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David the Gnome BG2 no reload challenge

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  • MacHurtoMacHurto Member Posts: 731
    Well in Bryannlaw now. Petrified the Roenall head of family in my courtyard (it is really a shame they cannot follow you indoors) as a warning to anyone trying to f*** with the DeArnise again. He will stay like this until his family signs the proposed papers leaving DeArnise to Nalia. Then, he can be made flesh again and go back to them. Seems a bit evil, but boy, these roenalls are thick as hell. Only very clear statements can get through the clouds of their noble brains. And honestly, being stupid is not a good reason to kill someone. This way they learn the lesson.

    Back with the shadow thieves, all missions of chapter 3 were very easy. Vampires are a joke once you get that necklace. How come people think baldurans shield is cheesy but not the necklace? Bodhi fell easily to summons + azuredge.

    Now chapter 4
    CrevsDaakBlackravenJuliusBorisovFredjo
  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486
    edited April 2014
    Petrifying Mr Roenall is awesome!
    Post edited by Blackraven on
    MacHurtoCrevsDaak
  • MacHurtoMacHurto Member Posts: 731
    At Bodhi's maze. Has it ever happened to anyone that the clay golem in the room beside the huge deadly trap just randomly moves and gets killed in it? Very weird. A suicidal golem
    BlackravenCrevsDaak
  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486
    Never had that happen... Not that you would have had to worry about it if it didn't kill itself.
    By the way you're getting dengerously close to completing SoA on no-reload no?
    MacHurto
  • MacHurtoMacHurto Member Posts: 731
    edited April 2014
    @blackraven hehe yes :-) still have the dangerous enemies ahead. Mages with lv9 spells, irenicus, dragons, illicids...

    Havent faced anyone dangerous yet (killed the liches with the scroll) and have had several lucky survivals so I would say my chances at the moment are 50-50% :-) Much higher than I would have thought a month back!

    Edit: when i say dangerous I mean dangerous to someone with inmunity to level drain/balduran shield/shield of harmony
  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486
    Well I'm glad you're cautious, that will surely help increase your chances of survival.
    MacHurto
  • MacHurtoMacHurto Member Posts: 731
    By the way, got the most useless tome of infinite spells in history. 2 pages: fireball and burning hands.
    CrevsDaak
  • MacHurtoMacHurto Member Posts: 731
    @Blackraven‌ i might die from unknown spells enemies have (inprisonment or whatever). Illicids are also a problem. Or shield of harmony protects against their powers?
  • GoturalGotural Member Posts: 1,229
    You will find some very useful potion of psionic blocking in the illithid dungeon, use them at will because they won't serve you much after the Underdark !
    MacHurtoCrevsDaakBlackravenJuliusBorisov
  • CrevsDaakCrevsDaak Member Posts: 7,155
    Gotural said:

    You will find some very useful potion of psionic blocking in the illithid dungeon, use them at will because they won't serve you much after the Underdark !

    Watch out of ToB's and WK's Enhanced Mind Flayers if you have SCS, put then those are very few and a Chaotic Commands over your tank is enough. You'll also need Prot. from Level Drain for ToB and WK's Mind Flayers because they have Vampiric Illithds.
    BlackravenGoturalJuliusBorisov
  • MacHurtoMacHurto Member Posts: 731
    edited April 2014
    At the sahuaguin city. No problems is spellhold other than forgetting to bring Yoshimo. David has 3M PX and 1 greater whirlwind.

    So far, this run is being lot of fun :-)
    JuliusBorisovBlackravenCrevsDaak
  • mumumomomumumomo Member Posts: 635
    The end of SOA is not very hard :

    - Get the staff of the magi spell trap on ALL THE TIME. That way you are immune to every nasty effect from traps or mages.
    - avoid the mind flayers lair. if you really want ot do it, use summons
    - once you get level 10 spells, keep a planetar summoned all the time : he will do all the work for you and you will be 100% safe.
    - for all the "difficult fights" (dragons, high level mages, irenicus) cast timestop. Since you are an illusionist with no access to ADHW or skull trap, the best way is probably to either kill them in melee or shapechange into a mindflayer.
    JuliusBorisovCrevsDaakMacHurto
  • MacHurtoMacHurto Member Posts: 731
    edited April 2014
    In the underdark. The Balor fell quickly. The party of drow were very resiliant. Didnt remember them like that but I usually have lots of melee. The mage and lich in the sphere gave no problems. The main problem has been that imprisoned mage with the portals. I fought him and well, the guy casted time stop, went to aerie that was out of sight, killed her will power word kill and then when he was low on health, he time stoped, gated a balor and used dimension door to escape.

    I had never seen him escaping with the loot before. It was real cool. It also proves I have to step up to kill mages quickly from now on.

    Oh, I am gonna get a beating when I ressurect her for being greedy...

    Edit: I summoned a deva against the drow but it didnt do much, I have to say
    BlackravenCrevsDaakJuliusBorisov
  • MacHurtoMacHurto Member Posts: 731
    Done with most of the drow city (until killing soulafein) and both the kuatoa and beholder lairs. Killed the older orbs with greater whirlwind to avoid them casting inprisonment. The demogorgon knights (a great Blood Bowl team name, btw) in the other lair hit very hard. Skelleton summons andranged work well to avoid all their casting and the melee damage. The rest has been quite easy. Well, except not sleeping with that drow. I guess it goes with Wisdom because she would not believe I was an eunuch or that aerie had me or anything! (Never happened before to me). Luckily the option of "belong to someone else in the other city" had no requirements.

    Wondering whether to do the illithid lair. Would the greenstone amulet protect me against all their attacks? Because that + a couple mordy swords + several improved haste should make me cruise the level, I think. Opinions? @mumumomo‌ you seemed very wary of the place. Is the tactic above not good enough?
    BlackravenJuliusBorisovCrevsDaak
  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486
    edited April 2014
    Greenstone Amulet, Aerie's Chaotic Commands could work. But my experience is that Skeletons and above all Invisible Stalkers work wonders. You could have Aerie summon a bunch of Invisible Stalkers, and David summon some Mordies, and have him turn invisible (only to accompany the summons, not to fight). They should do the job for you, or most of it. You could repeat with more summons (e.g. Skeletons).
    JuliusBorisov
  • MacHurtoMacHurto Member Posts: 731
    edited April 2014
    @Blackraven‌ but Chaotic commands protects against something that the greenstone doesnt? The Blast that stuns, perhaps?

    Also, are the invisible servants also magic resistant? Or why are they good against mindflayers?
  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486
    @MacHurto
    According to this link Skeletal Warriors seem to be the best summons and Chaotic Command on your party members works as well. Apparently Invisible Stalkers have been nerfed.
    MacHurtoJuliusBorisovCrevsDaak
  • MacHurtoMacHurto Member Posts: 731
    Mindflayer lair cleared. Skellies do not work as intended and die very quickly. A group of 5 of them hasted fell to 6 mindflayers. Probably a bug.
    Mordy swords cleared a room. The rest had to be done the old way: Brine potion + ranged on david (returning axe) and jan (returning dagger).

    Jan died as soon as we saw the elder brain as he casts confusion in a non psionic way. Very surprising. David just killed everything in sight by himself and then resurrected him. That shield of harmony is really one of the best items in this game.

    Have also killed the drow lich (breach+melee) and wiped that house full of guards right after. Took a lot of summons to keep them occupied but it was easy enough.

    Now to end this and start chapter 6 and the big challenges: dragons, groups of cowled wizards and the twisted rune.
    BlackravenCrevsDaakJuliusBorisov
  • MacHurtoMacHurto Member Posts: 731
    edited April 2014
    Kill dragons... Check (mordy swords + deva + breach did most of it). Fumigate sewers to get rid of an illithid infestation... Check (again, thee swords + impr. Haste and chaotic commands). Destroy a Twisted Rune cell for no apparent reason... Check (trap the lich to oblivion and pick the rest one by one. Extremely easy. Even without traps,I guess you can do like with Layene and you cast impr inv. + inmunity (dev) to safely kill the lich.)

    Now, waiting to kill the rest of the cowled wizards and then to Bodhi. To be honest, it seems unlikely anything can kill me by this point given my gear. Only at around 4.2 million XP which bugs me. Do you really get 5.5 million XP overall from Bodhi to the end of SoA? (For my multis to get to 6 mill and lv 9 spells + HLAs) I dont think so. How come I am reaching much lower XP numbers than with a full party? I have done everything :-?
    JuliusBorisov
  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486
    edited April 2014
    MacHurto said:

    Kill dragons... Check (mordy swords + deva + breach did most of it). Fumigate sewers to get rid of an illithid infestation... Check (again, thee swords + impr. Haste and chaotic commands). Destroy a Twisted Rune cell for no apparent reason... Check (trap the lich to oblivion and pick the rest one by one. Extremely easy. Even without traps,I guess you can do like with Layene and you cast impr inv. + inmunity (dev) to safely kill the lich.)

    Now, waiting to kill the rest of the cowled wizards and then to Bodhi. To be honest, it seems unlikely anything can kill me by this point given my gear. Only at around 4.2 million XP which bugs me. Do you really get 5.5 million XP overall from Bodhi to the end of SoA? (For my multis to get to 6 mill and lv 9 spells + HLAs) I dont think so. How come I am reaching much lower XP numbers than with a full party? I have done everything :-?

    How many are you? Three? Jan, Aerie, David? I wonder if Bodhi + Suldanessalar will get you to 6 million each before the final showdown. But if you've done everything your XP should be on par.

    Do you have shitloads of gold? If so you could raise your XP by buying a lot of scrolls, erase spells from your spellbook, copy spells from the scrolls you bought into your spellbook, erase, copy, erase, copy, etc.

    EDIT:

    @SionIV had something interesting to say about your current XP levels (which are indeed relatively low):
    SionIV said:


    But there are several factors that get taken into consideration here. Certain places like the Cult quest in temple district, Firkraag, Temple ruins and even Druid Grove will give you much more experience if you're higher level when you complete them.

    Has he gotten into Watcher's keep yet?

    Post edited by Blackraven on
  • MacHurtoMacHurto Member Posts: 731
    @blackraven @SionIV‌ no watchers keep yet, but I always do that in ToB and still reach 3M+ with a 6 man party by the end of SoA.

    Having 3M with a 4 man party going to spellhold seems like a lot. That is the amount of XP I have now (4M with a 3 man). I have been scribing everything (without deleting and re-scribing) I have found for all three characters (charname, aerie and jansen). Picked every lock and trap. At firkraag I had to kill 6+ vampires in the undead room. Not sure if it gets harder than that. Only thing I havent done is other NPCs quests.

    Very puzzling. Not sure what I am missing here.
    JuliusBorisov
  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486
    MacHurto said:


    Only thing I havent done is other NPCs quests.

    Does that include Planar Sphere? If you go there with Valygar (or, less elegantly, his corpse), you have one sourece of XP still waiting for you.
  • MacHurtoMacHurto Member Posts: 731
    edited April 2014
    @Blackraven‌ i did the planar sphere. I mean more like having anomen to do his quest and stuff like that. I guess I can do korgan's as it is fast but I doubt it will change much. Rasaads quest shouæd give a fair amount of XP so sill do that

    My experience from kills seems to be below 4.5M XP. Even with the kills from the summons it should not be above 5.5M. How much XP from kills can you get in chapters 4 and 5? That could be on par with @SionIV‌ if it is around 2M.
    JuliusBorisov
  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486
    MacHurto said:

    @Blackraven‌ i did the planar sphere. I mean more like having anomen to do his quest and stuff like that. I guess I can do korgan's as it is fast but I doubt it will change much.

    My experience from kills seems to be below 4.5M XP. Even with the kills from the summons it should not be above 5.5M

    @SionIV‌ you say you had this amount in kills before going to Spellhold? Where the hell are all those amnish XP bags hiding in my run?? :-D

    Maybe you could do a few Watcher's Keep levels before ToB?
    Also, what @SionIV said, your quest order may have to do with it. Druid Grove for example is great to tackle early on (if only for the wonderful Shield of Harmony imo), but the monsters are lower level than when you wait a bit...
  • MacHurtoMacHurto Member Posts: 731
    @Blackraven‌ I thought that would even out as then other quests will be done later. Anyway, that just means more time until Lv9 spells. For ToB i plan to take imoen and sarevok so it will take a while
    Blackraven
  • SionIVSionIV Member Posts: 2,689
    edited April 2014
    Taking the druid grove for an example.

    If you're low level you'll end up fighting normal trolls, if you're high level you'll fight spirit trolls.

    Temple ruins will have you fight mummies OR Bone golems + liches.

    Cult of the beholder can either have a ton of Beholders or just a few gauths.

    While it isn't that over the top experience, you'll still gain quite a bit more if you save them to later and do fetch quests early. The reason this happens for me is that i play no-reload so i save the 'harder' places for last, like firkraag.

    This is my experience table on my new team. I've done the two first levels of watcher's keep, but haven't went down to Mook at the harbor yet.

    Would also like to mention that while watcher's keep 1 & 2 doesn't hand out much experience, level 3 is a goldmine.

    -----------------------------------------------------------------

    And quoting from the other thread :

    "The reason he is reaching much lower XP numbers is quest experience. Many quests in BG2 give quest experience which is delivered to every single party member.

    So for completing a quest that gives you 45 000 quest experience, that's 45 000 to each person. In a 6 man party that is 270 000 experience gained. So the more party members you have, the more experience you'll have at the end of the day."

    So my 4 man party should have more experience gained than your three man party all in all.
    CrevsDaak
  • MacHurtoMacHurto Member Posts: 731
    @SionIV‌ Yes, the druid grove was probably low level although there were two spirit trolls in the troll cave. Umar ruins had a lich, I think. At least two bone golems. This is a no-reload challenge and I followed @mumumomo‌ quest order that can be seen at the beginning of the thread :-)

    All in all I think the difference should come from quest rewards but I left for spellhold with less that 3M/character and they were three characters only. In fact I seem to hit 3M at the Saguahin city. Do you get less XP if you play in core, perhaps?
  • SionIVSionIV Member Posts: 2,689
    edited April 2014
    MacHurto said:

    @SionIV‌ Yes, the druid grove was probably low level although there were two spirit trolls in the troll cave. Umar ruins had a lich, I think. At least two bone golems. This is a no-reload challenge and I followed @mumumomo‌ quest order that can be seen at the beginning of the thread :-)

    All in all I think the difference should come from quest rewards but I left for spellhold with less that 3M/character and they were three characters only. In fact I seem to hit 3M at the Saguahin city. Do you get less XP if you play in core, perhaps?

    You don't get less experience from playing on Core difficulty.

    There are also minor things like, did you explore every house? Even the commoner houses have locked containers and sometimes even traps. Did you ever run over a trap or disarmed them all? How many scrolls did you find and did you write them all down?

    On the 3 200 000 experience run i had done Watcher's keep level 1 and 2 if i remember right.
  • MacHurtoMacHurto Member Posts: 731
    @SionIV‌ no, I haven't explored every house and I have triggered a few traps. Still, that does bot explain how I hit 3M after Spellhold, I would think :-D Scrolls, I have stolen all I have needed. Everyone has all spells they could inscribe.

    Might be Watchers Keep. In any case, that is how it is, no more point discussing it. Just wanted lv9 spells before ToB, but even without, I think they can manage.

    SionIV
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