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"Maybe this time" [NO-RELOAD THREAD]: "The Tale of TEN THOUSAND Trials"

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  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,714
    Of course, post here. Not all of us follow the Bioware boards and the main intention of this thread was that it covers all the information itself.

    Also, congrats on beating the game once more, Alesia_BH!
    kcwisesemiticgoddessMusignylolien
  • DemivrgvsDemivrgvs Member Posts: 315
    @semiticgod I'm enjoying reading your run and it's quite insightful too for me. ;) I'll just comment on a few things.

    I see you are using the old SRV3, would you like to try V4 instead? It's better refined, more balanced, and fully compatible with EE.

    I see for example that you complain about V3 huge save penalties on many spells...well, V4 drastically changed that, going back to a more AD&D style (save penalty not strictly tied to spell lvl) and never going above -4 penalty (-5 and -6 were really insane, back then I was too much 3E oriented).

    When it comes to the new Iron Golem form something wrong must be going on and I'd like to make sure it doesn't happen on any install. What other sources of physical damage resistance do you have on?

    P.S Thanks for pointing out the Rod of Resurrection shapeshift bug, I guess I'll have to fix that for IR.
    kcwiseMusignylolien
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    @Demivrgvs: You don't need to nerf the Iron Golem form. The only reason it gives Yi Grovana such insane resistances is because she already has innate resistances by virtue of being a randomized character (the party's stats are all randomly generated). It's not unbalanced for a normal character, I think.

    It would be sad to see the Rod of Resurrection trick go away. I'm rather fond of these exploits, even if I don't end up using them. Still, the Iron Golem form is outrageously powerful if you get it at such a low level. I've tested the form with a Fighter/Mage/Cleric and several other characters and found that it greatly simplifies the gameplay if you're using it on a class that can't normally cast Shapechange.

    I'll install v4 and mention the content changes in my posts.
    kcwiseMusignylolien
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    BAHAHA!

    I have installed SR v4 as well as Item Revisions. I just looked at some of the new items.

    This changes everything.
    kcwiseDemivrgvsMusignylolien
  • DemivrgvsDemivrgvs Member Posts: 315
    @semiticgod you are my worst enemy, a "fu**ing cheesy exploiter"! :wink:

    A few things:
    - is SCS installed after SR? Because that's mandatory if you want SCS to actually take into account SR changes (SCS has specific checks for SR). If not, the game will work but SCS will assume spells work as per vanilla and does not skip a few spell tweaks on its own (which are skipped when SR is detected).
    - summoned snakes are from Animal Summoning V (druids have an AS spell at each lvl now)
    - I think you should read again how Physical Mirror works now :smiley:
    - jelly form immunities are as per PnP, the troll form has been moved to an appropriate ioun stone ;)
    semiticgoddessMusignylolien
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    @Demivrgvs: I do in fact have SR installed after SCS2. I thought SCS2 would override the SR files, so I made sure to install SR second. I'll go back and reinstall SCS2 so they take into account the SR spells.

    It's nice to see Physical Mirror has seen some buffs. With a Mirror Image effect, priests finally have a way of avoiding spell disruption, at least half of the time. I notice the Cloak of Mirroring has a similar effect.

    The cheese, the exploits... I've mentioned elsewhere that I tend to think more about how the game can be played than how it should be played. I just want to pick apart the system and see how it works. I have no real preference for how the game is supposed to be played.

    Usually I fall in love with a particular exploit, use it a while, and then move on to a new fling. You get to see so many more things that way.
    kcwiseJuliusBorisovMusignylolien
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    An exciting update for Imber and her friends.

    She died! HAHAHA!

    Anyway, I decided to try and kill Kangaxx. But first, we had an Elemental Lich to take care of.

    After having reinstalled SCS2 on top of SR, we find that the Elemental Lich is now using SR spells.
    image

    It doesn't know Dispelling Screen stacks, of course, but I'm not yet willing to use Acid Fog on it to disrupt its spells anyway, because it also has Protection from Acid active. We don't have the high-level debuffs to break down its defenses, so instead we'll have to wait things out. It casts its first Time Stop undisturbed and removes Rius' defenses with Spellstrike.
    image

    SCS2 liches are aware of the fact that their spells lose duration during Time Stop, so they make sure to renew PFMW before they become vulnerable again.
    image

    Rius flees to renew some of her defenses, while I buff up Imber's Project Image clone. The Lich nearly kills my Skeleton Warrior (I got Rius to scribe a Summon Skeleton Warrior spell, despite her awful 45% chance of success), so I hit it with Resilient Sphere. Oddly enough, the Skeleton Warrior is not pinned by the spell, but it does seem to get the immunities the spell grants.
    image

    Our MR isn't all at 100 anymore, since Poppy stops buffing at 72, so the Lich's multiple Sphere of Chaos spells actually manage to harm us. Meanwhile, it keeps renewing its defenses, just in case one of us tries to hit it.
    image

    Finally it gets around to actually attacking us. With our terrible saves vs. breath, we are in no shape to handle a direct hit from Cone of Cold.
    image

    Soon after that, however, its defenses wear off. No PFMW basically means death.
    image

    We grab the Golden Torso and cheat in the Golden Arm and Leg instead of going back to fetch them from the tomb of the Shade Lich, whom I destroyed earlier on.

    Now we have to fight Kangaxx. But first, there's a pretty nasty battle on the first floor because of the Tactics mod, one I'm not very familiar with. I don't have great confidence in my success, but I'm not really afraid of failing the run.

    In this fight, we face two Liches and a bunch of fighter types, all at once, in a very tiny space. I decide to tank out the Liches as before, and concentrate on killing the fighters. Poppy gets nailed by a damage spell, and nearly dies.
    image

    That's not actually 1 HP. She at 5 or so. Her minimum HP limit is not why she lived.

    I decide to turn Yi Grovana into a rat to hold off the fighters so Poppy can heal herself and cast Stoneskin (which I forgot to cast before the battle began). The Liches begin casting Time Stop. One of them does something I've never seen an enemy do before: it spawns in a clone.
    image

    Yi Grovana, of course, dispels the clone immediately with her already active True Sight. Tactics enemies aren't quite so bright, actually. But then, I'm comparing them to SCS2 enemies, who are quite brilliant.

    The other Lich conjures a Hakeashar--very bad news.
    image

    Aside from draining spells, Hakeashars in SR also can hit their targets with Feeblemind. I've been trying to slay a dwarven fighter over the past several rounds, but divert my attention to the Hakeashar instead. Also notice Poppy is now truly at 1 HP, and only alive thanks to her minimum HP limit. I only noticed she was missing a Stoneskin spell after she hit 1 HP.

    Meanwhile, the enemy grunts keep hacking away at Yi Grovana, despite her immunity to physical damage.
    image

    Notice the undead summons that the Liches are starting to bring out. They have many such spells, and soon the screen gets filled with them. Imber hurries over to kill them with Sunfire.
    image

    The Lich to the left appears to have a clone, which must have appeared after Yi Grovana's True Seeing spell ran out.

    There's only so much I can do against so many enemies. Imber spawns in a clone to save on Sunfire spells, but a hostile Dispel Magic spell dispels both the Lich's clone and Imber's.
    image

    Worse yet, Yi Grovana's rat attack has been dispelled, despite the effect being tagged as non-dispellable. She now only has her normal resistances, which are nowhere near sufficient to survive the enemy fighters.

    I have Yi turn into an Iron Golem, but her huge circle teleports her behind Rius and Poppy, preventing her from acting as a tank. I run outside to change our position. The enemies flood out of the door.
    image

    Seconds after leaving the room, Imber suddenly dies.
    image

    Turns out that that dwarf had a vorpal sword. It had a 15% chance per hit of forcing a save vs. death at -2 or killing the target, an effect which bypasses magic resistance. So why didn't we notice that earlier? Why didn't any of my other characters get killed by the sword, after so many rounds had passed?

    Well, if the party is fully buffed, then everyone in the group except for Imber has a pretty excellent save vs. death. If the dwarf ever hit them with the vorpal effect, they must have made their saves.

    I didn't want to quit the game without at least trying to win the fight. This time, I had Rius cast a couple of Acid Fog spells, and absolutely trounced the enemy, despite Yi Grovana dying in the first round against a vorpal strike. Turns out the Liches not only had no Protection from Acid spell active; they were also too stupid to walk 10 feet away to escape the cloud. This, combined with a PFMW spell on Rius and a Defensive Spin for Poppy to protect them from the vorpal, allowed me to concentrate my energy on killing the dwarf. Once the dwarf was down, I cleared up the remaining melee enemies. Shortly before I finished off the last Minotaur, one of the Liches died from acid damage, while the other managed to cast Heal on itself. But it had no PFMW spell active after that whole business was over, allowing me to slay it within a couple rounds.

    Foreknowledge makes such a big difference. I've only fought that battle once before, and never noticed the dwarf had a vorpal sword. That one detail ended the game for me. But when I knew the dwarf could kill me despite my Stoneskins and MR, and I knew the Liches had no immunity to acid damage, the fight was a cakewalk.
    kcwiseJuliusBorisovGoturalMusigny
  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486
    I'm sorry about the Imber's demise @semiticgod. But those were some epic Lich battles there... I had never seen (let alone played) the Tactics pre-Kangaxx battle. You actually did very well. It's evident that Imber wouldn't have fallen had you known about the Dwarf's vorpal blade.

    Any ideas on what's next?
    kcwiseJuliusBorisovMusigny
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    Incidentally... I have a rather interesting character who unfortunately is suffering from opcode 165, which pauses the target, a very rare paralyzing effect. Does anybody know if there's a way to un-pause a character? The opcode for un-pausing something is 270, but I don't know if I've ever seen any spell or item that actually used it.
    kcwiseMusignylolien
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    @Blackraven: Pause is indeed an in-game effect, though it might not be identical to the normal pause. It's the effect that prevents you from doing anything when you're casting Burning Hands or Aganazzar's Scorcher.

    Anyway... There's still another question I need to answer. Two of my characters have an effect that basically means they change into another .cre file, but this is not a polymorph effect. It replaces the creature, but since it kills the original creature, I have interpreted it to mean that the character changes into the new creature. I believe the change should make the original character adopt the new creature's ability scores and appearance, but I don't know about class or level. Should the character adopt its transformation's class and level, or retain its own?
    BlackravenkcwiseMusignylolien
  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486

    @Blackraven: Pause is indeed an in-game effect, though it might not be identical to the normal pause. It's the effect that prevents you from doing anything when you're casting Burning Hands or Aganazzar's Scorcher.

    Hm ok. Still, is there anything that undoes the pause, other than the lapse of time involved in the casting of the spell?

    Should the character adopt its transformation's class and level, or retain its own?

    Transformation's a very interesting effect. I have again no answer to your question. Since the original creature dies, I'd say the character should get all the characteristics of the new form, including class and level. However I don't know whether that's desirable from a mechanical point of view.
    kcwiseMusigny
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    @Blackraven: All I know is that there's an opcode for un-pausing a target. I don't know if anything in the vanilla game ever uses it, though. The engine permits it, but there might not exist a method of doing it in the game.

    As for the transformation... well, then we'd be looking at a level 29/30 halfling mage with nice stats and some absolutely crazy bonuses to spell slots. The only downside is that it would start with an empty spellbook, and it would only be able to pick 2 HLAs, at over 7 million XP.

    But if we DON'T take on the critter's class and level, then the other character is a bard with Improved Alacrity and a -3 bonus to casting time, albeit with 1 INT, no Potions of Wisdom, and some screwy spell slots. Either way, it would unbalance the early game. Do I pick the level 30 wizard or the bard who can deal 48d6 area effect fire damage in one round?
    kcwiseMusignylolien
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