For anyone that is unfamilar with a low level challenge, the purpose is to beat the game and overcome any challenges without leveling up any characters in the party (pressing the level up button). The difficulty is played at AD&D core rule, except the slider goes to lower difficulty whenever the mages scribe scrolls. From the beginning of SoA, the PC and NPC are about average level 8. SoA battles should be very doable for a level 8 party, but ToB battles can get pretty rough. ToB monsters are stronger, more intelligent (at least for dragons), and swarms of them can get ugly very quickly. In this challenge, there will be cheesy tactics and exploits, but I will not use the extreme ones (mislead and fake talk). I think killing chromatic demon with skull traps is ok (not intended in the game) because it seems that this is a general programming oversight that skull trap can hurt most enemies in the game (this is the main strategy for beating most of the tough bosses).
This time around, the game is much easier and smoother. In this game, I change the party composition in favor of spellcasters. My party consists of the PC Inquisitor, NPCs Anomen, Valygar, Edwin, Nalia and Aerie (will be replaced by Imoen after spellhold). Anomen is surprising good in the low level challenge because he can fight decently melee or range given the right equipment. Also, both Anomen and Viconia are lv 8 priests, so both have about the same number of spells before the wisdom bonus. Jan is not selected because he is a illusionist and cant use skull traps.
In this round, my party completed all the sidequests available in ch2 and ch3. They were pretty easy, even for encounters such as the 2 dragons, kangaxx and the twisted rune battle.
Lv1: Easy Lv2: Easy. Chromatic Demon was killed by skull traps.
Lv3: Hard. This level was bias against spellcasters since there were many magic dead and wild zones. However, fleeing was easy since only one character could teleport to the next part of the portal. I avoided some of the demon battles that did not yield any meaningful loots. Overall, the required demon battles were easier compared with the previous game since my pc had full plate armor and the holy avenger. I had to fight the last demon battle because for some reason the deck of many things could not be stolen.
Deck of Many Things: Star and Moon! (+1 str and +10 hp permanent)
Lv4: Easy. Another dead dragon and demi-lich.
Lv5: Fireworks! In the last game, I had to resort exploit (PC fake drink potion->time stop) to beat the final guardians. This time, my party spent several days setting up hundred of skull traps. Even though some of the guardian had magic resistance going up to 90%, the sheer number of skull traps meant they die regardless.
Final Level: Demogorgon Super easy. Rest so that Demogorgon's summons got unsummoned. PC (80% magic resistance) kited around Demogorgon, NPC mages Edwin, Nalia and Aerie used wands of spellstriking->pierce magic. Greater malision and wand of cursing. Demogorgon was screwed.
Chapter 3 Status: I did not give the pc or npc priest the extra wisdom from the Machine of the Lum. Anomen cant get any benefit cuz his base score is 12 wis and the knighthood bonus is a modified score.
My favorite method for killing mindflayers is lock them up in a cloud room. I purposely lured all the mindflayers into a single room so their corpses show up in one place in this picture:
For beholders, the shield of balduran came in handy. But for some reason, the beholder rays were deflected instead of reflected back. Anomen had to use 50+ charges of the wand of heaven, but still got imprisoned by the elder orb. Had to rescue him with a freedom spell. For drows, the holy avenger and improved haste from my 2 rings of gaax could more than handle an army of them.
With proper preparation, the silver dragon became a easy fight. Since I had 3 mages, I stripped off the magic resistance in the first round, reduced the saving throw by x8 (greater malision and doom x2) and blinded her the second round. Once Adalon was blinded, I made some silver dragon stew. Her blood was a delicious ingredient.
Back on the surface, I fought Bodhi and her legions of vampires. Recruited Drizzt, the Order and the Shadow Thieves. For some reason, the thieves never showed up. The fight was easy since I had the Protection against Undead on.
In Suldanessellar, my party slayed the final dragon in SoA. After he was blinded, he got ganged by spells:
The battle with mage Irenicus was easy. With 100% magic resistance, the flesh golem occupied most of his spells and my pc just solo him with the holy avenger. In hell, the final battle with slayer Irenicus was merely challenging. The only thing I had to watch out for was his initial death spell against summon creatures. Since my party was mainly level 8, half of my party died when he cast death spell. After the first reload, I killed him by melee and range attacks.
From SoA hell, I chose all the good paths. Now, my pc is immune to +1 or lower magical weapons, +10% magic resistance (for a current total of 95%) and other bonuses. Not much changed with the equipment however. Later, I upgraded the paladin bracer and the staff of the ram.
For some reason, I feel that the battles in the beginning of ToB (Saradush) were easier than most of the SoA fights. The only challenging battle in Saradush was the ambush of devil shades in the sewer because they swarmed quickly the party and they could level drain. The Gromir battle was easily overcome because the two mages were assassinated in the first round by my invisible party while summoned monsters distracted Gromir's cronies.
Compared with the previous game, fire giants were less threatening in this game. On average, the staff of the ram+6 had a 15% stunning the fire giant, which occurred once about every 3-4 rounds. In the 2 ambushes of fire giants, my party withered the opposition one giant at a time. My haste party successfully outmaneuvered the fire giants and summoned monsters to act as temporary distractions.
In the siege camp, I noticed that there were few places in the battlefield that there were no respawns. The trick was to have my party turned invisible and ran around in the map. As my party ran across the plains, enemies would spawn next to my party and I believe there was a maximum spawn limit in the map. My tactics in this battle was to hide in a place with only human spawns and summoned creatures next to Yaga Shura's party to soaked up all the mages and clerics' spells. After the mage and cleric ran out of spells, my party went out and mopped them up. Also, hit and run worked well to isolate Yaga Shura from his minions.
In the oasis, some goody two shoes tried to stop me. They were put down quickly. I wished this battle could have been more challenging.
At Amketran, I brought the Enkidu's Plate. Finally my pc had access to 100% magic resistance.
@AHF: The iron horn summons a berserk warrior. It has 90hp some it can survive some hits. I try to give all party members some access to summoning. My pc has the horn, Valygar has the spider, and each my mage has a wand of summoning and the golem manual.
Minsc: "This behaviour must not continue. Feel the burning stare of my hamster and change your ways. " The barbarian repented his past chaotic behavior when he Boo stared angrily at him.
Can you try to level up ONLY your main character from the first playthrough and show all his gains? In picture form (Before-After) just before the battle of Melissan?
...Oh, and another request, try to only level you own character up and defeat Melissan with help of your low level allies
Nah, I'm playing a low level challenge. That means no one - pc and npc - can level up (although technically Imoen got level up from spellhold, but that's only exception.
Just defeated Sendai and completed the fight up Abazigal's lair. This time around, for some reason, my party wasnt able to disrupt the dragon's spell casting with arrays of magic missiles (bug?) Both Draconis and the green dragon guarding Abazigal's lair cast heal on themselves before I could finish them and there seems to be no limit on how many heal spells they can cast.
Round 5: The Five continues: Sendai, Abazigal and Balthzaar
Like last game, Sendai, her drow army and her pets were easily annihilated. Unlike the drows in the underdark, these drows wore easily penetrable elven chain armor. Even puny thief mages like Imoen and Nalia landed hits at them frequently. For Sendai, since my pc was 100% magic resistant and immune to backstab (from the enkidu armor), Sendai was harmless. However, she managed to evade death 5 times (!) in her final form because she managed to cast heal that many times. Finally, the script triggered at the sixth time she was near-death:
Abazigal and his draconian relatives were still tough in this playthrough. Draconis in the dragon form was the toughest challenge in this dungeon. It was really annoying that he used spell triggers frequently and equipped himself with minor spell turning. In addition, he could turn invisible and roamed around the map too much. Since I had 3 mages in the party, I could lower his magic resistance in the first round, reduce saving throws and blinded him (first glitterdust (lasted for 4 rounds) and then blindness (lasted for 10 turns) on the second round. When he was at critical health, he always managed to cast heal at himself despite my mages were barraging him with magic missiles. This must be some kind of (very terrible!) bug because I was able to disrupt his spellcasting in the first game. After repeating this strategy a few times, I gave up and used a different strategy.
In this second playthrough, I have been accumulating magic scrolls such as simulacrum, project image, time stop and horrid wilting. After lowering its magic resistance to nil, I had Imoen cast a simulacrum spell and had the clone cast time stop and horrid wilting. I killed Draconis, Fll'Yissetat and Abazigal in this way. Cheese it.
Before dealing with Balthzaar, I dealt with his monks and mercenaries. I copied the strategy with draconis on Balthzaar. It's true that Balthzaar was immune to timestop, but not the timestop within a timestop (maybe a bug). This way, he died before he triggered his second wind.
#2: In the last game, the evil party of Charname, mage Semaj, archer Angelo and fighter Tamoko laid the smackdown on my party. Two of my npcs were killed by Tamoko and my pc had to play merry go around with the evil Charname to survive. This time my party came prepared. First, my mages ambushed Semaj's location with 8 skull traps. When the battle began, Edwin cast Greater Malision and Imoen and Nalia summoned some fodders. Next round, I had all 3 mages used the wand of paralyzation to stun Tamoko. After she's dead, paralyzed Angelo. After he's dead, paralyzed the evil Charname. Easy kills.
#3: Slayer was easy because he only targeted my pc. They ran around in circle and the slayer fell to hundreds of arrows and bullets piercing its body.
#4: Although PC was immune to backstabs, those thieves still hit pretty hard. Had to expend 10 potions of extra healing and some cannon fodders.
#5: Ravager is the monster with the highest hp in this game. He melee hard with claws or ranged with darts, had the ability to charm (dominate?) and swarm of infinite bone blades performed for its bidding. The setup was important and delicate. I had to kill him quickly before 1) my swarm of summons all died, 2) the effect of lower magic resistance (pierce magic from the wands of striking) ran out. At the end, I managed to achieve both. I used up my remaining 3 project images scrolls. First project image cast 13 rounds of summons. Second project image cast 5 scrolls of horrid wilting. Third project image cast 4 scrolls of horrid wilting.
The final battle remains. Can my party accomplish the impossible? Is my second game also doom to failure like my previous playthrough? Stay tune for the next round.
There is a bug with Edwin. For some reason, his thaco was raised to 27! (his normal thaco should be about 17.) Not sure what happened, but I suspected it was the blindness spell from the burning man in Yaga-Shura's mountain cave. The blindness was supposed to be temporary, but it stayed permanent with him . O well, he can still roll a 20 and hit something hopefully.
In the first game, my party couldnt overcome Melissan battle because her summons overwhelmed my party. When my party was being blown up by a group of slayer shadows, death tyrants, glabrezu and bone golems in 5 rounds, I knew my chances were nil against defeating Melissan.
In this second game, I was more prepared. I had 3 mages instead of 2, which meant I could reduce any monster's magic resistance to zero (spell trigger/chain contingency x3 lower magic resistance, 2 wands of spell striking -> pierce magic) in the beginning of the first round. Then, my 3 fighters could attempt to blind her with wands of cursing.
It turned out that blinding Melissan exacerbated the problem. Instead of engaging combat, Melissan would summon 4+ monsters every round. There was no chance in hell my low level party could win. The other strategy of timestop and horrid wilting (how I killed dragons and Balthazar) also failed. The best tactics for defeating Melissan was this:
Pre-cast simulacrum. At the start of battle, Edwin, Nalia and Imoen lowered Melissan's resistance to zero while the clone cast a scroll of the lv 8 Bigby's Clenched Fist. This spell GUARANTEED Melissan getting stun for 1 round with no saving throw (a nonzero chance of stunning Melissan in subsequent rounds). For the next 3 rounds, the clone repeated the 2nd scroll of Bigby's Clenched Fist (no save) and 2 scrolls of lv 9 Bigby's Crushing Hand (this spell allowed a save at -4 in the first round).
My party only needed 3-4 rounds to dish out 250 damages and destroy Melissan. Just in case, each my mage had a spell sequencer loaded up with 3 skull traps and each sequencer could do about 100 damages.
The guardian battles (air elemental prince, ice elemental prince and fallen solar) were dealt with easily. For the fallen deva battle, I used a timestop scroll and 2 scrolls of imprisonment on the Mariliths demons and blinded the fallen solar. Then my party skull trapped the fallen solar to death.
Melissan's cutscenes
Edit: Cant fix the displaying image issue...post the pictures in the next post.
I notice you didn't list whether you chose godhood or not.
If you didn't, did your character say, "No thanks. I'll just level up. With all the HLAs, it will be about the same without the whole immortal evil taint."
In the end, my pc chose the good path of godhood. He survived fratricide, loss of divinity and hell. He was always the underdog who defeated enemies ten to twenty levels higher than him. He shall always be remembered as the David who destroyed Goliath. In the end, he saved the world from the taint of his evil father and promised to restore goodness and peace in the realm.
1) Get fancy weapons, armors and accessories (no brainer): My fighters have thaco of 12-13 at level 7-8. With the best equipments, their thaco were improved to 2-3 (can be further enhanced by potions of storm giant strength, potion of power). For armor, my tank can get up to -16 AC. 2) Recharge wands Summoning are the best cuz they buy very valuable time (there are 3 of them in the bg2 SoA and ToB). Wand of fire is good against trolls or simply something your mage should fire when they run out of magic missiles. Wands of spellstriking and cursing work very well against bosses. Wand of paralyzation is useful in at least one battle. 3) Keep those scrolls! Required scrolls are Project Image, Simulacrum, Spell Trigger, Chain Contingency, Horrid Wilting, Time Stop, Bigby's Clenched Fist for Melissan. Recommended spells are Spell Sequencer, Power Word Blind and Wish.
Congratulations on completing a really interesting challenge! I really appreciate that you went back and did it over again just to get it right in the end. That's the spirit
I'm kinda sad that it is possible You should try this challenge again with a Tactics mod installed! That would be fun, you are obviously very good at the game (and subsequent cheesy tactics).
Comments
For anyone that is unfamilar with a low level challenge, the purpose is to beat the game and overcome any challenges without leveling up any characters in the party (pressing the level up button). The difficulty is played at AD&D core rule, except the slider goes to lower difficulty whenever the mages scribe scrolls. From the beginning of SoA, the PC and NPC are about average level 8. SoA battles should be very doable for a level 8 party, but ToB battles can get pretty rough. ToB monsters are stronger, more intelligent (at least for dragons), and swarms of them can get ugly very quickly. In this challenge, there will be cheesy tactics and exploits, but I will not use the extreme ones (mislead and fake talk). I think killing chromatic demon with skull traps is ok (not intended in the game) because it seems that this is a general programming oversight that skull trap can hurt most enemies in the game (this is the main strategy for beating most of the tough bosses).
This time around, the game is much easier and smoother. In this game, I change the party composition in favor of spellcasters. My party consists of the PC Inquisitor, NPCs Anomen, Valygar, Edwin, Nalia and Aerie (will be replaced by Imoen after spellhold). Anomen is surprising good in the low level challenge because he can fight decently melee or range given the right equipment. Also, both Anomen and Viconia are lv 8 priests, so both have about the same number of spells before the wisdom bonus. Jan is not selected because he is a illusionist and cant use skull traps.
In this round, my party completed all the sidequests available in ch2 and ch3. They were pretty easy, even for encounters such as the 2 dragons, kangaxx and the twisted rune battle.
Lv1: Easy
Lv2: Easy. Chromatic Demon was killed by skull traps.
Lv3: Hard. This level was bias against spellcasters since there were many magic dead and wild zones. However, fleeing was easy since only one character could teleport to the next part of the portal. I avoided some of the demon battles that did not yield any meaningful loots. Overall, the required demon battles were easier compared with the previous game since my pc had full plate armor and the holy avenger. I had to fight the last demon battle because for some reason the deck of many things could not be stolen.
Deck of Many Things: Star and Moon! (+1 str and +10 hp permanent)
Lv4: Easy. Another dead dragon and demi-lich.
Lv5: Fireworks! In the last game, I had to resort exploit (PC fake drink potion->time stop) to beat the final guardians. This time, my party spent several days setting up hundred of skull traps. Even though some of the guardian had magic resistance going up to 90%, the sheer number of skull traps meant they die regardless.
Final Level: Demogorgon
Super easy. Rest so that Demogorgon's summons got unsummoned. PC (80% magic resistance) kited around Demogorgon, NPC mages Edwin, Nalia and Aerie used wands of spellstriking->pierce magic. Greater malision and wand of cursing. Demogorgon was screwed.
I did not give the pc or npc priest the extra wisdom from the Machine of the Lum. Anomen cant get any benefit cuz his base score is 12 wis and the knighthood bonus is a modified score.
My favorite method for killing mindflayers is lock them up in a cloud room. I purposely lured all the mindflayers into a single room so their corpses show up in one place in this picture:
For beholders, the shield of balduran came in handy. But for some reason, the beholder rays were deflected instead of reflected back. Anomen had to use 50+ charges of the wand of heaven, but still got imprisoned by the elder orb. Had to rescue him with a freedom spell. For drows, the holy avenger and improved haste from my 2 rings of gaax could more than handle an army of them.
With proper preparation, the silver dragon became a easy fight. Since I had 3 mages, I stripped off the magic resistance in the first round, reduced the saving throw by x8 (greater malision and doom x2) and blinded her the second round. Once Adalon was blinded, I made some silver dragon stew. Her blood was a delicious ingredient.
Back on the surface, I fought Bodhi and her legions of vampires. Recruited Drizzt, the Order and the Shadow Thieves. For some reason, the thieves never showed up. The fight was easy since I had the Protection against Undead on.
In Suldanessellar, my party slayed the final dragon in SoA. After he was blinded, he got ganged by spells:
The battle with mage Irenicus was easy. With 100% magic resistance, the flesh golem occupied most of his spells and my pc just solo him with the holy avenger. In hell, the final battle with slayer Irenicus was merely challenging. The only thing I had to watch out for was his initial death spell against summon creatures. Since my party was mainly level 8, half of my party died when he cast death spell. After the first reload, I killed him by melee and range attacks.
From SoA hell, I chose all the good paths. Now, my pc is immune to +1 or lower magical weapons, +10% magic resistance (for a current total of 95%) and other bonuses. Not much changed with the equipment however. Later, I upgraded the paladin bracer and the staff of the ram.
For some reason, I feel that the battles in the beginning of ToB (Saradush) were easier than most of the SoA fights. The only challenging battle in Saradush was the ambush of devil shades in the sewer because they swarmed quickly the party and they could level drain. The Gromir battle was easily overcome because the two mages were assassinated in the first round by my invisible party while summoned monsters distracted Gromir's cronies.
Compared with the previous game, fire giants were less threatening in this game. On average, the staff of the ram+6 had a 15% stunning the fire giant, which occurred once about every 3-4 rounds. In the 2 ambushes of fire giants, my party withered the opposition one giant at a time. My haste party successfully outmaneuvered the fire giants and summoned monsters to act as temporary distractions.
In the siege camp, I noticed that there were few places in the battlefield that there were no respawns. The trick was to have my party turned invisible and ran around in the map. As my party ran across the plains, enemies would spawn next to my party and I believe there was a maximum spawn limit in the map. My tactics in this battle was to hide in a place with only human spawns and summoned creatures next to Yaga Shura's party to soaked up all the mages and clerics' spells. After the mage and cleric ran out of spells, my party went out and mopped them up. Also, hit and run worked well to isolate Yaga Shura from his minions.
In the oasis, some goody two shoes tried to stop me. They were put down quickly. I wished this battle could have been more challenging.
At Amketran, I brought the Enkidu's Plate. Finally my pc had access to 100% magic resistance.
Funny to see the Inquisitor devastating the silver dragon and battling "good two shoes"!
The barbarian repented his past chaotic behavior when he Boo stared angrily at him.
Been glued to the thread since discovering it, a big fan of your updates showing gear and particularly challenging fights with screenies.
Keep up the good work! Would love to see a similar thread done when BG:EE and see how you manage Sarevok with a level 1 party
...Oh, and another request, try to only level you own character up and defeat Melissan with help of your low level allies
Just defeated Sendai and completed the fight up Abazigal's lair. This time around, for some reason, my party wasnt able to disrupt the dragon's spell casting with arrays of magic missiles (bug?) Both Draconis and the green dragon guarding Abazigal's lair cast heal on themselves before I could finish them and there seems to be no limit on how many heal spells they can cast.
I will post the screenshots later today.
Like last game, Sendai, her drow army and her pets were easily annihilated. Unlike the drows in the underdark, these drows wore easily penetrable elven chain armor. Even puny thief mages like Imoen and Nalia landed hits at them frequently. For Sendai, since my pc was 100% magic resistant and immune to backstab (from the enkidu armor), Sendai was harmless. However, she managed to evade death 5 times (!) in her final form because she managed to cast heal that many times. Finally, the script triggered at the sixth time she was near-death:
Abazigal and his draconian relatives were still tough in this playthrough. Draconis in the dragon form was the toughest challenge in this dungeon. It was really annoying that he used spell triggers frequently and equipped himself with minor spell turning. In addition, he could turn invisible and roamed around the map too much. Since I had 3 mages in the party, I could lower his magic resistance in the first round, reduce saving throws and blinded him (first glitterdust (lasted for 4 rounds) and then blindness (lasted for 10 turns) on the second round. When he was at critical health, he always managed to cast heal at himself despite my mages were barraging him with magic missiles. This must be some kind of (very terrible!) bug because I was able to disrupt his spellcasting in the first game. After repeating this strategy a few times, I gave up and used a different strategy.
In this second playthrough, I have been accumulating magic scrolls such as simulacrum, project image, time stop and horrid wilting. After lowering its magic resistance to nil, I had Imoen cast a simulacrum spell and had the clone cast time stop and horrid wilting. I killed Draconis, Fll'Yissetat and Abazigal in this way. Cheese it.
Before dealing with Balthzaar, I dealt with his monks and mercenaries. I copied the strategy with draconis on Balthzaar. It's true that Balthzaar was immune to timestop, but not the timestop within a timestop (maybe a bug). This way, he died before he triggered his second wind.
#2: In the last game, the evil party of Charname, mage Semaj, archer Angelo and fighter Tamoko laid the smackdown on my party. Two of my npcs were killed by Tamoko and my pc had to play merry go around with the evil Charname to survive. This time my party came prepared. First, my mages ambushed Semaj's location with 8 skull traps. When the battle began, Edwin cast Greater Malision and
Imoen and Nalia summoned some fodders. Next round, I had all 3 mages used the wand of paralyzation to stun Tamoko. After she's dead, paralyzed Angelo. After he's dead, paralyzed the evil Charname. Easy kills.
#3: Slayer was easy because he only targeted my pc. They ran around in circle and the slayer fell to hundreds of arrows and bullets piercing its body.
#4: Although PC was immune to backstabs, those thieves still hit pretty hard. Had to expend 10 potions of extra healing and some cannon fodders.
#5: Ravager is the monster with the highest hp in this game. He melee hard with claws or ranged with darts, had the ability to charm (dominate?) and swarm of infinite bone blades performed for its bidding. The setup was important and delicate. I had to kill him quickly before 1) my swarm of summons all died, 2) the effect of lower magic resistance (pierce magic from the wands of striking) ran out. At the end, I managed to achieve both. I used up my remaining 3 project images scrolls. First project image cast 13 rounds of summons. Second project image cast 5 scrolls of horrid wilting. Third project image cast 4 scrolls of horrid wilting.
The final battle remains. Can my party accomplish the impossible? Is my second game also doom to failure like my previous playthrough? Stay tune for the next round.
PC:
Anomen:
Valygar:
Imoen:
Nalia:
Edwin:
There is a bug with Edwin. For some reason, his thaco was raised to 27! (his normal thaco should be about 17.) Not sure what happened, but I suspected it was the blindness spell from the burning man in Yaga-Shura's mountain cave. The blindness was supposed to be temporary, but it stayed permanent with him
In the first game, my party couldnt overcome Melissan battle because her summons overwhelmed my party. When my party was being blown up by a group of slayer shadows, death tyrants, glabrezu and bone golems in 5 rounds, I knew my chances were nil against defeating Melissan.
In this second game, I was more prepared. I had 3 mages instead of 2, which meant I could reduce any monster's magic resistance to zero (spell trigger/chain contingency x3 lower magic resistance, 2 wands of spell striking -> pierce magic) in the beginning of the first round. Then, my 3 fighters could attempt to blind her with wands of cursing.
It turned out that blinding Melissan exacerbated the problem. Instead of engaging combat, Melissan would summon 4+ monsters every round. There was no chance in hell my low level party could win. The other strategy of timestop and horrid wilting (how I killed dragons and Balthazar) also failed. The best tactics for defeating Melissan was this:
Pre-cast simulacrum. At the start of battle, Edwin, Nalia and Imoen lowered Melissan's resistance to zero while the clone cast a scroll of the lv 8 Bigby's Clenched Fist. This spell GUARANTEED Melissan getting stun for 1 round with no saving throw (a nonzero chance of stunning Melissan in subsequent rounds). For the next 3 rounds, the clone repeated the 2nd scroll of Bigby's Clenched Fist (no save) and 2 scrolls of lv 9 Bigby's Crushing Hand (this spell allowed a save at -4 in the first round).
My party only needed 3-4 rounds to dish out 250 damages and destroy Melissan. Just in case, each my mage had a spell sequencer loaded up with 3 skull traps and each sequencer could do about 100 damages.
The guardian battles (air elemental prince, ice elemental prince and fallen solar) were dealt with easily. For the fallen deva battle, I used a timestop scroll and 2 scrolls of imprisonment on the Mariliths demons and blinded the fallen solar. Then my party skull trapped the fallen solar to death.
Melissan's cutscenes
Edit: Cant fix the displaying image issue...post the pictures in the next post.
First Spoiler:
Second Spoiler:
Third Spoiler:
If you didn't, did your character say, "No thanks. I'll just level up. With all the HLAs, it will be about the same without the whole immortal evil taint."
In the end, my pc chose the good path of godhood. He survived fratricide, loss of divinity and hell. He was always the underdog who defeated enemies ten to twenty levels higher than him. He shall always be remembered as the David who destroyed Goliath. In the end, he saved the world from the taint of his evil father and promised to restore goodness and peace in the realm.
1) Get fancy weapons, armors and accessories (no brainer):
My fighters have thaco of 12-13 at level 7-8. With the best equipments, their thaco were improved to 2-3 (can be further enhanced by potions of storm giant strength, potion of power). For armor, my tank can get up to -16 AC.
2) Recharge wands
Summoning are the best cuz they buy very valuable time (there are 3 of them in the bg2 SoA and ToB). Wand of fire is good against trolls or simply something your mage should fire when they run out of magic missiles. Wands of spellstriking and cursing work very well against bosses. Wand of paralyzation is useful in at least one battle.
3) Keep those scrolls!
Required scrolls are Project Image, Simulacrum, Spell Trigger, Chain Contingency, Horrid Wilting, Time Stop, Bigby's Clenched Fist for Melissan. Recommended spells are Spell Sequencer, Power Word Blind and Wish.
Good job, and thanks for writing about it!