Aldain, Human Conjurer Redux: Update 2
Previous update found here
Next update found here
Aldain imports into BG2EE without issue.
He did not bring any importable items with him, so gets the standard setup: Mail of the Dead +2, Helm of Balduran, Staff Spear +2.
Careful spell selection and application allows for a smooth (well, no one died...) ride through Irenicus' dungeon, and we emerge inside the Promenade.
The party this time will be good-aligned (except Jaheira, but she's basically Neutral Good): We're picking up Aerie and Mazzy.
Aerie is very straightforward: True Sight, or if you prefer Remove Magic, handles the illusionary Werewolves.
We exit the Circus and head for the Slums, then immediately duck into the Copper Coronet, purchasing Bernard's Scroll Case as it's only available while Lehtinan runs the place.
Now, normally I'd just go ahead with freeing the slaves, but we're getting the party together as soon as possible: While Lehtinan is in charge, you can cast freely inside the Copper Coronet, so Aldain's familiar pops Invisibility, 10' Radius, and we take off for Umar Hills (detouring to the Government district to unlock it by talking to Delon).
We rest up, then head for the Temple, sneaking past the massed Shadows outside to save their experience for when we've got Mazzy with us.
There's no timer on Mazzy, so we can take as long as we want before going after the Shade Lord; this is good, since we really don't have the weaponry or spellworks right now to tackle him/it safely.
Mazzy is recruited at 250k experience (a little behind but nothing major) and we head back to the Coronet.
Weapon choices are a bit wonky this time around: Minsc will go Bastard Sword -> Flail, Jaheira Spear -> Quarterstaff, and Mazzy Long Sword -> Undecided.
Aldain, Aerie and (ultimately) Imoen can just pick whatever, it doesn't matter.
We clear the Coronet easily enough, though Hendak gets the kill on Lehtinan.
The Sewers go smoothly as well, though we hit a spot of trouble when dealing with Haegan: He quaffed a Potion of Frost Giant Strength and absolutely went to town on everyone with those Throwing Axes, eagerly assisted by Oil of Speed-quaffing guards...
Neither Jaheira nor Minsc are fantastic frontliners, at least at this stage, but they're what we've got.
The rest of the ship goes better, as the Mages here aren't high enough level to pose a credible threat.
As is customary, we hold off on reporting back to Hendak (and paying the enslaved girl 100g), to save potential reputation boosts for after we've bribed reputation up; I'm playing with reduced reputation gain, 1/4 of normal rate.
Beyond simply surviving, an early priority is getting some items that reduce irritation: Chief among these, the Potion Case and Quiver of Plenty +1 (since we've got Mazzy).
That means Watcher's Keep; en route we get the Suna Seni ambush, and though the enemy Mage promptly dispels our Invisibility, 10' Radius, the few seconds it took for that to take effect allowed us to reposition sufficiently to survive the ensuing battle.
Yes, Aerie is so very fragile... if ever her Stoneskin drops, she soon follows suit.
Alright! Enter Watcher's Keep, clear the Stone Golem to the left, then pop Farsight: Yes, we did get Vampiric Wraiths.
These things are just lethal to low-level parties that pop in unprepared.
We are anything but, however: We first clear the large mess of Trolls to the left (Chaotic Commands/Protection from Fire and some Fireballs of our own), then engage the Wraiths from the small left-side room of the main chamber.
Jaheira's Wall of Moonlight hits the Wraiths fairly hard, and with concentrated attacks, we soon bring them down: As long as they can't see characters vulnerable to Level Drain, they can't attack characters vulnerable to level drain.
Damnable things.
The Mustard Jellies to the far left of the level aren't really an issue, though they kill off our Skeleton Warriors.
We handle also the Spiders, then encounter an oddity: I seem to recall it's safe to rest in the warded room (you even get a message to that effect when you enter it), but we get a fairly large spawn of Ghasts and Mummies when we attempt it.
Things looked a little dangerous, but we bottlenecked the enemies by retreating into the southern room, and received an unexpected bonus: SCS improved random scroll drops kicked into overdrive, netting us Summon Djinni (!) and Spell Shield (!!) from the Ghasts.
Those kinds of ambushes I can get behind.
We head outside instead and rest in safety, then clear out the Guardian Golems easily enough, and that's as far as we go; we make off with a fair bit of loot and gold, and return to Athkatla.
So what's the plan? I don't want to play through 80% of the game without Imoen even if she is almost completely silent after you rescue her, but there's some nice stuff for sale in the Underdark, so I'd rather not head there penniless... or for that matter, at too low a level.
So we'll do two Strongholds, and most little things around Athkatla, though will leave the heavy-duty encounters alone (Twisted Rune, Liches, Guarded Compound, that sort of thing); we've literally no way to remove a Spell Trap before visiting the Underdark and aquiring Ruby Ray of Reversal, anyway.
Easiest of the easy first then: Graveyard.
With three warriors, this actually goes rather well; again, we get a nice random drop in the form of Protection from Magical Energy showing up in a chest.
Crypt King has good THAC0 but Remove Fear is all it takes to just thump him, Pai'Na is shot down and her miniscule Spiders dealt with afterwards, the Vampyre does not get to Level Drain anyone, and Wraiths are allergic to Fireball.
Good stuff all around.
En route back to the Coronet, we save Renfeld.
Sanasha and Prebek are mildly troublesome, but you can just handle the odd Confusion by spreading out, and Minsc is immune thanks to Lilarcor anyway.
Another epic scroll in the form of Mass Invisibility (seriously, we've been really lucky so far in this respect) awaits us upstairs in the Harper headquarters, and we finish by looting Xzar's corpse.
Onward!
Viconia is rescued from fanatics and accepted into the party in lieu of Yoshimo, bringing reputation to 9.
We bribe it to 16, drop Viconia for Yoshimo, and are now at 18 reputation.
Exposing Reijek nets us another point, and giving the enslaved girl 100 gold nets us the final point; we got lucky this time around, and are now sitting at 20 reputation, which will be quite helpful given our planned future shopping spree.
More small fry: Fallen Paladins are undone with some Bombardier Beetles, Orog/Slaver Wizard ambush is harsh since we weren't invisible at the time but we pull through (Flesh Golem from Watcher's Keep putting in a good effort), Wellyn is sent back to sleep, Neb is neutered, and yet another friggin' ambush as we are fatigued and mostly out of spells turns into a narrow victory thanks to a handful of Conjure Lesser Air Elemental Aldain kept memorized as a precaution.
Yeah, I know I say it a lot, but SCS Improved Elementals is a nice addition; it makes these spells worthwhile to cast, especially early on, which I think is fine given how intense the competition is at 5th level (lots of good, even absolutely necessary, spells here).
We hand in Haegan's key to Hendak, and now that we've gained a few levels all around, decide to pick up some nice Sewer gear; let's clear the rest of the area before mucking about with Tarnor though.
The teleporting Beholders/Gauths to the southwest are narrowly handed by the 7HD version of Skeleton Warriors (narrowly since the Sea Troll joined in and pummeled them pretty badly).
The Rakshasa can be pretty nasty since it's virtually immune to magic, at least at these levels, has great THAC0, and buffs itself; it is still vulnerable to Remove Magic though (L11 seems enough to consistently strip it of all buffs), and thus a lot less dangerous.
Five Lesser Air Elementals are now called up, no need to take chances after all, and we engage Tarnor and his cronies.
For the first (and probably last) time this run, Aerie let's loose a Lightning Bolt since the Elementals are immune to it, and with plenty of buffs including Haste, they deal good damage (though do drop quite quickly as well); with the help of our frontliners, they last just long enough to wipe the entire enemy party.
Lots of good loot for us!
Alright.
We'll be going into the Underdark, and even before that, there's all sorts of nasty death magic that can only be undone with a Resurrection spell (thanks to SCS revised death effects... otherwise it'd be run over if a Disintegrate hit someone).
However, Jaheira can't cast Resurrection, Aerie won't have access to it until very late in the game, and there's no temple available in the Underdark... so I'd like to grab the Rod of Resurrection just in case, which means dealing with Merkrath.
We run his little errand, huff and puff on his robes upon our return, and enrage/engage the Mage.
And it's actually easy pickings: Seems Merkrath only prepared Fire damage this time around (no Death Spell), so a single 8HD Fire Elemental basically absorbed his entire spell book.
Nice; we loot the western side of his lair including the Rod of Resurrection, but leave the eastern side alone (not feeling up to taking on the three (!) Yuan-Ti Mages there just yet), and send Haer'Dalis back to the Five Flagons.
Here we also finally ponied up for a magic license: Of course it's more optimal to just fight and kill the Cowled Wizards (experience, chance of nice random scrolls), but I'm erring on the side of caution here.
Now we can freely cast Friends, so run around for a bit picking up a bunch of containers to ease inventory burden.
There's still some small stuff to do though: Valeria's band of goons are soon dismantled.
Valeria herself is a nuisance with her Darts, but the real threat here is Dracandros: I've seen him pop Cacofiend before, though he doesn't get the chance this time around.
Still took a while to take him down though, mostly because Minsc failed a save against Greater Command early on.
We avenge our close call by retrieving the Dawn Ring for the Temple of Lathander (somewhere around here we did the Sir Sarles quest, keeping the Illithium for later), then prepare to deal with Brennan Risling and his fellow mobs.
Jaheira provides Fire Elementals, Aldain handles Air Elementals, and Brennan doesn't know what hit him.
Funny the lengths I go to to grab that ring... I end up never actually utilizing it.
Anyway, Jaheira's curse is next: By now, Remove Magic suffices to deal with the two lesser magelings, and the more powerful one (I forget who's who...) mostly tries to renew his defenses under a combined True Sight/Breach onslaught, not really accomplishing much.
Here we also nabbed Officer Dirth's Full Plate, though we hardly need it at this stage; it'll come with us to Fish City to be sold, though.
The local Pirates are also popped: An Elemental is Confused, but that's about the extent of their efforts.
So, that's almost all the easy stuff taken care of!
Or maybe all of it, I forget.
Anyway: Let's do a few strongholds, preferably from among the easier ones.
The obvious contender here is Trademeet, since Jaheira's weapon options are so woeful at the moment.
An ambush en route is handled via invisibly summoning Elementals, and we arrive unimpeded.
I observe invisibly as the animals maul the local guards, but no grand scroll drops today; Wilfred the Red still gives up a thousand gold, of course.
Alright, this should be fairly easy.
Again, Chaotic Commands and Protection from Fire on the frontliners, then we just charge, and Sunfire/Fireball from Aldain helps thin the herds, while the massive Spider spawn here gets a Cloudkill.
No issues at all really, as Spectral and Spirit Trolls don't really have many hitpoints, and so are highly vulnerable to spellworks; we quickly mow down all the trolls, including those found in the Mound.
The Greater Earth Elemental is kited while eating Magic Missile/Melf's Acid Arrow, Kylan Lind gets a Cloudkill and some Skeleton Warriors, and Mazzy shoots the Spore Colonies down while Minsc and Jaheira hold off the Red Myconids; the Shambling Mounds past the bridge are just slashed to bits.
Finally, Dalok and his friends get a Confusion (with good effect), and the way is clear, beyond Ihtafeer still being alive.
Jaheira gets every buff we have (we rested beforehand), which allowed her to get a Fire Elemental up during the duel, and Faldorn falls.
Alright... ugh.
Time for Ihtafeer.
There's really no good way to do this, at least not at our present levels (that I know of): Three Rakshasa at once just make for a really nasty encounter.
They use Remove Magic frequently, are high enough level to easily dispel our buffs, buff themselves, and throw elemental damage around... it's just all-around bad news.
Still, at least Jaheira can protect her buffs, and since there's nothing else to use our slots for besides summons (given Rakshasa's near-immunity to magic), Minsc and Mazzy get full buffs too, in particular, we boost their elemental resistances to the best of our ability.
And then it's go time.
Jalaal is the weakest of the three (he doesn't seem to get Protection from Magical Weapons), so we focus him down first: Skeleton Warriors are keeping Ihtafeer busy.
Saadat is weaker than Ihtafeer but lasts a fair while, and we have no choice but to tank his and Ihtafeer's spellbook as we slowly wear the former down.
Yeah, we brought the non-warriors into the hut to try and distract Ihtafeer a bit... dangerous, but necessary.
A lot of running and potion gulping later, we finally put the last blow to Ihtafeer.
The fight lasted long enough that most buffs had to be renewed, including Jaheira's Club of Meteoric Iron.
Still, that was surprisingly clean, if harrowing: I've seen them use 2x Web Minor Sequencers, which can prove disastrous, but this time they went exclusively for elemental damage.
We rest up, then botch our attempt to Pickpocket Taquee (I tried pausing immediately but he went hostile too quickly).
I wasn't sure how to handle this, so immediately talked to the head genie, and they all disappeared with Ihtafeer's head.
Maybe I could've just killed Taquee for his flask with no consequences?
Anyway, we accept our well-earned reward.
Also, Tiris gets a helping hand (Reijek just gets a mailed fist), we give the Mantle of Waukeen to Lord Logan, then whack Skarmaen for his Elven Chainmail.
So, that's one stronghold!
It seems only fitting that we round things off by clearing the Ruined Temple, though we won't quite cleanse the whole thing just yet, as we shall see.
We are well enough leveled by now, so the Shadows here are swiftly dispatched: Thankfully no Lich shows up, and Lesser Fire Elementals (I splurged on a scroll in Trademeet, which Aldain scribed) are quite helpful against Greater Mummies.
We stop just short of the Shade Lord, and return to Umar Hills, clearing out Valygar's guardian Rangers and a local Mimic, as well as putting down a rampaging Golem.
We will return for the Shade Lord, but only once we've got the Mace of Disruption handy; towards that end, we now return to Athkatla and pay Gaelan his 15k.
Lassal is easily undone, though we get an Ogre ambush while en route to the Bridge district, and yet again a scroll drop (from one of the Ogre Magi, I guess): Spell Turning.
Which is actually not so great, since what usually happens is a spell just bounces between your Spell Turning and the enemy's until both are exhausted... but I find having it up dissuades SCS casters from throwing anything at you, so I still use it.
Anyway, we deal with the Guild Contact (Gravy? Gratin? Tasty...), then make absolutely certain Haz encounters a Grimwarder at close range so we get his Staff Mace +2, and finally send invisible Yoshimo to fetch the Mace of Disruption from the pool of blood.
With the Mace of Disruption, the Amulet of Power, and some buffs (this is a good time to pop some potions), Minsc makes mincemeat out of the local vampiric population: A Fire Elemental helps out with the Clay Golem, and some Skeleton Warriors act as decoys as Tanova's Protection from Magical Weapons simply expires.
Bodhi chases a hasted Minsc around for a while, then retreats, and that's that.
Great, just a few loose ends left to tie up; first, the eastern part of Mekrath's lair.
Fire Elementals do the bulk of the work here: A stray Lightning Bolt nearly fries Aerie though (low hitpoints), but we pull through as none of the Yuan-Ti Mages apparently had Death Spell prepared.
The loot was non-remarkable, really... but still, we clear everything because we can.
Next, I figured it was time for Jaheira's romance to progress, and sure enough, resting in the Druid Grove popped the hopeless clad-in-plate goons, upon whose deaths Meronia immediately whisked Jaheira away.
We rest at the Coronet, Jaheira returns, and we mercilessly clobber Galvarey and his lackeys: There's a (true) Ring of Wizardry in it for us!
Alright, now, all that's left before we sail for Brynnlaw is the Shade Lord: Here I bought a handful of key scrolls, including Improved Haste, and scribed them.
Some things SCS Shade Lord does (I can't recall but think he even pops Blade Barrier?):
He has an aura which periodically level drains anyone in close proximity.
His defences consist of Protection from Magical Weapons, Spell Turning and Mirror Image; he renews these periodically (all three, instantly).
He has at least one cast of Finger of Death and Black Blade of Disaster.
If he kills a summon, it spawns a Shadow.
So, pretty difficult to tackle early on; the good news is, there is no more bad news he doesn't actually dispel your buffs.
All the while you're fighting him, the Shadow Altar also keeps spawning Shadows: I play with the component which removes ammunition from containers, so we can't kill it with a Sunstone Bullet either.
Thus, we waited for the Mace of Disruption.
All-around buffs and we charge: Minsc has Mace of Disruption and Amulet of Power, Jaheira pops Negative Plane Protection on herself, the rest of the party quickly moves to the south, then supports at range.
With Improved Haste, Minsc together with Mazzy soon brings the Shadow Altar low, while Jaheira occupies the Shade Lord, and Aldain gets off Pierce Magic followed by Breach.
And then we just turn our tender mercies on the Shade Lord himself... or well, Minsc does nearly all of the work (Improved Haste really is beastly).
That was almost too easy... as long as you can deal with the level drain and handle the Shade Lord's defenses, he's not very tough.
Another stronghold down!
I thought we were done here, but Mazzy's quest popped, so we dealt with that real quick.
As our final act, I booted Yoshimo temporarily and replaced him with Valygar; Valygar in turn being replaced by Yoshimo once the former had opened the door to the Planar Sphere.
I dislike killing Valygar and will avoid it if possible.
But now... now, we are ready.
We're leveled enough, we're geared enough, we're moneyed enough.
We're coming, Imoen!
Hopefully, we'll survive Brynnlaw this time, and maybe even Spellhold proper.
Aldain, Human Conjurer Redux: Update 3
Previous update found here
Next update found here
In keeping with our plan, we head straight for Brynnlaw: The initial Vampire ambush is just beaten down by Minsc.
Galvena and Vadek get some Skeleton Warriors to munch on (not so tasty), and then we go after Perth.
This time, Yoshimo's traps weren't quite enough to kill Perth off; usually the poison damage does the trick, but Perth got a fair few spells off the ground, even though we came out ahead in the end.
As long as you have room to maneuver, you can usually win even fights against much higher level spellcasters.
We clear the outside of Spellhold, this time making sure NOT to open the door, since as we recall that consumes your Ward Stone, and then you just get incessantly petrified trying to move back past the bridge...
The SCS component which removes your gear in Spellhold occasionally glitches (items have disappeared before, particularly from inside containers), so I always remove our gear manually beforehand: Everything gets stripped apart from The Crimson Dart +3 on Aldain, since he needs to handle Dream Bhaal somehow, and two Oils of Speed.
If you're not prepared for it, Dream Bhaal can easily kill you, as (in my install at least) he frequently pops an Oil of Speed followed by a Giant Strength potion, and carries several healing potions as well.
Aldain sacrifices a point of Constitution, bludgeons Bhaal, and we're reunited with Imoen. Hooray!
Alright, let's get started in our attempts to clear the Asylum with almost no resting, underestimating the encounters in the process.
The Orogs/Minotaurs to the west beat us to within an inch of our lives, but are even so outdone by the Ruhk.
Having next to no gear while being forced to engage something with very low AC, very low THAC0, tons of defensive buffs as well as elemental damage spells... it's rough.
Jaheira had Wondrous Recall available though, so we get Aerie back on her feet, dismantle the Clay Golem successfully, then just loiter for a while as the measly Ring of Regeneration gets us back up to speed; I prepared mostly buffs and summons, so we don't have much healing, and the handful of potions you get we already quaffed in a bid to come out ahead against the Ruhk.
Still, Animate Dead is available, so we manage the Mind Flayer and Beholder to the south; the Skeleton Warriors help us deal with the Kobolds, Undead in the corridors as well as the Umber Hulks, though ultimately all fall to the latter.
Now, the resident Lich has a big Undead spawn guarding it; fortunately they're not linked, so we put up our last significant wave of summons (Fire Elementals), then draw the guards out of the library.
SCS Fire Elementals have Shroud of Flame available as a special ability, and Jaheira caught it... never fear though, as Aerie gets Jaheira back up.
So, we've got one injured Fire Elemental, and a cast of Monster Summoning III: Can we beat a Lich?
Nope, not happening; in fact, that came close to ending our run.
I've no idea how Aldain avoided being affected by that Horrid Wilting: The Lich had Symbol, Death, Finger of Death and Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting in a Chain Contingency which fired at Mazzy.
Maybe a bug?
Anyway, we take the hint and retreat to rest up.
What follows is a drawn-out battle: We've got no way to dismantle the Lich's Spell Trap and it's immune to literally all elemental damage thanks to prebuffs, so we are forced to just wait out its multitude of Protection from Magical Weapons.
We send in summons piecemeal inbetween Mazzy and Minsc using our few magical arrows to take potshots: Mazzy dies early on to the same Chain Contingency, and Minsc comes within 14 HP of dropping as well.
Seriously, it's not so fun having to just tank an L18+ Mage's spellbook.
Ugh.
Still, that should be the worst of it for now.
We quickly clear out Dace, then deal with the Pit Fiend and Greater Wolfwere (these we could've just skipped, they require serious prebuffs and give meh experience), then head for the next level.
Down the left path, regular Troll prebuffs keep us safe, and Protection from Fire plus a Minor Spell Deflection lets Aerie pick up the three portraits in safety; Bodhi buggers off, we deal with the Minotaurs and lone Gauth, then head back to the right path.
The Yuan-Ti get Confusion, which works well here.
The Umber Hulk Elder is shot down, Wolfweres are just melee'd, the Clay Golems are handled with the help of Fire Elementals (though we had to pop one Remove Curse), and then we prebuff fully to deal with the Spirit Troll, Ulitharid and Noble Djinni.
Against SCS Mind Flayers, it's usually better to boost your saves until you're virtually immune to Mind Blast, as the Flayers won't really notice but keep picking ineffective attacks; they do notice if you're immune via Chaotic Commands though, at which point they start spamming ranged magical/blunt damage, which quickly stacks up.
Here we rest again; we're almost entirely out of spells.
I went back and cleared the Yuan-Ti on the first level, not sure why, but then pushed through the final evaluation, snagging the Bone Club for Jaheira.
So, to my shame, I just couldn't be bothered with having to fight, in a small enclosed space, yet another bizarrely over-leveled Mage (this one with friggin' HLAs) whose multitude of protections are literally impossible for us to strip at this stage.
So, Lonk the Sane gets bonked in the head before his buffs fire, and Irenicus gets the same tender treatment.
The encounter went kinda weird, since Irenicus' Chain Contingency fired (same as the Lich, it had Symbol, Death, Finger of Death and Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting), but killed off most of the Clones rather than us.
Irenicus pops his scripted True Seeing, and has time for an Improved Mantle before he teleports out.
We deal with Yoshimo, loot Irenicus' office, then accept Saemon's help, and we're out.
Another oddity, as Imoen in the ensuing Slayer Dream drops some potions when she's killed, which Aldain is then able to loot; sure, why not.
We deal with some local pirates, including killing Desharik when he shows up to yell at us for stealing his ship, and are off.
Next priority is surviving the Gith ambush: Aldain goes invisible while the rest of the party focuses the Captain, and we soon get transported to Fish City, where of course we begin by selling enormous amounts of crap to the local Priestess, as she pays the best out of any merchant in Shadows of Amn.
Here I at long last turned a few pages in the Book of Infinite Spells, and we got True Seeing; I'll keep that, it's always useful.
Sauhagin are vicious, but as long as you've got Chaotic Commands up, you're at least safe from their stunning bolts; fish are also highly vulnerable to fire, so we push through, though no Cloak of Mirroring for us, as SCS moves it deep into ToB.
Ixilthethocal is actually rather dangerous, as he gets HLAs: Minsc eats a few Power Attacks before we can put the former down, but ultimately, pure melee opponents are seldom run-ending threats.
Here we do a bout of scribing, since we'll need it for the Underdark, then finally descend.
The initial trio of Mind Flayers are handled via buffs boosting our saves: Chant/Prayer/Recitation/Protection from Evil 10' Radius/Emotion, Hope is 1+1+2+2+2 = +8 to all saves against evil creatures.
When necessary, one can add Spirit Armor for another +3 specifically against spells, Mass Invisibility for a further +4 overall, and there's even the odd Potion of Invulnerability for a further +5 on frontliners if necessary... with +17 to all saves (+20 against spells), even Minsc can survive.
Now, we need access to a safe place to rest, so we'll deal with the Drow war party to the north.
These guys aren't lethal, but still dangerous if underestimated: Minsc takes a real beating (though that is healed up as we keep fighting), but focusing one Drow at a time pays off, and we emerge more or less unscathed.
I pick up all the Drow gear: The Swirfneblin merchant to the north buys it, so I'll hoard all of it that we come across in a barrel in the Swirfneblin settlement, then sell last thing we do before leaving.
Each suit/weapon is only worth, at best, a few hundred, but you get something like ~150 pieces of arms and armor in total, depending on choices, so it adds up.
We also take down Madman Aganalo and Riti while here; yes, I should've held off on scribing for Imoen so she could've gotten Improved Haste as well, I realized belatedly.
The Balor to the north has vorpal attacks (Death Ward), spams Remove Magic (SI: Abjuration or Entropy Shield), and has several fire-based offensive and defensive spells (Protection from Fire).
It throws a spanner into the works by Teleporting Without Error to Mazzy, who is sitting outside the cavern entirely unprotected, but we manage to take it down before it kills anyone.
Here I have Aldain pop a few Limited Wish, since we needed to rest anyway; Full Plate Mail +2 and Glasses of Identification are both useful.
So, now there are a lot of encounters waiting for us: Kuo-toa, Illithids, Beholders, Drow, and two very high-level enemy Mages stuck in a Soul Gem.
I always do all three lairs before entering Ust Natha, as once inside you really are very low on time (feels like this should be rectified, SCS makes it even worse by shortening some timers): We start with the Kuo-toans since they are by far the easiest.
I had actually forgotten they're 90% resistant to magical damage, so Aldain's Skull Trap was a moot point; they are, however, quite vulnerable to Fire damage, so a single Fireball is nearly enough to wipe an entire encounter.
We add some Tainted Tadpoles to the pool, reducing the Prince's regeneration, though we could've probably just powered through, no worries.
Same thing here as with Sauhagin by the by: Keep Chaotic Commands up to avoid being stunned.
Skeleton Warriors handle the Beholder and Gauths to the southwest.
After a brief foray back into the eastern Underdark (clearing more Kuo-toans as well as the small Drow war party by the bridge), we rest up and return to the lair: There are Demon Knights to deal with.
These are really very nasty, and I'm surprised we got through them with no casualties.
Level drain on hit, Remove Magic seemingly at will, Power Word, Blind, Symbol, Stun, Fireball... lots of things you must protect against (SCS lets you counter Blindness with True Seeing).
By now, Mazzy's saves are good enough that I feel comfortable letting her take part in the action, but I forgot to keep Protection from Magical Weapons up on Imoen, and she got drained down to L4 Mage/LSomething Thief... pretty close to a possible chunking from reaching level 0, not good.
Not sure if SCS revised death effects would've saved her.
Anyway, great Armor of the Hart for Minsc, even greater Belt of Frost Giant Strength for Minsc, and pointless two-handed sword to sell (cannot be used by Good-aligned characters).
We next farm some experience: Each Elemental Portal down here will spawn up to 10 Elementals if you haven't talked to Vithal yet, very nice.
A rest later, we proceed with the lairs: Beholders are next.
We buff up completely and enter the lair to the south.
I had forgotten that SCS actually moves the Elder Orb further into the complex, so we only had to deal with two Beholders upon entering: If you're fast enough and have at least Death Ward up, you can easily get through it without casualties, as Beholders usually pop Anti-Magic Ray if you're buffed (which protects you from further rays for one round).
Or you could just apply Invisibility, 10' Radius and let only the warriors do the fighting.
Now begins a fairly lengthy running battle: A Hive Mother is located at the center of the lair, but she has something like four Beholders with her, and additional Beholders will come running once the battle starts.
We go heavy on Skeleton Warriors, and try to snipe from outside visual range with area-of-effect damage.
Even so, we had to retreat once and rest up; there were just too many Beholders for us to clear safely in one go.
Eventually we push through the Hive Mother's defenses and bring her down; Gauths and Mind Flayers to the southwest were handled by killing the Mind Flayers first (they're scripted to keep spamming spells at the Gauths until the latter are all dead).
Now something potentially run-ending occurred: I had scouted the entire lair.
There was one Elder Orb to the southeast left, along with a few Beholders, but everything else was clear.
As Aldain and Imoen maneuvered around to the north hoping to get into position for some ranged artillery... another Elder Orb just spawned in.
I guess Minsc, who did the scouting, somehow failed to trip the spawn.
That's very disconcerting.
Aldain and Imoen each popped an Oil of Speed and were somehow able to get clear before the Elder Orb/Djinni/Efreeti just annihilated them... we set up shop at the very entrance, quickly getting Skeleton Warriors off the ground and applying emergency party-wide buffs.
That could've easily been the end, though.
We rest up yet again; it's just the Illithids left now.
Defeating the Ogre Guard is easy, but the Illithid from the eastern room got called in, and ambushed us as we opened the door.
Thankfully, we made our saves.
Another potential close shave.. alright.
Apply longer duration buffs (Emotion, Hope, Protection from Evil 10' Radius, Spirit Armor) and clear the handful of Illithid to the south; for the larger spawns, we'll add a lot more buffs, but we don't have enough of those to apply for every fight in here.
Create some circlets, use one to have an endlessly respawning Illithid from the eastern room open doors for us, then prepare for the first massive spawn to the west.
In addition to short-term clerical buffs that boost saves, we also apply Mass Invisibility and Improved Haste (for Minsc and Mazzy), as well as True Seeing on Jaheira to counter the Improved Invisibility of the Illithids.
Good.
It hurts, but we can do it.
Buffs still running, we clear the smaller Illithid spawn to the north, then deal with the Kuo-toan Priest/Insane Dwarf Warrior/Umber Hulk to the south.
We apply our second round of extreme buffing, and hit the Master Brain.
Yes, that got really nasty.
I overlooked that the Master Brain has Disjunction (fancy name for Remove Magic, really): We had enough time to annihilate its attendant Ulitharids before it popped, but we still ended up taking massive damage as a result.
Just lucky no one got stunned and eaten.
Anyway, we evacuate and eliminate the hopelessly outmatched Simyaz and friends; a few Fire Elementals were sufficient for the task.
Now then, let's help Vithal out, then rob him as he tries to teleport away.
We purchase a Freedom scroll off Carlig and pop it.
The Earth Elemental portal is cleared without incident, and then it's time for the Fire Elemental gate.
I have to remember to protect Vithal, even though he goes invisible at the start of each fight.
So, he caught Shroud of Flame, and just slowly died.
No Skull of Death, nor Rod of Absorption for us, although we did get the scrolls.
Well, let's move on.
Since we have room to move around, it should be fine to take on Alchra Diagott and Raevilin Strathi: If they do put up Spell Trap, we'll just have to wait out their physical protection spells by running around.
Buff with everything, literally everything we have available, then get on with it.
Alchra pops several HLAs, but aimed at Skeleton Warriors, and eventually runs out of Protection from Magical Weapons, though he did a fair bit of damage with Energy Blades.
In comparison, Raevilin is quite straightforward: No Spell Trap, so we can just tear down his protections and kill him.
Well, good!
Several decent scrolls for us.
Now then: Normally, if you retrieve her eggs, you can let Adalon handle the Drow party guarding the exit from the Underdark, but in SCS, she'll kill off a few enemies and leave the rest to you.
Since she teleports you straight into the enemy party, this is incredibly dangerous behavior, as one of the enemies she leaves alone is a Mage with access to 9th level spells... so we're forced to take the enemy party down ahead of time ourselves, in order to control the engagement.
Again, buff with everything, get a full complement of (by now) 9HD Skeleton Warriors up, then go.
We were right to worry, as the Drow Wizard puts up a Spell Trap; no choice now but to wait out his protections.
Turns out that Drow magic resistance isn't 100% (I think it's 90%?), as the Drow Wizard inadvertently fries a companion in his Incendiary Cloud, a small comfort (to us).
The two Glabrezu are dangerous but have no protection spells, so we quickly take them down: Our Skeleton Warriors are getting pummeled, so we keep summoning more.
Note how difficult it is to tell what's going on, another facet of this fight I dislike; there are so many enemies in such a small space you can't really tell who's where.
Soon, it's just two enemy arcanists left; the big one and a much less intimidating one.
Ultimately, the big one runs out of various versions of Mantle, and that's it for him.
He spent most of his time trying to dispel our protections, but we just rotated the ones who got protections stripped out, reapplied what we could, then sent them back in: Typically this was Minsc, as he's just overall hopeless against anyone that can dispel.
Nerve-wracking, but we pulled through yet again.
Very soon, we'll have access to Ruby Ray of Reversal, at which point no enemy spell protections are safe from us, though that is only because SCS allows it.
Spell Immunity: Abjuration and Alteration would together make you completely immune to any attempts to remove spell protections (I think? Can't recall if it blocks the wands you find in Watcher's Keep), indeed any protections, though I also refrain from doing this by allowing only one instance of Spell Immunity active per caster at a time.
Anyway, it has been a long update, so this seems a good place to stop for now.
The party is preparing to enter Ust Natha, which also contains a few potential spots for ending a run... let's hope we somehow swing it.
Aldain, Human Conjurer Redux: Update 4
Previous update found here
Next update found here
So, off to Ust Natha; we speak with Adalon, are Drow-ified, and enter.
SCS, as noted, shortens several timers here, and we get twelve hours to save Phaere.
En route to do so, we encounter the odd adventuring party containing a Goblin, Ogre, Mephit and War Dog... the only real threat here is N'ashtar, but he seemingly spent his L8 slots on Improved Mantle, so didn't get to do much.
We buff fully and carve through the Mind Flayers, prioritizing the enemies closest to Phaere, as I've seen her die here before.
Then, it's time to underestimate the enemy again, as we barge into Qilue's home with minimal buffs.
Qilue herself is more of a nuisance, but her servants are no joke: They're fond of, among other things, Disintegrate.
Minsc takes one but makes his save, Mazzy takes one but makes her save, Jaheira takes two (!) and fails one of her saves.
Yep, good thing we picked up the Rod of Resurrection from Mekrath's lair, since Raise Dead won't work in SCS if you've been killed by Disintegrate: We get Jaheira back and depart.
Still, that debacle meant we saved a lot of buff spells, so we easily take down Lasaonar and Chalinthra (Chaotic Commands being crucial, as otherwise Aldain would've succumbed to Symbol, Hopelessness here).
Mazzy handles the melee brutes, including the Beholder (her saves are quite good, as mentioned before), and since I refuse to pay 1200 gold (!!) to rest in the tavern, we head back to the Swirfneblin settlement and pay 5 gold instead.
Upon our return, Aerie handles Mage duel #1, Aldain takes #2, and I skip #3 since it's very dangerous and you only get a little experience for it.
We talk to Phaere again and kill a local Beholder; as with the Illithids, be very quick, since although unlikely, weak little Phaere can technically die if her Magic Resistance fails.
Now, we are sent to deal with the Swirfneblin patrol, convince Soulafein to let us handle it, and let them go.
This is a good time to unload some of the gold we're hoarding: We purchased a few scrolls from Carlig earlier, but he has a different selection when you're in Drow form, and now we also have access to the Drow merchants.
I kept a tally: We spend a brutal 111k on mostly scrolls, but also some nice potions and good gear.
Admittedly about half of that was probably overkill; spells that are only circumstantially useful and stuff like The Sentinel +4 which is nice but not at all required.
Still, it's good to have a grasp of just how much money to have on hand by the time we hit the Underdark; in a hypothetical future run, one stronghold should be sufficient to make ends meet, if we pace our purchases a bit.
Now, with access to Ruby Ray of Reversal on Aldain, it's time for a close-quarters Lich fight: Deirex.
Deirex's Chain Contingency (Symbol, Death, Summon Fiend, Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting) demonstrates why this fight should be prepared extensively for: Anyone without Protection from Magical Energy up would've been at real risk of just dying instantly, as would anyone with low HP... such as Aerie.
Still, the thing that makes Liches so frightening is that, early on, you just can't remove their protections.
Now we can, even if they go for Spell Trap, and Deirex just can't beat the action economy (one action per round against six):
We pop some fast-casting summons to distract him, tear down his protections from range, then take him out, quick and clean.
He gets several HLAs off as well as a Time Stop, but they're all wasted dealing with low-cost summons like Kitthix and the Berserk Warrior, since they're all he can see at the time.
Well, good! One of the major encounters in here crossed off.
The Ooze priests are easily dismantled next; their arcanist, Relonar, gets priority for pummelin'.
We won't repeat the Qilue debacle when it comes to House Jae'llat: We retreated and rested beforehand (since apparently there's no timer on this).
A truckload of buffs later, we charge in, and go to town with everything we've got: Against Drow, casters are best used to counter enemy buffs and protections, as well as summon help.
The named House members are, I would say, mostly middling level, and so they survive a while, but cannot really threaten us.
And that's Ust Natha finished!
A little bumpy at the start, but once we got serious things just panned out.
We perform the ritual, betraying both the Matron Mother and Phaere (Soulafein handed us his fake eggs).
We clear the Drow barring our way, though watch invisibly as they first kill off the War Elves.
This is rather amusing: The Elves stand literally no chance, as the Drow just bulldoze through them so quickly we probably couldn't even have saved them if we tried.
As planned, we gather up all the Drow gear, identify the lot (which took 3 rests), then sell it to the Swirfneblin merchant in batches by type, so we don't get depreciation.
This was actually worth the effort, as we make off with roughly 23k for our troubles as we depart for the surface.
Upon our return to Athkatla, we get the Gith ambush; these are pretty nasty (we'll see another instance of said nastiness shortly), especially the Anti-Paladins who dispel on hit, although we pull through without casualties as Remove Magic neuters them pretty effectively.
Next we take the time to forge some things at Cromwell's: Improved Mace of Disruption (very good), Gesen's Bow (very good), the Equalizer (eh... but it always counts as +3 at least), and the Silver Sword (also a bit meh, not sure why I bothered).
Here we also deliver Yoshimo's heart to a Priest of Ilmater for 200k experience.
So, there's still lots of things to do, such as several strongholds, so we set about the Unseeing Eye.
By now, most of the encounters here are not so very difficult, though we do hit a snag trying to converse resources when dealing with the Ghoul Town Lich: I'm not sure if you can rest down here or not, so wanted to be certain we could clear the later Beholder Lair without issue.
As always, the Lich has a massive retinue of various Undead: We clear most of them out with Imoen's 3x Fireball Spell Sequencer.
The Lich gets a Time Stop off, but doesn't seem to have Improved Alacrity; it does pop Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting at Minsc, but he survives.
Then it just goes bad.
The damnable thing had not one, but two Imprisonment ready.
I am quite pleased with myself for buying an extra scroll of Freedom off Carlig; the intent was to use it in case Deirex Imprisoned anyone, but it came in handy here instead.
SCS revises this a bit, such that any party member freed from Imprisonment is instantly returned to the party upon being freed, so hopefully this didn't break for instance Jaheira's romance (as it tended to do in the original game).
We proceed to clear the Beholders out, though hit another snag: Again, I needed our final batch of Skeleton Warriors to deal with the Unseeing Eye, so tried to conserve resources.
Aldain, Aerie and Imoen were to pop into visual range while our warriors fought some Beholders, use their 2x Magic Missile Minor Sequencers, then pop back out.
Imoen pathed a bit badly though, and couldn't get out of range fast enough.
Still, Wondrous Recall lets us get her back up on her feet.
The Unseeing Eye summons two Death Tyrants, but none of the three antagonists are a match for 9HD Skeleton Warriors, especially once you hit the Unseeing Eye with the Rod.
Good stuff.
We return the Rod to the Avatar, then head upstairs and deal with Gaal: A single Remove Magic strips all his protections, and that's it for him.
Heading back to rest, we get the (I guess that's what they are?) Rakshasa ambush, but they're too low level: A Remove Magic destroys their buffs, and they're not so frightening without them.
That's one stronghold down, but there are others; the Thief one should be quick and easy.
Rayic Gethras has little recourse by this point; protections removed in an instant.
Mae'Var's hopeless goons share a similar fate, and Mae'Var himself is easily Breached: Another stronghold cleared.
Next, let's deal with De'Arnise Keep, but first another Gith ambush en route.
OK, so what happened?
We got overconfident and traveled without Invisibility, 10' Radius.
Anti-Paladins dispel on hit (and they either do so at a very high caster level, or it's just guaranteed): All our buffs repeatedly got stripped.
Aldain had it bad: One Anti-Paladin hit cleared his Stoneskin, followed by a whooping critical which took him well below half health.
He had a Stoneskin on HP below 50% Contingency, which might well have saved his life; I should switch his Spell Sequencer to a defensive one, I suppose.
Nasty experience.
Well, at least De'Arnise Keep goes smoothly: We literally blaze through the various Trolls, not encountering much resistance (for some reason we got several spawns with three regular Trolls and something like 12 Ice Trolls).
We clear the Golems on the way, then literally drown Tor'Gal and his cronies in a sea of fire... they stand no chance whatsoever.
Yes, I know you get 10k extra gold as reward if Nalia is in your party, but I didn't want anyone to fall further behind in experience (since only those in the party get the quest experience); ~50k experience for a party member is worth more at this point than 10k gold.
Probably.
Anyway, we forge the Flail of Ages on the way out (which Minsc will use once he gets a second pip in Flails), report in to Nalia, and abscond to the Coronet (this time under Invisibility, 10' Radius, though nothing untoward occurs).
And this seems like a good spot to call it quits for the moment, as we're now entirely caught up to where I am in the run.
Beyond the somewhat weird wilderness areas you get access to after the Underdark, what's left is basically all high-octane content: The Planar Sphere, the Planar Prison, two Liches as well as Kangaxx, Guarded Compound, Twisted Rune, Alhoon, Windspear Hills, and the Shadow Dragon.
I think that's it, plus however much of Watcher's Keep we want to go after while in SoA.
So this is also a good time to catch our collective breath a bit, as these encounters will require some planning, and above all, very careful buffing.
This party is somewhat fragile: Jaheira suffers HP-wise from her multiclass but can at least protect her buffs, Minsc can't even do that, Aerie will just die if you forget a single protection on her, and even reasonably sturdy Aldain and Imoen are both arcanists and so rely entirely on buffs to stay alive... Mazzy is the only tough cookie, and even then she doesn't have great hitpoints thanks to 16 CON.
In short, it's a bit exhausting handling this party during tough encounters, as you basically have to apply every buff in the spellbook, and still be on your toes for them getting dispelled, at which point you need to react instantly to avoid horrific death.
I'll take a short break from the run, and also do not have much time to play for a while anyway, so next update might be a while.
We'd already started the Windspear Hills dungeon last time and we soon moved through the rest of it to confront Samia's group. They were mainly occupied by skeleton warriors and didn't do us much damage. Kaol was the last to go with Crusher beating him down and Behemoth backstabbing the corpse just to make sure.
Behemoth still had access to poison traps, which meant Firkraag was unable to put up much of a struggle.
There's no reputation gain for that quest, which meant we were still stuck on 19. However, Behemoth was tired of wielding an inferior staff, so Crusher reluctantly coughed up the cost for that despite the higher than usual price. A few other purchases were added as well before we dived into the Temple sewers for the first time. Before going after the illithid there we had to clear out a few obstacles. The last of those was Gaius whose defenses kept him alive for a while, without really threatening us.
The first illithid room saw us taking rather more damage than expected thanks to a bouncing lightning bolt from the mage, though we still had a safe margin in hand. The second room was cleared without trouble with the illithid there being dragged out one or two at a time. For the third room Crusher used Azuredge to kill Alhoon before heading into the room to mix things up with the rest of the illithid. That was taking a bit of a risk, particularly when a bit of his brain was devoured by one illithid which was hanging on at near death as another joined the fight. With intelligence down to 6, Crusher would not have survived if both illithid had hit simultaneously in the second or two they were fighting together. The second illithid did indeed manage a hit, but not until the first was dead and Crusher rapidly retreated and finished the fight by throwing missiles.
Rather than go immediately after the Unseeing Eye, Crusher decided to target the Ring of Gaxx. The lich in the sewers managed to buff and resist attacks from Azuredge for long enough for Crusher's rage to wear off. In the fight I was confused when the lich targeted Crusher with a maze, but he didn't disappear. The screenshot showed though that the maze was cast just before rage wore off (and immunity and MR checks are made at the point the spell projectile hits, even though there's then a gap of a few seconds before the spell takes effect).
The liches in the Bridge District and City Gates were no problem and we moved on to find Kangaxx. To avoid any threat from him, we all used PfU scrolls and were able to cut him down at our leisure.
There was just time in the session to head back through the sewers to pick up the first piece of the Rift Device, ready for use on the Unseeing Eye next time.
Berserker 16, 145 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 631 kills (+263 in BG1)
Figher 11 / cleric 12, 109 HPs , 166 kills (+127 in BG1), 1 death
Cleric 12 / thief 14, 71 HPs, 115 kills (+129 in BG1), 0 deaths
I have just tried a solo run for a dwarven fighter in Icewind Dale.
I was doing fine until I was held in the Vale of Shadows. Having a party of two would have made all the difference.
Here are the imitial stats which weren't bad. No re-roller!
Portraits are a combination of an old selfie together with Duck duck go AI.
I have teamed up with Tenya, Gavin (Two clerics) Morwen (a skald) and Safana (a thief) and we have already done most of the available quests before heading for the Nashkel mines.
I have actually been plugging away at the solos a bit but nothing has gone as far as the last Dragon Disciple. A druid/ranger fell to Tarnesh, a Cleric/Mage was petrified, a Cleric/Thief was felled by two ankheg hits in quick succession. So it goes, so it goes. Presently I am striving away with a murderous Half-Orc Thug (Fighter/ Thief with rage but very limited skills) who has started out with a Dex of 5. Sometimes even I wonder what I am doing hahaha.
Lessandra continued gathering experience, paying a cautious visit to the outskirts of Durlag's Tower, nipping into Firewine, and exploring the further reaches of the map, gathering more treasure and more trinkets for her defence. She cleared out a zombie infestation, only for a parasitic entity to at once fear her, paralyze her, disease her, and at last kill her, despite the efforts of one of her faithful gibberlings. I could have been more cautious about the encounter, but have had complicated feelings about the level of metagaming I was employing already. It was very interesting to play with a solo character and to try to make the best use of all the tools at their disposal but it definitely made the game much more of a puzzle to be solved than an experience to be enjoyed. I certainly felt conscious that I lack the fine knowledge of edge cases with regard to game mechanics at certain points when a single error could end the run. Probably time for a break as I might want to redo the install if I play again in the near future.
Just wondering how you made a halfling sorcerer, using Keeper or via a mod.
I used to have a mod installed that allowed any race to be any class. Is that how you did it?
Uhh, a combination of Tome and Blood and Tweaks Anthology I think.
Just wondering how you made a halfling sorcerer, using Keeper or via a mod.
I used to have a mod installed that allowed any race to be any class. Is that how you did it?[/quote]
Uhh, a combination of Tome and Blood and Tweaks Anthology I think. [/quote]
I'll have to look those up. If I remember rightly, one of them increases the charisma of dwarves by 1 so that a dwarf can become a paladin.
We'd already started the Unseeing Eye quest last time, so carried on with that. Clerical turning and Azuredge made pretty short work of some groups of undead and the Shield of Balduran gave various beholders no chance. The Unseeing Eye itself died of poison damage from traps and we immediately went to hand in the Rift device in order to avoid any potential little accidents ...
The last major quest area in chapters 2&3 was the Planar Prison. We invaded that invisibly to give the group of Bounty Hunters no real chance. We initially progressed anti-clockwise, but Brinholder was keen to come back the other way to deal with the Warden - so that he got no supporting troops and was swiftly beaten down.
The vampire HQ offered relatively little resistance. Tanova was the main exception, thanks mainly to her maze taking effect on Crusher who was just too slow to trigger his rage. Bodhi took massive damage from a backstab and other attacks and had had enough after only a few seconds.
After forging the iMod and making a final few purchases we took a trip to Spellhold. Brinholder offered to supply various spell defenses in order to attack Perth, but Behemoth was already sneaking around behind the mage and cut the discussion short with a backstab. His spell book offered the opportunity to cast wyvern call, but with 2 clerics in the party we had lots of summoning options anyway so Crusher looked for other options - but only succeeded in locking the book on Burning Hands.
The only enounter inside the Asylum that offered any threat was when several yuan-ti mages threw out lightning bolts. They were aimed at skeleton warriors, but Behemoth was caught by several bounces and nearly killed before being able to retreat. Irenicus was duly forced to retreat to open up a way out for us.
We saved the game ready to take an ill-fated boat journey next time.
Berserker 19, 154 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 811 kills (+263 in BG1)
Figher 13 / cleric 14, 113 HPs , 203 kills (+127 in BG1), 1 death
Cleric 14 / thief 16, 75 HPs, 146 kills (+129 in BG1), 0 deaths
Astonishingly Birdy the clumsy Half-Orc Thug has actually made decent progress, without much in the way of near-death experiences. The hairiest moment was probably when Borda (at the Friendly Arm in my randomised install) pursued her downstairs, hitting her with magic missiles despite her efforts to dodge outside. But apart from that she has thus far succeeded at sorting out the mines in Nashkel and felling Tranzig, getting up to level 7/8. She has a range of wands at her disposal and usually manages to dispose of opponents from range. In theory her potion stack should protect her against most threats but the random nature of my install means that death shall probably approach from some unexpected quarter...
Aldain, Human Conjurer Redux: Update 5
Previous update found here
Alright, we're back!
As mentioned previously, it's almost only higher-tier stuff to go, so let's get cracking.
First up: The Shadow Dragon.
Who is surprisingly weak, even with SCS: It prebuffs only with Protection from Magical Weapons, and isn't all that threatening in melee either.
Minsc takes a few hits, and the breath weapon which blinds on a failed save and, I presume, level drains if you don't have Negative Plane Protection up is a nuisance, but we easily push through with no casualties: Breach and dispose.
I went ahead and forged the Shadow Dragon Scale for undispellable 50% Acid resistance, but beyond that it's as unremarkable as the Dragon from whence it sprang.
We swung by the odd extra outdoor areas here; the Ancient Vampires just disappeared once we scouted them (I think they had a tendency to do this in the original game too, but only once damaged).
The oddly placed adventuring party where no members have names is duly done in, as the Mage carries a scroll of Time Stop: We'll want as many of these as we can scrounge up for the Throne fight, if we get that far.
The oasis-like area literally just has some hopelessly outmatched Orcs and a few Ankhegs; the Wyvern cultists are similarly no threat by this point, nor the lovesick Werewolf (Wolfwere.. Wolf-something), and we finish by smacking some Kuo-toans about the face and neck for an entirely pointless magical Longbow.
Well, that was something... these areas seem like they should be available earlier, at least the ones with the Cultists and Orcs.
We continue with strongholds, heading for the Windspear Hills.
The Ruhk Transmuter has bizarrely low THAC0, but by now we can just pop a single Remove Magic to, well, remove him as a threat.
Two very large Golem spawns in here are handled by letting a Djinni tank, with Minsc popping in and out to deal with one Golem at a time.
Minsc also absolutely destroys the two large Undead spawns to the east; Improved Haste and similarly Improved Mace of Disruption does fine work here, and with the amount of buffs we've got running, even Minsc can make the odd save against status effects.
We do hit a small snag dealing with the Efreeti Guardians, as one of them moved at extreme pace through the door behind fire-proofed Minsc before we could close it, and proceeded to lay a bit of waste to our backlines: Should've just fire-proofed everyone.
Kaol is the only one in Samia's party with any defenses to speak of so stays awhile for 2 - 3 rounds, but ultimately manages nothing beyond a Greater Malison.
Onward we push: Greater Wolfweres, Golems of all shapes and sizes, and Orcs... none can withstand a near-epic party.
Not even Conster accomplishes anything of note, as we just buffed to the hilt, and a Remove Magic was all he had time for (of course it dispelled every buff on Minsc... somehow this always occurs).
We rest up and engage Firkraag: I wasn't sure what he'd do, but in retrospect, Protection from Fire on everyone would've probably sufficed, as he heavily favored his breath weapon and melee.
With little in the way of spell protections, it's again just a matter of Breach: Firkraag barely managed to take down a single Fire Elemental before his jig was up.
We chuck Carsomyr in our Bag of Holding for bragging rights, and return to Garren, where the experience bumps Aldain to L18: For his first HLA, he picks Summon Planetar.
With the Robe of Vecna now essentially unavailable for nearly all of the trilogy (SCS moves it to Azamantes in Watcher's Keep), Improved Alacrity loses its luster; of course we'll grab it since pure arcanists get enough HLAs to cover everything, but not for quite some time.
Meanwhile, the Planetar is just awesome all-around: Zips around at near light speed, great THAC0, great APR, great saves, great hitpoints, several really nasty spells (I'm particularly fond of Holy Word, but the auto-casting Blade Barrier is spectacular as well), and in a pinch it can throw an instant Heal on whoever needs saving.
Whenever we're facing something truly nasty, a Planetar will always lead the charge.
Time to get our own stronghold then, I'd say: Off to the previously opened Planar Sphere.
The Sauhagin have great THAC0 and hit hard, but pure damage is unlikely to thwart us at this stage.
The first group of Halflings is dismantled in a matter of rounds, as they're just too low-level to stand a chance, and the same can be said for Necre and Taibela.
The local Golems do a good job of somehow Slowing, Cursing (so no healing) and blocking Minsc off from retreating; he came quite close to dropping (2 more hits would've done it).
We repair the Guardian Golem and let it deal with the Elder Orb; Lavok awaits.
His list of prebuffs actually isn't terribly impressive: A single Spell Turning is it for higher-level spell protections .
Though he of course also pops Absolute Immunity, and has a nasty Chain Contingency with the usual Necromancer favorites of Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting, Symbol, Death and Finger of Death prepared (again.. you have to be immune to everything at this stage, or just keep a lot of Raise Dead handy).
Our Planetar lands a Holy Word however, which neuters Lavok quite efficiently: He stays alive for a while thanks to a defensive Spell Trigger, but ultimately we tear down his protections, the Planetar lands a devastating Blade Barrier hit, and Lavok is undone.
We clear the two small siderooms, grab the entirely unremarkable treasure, and head outside.
Chaotic Commands, Protection from Evil, and the whole standard slew of save-improving buffs means we're effectively immune to everything out here, and so cleanse the entire map (I think we got three hearts, but maybe it was four).
We head back inside, and it's Tolgerias' turn on the chopping block.
Like Lavok, he didn't really put up many spell defenses, though did make himself immune to literally every damage type except Acid.
Again, a Planetar (Imoen also reached L18) leads the charge, and we just strip Tolgerias of his protections, at which point not even his bizarre HP pool can save him.
Still, Tolgerias got off a few Remove Magic/other protection strippers before going down, and his Chain Contingency included a Djinni and Efreeti... I wouldn't have liked to tackle this fight at pre-Spellhold levels (though as we've seen it's doable with careful planning, largely because Tolgerias can't see through Invisibility).
We of course clear both the Ice room (Helmet of Defense, very nice!) and the Fire room; the Engine room Golems pummel Minsc a bit but are ultimately subdued, and we are returned to our own plane, with the Planar Sphere now left to Aldain's tender mercies.
Good good, one thing after another is getting crossed off the list.
We're now confident enough to go on proper Lich hunts: The Crooked Crane's resident such is first to go.
Time Stop -> Ruby Ray of Reversal -> Breach, then cast Breach again since the Ruby Ray needs a few ticks of ingame time to actually remove a spell protection so the first Breach got stopped by the Lich's Spell Deflection... there's really not much point to stripping protections under Time Stop.
In fact, I wonder what the point of Time Stop is, really, unless you're a Fighter/Mage.
I suppose Aldain could Improve Haste himself and land some automatic hits with Firetooth +3 at 4 APR, but if an enemy doesn't have Protection from Magical Weapons up, it's faster and easier to just let the warriors kill it (literally takes a few seconds).
Anyway, we grab the loot, including Daystar for Mazzy, and go after the Shade Lich.
This turned a little nasty, as it brought in a Fallen Planetar, and I failed to protect Aldain with Spell Immunity: Abjuration.
Seems I just clicked the spell, but then forgot to pick a school to be protected from before cycling to the next character... not good.
Aldain gets hit by Remove Magic and eats a couple Energy Blades, but we're able to bring the Lich down before it accomplishes anything else beyond terrorizing our Djinni.
Huff. Alright: Elemental Lich.
Our Planetar again lands Holy Word, causing the Lich to fail several casts, which makes things easier; ultimately, a Blade Barrier pulse gets the kill.
Now then, with all of his body assembled, it's time for Kangaxx, but before that, we really do need to update our spell books a bit, so we go on a shopping spree.
Most of what we bought really isn't that important, but now all three arcanists have full suites of protection spells available (elemental, magical, weapons, spells).
We also pick up most of the scrolls in Ribald's special store, which is exceedingly costly: About 80k at 20 reputation and 20 CHA.
All that scribing also netted us a few levels, nice; Mazzy has now achieved Grand Mastery in Long Swords, so will at long last switch over to melee.
So, Kangaxx: The Lich form reacts poorly to a Planetar's Holy Word, and we're able to take it down in a matter of a few rounds.
Amazingly, the Demilich form has almost no spell protections; a single Ruby Ray of Reversal strips what little there was, and the subsequent Breach renders Kangaxx entirely vulnerable.
Daystar does a very good job of rapidly reducing the Demilich's HP pool through the physical resistance; Kangaxx threw a single Trap the Soul at Minsc (I had Minsc pop a Potion of Magic Shielding, but could've just let it hit I suppose) to no effect, and then just sort of crumpled.
Anti-climactic, but I prefer that.
The ring goes to Mazzy, whom I now relieve of her non-magical Full Plate Mail and put in Red Dragon Plate instead.
Still... even with the Amulet of Spell Warding, her saves aren't that great? Maybe I really do need to keep her with a Ring of Protection +2 and non-magical armor, we'll see.
Her whole raison d'etre is being unassailable even when every buff gets dispelled, after all.
After that quick and easy hunt, surely even the Planar Prison shall prove no obstacle.
Buffs. Buffs! Always keep the buffs up, lest we all perish.
So there's some line-of-sight issues here, which kept True Sight from revealing the Yuan-Ti Mage during the opening fight; it stayed alive long enough to land Greater Malison followed by Prismatic Spray, which outright killed Imoen.
It even tagged Aldain, though luckily he only got hit by the 20 damage effect (could've easily been a kill on him too).
Ugh.
We let a Deva lead the way to the east, clearing Yuan-Ti, a talking Wyvern and the Master of Thralls without much issue, though Minsc got Stunned by the Air Elementals (he lived).
There's still some weirdness with the scripts of the Thralls here, as some of them came running from the Warden's room to attack us way to the south, and several didn't fight the Warden even after we destroyed the Orb.
The Warden himself was a lot less horrible than I'd expected.
Again, not so much in the way of spell protections (Improved Haste though): He managed a few good swings at our Planetar, but was Breached, Slowed and done for in short order.
It's usually a good idea to stop for a little while after a close call like that Prismatic Spray, so let's do that.
Things are coming along nicely though: What remains in Shadows of Amn beyond Bodhi and Irenicus is the Twisted Rune, the Alhoon and the Guarded Compound.
I think we'll go for a little more Watcher's Keep as well; opening the portal and clearing the second level should be very doable, though we'll absolutely want the Pocket Plane power available for level 3.
Everyone (except Imoen, who only has Summon Planetar) has two HLAs at the moment: Jaheira went Whirlwind - Greater Whirlwind, Minsc has Hardiness/Power Attack, Mazzy dived straight into Power Attack -> Critical Strike, Aerie played it safe with Summon Deva and Energy Blades, and Aldain took Summon Planetar as well as Energy Blades.
If I'm doing the math correctly, Imoen, Mazzy and Jaheira should all pick up another HLA before Throne of Bhaal; possibly the other three party members as well, though more likely that'll be sometime during Saradush.
We're quite powerful by now, if very buff-reliant, though to be fair you usually are by this stage: There's just no getting around needing every protection running while simultaneously having oodles of Breach and spell-protection removers available.
Casters are mostly reduced to providing and stripping protections; what few slots are left over typically go towards Improved Haste or a summon, since it's just more efficient that way, and even then most summons won't stay alive long enough to matter.
Anyway: Let's not falter. Stay focused, stay buffed, stay sharp.
Until next time.
There was plenty of XP on offer this time and no great difficulty in picking it up. Our initial boat journey resulted in being shipwrecked in Fish City. Different factions were keen to make use of us for their own purposes, but all of them ended up with the same treatment.
In the Underdark we quickly moved through some initial challenges to investigate the Western Tunnels. A kuo-toa prince there found his high regeneration appeared to be just enough to outlast a first use of whirlwind by Crusher. During the session I thought a backstab from Behemoth had got the final touch, but looking at the screenshot a follow-up blow from Crusher had already proved to be the final straw.
On the way out of the tunnels, Behemoth made a first use of an Incendiary Cloud to bypass the magic resistance of a group of drow.
By this time everyone had got at least one level and Behemoth used his new UAI ability to free Vithal from Imprisonment. That freedom didn't last long though as the mage was caught in some traps immediately after recovering treasure from various elemental domains.
Moving through the Underdark, a nest of beholders found themselves no match for fighters protected by both the Shield of Balduran and the Cloak of Mirroring. The nearby illithid hide-out was more of a danger thanks to their sucking abilities and both Crusher and Brinholder were hit several times and forced to break contact to remain safe. However, that was done successfully and the brain duly sent to permanent sleep.
After disguising ourselves as drow we did a bit of shopping before embarking on a series of tasks for Phaere - the first of which was to rescue her. Brinholder was aware of the possibility of being ambushed on the way to do that and thoughtfully sent his new pet Deva to trigger the attack. Rather amusingly, the globe of blades surrounding it proved too much for the invisible thief sneaking in to attempt a backstab.
The rescue itself was a bit harder than it might have been as the Skull of Death refused to cast a death spell (a long-standing glitch I think), but with summons helping us out there were no problems anyway.
My lack of memory about the remaining tasks meant those took a bit longer than they should have done and the session ended with us on the way to steal some dragon eggs and replace them with fakes - hopefully selecting the right set of those ...
Berserker 22, 163 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 976 kills (+263 in BG1)
Figher 15 / cleric 16, 117 HPs , 264 kills (+127 in BG1), 1 death
Cleric 16 / thief 18, 79 HPs, 169 kills (+129 in BG1), 0 deaths
Comments
Previous update found here
Next update found here
He did not bring any importable items with him, so gets the standard setup: Mail of the Dead +2, Helm of Balduran, Staff Spear +2.
Careful spell selection and application allows for a smooth (well, no one died...) ride through Irenicus' dungeon, and we emerge inside the Promenade.
The party this time will be good-aligned (except Jaheira, but she's basically Neutral Good): We're picking up Aerie and Mazzy.
Aerie is very straightforward: True Sight, or if you prefer Remove Magic, handles the illusionary Werewolves.
We exit the Circus and head for the Slums, then immediately duck into the Copper Coronet, purchasing Bernard's Scroll Case as it's only available while Lehtinan runs the place.
Now, normally I'd just go ahead with freeing the slaves, but we're getting the party together as soon as possible: While Lehtinan is in charge, you can cast freely inside the Copper Coronet, so Aldain's familiar pops Invisibility, 10' Radius, and we take off for Umar Hills (detouring to the Government district to unlock it by talking to Delon).
We rest up, then head for the Temple, sneaking past the massed Shadows outside to save their experience for when we've got Mazzy with us.
There's no timer on Mazzy, so we can take as long as we want before going after the Shade Lord; this is good, since we really don't have the weaponry or spellworks right now to tackle him/it safely.
Mazzy is recruited at 250k experience (a little behind but nothing major) and we head back to the Coronet.
Weapon choices are a bit wonky this time around: Minsc will go Bastard Sword -> Flail, Jaheira Spear -> Quarterstaff, and Mazzy Long Sword -> Undecided.
Aldain, Aerie and (ultimately) Imoen can just pick whatever, it doesn't matter.
We clear the Coronet easily enough, though Hendak gets the kill on Lehtinan.
The Sewers go smoothly as well, though we hit a spot of trouble when dealing with Haegan: He quaffed a Potion of Frost Giant Strength and absolutely went to town on everyone with those Throwing Axes, eagerly assisted by Oil of Speed-quaffing guards...
Neither Jaheira nor Minsc are fantastic frontliners, at least at this stage, but they're what we've got.
The rest of the ship goes better, as the Mages here aren't high enough level to pose a credible threat.
As is customary, we hold off on reporting back to Hendak (and paying the enslaved girl 100g), to save potential reputation boosts for after we've bribed reputation up; I'm playing with reduced reputation gain, 1/4 of normal rate.
Beyond simply surviving, an early priority is getting some items that reduce irritation: Chief among these, the Potion Case and Quiver of Plenty +1 (since we've got Mazzy).
That means Watcher's Keep; en route we get the Suna Seni ambush, and though the enemy Mage promptly dispels our Invisibility, 10' Radius, the few seconds it took for that to take effect allowed us to reposition sufficiently to survive the ensuing battle.
Yes, Aerie is so very fragile... if ever her Stoneskin drops, she soon follows suit.
Alright! Enter Watcher's Keep, clear the Stone Golem to the left, then pop Farsight: Yes, we did get Vampiric Wraiths.
These things are just lethal to low-level parties that pop in unprepared.
We are anything but, however: We first clear the large mess of Trolls to the left (Chaotic Commands/Protection from Fire and some Fireballs of our own), then engage the Wraiths from the small left-side room of the main chamber.
Jaheira's Wall of Moonlight hits the Wraiths fairly hard, and with concentrated attacks, we soon bring them down: As long as they can't see characters vulnerable to Level Drain, they can't attack characters vulnerable to level drain.
Damnable things.
The Mustard Jellies to the far left of the level aren't really an issue, though they kill off our Skeleton Warriors.
We handle also the Spiders, then encounter an oddity: I seem to recall it's safe to rest in the warded room (you even get a message to that effect when you enter it), but we get a fairly large spawn of Ghasts and Mummies when we attempt it.
Things looked a little dangerous, but we bottlenecked the enemies by retreating into the southern room, and received an unexpected bonus: SCS improved random scroll drops kicked into overdrive, netting us Summon Djinni (!) and Spell Shield (!!) from the Ghasts.
Those kinds of ambushes I can get behind.
We head outside instead and rest in safety, then clear out the Guardian Golems easily enough, and that's as far as we go; we make off with a fair bit of loot and gold, and return to Athkatla.
So what's the plan? I don't want to play through 80% of the game without Imoen even if she is almost completely silent after you rescue her, but there's some nice stuff for sale in the Underdark, so I'd rather not head there penniless... or for that matter, at too low a level.
So we'll do two Strongholds, and most little things around Athkatla, though will leave the heavy-duty encounters alone (Twisted Rune, Liches, Guarded Compound, that sort of thing); we've literally no way to remove a Spell Trap before visiting the Underdark and aquiring Ruby Ray of Reversal, anyway.
Easiest of the easy first then: Graveyard.
With three warriors, this actually goes rather well; again, we get a nice random drop in the form of Protection from Magical Energy showing up in a chest.
Crypt King has good THAC0 but Remove Fear is all it takes to just thump him, Pai'Na is shot down and her miniscule Spiders dealt with afterwards, the Vampyre does not get to Level Drain anyone, and Wraiths are allergic to Fireball.
Good stuff all around.
En route back to the Coronet, we save Renfeld.
Sanasha and Prebek are mildly troublesome, but you can just handle the odd Confusion by spreading out, and Minsc is immune thanks to Lilarcor anyway.
Another epic scroll in the form of Mass Invisibility (seriously, we've been really lucky so far in this respect) awaits us upstairs in the Harper headquarters, and we finish by looting Xzar's corpse.
Onward!
Viconia is rescued from fanatics and accepted into the party in lieu of Yoshimo, bringing reputation to 9.
We bribe it to 16, drop Viconia for Yoshimo, and are now at 18 reputation.
Exposing Reijek nets us another point, and giving the enslaved girl 100 gold nets us the final point; we got lucky this time around, and are now sitting at 20 reputation, which will be quite helpful given our planned future shopping spree.
More small fry: Fallen Paladins are undone with some Bombardier Beetles, Orog/Slaver Wizard ambush is harsh since we weren't invisible at the time but we pull through (Flesh Golem from Watcher's Keep putting in a good effort), Wellyn is sent back to sleep, Neb is neutered, and yet another friggin' ambush as we are fatigued and mostly out of spells turns into a narrow victory thanks to a handful of Conjure Lesser Air Elemental Aldain kept memorized as a precaution.
Yeah, I know I say it a lot, but SCS Improved Elementals is a nice addition; it makes these spells worthwhile to cast, especially early on, which I think is fine given how intense the competition is at 5th level (lots of good, even absolutely necessary, spells here).
We hand in Haegan's key to Hendak, and now that we've gained a few levels all around, decide to pick up some nice Sewer gear; let's clear the rest of the area before mucking about with Tarnor though.
The teleporting Beholders/Gauths to the southwest are narrowly handed by the 7HD version of Skeleton Warriors (narrowly since the Sea Troll joined in and pummeled them pretty badly).
The Rakshasa can be pretty nasty since it's virtually immune to magic, at least at these levels, has great THAC0, and buffs itself; it is still vulnerable to Remove Magic though (L11 seems enough to consistently strip it of all buffs), and thus a lot less dangerous.
Five Lesser Air Elementals are now called up, no need to take chances after all, and we engage Tarnor and his cronies.
For the first (and probably last) time this run, Aerie let's loose a Lightning Bolt since the Elementals are immune to it, and with plenty of buffs including Haste, they deal good damage (though do drop quite quickly as well); with the help of our frontliners, they last just long enough to wipe the entire enemy party.
Lots of good loot for us!
Alright.
We'll be going into the Underdark, and even before that, there's all sorts of nasty death magic that can only be undone with a Resurrection spell (thanks to SCS revised death effects... otherwise it'd be run over if a Disintegrate hit someone).
However, Jaheira can't cast Resurrection, Aerie won't have access to it until very late in the game, and there's no temple available in the Underdark... so I'd like to grab the Rod of Resurrection just in case, which means dealing with Merkrath.
We run his little errand, huff and puff on his robes upon our return, and enrage/engage the Mage.
And it's actually easy pickings: Seems Merkrath only prepared Fire damage this time around (no Death Spell), so a single 8HD Fire Elemental basically absorbed his entire spell book.
Nice; we loot the western side of his lair including the Rod of Resurrection, but leave the eastern side alone (not feeling up to taking on the three (!) Yuan-Ti Mages there just yet), and send Haer'Dalis back to the Five Flagons.
Here we also finally ponied up for a magic license: Of course it's more optimal to just fight and kill the Cowled Wizards (experience, chance of nice random scrolls), but I'm erring on the side of caution here.
Now we can freely cast Friends, so run around for a bit picking up a bunch of containers to ease inventory burden.
There's still some small stuff to do though: Valeria's band of goons are soon dismantled.
Valeria herself is a nuisance with her Darts, but the real threat here is Dracandros: I've seen him pop Cacofiend before, though he doesn't get the chance this time around.
Still took a while to take him down though, mostly because Minsc failed a save against Greater Command early on.
We avenge our close call by retrieving the Dawn Ring for the Temple of Lathander (somewhere around here we did the Sir Sarles quest, keeping the Illithium for later), then prepare to deal with Brennan Risling and his fellow mobs.
Jaheira provides Fire Elementals, Aldain handles Air Elementals, and Brennan doesn't know what hit him.
Funny the lengths I go to to grab that ring... I end up never actually utilizing it.
Anyway, Jaheira's curse is next: By now, Remove Magic suffices to deal with the two lesser magelings, and the more powerful one (I forget who's who...) mostly tries to renew his defenses under a combined True Sight/Breach onslaught, not really accomplishing much.
Here we also nabbed Officer Dirth's Full Plate, though we hardly need it at this stage; it'll come with us to Fish City to be sold, though.
The local Pirates are also popped: An Elemental is Confused, but that's about the extent of their efforts.
So, that's almost all the easy stuff taken care of!
Or maybe all of it, I forget.
Anyway: Let's do a few strongholds, preferably from among the easier ones.
The obvious contender here is Trademeet, since Jaheira's weapon options are so woeful at the moment.
An ambush en route is handled via invisibly summoning Elementals, and we arrive unimpeded.
I observe invisibly as the animals maul the local guards, but no grand scroll drops today; Wilfred the Red still gives up a thousand gold, of course.
Alright, this should be fairly easy.
Again, Chaotic Commands and Protection from Fire on the frontliners, then we just charge, and Sunfire/Fireball from Aldain helps thin the herds, while the massive Spider spawn here gets a Cloudkill.
No issues at all really, as Spectral and Spirit Trolls don't really have many hitpoints, and so are highly vulnerable to spellworks; we quickly mow down all the trolls, including those found in the Mound.
The Greater Earth Elemental is kited while eating Magic Missile/Melf's Acid Arrow, Kylan Lind gets a Cloudkill and some Skeleton Warriors, and Mazzy shoots the Spore Colonies down while Minsc and Jaheira hold off the Red Myconids; the Shambling Mounds past the bridge are just slashed to bits.
Finally, Dalok and his friends get a Confusion (with good effect), and the way is clear, beyond Ihtafeer still being alive.
Jaheira gets every buff we have (we rested beforehand), which allowed her to get a Fire Elemental up during the duel, and Faldorn falls.
Alright... ugh.
Time for Ihtafeer.
There's really no good way to do this, at least not at our present levels (that I know of): Three Rakshasa at once just make for a really nasty encounter.
They use Remove Magic frequently, are high enough level to easily dispel our buffs, buff themselves, and throw elemental damage around... it's just all-around bad news.
Still, at least Jaheira can protect her buffs, and since there's nothing else to use our slots for besides summons (given Rakshasa's near-immunity to magic), Minsc and Mazzy get full buffs too, in particular, we boost their elemental resistances to the best of our ability.
And then it's go time.
Jalaal is the weakest of the three (he doesn't seem to get Protection from Magical Weapons), so we focus him down first: Skeleton Warriors are keeping Ihtafeer busy.
Saadat is weaker than Ihtafeer but lasts a fair while, and we have no choice but to tank his and Ihtafeer's spellbook as we slowly wear the former down.
Yeah, we brought the non-warriors into the hut to try and distract Ihtafeer a bit... dangerous, but necessary.
A lot of running and potion gulping later, we finally put the last blow to Ihtafeer.
The fight lasted long enough that most buffs had to be renewed, including Jaheira's Club of Meteoric Iron.
Still, that was surprisingly clean, if harrowing: I've seen them use 2x Web Minor Sequencers, which can prove disastrous, but this time they went exclusively for elemental damage.
We rest up, then botch our attempt to Pickpocket Taquee (I tried pausing immediately but he went hostile too quickly).
I wasn't sure how to handle this, so immediately talked to the head genie, and they all disappeared with Ihtafeer's head.
Maybe I could've just killed Taquee for his flask with no consequences?
Anyway, we accept our well-earned reward.
Also, Tiris gets a helping hand (Reijek just gets a mailed fist), we give the Mantle of Waukeen to Lord Logan, then whack Skarmaen for his Elven Chainmail.
So, that's one stronghold!
It seems only fitting that we round things off by clearing the Ruined Temple, though we won't quite cleanse the whole thing just yet, as we shall see.
We are well enough leveled by now, so the Shadows here are swiftly dispatched: Thankfully no Lich shows up, and Lesser Fire Elementals (I splurged on a scroll in Trademeet, which Aldain scribed) are quite helpful against Greater Mummies.
We stop just short of the Shade Lord, and return to Umar Hills, clearing out Valygar's guardian Rangers and a local Mimic, as well as putting down a rampaging Golem.
We will return for the Shade Lord, but only once we've got the Mace of Disruption handy; towards that end, we now return to Athkatla and pay Gaelan his 15k.
Lassal is easily undone, though we get an Ogre ambush while en route to the Bridge district, and yet again a scroll drop (from one of the Ogre Magi, I guess): Spell Turning.
Which is actually not so great, since what usually happens is a spell just bounces between your Spell Turning and the enemy's until both are exhausted... but I find having it up dissuades SCS casters from throwing anything at you, so I still use it.
Anyway, we deal with the Guild Contact (Gravy? Gratin? Tasty...), then make absolutely certain Haz encounters a Grimwarder at close range so we get his Staff Mace +2, and finally send invisible Yoshimo to fetch the Mace of Disruption from the pool of blood.
With the Mace of Disruption, the Amulet of Power, and some buffs (this is a good time to pop some potions), Minsc makes mincemeat out of the local vampiric population: A Fire Elemental helps out with the Clay Golem, and some Skeleton Warriors act as decoys as Tanova's Protection from Magical Weapons simply expires.
Bodhi chases a hasted Minsc around for a while, then retreats, and that's that.
Great, just a few loose ends left to tie up; first, the eastern part of Mekrath's lair.
Fire Elementals do the bulk of the work here: A stray Lightning Bolt nearly fries Aerie though (low hitpoints), but we pull through as none of the Yuan-Ti Mages apparently had Death Spell prepared.
The loot was non-remarkable, really... but still, we clear everything because we can.
Next, I figured it was time for Jaheira's romance to progress, and sure enough, resting in the Druid Grove popped the hopeless clad-in-plate goons, upon whose deaths Meronia immediately whisked Jaheira away.
We rest at the Coronet, Jaheira returns, and we mercilessly clobber Galvarey and his lackeys: There's a (true) Ring of Wizardry in it for us!
Alright, now, all that's left before we sail for Brynnlaw is the Shade Lord: Here I bought a handful of key scrolls, including Improved Haste, and scribed them.
Some things SCS Shade Lord does (I can't recall but think he even pops Blade Barrier?):
He has an aura which periodically level drains anyone in close proximity.
His defences consist of Protection from Magical Weapons, Spell Turning and Mirror Image; he renews these periodically (all three, instantly).
He has at least one cast of Finger of Death and Black Blade of Disaster.
If he kills a summon, it spawns a Shadow.
So, pretty difficult to tackle early on; the good news is, there is no more bad news he doesn't actually dispel your buffs.
All the while you're fighting him, the Shadow Altar also keeps spawning Shadows: I play with the component which removes ammunition from containers, so we can't kill it with a Sunstone Bullet either.
Thus, we waited for the Mace of Disruption.
All-around buffs and we charge: Minsc has Mace of Disruption and Amulet of Power, Jaheira pops Negative Plane Protection on herself, the rest of the party quickly moves to the south, then supports at range.
With Improved Haste, Minsc together with Mazzy soon brings the Shadow Altar low, while Jaheira occupies the Shade Lord, and Aldain gets off Pierce Magic followed by Breach.
And then we just turn our tender mercies on the Shade Lord himself... or well, Minsc does nearly all of the work (Improved Haste really is beastly).
That was almost too easy... as long as you can deal with the level drain and handle the Shade Lord's defenses, he's not very tough.
Another stronghold down!
I thought we were done here, but Mazzy's quest popped, so we dealt with that real quick.
As our final act, I booted Yoshimo temporarily and replaced him with Valygar; Valygar in turn being replaced by Yoshimo once the former had opened the door to the Planar Sphere.
I dislike killing Valygar and will avoid it if possible.
But now... now, we are ready.
We're leveled enough, we're geared enough, we're moneyed enough.
We're coming, Imoen!
Hopefully, we'll survive Brynnlaw this time, and maybe even Spellhold proper.
Previous update found here
Next update found here
Galvena and Vadek get some Skeleton Warriors to munch on (not so tasty), and then we go after Perth.
This time, Yoshimo's traps weren't quite enough to kill Perth off; usually the poison damage does the trick, but Perth got a fair few spells off the ground, even though we came out ahead in the end.
As long as you have room to maneuver, you can usually win even fights against much higher level spellcasters.
We clear the outside of Spellhold, this time making sure NOT to open the door, since as we recall that consumes your Ward Stone, and then you just get incessantly petrified trying to move back past the bridge...
The SCS component which removes your gear in Spellhold occasionally glitches (items have disappeared before, particularly from inside containers), so I always remove our gear manually beforehand: Everything gets stripped apart from The Crimson Dart +3 on Aldain, since he needs to handle Dream Bhaal somehow, and two Oils of Speed.
If you're not prepared for it, Dream Bhaal can easily kill you, as (in my install at least) he frequently pops an Oil of Speed followed by a Giant Strength potion, and carries several healing potions as well.
Aldain sacrifices a point of Constitution, bludgeons Bhaal, and we're reunited with Imoen. Hooray!
Alright, let's get started in our attempts to clear the Asylum with almost no resting, underestimating the encounters in the process.
The Orogs/Minotaurs to the west beat us to within an inch of our lives, but are even so outdone by the Ruhk.
Having next to no gear while being forced to engage something with very low AC, very low THAC0, tons of defensive buffs as well as elemental damage spells... it's rough.
Jaheira had Wondrous Recall available though, so we get Aerie back on her feet, dismantle the Clay Golem successfully, then just loiter for a while as the measly Ring of Regeneration gets us back up to speed; I prepared mostly buffs and summons, so we don't have much healing, and the handful of potions you get we already quaffed in a bid to come out ahead against the Ruhk.
Still, Animate Dead is available, so we manage the Mind Flayer and Beholder to the south; the Skeleton Warriors help us deal with the Kobolds, Undead in the corridors as well as the Umber Hulks, though ultimately all fall to the latter.
Now, the resident Lich has a big Undead spawn guarding it; fortunately they're not linked, so we put up our last significant wave of summons (Fire Elementals), then draw the guards out of the library.
SCS Fire Elementals have Shroud of Flame available as a special ability, and Jaheira caught it... never fear though, as Aerie gets Jaheira back up.
So, we've got one injured Fire Elemental, and a cast of Monster Summoning III: Can we beat a Lich?
Nope, not happening; in fact, that came close to ending our run.
I've no idea how Aldain avoided being affected by that Horrid Wilting: The Lich had Symbol, Death, Finger of Death and Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting in a Chain Contingency which fired at Mazzy.
Maybe a bug?
Anyway, we take the hint and retreat to rest up.
What follows is a drawn-out battle: We've got no way to dismantle the Lich's Spell Trap and it's immune to literally all elemental damage thanks to prebuffs, so we are forced to just wait out its multitude of Protection from Magical Weapons.
We send in summons piecemeal inbetween Mazzy and Minsc using our few magical arrows to take potshots: Mazzy dies early on to the same Chain Contingency, and Minsc comes within 14 HP of dropping as well.
Seriously, it's not so fun having to just tank an L18+ Mage's spellbook.
Ugh.
Still, that should be the worst of it for now.
We quickly clear out Dace, then deal with the Pit Fiend and Greater Wolfwere (these we could've just skipped, they require serious prebuffs and give meh experience), then head for the next level.
Down the left path, regular Troll prebuffs keep us safe, and Protection from Fire plus a Minor Spell Deflection lets Aerie pick up the three portraits in safety; Bodhi buggers off, we deal with the Minotaurs and lone Gauth, then head back to the right path.
The Yuan-Ti get Confusion, which works well here.
The Umber Hulk Elder is shot down, Wolfweres are just melee'd, the Clay Golems are handled with the help of Fire Elementals (though we had to pop one Remove Curse), and then we prebuff fully to deal with the Spirit Troll, Ulitharid and Noble Djinni.
Against SCS Mind Flayers, it's usually better to boost your saves until you're virtually immune to Mind Blast, as the Flayers won't really notice but keep picking ineffective attacks; they do notice if you're immune via Chaotic Commands though, at which point they start spamming ranged magical/blunt damage, which quickly stacks up.
Here we rest again; we're almost entirely out of spells.
I went back and cleared the Yuan-Ti on the first level, not sure why, but then pushed through the final evaluation, snagging the Bone Club for Jaheira.
So, to my shame, I just couldn't be bothered with having to fight, in a small enclosed space, yet another bizarrely over-leveled Mage (this one with friggin' HLAs) whose multitude of protections are literally impossible for us to strip at this stage.
So, Lonk the Sane gets bonked in the head before his buffs fire, and Irenicus gets the same tender treatment.
The encounter went kinda weird, since Irenicus' Chain Contingency fired (same as the Lich, it had Symbol, Death, Finger of Death and Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting), but killed off most of the Clones rather than us.
Irenicus pops his scripted True Seeing, and has time for an Improved Mantle before he teleports out.
We deal with Yoshimo, loot Irenicus' office, then accept Saemon's help, and we're out.
Another oddity, as Imoen in the ensuing Slayer Dream drops some potions when she's killed, which Aldain is then able to loot; sure, why not.
We deal with some local pirates, including killing Desharik when he shows up to yell at us for stealing his ship, and are off.
Next priority is surviving the Gith ambush: Aldain goes invisible while the rest of the party focuses the Captain, and we soon get transported to Fish City, where of course we begin by selling enormous amounts of crap to the local Priestess, as she pays the best out of any merchant in Shadows of Amn.
Here I at long last turned a few pages in the Book of Infinite Spells, and we got True Seeing; I'll keep that, it's always useful.
Sauhagin are vicious, but as long as you've got Chaotic Commands up, you're at least safe from their stunning bolts; fish are also highly vulnerable to fire, so we push through, though no Cloak of Mirroring for us, as SCS moves it deep into ToB.
Ixilthethocal is actually rather dangerous, as he gets HLAs: Minsc eats a few Power Attacks before we can put the former down, but ultimately, pure melee opponents are seldom run-ending threats.
Here we do a bout of scribing, since we'll need it for the Underdark, then finally descend.
The initial trio of Mind Flayers are handled via buffs boosting our saves: Chant/Prayer/Recitation/Protection from Evil 10' Radius/Emotion, Hope is 1+1+2+2+2 = +8 to all saves against evil creatures.
When necessary, one can add Spirit Armor for another +3 specifically against spells, Mass Invisibility for a further +4 overall, and there's even the odd Potion of Invulnerability for a further +5 on frontliners if necessary... with +17 to all saves (+20 against spells), even Minsc can survive.
Now, we need access to a safe place to rest, so we'll deal with the Drow war party to the north.
These guys aren't lethal, but still dangerous if underestimated: Minsc takes a real beating (though that is healed up as we keep fighting), but focusing one Drow at a time pays off, and we emerge more or less unscathed.
I pick up all the Drow gear: The Swirfneblin merchant to the north buys it, so I'll hoard all of it that we come across in a barrel in the Swirfneblin settlement, then sell last thing we do before leaving.
Each suit/weapon is only worth, at best, a few hundred, but you get something like ~150 pieces of arms and armor in total, depending on choices, so it adds up.
We also take down Madman Aganalo and Riti while here; yes, I should've held off on scribing for Imoen so she could've gotten Improved Haste as well, I realized belatedly.
The Balor to the north has vorpal attacks (Death Ward), spams Remove Magic (SI: Abjuration or Entropy Shield), and has several fire-based offensive and defensive spells (Protection from Fire).
It throws a spanner into the works by Teleporting Without Error to Mazzy, who is sitting outside the cavern entirely unprotected, but we manage to take it down before it kills anyone.
Here I have Aldain pop a few Limited Wish, since we needed to rest anyway; Full Plate Mail +2 and Glasses of Identification are both useful.
So, now there are a lot of encounters waiting for us: Kuo-toa, Illithids, Beholders, Drow, and two very high-level enemy Mages stuck in a Soul Gem.
I always do all three lairs before entering Ust Natha, as once inside you really are very low on time (feels like this should be rectified, SCS makes it even worse by shortening some timers): We start with the Kuo-toans since they are by far the easiest.
I had actually forgotten they're 90% resistant to magical damage, so Aldain's Skull Trap was a moot point; they are, however, quite vulnerable to Fire damage, so a single Fireball is nearly enough to wipe an entire encounter.
We add some Tainted Tadpoles to the pool, reducing the Prince's regeneration, though we could've probably just powered through, no worries.
Same thing here as with Sauhagin by the by: Keep Chaotic Commands up to avoid being stunned.
Skeleton Warriors handle the Beholder and Gauths to the southwest.
After a brief foray back into the eastern Underdark (clearing more Kuo-toans as well as the small Drow war party by the bridge), we rest up and return to the lair: There are Demon Knights to deal with.
These are really very nasty, and I'm surprised we got through them with no casualties.
Level drain on hit, Remove Magic seemingly at will, Power Word, Blind, Symbol, Stun, Fireball... lots of things you must protect against (SCS lets you counter Blindness with True Seeing).
By now, Mazzy's saves are good enough that I feel comfortable letting her take part in the action, but I forgot to keep Protection from Magical Weapons up on Imoen, and she got drained down to L4 Mage/LSomething Thief... pretty close to a possible chunking from reaching level 0, not good.
Not sure if SCS revised death effects would've saved her.
Anyway, great Armor of the Hart for Minsc, even greater Belt of Frost Giant Strength for Minsc, and pointless two-handed sword to sell (cannot be used by Good-aligned characters).
We next farm some experience: Each Elemental Portal down here will spawn up to 10 Elementals if you haven't talked to Vithal yet, very nice.
A rest later, we proceed with the lairs: Beholders are next.
We buff up completely and enter the lair to the south.
I had forgotten that SCS actually moves the Elder Orb further into the complex, so we only had to deal with two Beholders upon entering: If you're fast enough and have at least Death Ward up, you can easily get through it without casualties, as Beholders usually pop Anti-Magic Ray if you're buffed (which protects you from further rays for one round).
Or you could just apply Invisibility, 10' Radius and let only the warriors do the fighting.
Now begins a fairly lengthy running battle: A Hive Mother is located at the center of the lair, but she has something like four Beholders with her, and additional Beholders will come running once the battle starts.
We go heavy on Skeleton Warriors, and try to snipe from outside visual range with area-of-effect damage.
Even so, we had to retreat once and rest up; there were just too many Beholders for us to clear safely in one go.
Eventually we push through the Hive Mother's defenses and bring her down; Gauths and Mind Flayers to the southwest were handled by killing the Mind Flayers first (they're scripted to keep spamming spells at the Gauths until the latter are all dead).
Now something potentially run-ending occurred: I had scouted the entire lair.
There was one Elder Orb to the southeast left, along with a few Beholders, but everything else was clear.
As Aldain and Imoen maneuvered around to the north hoping to get into position for some ranged artillery... another Elder Orb just spawned in.
I guess Minsc, who did the scouting, somehow failed to trip the spawn.
That's very disconcerting.
Aldain and Imoen each popped an Oil of Speed and were somehow able to get clear before the Elder Orb/Djinni/Efreeti just annihilated them... we set up shop at the very entrance, quickly getting Skeleton Warriors off the ground and applying emergency party-wide buffs.
That could've easily been the end, though.
We rest up yet again; it's just the Illithids left now.
Defeating the Ogre Guard is easy, but the Illithid from the eastern room got called in, and ambushed us as we opened the door.
Thankfully, we made our saves.
Another potential close shave.. alright.
Apply longer duration buffs (Emotion, Hope, Protection from Evil 10' Radius, Spirit Armor) and clear the handful of Illithid to the south; for the larger spawns, we'll add a lot more buffs, but we don't have enough of those to apply for every fight in here.
Create some circlets, use one to have an endlessly respawning Illithid from the eastern room open doors for us, then prepare for the first massive spawn to the west.
In addition to short-term clerical buffs that boost saves, we also apply Mass Invisibility and Improved Haste (for Minsc and Mazzy), as well as True Seeing on Jaheira to counter the Improved Invisibility of the Illithids.
Good.
It hurts, but we can do it.
Buffs still running, we clear the smaller Illithid spawn to the north, then deal with the Kuo-toan Priest/Insane Dwarf Warrior/Umber Hulk to the south.
We apply our second round of extreme buffing, and hit the Master Brain.
Yes, that got really nasty.
I overlooked that the Master Brain has Disjunction (fancy name for Remove Magic, really): We had enough time to annihilate its attendant Ulitharids before it popped, but we still ended up taking massive damage as a result.
Just lucky no one got stunned and eaten.
Anyway, we evacuate and eliminate the hopelessly outmatched Simyaz and friends; a few Fire Elementals were sufficient for the task.
Now then, let's help Vithal out, then rob him as he tries to teleport away.
We purchase a Freedom scroll off Carlig and pop it.
The Earth Elemental portal is cleared without incident, and then it's time for the Fire Elemental gate.
I have to remember to protect Vithal, even though he goes invisible at the start of each fight.
So, he caught Shroud of Flame, and just slowly died.
No Skull of Death, nor Rod of Absorption for us, although we did get the scrolls.
Well, let's move on.
Since we have room to move around, it should be fine to take on Alchra Diagott and Raevilin Strathi: If they do put up Spell Trap, we'll just have to wait out their physical protection spells by running around.
Buff with everything, literally everything we have available, then get on with it.
Alchra pops several HLAs, but aimed at Skeleton Warriors, and eventually runs out of Protection from Magical Weapons, though he did a fair bit of damage with Energy Blades.
In comparison, Raevilin is quite straightforward: No Spell Trap, so we can just tear down his protections and kill him.
Well, good!
Several decent scrolls for us.
Now then: Normally, if you retrieve her eggs, you can let Adalon handle the Drow party guarding the exit from the Underdark, but in SCS, she'll kill off a few enemies and leave the rest to you.
Since she teleports you straight into the enemy party, this is incredibly dangerous behavior, as one of the enemies she leaves alone is a Mage with access to 9th level spells... so we're forced to take the enemy party down ahead of time ourselves, in order to control the engagement.
Again, buff with everything, get a full complement of (by now) 9HD Skeleton Warriors up, then go.
We were right to worry, as the Drow Wizard puts up a Spell Trap; no choice now but to wait out his protections.
Turns out that Drow magic resistance isn't 100% (I think it's 90%?), as the Drow Wizard inadvertently fries a companion in his Incendiary Cloud, a small comfort (to us).
The two Glabrezu are dangerous but have no protection spells, so we quickly take them down: Our Skeleton Warriors are getting pummeled, so we keep summoning more.
Note how difficult it is to tell what's going on, another facet of this fight I dislike; there are so many enemies in such a small space you can't really tell who's where.
Soon, it's just two enemy arcanists left; the big one and a much less intimidating one.
Ultimately, the big one runs out of various versions of Mantle, and that's it for him.
He spent most of his time trying to dispel our protections, but we just rotated the ones who got protections stripped out, reapplied what we could, then sent them back in: Typically this was Minsc, as he's just overall hopeless against anyone that can dispel.
Nerve-wracking, but we pulled through yet again.
Very soon, we'll have access to Ruby Ray of Reversal, at which point no enemy spell protections are safe from us, though that is only because SCS allows it.
Spell Immunity: Abjuration and Alteration would together make you completely immune to any attempts to remove spell protections (I think? Can't recall if it blocks the wands you find in Watcher's Keep), indeed any protections, though I also refrain from doing this by allowing only one instance of Spell Immunity active per caster at a time.
Anyway, it has been a long update, so this seems a good place to stop for now.
The party is preparing to enter Ust Natha, which also contains a few potential spots for ending a run... let's hope we somehow swing it.
Previous update found here
Next update found here
SCS, as noted, shortens several timers here, and we get twelve hours to save Phaere.
En route to do so, we encounter the odd adventuring party containing a Goblin, Ogre, Mephit and War Dog... the only real threat here is N'ashtar, but he seemingly spent his L8 slots on Improved Mantle, so didn't get to do much.
We buff fully and carve through the Mind Flayers, prioritizing the enemies closest to Phaere, as I've seen her die here before.
Then, it's time to underestimate the enemy again, as we barge into Qilue's home with minimal buffs.
Qilue herself is more of a nuisance, but her servants are no joke: They're fond of, among other things, Disintegrate.
Minsc takes one but makes his save, Mazzy takes one but makes her save, Jaheira takes two (!) and fails one of her saves.
Yep, good thing we picked up the Rod of Resurrection from Mekrath's lair, since Raise Dead won't work in SCS if you've been killed by Disintegrate: We get Jaheira back and depart.
Still, that debacle meant we saved a lot of buff spells, so we easily take down Lasaonar and Chalinthra (Chaotic Commands being crucial, as otherwise Aldain would've succumbed to Symbol, Hopelessness here).
Mazzy handles the melee brutes, including the Beholder (her saves are quite good, as mentioned before), and since I refuse to pay 1200 gold (!!) to rest in the tavern, we head back to the Swirfneblin settlement and pay 5 gold instead.
Upon our return, Aerie handles Mage duel #1, Aldain takes #2, and I skip #3 since it's very dangerous and you only get a little experience for it.
We talk to Phaere again and kill a local Beholder; as with the Illithids, be very quick, since although unlikely, weak little Phaere can technically die if her Magic Resistance fails.
Now, we are sent to deal with the Swirfneblin patrol, convince Soulafein to let us handle it, and let them go.
This is a good time to unload some of the gold we're hoarding: We purchased a few scrolls from Carlig earlier, but he has a different selection when you're in Drow form, and now we also have access to the Drow merchants.
I kept a tally: We spend a brutal 111k on mostly scrolls, but also some nice potions and good gear.
Admittedly about half of that was probably overkill; spells that are only circumstantially useful and stuff like The Sentinel +4 which is nice but not at all required.
Still, it's good to have a grasp of just how much money to have on hand by the time we hit the Underdark; in a hypothetical future run, one stronghold should be sufficient to make ends meet, if we pace our purchases a bit.
Now, with access to Ruby Ray of Reversal on Aldain, it's time for a close-quarters Lich fight: Deirex.
Deirex's Chain Contingency (Symbol, Death, Summon Fiend, Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting) demonstrates why this fight should be prepared extensively for: Anyone without Protection from Magical Energy up would've been at real risk of just dying instantly, as would anyone with low HP... such as Aerie.
Still, the thing that makes Liches so frightening is that, early on, you just can't remove their protections.
Now we can, even if they go for Spell Trap, and Deirex just can't beat the action economy (one action per round against six):
We pop some fast-casting summons to distract him, tear down his protections from range, then take him out, quick and clean.
He gets several HLAs off as well as a Time Stop, but they're all wasted dealing with low-cost summons like Kitthix and the Berserk Warrior, since they're all he can see at the time.
Well, good! One of the major encounters in here crossed off.
The Ooze priests are easily dismantled next; their arcanist, Relonar, gets priority for pummelin'.
We won't repeat the Qilue debacle when it comes to House Jae'llat: We retreated and rested beforehand (since apparently there's no timer on this).
A truckload of buffs later, we charge in, and go to town with everything we've got: Against Drow, casters are best used to counter enemy buffs and protections, as well as summon help.
The named House members are, I would say, mostly middling level, and so they survive a while, but cannot really threaten us.
And that's Ust Natha finished!
A little bumpy at the start, but once we got serious things just panned out.
We perform the ritual, betraying both the Matron Mother and Phaere (Soulafein handed us his fake eggs).
We clear the Drow barring our way, though watch invisibly as they first kill off the War Elves.
This is rather amusing: The Elves stand literally no chance, as the Drow just bulldoze through them so quickly we probably couldn't even have saved them if we tried.
As planned, we gather up all the Drow gear, identify the lot (which took 3 rests), then sell it to the Swirfneblin merchant in batches by type, so we don't get depreciation.
This was actually worth the effort, as we make off with roughly 23k for our troubles as we depart for the surface.
Upon our return to Athkatla, we get the Gith ambush; these are pretty nasty (we'll see another instance of said nastiness shortly), especially the Anti-Paladins who dispel on hit, although we pull through without casualties as Remove Magic neuters them pretty effectively.
Next we take the time to forge some things at Cromwell's: Improved Mace of Disruption (very good), Gesen's Bow (very good), the Equalizer (eh... but it always counts as +3 at least), and the Silver Sword (also a bit meh, not sure why I bothered).
Here we also deliver Yoshimo's heart to a Priest of Ilmater for 200k experience.
So, there's still lots of things to do, such as several strongholds, so we set about the Unseeing Eye.
By now, most of the encounters here are not so very difficult, though we do hit a snag trying to converse resources when dealing with the Ghoul Town Lich: I'm not sure if you can rest down here or not, so wanted to be certain we could clear the later Beholder Lair without issue.
As always, the Lich has a massive retinue of various Undead: We clear most of them out with Imoen's 3x Fireball Spell Sequencer.
The Lich gets a Time Stop off, but doesn't seem to have Improved Alacrity; it does pop Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting at Minsc, but he survives.
Then it just goes bad.
The damnable thing had not one, but two Imprisonment ready.
I am quite pleased with myself for buying an extra scroll of Freedom off Carlig; the intent was to use it in case Deirex Imprisoned anyone, but it came in handy here instead.
SCS revises this a bit, such that any party member freed from Imprisonment is instantly returned to the party upon being freed, so hopefully this didn't break for instance Jaheira's romance (as it tended to do in the original game).
We proceed to clear the Beholders out, though hit another snag: Again, I needed our final batch of Skeleton Warriors to deal with the Unseeing Eye, so tried to conserve resources.
Aldain, Aerie and Imoen were to pop into visual range while our warriors fought some Beholders, use their 2x Magic Missile Minor Sequencers, then pop back out.
Imoen pathed a bit badly though, and couldn't get out of range fast enough.
Still, Wondrous Recall lets us get her back up on her feet.
The Unseeing Eye summons two Death Tyrants, but none of the three antagonists are a match for 9HD Skeleton Warriors, especially once you hit the Unseeing Eye with the Rod.
Good stuff.
We return the Rod to the Avatar, then head upstairs and deal with Gaal: A single Remove Magic strips all his protections, and that's it for him.
Heading back to rest, we get the (I guess that's what they are?) Rakshasa ambush, but they're too low level: A Remove Magic destroys their buffs, and they're not so frightening without them.
That's one stronghold down, but there are others; the Thief one should be quick and easy.
Rayic Gethras has little recourse by this point; protections removed in an instant.
Mae'Var's hopeless goons share a similar fate, and Mae'Var himself is easily Breached: Another stronghold cleared.
Next, let's deal with De'Arnise Keep, but first another Gith ambush en route.
OK, so what happened?
We got overconfident and traveled without Invisibility, 10' Radius.
Anti-Paladins dispel on hit (and they either do so at a very high caster level, or it's just guaranteed): All our buffs repeatedly got stripped.
Aldain had it bad: One Anti-Paladin hit cleared his Stoneskin, followed by a whooping critical which took him well below half health.
He had a Stoneskin on HP below 50% Contingency, which might well have saved his life; I should switch his Spell Sequencer to a defensive one, I suppose.
Nasty experience.
Well, at least De'Arnise Keep goes smoothly: We literally blaze through the various Trolls, not encountering much resistance (for some reason we got several spawns with three regular Trolls and something like 12 Ice Trolls).
We clear the Golems on the way, then literally drown Tor'Gal and his cronies in a sea of fire... they stand no chance whatsoever.
Yes, I know you get 10k extra gold as reward if Nalia is in your party, but I didn't want anyone to fall further behind in experience (since only those in the party get the quest experience); ~50k experience for a party member is worth more at this point than 10k gold.
Probably.
Anyway, we forge the Flail of Ages on the way out (which Minsc will use once he gets a second pip in Flails), report in to Nalia, and abscond to the Coronet (this time under Invisibility, 10' Radius, though nothing untoward occurs).
And this seems like a good spot to call it quits for the moment, as we're now entirely caught up to where I am in the run.
Beyond the somewhat weird wilderness areas you get access to after the Underdark, what's left is basically all high-octane content: The Planar Sphere, the Planar Prison, two Liches as well as Kangaxx, Guarded Compound, Twisted Rune, Alhoon, Windspear Hills, and the Shadow Dragon.
I think that's it, plus however much of Watcher's Keep we want to go after while in SoA.
So this is also a good time to catch our collective breath a bit, as these encounters will require some planning, and above all, very careful buffing.
This party is somewhat fragile: Jaheira suffers HP-wise from her multiclass but can at least protect her buffs, Minsc can't even do that, Aerie will just die if you forget a single protection on her, and even reasonably sturdy Aldain and Imoen are both arcanists and so rely entirely on buffs to stay alive... Mazzy is the only tough cookie, and even then she doesn't have great hitpoints thanks to 16 CON.
In short, it's a bit exhausting handling this party during tough encounters, as you basically have to apply every buff in the spellbook, and still be on your toes for them getting dispelled, at which point you need to react instantly to avoid horrific death.
I'll take a short break from the run, and also do not have much time to play for a while anyway, so next update might be a while.
Crusher - dwarf berserker (Grond0)
Brinholder - dwarf fighter/cleric (Corey_Russell)
Behemoth - half-orc cleric/thief (Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1224377/#Comment_1224377
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1224625/#Comment_1224625
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1224896/#Comment_1224896
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1224985/#Comment_1224985
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1225084/#Comment_1225084
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1225224/#Comment_1225224
We'd already started the Windspear Hills dungeon last time and we soon moved through the rest of it to confront Samia's group. They were mainly occupied by skeleton warriors and didn't do us much damage. Kaol was the last to go with Crusher beating him down and Behemoth backstabbing the corpse just to make sure.
There's no reputation gain for that quest, which meant we were still stuck on 19. However, Behemoth was tired of wielding an inferior staff, so Crusher reluctantly coughed up the cost for that despite the higher than usual price. A few other purchases were added as well before we dived into the Temple sewers for the first time. Before going after the illithid there we had to clear out a few obstacles. The last of those was Gaius whose defenses kept him alive for a while, without really threatening us.
Rather than go immediately after the Unseeing Eye, Crusher decided to target the Ring of Gaxx. The lich in the sewers managed to buff and resist attacks from Azuredge for long enough for Crusher's rage to wear off. In the fight I was confused when the lich targeted Crusher with a maze, but he didn't disappear. The screenshot showed though that the maze was cast just before rage wore off (and immunity and MR checks are made at the point the spell projectile hits, even though there's then a gap of a few seconds before the spell takes effect).
Berserker 16, 145 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 631 kills (+263 in BG1)
Figher 11 / cleric 12, 109 HPs , 166 kills (+127 in BG1), 1 death
Cleric 12 / thief 14, 71 HPs, 115 kills (+129 in BG1), 0 deaths
I was doing fine until I was held in the Vale of Shadows. Having a party of two would have made all the difference.
Here are the imitial stats which weren't bad. No re-roller!
Portraits are a combination of an old selfie together with Duck duck go AI.
Portrait made from a selfie + AI.
I have teamed up with Tenya, Gavin (Two clerics) Morwen (a skald) and Safana (a thief) and we have already done most of the available quests before heading for the Nashkel mines.
I have actually been plugging away at the solos a bit but nothing has gone as far as the last Dragon Disciple. A druid/ranger fell to Tarnesh, a Cleric/Mage was petrified, a Cleric/Thief was felled by two ankheg hits in quick succession. So it goes, so it goes. Presently I am striving away with a murderous Half-Orc Thug (Fighter/ Thief with rage but very limited skills) who has started out with a Dex of 5. Sometimes even I wonder what I am doing hahaha.
I have actually been plugging away at the solos ab
Uhh, a combination of Tome and Blood and Tweaks Anthology I think.
I used to have a mod installed that allowed any race to be any class. Is that how you did it?[/quote]
Uhh, a combination of Tome and Blood and Tweaks Anthology I think. [/quote]
I'll have to look those up. If I remember rightly, one of them increases the charisma of dwarves by 1 so that a dwarf can become a paladin.
Crusher - dwarf berserker (Grond0)
Brinholder - dwarf fighter/cleric (Corey_Russell)
Behemoth - half-orc cleric/thief (Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1224377/#Comment_1224377
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1224625/#Comment_1224625
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1224896/#Comment_1224896
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1224985/#Comment_1224985
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1225084/#Comment_1225084
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1225224/#Comment_1225224
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1225328/#Comment_1225328
We'd already started the Unseeing Eye quest last time, so carried on with that. Clerical turning and Azuredge made pretty short work of some groups of undead and the Shield of Balduran gave various beholders no chance. The Unseeing Eye itself died of poison damage from traps and we immediately went to hand in the Rift device in order to avoid any potential little accidents ...
The last major quest area in chapters 2&3 was the Planar Prison. We invaded that invisibly to give the group of Bounty Hunters no real chance. We initially progressed anti-clockwise, but Brinholder was keen to come back the other way to deal with the Warden - so that he got no supporting troops and was swiftly beaten down.
The vampire HQ offered relatively little resistance. Tanova was the main exception, thanks mainly to her maze taking effect on Crusher who was just too slow to trigger his rage. Bodhi took massive damage from a backstab and other attacks and had had enough after only a few seconds.
After forging the iMod and making a final few purchases we took a trip to Spellhold. Brinholder offered to supply various spell defenses in order to attack Perth, but Behemoth was already sneaking around behind the mage and cut the discussion short with a backstab. His spell book offered the opportunity to cast wyvern call, but with 2 clerics in the party we had lots of summoning options anyway so Crusher looked for other options - but only succeeded in locking the book on Burning Hands.
We saved the game ready to take an ill-fated boat journey next time.
Berserker 19, 154 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 811 kills (+263 in BG1)
Figher 13 / cleric 14, 113 HPs , 203 kills (+127 in BG1), 1 death
Cleric 14 / thief 16, 75 HPs, 146 kills (+129 in BG1), 0 deaths
Previous update found here
As mentioned previously, it's almost only higher-tier stuff to go, so let's get cracking.
First up: The Shadow Dragon.
Who is surprisingly weak, even with SCS: It prebuffs only with Protection from Magical Weapons, and isn't all that threatening in melee either.
Minsc takes a few hits, and the breath weapon which blinds on a failed save and, I presume, level drains if you don't have Negative Plane Protection up is a nuisance, but we easily push through with no casualties: Breach and dispose.
I went ahead and forged the Shadow Dragon Scale for undispellable 50% Acid resistance, but beyond that it's as unremarkable as the Dragon from whence it sprang.
We swung by the odd extra outdoor areas here; the Ancient Vampires just disappeared once we scouted them (I think they had a tendency to do this in the original game too, but only once damaged).
The oddly placed adventuring party where no members have names is duly done in, as the Mage carries a scroll of Time Stop: We'll want as many of these as we can scrounge up for the Throne fight, if we get that far.
The oasis-like area literally just has some hopelessly outmatched Orcs and a few Ankhegs; the Wyvern cultists are similarly no threat by this point, nor the lovesick Werewolf (Wolfwere.. Wolf-something), and we finish by smacking some Kuo-toans about the face and neck for an entirely pointless magical Longbow.
Well, that was something... these areas seem like they should be available earlier, at least the ones with the Cultists and Orcs.
We continue with strongholds, heading for the Windspear Hills.
The Ruhk Transmuter has bizarrely low THAC0, but by now we can just pop a single Remove Magic to, well, remove him as a threat.
Two very large Golem spawns in here are handled by letting a Djinni tank, with Minsc popping in and out to deal with one Golem at a time.
Minsc also absolutely destroys the two large Undead spawns to the east; Improved Haste and similarly Improved Mace of Disruption does fine work here, and with the amount of buffs we've got running, even Minsc can make the odd save against status effects.
We do hit a small snag dealing with the Efreeti Guardians, as one of them moved at extreme pace through the door behind fire-proofed Minsc before we could close it, and proceeded to lay a bit of waste to our backlines: Should've just fire-proofed everyone.
Kaol is the only one in Samia's party with any defenses to speak of so stays awhile for 2 - 3 rounds, but ultimately manages nothing beyond a Greater Malison.
Onward we push: Greater Wolfweres, Golems of all shapes and sizes, and Orcs... none can withstand a near-epic party.
Not even Conster accomplishes anything of note, as we just buffed to the hilt, and a Remove Magic was all he had time for (of course it dispelled every buff on Minsc... somehow this always occurs).
We rest up and engage Firkraag: I wasn't sure what he'd do, but in retrospect, Protection from Fire on everyone would've probably sufficed, as he heavily favored his breath weapon and melee.
With little in the way of spell protections, it's again just a matter of Breach: Firkraag barely managed to take down a single Fire Elemental before his jig was up.
We chuck Carsomyr in our Bag of Holding for bragging rights, and return to Garren, where the experience bumps Aldain to L18: For his first HLA, he picks Summon Planetar.
With the Robe of Vecna now essentially unavailable for nearly all of the trilogy (SCS moves it to Azamantes in Watcher's Keep), Improved Alacrity loses its luster; of course we'll grab it since pure arcanists get enough HLAs to cover everything, but not for quite some time.
Meanwhile, the Planetar is just awesome all-around: Zips around at near light speed, great THAC0, great APR, great saves, great hitpoints, several really nasty spells (I'm particularly fond of Holy Word, but the auto-casting Blade Barrier is spectacular as well), and in a pinch it can throw an instant Heal on whoever needs saving.
Whenever we're facing something truly nasty, a Planetar will always lead the charge.
Time to get our own stronghold then, I'd say: Off to the previously opened Planar Sphere.
The Sauhagin have great THAC0 and hit hard, but pure damage is unlikely to thwart us at this stage.
The first group of Halflings is dismantled in a matter of rounds, as they're just too low-level to stand a chance, and the same can be said for Necre and Taibela.
The local Golems do a good job of somehow Slowing, Cursing (so no healing) and blocking Minsc off from retreating; he came quite close to dropping (2 more hits would've done it).
We repair the Guardian Golem and let it deal with the Elder Orb; Lavok awaits.
His list of prebuffs actually isn't terribly impressive: A single Spell Turning is it for higher-level spell protections .
Though he of course also pops Absolute Immunity, and has a nasty Chain Contingency with the usual Necromancer favorites of Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting, Symbol, Death and Finger of Death prepared (again.. you have to be immune to everything at this stage, or just keep a lot of Raise Dead handy).
Our Planetar lands a Holy Word however, which neuters Lavok quite efficiently: He stays alive for a while thanks to a defensive Spell Trigger, but ultimately we tear down his protections, the Planetar lands a devastating Blade Barrier hit, and Lavok is undone.
We clear the two small siderooms, grab the entirely unremarkable treasure, and head outside.
Chaotic Commands, Protection from Evil, and the whole standard slew of save-improving buffs means we're effectively immune to everything out here, and so cleanse the entire map (I think we got three hearts, but maybe it was four).
We head back inside, and it's Tolgerias' turn on the chopping block.
Like Lavok, he didn't really put up many spell defenses, though did make himself immune to literally every damage type except Acid.
Again, a Planetar (Imoen also reached L18) leads the charge, and we just strip Tolgerias of his protections, at which point not even his bizarre HP pool can save him.
Still, Tolgerias got off a few Remove Magic/other protection strippers before going down, and his Chain Contingency included a Djinni and Efreeti... I wouldn't have liked to tackle this fight at pre-Spellhold levels (though as we've seen it's doable with careful planning, largely because Tolgerias can't see through Invisibility).
We of course clear both the Ice room (Helmet of Defense, very nice!) and the Fire room; the Engine room Golems pummel Minsc a bit but are ultimately subdued, and we are returned to our own plane, with the Planar Sphere now left to Aldain's tender mercies.
Good good, one thing after another is getting crossed off the list.
We're now confident enough to go on proper Lich hunts: The Crooked Crane's resident such is first to go.
Time Stop -> Ruby Ray of Reversal -> Breach, then cast Breach again since the Ruby Ray needs a few ticks of ingame time to actually remove a spell protection so the first Breach got stopped by the Lich's Spell Deflection... there's really not much point to stripping protections under Time Stop.
In fact, I wonder what the point of Time Stop is, really, unless you're a Fighter/Mage.
I suppose Aldain could Improve Haste himself and land some automatic hits with Firetooth +3 at 4 APR, but if an enemy doesn't have Protection from Magical Weapons up, it's faster and easier to just let the warriors kill it (literally takes a few seconds).
Anyway, we grab the loot, including Daystar for Mazzy, and go after the Shade Lich.
This turned a little nasty, as it brought in a Fallen Planetar, and I failed to protect Aldain with Spell Immunity: Abjuration.
Seems I just clicked the spell, but then forgot to pick a school to be protected from before cycling to the next character... not good.
Aldain gets hit by Remove Magic and eats a couple Energy Blades, but we're able to bring the Lich down before it accomplishes anything else beyond terrorizing our Djinni.
Huff. Alright: Elemental Lich.
Our Planetar again lands Holy Word, causing the Lich to fail several casts, which makes things easier; ultimately, a Blade Barrier pulse gets the kill.
Now then, with all of his body assembled, it's time for Kangaxx, but before that, we really do need to update our spell books a bit, so we go on a shopping spree.
Most of what we bought really isn't that important, but now all three arcanists have full suites of protection spells available (elemental, magical, weapons, spells).
We also pick up most of the scrolls in Ribald's special store, which is exceedingly costly: About 80k at 20 reputation and 20 CHA.
All that scribing also netted us a few levels, nice; Mazzy has now achieved Grand Mastery in Long Swords, so will at long last switch over to melee.
So, Kangaxx: The Lich form reacts poorly to a Planetar's Holy Word, and we're able to take it down in a matter of a few rounds.
Amazingly, the Demilich form has almost no spell protections; a single Ruby Ray of Reversal strips what little there was, and the subsequent Breach renders Kangaxx entirely vulnerable.
Daystar does a very good job of rapidly reducing the Demilich's HP pool through the physical resistance; Kangaxx threw a single Trap the Soul at Minsc (I had Minsc pop a Potion of Magic Shielding, but could've just let it hit I suppose) to no effect, and then just sort of crumpled.
Anti-climactic, but I prefer that.
The ring goes to Mazzy, whom I now relieve of her non-magical Full Plate Mail and put in Red Dragon Plate instead.
Still... even with the Amulet of Spell Warding, her saves aren't that great? Maybe I really do need to keep her with a Ring of Protection +2 and non-magical armor, we'll see.
Her whole raison d'etre is being unassailable even when every buff gets dispelled, after all.
After that quick and easy hunt, surely even the Planar Prison shall prove no obstacle.
Buffs. Buffs! Always keep the buffs up, lest we all perish.
So there's some line-of-sight issues here, which kept True Sight from revealing the Yuan-Ti Mage during the opening fight; it stayed alive long enough to land Greater Malison followed by Prismatic Spray, which outright killed Imoen.
It even tagged Aldain, though luckily he only got hit by the 20 damage effect (could've easily been a kill on him too).
Ugh.
We let a Deva lead the way to the east, clearing Yuan-Ti, a talking Wyvern and the Master of Thralls without much issue, though Minsc got Stunned by the Air Elementals (he lived).
There's still some weirdness with the scripts of the Thralls here, as some of them came running from the Warden's room to attack us way to the south, and several didn't fight the Warden even after we destroyed the Orb.
The Warden himself was a lot less horrible than I'd expected.
Again, not so much in the way of spell protections (Improved Haste though): He managed a few good swings at our Planetar, but was Breached, Slowed and done for in short order.
It's usually a good idea to stop for a little while after a close call like that Prismatic Spray, so let's do that.
Things are coming along nicely though: What remains in Shadows of Amn beyond Bodhi and Irenicus is the Twisted Rune, the Alhoon and the Guarded Compound.
I think we'll go for a little more Watcher's Keep as well; opening the portal and clearing the second level should be very doable, though we'll absolutely want the Pocket Plane power available for level 3.
Everyone (except Imoen, who only has Summon Planetar) has two HLAs at the moment: Jaheira went Whirlwind - Greater Whirlwind, Minsc has Hardiness/Power Attack, Mazzy dived straight into Power Attack -> Critical Strike, Aerie played it safe with Summon Deva and Energy Blades, and Aldain took Summon Planetar as well as Energy Blades.
If I'm doing the math correctly, Imoen, Mazzy and Jaheira should all pick up another HLA before Throne of Bhaal; possibly the other three party members as well, though more likely that'll be sometime during Saradush.
We're quite powerful by now, if very buff-reliant, though to be fair you usually are by this stage: There's just no getting around needing every protection running while simultaneously having oodles of Breach and spell-protection removers available.
Casters are mostly reduced to providing and stripping protections; what few slots are left over typically go towards Improved Haste or a summon, since it's just more efficient that way, and even then most summons won't stay alive long enough to matter.
Anyway: Let's not falter. Stay focused, stay buffed, stay sharp.
Until next time.
Crusher - dwarf berserker (Grond0)
Brinholder - dwarf fighter/cleric (Corey_Russell)
Behemoth - half-orc cleric/thief (Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1224377/#Comment_1224377
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1224625/#Comment_1224625
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1224896/#Comment_1224896
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1224985/#Comment_1224985
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1225084/#Comment_1225084
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1225224/#Comment_1225224
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1225328/#Comment_1225328
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1225525/#Comment_1225525
There was plenty of XP on offer this time and no great difficulty in picking it up. Our initial boat journey resulted in being shipwrecked in Fish City. Different factions were keen to make use of us for their own purposes, but all of them ended up with the same treatment.
In the Underdark we quickly moved through some initial challenges to investigate the Western Tunnels. A kuo-toa prince there found his high regeneration appeared to be just enough to outlast a first use of whirlwind by Crusher. During the session I thought a backstab from Behemoth had got the final touch, but looking at the screenshot a follow-up blow from Crusher had already proved to be the final straw.
By this time everyone had got at least one level and Behemoth used his new UAI ability to free Vithal from Imprisonment. That freedom didn't last long though as the mage was caught in some traps immediately after recovering treasure from various elemental domains.
Moving through the Underdark, a nest of beholders found themselves no match for fighters protected by both the Shield of Balduran and the Cloak of Mirroring. The nearby illithid hide-out was more of a danger thanks to their sucking abilities and both Crusher and Brinholder were hit several times and forced to break contact to remain safe. However, that was done successfully and the brain duly sent to permanent sleep.
After disguising ourselves as drow we did a bit of shopping before embarking on a series of tasks for Phaere - the first of which was to rescue her. Brinholder was aware of the possibility of being ambushed on the way to do that and thoughtfully sent his new pet Deva to trigger the attack. Rather amusingly, the globe of blades surrounding it proved too much for the invisible thief sneaking in to attempt a backstab.
My lack of memory about the remaining tasks meant those took a bit longer than they should have done and the session ended with us on the way to steal some dragon eggs and replace them with fakes - hopefully selecting the right set of those ...
Berserker 22, 163 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 976 kills (+263 in BG1)
Figher 15 / cleric 16, 117 HPs , 264 kills (+127 in BG1), 1 death
Cleric 16 / thief 18, 79 HPs, 169 kills (+129 in BG1), 0 deaths