After reading about other runs, I thought perhaps I should try something myself. Looking at options, I came across this take-off of 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover I wrote 8 or 9 years ago.
The problem is all inside your head she said to me
The answer is easy if you take it logically
I'd like to help you in your struggle to be free
There must be fifty ways to save the dukes
She said it's really not my habit to intrude
Furthermore, I hope my meaning won't be lost or misconstrued
But I'll repeat myself at the risk of being crude
There must be fifty ways to save the dukes
Fifty ways to save the dukes
Just summon a mate, Pate
Shoot to dispel, Kel
Use malison, Alison
While web can make you free
Try out a sphere, Greer
Or make them run in fear
They can't hit what they can't see, Lee
And that can make you free
She said it grieves me so to see you in such pain
I wish there was something I could do to make you smile again
I said I appreciate that and would you please explain
About the fifty ways
She said why don't we both just sleep on it tonight
And I believe in the morning you'll begin to see the light
And then she kissed me and I realized she probably was right
There must be fifty ways to save the dukes
Fifty ways to save the dukes
Just summon a mate, Pate
Shoot to dispel, Kel
Use malison, Alison
While web can make you free
Try out a sphere, Greer
Or make them run in fear
They can't hit what they can't see, Lee
And that can make you free
I don't remember why I did it, but it reads as though it should have had a party associated with it - so I've created one consistent with the song.
It's a while since I did a run in SCS, so that will be a bit of a change for me as well. Ways has at least reached Beregost without undue difficulty, though it felt a bit odd to be attacked by several dead NPCs on the way (I think that's a result of the SCS component allowing you options when you recruit them).
Travelling south to Nashkel, while exploring the nearby area, we ran into Viconia - her command spell helped us in taking down this cleric flaming fist merc:
Kagain left the party and we picked up our first cleric. Next, we got our hands on the boots of stealth and Mirianne's Letter, travelled further south for the family amulet and made our way to Nashkel. The ankheg armor hiding spot didn't contain any armor, but a shortbow +1, which was a nice surprise:
I wanted to rest, but didn't want to face another bounty hunter yet, so I travelled to the carnival, where I ran into Quayle and swapped out Viconia for him. I did go back to Nashkel to take down Neira, who gets a bunch of tactics-based prebuffs, including animate dead:
With the help of bless and a spirit animal summon, we were able to get a few good hits in. I also noticed, though, that Neira seems to have cast her first spell (I think it was rigid thinking, which failed) almost without any casting time. I noticed a similiar thing against the red wizard hunting Neera - his opening flame arrow came out unusually fast. Does tactics grant enemy spellcasters one instant or faster cast at the beginning of combat? I'm going to have to pay attention to see. In any case, we were able to interrupt her second spell:
Quayle successfully commands Neira, allowing us to get good hits in (and we see armor and shield breakage for the first time). As our foe dies, her skeleton approaches, and we run outside. Notably, this skeleton looks like the level 15 version of skeleton warriors, and I was both confused and scared as to why Neira would be able to summon one of these:
As I ran out, the amnish guards helped us in attacking the summon, and it turned out to be a harmless low level skeleton instead, as they killed it with a few hits. I don't know why the visual is different here, as far as I know none of my mods should do that, but it might be a hidden component of one of them:
I took a quick trip south to the Mines, mainly to trigger the Dorn encounter for some easy gear (including a magical shield for Quayle) and also took a quick look at the wand of frost hiding place - in this case, it contained bracers of AC8 - nice:
Now, these could've been cursed ones instead, but I decided to take the risk, and it payed off (no way to identify stuff without paying a merchant yet, and we're very low on funds). I also decided to leave Ajantis in Nashkel to pick up Branwen, because I thought that additional command spells would be very valuable in this installation: With sleep breaking upon attack and blindness plus web much lowered in duration, command seems like a premier option for early crowd control. I also realized that with two commanding clerics, I could safely go for the ankhegs as an early experience boost. For a little bit of a bonus on my travels back north, I decided to pick up Samuel (also found chainmail +1 in the fire resistance ring hiding spot) and transport him to FAI. However, things didn't work out so well: We got ambushed by hobgoblin archers, and before I was even able to act, they unleashed a devastating hail of arrows, with two hits each on Imoen and Quayle, leaving me no option for counterplay (and it seems like the double hits got around the unconsicousness-mechanic in this tactics installation, as they both just died right away):
I expected the run might end here, but I decided to give it my all, spamming command, summoning a spirit animal, casting bless, getting into melee to avoid more arrows, and drinking healing potions on my sturdier party members. Branwen got knocked down, but Khalid and Jaheira were able to actually finish the job (a vulnerable Xindra had to stay back, and Jaheira consumed a total of three healing potions):
We picked up all the gear and spent 400 gold at FAI to resurrect the fallen. The party is pretty low on cash as a result. So, do hobgoblin archers (non-elite) usually attack with a +4 bonus, or is this a tactics thing? Propably the latter, when looking at the wiki. I've also noticed that kobolds are a LOT beefier. The installation options to improve generic enemies certainly does what it advertises.
I hoped that ankhegs wouldn't really get changed too much. One or two command spells per ankheg (requiring three rests in total to clear out the nest and the map) allowed for semi-safe takedowns - very nice, and lots of experience for the party (plus, another +1 small shield amongst their treasures). Only a pair of northern ankhegs wasn't so easy to deal with, and a ranged hit put Imoen in some danger, though everyone survived:
I also helped Tenya and took care of the zombie plague (sadly no cloak of protection), ending up with most of the party at around level 3. Also went for a tactical visit to Bjornin's half-ogres for another magical shield as quest rewards are not randomized (avoiding the remained of the map, and taking care in Beregost not to run into Silke, who should still be around somewhere, waiting to strike). Not sure what I'll do next, but with the levels acquired, maybe we will be a bit safer against the improved generic enemies. I would love to have the cash for ankheg armor, but that's not in the cards for now (though I transported one shell to a containerin Beregost for the future).
In Korlasz crypt we finally found our Gem Bag! Xun and Baeloth used another set of PfU's to reach Korlasz. Managing our invisibility was crucial bombing Korlasz with fire. First we used the three memoried Invisibility 10's, and then all but one of the potions, and Korlasz surrendered. We had reputation of 19 so we praised the Flaming Fist Enforcer to 18 so Viconia could join us in Baldur's Gate. Calling myself Bhaalspawn for the growd we got it to 15.
Chapter 8
Teleria was killed casually as she doesn't agro if not talked to. Skelis then cleared the map from enemies. Tsolak was easily killed too for the Boots of Haf Speed, which I can turn into third set of Boots of Speed. We easily helped the Dwarves to fight the Undead, and then Skelies cleared the place. The next level was quite tiring, as we needed about 20 rests, but eventually the Skelis grinded the Un-dead in there too. Baeloth and Viconia both got confused couple times, but did not die. Coldheart could do little with Secret Revealed, although he got Time Stop away. We hid behind the tent for the parley. Viconia lv9.
Chapter 9
Baeloth lv11 with Animate Dead, which are already the second best version with the Cloak of Minor Arcana. Didn't really expect Baeloth getting them before Viconia. Viconia looted the Troll Cave for the important Enchanted Weapon scroll and Locket of Embrasing, which Viconia equipped with the help of Helm of Opposite Alignement.
Trying to sneak to Morentherene it surprised us by waking, and we barely made out alive. Rested, buffed with Remove Fear and ran past it with haste. Ziatar was burned afar, although we ran out of fire and needed to finish it with Skelis. Neothelid, Akanna and her Aerial Servants were easily killed by Xun and Skelis.
At the forst Hoach made us the third set of Boots of Speed, so Viconia could keep up. Surrendered the fort, interrupted the bridge mage with Ring of Energy and Skelis wiped the guards.
Chapter 10
Got 165k gold selling our loot for the genie, and equipped Ring of Purity with the alignment adjuster. Then we did all the mundane quests and Baeloth got lv11 with Resist Fear, Protection from Fire, Stoneskin and Spell Immunity.
Zaedroth buggered away because we are a Blackguard, which I forgot. So no Spell Sequencer robe for Baeloth. Viconia died in the fight against the Dark Magician which sucked because she missed out on a big xp dump and she was still 55k xp away from Skeli upgrade. So Baeloth took a small death in the Undead Cave, so Viconia could get more xp. Last two PfU's and OGL fire to clear the place, Viconia 26k xp, clearing Dead Man's pass 20k, 10k after clearing Mimic cave, 2k after Laddle and Etting Ghost and finally after freeing Slug Viconia got lv10. We were now all maxed out 450k xp because of the 90% cap. Baeloth used SI Conjuration on Hephernaans chest and we escaped the place.
Troll Wave, 20 pre Skull Traps, 5 Skelis and 10x Detonators with 1 Goblet.
Mage Wave, 17 Detonators.
Paladin Wave, 26 Detonators, 5 Skelis and WoMS.
Final Wave, 20 Detonators, WoMS and 6 Goblets.
Ashatiel was easily killed and first time in ages I cleared the Avernus bridge with Skelis.
Xun arrived Belhifet with -9 Thac0 Enchanted Weapon Martyr's Morningstar and 400hp, and after refreshing hp with the Goblet 6 times Bel was already dead. Xun did all the heavy lifting and Viconia and Baeloth just enjoyed the show.
A few chores in Beregost included an attempt to kill Neera to get her gem bag. However, with SCS installed she refused to die despite being peppered with missiles after being blinded. I couldn't remember if that would change after she had a conversation - but it didn't (the gem bag is much less useful for a party than solo though, so not too much of a loss). I did remember that SCS would mean a failed attempt to blind someone would turn them hostile, but decided to try that with Silke anyway. The blind from Alison did fail, but a follow-up command from Ways was successful and Silke failed to recover from that.
After going down to Nashkel, Ways took another chance by annoying Zordral and dragging him out of his tent. His mirrors and buffed AC kept him going a while and he first scared and then held Kel. The only direct damage spell he attempted looked like an intended scorcher, but he abandoned that when Greer ran out of sight range (one of the advantages of SCS) and was shot down shortly afterwards.
Sleep made saving Arabelle a piece of cake, even for a 1st level party. Then it was on to Firewine Bridge where Meilum saved against attempts to blind him, but command proved to be his fatal weakness. Back in Nashkel Neira was successfully blinded, but that made no difference as command effectively killed her anyway.
A bit of stealing meant that the party now had 3 invisibility potions and decided to go and call on Drizzt before reputation got too high. I wasn't sure if he would consent to simply follow Lee round in circles, but in the event he proved to be an obedient little drow and eventually the criticals became, well, critical. The 2k XP each gained from that allowed everyone to level up for the first time. Lee gratefully took the armor - allowing him far better AC while still being able to use his thief skills.
Immediately after killing Drizzt they used sleep to subdue Bjornin's half-ogres and then headed back to Beregost. After the hard work of keeping Drizzt in line I couldn't be bothered to micro-manage running away from a xvart ambush and Alison paid the price for that with the first party death. 200 gold put her back together in time to collect a magical shield from Bjornin.
Heading north, a sleeping ogre gave up his collection of belts before Alison was consoled for her death with a ring of wizardry. Unusually for my parties, Ways did actually use remove fear before confronting Tarnesh. It wasn't required though as the mage's initial attempt to buff failed and he collapsed. Returning Joia's ring gave a couple of the party the XP to level up, but I'm playing with my usual party rules that require everyone to level up at the same time.
Still pushing the boundaries, the next target to be tackled was Bassilus. He has potentially nasty spells, but Pate successfully blinded him with Sunscorch at the start of the combat. That could well have been quickly fatal for him, except that he used Divine Protection to avoid any damage. A couple of rounds later I failed to recognize that he was casting at Kel and Bassilus completed an Unholy Blight aimed at him. Kel used a potion of heroism to provide a couple of extra HPs, but that was not quite sufficient and she collapsed to the floor. Bassilus then finished off the spirit lion and turned on Lee - which I found surprising given he was in the shadows approaching for a backstab . A magic missile wand charge successfully disrupted an attempt to summon a skeleton warrior and Alison finally got a successful blind with her 6th attempt. There are several cleric spells that can counter that, so I was only expecting a brief respite and the chance to hit rather easier during it. However, Bassilus didn't attempt to cast anything further and died a couple of rounds later. Ways went to a temple to get Kel raised, only to find that didn't work. He tried 4 or 5 times at different temples and I was about to conclude that the original P&P behaviour (requiring resurrection rather than raise dead for elves) had been brought in, when it worked - I don't know why. I realised at that point though I'd failed to pick up Kel's equipment, so there was further expense involved there as well as the painful loss of the bracers of weapon expertise and the Twinkle scimitar.
Kel had bought 10 crossbow bolts as part of his re-equipping and put them to use at High Hedge against a pair of golems. It looked like some melee might be required as well, but a critical hit with the final bolt finished the job and allowed the party to level up once again. Thalantyr then successfully restored Melicamp to provide a nice little bonus.
Xindra, half-elven totemic druid (Tactics Remix with additional mods), final update
We start off with a quick (failed) attempt at saving Melicamp, explored High Hedge but didn't return Perdue's sword (Silke is still lurking over there). We also fought Zargal in the hopes of item randomizer getting us something good, but nothing useful was found - these hobgoblins seem to hit a lot better/harder with Tactics, though I am not 100% sure if I am just imagining things. Hold person saved the day:
We also took in Brage, and learned while exploring that ghasts are very dangerous now: They move very fast and cast blindness, and they might also have improved combat stats. Ghouls are luckily unchanged. Next, I move southwest of Nashkel for the guaranteeed club +1 (being an EE addition):
In the nearby cave, we find a magical ring that looks like "The Victor". It's time for Quayle to learn identify: Randomizer has an option to change the visual appearance of cursed items, so this ring might very well not be what it looks like. Xindra finds a winter wolf (takes forever to take down, as they seem to have much-improved AC, amongst other things - luckily they still only deal frost damage, so the Belt of the Antipode does the job). A quick visit to the west, and Hairtooth and Gnarl fall, but don't offer any special loot. I don't explore further, being unsure about how the improved gnoll fortress component will affect things.
Quayle successfully scribes identify without the aid of intelligence potions, and we identify everything at FAI - good thing we didn't equip this armor yet:
However, the ring in question was actually The Victor!
Our first actually good find via randomizer - everything else so far has been a downgrade from what we'd usually get at this point.
A quick return to the Cloud Peak Mountains area as I want to go for full exploration this run, and I run into my first dread wolves. There is an improved wolf component in tactics, and it definitely affects these guys a lot - for example, they regenerate, and quite fast at that - that's 8 damage, and right away the wolf is back to uninjured:
I retreat to get some spells ready. With a spirit lion and bless, we are able to deal enough damage to overcome regeneration, but the wolf doesn't die. Now, there are dread wolves in SoD that need fire/acid to kill them, and I remember reading something like that while skimming the tactics readme, so I try my luck with flame blade, and it works (though the duration is only long enough to kill one of the two wolves). More like the SCS improved trolls mechanic, so no unsonsciousness. Also, these guys transmit a very long-lasting disease, as I noticed a bit later:
This disease actually lasted many, many days. Temples in Nashkel or FAI don't offer a way to cleanse diseases, and I have no way to do so at this point. It took resting for a very long time at FAI to finally get rid of it. So, fire damage sources and disease removal are apparently a bit more important with tactics.
We also checked out some vendors after finally getting some cash from selling all the newly identified items. There's not much to buy, most vendor inventory has been moved by the randomizer - mostly two large shields +1 and the amulet of protection +1, plus the price of forging ankheg armor. The only thing I've seen so far that I would like but can't afford (aside from consumables) is the Claw, which was still at High Hedge as per usual.
Also, during one of my rests I was interrupted by flinds. I was curious about the improved gnoll component, because the gnolls I had encountered so far seemed okay (the gnoll slayers at High Hedge did use healing potions, but normal gnolls seemed relatively weak) - these flinds however don't mess around - after seeing all of them quaffing powerful potions, I decided to run away:
However, further exploration of tactics mechanics will have to wait, as this run came to a relatively quick end when I foolishly decided to check out Bassilus (wanting the gold for the Claw). I knew I would propably not be able to take him down, given the prebuffs we've seen so far, but I just wanted to see what a higher level clerics spell list would look like, expecting that I could propably just run away. Seeing Blade Barrier and an Aerial Servant meant that we wouldn't even try:
However, despite my attempt to run to the north-eastern edge of the map, Bassilus was able to get into visual range of Xindra for a quick second, enough to allow him to start a hold person cast. At this point I had no counterplay for this yet, and Xindra was hit just before she would've been able to leave the area. Bassilus followed up with Bolt of Glory (of all things), and his magic resistance from the spell with the same name prevented any attempt at interruption, even with "The Victor", which usually rarely fails:
In an attempt to save our Bhaalspawn, we tried a bunch of stuff, but every single spell was blocked by magic resistance (which seems rather unlikely - the resistance shouldn't be that high, so we definitely got unlucky here), and while we did land a few physical hits, Bassilus' hitpoints seemed much improved as well, so he wasn't even close to dying. Meanwhile, he held Jaheira, flame striked Imoen and eventually killed Xindra (while ignoring the non-held party members that were attacking him, which seems like an interesting choice for the AI):
I wasn't happy with the settings anyway, so I am not saddened by the end to the run at all - with the unsconsciousness mechanic being in there, a victory (though we are very far away from that) would have felt hollow. I wanted a challenge and definitely got one, though I will have to change a few settings, and I will also go with a custom party for my next attempt so I can more specifically answer the challenges I've seen so far (I've also played a lot with official companions in my last few run and want to change things up again; however, since I've only seen a small percentage of the game with tactics changes so far, I doubt my choices will end up being ideal).
All right, I've changed my settings: ATweaks is gone, so I'm now only playing with Tactics Remix and Item Randomizer. Still a full installation for the latter. For tactics, the installation is mostly complete, with the exceptions of: No unconsiousness mechanic (we're not playing Dragon Age or Pillars of Eternity here, it just feels too modern of a thing for the BG series, and also makes things easier instead of harder), no blanket increase to enemy hitpoints (which I already didn't have last time), and I've also removed extra spell slots for enemy spellcasters, a sub-option within "Smarter Mages" and "Smarter Clerics" - let's see how that will impact the pre-buffs and spell usage by our spellcasting foes - though it might take a while to find out, because I am mostly going to avoid those entirely early on if I can.
I'm now playing with a custom party that is hopefully a bit more ready to deal with some of the improved enemies that we're going to encounter. The Bhaalspawn should provide some nice support with her skald song:
For our frontline, we're joined by the dwarven berserker Fargrom:
Damage at range is coming from the elven archer Valayar:
The fighter/cleric Perigosch, another dwarf, will provide some divine support:
His brother Arbolosch, a fighter/thief, will deal with locks and traps:
I wasn't quite sure how to fill the final party slot, but since early to mid BG1 is where clerics are at their best and I found command to be rather useful with some of the changes in tactics, I decided (after thinking about adding a fighter/mage, a second fighter/cleric or a second archer) to go for a single class Priest of Helm, a halfling named Iridine:
She will also be helpful in getting rid of the vast quantitity of illusion-based pre-buffs for the various wizards we're going to deal with.
You may notice some weird profiencies here, most notably a lot of sword and shield style. This is because a) I'm only planning to play BG1 here, where ranged attacks are more commong and more threatening, plus dual wielding doesn't really get to its highest potential yet and b) because the possibly improved hobgoblins, bandits and kobolds have already been super threatening in my first run, and I can imagine they will only get more so when I encounter stronger versions (black talon elites, elite hobgoblin archers, kobold commandos etc.) - Valayar is picking gnolls as a racial enemy because I have the feeling that the flinds and the improved gnoll fortress might be pretty tough to deal with, and there aren't that many great choices in BG1 (my other ideas would've been kobolds, hobgoblins or ghouls). A lot of the weapon pips are based on afew guaranteed item drops (mostly from the EE), because I have no idea when and if I will find other useful weapons via item randomizer. For example, I never found a magical short sword or long sword during my previous run (not even in any of the shops), despite them being among the most common types in the base game.
I haven't started playing yet, but I plan to go for the ankhegs pretty much right away this time around, as they seemed the most promising source of early experience without some kind of solo XP trickery. I am kind of worried about my bhaalspaw, being the only party member unable to wear helmets, just getting shot down by a few stray arrows, but I wanted to pick her for the top spot because of the option to eventually add a familiar, which she wouldn't have gotten as a party member. Let's see if this will backfire (if it does, I might need a fighter/mage instead of a bard for the purposes of arcane spellcasting).
@enuhal Sorry to hear the end of your run. Good luck in your next attempt. @grond0 I have ran across the bug unable to resurrect party members bug a number of times in a temple in BG 2, and since BG 1 EE really uses the same engine maybe it's the same bug...I would usually clear it by reloading though I think at least once I had to fix the state flag with EE Keeper.
Update on my dwarven fighter/cleric run: He has just made it to the city of Baldur's Gate. Run has been pretty smooth so far, with the archers Minsc (with DEX gauntlets) and Khalid taking down enemies pretty fast with their long bows. Will keep at it.
We cleared the initial wilderness area and the one further east, dealt with the outside of FAI (without approaching Tarnesh) and immediately went north for our ankheg hunt. With better stats, one command per ankheg was enough to stay safe. We had to rest one time inbetween, and I decided to visit Beregost for that rest, because it also allowed me so sell a bunch of the ankheg shells. After a second round of ankheg hunting, we ended up with enough gold for a large shield +1, sling +1 and two suits of platemail, plus the ankheg plate. Nice. Also, seems like vendor items are static with the randomizer - the vendors had the same very few magic items left in stock as they did in my previous run. Further north, we talked to Tenya - who did get her tactics prebuffs, so we had to deal with one of the dangerous looking but actually easy to destroy skeletons:
This also confirms that tactics is the culprit for this cosmetic change. Can't say that I'm a fan of it, I like the ability to distinguish the different skeletons by sight. We cleared the zombie farm and stole the +1 bastard sword in the random Ulgoth's Beard house. This weapon is the main reason behind Fargrom's bastard sword weapon pip choice, because I also found in that spot during my first run, so I assumed it would be a static find (given that this is its vanilla location). The +1 bastard sword in the Beregost smithy, in contrast, was missing. Making sure to avoid Neera, we travelled further south of Beregost, clearing Landrin's spiders on the way and the two areas on the road to Nashkel, also returning Zhurlong's boots, Mirianne's letter and the family amulet. I did encounter my first hobgoblin elites here, and they are indeed tougher and carry + use healing potions:
We also ran into the first ghast for this run, though with our improved stats and knowing how dangerous they can be, this was no problem this time around. Now, we finally decided to take on Tarnesh, going for a backstab and keeping our archer stealthed as well, ready to add an arrow at the same time - the backstab wasn't enough, but the addition of the arrow did the trick:
After turning in our two quests at FAI, we moved to Nashkel, taking down Neira with command:
Further south, we triggered the Dorn ambush to get the +1 wakizashi for Arbolosch and cleared the outside of the Mines. Greywulf was easy enough (hold person did the job), but only carried a +1 longsword. We rescued Samuel before returning back north, clearing High Hedge and sniping Bjornin’s half ogres, Melicamp (who survived this time), Zargal and Brage (all mostly without additional combat). After some turn-ins in Beregost, we're mostly done with the quests there (except for Silke, but she will have to wait). Next, south again to obtain the +1 club and clear the western Cloud Peak Mountains area. Once again we also killed the two bridge ogrillons at the gnoll fortress before retreating, and we also finally found an identify scroll for Brintje. None of our random finds are really all that useful (the only ones we're using are chainmail +1 and studded leather +1), and the only piece that wasn't just random +1 armor or weapons was a shield amulet:
Not the greatest find for us, sadly. However, we now had enough cash to buy the second +1 large shield and the +1 amulet of protection, plus The Captive Audience. We also decided that we were ready for the Neera fight now, and I wanted that gem bag. An attempt to open with silence failed when I realized that the extensive tatcics prebuffs include vocalize. I removed the spell from my memorized spells after that, otherwise I will make that mistake again (I guess we could use it against clerics or druids). Well, true sight and regular attacks did the job, with the red wizard now lacking defenses against melee weapons - he only got to cast an acid arrow on Valayar, which wasn't enough to take him down:
Protection from normal missles was still present, so the decision to remove the "Extra Spells" option so far hasn't really impacted the few spellcaster fights we've seen. I already had some magical ammo, bought earlier, but didn't think of using it in the moment, but melee attacks were enough. Now, Beregost is free to roam. I decided to quickly check out the remaining available merchants, going to Gullykin (nothing special in the temple shop; also picking up the +1 sling, which seems to be not randomized) and the entrace of Durlag's (sadly no wand of fire of fire on the merchant) - and while we were far too the east, we also took down Meilum, who dropped nothing of value (random +1 weapons). So, vendor items don't appear to be moved to other vendors, just to drops. The only static vendor items in total (outside of consumables such as scrolls, potions and ammo, plus a wand of sleep and a wand of magic missles that were still available at High Hedge) are apparently: The Captive Audience, two +1 large shields, a +1 sling, two quarterstaves +1 (I think? might have been just one instead; I have no use for them anyway), an amulet of protection +1; Claw and Horn of Kazgaroth - and that's it. Unless the BG city vendors do indeed get additional items, the value of gold seems much reduced with Item Randomizer. On the Tactics front, we're obviously doing a lot better. The random improved generic enemies now feel relatively easy to defeat again, with our own stats being better and the skald song doing a lot of work (plus, the early extra levels due to our immediate ankheg hunt). Not much to say on the spellcaster front yet, as we've only seen the same ones we've cked out before (but at a much later date) and will propably still avoid additional ones for a bit. Levels are now 3-5, with most party members being at level 4 (including our archer - I have to remember that I can use called shot now). All additional content yet to encounter (except for Silke and Bassilus, though we failed to kill either of them) will now be new in terms of tactics improvements.
A bit more exploration led to the minesite where the Doomsayer was blinded. However, that wasn't particularly helpful as it then started running around everywhere and eventually had to be taken down by a mob attack rather than just finished off with 2-handed weapons from outside its sight range. I decided to give sirines a miss for now, but did clear the area to the south - including helping Laurel out against the larger number of gibberlings SCS introduces. Alison had taken friends as a new spell when attaining level 3 and that enabled her to secure a pair of fluffy boots from the scared merchant. To the south, fighting retreats and the odd sleep dealt with the hordes at the Gnoll Stronghold with no alarms.
A stop off at High Hedge allowed for a resupply of daggers before returning south to explore the Cloud Peak Mountains. There wasn't huge amounts of XP on offer there, but every little helps and killing Ingot allowed the party to level up once again. Greywolf and the external area of the Nashkel Mines were no problem and they finished their clearance of the southernmost areas by taking Samuel back to the FAI.
Deciding it was about time to deal with Shoal, Ways headed for the coast. Lee found her kiss too overwhelming to bear, but a quick thump from Pate persuaded her to revive him. Droth failed to save against a command and his mirrors were not sufficient to allow him to survive the subsequent missile storm. Sleep and blindness quickly eliminated the nearby ogre clan and I decided the sirines there should now be safe enough. That proved to be the case, with the only charm attempt being, rather surprisingly, directed at an elf . Encouraged by that, more sirines were sought out at the lighthouse area. The first group of those did manage to charm Lee this time, but he was not a good enough shot to get through Ways' AC. Sil's group was no trouble at all, partly thanks to Lee one-shotting Sil with a critical backstab. By this time Lee had picked up lots of magical arrows of one sort or another and those made short work of the golems in the cave. Ways grabbed the constitution tome to allow him the ability to regenerate without resorting to Buckley's Buckler. The party was now close to another level and, after a painful encounter with a large group of hobgoblins, some dread wolves allowed them to level up again.
At the basilisk area, Greer took temporary possession of the Ring of Wizardry in order to cast PfP on everyone and not have to worry about micro-managing moveement. The southern basilisks were killed without incident, but Mutamin heard the attack on one of those near him and arrived slightly unexpectedly. However, a quick round of spells and one of the poison darts from the pirate cave saw him dead before he could do anything and his pet basilisks didn't last much longer. Reviving the nearby statue took reputation up to 20. Kirian's party were webbed and shot down unceremoniously.
With shop prices now at their minimum, a few purchases followed to boost equipment. Then it was time for a spot of ankheg hunting - their shells boosting finances as well as getting some useful XP. While sleep is very effective against them, nearly all the time the ankhegs were just shot down by the party - with just the odd critical hit affecting Ways.
Next up was the Red Wizards area. The SCS spiders there are extremely dangerous if you encounter them unprepared. Lee was turned invisible to deal with the web traps before contacting them to eliminate one source of danger. Invisibility was also used a couple of times on those immobilized by spider web tangles to prevent the spiders from quickly finishing them off, while Kel made use of his own immobilizing attack with stunning darts. The only slight hiccup was when a wraith spider got one attack in on a webbed Kel, when I blinded it immediately after it launched its web tangle and got caught out when it continued to advance - but it died from a general attack even before Pate could complete a first use of Call Lightning. Living in that area you might have expected the Red Wizards to have some defense against web attacks - but they didn't .
A bit more cleaning up in areas included an amusing encounter with the Flaming Fist south of Beregost. Blinding their leader turned him hostile - and the others immediately attacked him. Attacking the others to prevent them taking my XP saw one of them turn hostile quickly - and briefly turn on the last neutral one in the moment before it also went hostile ...
Next up, we cleared the xvart village, which was easy enough, and went do the digsite. The digsite itself was no problem; However, we meet our first kobold commandos in the area – they are definitely beefed up, a LOT, in terms of their accuracy. Three arrows fly towards Iridine and immediately kill her – mind you, this is a cleric in plate mail with a +1 medium shield – with skald song, her AC against missile weapons is -7 (without it’s -5). She should not die this fast. Luckily, our berserker sits at -13 or -11 depending on whether or not he has the skald song, and I make sure that others aren’t targeted, so the kobolds die, but we have our first death and need to spend 600 gold in the Nashkel temple.
Upon our return, we take on the big gnoll group to the north-east, our first big fight against improved gnolls. We are able to hold the chieftains – the flinds drink various potions, including oils of speed, but we’re prepared for a tough fight and have bless + chant going – easy enough with all that:
Next, we explore the eastern Cloud Peak Mountain area. There’s a tactics component that improves adventuring parties, and I’m not sure which ones count – is Sendai included? In any case, we scout her position with our stealthed archer and get bless + chant + DUHM going. She and her boys do drink potions (including an oil of speed), so they are to be taken seriously, but we still easily prevail.
Vax and Zal are next (the fact that a dart crit can deal 14 damage to Brintje is still rather scary – I wish she could wear a helmet), and we finally pick up a decent piece of randomized loot: Another Amulet of Protection +1, which is very welcome.
We also have the cash now (thanks in part to finding a few winter wolves) for the Claw of Kazgaroth, which is equipped by Brintje.
One thing I’ve noticed by now among the generic enemy improvements is definitely that they have weapon styles – notable when, for example, generic kobolds crit on a 19, presumable due to having single weapon style.
Now, we're going to the lake area, where we take on another mage battle. Our foe is similar to the red wizard in Beregost in terms of buffs: A clear weakness to (magical) physical attacks once the illusions are removed. Also, she once again seems to favor direct damage spells (flame arrow is her first one) – she also casts horror on a party protected by remove fear, so the AI doesn’t seem to always recognize immunities:
Now we move to area north-east of Nashkel and run into a dangerous ogre mage to the south. He has up to 4th level spells, including stoneskin. I notice the weakness I’ve seen before on these mages: No significant armor-buffing spell. We can’t tackle this one with our own spells with those protections, but we can cast true sight and now he only has stoneskin as a physical defense if we make use of our magical ammo – and so we do. He casts a scorcher ray, but we easily get through the stoneskins and kill him.
Another group of named bandits here grants us our first good weapon find - the composite longbow +1. Hold person helps us in obtaining it:
Nice. Also, we already have fire ammo for dread wolves – they are MUCH easier to deal with at this point. On the way back to town, we take on Zordral at the carnival. This one doesn't get to put up his pre-buffs, as three arrows hit him instantly before they are triggered:
Next, the area north of the gnoll fortress, where we fight on the bridge – ogre berserkers are similar to their SCS version, getting access to berserk. So far, so good – our gold is enough to buy us a wand of sleep + wand of fear (not the greatest, but might come in helpful as there’s little to spend our gold on - I mistakenly stated that a wand of magic missles was available, but I confused it with a wand of fear) and all scrolls around the available shops to learn for Brinje.
Next, we explore the temple - with magical ammo and a berserker I felt ready for vampire wolves. Those are definitely hugely affected by the improved wolves component: They start with domination! luckily I was able to pause as the spell was flying towards Fargrom – he raged just in time:
The vampire wolf followed up with doom and minor drain. I was able to shoot him down, and the second one didn’t aggro right away – it didn’t target our berserker upon moving in, but instead Brintje as soon as she was in sight – they seem to be smart with targeting, maybe – Brintje got dominated, but she’s really not a threat to us, and the others bring down the second vampire wolf. Good work:
We also explore some of the less dangerous parts of already visited areas, encountering a hobgoblin archer ambush on the way. A good time to talk about some odd behaviour from the tactics AI: Ranged attackers pretty much ALWAYS seem to target Brintje, and I don't know why - Remember that she's wearing the Claw, and is always in chainmail. Her AC against missles is far from the worst (that would be our archer, and by a pretty clear margin). You can see this behaviour here:
And as you can guess, the crits can get quite dangerous. Does the AI recognise that Brintje can't wear a helmet and is just hoping for lucky crits? Or is it because she has the lowest hitpoint total at this point?
One of the areas we clear out is the outside of Ulcaster (not entering the dungeon yet) – there’s an improved Ulcaster component in tactics, and I just hoped that it wouldn’t include Icharyd – I was wrong: Seems like he’s also a cleric in tactics, using two spells that I was able to interrupt, luckily, and a hold person, which hit one of the party, but I was able to take him down (while he was presumably trying to heal himself, from the spell animation/sound).
Definitely beefed up, but this is one battle where the SCS version is actually a lot more difficult, with the forced timeskip that removes all buffs and the lightning damage added in. He dropped a unique flail +1 with 1 point of fire damage, seems like it’s added by tactics – the first new item I’ve seen. Sadly no flail users in the party.
Next, we made a move to Peldvale to check out the black talon elites. They drink strong potions (speed, invulnerability, heroism, giant strength types and the like, plus healing), just like the more powerful gnolls and named humanoids we’ve encountered so far. And they hit HARD. After seeing both the kobold commandos and the black talon elites I’m convinced that going for weapon and shield style on multiple characters was actually a really good choice. I'm skipping Larswood for now, as I don’t want to fight a high level druid yet. Instead, we're doing the gnoll fortress, the first “officially” improved area. Of course, we get the more powerful gnolls – getting crit a ton, these guys propably have two-handed weapon style as we see crits on a 19. This is all really tough on my primary tank, Fargrom (who often only is hittable via crits, so double the crit range means double the hits). Tactics also adds in gnoll shamans, who are shaman-class, judging from their prebuffs, but seem to be low level – command and focusing them at range works out. They do come, however, with two skeletons each, which aren’t animate dead summons but the type of ranged skeletons you might find in some random wilderness spawns. All in all, pretty rough area to clear out, and it’s a good thing we didn’t go here earlier on. No tome in the cave, just a useless +1 short sword, but the second gnoll chieftain carried this halberd +1 with +1 fire damage, very similar to the flail we found earlier. Here are some screenshots from the whole experience:
After some thinking, I decided to go for the Nashkel Mines next – we’ve shown that we can take on a tactics improved area, and the mines are another one. For most of it, I got what I expected – lots of improved kobolds hitting us despite our great AC scores, forcing a rest before we made it to the final level. On the way, our skald casts invisibility on Arbolosch so he can safely disarm all the traps in level 3. At the end, there’s a kobold witch doctor – and wouldn’t you know it, just like in SCS, he opens up with lightning bolt. It also bounces in a dangerous fashion, I’m barely able to move my characters aside to stop a second hit for some of them. Luckily, he’s also easily killed:
Mulahey has one of those mages in his cave as well, and since we’re in very cramped quarters, I am forced to dodge the spell by moving back outside. None of the enemies follow me, and upon moving back in my combat position is luckily still okay (Mulahey has stood back, didn’t get involved yet), the witch doctor follows up with flame arrow and horror, and we shoot him down with magical ammo, finishing him with holy smite:
We go after Mulahey, who casts hold person on our backline but fails to pierce our great dwarven saving throws, luckily. As he reaches low hitpoints/dies, suddenly, out of thin air, another huge group of kobolds with another witch doctor spawns inside his cave – not sure if triggered by a timer, his hitpoints (dialogue where he gives up, which we don’t accept) or maybe me moving further into the cave. Seems very unfair. Kobold commandos instantly target and hit Brintje, who almost dies – I am forced to drink one of the very rare invisbility potions to make sure there isn’t a potentially deadly follow-up hit - and we’re forced to run again because we won’t be able to interrupt lighting bolt again and aren’t ready for another witch doctor battle:
The spell still goes off, targeting our berserker - luckily it bounces back into the cave instead towards the fleeing party, only killing kobolds:
Interestingly, upon our return after a rest, the pre-buffs of the witch doctor don’t fire back up. Strange. In SCS, spellcasters can just do that all over again, if I remember correctly. Might be a loophole in tactics? Will keep my eyes open. In any case, that makes it easy to take this guy down. We find a wand of fire and the charisma tome – very nice!
Back to Nashkel, where we face Nimbul – true sight + magical ammo with the help of a few buffs does the job, he spams magic missles at us, which isn’t enough.
We get boots of avoidance and find familiar out of this, which should increase Brintje’s survivability against all the arrows aimed at her. Tranzig gets backstabbed by Arbolosch, who now gets triple damage, aided by bless and chant.
We also quickly clear up the named bandits at the crossroads and at Peldvale, where we once again run into quite a few extremely dangerous black talons, which makes me doubt that we can go to the bandit camp (which is also improved, though we don’t know with what else) any time soon.
Party levels are now 4-6. I'm not too happy with the group of opponents just spawning in out of nowhere in the mines. This could've easily ended the run with very little options for counterplay - feels a bit unfair.
Also, some thoughts about my AC against missles after checking a few things in my character sheets:
I should have picked single weapon style instead of going for the buckler + weapon and shield style for my skald. The buckler vs missles vs weapon and shield style mechanic is a bit weird, but I did hear about it before, just forgot the details. In the end, I get the exact same out of single weapon style with the free bonus crit chance (though the skald barely ever attacks), and if I find a buckler +1, if I understand the mechanics correctly, the single weapon style will actually be one point superior for missile defense (though inferior for melee defense), since bucklers +1 add a +2 to missile ac to offset their general armor bonus of 2.
More importantly, I JUST learned for the very first time that weapon and shield style does NOT work when you have a sling + shield equipped. It needs to be a melee weapon (also tested throwing daggers, doesn’t work either). That is VERY useful information I would’ve loved to have known that earlier on. Makes the bonus really not as great for my two clerics as I had previously thought, and explains why the kobold commandos were able to score so many hits against Iridine back at the digsite.
I decide to go for the mine exit area next, and I accidentally run into Narcillicus while unprepared (I didn’t think he would be this far to the east):
We run north to flee the map, not ready to fight him right now – he casts a scorcher ray on the fleeing party, but that forces him to stay in place for a while, allowing us to escape. After resting, we return to the map, mostly because I was curious if his position would be reset or not (otherwise, I could explore the nearby cave with the three ghasts and hopefully some good loot). He didn’t reset, I was able to take out the slimes and get to the cave.
I also decided to see if I could get the wizard with a backstab – sadly, he moved just as the hit came in, no longer with his back to Arbolosch, so he only got hit normally – however, similiar to the final witch doctor in the mines, he didn’t fire up his pre-buffs again, instead casting improved invisibility upon himself. I moved in as he revealed himself again with some kind of summoning spell – he was easily taken down, didn't even need my true sight.
Okay, so it seems, for sure now, that you can get around tactics mage’s prebuffs by triggering them and resting, which doesn’t work in every situation of course, and I will avoid doing so on purpose if I can, as it feels a bit cheesy (but if I have to flee and rest organically, I will do so – not to reset buffs, but because it’s the normal gameplay reaction when at an overwhelming disadvantage).
I also took on the amazons, who did use a bunch of cleric spells, but notably no repeated backstabs – I think, from what I've seen until now, that thieves are one thing that SCS improves a lot more than tactics does (now we have a second example of this happening after Icharyd). We are able to hold person the two clerics after getting our own archer confused, but he luckily doesn’t attack us. Nice.
Since we managed to do decently well here, I went after the Gullykin group next – an initial backstab on their arcane spellcaster didn’t do enough damage, but with a bunch of my (low level, don’t let the visuals fool you) skeletons here, true sight, magical ammo and attacks at range, that was enough.
We also found a two-handed axe +1 with a chance of dealing extra fire damage. Quite curious: Three items added in by tactics for now, and all have been +1 weapons with fire damage. Maybe it's because of the change to dread wolves, go give the player some sources for that?
Now we felt strong enough to also circle back to Silke – true sight + magical ammo with a bunch of buffs (remove fear, chant+bless, DUHM) - by now our standard approach to these spellcasters. Her one move was magic missles on a skeleton? While these tactics spellcasters have good defenses (though with a distinct lack of armor-improving spells), I am questioning their offensive moves. While I have seen sleep and horror, I have seen them only once or twice – everything else has mostly been straight up damaging spells, and not the very powerful ones like fireball – more like flame arrows, acid arrows, scorchers and magic missles (the lightning bolts from the kobolds being a notable exception and actually super deadly). Silke dies surprisingly quickly - once again, low level stoneskins don't block that many hits, and with poor AC and no illusion-based defenses left, they don't do all that much:
From these battles, aside from the very welcome boots of grounding, I got a chainmail +2, which is great for Brintje (seems like a static drop), and earlier on Tranzig also did have his Ring of Protection +1 and Wand of Magic Missles (seems like both of these are static as well). Not much else in terms of stuff I can actually use, but tons of sellable items. With nothing else to buy, we get all the relevant potions and green scrolls that are available, and also a bunch of more magical ammo. With additional money, we can always get more acid arrows or arrows +2, bullets +1 or elemental bullets +1 around the place. The only typical ammo type (outside of specials like dispelling/explosives) not available in abundance pre big city are +2 bullets, or so it seems to me – I already bought all the ones I could find. With PFNM being everywhere, it’s good to stock up on these things.
We now have access to exactly five skeleton summons (though the weakest version of them), so it might be a good idea to see if the sirens at the sword coast have been changed at all.
Edit: Forgot to mention that among the potions I picked up were some master thievery ones from the vendor at Durlag's; I used them to steal Dushai's ring and Algernon's cloak (both apparently static items).
Brintje, half-elven skald (custom party/tactics remix/item randomizer) - Update 2Also, some thoughts about my AC against missles after checking a few things in my character sheets:
I should have picked single weapon style instead of going for the buckler + weapon and shield style for my skald. The buckler vs missles vs weapon and shield style mechanic is a bit weird, but I did hear about it before, just forgot the details. In the end, I get the exact same out of single weapon style with the free bonus crit chance (though the skald barely ever attacks), and if I find a buckler +1, if I understand the mechanics correctly, the single weapon style will actually be one point superior for missile defense (though inferior for melee defense), since bucklers +1 add a +2 to missile ac to offset their general armor bonus of 2.
@Enuhal that seems odd. So long as you have any one handed melee weapon equipped I think you get the -2 bonus vs missiles from sword and shield style. The penalty for bucklers just cancels the shield's standard AC bonus against missiles, so the overall effect should be to improve AC by 2 against missiles (vs improving it by 1 for single weapon style).
@Grond0 I've tested it again, in a controlled environment with several weapon style configurations and bucklers + bucklers +1. The way the bucklers special ability of not improving AC against missles works is weird - while wearing a buckler lowers the overall AC by 1, it also increases the AC again missles by 1 (and a buckler +1 will increase it by two), but I propably somehow forgot to consider the overall lowering of my AC during my calculations for my previous post, so yeah, I was definitely mistaken there - weapon and shield style does offer 1 (though not 2) point improvement in AC against missles with a buckler compared to one-handed weapon style and no shield, even with a buckler +1, which, for a skald that basically never attacks and often gets pelted with arrows, is propably the better deal. Thanks for the correction, that does make me feel a bit better about my choice
Trio 71 Session 6 (links to session 12345)
Tar (Gate70)
Omen (Grond0)
Coreheal VII (Corey_Russell)
Tar had a cunning plan. First he spoke to Flydian, learning of Trademeet. Once there we defended the place against a few animals and removed the Dao Djinn. Thus freeing up the merchant so we could procure the Blackblood club for Coreheal. There's lots more to do here but Tar wanted to travel elsewhere
That's right, a pleasant stroll around the Temple District sewers to dispose of Mekrath and releasing Haer'Dalis. We picked up items including a rod of resurrection in case our cleric perished later. On our way to the Planar Prison we dealt with a couple of thief guild traitors
The young portal to the Planar Prison almost cost Tar her life. A fire elemental shuffled around a few tables and clouted her hard for 54 crushing damage with a mephit immediately adding another 10 damage. Tar crawled away with 8hp remaining and waited for Omen to tidy up
After a bit of healing we entered the portal. Tar in stealth, Omen with an invisibility potion and Coreheal with Sanctuary. Omen had potions of frost giant strength, speed and invulnerability. Omen picked off the mage on the left as Coreheal cast silence. Omen's bounty hunter caster perished as Tar threw in a special snare holding one enemy and injuring the other three. They didn't last much longer
So we headed anti-clockwise after identifying their loot, killing their thrall leader and attacking a larger group of enemies. They too were easily beaten down and we prepared ourselves for the Master of Thralls. Omen led the attack as skeletons supported and Tar used a special snare. Coreheal realised his +2 missiles were of no use so moved to attack the Master of Thralls. By this time Omen had almost killed one greater water elemental, but the Master of Thralls landed a few rapid hits (game recording shows damages of 14, 14 taking him to 37hp then a double hit of 27 magic and 11 to drop him from 37 to dead)
While killing off Coreheal the Master of Thralls had also death-gazed Tar. She had resisted though and stepped backwards and once out of range she tossed in another special snare which resulted in many thralls becoming master-less
Omen finished off the remaining greater water elemental before Tar could close in (she was half way there, then got stuck thinking whether her weapon would suffice or if there was danger moving any closer)
With that battle over we used a rod of resurrection charge to raise Coreheal, rested up and attacked the Warden after freeing all the thralls. He survived three hurled axes and a special snare but not a fourth hurled axe. His minions put up a good fight with the yuan-ti mages frustrating Omen with their stoneskins, but ultimately foiled by another special snare. We then freed the performing troupe and departed
Sansuki wanted our help but he died while we killed Del and two lesser vampires. Not helped by Corey_Russell being dropped from the game and his character being the only one with level-drain immunity - meaning I was trying to control two characters in multiplayer. Once they were killed he rejoined the game
We reported in to Aran Linvail, but for the time being ignored his suggestion to investigate the vampire nest and instead dealt with Mae'Var. Meaning Rayic Gethras died to a single hit after a special snare, various documents were brusquely obtained and Mae'Var was terminated. Rayic Gethras rewarded us and we went on our way
Coreheal suggested dealing with Prebek and Sanasha. Tar reminded him that we'd forgotten to rescue Renfeld last session, but he was correct that they'd still be there and could be killed off. So we did that
Next up was the de Arnise keep. We did everything required to help Nalia abandon her family estate while retaining the Flail of Ages for our own nefarious purposes. Our backpacks are surely overflowing and require a store visit before we start our next episode. Look at all these goodies
(Tar would have to seriously consider the appropriateness of wearing dwarven-flesh armour, but no such qualms about the human flesh)
You are of course correct and the same person mentioned a sentence earlier mentions Rayic in the right context. I'll leave the error as-is for a no-reload post
Also I timed the Master of Thralls, it took 5 seconds to land 3 hits and a vampiric touch from full health to death. Lowest to hit roll I saw was 8 which surprised me (I could see 2 of the 3 attack rolls, 3rd one looks to have not made it to the text box in the recording)
We went to lighthouse area, using our wand of sleep for the first time to help out with the huge group of hobgoblin archers:
Now, to find and fight some sirens – tactics doesn’t seem to do much here, we used skeletons, enraged Fargrom and Valayar due to his elven charm resistance. Flesh golems are a bit changed, they have enrage, but all in all, things worked out quite well despite Valayar getting charmed once (and poisoned by siren arrows at the same time, so we had to cast slow poison on a hostile target, which luckily still works). We found the constitution tome (maybe another static item), I also got my hands on a wand of frost:
After that, we moved to the other Sword Coast area, where we fought Droth with the usual true sight + magic ammo combo and some buffs. The helm of defense seems to be static:
More exploration in the area for some good experience, and we move to the Doomsayer, using magic missle on Brintje (a rare time where she's actually not wearing armor in combat) and our two wands of magic missile. Easy enough, doesn’t seem to be changed:
Now for the basilisks. This is another tactics-improved area. Corax, notably, is super weak now, almost dies to a single gnoll hit – we’re not keeping him at the front for the remainder of the area. We have to use some PfP spellscrolls to get the full party immunity to flesh to stone – basilisks now deal direct poison damage on melee attacks, and they also get a missile attack that deals physical & poison damage in addition to their petrification attack (a bit similar to ankhegs):
We also have to deal with Mutamin, who gets shot down through stoneskins.
An attempt to backstab the wizard in the central group fails due to lack of damage, so we have a full fight on our hands – hold persons mostly fail, but the damage output and saving throws are good enough to avoid anything too dangerous happening to us, though our frontliner takes a ton of damage and drinks quite a few healing potions. We find another wand of fire and bracers of AC7, and we also buy even more potions (now even the ones that we will probably never need, just in case) and ammo.
Next up: Larswood – and more black talon elites. The two druids I’m a bit scared about, as they are sure to have ironskins and probably some powerful spells, but we get enough attacks to break through their defenses before anything dangerous can happen, partially thanks to making use of our expensive acid arrows.
We move further east to the red wizard area, though planning not to attempt the wizards themselves just yet. I learn the hard way that giant spiders in tactics do get web tangle, just like in SCS – when Brintje gets webbed in the tangle reveal (came unexpected, so no time to swap over ring of free action for me). This is the closest, aside from the two dangerous lightning bolts in the mines, we’ve come to death – a slow poison spell comes in clutch, and a crit and two quick hits on the final giant spider prevents another attack that would most likely hit and maybe even kill Brintje. Phew…
(A look ahead: I confirmed in Cloakwood that these tactics spiders do exclusively go for webbed targets if there are any, so a webbed target is very, very much in danger of dying - a reason why I eventually kept the ring of free action mostly on Brintje in the future and only swapped it around for specific occasions).
Now, back to Gullykin to enter the Firewine Dungeon – the entrance directly to the ogre mage isn’t blocked, and he dies from our opening salvo. Great loot here: He has a full plate on him!
The mage down here starts casting lightning bolt – I’m just assuming that from hearing the words for an invocation spell in close quarters, so I immediately exit the area, and I could see in the combat log that I was correct since some of our summoned skeletons got killed by lightning damage right as we left. We hunt down our foe after that, he goes invisible and disappears for a while as our true sight runs out, but we find him again, and he immediately goes invisible again just to reveal himself again by stupidly attacking with his staff. Definitely a big AI weakness with tactics, I’ve seen this behaviour before.
We move to the other entrance to the dungeon to start clearing out the lower half, including the ancient armor quest.
After some thinking about our next target, I decide to go after Bassilus, and this is the first time we can see the impact of not giving our foes extra spells: instead of blade barrier + aerial servant, he just has the blade barrier. We send in our skeletons and kite him for a bit, wanting some of his short-duration buffs to run out. Honestly, without the servant, he should be easy to kill by now, as we don’t have to run away from another foe at the same time – our ranged attacks are easily enough to take him down in a quick fashion:
Now, to enter bandit camp (after buying more magical ammo to use for the entire thing) – upon our entering, the combat log shows three NPCs named “cutthroat” drinking a potion. I’m expecting that these might be invisibility potions and we’re going to deal with some backstabbing? We will need to watch the combat log.
The party drinks some of the more common stat boosting potions in our arsenal and we call in our skeletons before approaching the camp from the west, sending in our summons and retreating to the edge of the map, so the enemies are forced to come to us and we have a potential way out. The bandits bunch up in two huge groups, and we’re using wand of fire charges and oils of fiery burning to help out our damage (we haven't found any necklaces of missles yet). Meanwhile, true sight is able to reveal the cutthroats, who are indeed invisible backstabbers (and also are able to go invisible again). Unlike in SCS, the enemies from the big tent don’t enter the fray, so this is a third instance of SCS actually being harder imo (at least with me being able to easily deal with the cutthroats thanks to true sight). Taugosz has his full plate, so we even get some good loot out of this:
We go in the tent, where we’re able to shoot down the mage with our opening salvo, before his pre-buffs trigger. The hobgoblin here has The Dead Shot, which is a huge upgrade for us – seems like the most important loot in the camp is static. Mh, not sure what to think of that – I’ve seen a lot of static non-randomized loot in recent areas.
Now, Cloakwood is unlocked. The next update will follow pretty much immediately, just splitting it into two posts because it's getting pretty long already.
Cloakwood level 1 is no trouble – Seniyad starts out with a forest nymph by his side, but we’re able to take her down before she can do anything, and the druid dies rather quickly as well.
In the second level, the spiders are fairly routine, but Centeol can actually cast spells now and has a strong list of prebuffs – more concerningly, as soon as our party steps inside her lair, we’re hit by a web spell. Things get quite close as she throws MMMs at the webbed Iridine – whoever isn’t webbed (usually only 2-3 party members, including of course Fargrom with Dushai’s ring) has to race taking down her defenses and killing her before Irdine dies – we’re barely able to get there:
Level 3 has the shadow arch druid – and this one’s apparently quite high level, starting out with a fire elemental, a forest being and physical mirror (not good for us with my focus on ranged attacks). Even worse, I wasn’t able to find the curser option to go downstairs – either I was blind, or tactics blocks the way downstairs until he’s dead - which seems to be the case, looking at what happened later on in the mines. So, I had to fight against some very powerful foes.
Checking all of my options and his pre-buffs, with chaotic commands blocking most of my crowd control abilities and little hope of slicing through ironskins very quickly with just melee attacks, I decided to activate my two wands of fear, in the hope of them doing something – and they did! Both the shadow arch druid and the nymph get feared, which basically wins me the battle – even with little space, I am able to kite the fire elemental and shoot +2 ammo at it, and finish the two feared opponents afterwards. Now, we have some nice weapon upgrades in the scimitar and club +2 (both EE additions, so static). Only one Cloakwood level remains before we could make it to the mines:
The Hamadryad is unchanged, doesn’t even get other spells/prebuffs, giving us a fourth example for encounters where SCS is harder. Wyverns were easy enough, and we leave Drasus alone for now to return out of the woods, in the hopes of clearing out Ulcaster for now. So, nothing in the dungeon seems changed until the final room (just like in SCS) – instead of the multiphase Wolf of Ulcaster with its ghouls, wolves, fear and dispel powers, we get a Wraith of Ulcaster here – he summons shadows, seems to spam stuff like malison, mass minor drain, blindness etc., and is dangerous in combat – he was able to surprise me by level draining Arbolosch to death, but luckily, the others were able to shoot him down after that (also, his treasure contains two greater restoration scrolls). Certainly a dangerous foe, though comparable in difficulty to the Wolf of Ulcaster featured in SCS, or so I would guess from this one time doing the fight:
Now, we're going after the red wizards - and they're surprisingly easy to deal with! Skeletons and our berserker with enrage at the front, the others shoot from max range, and the wizards fall relatively quickly, mostly trying to deal with our skeletons:
On to Durlag’s Tower, the upper levels. Brintje is using wand of frost & fire charges for battle horrors / doom guards. We decide to leave the ghost alone, he presumably will get 6th level spells, which seems a bit too dangerous for now. The other upper levels are cleared out, including the improved basilisks. No interesting loot for us, sadly.
Back in Beregost, we randomly encounter a tactics addition - after checking the readme, I would presume it's from the “random city encounters” component, even though it states that it is for BG2 (it was still part of our BG1 installation) – we get a message that “our heroic reputation attracts attention from the local underworld” or something similar, and a bunch of bandits spawn in, including a cleric and a rather high level mage. We are unprepared, but able to get into a decent position because we randomly stumbled upon this encounter with our fighter/thief and he was able to run into a house and stealth – these guys seem to be somewhat identical to the final type of BG2 ambush (the one that can repeat endlessly), as their mage drops the exact same scrolls you usually get from that one. Luckily we were full on hitpoints and spells when the encounter started, could’ve been dangerous if we were caught completely off guard.
Also, note the combat log: This encounter is bugged, the combat log spams diary entries from Siege of Dragonspear for some reason.
Now, aside from the critical path, there’s basically only TOTSC content left – Durlag’s lower levels and Ice Island, not counting the two encounters we’ve delayed (the ghost at the upper levels and Kahrk) because they presumably have 6th level mage spells. Time to get back to the Iron Mines, where we face Drasus and his party, with 5 skeletons (3 of them the 7th level version) at the ready, with bless, chant, remove fear, protection from evil 10’ radius, DUHM and true sight, MI and MSD as part of our buffs. We’re able to shoot down both wizards with our +2 ammo, with the skeletons and Fargrom holding the frontline just long enough so we can switch towards the two fighters. Loot involves the boots of speed (presumably static), but also the gauntlets of dexterity, which is actually decent here as we have 3 dwarves that can still benefit from the additional dexterity.
The three wizards, Hareishan, Natasha and the ogre mage, are kind of what we expect – Hareishan being dangerous because she uses a lightning bolt, which almost kills Iridine, while Natasha barely survives a backstab and we use our skeletons for the ogre mage. Close call against Hareishan, but we make it through.
Now, downstairs, we kill the guard (guards, actually - additional help spawns in, which we counter with hold person spells) and intend to go back up to rest, but the stairs are unavailable – seems like you can only leave if you kill Davaeorn.
Luckily, we can rest down here as well (after 4 failed attempts). We disarm the traps, and two battle horrors join Dav – we shoot him down with our magical ammo, meanwhile a stinking cloud appears in the opening room, so I guess tactics wants you to fight in the rooms Davaeorns tends to teleport around in. The battle horrors get killed with the help of wand of frost/magic missile charges. All in all, the battle wasn't as hard as I would've expected.
Some great loot here, overall we get Belt of Blunting, ankheg plate, a wisdom tome and the Ring of Holiness.
A quick visit to Baldur’s Gate city to fight the necromancers at Sorcerous Sundries – relatively easy, the AI kills its own summons with skulltraps while we shoot down the wizards, and we find Elve's Bane.
Now, time for our second big scroll learning session. We also buy a few potions and green scrolls, the shop has nothing special – we buy a wand of paralyzation and magic missles, also getting a new wand of frost and recharging another wand of magic missles, but there are no wands of the heavens available, we’re still at zero of those, sadly. We're also buying some stuff at Black Lily (including special arrows), the tome is sadly not here, but we do find our first necklace of missles at the vendor in Elfsong. Still, finally we have something to spend some money on with all the new consumables now available. We shall see if there’s stuff to buy further into the city. Next time, time for some big city exploration - though further updates will be much smaller or slower paced, as I had a ton of time to play the last few days, which changes again tomorrow.
My three Drows are currently waiting to sail away from Athkatla. BG2 has been pretty easy, but repetitive going so far, so I got restartis for something else in the meantime.
Meet the pair. Raven, a Half Orc Dark Moon Monk and Favored Soul Elf Sorcerer Mystara.
We are using sligthly modified Tome&Blood Favored Soul Sorcerer kit for Mystara, and we are getting:
+ Permanent PfE
+ Cleric Spells from Death Sphere which at LoB difficulty mostly means Doom, Animated Dead at lv3, Death Ward and Harm
- One less casting slot per day
For vanilla Favored Soul we exhanged -2 save bonus and Bolts of Glory for Harm spell, which I think should be the necromancy option from get go.
weidu.log
// Log of Currently Installed WeiDU Mods
// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod
// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version]
~EEUITWEAKS/EEUITWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1070 // Faydark's Abilities Auto-Roller/GrimLefourbe's BG2 UI: 4.0.6
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2140 // Expanded Dual-Class Options: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3040 // Make Bags of Holding Bottomless: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3080 // Increase Ammo Stack Size -> Unlimited ammo stacking: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3100 // Increase Potion Stacking -> Unlimited potion stacking: v17
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1500 // Include arcane spells from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1510 // Include divine spells from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1520 // Include bard songs from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2010 // Core Stratagems spell-system changes (installed by default by any AI component): 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2500 // Add 9 new arcane spells: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2510 // Add 6 new divine spells (some borrowed from Divine Remix): 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3015 // Re-introduce potions of extra-healing: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3505 // Wider selection of random scrolls: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4000 // More Appropriate-Speed Bears: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4020 // More realistic wolves and wild dogs: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4030 // Improved shapeshifting: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4250 // Make spell sequencers and contingencies into innate abilities: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6030 // Smarter Mages: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6040 // Smarter Priests: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6100 // Potions for NPCs: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6200 // Improved Spiders: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6300 // Smarter sirines and dryads: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6310 // Slightly smarter carrion crawlers: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6320 // Smarter basilisks: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7000 // Improved doppelgangers: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7010 // Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7020 // Improved deployment for parties of assassins: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7030 // Improved kobolds: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7040 // Relocated bounty hunters: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7050 // Improved Ulcaster: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7060 // Improved Balduran's Isle: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7070 // Improved Durlag's Tower: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7080 // Improved Demon Cultists: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7090 // Improved Cloakwood Druids: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7100 // Improved Bassilus: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7110 // Improved Drasus party: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7130 // Improved Red Wizards: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7140 // Improved Undercity assassins: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7150 // Improved Carsa/Kahrk interaction: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7200 // Tougher chapter-two end battle: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7210 // Tougher chapter-three end battle: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7220 // Tougher chapter-four end battle: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7230 // Tougher chapter-five end battle: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7250 // Improved final battle: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7900 // Improved minor encounters: 35.21
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2360 // Remove Racial Restrictions for Single-Classes: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2380 // Remove Racial Restrictions for Kits: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2371 // Alter Dual-Class Restrictions -> Allow non-humans to dual-class: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2350 // Alter Multi-Class Restrictions -> Allow humans to multi-class: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2390 // Alter Paladin Spell Progression Table -> Paladins Use Icewind Dale-Heart of Winter Spell Tables [grogerson]: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2400 // Alter Ranger Spell Progression Table -> Rangers Use Icewind Dale-Heart of Winter Spell Tables [grogerson]: v17
~SUBRACE/SUBRACE.TP2~ #1 #200 // Subrace mod for Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition (BG1, BG:SoD, BG2, EET) -> No change subrace colors (Hair and Skin): 0.3.1
~TOMEANDBLOOD/TOMEANDBLOOD.TP2~ #0 #31 // Sorcerer: Favored Soul: 1.4
Intro 250xp.
Imoen killed for Speed and WoMM.
Neera killed with WoMM for Gem Bag.
Marl 900xp.
Algernon killed for Charm Cloak.
Charmed Jemby stopped Drizzt fighting Gnolls, got Icingdeath.
Hentold Dagger 900xp and Invis potion.
Nashkel Invis potion.
Beregost Invis potion.
Potion case from HH.
Albert 1000xp Raven lv2, going to put everything on Detect Illusions.
Escaped Bandit Waylay with 2hp and Mystara died first time.
Tenya Bowl 2035xp Mystara lv2.
Bought Shield Amulet, OGL and Green PfP.
Two Invis potions to reach Mulahey.
Mulahey Charmed first try, got the loot and used our last Invis potion.
Charmed Minsc killed Nimbul 650xp Raven lv3.
Charmed Marl ko'd Tranzig 975xp.
Raiken escorted us to Bandit Camp.
Charmed Taurgosz got killed by Black Bear.
Killed Dushai for Ring of Free Action.
Bought rep to 12.
Firebread rep 13, scroll case, 300xp.
Drienne rep 14, PfU 200xp.
Oublek rep 15.
Mulahey Symbol rep 16, 1000xp.
Joseph's Ring 800xp.
Samuel rep 17, 500xp. Mystara lv3 PfE.
Brage rep 18, 1000xp.
Bought Sandthief Ring for 14k.
2 Sandthiefs for Brun's Son rep 19, 1500xp, Raven lv4 *Dagger.
3 Sandthiefs for looting the Bandit Tent.
And we are at chapter 4 although we need to get some xp, and Invis spell before going to the mines.
Ways led his party through the Nashkel Mine, clearing all the kobolds on the way to find Mulahey. He failed to complete a spell, while his support crew struggled to make their way through some spike stones to help him. Outside the mine the area was cleared without problems. Narcillicus managed to protect himself for a while with shield and PfNM, but was blinded during the initial exchange and could be taken down at leisure with magical ammunition after his mustard jellies were beaten up.
Back in Nashkel, Nimbul spotted Lee's backstab coming just in time for stoneskin to save him - but only for a few seconds as the others joined the attack. Tranzig was hit by a backstab, but survived - though not for long.
The party wasn't too far from another level and decided to seek that in Ulcaster, even though taking on Icharyd looked pretty dodgy. I thought the lightning would be the main problem, but Lee died earlier than that when a flail snaked out rather further to hit him than expected. A first use of the wand of monster summoning helped provide alternative targets for lightning, but all the remaining party were still in bad shape when Icharyd thankfully gave up the ghost.
Fortunately, Ways decided to rest and heal up before heading for the temple to resurrect Lee. That meant an ambush by the amazons was less of a concern and it was anyway defeated easily. Once the party were all back in good shape they returned to Ulcaster and quickly picked up the bit of XP needed to take another level. Other than scaring a beetle the Wolf of Ulcaster failed to trouble the scorers.
On the way out from Ulcaster they were ambushed by Molkar's gang. They were summarily dealt with though with Lee taking the opportunity to practise his backstabbing skills on a blinded Molkar. Since they were in the area anyway Ways decided to clear Gullykin and pick up another +1 sling.
At the Bandit Camp, web did an excellent job of crowd control as the hordes of bandits attacked and Ways gratefully accepted an armor upgrade from Taurgosz. There wasn't a great deal to gain from exploring Peldvale and Larswood, but Ways did it anyway. Webs once more proved their worth against large numbers of Black Talons and Lee inherited more magical arrows than he will ever need.
In the first Cloakwood area, Ways agreed to help Aldeth and made short work of the attacking druids. In the second area I didn't bother detrapping the area invisibly, but just worked gradually round sorting out the spiders and ettercaps on the way to find Centeol. In the third area the basic druids caused no trouble. However, Kel waited too long upstairs trying to stun the Archdruid and got petrified by a chromatic orb. That required a trip to the temple to get a green scroll. Kel was then revived and brought back into the party an instant before being made invisible in order to avoid an immediate attack killing him. Amarande was then dragged downstairs into an ambush - with Kel taking his revenge there by getting the fatal shot.
There was a rare use of the wand of fire when Ways was webbed by a giant spider on the way to the 4th area. At the cave there, Kel took advantage of an invisible wall to shoot down the wyverns. The outside of the final area was then explored, but the party exhausted their daggers in the process and returned to High Hedge to resupply.
On returning, the sorcerers put down a web field to incapacitate Drasus & co. Ways had equipped a melee weapon during a spider ambush on the way and inadvertently stuck himself in the webs - but it didn't matter as none of the opposition managed to break free. Inside the mine, more webs accounted for Hareishan and a single web for Natasha. The ogre mage managed to get a magic missile away before being stunned. Downstairs, Davaeorn didn't manage to strike up a conversation before skull traps took their toll.
Durlag's Tower is the only map area not yet done but that will be left for a while yet, so Baldur's Gate will be the next target.
Ways, fighter/cleric L5/5, 56 HPs, 346 kills
Pate, totemic druid L7, 54 HPs, 145 kills, 0 deaths
Kel, archer L6, 50 HPs, 498 kills, 1 death
Alison, sorcerer L6, 31 HPs, 71 kills, 1 death
Greer, dragon disciple L6, 44 HPs, 169 kills, 0 deaths
Lee, fighter/thief L5/5, 56 HPs, 359 kills, 2 deaths
Kel has put the Light Crossbow of Speed and Bracers of Archery to good use to take a commanding lead in the kills table.
Now, for some city exploration – we enter the sewers and take down the ogre mage, which is no problem at all, and deal with the two necromancers.
Our first spot of trouble comes in the docks, where we encounter another one of these randomly appearing bandit groups added by tactics (this time without the combat log bug) – things look fine at the beginning, but suddenly there’s a backstab on Brintje that nearly kills her, forcing her to drink an invisibility potion to make sure she survives. We clear up the battle, and luckily we find another invisibility potion among the bodies, so not much is lost. Still, we need to be very careful when moving around the city, in case more of these random groups appear:
Our city questing goes quite well – not too many changes, aside from the usual spellcaster prebuffs. Ragefast has a stone golem with him:
Ramazith has one as well, but it doesn’t go hostile, probably because we already killed the wizard downstairs – no tome here sadly, but we do find some good items. We have to be very careful with the ogre mages, using the arrow of slaying and carefully luring them outside into the waiting, buffed up party, assisted by 5 skeletons.
In the north-eastern district, another party of bandits spawns in, similar to the last one – they also get one backstab on Brintje (despite the fact that I immediately activate true sight), but it’s a low damage one and not very scary.
We do get the wisdom tome from the poisoning questline, and also the additional boots of speed by surrounding and killing Lothander. A decent amount of gear here seems to be static. There's the potential for trouble when Marek, shortly before his death, is able to confuse some of the party, so we're basically hoping that they won't tank our entire reputation by starting to shoot random peasants - luckily, they don't; In fact, I was able to place the non-confused party members in such a way that they would block the further attempted movement of the confused ones, despite not being able to surround them.
The southwestern battles go very well, and we find some good stuff, such as my first wand of the heavens and two necklaces of missles. Now, we have a decent amount of artillery. On the the north-west, the last remaining district in the city. I get into a weird situation here, when trying to kill Gervisse – somehow, most of my initial attacks missed, and he made his concentration check (a thing in tactics to avoid spellcasting interruptions) for his initial lightning bolt – knowing how deadly the spell is in closed quarters, I had my party leave the house, but for some reason (and I am quite sure selected all party members), Brintje herself stayed behind. I noticed this when she was at EXACTLY 1 hp and was able to drink a potion of absorption, which avoided the final bounce and saved her life. Very strange, and I really don’t like how much many lightning bolts we’re getting thrown at us here – and this was possibly now our fourth near-death experience of the run.
Well, on the other hand, dealing with Degrodel is rather easy as most foes here seem to be unchanged.
Soon, we’re done with everything except for the Iron Throne itself, and so we prepare for the improved chapter end battle. Though I didn’t notice too much of the improvements – with one wand of fire, 3 necklace of missles and 2 potions of explosion, some of the foes died right away – we focused down the cleric and wizard protected against fire from their pre-buffs, the only thing they were able to cast at us was a flame arrow. Two fighters to kill after that, and we were done – though the tons of buffs, including some potion buffs including heroism, hill giant strength and agility, certainly helped. Important finds were a second wand of the heavens and the RoP +2.
EDIT: I accidentally accessed the wrong folder for my screenshots and ended up writing a whole post based on a later stage of my run! I was wondering why the party seemed higher-level than I remembered they were for Part 2.
Anyway, I'm leaving this up for now so I don't lose the text, but I'll have to return to this and add in the real Part 3, because what I added below is actually part 4 or 5 or something.
Bolithaw the Sniper: BG1, part 3
I've been noticing that Bolithaw's attacks are surprisingly unreliable, despite her ranged attack bonuses. Being able to backstab from range isn't so meaningful if you keep missing your attacks and leaving the rest of the party to handle the enemy pressure. We nab the Bracers of Archery to help out and try our hand at some more mod-introduced maps.
To my delight, I see werebadgers, a sprite you normally only see in IWD2! They're immune to normal weapons, however, and in my install, +1 ammunition is downgraded to being nonmagical. But our Sky Dancer Vosper's lightning bolts strike as magical weapons.
Then I realize that one of Aura's special abilities is a party-wide buff to attacks, toggleable based on damage type. We can actually make all of our ranged attacks strike as +1 enchantment higher! Bolithaw helps pin down the werebadgers, with Blindness from Aura to help our front line stay healthy.
I don't believe Aura's ability will let us bypass Protection from Normal Missiles, however, since that spell works by granting immunity to specific projectiles, rather than checking an incoming weapon's enchantment level. So we'll still have some trouble dealing with certain mages.
We still need more XP before we tackle bigger quests, so we take an early detour to the Cloakwood, which my install lets me visit before the bandit camp. I decide to take a risk and invade the spider hive rather than using Sanctuary or doing my normal "enter while invisible and then right-click over the container to loot Chelak's body and Spider's Bane from the inventory screen without breaking invisibility" trick.
We have not stolen Dushai's Ring of Free Action, so Web Tangle spells from the spiders could prove fatal. Iffle, our Force Wizard and primary tank, fails her save and is doomed to die to a spider swarm, but Finch is quick enough to down a Potion of Freedom before Web Tangle hits her.
We burn down some spiders with a Wand of the Heavens from Vosper and a Wand of Fire from Aura. But the spiders don't go down easy, and another Web Tangle comes our way. This time, we are not prepared.
Bolithaw gets hit. She's disabled for several rounds, and we have to scramble to take the pressure off. Worse yet, Vosper gets webbed, too. Our front line is falling apart.
I've kept Bolithaw a short distance away, and our Primordial Witch Doctor Dardaseen puts a spider to sleep for 5 rounds with Light Slumber, but the safest option is to deploy the Wand of Monster Summoning. I've been trying not to use it, because I'm not recharging wands in this run and we might REALLY need those free summons for the Cloakwood Mines.
But now is the time to spend resources. Aura makes a saving throw vs. yet another Web Tangle and summons a wall of monsters around Bolithaw before the spiders can reach her.
Notice that it's summoning more than 5 critters at once--I removed the summoning cap so I could spam our Witch Doctor's unique summoning spells more, and the side effect is that the Wand of Monster Summoning is stronger than normal.
Finch tries to bail out Vosper with Cure Moderate Wounds, but our poor Sky Dancer just doesn't have the HP to survive the spider horde's automatic hits. Vosper crumples just before our summoned monsters deal the last blow to the last spider.
We have to hike back to town for two Raise Dead spells, taking down some ambushing ettercaps on the way and getting Finch another level. With Spider's Bane in hand, we don't have to worry about Bolithaw getting webbed or paralyzed (as long as we're quick to react when those spells inevitably come).
Around the Sword Coast in my install are a handful of portals you can access with a special ring. I visit one of them, poking inside unbuffed and unprepared, and see something rather ominous.
A brand new area I've never seen before, in which apparently we cannot cast spells or even use items. Even traps aren't allowed! We have to face whatever enemies are here without any magic. This time, it's ankhegs, and we manage to bring them down. I normally run magic-heavy parties, but this group has some decent combat abilities even without spells. Bolithaw hits level 6, getting her 3rd pip in crossbows, the maximum that Snipers can achieve.
I initially thought that our Force Wizard was our top damage dealer, but looking at our statistics, a third of our kills belong to Bolithaw, and another quarter belong to Aura! Wands and ranged attacks are our main asset. Classic BG1.
We return to the Cloakwood, still searching for better sources of XP, and run into a Hamadryad. She charms Vosper and has excellent AC and can teleport, but we manage to grind it out. Vosper, thankfully, has very weak damage output.
Then we run into 4 Black Talon archers, a much more dangerous encounter. They shoot down Iffle in seconds.
Iffle gets a d8 per level instead of a mage's d4, but she is still fragile. We escape the fight with no other deaths, but it makes the wyverns of the Cloakwood seem a lot less approachable than I thought.
Back down south, we bring Ursa's hide, a new mod item, to Taerom in Beregost to turn it into hide armor. It's a pitiful 8 AC, but it also gives a bonus to Constitution, giving Aura a whole +2 to max HP.
Which is a lot, considering hers is otherwise 19. Iffle is fragile, but Aura is always an inch from death.
While we're at the temple of Lathander to raise Iffle, we check out the selection and find a roster of really, really good items for sale. A ring that grants immunity to petrification, a helm that gives immunity to confusion and fear, a +3 flail, +3 armor with immunity to poison, and more.
We're trying not to rely on overpowered items, so we'll probably not use any of them, or even a few other mod items we've been finding as loot. We also opt not to patronize another modded shopkeeper that sells 40 Potions of Magic Blocking, 10 Potions of Magic Shielding, and an unlimited number of Potions of Extra Healing and scrolls of Greater Restoration... the kind of game-changing resources whose power is normally limited by a narrow supply.
Instead, we burn our money on two perfectly-balanced vanilla items, the famously modest Army Scythe and Dagger of Venom!
Bolithaw's non-stealth attack power is much higher, and Vosper now has a serious game-changer. She gets 3 attacks per round due to the Sky Dancer kit, and each strike from the dagger can deal 15 poison damage if given enough time and a failed save. Vosper is in business.
We make our way towards the bandit camp and Vosper uses her new poison against the Black Talons. It works great, but enemies continue to surprise me in this run: more archers ambush us from the east just as I think we're done with the fight.
Dardaseen buys us time with a Light Slumber spell and we scrape out with our lives, but it's a reminder of my own unfamiliarity with this install and this metagame. I am so accustomed to relying on Invisibility to dodge fights that, now that I'm committing to fighting things out whenever I can, I'm finding a lot more danger than I used to.
We still talk our way past Tazok, but I want to tackle the inside of the bandit tent conventionally, despite the fact that we can easily sidestep the fight with Invisibility and Sanctuary. We still approach under Invisibility, however, for the sake of slightly better positioning.
Vosper aims for the mage Venkt's throat with the Dagger of Venom, but he makes his saves vs. death and activates his prebuffs safely, allowing him to fire off his first spell: Sleep.
Which Iffle isn't high enough level to get immunity to. Our main tank hits the floor at the beginning of the fight, and will not awaken if damaged. She's out of the fight.
Not a single enemy fails its save against Aura's Horror spell. Bolithaw shoots down Raemon, but Finch's Hold Person only paralyzes one archer, Vosper struggles to cut through Venkt's defenses to shut down his spellcasting, and Venkt's Slow spell hits Bolithaw, Aura, AND Finch.
Dardaseen loses a spell to an arrow, and Aura bails out a dangerously-wounded Finch by successfully blinding Britik, the gnoll, whom I've found can deal surprisingly strong burst damage. Aura switches to the Wand of Fire to clean up, but Venkt manages to summon some monsters on top of us.
Note the Protection from Normal Missiles on Venkt. He is impervious to our arrows and bolts. But Vosper and Dardaseen finally get through his defenses and modest HP pool, and the mage goes down!
As the fight grinds to an end, Britik lands a hit on Aura, who survives only thanks to a special item only she can use: once per day, she gets to cheat death.
It's not reliable enough to make a strategy out of it, but at least it saves us the trouble of picking up her gear after death.
But Iffle still gets herself killed. Despite avoiding all enemy attention during her long sleep, she still dies to the Lightning Bolt trap on the chest.
Not because I ordered her to open it, but because Vosper opened it. Vosper was nearly immune to electricity, but it bounced off the wall and nailed Iffle in one hit.
Despite the loss of our tank and our second wand user, I decide to try fighting our way out of the camp. We use the Wand of Monster Summoning to protect ourselves, the Wand of Fire to clean house, and even one of Aura's craftable items to mass-Feeblemind the bandits, albeit for only one round. It's a simple but messy strategy.
Dardaseen still croaks in the process. Due to her Wizard Slayer-style item restrictions, and her inability to wear armor beyond studded leather, her AC is total garbage, and she gets shot down in short order.
We keep bombing and using ranged attacks and manage to clear the exterior of the camp. We head back to town to bring back our two fallen comrades... and trade in the scalps of 48 fallen bandits.
The Candlekeep Crypts brought us to our most difficult gamestate yet, solely because of my lack of mod knowledge: It appears that each of the tombs here spawns in a set of guardians in tactics. I was completely unprepared for this and it almost cost me the run: The first tomb made 4 skeleton warriors appear, but they were far from regular skeletons (otherwise, we would’ve been fine) - two of the four have spawned in in this screenshot:
It turns out that these skeletons are spellcasters, and they started using powerful crowd control spells right away – most importantly, greater malison, followed by confusion - a famously devastating combo. Absolutely unexpected for me, and they hit me before I was realizing what was going on - I was just expecting physical combat, so I wasn't fast enough with pausing the game and reacting with some protective potions. Fargrom made his initial saving throws and was able to rage to avoid any further spells once I realized what was going on, and I had control of Arbolosch for a good while, but everyone else got confused. I had Fargrom drink a bunch of potions (such as speed, heroism and hill giant strength) to increase his speed in taking down skeletons, in hopes that he would bring down the foes attacking my helpless party members before anyone would fall. Iridine and Brinjte, both confused, started attacking each other (luckily, they're not the best at hitting stuff in melee combat) – I had the “wizard slayer” axe on Fargrom, but the dispel failed to do anything (I would guess that it’s super lower level and factually useless).
Valayar, who, while confused, insisted on fighting a skeleton warrior in melee combat, eventually got killed with no way for me to save him.
We killed one of the skeletons when Arbolosch got hit with Emotion: Hopelessness. All the potions that would've been able to help him were in Brintje's potion bag, and we had no control over her:
Well, we finally got back control of our confused party members as a second skeleton died - now we're trying to save Arbolosch. Brintje was wearing armor, so no way to cast invisibility on him, and tactics enemies are very deliberately always attacking helpless targets - note that the skeleton to the left is still at range - these skeleton warrior types do have a physical ranged attack for some reason:
Sadly, we weren't fast enough with our damage to save our fighter/thief, though the final two skeletons eventually did crumble:
With two dead, including our thief, things didn’t look good for us, especially with all the traps and locks down here. First, I had to go into a careful game of inventory management to pick up the important equipment from the fallen (left behind some easily replacable gear and some stuff that I would sell anyway). I also had to rest to regain some crucial spells. Next, I decided to have Fargrom drink a bunch of powerful potions and use some green scrolls on him to maximize his fire and lightning resistance for eventual traps, get him cloud giant strength for the locked tombs and invulnerability for really good saving throws against potential future surprises. He basically went on a solo mission to clear the other tombs – running into wraiths (rage was once again very helpful here to protect against level drain), shadows, the usual spiders (where we used the ring of free action) and another one of those big groups of skeleton warriors with special abilities. Our berserker took them all down, drinking another regeneration potion to maintain his health:
On to level two, where Fargrom did most things solo again, with the party helping out against the doppelgangers, and on we move into the final cave complex. We used our skeleton summons and a bunch of buffs, including haste, to deal with the big hostile party down there. For the first time in tactics, the enemies here didn't spend their time casting damaging spells on us, instead trying to dispel crucial buffs - all focused on Fargrom, who was hit with both lesser dispel and breach. However, this gave the others enough time to take down the most dangerous foes and decide the battle:
We gave Fargrom some more potions, and he also cleared out the side rooms and the basilisks (using a green PfP scroll and the help of the skeletons, which was really needed - these improved greater basilisks are a real combat threat for a solo character) – so, in the end we ended up successfully clearing the entire dungeon despite losing two of our most powerful party members. At the FAI temple, we were finally able to resurrect the fallen and clear up our inventories. We lost a bunch of gold during the whole affair, though honestly not that much because I also found a bunch of useless high value sellables such as Evermemory (the only really good find being the dexterity tome):
Kirinhale 4000xp
Charmed Riggolo killed Ghost 3750xp. Mystara lv4 Invisibility
Charmed Meilum killed Khark 3500xp. Khark has Magi Katana +2 on SCS, which also improves casting speed and level by 1. Monk can actually use it, but it's mostly usable by F/M.
Molkar Waylay escaped by Monk speed
Bought Greenstone Amulet
Lamalha Waylay escaped by Monk speed
Picked up WoMS and ability Tomes with Invis
WoMS killed Shoal 5000xp. Raven lv5.
Right click looted body for Tiber 800xp
Drasus Charmed 4th try and he casually killed Rezdan and Kysus, then fought Genthore before getting killed by WoMS 5600xp.
Used last WoMS charges to kill Mustard Jelly 2000xp.
Flooding the mines rep 20 2000xp.
Chapter 5
Tremain's Son 5000xp.
Marek and Lothander 16150xp. We pre Charmed Lothander to get his Speed Boots, but he still managed to backstab Mystara to second death. Marek didn't survive second WoMS. Raven lv6.
At this point we did the Basilisk XP-loop (33) which went perfectly. Then the Basilisk cleared the level.
Raven lv8 *Dart 80 Detect Illusion
Mystara lv9 *Sling Shield, Resist Fear, Mirror Image, Haste, Invisibility 10', Skull Trap, Emotion Hope, Emotion Courage. Also got Animate Dead as lv3 spell as per our kit rules.
Iron Throne Naaman Charmed and killed by Shennara. Shennara Kaalos got WoMS. Skelis killed couple of the Iron Throne, but then Mystara was revealed and Acid Arrowed. She retreated, but was being followed and couldn't cast Invis. Raven being Invisible blocked the door and gave enough healing for her to survive the Acid Arrow. Managed to save her this time, just to be killed soon after by Aasims Unholy Blight (3). After resurrecting her and resting we got last of the Iron Throne.
Skelis killed Ramazith and Ragefast. There's blind spot behind the post where Ragefast can't see.
Ogre Waylay passed with couple Invis potions.
Chapter 7
Slythe and Krystin grinded by WoMS.
Denak burned afar for Ring of Energy.
Five Emotioned Skelis were enough for Love, picked up Durlag's Goblet and first Champions Strength scroll.
We pre Charmed Mage and Shaman Dobbelgangers and Skelis quite easily killed the rest. Mage got a lot of summons on but was soon killed too.
96 Fireballs and one PfU for Sarevok, he didn't see us.
One PfU and Invis to reach Korlasz, and with 7 Invis potions and OGL Fireballs she surrendered. Raven lv9. In Baldur's Gate we did the mundane quests and killed Viconia for her Circlet which belonged to Raven.
Chapter 8
Teleria hacked casually. Doing the quests Mystara got lv10 with another Animate Dead (lv5). This also meant her Skelis got upgraded to 7HD ones with Cloak of Minor Arcana. These guys were soon put to use, as they demolished Tsolak and Dumathoins enemies. Then cleared the level. The Undead cave took again about 20 rests to clear as the enemy mobs are so heavy. We picked Secret Revealed, but then betrayed the Dwarves and killed them. Got the Undead help for the Crusader battle. Hid behind the tent for parlay.
Chapter 9
Mystara lv11 fighting the Trolls, Blur, PfF, Stoneskin, Oracle. We picked first Enchanted Weapon scroll from the Troll cave with three Invis potions. The Trolls will start to wander when looting and block the way, but they eventually return to their post. Morentherene Daggered, Ziatar burned, Neothelid killed in couple rounds by Skelis. Akanna managed to kill Mystara (4), again with Unholy Blight, but the fight ended soon after. Bridge Mage interrupted by Ring of Energy.
Chapter 10
Raven lv10 with 100 Detect Illusion. Sold my stuff for the Genie for cool 180k. We suffered slight setback as we find out Bracers of Shuttered Lid aren't usable by evil monks, so we lost 1 Thac0 from our planned output. Munade quests and item gathering. Skelis killed Orogs for cursed belt Protector of Unworthy which is useful against Belhifet. Rakhasha gave us Modron Heart for the chaotic Troll Wave. Listened Therli being killed by Drows, and got Cloak of Cargoyle to protect Monk from criticals. Zhadroth was easily trapped by Skelis and Secret Revealed. And btw the Endless Watcher is full of shit, as he attacked the Skelis trying to kill Zhadroth. Mystara can actually fit 3 priest Skelis in the Sequencer. Looted the Hephernaans chest with couple Magic protections and escaped the place.
Troll Wave - 20 pre Skull Traps, 2 pre Cloudkills, 5 Skelis and double Fireballs every round and it took less than turn to beat them.
Mage Wave - 4 pre Webs, 2 pre Cloudkills. And we were immediatelly Dispelled by someone, and it became quite chaotic fight. Mystara died (5) trying rebuff the Skelis, but luckily they were strong enough to beat the Mages on their own. But it was still a setback as Mystara lost her Skeli spells and the Sequencer. We resurrected her, but she died immediatelly again (6) by CON penalty as we equipped the Claw of Kazgaroth when she still had 1hp. Another resurrection, and then we rebuffed.
Paladin Wave - 5 pre Webs, 2 pre Cloudkills, 5 half dead Skelis, Rejuvination. Rhayla was targeted first as she could Dispel, and she died after second Fireball hit. They creeped forward and walked around the tent which were a concern, but with Stone Ally and 2 WoMS they were repelled.
Final Wave - Skeli Spell Sequencer, 5 Skelis and rebuffed again. But we didn't need the sequencer as the wave was pretty quickly destroyed. Detect Illusions, Oracle and couple Fireballs.
That took quite a lot of planning, buffing, adjusting and rebuffing on the go, but we only needed to use the Goblet only once. To this point it has been mostly Mystara doing the work, but lets see if Raven can finally pull most of the weight against Belhifet.
Back in the city - we're breaking into the Flaming Fist HQ:
Here's Cythandria:
So far, so easy, but things got interesting again when facing the undercellar assassins. Krystin aggressively backstabbed and used invisibility potions, and since he only went after Brintje, I was forced to drink another invisibility potion (luckily, I’ve found a few extra ones by now). Slythe was a bit over the top, with her pre-buffs including even a 7th level spell in mantle, and a 6th level spell with summon air elemental (plus more), and she was also spamming lightning bolts all over the place, but luckily she wasted a lot of her resources on our skeletons and I was able to leave the area for a quick breather – she followed us, but by then her mantle was gone and we were able to shoot her down.
The ducal palace battle was a bit close – Liia died early on, Belt took some damage as well, but we were able to save him:
Down in the thieve’s maze, skeleton warriors are replaced by the same type we met in the Candlekeep catacombs – or rather, this seems to be the tactics version of skeleton warriors in general, using fear, confusion and emotion spells. Luckily, we’ve saved our PfU scrolls for the maze and undercity.
In the undercity, the Iron Throne party is relatively easy to take down (given that we use green scrolls and potions to get to 90-100 fire resistance, and tactics wizards don’t dispel nearly as aggressively as the ones in SCS – we only get a dispel on Fargrom, and the only previous dispel we suffered was in the Candlekeep catacombs).
Tamoko has Shield of the Archons and Regeneration, so really high level stuff – we send some summoned monsters via the wand to keep her busy until her regeneration runs out, and we take her down (also getting another full plate in the process – the iron throne party had the strength tome, btw, so we’ve now found all the vanilla tomes).
I’m planning to do the final battle right here and now, creating an extra final save before that, and if I succeed, I will reload it to check out the TOTSC content as a little bonus – it's not going to count for the run, so I will reload if needed, I'm just checking the areas out out of curiosity to see what tactics does with them, especially since the readme claims that Durlag’s Tower is supposed to be pretty damn difficult in the tactics version.
Approximately four weeks had passed since Jiddy and Chanceless last ventured outside. Chanceless stared at his portrait, wondering why he wasn't the fighter/illusionist while Jiddy perused his scrollcase wondering why he had not summoned a familiar from the scroll within. Some things we are destined to never know
At least we knew what to do first as we had spent the last month outside the bandit camp. Chanceless fearlessly led, stabbing from the shadows then holding his ground as Jiddy provided support. Those enemies who did not perish by the sword tended to perish blinded and then by the sword
To the main tent. Jiddy cast remove fear and Chanceless started with a backstab on Venkt. He missed, so our contingency plan saw him retreat outside and run. Jiddy was waiting outside and cast cloudkill but Britik shrugged that off and chased after Chanceless. Meanwhile Hakt had hit Chanceless with a poisoned arrow, and then a second, forcing Jiddy to blind their archer. With that done, we blinded Britik and killed both from range
Raemon and Venkt were waiting in what was left of the stinking cloud but Chanceless was down to single figure health, so we rested up and began anew. Venkt failed to survive a second backstab attempt and Raemon was left to fight blind
Our way to the city of Baldur's Gate was open but Jiddy wanted to visit Ulgoths Beard first. That meant making our way north of the Friendly Arm inn for the first time, and Chanceless felt he could not pass up the ankheg nest. Jiddy had sleep spells aplenty but still suggested herding ankhegs to sleep more than one at a time. Although this worked and we emptied the nest it would have been easier and quicker to kill one at a time
Finally reaching Ulgoths Beard via an identifying Beregost Temple detour we sold many items and purchased a cloak for Chanceless and a staff for Jiddy. He then realised we had not relieved Meilum of his bracers
Some time before or after this (are gnomes renowned for their perfidiousness of memory) we visited the lighthouse area and cleared that by using a potion of clarity
Cloakwood was definitely next. Perhaps. Anyway, we scooted through the areas and arrived at the hidden mine. Of the four anti-heroes on the central isle their axeman and a mage were blind while all stood in a stinking cloud. As soon as the other mage failed his save we shot him down and started on the others. Eventually Drasus cottoned on but failed to make headway against Chanceless
Inside the mine we again made rapid progress, choosing to sneak past the bobgoblin bandits and guards after Yeslick and before the final level. Once that was done we killed the final guard and removed the traps between us and Davaeorn. Chanceless tried a few backstabs on Davaeorn and just as Jiddy was about to join in with a spell a backstab closed that encounter allowing us to flood the mine in peace
On to Baldurs Gate. We worked our way around a few areas picking up the helm of Balduran, taking out a greater basilisk and the ennui chitchat in the low lantern inn. Marek died as a consequence of poisoning us while Jiddy chose to let Lothander escape (since we had not bothered to pick up a wand of monster blocking summoniness
We sorted out the ogre in the sewers and doppelgangers, allowing us to convince Duke Eltan that we should return us to Candlekeep. He was having none of it, insisting we deal with the trash in the Iron Throne. So we head in that direction and as we are half way up to the fifth floor Jiddy idly wonders if he should have rested first. No time for rest
Chanceless hid in the shadows to find our preferred combat bottleneck to the south of the awaiting bozos. Jiddy had an invisibility spell memorised so joined him. Only two blind spells memorised, but both work on casters who go hostile. People start to move but so far we are unseen, so Jiddy throws in a stinking cloud. Still we get away with it so he waves a wand and a fireball erupts. By now two casters are swizzling wands back at us so Jiddy tries a second fireball in an effort to avoid any flamestrikes
One caster loses his spell but the other is determined, right up until Chanceless plants an arrow in his face. Only, he cast the spell already and Confusion is heading towards Chanceless. Jiddy runs towards the back room while Chanceless heads into the left room. Chanceless saves against the confusion and hides in the shadows as two enemies enter his room and block him in. Jiddy fails to save but continues to where he intended to move and remains stubbornly out of sight
Chanceless realises he cannot backstab either enemy without the other engaging, and cannot get out of sight. After a round or two he moves so he can see only one badly wounded caster (Alai?) and shoots him dead. He hides again and attacks the second caster (Aasim perhaps), killing him too
The doppelganger is outside but cannot be attacked from inside and is in sight of his companions if attacked in the southern hallway. Chanceless sneaks to the right room and shoots. He hits but the doppelganger attacks. Another shot then some melee leads to another enemy down
By this time Jiddy has recovered and is about to join in as Chanceless kills Zhalimar with a backstab. Gardush is on his own, chasing Chanceless while absorbing flame arrow and magic missile from Jiddy. Chanceless doubles back occasionally to add his sword and it is not long before we are resting on the building roof having identified yet more trinkets
The end of another session, backpacks laden with loot to sell
There were no problems with initial encounters in the City and dealing with a stray basilisk allowed the party to level up once more. They picked up a second pair of boots of speed from Lothander before Larze failed to deal with a simple command and Marek was stunned by a wand.
Progress continued to be easy enough, with backstabs being a favoured method of dealing with mages. I didn't normally bother with summons, but did put some up for the Mountain Maulers as I couldn't remember whether Gretek could be decoyed away with SCS. In the event he could, which made the battle simple. Various dopplegangers were also no problem, which perhaps led me to being a bit incautious when attacking Sunin. No buffs or summons were used there and his defences were good enough to absorb several rounds of attacks. Greer was hit with an acid arrow sequencer and needed healing to avoid death from that. The party ran through the door several times to avoid spells (risking the possibility of getting stuck) before eventually bringing the mage down.
After that experience I decided to take no risks with the Iron Throne party. After going past them invisibly, some beetles drew Shennara out of hiding. Kaalos managed several invisible backstabs on a skeleton before running out of invisibility potions and being stunned. Webs were then followed by a round of fireballs before spirit lions finished things off.
After draining their budget recharging wands, the party reported in to Duke Eltan for duty in Candlekeep. They used a round of their hoarded invisibility potions to avoid the ogre mage ambush there before a spike growth killed them off. Inside the library they made short work of the Iron Throne leaders before moving on to the catacombs. Ways took both of the tomes there before dealing with everything on the way out. The only slight glitches were when a phase spider teleported in from somewhere out of sight and poisoned Alison (but Ways was close by to heal her) and when SCS Diarmid proved to be unkillable and everyone had to go invisible to get past him.
Back in the City they buffed up to go and rescue Duke Eltan, before dealing with Cythandria. She cast a shroud of flame on Alison just before she died. That seemed to continue on for a long time and Alison eventually used a potion of magic blocking rather than risk dying (I probably should have just swapped rings of fire resistance round to reduce damage on her earlier). Slythe went down quickly against a general assault and Krystin didn't last too much longer. At the palace I was surprised to find just standard greater dopplegangers - with Liia getting SCS upgrades that gave them no realistic chance of success.
Before diving into the maze, there was a bit of unfinished business at Watcher's Keep. After killing the battle horrors on the path the party went to deal with the one on the wall. In itself that wasn't a problem, but I got caught out by an SCS bug that allows a greater ghoul from the lower levels to come out through the wall. It didn't appear when the party initially arrived at the stairs, but did so after Ways and Greer finished off the skeletons - the others having dragged the battle horror to the other end of the wall. Greer was held by the ghoul and looked like being killed before the others could arrive - so Ways boldly threw himself into the combat and destroyed the ghoul with the help of a wand of heavens blast. Lee took out the basilisks on the roof with backstabs. Lee then laboriously laid some traps for Kirinhale, but those weren't needed when he found another critical backstab. Riggilo was enclosed in an invisible cage, but responded by disappearing himself. Lee tried for some time to discover him, but his 5% detect illusions skill failed to do the job and eventually Ways took it upon himself to buff up and deal with Riggilo. Lee also did the hard work against the ghost with a series of backstabs using the stairs to escape.
The party were still some way from being able to take another level, so decided to dive into the under-tower. Lee painstakingly removed the traps from level 1 while the party worked their way around. I couldn't remember just what the warders did, so prepared rather more than usual. Avarice died in some pre-set skull traps and Ways finished off Fear who had been badly wounded by thief traps. Ways then hurt himself with reflected bullets aimed at Love, but the wand of heavens proved effective to finish the job against him while Love concentrated on the last skeleton. Finally, Pride was held up enough by webs and spirit lions to be shot down by magical ammunition.
More patient work saw them fully explore (and de-trap) the next level before taking on the dwarven doom guards. Webs meant only the last one of those managed to fight back at all. A brief look into the next level then gained enough XP for the party to level up again.
So, how’s the Sarevok battle like in tactics remix? Of course, we're approaching it with all kinds of buffs, potions and scrolls. Sarevok does get the aid of two more allies – Diarmid, who just seems to be a pretty regular archer, and Korlasz, from the opening dungeon of SoD – of course, as is always the case for tactics, there are starting summons as well, in this case including two dangerous earth elementals. The boss himself is also apparently immune to all normal and +1 weapons – we can’t dispel his haste with dispelling arrows as a result, which are usually a pretty huge factor in this battle:
A dispel goes towards Fargrom, who is able to get a bit away from the others (and keeps most of his buffs anyway), but the effect sadly still travels to Valayar as well, who gets completely dispelled. In the meantime, we shoot down the hasted Tazok. There’s also a confusion spell flying towards our archer, which he counters by moving far away and drinking a potion of magic blocking. Meanwhile, we’re able to shoot down Korlasz, who dimension doors away (since she doesn’t show up again, she presumably flees to the SoD opening dungeon).
Other enemies don’t really get hit/affected by our dispelling arrows as much, I’m pretty sure enemies get saving throws against the effect in tactics (or there’s something else blocking the effect – I’m not getting the “weapon ineffective” message this time). Fargrom gets dispelled again, this time actually losing his buffs, so he enrages to stay safe. Meanwhile, we shoot down the earth elementals, as they do a ton of damage in melee combat.
Angelo is our next target. Fargrom has to resort to kiting the hasted Sarevok – there’s too much damage coming in for the weak BG1 healing potions to do their work.
Semaj is next, followed by Diarmid, who has done quite a bit of damage to Valayar, but not enough.
Thinking that the battle is basically over, I shoot down Sarevok (note that Fargrom can’t actually hurt him, since there is no bastard sword +2 available – a bit lame, to be honest, kind of limits weapon choice).
But there’s a twist: This fight has a second phase. To my surprise, Sarevok teleports to the throne as he’s near death and calls in a bunch of creatures called “shadows of murder” – around six of them at the start.
I try to take all of them down – they use spook spells, just like regular shadows do in tactics, and we add in some wands of monster summoning fodder to keep them busy:
I am able to renew remove fear on the entire party. Sarevok seems double hasted by now, so kiting him is a bit more complicated, I have to switch around boots of speed from time to time.
Eventually, it becomes clear that new shadows will just keep spawning in constantly (though we were able to reduce their numbers), so we focus on Sarevok instead – we go from one to two to three shadows, but now Sarevok is near death, and before the shadows can mass up to become a real threat, the big guy finally falls. Nice!
The readme states that this is an unfinished version of the battle, and it’s supposed to become a more epic multi-phase encounter, but it was already certainly quite a bit tougher compared to vanilla. I think it is probably comparable to the SCS version in terms of difficulty in its current version.
So, outside of TOTSC, which we have yet to explore, tactics is mostly a pretty clear upgrade in terms of difficulty, especially for most generic enemies, in comparison to a full SCS installation. The exceptions are Icharyd, the bandit camp, the hamadryad, the lack of bounty hunter ambushes, and slightly less dangerous thieves (at the beginning, at least – later in the game, tactics thieves became just as dangerous as SCS ones). As for spellcasters, it’s debatable. Tactics gets more prebuffs, but I feel like they are less intelligently chosen and the spellcasters focus too much on mediocre single target damaging spells instead of trying to crowd control the party. However, the mod loves lightning bolt in the mid to lategame which is supremely dangerous, and I would guess that a spellcaster-heavy party will have a much bigger problem dealing with the many prebuffs in the tactics list. There are some AI weaknesses though, such as the tendency to pointlessly attack directly after going invisible, and the lack of armor spells in the prebuffs. Overall, I think SCS has the smarter AI, so if you're not looking for stat improvements on your enemies, tactics might not be the best choice.
The weakest parts of the mods are probably those where enemies spawn in out of nothing, such as in the Nashkel mines – less so with the three city “underworld” encounters I’ve seen (in Beregost, the BG docks and north-eastern BG), as there’s at least some warning about them. The skeleton warriors in the Candlekeep catacombs also felt a bit unfair, though probably less overwhelming if I had known about them. I also dislike having to deal with so many lightning bolt spells, I just don’t like how that spell works in the BG series, feels way too random and potentially instantly deadly. Otherwise, it was a very nice challenge for me – 4-5 very close calls, one full restart, and without a custom party, it would’ve been much more difficult (since many improvements come down to straight up better enemy stats).
Now: Let’s see how the mod affects TOTSC. The readme doesn’t really mention the Ice Island or Balduran’s Island (though werewolfs should deal some bleeding damage), and we will start out with those. Ice Island should be tough either way. I will give a report on each of those areas, even though they aren’t officially part of the run, just in case someone is curious and wants to know how tactics would play out in a potential future no-reload scenario. As mentioned, I’m only interested in BG1 right now, so Brintje won’t continue into SoD or SoA.
Comments
After reading about other runs, I thought perhaps I should try something myself. Looking at options, I came across this take-off of 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover I wrote 8 or 9 years ago.
The answer is easy if you take it logically
I'd like to help you in your struggle to be free
There must be fifty ways to save the dukes
She said it's really not my habit to intrude
Furthermore, I hope my meaning won't be lost or misconstrued
But I'll repeat myself at the risk of being crude
There must be fifty ways to save the dukes
Fifty ways to save the dukes
Just summon a mate, Pate
Shoot to dispel, Kel
Use malison, Alison
While web can make you free
Try out a sphere, Greer
Or make them run in fear
They can't hit what they can't see, Lee
And that can make you free
She said it grieves me so to see you in such pain
I wish there was something I could do to make you smile again
I said I appreciate that and would you please explain
About the fifty ways
She said why don't we both just sleep on it tonight
And I believe in the morning you'll begin to see the light
And then she kissed me and I realized she probably was right
There must be fifty ways to save the dukes
Fifty ways to save the dukes
Just summon a mate, Pate
Shoot to dispel, Kel
Use malison, Alison
While web can make you free
Try out a sphere, Greer
Or make them run in fear
They can't hit what they can't see, Lee
And that can make you free
Ways, fighter/cleric L1/1, 14 HPs, 7 kills
Pate, totemic druid L1, 10 HPs, 2 kills, 0 deaths
Kel, archer L1, 13 HPs, 3 kills, 0 deaths
Alison, sorcerer L1, 6 HPs, 2 kills, 0 deaths
Greer, dragon disciple L1, 6 HPs, 1 kill, 0 deaths
Lee, fighter/thief L1/1, 13 HPs, 2 kills, 0 deaths
Xindra, half-elven totemic druid (Tactics Remix with additional mods), update 1
Travelling south to Nashkel, while exploring the nearby area, we ran into Viconia - her command spell helped us in taking down this cleric flaming fist merc:
I hoped that ankhegs wouldn't really get changed too much. One or two command spells per ankheg (requiring three rests in total to clear out the nest and the map) allowed for semi-safe takedowns - very nice, and lots of experience for the party (plus, another +1 small shield amongst their treasures). Only a pair of northern ankhegs wasn't so easy to deal with, and a ranged hit put Imoen in some danger, though everyone survived:
The Three Drows Update 3
In Korlasz crypt we finally found our Gem Bag! Xun and Baeloth used another set of PfU's to reach Korlasz. Managing our invisibility was crucial bombing Korlasz with fire. First we used the three memoried Invisibility 10's, and then all but one of the potions, and Korlasz surrendered. We had reputation of 19 so we praised the Flaming Fist Enforcer to 18 so Viconia could join us in Baldur's Gate. Calling myself Bhaalspawn for the growd we got it to 15.
Chapter 8
Teleria was killed casually as she doesn't agro if not talked to. Skelis then cleared the map from enemies. Tsolak was easily killed too for the Boots of Haf Speed, which I can turn into third set of Boots of Speed. We easily helped the Dwarves to fight the Undead, and then Skelies cleared the place. The next level was quite tiring, as we needed about 20 rests, but eventually the Skelis grinded the Un-dead in there too. Baeloth and Viconia both got confused couple times, but did not die. Coldheart could do little with Secret Revealed, although he got Time Stop away. We hid behind the tent for the parley. Viconia lv9.
Chapter 9
Baeloth lv11 with Animate Dead, which are already the second best version with the Cloak of Minor Arcana. Didn't really expect Baeloth getting them before Viconia. Viconia looted the Troll Cave for the important Enchanted Weapon scroll and Locket of Embrasing, which Viconia equipped with the help of Helm of Opposite Alignement.
Trying to sneak to Morentherene it surprised us by waking, and we barely made out alive. Rested, buffed with Remove Fear and ran past it with haste. Ziatar was burned afar, although we ran out of fire and needed to finish it with Skelis. Neothelid, Akanna and her Aerial Servants were easily killed by Xun and Skelis.
At the forst Hoach made us the third set of Boots of Speed, so Viconia could keep up. Surrendered the fort, interrupted the bridge mage with Ring of Energy and Skelis wiped the guards.
Chapter 10
Got 165k gold selling our loot for the genie, and equipped Ring of Purity with the alignment adjuster. Then we did all the mundane quests and Baeloth got lv11 with Resist Fear, Protection from Fire, Stoneskin and Spell Immunity.
Zaedroth buggered away because we are a Blackguard, which I forgot. So no Spell Sequencer robe for Baeloth. Viconia died in the fight against the Dark Magician which sucked because she missed out on a big xp dump and she was still 55k xp away from Skeli upgrade. So Baeloth took a small death in the Undead Cave, so Viconia could get more xp. Last two PfU's and OGL fire to clear the place, Viconia 26k xp, clearing Dead Man's pass 20k, 10k after clearing Mimic cave, 2k after Laddle and Etting Ghost and finally after freeing Slug Viconia got lv10. We were now all maxed out 450k xp because of the 90% cap. Baeloth used SI Conjuration on Hephernaans chest and we escaped the place.
Troll Wave, 20 pre Skull Traps, 5 Skelis and 10x Detonators with 1 Goblet.
Mage Wave, 17 Detonators.
Paladin Wave, 26 Detonators, 5 Skelis and WoMS.
Final Wave, 20 Detonators, WoMS and 6 Goblets.
Ashatiel was easily killed and first time in ages I cleared the Avernus bridge with Skelis.
Xun arrived Belhifet with -9 Thac0 Enchanted Weapon Martyr's Morningstar and 400hp, and after refreshing hp with the Goblet 6 times Bel was already dead. Xun did all the heavy lifting and Viconia and Baeloth just enjoyed the show.
Previous updates:
A few chores in Beregost included an attempt to kill Neera to get her gem bag. However, with SCS installed she refused to die despite being peppered with missiles after being blinded. I couldn't remember if that would change after she had a conversation - but it didn't (the gem bag is much less useful for a party than solo though, so not too much of a loss). I did remember that SCS would mean a failed attempt to blind someone would turn them hostile, but decided to try that with Silke anyway. The blind from Alison did fail, but a follow-up command from Ways was successful and Silke failed to recover from that.
After going down to Nashkel, Ways took another chance by annoying Zordral and dragging him out of his tent. His mirrors and buffed AC kept him going a while and he first scared and then held Kel. The only direct damage spell he attempted looked like an intended scorcher, but he abandoned that when Greer ran out of sight range (one of the advantages of SCS) and was shot down shortly afterwards.
Sleep made saving Arabelle a piece of cake, even for a 1st level party. Then it was on to Firewine Bridge where Meilum saved against attempts to blind him, but command proved to be his fatal weakness. Back in Nashkel Neira was successfully blinded, but that made no difference as command effectively killed her anyway.
A bit of stealing meant that the party now had 3 invisibility potions and decided to go and call on Drizzt before reputation got too high. I wasn't sure if he would consent to simply follow Lee round in circles, but in the event he proved to be an obedient little drow and eventually the criticals became, well, critical. The 2k XP each gained from that allowed everyone to level up for the first time. Lee gratefully took the armor - allowing him far better AC while still being able to use his thief skills.
Immediately after killing Drizzt they used sleep to subdue Bjornin's half-ogres and then headed back to Beregost. After the hard work of keeping Drizzt in line I couldn't be bothered to micro-manage running away from a xvart ambush and Alison paid the price for that with the first party death. 200 gold put her back together in time to collect a magical shield from Bjornin.
Heading north, a sleeping ogre gave up his collection of belts before Alison was consoled for her death with a ring of wizardry. Unusually for my parties, Ways did actually use remove fear before confronting Tarnesh. It wasn't required though as the mage's initial attempt to buff failed and he collapsed. Returning Joia's ring gave a couple of the party the XP to level up, but I'm playing with my usual party rules that require everyone to level up at the same time.
Still pushing the boundaries, the next target to be tackled was Bassilus. He has potentially nasty spells, but Pate successfully blinded him with Sunscorch at the start of the combat. That could well have been quickly fatal for him, except that he used Divine Protection to avoid any damage. A couple of rounds later I failed to recognize that he was casting at Kel and Bassilus completed an Unholy Blight aimed at him. Kel used a potion of heroism to provide a couple of extra HPs, but that was not quite sufficient and she collapsed to the floor. Bassilus then finished off the spirit lion and turned on Lee - which I found surprising given he was in the shadows approaching for a backstab
Kel had bought 10 crossbow bolts as part of his re-equipping and put them to use at High Hedge against a pair of golems. It looked like some melee might be required as well, but a critical hit with the final bolt finished the job and allowed the party to level up once again. Thalantyr then successfully restored Melicamp to provide a nice little bonus.
Ways, fighter/cleric L2/2, 24 HPs, 28 kills
Pate, totemic druid L3, 24 HPs, 10 kills, 0 deaths
Kel, archer L3, 28 HPs, 20 kills, 1 death
Alison, sorcerer L3, 16 HPs, 5 kills, 1 death
Greer, dragon disciple L3, 23 HPs, 8 kills, 0 deaths
Lee, fighter/thief L2/3, 27 HPs, 18 kills, 0 deaths
We start off with a quick (failed) attempt at saving Melicamp, explored High Hedge but didn't return Perdue's sword (Silke is still lurking over there). We also fought Zargal in the hopes of item randomizer getting us something good, but nothing useful was found - these hobgoblins seem to hit a lot better/harder with Tactics, though I am not 100% sure if I am just imagining things. Hold person saved the day:
Quayle successfully scribes identify without the aid of intelligence potions, and we identify everything at FAI - good thing we didn't equip this armor yet:
A quick return to the Cloud Peak Mountains area as I want to go for full exploration this run, and I run into my first dread wolves. There is an improved wolf component in tactics, and it definitely affects these guys a lot - for example, they regenerate, and quite fast at that - that's 8 damage, and right away the wolf is back to uninjured:
We also checked out some vendors after finally getting some cash from selling all the newly identified items. There's not much to buy, most vendor inventory has been moved by the randomizer - mostly two large shields +1 and the amulet of protection +1, plus the price of forging ankheg armor. The only thing I've seen so far that I would like but can't afford (aside from consumables) is the Claw, which was still at High Hedge as per usual.
Also, during one of my rests I was interrupted by flinds. I was curious about the improved gnoll component, because the gnolls I had encountered so far seemed okay (the gnoll slayers at High Hedge did use healing potions, but normal gnolls seemed relatively weak) - these flinds however don't mess around - after seeing all of them quaffing powerful potions, I decided to run away:
However, further exploration of tactics mechanics will have to wait, as this run came to a relatively quick end when I foolishly decided to check out Bassilus (wanting the gold for the Claw). I knew I would propably not be able to take him down, given the prebuffs we've seen so far, but I just wanted to see what a higher level clerics spell list would look like, expecting that I could propably just run away. Seeing Blade Barrier and an Aerial Servant meant that we wouldn't even try:
All right, I've changed my settings: ATweaks is gone, so I'm now only playing with Tactics Remix and Item Randomizer. Still a full installation for the latter. For tactics, the installation is mostly complete, with the exceptions of: No unconsiousness mechanic (we're not playing Dragon Age or Pillars of Eternity here, it just feels too modern of a thing for the BG series, and also makes things easier instead of harder), no blanket increase to enemy hitpoints (which I already didn't have last time), and I've also removed extra spell slots for enemy spellcasters, a sub-option within "Smarter Mages" and "Smarter Clerics" - let's see how that will impact the pre-buffs and spell usage by our spellcasting foes - though it might take a while to find out, because I am mostly going to avoid those entirely early on if I can.
I'm now playing with a custom party that is hopefully a bit more ready to deal with some of the improved enemies that we're going to encounter. The Bhaalspawn should provide some nice support with her skald song:
You may notice some weird profiencies here, most notably a lot of sword and shield style. This is because a) I'm only planning to play BG1 here, where ranged attacks are more commong and more threatening, plus dual wielding doesn't really get to its highest potential yet and b) because the possibly improved hobgoblins, bandits and kobolds have already been super threatening in my first run, and I can imagine they will only get more so when I encounter stronger versions (black talon elites, elite hobgoblin archers, kobold commandos etc.) - Valayar is picking gnolls as a racial enemy because I have the feeling that the flinds and the improved gnoll fortress might be pretty tough to deal with, and there aren't that many great choices in BG1 (my other ideas would've been kobolds, hobgoblins or ghouls). A lot of the weapon pips are based on afew guaranteed item drops (mostly from the EE), because I have no idea when and if I will find other useful weapons via item randomizer. For example, I never found a magical short sword or long sword during my previous run (not even in any of the shops), despite them being among the most common types in the base game.
I haven't started playing yet, but I plan to go for the ankhegs pretty much right away this time around, as they seemed the most promising source of early experience without some kind of solo XP trickery. I am kind of worried about my bhaalspaw, being the only party member unable to wear helmets, just getting shot down by a few stray arrows, but I wanted to pick her for the top spot because of the option to eventually add a familiar, which she wouldn't have gotten as a party member. Let's see if this will backfire (if it does, I might need a fighter/mage instead of a bard for the purposes of arcane spellcasting).
@grond0 I have ran across the bug unable to resurrect party members bug a number of times in a temple in BG 2, and since BG 1 EE really uses the same engine maybe it's the same bug...I would usually clear it by reloading though I think at least once I had to fix the state flag with EE Keeper.
Update on my dwarven fighter/cleric run: He has just made it to the city of Baldur's Gate. Run has been pretty smooth so far, with the archers Minsc (with DEX gauntlets) and Khalid taking down enemies pretty fast with their long bows. Will keep at it.
We cleared the initial wilderness area and the one further east, dealt with the outside of FAI (without approaching Tarnesh) and immediately went north for our ankheg hunt. With better stats, one command per ankheg was enough to stay safe. We had to rest one time inbetween, and I decided to visit Beregost for that rest, because it also allowed me so sell a bunch of the ankheg shells. After a second round of ankheg hunting, we ended up with enough gold for a large shield +1, sling +1 and two suits of platemail, plus the ankheg plate. Nice. Also, seems like vendor items are static with the randomizer - the vendors had the same very few magic items left in stock as they did in my previous run. Further north, we talked to Tenya - who did get her tactics prebuffs, so we had to deal with one of the dangerous looking but actually easy to destroy skeletons:
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1219242/#Comment_1219242
A bit more exploration led to the minesite where the Doomsayer was blinded. However, that wasn't particularly helpful as it then started running around everywhere and eventually had to be taken down by a mob attack rather than just finished off with 2-handed weapons from outside its sight range. I decided to give sirines a miss for now, but did clear the area to the south - including helping Laurel out against the larger number of gibberlings SCS introduces. Alison had taken friends as a new spell when attaining level 3 and that enabled her to secure a pair of fluffy boots from the scared merchant. To the south, fighting retreats and the odd sleep dealt with the hordes at the Gnoll Stronghold with no alarms.
A stop off at High Hedge allowed for a resupply of daggers before returning south to explore the Cloud Peak Mountains. There wasn't huge amounts of XP on offer there, but every little helps and killing Ingot allowed the party to level up once again. Greywolf and the external area of the Nashkel Mines were no problem and they finished their clearance of the southernmost areas by taking Samuel back to the FAI.
Deciding it was about time to deal with Shoal, Ways headed for the coast. Lee found her kiss too overwhelming to bear, but a quick thump from Pate persuaded her to revive him. Droth failed to save against a command and his mirrors were not sufficient to allow him to survive the subsequent missile storm. Sleep and blindness quickly eliminated the nearby ogre clan and I decided the sirines there should now be safe enough. That proved to be the case, with the only charm attempt being, rather surprisingly, directed at an elf
At the basilisk area, Greer took temporary possession of the Ring of Wizardry in order to cast PfP on everyone and not have to worry about micro-managing moveement. The southern basilisks were killed without incident, but Mutamin heard the attack on one of those near him and arrived slightly unexpectedly. However, a quick round of spells and one of the poison darts from the pirate cave saw him dead before he could do anything and his pet basilisks didn't last much longer. Reviving the nearby statue took reputation up to 20. Kirian's party were webbed and shot down unceremoniously.
With shop prices now at their minimum, a few purchases followed to boost equipment. Then it was time for a spot of ankheg hunting - their shells boosting finances as well as getting some useful XP. While sleep is very effective against them, nearly all the time the ankhegs were just shot down by the party - with just the odd critical hit affecting Ways.
Next up was the Red Wizards area. The SCS spiders there are extremely dangerous if you encounter them unprepared. Lee was turned invisible to deal with the web traps before contacting them to eliminate one source of danger. Invisibility was also used a couple of times on those immobilized by spider web tangles to prevent the spiders from quickly finishing them off, while Kel made use of his own immobilizing attack with stunning darts. The only slight hiccup was when a wraith spider got one attack in on a webbed Kel, when I blinded it immediately after it launched its web tangle and got caught out when it continued to advance - but it died from a general attack even before Pate could complete a first use of Call Lightning. Living in that area you might have expected the Red Wizards to have some defense against web attacks - but they didn't
A bit more cleaning up in areas included an amusing encounter with the Flaming Fist south of Beregost. Blinding their leader turned him hostile - and the others immediately attacked him. Attacking the others to prevent them taking my XP saw one of them turn hostile quickly - and briefly turn on the last neutral one in the moment before it also went hostile ...
They've just arrived at the Nashkel Mine.
Ways, fighter/cleric L4/4, 44 HPs, 174 kills
Pate, totemic druid L6, 45 HPs, 57 kills, 0 deaths
Kel, archer L5, 45 HPs, 196 kills, 1 death
Alison, sorcerer L5, 25 HPs, 31 kills, 1 death
Greer, dragon disciple L5, 39 HPs, 73 kills, 0 deaths
Lee, fighter/thief L4/4, 44 HPs, 191 kills, 1 death
Next up, we cleared the xvart village, which was easy enough, and went do the digsite. The digsite itself was no problem; However, we meet our first kobold commandos in the area – they are definitely beefed up, a LOT, in terms of their accuracy. Three arrows fly towards Iridine and immediately kill her – mind you, this is a cleric in plate mail with a +1 medium shield – with skald song, her AC against missile weapons is -7 (without it’s -5). She should not die this fast. Luckily, our berserker sits at -13 or -11 depending on whether or not he has the skald song, and I make sure that others aren’t targeted, so the kobolds die, but we have our first death and need to spend 600 gold in the Nashkel temple.
One thing I’ve noticed by now among the generic enemy improvements is definitely that they have weapon styles – notable when, for example, generic kobolds crit on a 19, presumable due to having single weapon style.
Now, we're going to the lake area, where we take on another mage battle. Our foe is similar to the red wizard in Beregost in terms of buffs: A clear weakness to (magical) physical attacks once the illusions are removed. Also, she once again seems to favor direct damage spells (flame arrow is her first one) – she also casts horror on a party protected by remove fear, so the AI doesn’t seem to always recognize immunities:
Next, we explore the temple - with magical ammo and a berserker I felt ready for vampire wolves. Those are definitely hugely affected by the improved wolves component: They start with domination! luckily I was able to pause as the spell was flying towards Fargrom – he raged just in time:
One of the areas we clear out is the outside of Ulcaster (not entering the dungeon yet) – there’s an improved Ulcaster component in tactics, and I just hoped that it wouldn’t include Icharyd – I was wrong: Seems like he’s also a cleric in tactics, using two spells that I was able to interrupt, luckily, and a hold person, which hit one of the party, but I was able to take him down (while he was presumably trying to heal himself, from the spell animation/sound).
Next, we made a move to Peldvale to check out the black talon elites. They drink strong potions (speed, invulnerability, heroism, giant strength types and the like, plus healing), just like the more powerful gnolls and named humanoids we’ve encountered so far. And they hit HARD. After seeing both the kobold commandos and the black talon elites I’m convinced that going for weapon and shield style on multiple characters was actually a really good choice. I'm skipping Larswood for now, as I don’t want to fight a high level druid yet. Instead, we're doing the gnoll fortress, the first “officially” improved area. Of course, we get the more powerful gnolls – getting crit a ton, these guys propably have two-handed weapon style as we see crits on a 19. This is all really tough on my primary tank, Fargrom (who often only is hittable via crits, so double the crit range means double the hits). Tactics also adds in gnoll shamans, who are shaman-class, judging from their prebuffs, but seem to be low level – command and focusing them at range works out. They do come, however, with two skeletons each, which aren’t animate dead summons but the type of ranged skeletons you might find in some random wilderness spawns. All in all, pretty rough area to clear out, and it’s a good thing we didn’t go here earlier on. No tome in the cave, just a useless +1 short sword, but the second gnoll chieftain carried this halberd +1 with +1 fire damage, very similar to the flail we found earlier. Here are some screenshots from the whole experience:
Back to Nashkel, where we face Nimbul – true sight + magical ammo with the help of a few buffs does the job, he spams magic missles at us, which isn’t enough.
Party levels are now 4-6. I'm not too happy with the group of opponents just spawning in out of nowhere in the mines. This could've easily ended the run with very little options for counterplay - feels a bit unfair.
Also, some thoughts about my AC against missles after checking a few things in my character sheets:
I should have picked single weapon style instead of going for the buckler + weapon and shield style for my skald. The buckler vs missles vs weapon and shield style mechanic is a bit weird, but I did hear about it before, just forgot the details. In the end, I get the exact same out of single weapon style with the free bonus crit chance (though the skald barely ever attacks), and if I find a buckler +1, if I understand the mechanics correctly, the single weapon style will actually be one point superior for missile defense (though inferior for melee defense), since bucklers +1 add a +2 to missile ac to offset their general armor bonus of 2.
More importantly, I JUST learned for the very first time that weapon and shield style does NOT work when you have a sling + shield equipped. It needs to be a melee weapon (also tested throwing daggers, doesn’t work either). That is VERY useful information I would’ve loved to have known that earlier on. Makes the bonus really not as great for my two clerics as I had previously thought, and explains why the kobold commandos were able to score so many hits against Iridine back at the digsite.
I decide to go for the mine exit area next, and I accidentally run into Narcillicus while unprepared (I didn’t think he would be this far to the east):
I also took on the amazons, who did use a bunch of cleric spells, but notably no repeated backstabs – I think, from what I've seen until now, that thieves are one thing that SCS improves a lot more than tactics does (now we have a second example of this happening after Icharyd). We are able to hold person the two clerics after getting our own archer confused, but he luckily doesn’t attack us. Nice.
Now we felt strong enough to also circle back to Silke – true sight + magical ammo with a bunch of buffs (remove fear, chant+bless, DUHM) - by now our standard approach to these spellcasters. Her one move was magic missles on a skeleton? While these tactics spellcasters have good defenses (though with a distinct lack of armor-improving spells), I am questioning their offensive moves. While I have seen sleep and horror, I have seen them only once or twice – everything else has mostly been straight up damaging spells, and not the very powerful ones like fireball – more like flame arrows, acid arrows, scorchers and magic missles (the lightning bolts from the kobolds being a notable exception and actually super deadly). Silke dies surprisingly quickly - once again, low level stoneskins don't block that many hits, and with poor AC and no illusion-based defenses left, they don't do all that much:
We now have access to exactly five skeleton summons (though the weakest version of them), so it might be a good idea to see if the sirens at the sword coast have been changed at all.
Edit: Forgot to mention that among the potions I picked up were some master thievery ones from the vendor at Durlag's; I used them to steal Dushai's ring and Algernon's cloak (both apparently static items).
Tar (Gate70)
Omen (Grond0)
Coreheal VII (Corey_Russell)
Tar had a cunning plan. First he spoke to Flydian, learning of Trademeet. Once there we defended the place against a few animals and removed the Dao Djinn. Thus freeing up the merchant so we could procure the Blackblood club for Coreheal. There's lots more to do here but Tar wanted to travel elsewhere
That's right, a pleasant stroll around the Temple District sewers to dispose of Mekrath and releasing Haer'Dalis. We picked up items including a rod of resurrection in case our cleric perished later. On our way to the Planar Prison we dealt with a couple of thief guild traitors
The young portal to the Planar Prison almost cost Tar her life. A fire elemental shuffled around a few tables and clouted her hard for 54 crushing damage with a mephit immediately adding another 10 damage. Tar crawled away with 8hp remaining and waited for Omen to tidy up
After a bit of healing we entered the portal. Tar in stealth, Omen with an invisibility potion and Coreheal with Sanctuary. Omen had potions of frost giant strength, speed and invulnerability. Omen picked off the mage on the left as Coreheal cast silence. Omen's bounty hunter caster perished as Tar threw in a special snare holding one enemy and injuring the other three. They didn't last much longer
So we headed anti-clockwise after identifying their loot, killing their thrall leader and attacking a larger group of enemies. They too were easily beaten down and we prepared ourselves for the Master of Thralls. Omen led the attack as skeletons supported and Tar used a special snare. Coreheal realised his +2 missiles were of no use so moved to attack the Master of Thralls. By this time Omen had almost killed one greater water elemental, but the Master of Thralls landed a few rapid hits (game recording shows damages of 14, 14 taking him to 37hp then a double hit of 27 magic and 11 to drop him from 37 to dead)
While killing off Coreheal the Master of Thralls had also death-gazed Tar. She had resisted though and stepped backwards and once out of range she tossed in another special snare which resulted in many thralls becoming master-less
Omen finished off the remaining greater water elemental before Tar could close in (she was half way there, then got stuck thinking whether her weapon would suffice or if there was danger moving any closer)
With that battle over we used a rod of resurrection charge to raise Coreheal, rested up and attacked the Warden after freeing all the thralls. He survived three hurled axes and a special snare but not a fourth hurled axe. His minions put up a good fight with the yuan-ti mages frustrating Omen with their stoneskins, but ultimately foiled by another special snare. We then freed the performing troupe and departed
Sansuki wanted our help but he died while we killed Del and two lesser vampires. Not helped by Corey_Russell being dropped from the game and his character being the only one with level-drain immunity - meaning I was trying to control two characters in multiplayer. Once they were killed he rejoined the game
We reported in to Aran Linvail, but for the time being ignored his suggestion to investigate the vampire nest and instead dealt with Mae'Var. Meaning Rayic Gethras died to a single hit after a special snare, various documents were brusquely obtained and Mae'Var was terminated. Rayic Gethras rewarded us and we went on our way
Coreheal suggested dealing with Prebek and Sanasha. Tar reminded him that we'd forgotten to rescue Renfeld last session, but he was correct that they'd still be there and could be killed off. So we did that
Next up was the de Arnise keep. We did everything required to help Nalia abandon her family estate while retaining the Flail of Ages for our own nefarious purposes. Our backpacks are surely overflowing and require a store visit before we start our next episode. Look at all these goodies
Very interesting. I could have sworn it was Bloodscalp who rewarded us. Having Rayic reward us from the dead would be a neat trick.
Also I timed the Master of Thralls, it took 5 seconds to land 3 hits and a vampiric touch from full health to death. Lowest to hit roll I saw was 8 which surprised me (I could see 2 of the 3 attack rolls, 3rd one looks to have not made it to the text box in the recording)
We went to lighthouse area, using our wand of sleep for the first time to help out with the huge group of hobgoblin archers:
Now, back to Gullykin to enter the Firewine Dungeon – the entrance directly to the ogre mage isn’t blocked, and he dies from our opening salvo. Great loot here: He has a full plate on him!
After some thinking about our next target, I decide to go after Bassilus, and this is the first time we can see the impact of not giving our foes extra spells: instead of blade barrier + aerial servant, he just has the blade barrier. We send in our skeletons and kite him for a bit, wanting some of his short-duration buffs to run out. Honestly, without the servant, he should be easy to kill by now, as we don’t have to run away from another foe at the same time – our ranged attacks are easily enough to take him down in a quick fashion:
Cloakwood level 1 is no trouble – Seniyad starts out with a forest nymph by his side, but we’re able to take her down before she can do anything, and the druid dies rather quickly as well.
Now, aside from the critical path, there’s basically only TOTSC content left – Durlag’s lower levels and Ice Island, not counting the two encounters we’ve delayed (the ghost at the upper levels and Kahrk) because they presumably have 6th level mage spells. Time to get back to the Iron Mines, where we face Drasus and his party, with 5 skeletons (3 of them the 7th level version) at the ready, with bless, chant, remove fear, protection from evil 10’ radius, DUHM and true sight, MI and MSD as part of our buffs. We’re able to shoot down both wizards with our +2 ammo, with the skeletons and Fargrom holding the frontline just long enough so we can switch towards the two fighters. Loot involves the boots of speed (presumably static), but also the gauntlets of dexterity, which is actually decent here as we have 3 dwarves that can still benefit from the additional dexterity.
Meet the pair. Raven, a Half Orc Dark Moon Monk and Favored Soul Elf Sorcerer Mystara.
We are using sligthly modified Tome&Blood Favored Soul Sorcerer kit for Mystara, and we are getting:
+ Permanent PfE
+ Cleric Spells from Death Sphere which at LoB difficulty mostly means Doom, Animated Dead at lv3, Death Ward and Harm
- One less casting slot per day
For vanilla Favored Soul we exhanged -2 save bonus and Bolts of Glory for Harm spell, which I think should be the necromancy option from get go.
weidu.log
// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod
// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version]
~EEUITWEAKS/EEUITWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1070 // Faydark's Abilities Auto-Roller/GrimLefourbe's BG2 UI: 4.0.6
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2140 // Expanded Dual-Class Options: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3040 // Make Bags of Holding Bottomless: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3080 // Increase Ammo Stack Size -> Unlimited ammo stacking: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3100 // Increase Potion Stacking -> Unlimited potion stacking: v17
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1500 // Include arcane spells from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1510 // Include divine spells from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1520 // Include bard songs from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2010 // Core Stratagems spell-system changes (installed by default by any AI component): 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2500 // Add 9 new arcane spells: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2510 // Add 6 new divine spells (some borrowed from Divine Remix): 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3015 // Re-introduce potions of extra-healing: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3505 // Wider selection of random scrolls: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4000 // More Appropriate-Speed Bears: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4020 // More realistic wolves and wild dogs: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4030 // Improved shapeshifting: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4250 // Make spell sequencers and contingencies into innate abilities: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6030 // Smarter Mages: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6040 // Smarter Priests: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6100 // Potions for NPCs: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6200 // Improved Spiders: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6300 // Smarter sirines and dryads: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6310 // Slightly smarter carrion crawlers: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6320 // Smarter basilisks: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7000 // Improved doppelgangers: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7010 // Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7020 // Improved deployment for parties of assassins: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7030 // Improved kobolds: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7040 // Relocated bounty hunters: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7050 // Improved Ulcaster: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7060 // Improved Balduran's Isle: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7070 // Improved Durlag's Tower: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7080 // Improved Demon Cultists: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7090 // Improved Cloakwood Druids: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7100 // Improved Bassilus: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7110 // Improved Drasus party: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7130 // Improved Red Wizards: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7140 // Improved Undercity assassins: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7150 // Improved Carsa/Kahrk interaction: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7200 // Tougher chapter-two end battle: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7210 // Tougher chapter-three end battle: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7220 // Tougher chapter-four end battle: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7230 // Tougher chapter-five end battle: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7250 // Improved final battle: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7900 // Improved minor encounters: 35.21
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2360 // Remove Racial Restrictions for Single-Classes: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2380 // Remove Racial Restrictions for Kits: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2371 // Alter Dual-Class Restrictions -> Allow non-humans to dual-class: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2350 // Alter Multi-Class Restrictions -> Allow humans to multi-class: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2390 // Alter Paladin Spell Progression Table -> Paladins Use Icewind Dale-Heart of Winter Spell Tables [grogerson]: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2400 // Alter Ranger Spell Progression Table -> Rangers Use Icewind Dale-Heart of Winter Spell Tables [grogerson]: v17
~SUBRACE/SUBRACE.TP2~ #1 #200 // Subrace mod for Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition (BG1, BG:SoD, BG2, EET) -> No change subrace colors (Hair and Skin): 0.3.1
~TOMEANDBLOOD/TOMEANDBLOOD.TP2~ #0 #31 // Sorcerer: Favored Soul: 1.4
Intro 250xp.
Imoen killed for Speed and WoMM.
Neera killed with WoMM for Gem Bag.
Marl 900xp.
Algernon killed for Charm Cloak.
Charmed Jemby stopped Drizzt fighting Gnolls, got Icingdeath.
Nashkel Invis potion.
Beregost Invis potion.
Potion case from HH.
Albert 1000xp Raven lv2, going to put everything on Detect Illusions.
Escaped Bandit Waylay with 2hp and Mystara died first time.
Bought Shield Amulet, OGL and Green PfP.
Two Invis potions to reach Mulahey.
Mulahey Charmed first try, got the loot and used our last Invis potion.
Charmed Minsc killed Nimbul 650xp Raven lv3.
Raiken escorted us to Bandit Camp.
Charmed Taurgosz got killed by Black Bear.
Killed Dushai for Ring of Free Action.
Firebread rep 13, scroll case, 300xp.
Drienne rep 14, PfU 200xp.
Oublek rep 15.
Mulahey Symbol rep 16, 1000xp.
Joseph's Ring 800xp.
Samuel rep 17, 500xp. Mystara lv3 PfE.
Brage rep 18, 1000xp.
Bought Sandthief Ring for 14k.
2 Sandthiefs for Brun's Son rep 19, 1500xp, Raven lv4 *Dagger.
3 Sandthiefs for looting the Bandit Tent.
And we are at chapter 4 although we need to get some xp, and Invis spell before going to the mines.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1219242/#Comment_1219242
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1219303/#Comment_1219303
Ways led his party through the Nashkel Mine, clearing all the kobolds on the way to find Mulahey. He failed to complete a spell, while his support crew struggled to make their way through some spike stones to help him. Outside the mine the area was cleared without problems. Narcillicus managed to protect himself for a while with shield and PfNM, but was blinded during the initial exchange and could be taken down at leisure with magical ammunition after his mustard jellies were beaten up.
Back in Nashkel, Nimbul spotted Lee's backstab coming just in time for stoneskin to save him - but only for a few seconds as the others joined the attack. Tranzig was hit by a backstab, but survived - though not for long.
The party wasn't too far from another level and decided to seek that in Ulcaster, even though taking on Icharyd looked pretty dodgy. I thought the lightning would be the main problem, but Lee died earlier than that when a flail snaked out rather further to hit him than expected. A first use of the wand of monster summoning helped provide alternative targets for lightning, but all the remaining party were still in bad shape when Icharyd thankfully gave up the ghost.
At the Bandit Camp, web did an excellent job of crowd control as the hordes of bandits attacked and Ways gratefully accepted an armor upgrade from Taurgosz. There wasn't a great deal to gain from exploring Peldvale and Larswood, but Ways did it anyway. Webs once more proved their worth against large numbers of Black Talons and Lee inherited more magical arrows than he will ever need.
There was a rare use of the wand of fire when Ways was webbed by a giant spider on the way to the 4th area. At the cave there, Kel took advantage of an invisible wall to shoot down the wyverns. The outside of the final area was then explored, but the party exhausted their daggers in the process and returned to High Hedge to resupply.
On returning, the sorcerers put down a web field to incapacitate Drasus & co. Ways had equipped a melee weapon during a spider ambush on the way and inadvertently stuck himself in the webs - but it didn't matter as none of the opposition managed to break free. Inside the mine, more webs accounted for Hareishan and a single web for Natasha. The ogre mage managed to get a magic missile away before being stunned. Downstairs, Davaeorn didn't manage to strike up a conversation before skull traps took their toll.
Durlag's Tower is the only map area not yet done but that will be left for a while yet, so Baldur's Gate will be the next target.
Ways, fighter/cleric L5/5, 56 HPs, 346 kills
Pate, totemic druid L7, 54 HPs, 145 kills, 0 deaths
Kel, archer L6, 50 HPs, 498 kills, 1 death
Alison, sorcerer L6, 31 HPs, 71 kills, 1 death
Greer, dragon disciple L6, 44 HPs, 169 kills, 0 deaths
Lee, fighter/thief L5/5, 56 HPs, 359 kills, 2 deaths
Kel has put the Light Crossbow of Speed and Bracers of Archery to good use to take a commanding lead in the kills table.
Now, for some city exploration – we enter the sewers and take down the ogre mage, which is no problem at all, and deal with the two necromancers.
Anyway, I'm leaving this up for now so I don't lose the text, but I'll have to return to this and add in the real Part 3, because what I added below is actually part 4 or 5 or something.
I've been noticing that Bolithaw's attacks are surprisingly unreliable, despite her ranged attack bonuses. Being able to backstab from range isn't so meaningful if you keep missing your attacks and leaving the rest of the party to handle the enemy pressure. We nab the Bracers of Archery to help out and try our hand at some more mod-introduced maps.
To my delight, I see werebadgers, a sprite you normally only see in IWD2! They're immune to normal weapons, however, and in my install, +1 ammunition is downgraded to being nonmagical. But our Sky Dancer Vosper's lightning bolts strike as magical weapons.
I don't believe Aura's ability will let us bypass Protection from Normal Missiles, however, since that spell works by granting immunity to specific projectiles, rather than checking an incoming weapon's enchantment level. So we'll still have some trouble dealing with certain mages.
We still need more XP before we tackle bigger quests, so we take an early detour to the Cloakwood, which my install lets me visit before the bandit camp. I decide to take a risk and invade the spider hive rather than using Sanctuary or doing my normal "enter while invisible and then right-click over the container to loot Chelak's body and Spider's Bane from the inventory screen without breaking invisibility" trick.
We have not stolen Dushai's Ring of Free Action, so Web Tangle spells from the spiders could prove fatal. Iffle, our Force Wizard and primary tank, fails her save and is doomed to die to a spider swarm, but Finch is quick enough to down a Potion of Freedom before Web Tangle hits her.
Bolithaw gets hit. She's disabled for several rounds, and we have to scramble to take the pressure off. Worse yet, Vosper gets webbed, too. Our front line is falling apart.
I've kept Bolithaw a short distance away, and our Primordial Witch Doctor Dardaseen puts a spider to sleep for 5 rounds with Light Slumber, but the safest option is to deploy the Wand of Monster Summoning. I've been trying not to use it, because I'm not recharging wands in this run and we might REALLY need those free summons for the Cloakwood Mines.
But now is the time to spend resources. Aura makes a saving throw vs. yet another Web Tangle and summons a wall of monsters around Bolithaw before the spiders can reach her.
Finch tries to bail out Vosper with Cure Moderate Wounds, but our poor Sky Dancer just doesn't have the HP to survive the spider horde's automatic hits. Vosper crumples just before our summoned monsters deal the last blow to the last spider.
Around the Sword Coast in my install are a handful of portals you can access with a special ring. I visit one of them, poking inside unbuffed and unprepared, and see something rather ominous.
I initially thought that our Force Wizard was our top damage dealer, but looking at our statistics, a third of our kills belong to Bolithaw, and another quarter belong to Aura! Wands and ranged attacks are our main asset. Classic BG1.
We return to the Cloakwood, still searching for better sources of XP, and run into a Hamadryad. She charms Vosper and has excellent AC and can teleport, but we manage to grind it out. Vosper, thankfully, has very weak damage output.
Then we run into 4 Black Talon archers, a much more dangerous encounter. They shoot down Iffle in seconds.
Back down south, we bring Ursa's hide, a new mod item, to Taerom in Beregost to turn it into hide armor. It's a pitiful 8 AC, but it also gives a bonus to Constitution, giving Aura a whole +2 to max HP.
Which is a lot, considering hers is otherwise 19. Iffle is fragile, but Aura is always an inch from death.
While we're at the temple of Lathander to raise Iffle, we check out the selection and find a roster of really, really good items for sale. A ring that grants immunity to petrification, a helm that gives immunity to confusion and fear, a +3 flail, +3 armor with immunity to poison, and more.
We're trying not to rely on overpowered items, so we'll probably not use any of them, or even a few other mod items we've been finding as loot. We also opt not to patronize another modded shopkeeper that sells 40 Potions of Magic Blocking, 10 Potions of Magic Shielding, and an unlimited number of Potions of Extra Healing and scrolls of Greater Restoration... the kind of game-changing resources whose power is normally limited by a narrow supply.
Instead, we burn our money on two perfectly-balanced vanilla items, the famously modest Army Scythe and Dagger of Venom!
Bolithaw's non-stealth attack power is much higher, and Vosper now has a serious game-changer. She gets 3 attacks per round due to the Sky Dancer kit, and each strike from the dagger can deal 15 poison damage if given enough time and a failed save. Vosper is in business.
We make our way towards the bandit camp and Vosper uses her new poison against the Black Talons. It works great, but enemies continue to surprise me in this run: more archers ambush us from the east just as I think we're done with the fight.
We still talk our way past Tazok, but I want to tackle the inside of the bandit tent conventionally, despite the fact that we can easily sidestep the fight with Invisibility and Sanctuary. We still approach under Invisibility, however, for the sake of slightly better positioning.
Vosper aims for the mage Venkt's throat with the Dagger of Venom, but he makes his saves vs. death and activates his prebuffs safely, allowing him to fire off his first spell: Sleep.
Which Iffle isn't high enough level to get immunity to. Our main tank hits the floor at the beginning of the fight, and will not awaken if damaged. She's out of the fight.
As the fight grinds to an end, Britik lands a hit on Aura, who survives only thanks to a special item only she can use: once per day, she gets to cheat death.
But Iffle still gets herself killed. Despite avoiding all enemy attention during her long sleep, she still dies to the Lightning Bolt trap on the chest.
Not because I ordered her to open it, but because Vosper opened it. Vosper was nearly immune to electricity, but it bounced off the wall and nailed Iffle in one hit.
Despite the loss of our tank and our second wand user, I decide to try fighting our way out of the camp. We use the Wand of Monster Summoning to protect ourselves, the Wand of Fire to clean house, and even one of Aura's craftable items to mass-Feeblemind the bandits, albeit for only one round. It's a simple but messy strategy.
We keep bombing and using ranged attacks and manage to clear the exterior of the camp. We head back to town to bring back our two fallen comrades... and trade in the scalps of 48 fallen bandits.
The Candlekeep Crypts brought us to our most difficult gamestate yet, solely because of my lack of mod knowledge: It appears that each of the tombs here spawns in a set of guardians in tactics. I was completely unprepared for this and it almost cost me the run: The first tomb made 4 skeleton warriors appear, but they were far from regular skeletons (otherwise, we would’ve been fine) - two of the four have spawned in in this screenshot:
Chapter 4
Kirinhale 4000xp
Charmed Riggolo killed Ghost 3750xp. Mystara lv4 Invisibility
Charmed Meilum killed Khark 3500xp. Khark has Magi Katana +2 on SCS, which also improves casting speed and level by 1. Monk can actually use it, but it's mostly usable by F/M.
Molkar Waylay escaped by Monk speed
Bought Greenstone Amulet
Lamalha Waylay escaped by Monk speed
Picked up WoMS and ability Tomes with Invis
WoMS killed Shoal 5000xp. Raven lv5.
Right click looted body for Tiber 800xp
Drasus Charmed 4th try and he casually killed Rezdan and Kysus, then fought Genthore before getting killed by WoMS 5600xp.
Charmed Guard killed Davaeorn 6000xp. Mystara lv5 PfP, Knock.
Used last WoMS charges to kill Mustard Jelly 2000xp.
Flooding the mines rep 20 2000xp.
Chapter 5
Tremain's Son 5000xp.
Marek and Lothander 16150xp. We pre Charmed Lothander to get his Speed Boots, but he still managed to backstab Mystara to second death. Marek didn't survive second WoMS. Raven lv6.
At this point we did the Basilisk XP-loop (33) which went perfectly. Then the Basilisk cleared the level.
Raven lv8 *Dart 80 Detect Illusion
Mystara lv9 *Sling Shield, Resist Fear, Mirror Image, Haste, Invisibility 10', Skull Trap, Emotion Hope, Emotion Courage. Also got Animate Dead as lv3 spell as per our kit rules.
Iron Throne Naaman Charmed and killed by Shennara. Shennara Kaalos got WoMS. Skelis killed couple of the Iron Throne, but then Mystara was revealed and Acid Arrowed. She retreated, but was being followed and couldn't cast Invis. Raven being Invisible blocked the door and gave enough healing for her to survive the Acid Arrow. Managed to save her this time, just to be killed soon after by Aasims Unholy Blight (3). After resurrecting her and resting we got last of the Iron Throne.
Skelis killed Ramazith and Ragefast. There's blind spot behind the post where Ragefast can't see.
Ogre Waylay passed with couple Invis potions.
Chapter 7
Slythe and Krystin grinded by WoMS.
Denak burned afar for Ring of Energy.
Five Emotioned Skelis were enough for Love, picked up Durlag's Goblet and first Champions Strength scroll.
We pre Charmed Mage and Shaman Dobbelgangers and Skelis quite easily killed the rest. Mage got a lot of summons on but was soon killed too.
96 Fireballs and one PfU for Sarevok, he didn't see us.
One PfU and Invis to reach Korlasz, and with 7 Invis potions and OGL Fireballs she surrendered. Raven lv9. In Baldur's Gate we did the mundane quests and killed Viconia for her Circlet which belonged to Raven.
Chapter 8
Teleria hacked casually. Doing the quests Mystara got lv10 with another Animate Dead (lv5). This also meant her Skelis got upgraded to 7HD ones with Cloak of Minor Arcana. These guys were soon put to use, as they demolished Tsolak and Dumathoins enemies. Then cleared the level. The Undead cave took again about 20 rests to clear as the enemy mobs are so heavy. We picked Secret Revealed, but then betrayed the Dwarves and killed them. Got the Undead help for the Crusader battle. Hid behind the tent for parlay.
Chapter 9
Mystara lv11 fighting the Trolls, Blur, PfF, Stoneskin, Oracle. We picked first Enchanted Weapon scroll from the Troll cave with three Invis potions. The Trolls will start to wander when looting and block the way, but they eventually return to their post. Morentherene Daggered, Ziatar burned, Neothelid killed in couple rounds by Skelis. Akanna managed to kill Mystara (4), again with Unholy Blight, but the fight ended soon after. Bridge Mage interrupted by Ring of Energy.
Chapter 10
Raven lv10 with 100 Detect Illusion. Sold my stuff for the Genie for cool 180k. We suffered slight setback as we find out Bracers of Shuttered Lid aren't usable by evil monks, so we lost 1 Thac0 from our planned output. Munade quests and item gathering. Skelis killed Orogs for cursed belt Protector of Unworthy which is useful against Belhifet. Rakhasha gave us Modron Heart for the chaotic Troll Wave. Listened Therli being killed by Drows, and got Cloak of Cargoyle to protect Monk from criticals. Zhadroth was easily trapped by Skelis and Secret Revealed. And btw the Endless Watcher is full of shit, as he attacked the Skelis trying to kill Zhadroth.
Troll Wave - 20 pre Skull Traps, 2 pre Cloudkills, 5 Skelis and double Fireballs every round and it took less than turn to beat them.
Mage Wave - 4 pre Webs, 2 pre Cloudkills. And we were immediatelly Dispelled by someone, and it became quite chaotic fight. Mystara died (5) trying rebuff the Skelis, but luckily they were strong enough to beat the Mages on their own. But it was still a setback as Mystara lost her Skeli spells and the Sequencer. We resurrected her, but she died immediatelly again (6) by CON penalty as we equipped the Claw of Kazgaroth when she still had 1hp.
Paladin Wave - 5 pre Webs, 2 pre Cloudkills, 5 half dead Skelis, Rejuvination. Rhayla was targeted first as she could Dispel, and she died after second Fireball hit. They creeped forward and walked around the tent which were a concern, but with Stone Ally and 2 WoMS they were repelled.
Final Wave - Skeli Spell Sequencer, 5 Skelis and rebuffed again. But we didn't need the sequencer as the wave was pretty quickly destroyed. Detect Illusions, Oracle and couple Fireballs.
That took quite a lot of planning, buffing, adjusting and rebuffing on the go, but we only needed to use the Goblet only once. To this point it has been mostly Mystara doing the work, but lets see if Raven can finally pull most of the weight against Belhifet.
Back in the city - we're breaking into the Flaming Fist HQ:
Jiddy (male gnome Fighter/Illusionist, Gate70); Chanceless (male gnome Fighter/Thief, Grond0)
Approximately four weeks had passed since Jiddy and Chanceless last ventured outside. Chanceless stared at his portrait, wondering why he wasn't the fighter/illusionist while Jiddy perused his scrollcase wondering why he had not summoned a familiar from the scroll within. Some things we are destined to never know
At least we knew what to do first as we had spent the last month outside the bandit camp. Chanceless fearlessly led, stabbing from the shadows then holding his ground as Jiddy provided support. Those enemies who did not perish by the sword tended to perish blinded and then by the sword
To the main tent. Jiddy cast remove fear and Chanceless started with a backstab on Venkt. He missed, so our contingency plan saw him retreat outside and run. Jiddy was waiting outside and cast cloudkill but Britik shrugged that off and chased after Chanceless. Meanwhile Hakt had hit Chanceless with a poisoned arrow, and then a second, forcing Jiddy to blind their archer. With that done, we blinded Britik and killed both from range
Raemon and Venkt were waiting in what was left of the stinking cloud but Chanceless was down to single figure health, so we rested up and began anew. Venkt failed to survive a second backstab attempt and Raemon was left to fight blind
Our way to the city of Baldur's Gate was open but Jiddy wanted to visit Ulgoths Beard first. That meant making our way north of the Friendly Arm inn for the first time, and Chanceless felt he could not pass up the ankheg nest. Jiddy had sleep spells aplenty but still suggested herding ankhegs to sleep more than one at a time. Although this worked and we emptied the nest it would have been easier and quicker to kill one at a time
Finally reaching Ulgoths Beard via an identifying Beregost Temple detour we sold many items and purchased a cloak for Chanceless and a staff for Jiddy. He then realised we had not relieved Meilum of his bracers
Some time before or after this (are gnomes renowned for their perfidiousness of memory) we visited the lighthouse area and cleared that by using a potion of clarity
Cloakwood was definitely next. Perhaps. Anyway, we scooted through the areas and arrived at the hidden mine. Of the four anti-heroes on the central isle their axeman and a mage were blind while all stood in a stinking cloud. As soon as the other mage failed his save we shot him down and started on the others. Eventually Drasus cottoned on but failed to make headway against Chanceless
Inside the mine we again made rapid progress, choosing to sneak past the bobgoblin bandits and guards after Yeslick and before the final level. Once that was done we killed the final guard and removed the traps between us and Davaeorn. Chanceless tried a few backstabs on Davaeorn and just as Jiddy was about to join in with a spell a backstab closed that encounter allowing us to flood the mine in peace
On to Baldurs Gate. We worked our way around a few areas picking up the helm of Balduran, taking out a greater basilisk and the ennui chitchat in the low lantern inn. Marek died as a consequence of poisoning us while Jiddy chose to let Lothander escape (since we had not bothered to pick up a wand of monster blocking summoniness
We sorted out the ogre in the sewers and doppelgangers, allowing us to convince Duke Eltan that we should return us to Candlekeep. He was having none of it, insisting we deal with the trash in the Iron Throne. So we head in that direction and as we are half way up to the fifth floor Jiddy idly wonders if he should have rested first. No time for rest
Chanceless hid in the shadows to find our preferred combat bottleneck to the south of the awaiting bozos. Jiddy had an invisibility spell memorised so joined him. Only two blind spells memorised, but both work on casters who go hostile. People start to move but so far we are unseen, so Jiddy throws in a stinking cloud. Still we get away with it so he waves a wand and a fireball erupts. By now two casters are swizzling wands back at us so Jiddy tries a second fireball in an effort to avoid any flamestrikes
One caster loses his spell but the other is determined, right up until Chanceless plants an arrow in his face. Only, he cast the spell already and Confusion is heading towards Chanceless. Jiddy runs towards the back room while Chanceless heads into the left room. Chanceless saves against the confusion and hides in the shadows as two enemies enter his room and block him in. Jiddy fails to save but continues to where he intended to move and remains stubbornly out of sight
Chanceless realises he cannot backstab either enemy without the other engaging, and cannot get out of sight. After a round or two he moves so he can see only one badly wounded caster (Alai?) and shoots him dead. He hides again and attacks the second caster (Aasim perhaps), killing him too
The doppelganger is outside but cannot be attacked from inside and is in sight of his companions if attacked in the southern hallway. Chanceless sneaks to the right room and shoots. He hits but the doppelganger attacks. Another shot then some melee leads to another enemy down
By this time Jiddy has recovered and is about to join in as Chanceless kills Zhalimar with a backstab. Gardush is on his own, chasing Chanceless while absorbing flame arrow and magic missile from Jiddy. Chanceless doubles back occasionally to add his sword and it is not long before we are resting on the building roof having identified yet more trinkets
The end of another session, backpacks laden with loot to sell
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1219242/#Comment_1219242
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1219303/#Comment_1219303
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1219375/#Comment_1219375
There were no problems with initial encounters in the City and dealing with a stray basilisk allowed the party to level up once more. They picked up a second pair of boots of speed from Lothander before Larze failed to deal with a simple command and Marek was stunned by a wand.
Progress continued to be easy enough, with backstabs being a favoured method of dealing with mages. I didn't normally bother with summons, but did put some up for the Mountain Maulers as I couldn't remember whether Gretek could be decoyed away with SCS. In the event he could, which made the battle simple. Various dopplegangers were also no problem, which perhaps led me to being a bit incautious when attacking Sunin. No buffs or summons were used there and his defences were good enough to absorb several rounds of attacks. Greer was hit with an acid arrow sequencer and needed healing to avoid death from that. The party ran through the door several times to avoid spells (risking the possibility of getting stuck) before eventually bringing the mage down.
After that experience I decided to take no risks with the Iron Throne party. After going past them invisibly, some beetles drew Shennara out of hiding. Kaalos managed several invisible backstabs on a skeleton before running out of invisibility potions and being stunned. Webs were then followed by a round of fireballs before spirit lions finished things off.
After draining their budget recharging wands, the party reported in to Duke Eltan for duty in Candlekeep. They used a round of their hoarded invisibility potions to avoid the ogre mage ambush there before a spike growth killed them off. Inside the library they made short work of the Iron Throne leaders before moving on to the catacombs. Ways took both of the tomes there before dealing with everything on the way out. The only slight glitches were when a phase spider teleported in from somewhere out of sight and poisoned Alison (but Ways was close by to heal her) and when SCS Diarmid proved to be unkillable and everyone had to go invisible to get past him.
Back in the City they buffed up to go and rescue Duke Eltan, before dealing with Cythandria. She cast a shroud of flame on Alison just before she died. That seemed to continue on for a long time and Alison eventually used a potion of magic blocking rather than risk dying (I probably should have just swapped rings of fire resistance round to reduce damage on her earlier). Slythe went down quickly against a general assault and Krystin didn't last too much longer. At the palace I was surprised to find just standard greater dopplegangers - with Liia getting SCS upgrades that gave them no realistic chance of success.
Before diving into the maze, there was a bit of unfinished business at Watcher's Keep. After killing the battle horrors on the path the party went to deal with the one on the wall. In itself that wasn't a problem, but I got caught out by an SCS bug that allows a greater ghoul from the lower levels to come out through the wall. It didn't appear when the party initially arrived at the stairs, but did so after Ways and Greer finished off the skeletons - the others having dragged the battle horror to the other end of the wall. Greer was held by the ghoul and looked like being killed before the others could arrive - so Ways boldly threw himself into the combat and destroyed the ghoul with the help of a wand of heavens blast. Lee took out the basilisks on the roof with backstabs. Lee then laboriously laid some traps for Kirinhale, but those weren't needed when he found another critical backstab. Riggilo was enclosed in an invisible cage, but responded by disappearing himself. Lee tried for some time to discover him, but his 5% detect illusions skill failed to do the job and eventually Ways took it upon himself to buff up and deal with Riggilo. Lee also did the hard work against the ghost with a series of backstabs using the stairs to escape.
The party were still some way from being able to take another level, so decided to dive into the under-tower. Lee painstakingly removed the traps from level 1 while the party worked their way around. I couldn't remember just what the warders did, so prepared rather more than usual. Avarice died in some pre-set skull traps and Ways finished off Fear who had been badly wounded by thief traps. Ways then hurt himself with reflected bullets aimed at Love, but the wand of heavens proved effective to finish the job against him while Love concentrated on the last skeleton. Finally, Pride was held up enough by webs and spirit lions to be shot down by magical ammunition.
Pate, totemic druid L10, 73 HPs, 177 kills, 0 deaths
Kel, archer L8, 71 HPs, 563 kills, 1 death
Alison, sorcerer L9, 46 HPs, 87 kills, 1 death
Greer, dragon disciple L9, 62 HPs, 212 kills, 0 deaths
Lee, fighter/thief L7/8, 81 HPs, 419 kills, 2 deaths
So, how’s the Sarevok battle like in tactics remix? Of course, we're approaching it with all kinds of buffs, potions and scrolls. Sarevok does get the aid of two more allies – Diarmid, who just seems to be a pretty regular archer, and Korlasz, from the opening dungeon of SoD – of course, as is always the case for tactics, there are starting summons as well, in this case including two dangerous earth elementals. The boss himself is also apparently immune to all normal and +1 weapons – we can’t dispel his haste with dispelling arrows as a result, which are usually a pretty huge factor in this battle:
So, outside of TOTSC, which we have yet to explore, tactics is mostly a pretty clear upgrade in terms of difficulty, especially for most generic enemies, in comparison to a full SCS installation. The exceptions are Icharyd, the bandit camp, the hamadryad, the lack of bounty hunter ambushes, and slightly less dangerous thieves (at the beginning, at least – later in the game, tactics thieves became just as dangerous as SCS ones). As for spellcasters, it’s debatable. Tactics gets more prebuffs, but I feel like they are less intelligently chosen and the spellcasters focus too much on mediocre single target damaging spells instead of trying to crowd control the party. However, the mod loves lightning bolt in the mid to lategame which is supremely dangerous, and I would guess that a spellcaster-heavy party will have a much bigger problem dealing with the many prebuffs in the tactics list. There are some AI weaknesses though, such as the tendency to pointlessly attack directly after going invisible, and the lack of armor spells in the prebuffs. Overall, I think SCS has the smarter AI, so if you're not looking for stat improvements on your enemies, tactics might not be the best choice.
The weakest parts of the mods are probably those where enemies spawn in out of nothing, such as in the Nashkel mines – less so with the three city “underworld” encounters I’ve seen (in Beregost, the BG docks and north-eastern BG), as there’s at least some warning about them. The skeleton warriors in the Candlekeep catacombs also felt a bit unfair, though probably less overwhelming if I had known about them. I also dislike having to deal with so many lightning bolt spells, I just don’t like how that spell works in the BG series, feels way too random and potentially instantly deadly. Otherwise, it was a very nice challenge for me – 4-5 very close calls, one full restart, and without a custom party, it would’ve been much more difficult (since many improvements come down to straight up better enemy stats).
Now: Let’s see how the mod affects TOTSC. The readme doesn’t really mention the Ice Island or Balduran’s Island (though werewolfs should deal some bleeding damage), and we will start out with those. Ice Island should be tough either way. I will give a report on each of those areas, even though they aren’t officially part of the run, just in case someone is curious and wants to know how tactics would play out in a potential future no-reload scenario. As mentioned, I’m only interested in BG1 right now, so Brintje won’t continue into SoD or SoA.