Don't sweat it, weird bugs happened. In the end we had 5 copies of Zhurlong's boots for some reason.
Blind people running like headless chicken is kinda stupid. It made Silke so annoying (she was hasted). We also discovered a bug (?) with Neera when one of the fighters ran off and we had to search for him.
I'm surprised my 16 STR berserker can do work with mundane weapons.
@semiticgod@Meyahi As @Bengoshi and I said while we were playing, The running off thing is due to a change made to the AI by the EE games. It was decided that it was unreasonable and unfair for blind characters to just sit there like sitting ducks and wait to be killed. So now they do something more reasonable and a bit more challenging to the players. Now they wander randomly to simulate seeking a target or trying to escape. That is probably close to what a player character would do if their entire team got blinded.
I really want to exploit the blind thief trick with a Bounty Hunter, but my previous attempts didn't go so well. I started a new run with this in mind.
First, and most importantly, I'm starting out with new faces only. I'm limiting my re-use of the same old soundsets, portraits, and names. I desperately need to keep the parties fresh. Second, I'm structuring an entire party around the blind thief trick. This party has two blind Bounty Hunters (because Maze traps), two blind unkitted Monks (because Stunning Blow), and two non-blind Archers (because Called Shot) to guide the others.
Everyone can use stealth, and the monks and thieves can hide in plain sight. Basically no spellcasting, big THAC0 and AC penalties on our frontline monks, and no missile weapons besides the ones the Archers use. It's a weird group.
Our Bhaalspawn? Zalos, a halfling Bounty Hunter. I judged this to be the safest position for the Bhaalspawn, as it had the best saving throws.
The blindness negates her DEX bonus to AC and costs her 9 levels of THAC0 bonuses. She is very squishy in combat, but she won't be engaging in much.
Our other Bounty Hunter? Also a halfling. Meet Nibidda.
We got some really crazy stat rolls on some of these people. I really like this picture... there need to be more interesting-looking old people portraits for these games. Barely any male in fantasy portraits looks older than 40, and barely any female looks older than 30.
And our Archers? First is a deathly pale half-elf with an inexplicably high STR and the curious name of Xiaohei, Little Black. She specializes in slings because of the STR bonus, and darts because she can switch between them easily while using a shield.
Actually a pretty bad name in Chinese, but, you know, whatever. All three of those portraits are from a Buzzfeed article about some artists' vivid and photorealistic portraits.
Our other Archer is Gloomwort, the only recurring character here, who used to be a druid in an IWD run.
He specializes in shortbows and crossbows, filling in the pips that Xiaohei lacks. Doesn't he look like John Kerry? Or an old tree?
The monks? First is Gelimbi, with a portrait I'm very fond of.
It's a redone version of a painting from Ocarina of Time, which I only noticed years after I played the game was supposed to be two hands holding a mask. But I always saw it as a bejowled green man in a black and white sweater with Krusty the Clown hair in a crouched position, a solemn expression on his eyeless face. That image stuck in my memory more than any other image in that game, because it was so creepy. He's barely visible in this version, however.
Our other monk is Azorre. I thought this portrait was kind of cute.
I like this group. It looks new and sounds new. And the playstyle is utterly foreign.
Since everyone in the group can hide, we sneak past the Duergar and mob the Mineral Mephit. We can now steal the Sewage Golem key!
Even though we get more XP from using the Activation Stone instead.
We don't do a very good job of sneaking past the Otyugh. Nibidda, our designated lockpicker and trap disarmer, had to break invisibility within the Otyugh's field of vision, but he couldn't quite hide afterward, and had to run.
Azorre blocks the Otyugh while still invisible, granting Nibidda some breathing room.
Eventually I give up on trying to hide from the Otyugh and just whomp it.
We do pretty good, handling much of the danger while weathering the damage. And when our frontliners get hurt--which they will, because they're low-level monks with a +4 AC penalty due to blindness--they can Hide with No Sight and get enough room to use Lay on Hands.
Hide with No Sight also lets us steal an Oil of Speed without drawing the attention of Ilyich's men.
It makes traps a pain, however, as Nibidda has to be practically on top of them in order to detect them.
The Mephit Portals are rather easy to hit. And they can be backstabbed, unlike any other construct.
I want to rest before we face Ilyich, so I make sure we use our per-day abilities on the other enemies around the place. Special Snares wreck the final group of Duergar, but our Bounty Hunters don't hang back after the enemy gets slowed.
We move the monks ahead to fight the Mage, who can only hit two party members with Horror due to the way we spread out the group.
A Special Snare slows the mage as well and eases his fall.
We still have traps left, so we go to the Assassins on the way out. Nibidda gets targeted when he fails to hide--as he didn't realize one of the enemies was right next to him when he tried to do so.
SCS backstabbers go for the characters with the worst AC, which means thieves are always very vulnerable. But being able to set traps mid-combat is a powerful offensive tool.
We lay our remaining traps near Ilyich and rest. The traps take care of the Smoke Mephit, though that's not much benefit to us on its own.
Mid-combat traps thin out the Duergar when we lure them out, and Stunning Blow keeps attacks off of us.
Ilyich's mage friend disables many of us, but he can't handle trap damage combined with missile fire. It's too much for a single Mirror Image to absorb.
Of course, I not only allow, I encourage others to share their screenshots, emotions and just give any kind of a feedback for the MP run.
To me, it's also the first experience of an international MP, my previous attempts included only me and my wife playing BG.
So far, so good. Everything is so quick in the multiplayer. Unexpected things happen quickly, lucky and unlucky moments come quickly. But the best thing about the MP is the contant conversation between the participants. Thanks, @semiticgod for reporting the lines
The Re-Excellent Adventures of Epona Rae: Chapter 3 (Part 2: We Don't Go To Spellhold)
Narrator: Chromatic Orb is an excellent spell. I never realized. The party has entirely switched over from Magic Missiles to COs by now. Although CO is save reliant and doesn't do as much damage, it synergizes with the party's spells so much better. Much of Epona's firepower stems from being able to one-hit-kill, and the other party members are following the same track.
After leaving Trademeet, Epona returns to the Wild refuge and speaks to Telana. She tells us to meet Hayes in the Bridge District and find a wild mage by the name of Daxus. Sounds easy enough.
We get ambushed in the Delosar Inn, then again outside. Both fights last only seconds. Epona wipes the floor with the Red Wizards. Three of the mercenaries are petrified, then another is death spelled. The Amnian Guards take down the remaining archer.
Epona had a Talisman of the Hearthfire, but decided to keep Daxus around for the battle. She had no idea it would be over so quickly, or that the Red Wizard assault wouldn't be stronger.
Frustratingly, keeping Daxus around for the fight means that the option to teleport is no longer available. Why? No reason. It's just not there anymore. Very frustrating. We tell Daxus to follow us outside.
We are whisked away by the game, even though Epona and Daxus are perfectly capable of walking out the door all by themselves.
I looked up the definition of 'Follow' in the dictionary. It does not involve anything like this:
Narrator: This kind of stuff annoys me at times. Why is the party arranged like that? Why is Daxus, a man we're supposed to defend--and who was supposed to follow behind us--purposely thrust out into the line of fire like that? Why can't I just play this damn game my own way, instead of having my people arranged like chess pieces on whatever board the programmers decide they wanted me to play? Sheesh...
I was expecting Daxus to get murderized because he's dropped out in front of the party. The Red Wizards ignore him, however. Thankfully.
Skull traps disurpt the enemy's ranks, then chromatic orbs petrify them. They are broken down into chunks. I was getting great mileage out of this level 1 spell this point, and the party's higher level abilities were more or less still fully available. Things were looking up.
We send Daxus off with Hayes and return to the Wild Refuge.
Epona: Oh crackers, did I leave the oven on?
We speak with Telana and discover that the Red Wizards have taken the wild mages to Waukeen's Promenade. Neera blows up the bouncer and begins to act like an idiot, even by the standards normally allowed for vengeance-seeking hotheads. Once again, Epona must fight against the dark urge to slap someone.
She also meets an old friend.
Epona: I'm definitely going to come back as a shadowdancer!
Narrator: Epona doesn't partake in melee combat, but she purchases the dagger anyway. For nostalgia's sake. Maybe she can get off a backstab at some point. She doesn't really have the strength or THAC0 for it, but you never know.
We convince Gul Dukeem to open door number 1. She is recognized, but chromatic orbs and Yoshimo's traps make quick work of the attackers.
I've done this quest once before. The last time I did it, there was an entire company of mercenaries on the other side. Epona opens the door while cloaked do a little recon.
It's not what we were expecting.
Epona: Wait a minute... you knew what was going to be on the other side of that door, and you sent me to open it up anyway?
Narrator: I have no recollection of the event in question.
Epona: Mm-hmmmmm.... riiiiight.
Narrator: It seems that doing some of the wild mage quests changes how the assault on the Wizard Enclave plays out. Mironda, rather than a non-descript Bernard-type NPC, is behind the bar. Instead of finding a room full of hostile mercenaries, we find people sipping cocktails.
As she explores, Epona sees evidence that the relationship between wizard and mercenary is on the rocks. Fadell's journal makes clear that losses are high but morale is low. Epona even spots a Red Wizard trying to extort sex out of a female merc. She tries to get Fadell to down a few more drinks in honour of her fallen comrades, but the merc leader doesn't go for it. So Epona decides to try Mironda.
Epona starts the brawl by disintegrating the closest Red Wizard. Then runs like hell, taking care to avoid running into anyone's knees. Hardly anyone pays attention to her in the scuffle.
She eventually makes her way to the slave pen to free Ghallus, but a Thayan Fighter surprises her. Epona deals with him in a swift and humorous manner.
Polymorph Other might as well be a kill-weapon like Disintegrate. When the target fails a save and is transformed, their hitpoints are dramatically reduced. So much so that 1 or 2 minute meteors from Jan's robe, a chromatic orb or magic missile can finish them off. It's a decent option for times when you've expended all of your other insta-kill abilities.
Offscreen, the rest of the party prepares to breach the door between Gul Dukeem's shop and the bar. When they do, a hail of poisonous trap-arrows flood the room, decimating the Thayan forces and giving the disgruntled mercs a helpful boost.
One interesting thing I learned during this battle is that charmed enemies don't turn hostile if they are harmed by allies. Epona turns a few of the Red Wizards with her POV gun, then allows the mercenaries to cut them down without retaliation.
Narrator: The mercs leave after the battle and Epona makes her way deeper into the enclave, where she finds Lanneth. Ghallus returns with some beefy Amnian Legionnaires in tow, who make mincemeat out of the red wizards.
Epona: Let's see what's behind door number 2 then, shall we?
Image: Epona breaches the door to Lanneth's lab with traps, seriously wounding the Red Wizards and fighters on the otherside. However, Lanneth has enough to potions to fully heal herself back up again.
Luckily, while waiting for the poison to do it's work, some of Lanneth's protections wear off.
Epona elects to deal with the Red Witch in other way.
Image: A dominated Lanneth shreds her former comrades at upper-right, stripping them of protections and pelting them with missiles.
Epona, meanwhile, death rays anyone who attempts to flee out the door.
Image: Lanneth, unable to respond due to being dominated, is put down before she can return to her senses and unleash any sunfire spells on the party.
It's actually kind of a horrible way to kill someone, when you think about it. They can see it all about to happen but cannot do anything to stop it; Then it's all over too soon for them to regain their senses. What a sucky way to go. Epona's not all that keen on it either, but sometimes you just have to do what works.
Narrator: Neera's quest was a slaughterfest the first time I did it on another playthrough, so it was nice to see that there was another way to do it. If you don't get Halfling's Help for Mironda in the Wild Refuge, then you end up facing a room of already hostile mercenaries. It was a relief to turn them on their Red Wizard masters and get some help this time through.
With Lanneth out of the picture Epona rescues the wild mages and returns to the Wild Refuge. Though she needs to make sure everything is okay and get some closure, in truth there is only one person on her mind. Zaviak. She has something to show him.
Narrator: Zaviak only has one person on his mind, though. Telana. Epona loses yet another romantic opportunity. The man also makes no mention of Wilson.
Seriously. Epona saved his life, found his bear and traveled an entire day just to come see him, and all the guy can do is gawk at Telana. What is a female gnome honestly supposed to do in this game?
Epona: [sigh] Just can't give this away.
Narrator: Still, all in all this was a very lucrative mission. Epona and her gang left with an entire arsenal of new wands and gear. Most importantly we got our hands on a spellstrike wand. This should make taking down mages so much easier, especially now that Epona also has a true seeing gem.
Now Epona is all set to face Bodhi.... except for the whole level drain thing. Realizing we'll need some help against the undead, Epona sinks to a new low.
Anomen: Hellooooooo, My Lady. You couldn't get the best, so no everything is coming up Anomen! Huzzah!
Epona: Not my finest moment.
Narrator: I neglected to tell Epona that I'd forgotten all about the Protection from Undead scrolls we had. Nobody tell her this. My fault, totally. She'd kill me if she found out.
Bodhi's lair was actually quite easy. Vampires don't seem to do well with Disintegration. Every single vampire hit was vapourized. I can't even recall if they actually got to save against Epona's death ray.
For the larger groups of enemies, Anomen made a useful tool (pun intended) on point, invisible and pinging Turn Undead every round. He was able to scatter the vampires, allowing Epona to hunt them down singularly with Disintegration or the Wand of Paralyzation. The wand got a lot of use zapping the held enemies.
Epona: I like to pretend I'm a stormtrooper. Pew pew!
When the vampire lair was cleared, the party confronted Bodhi.
Epona: Bodhi, you have a drinking problem.
Yoshimo: You have a built a fortress literally flowing with red wine. Creating such copious amounts of your own brew takes alcoholism to a whole new level. You're grog is cutting into the Shadow Thieves' market; they've tasked us with taking you to rehab. Of course, though, we do this because we're your friends.
Anomen: Yes, we care about you.
Bodhi: Ano... Anomen? What are you doing here?
Anomen: You never called...
Epona: Don't tell me you two... you know.
Bodhi: Yes, okay. We did. Who do you think drove me to the bottle?
Epona: It's time to get some help.
Bodhi: I don't have a problem. Quit badgering me. I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe you have a problem. You're not my brother, I'm moving out of this place, I don't live here anymore, you can't tell me what to do!
[Bodhi retreats]
Anomen: Another victory for Anomen!
Epona: Sheesh, he wouldn't shut up about that. The tale grew with each telling, as well. After a night in the Five Flagons he was telling everyone that he jumped on Bodhi's back and impaled her with a spear.
The party underwent some changes before departing for Spellhold. Jan returned from his romantic night with Lissa.
Epona and gang tolerated Anomen for as long as was gnomishly possible, but in the end they were broken like a battered ship upon the unyielding rock of his abrasive barnacle-strewn personality. 'Chalk up another one for Anomen' quickly became a broken-record mantra, repeated at the end of every retelling of his glorious--and apparently solo--victory over the vampire Bodhi. Everytime he opened his mouth the party lost a measure of its sanity. Wilson went berserk and mauled him.
Epona now had a dead body on her hands, but she handled the issue adroitly.
Epona: Yes, I'd like to report another Skinner Murder.
The team then went to Spellhold. During the week long voyage Epona and Yoshimo had plenty of time to discuss and rehearse how they would play his betrayal and eventual death. Since Yoshimo has officially been killed more times than Sean Bean, he was up for a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Five Flagon's Acting Guild. Th two decided to plan something special.
Yoshimo is of the mind to play his death in a soulful and thought provoking way, drawing inspiration from Delivio's death in Enter The Ninja. He hopes to capture man's futile struggle of free-will vs. circumstance with a single poignant facial expression.
Epona thinks he should go for gold. Ray guns open up a whole new spectrum of death options not available among the standard stock of death-throes offered by sword play, and she was favouring a more dramatic approach that would be remembered through the ages, a la 1974's Karate Girl.
We'll just have to see.
Once at Brynnlaw, Epona heard about a certain Perth the Adept. Unfortunately, the film studio was having serious technical problems with its animatronic extras. Perth was all scrambled and attacked.
Luckily, Epona had her true seeing gem and wand of spell strikes. With no defences, Perth was easy prey for poison traps and chromatic orbs.
We all know what happens. Go to spellhold, find Imoen, get captured, lose soul, get thrown out by Ireniucs like an overdue parking ticket.
Fortunately, an unexpected ally intervened.
Bodhi: I've thought about what you said, Epona, and I've decided you're right. I've been doing a lot of thinking. Guess what, I'm in rehab!
The story of forum no-reloaders aka the Monty Python crew
So I guess it is my turn to tell the tale of our day's adventures. I am not used to taking screenshots every few minutes so I only managed 3 today.
We started our adventure where we left off last time in the area south, southwest of Beregost. At this time it was just @GemHound@bengoshi and I, each of us controlling our own party member and an extra one for the other three who were absent at the time. The first thing we did was go to kill the half-ogres that Bjornin had sent us after earlier. Having done this we left the area to report back to the recovering paladin and get a nice new shield. Then we decided to do some shopping at the High Hedge to get some scrolls for our mages Llolnae and Poppy. I was informed that we could get ambushed at any point by dangerous assassins so we stocked up on a few spells to prepare for this, primarily Detect Invisibility. After this we went to The FAI temple to buy potions to increase our mages' brain power so they could better learn the spells we had bought. After doing this I suggested we head to the Cloudpeak Mountains to hunt some winter wolves which we did. On the way there we were waylaid by, surprise surprise, a winter wolf which I destroyed in two hits.
I had taken to scouting around in advance of the rest of the group one we reached the cloudpeaks now that my stealth was good enough to succeed most of the time. We encountered some bears and winter wolves and killed them as we went. I was backstabbing just about everything that got in our way, including a gnoll that looked like trouble by the name of ingot.
We met a group of gnolls led by Ludrug who challenged our mightiest champion (which turned out to be Moros) to a duel. Ludrug was beaten soundly and surrendered, allowing us passage through the area. It was right after this that misfortune befell our group as, while Llolnae was busy leveling up, a cave bear wandered over to Poppy and killed her before the group could regain its bearings. We decided to clear the area before bringing her back at a temple. Right after this happened we were joined by @Meyahi who took control of his character, Moros. We met a dryad and protected her tree from some morons who we webbed and greased up while shooting them down from afar. We rescued a dead cat from a waterfall and returned it to the girl who owned it. At this point @GemHound had to leave the group for the day and so we continued on without him.
We cleared the area and returned to Nashkel to have poppy resurrected and then moved to the area of the mountains southwest of Nashkel. Upon entering our first battle in the area the combat music bugged out and refused to stop so I stopped time for a short while, which we had previously discovered fixes the issue somehow. (Check out the code I used!)
Despite my desires for a new suit of leathers, we decided to leave Sendai and her deadly archer buddies alone for now and instead take on Vax and Zal. This almost cost us dearly as bad timing, a bit of confusion, some misplaced webs, and some bad luck nearly killed Moros and Tyndor. While we dealt with Vax, who had come up to challenge us alone before we were quite ready, Zal had wandered out of the range of the webs that Loki had cast. As we were looking for Zal after killing Vax we were spotted by a winter wolf and Moros and Tyndor accidentally wandered into the web. Vax must have heard the commotion of all this because he came back and started throwing his darts. Fortunately a quick thinking Poppy (who was under @Meyahi's control) cast Command on Vax as Gowrek rushed up to him to kill him before he could toss more than one dart. The web had worn off just in time for Moros to get the Antipode belt passed to him and slapped around his waist to save him from the cold of the winter wolf. Having narrowly escaped this encounter we left for Beregost to do some trading and recover from our wounds.
Deciding that the one suit of ankheg we found in Nashkel was not enough we headed to the ankheg farm to collect some shells for the making of a new suit. We killed an ankheg and rushed back to the Thunderhammer smithy to have a new suit of ankheg plate made for Gowrek. When we had our new suit we couldn't think of anywhere to go except back to the ankheg farm to kill more ankhegs in hopes of gaining some valuable experience. We had little trouble clearing out a tunnel full of the critters and we only interrupted our bug hunting once to dump more shells on Taerom's doorstep. After clearing out the ankheg tunnels we returned to Beregost again and decided to stop for the day.
I was very pleased with our work today. We got a lot of things done and I think we are starting to get the hang of working together with each other. By now our multi-class characters are about level 3 and our single-class characters are about level 4. It was great fun and I am having a blast! Gowrek is still doing the majority of the killing in the group, but Moros is slowly catching up to him.
@semiticgod@bengoshi@GemHound it would be nice if any of you has more screenshots to share. I need to start taking some myself but I guess I'm too concentrated on what's happening.
The wand of fire in the Ankheg cave should let us do the nashkel mines. I quote @bengoshi describing the Mulahey encounter in SCS: "Kobolds come and come and come and come and come and come"
I want Gloomwort to have Tuigan Bow so he can make better use of Called Shot, so we go to the Beastmaster. Both our Bounty Hunters lay traps and immediately disappear.
This clears up most of the enemies, and another setting clears up the rest. With blindness, traps are instant-casting, uninterruptible area-effect physical damage spells with no save that bypass spell protections and resistances, and also apply some other effects on contact (lingering poison damage, fire damage, paralysis, etc.).
That said, I really wish Zalos could get the spells Irenicus promises us.
If only Liches, Mind Flayers, and Vampires went down that easily.
We start the Mae'Var questline for easy XP, but blindness slows Nibidda's trap disarming to a crawl. He can only detect one at a time.
Blindness has lots of uses, but it comes at a cost.
I always travel with the entire party hidden, which lets us get the jump on ambushing bandits.
Traps frustrate their approach and weaken the enemy fighters.
This gives us the time to put our ranger spells to use.
Our monks appear and fade to waste the enemy mage's spells. We send in a monk while he or she is invisible, let the invisibility wear off, and then hide in plain sight while the mage is casting a spell. This lets us drain their spells as well as their pre-buffs.
We now have Arbane's Sword! This might come in handy if a disabler comes our way. We also trigger the Renfeld ambush, which we win mostly just using traps, and begin the Harper questline. Prebek and Sanasha have lots of disablers, but Called Shot allows us to increase our chance of a successful Stunning Blow. We slay both mages this way.
Called Shot at level 8 penalizes the target's save vs. spell by 1 every hit, for 15 seconds. Stunning Blow lasts 2 rounds and stuns the target for one round on a failed save vs. spell. With our high APR, we can force the enemy to make many saves at a considerable penalty to avoid getting stun-locked, although we're a ways away from getting guaranteed failed saves against stuff like Stunning Blow.
Called Shot is actually a lot more useful in mage-heavy parties, since mages have so many more things that are improved by save penalties, but Stunning Blow, unlike mage spells, bypasses MR and spell protections.
We take on the Crypt King, which proves to be unwise. Half our party fails its save against Horror, and the remainder suffers lots of damage from Namarra, costing us many potions. We could have slain most solo enemies here easily, but the Crypt King has high resistances to missile damage for some reason, which negates most of our trap damage. And there's not much else our thieves can do if their traps fall flat.
Pai'Na will be easier. Our traps will instantly slay all of her spiders simultaneously. As for Pai'Na herself, we launch an ambush with Stunning Blow, letting us bring her down to Badly Injured before her spiders even show up.
We snatch Kitty from Pai'Na's body. It's a pity EE didn't upgrade Kitty at all, but it's still nice to have her.
We get caught off-guard by another random ambush. This time, we're all completely visible.
The party is all shiny because I used CTRL-J to get them to the district exit before the ambush.
It's daytime, so our attempts to hide fail. But we can still set our traps, and since we just hit level 11, the Special Snares are crazy powerful against humanoids.
The enemy mage disables us, but we have enough offensive power thanks to our traps that we weaken them a lot faster than they can weaken us.
Another nice thing about traps is that they seek out invisible enemies. On top of that, the lingering poison effect of normal (non-Bounty Hunter) traps is great at disrupting enemy mage spells.
There's no save against that damage. They can't escape it.
We have a lot of options from here, but I decide to stick our normal route. To the Umar Hills!
Against the Killer Mimic, we take advantage of our traps' ability to hit invisible critters.
It doesn't fight back at all.
Next, we'll be heading to the Temple Ruins, but first, I want to loot a bit of Watcher's Keep. It would be great if we could get the Crimson Dart for Xiaohei, and an Ammo Belt for Gloomwort so his inventory wouldn't be crowded with arrows and bolts all the time. As our bowman and crossbowman, he has to have lots of ammo on hand for whatever situation confronts us.
We don't have many magic weapons, and Stone Golems are immune to normal ones. But trap damage bypasses all weapon immunities.
We don't have immunity to level drain, but we should be able to destroy the Vampiric Wraiths using traps. We get 7 on round one, and then 2 per round thereafter. We lay our traps and open the door to the main chamber.
The Vampiric Wraiths go down to Badly Injured and Near Death. We use Gelimbi to tank the wraiths while our Bounty Hunters keep laying traps.
But the Vampiric Wraiths regenerate faster than I thought. They heal 1 HP per second, but apparently their haste boosts that in EE as well as vanilla. We can't deal damage fast enough to kill them. Our tank falls.
This is immensely frustrating. It's not that we have to raise Gelimbi. The problem is that our greatest advantage in that fight is now lost. When we return, those Vampiric Wraiths will be waiting for us, and we won't be able to outrun them or hide from them--they can see through invisibility and have haste--in order to set up some more traps and try again at a higher level. Our only options are to use the Mace of Disruption with low APR and hope for the best, or use one or more Protection from Undead scrolls.
After raising Gelimbi, we go back to the Athkatla and go buy Protection from Undead scrolls from every place I suspect I might find them: at the Adventurer's Mart, from the Spell Store in the Promenade, and at every temple in Athkatla, from the temples of Helm in the Bridge District and the Temple District, to the Talos and Lathander temples in the latter district, to the temples of Ilmater in the Slums and the Promenade.
I gather 14 such scrolls. That's not much.
Thing is, since our Charname is a single-classed thief, we can't side with Bodhi. We're going to have to face vampires in Chapter 2. I'd really like to have Protection from Undead scrolls for that, because the only party members who will be able to get Negative Plane Protection are our Archers, who are pretty poor in melee, and have no defense against Giant Rat disease damage or the Constitution drain of SCS vampires. We have to ration those scrolls very closely. As I realize just now, this party isn't very well equipped to handle undead.
We go to the Temple Ruins without the Crimson Dart. The undead there don't drain levels, besides the Shade Lord, so we can bring them down with traps and weapons. An interesting discovery is that Bone Golems, who are the toughest enemies you'll find here at low levels (the high levels being dominated by liches), are vulnerable to Stunning Blow.
I used to avoid the Shade Lord and would just clear out the preceding area, but recently I've been going after him regularly. Even though we have no defense against level drain--we don't even have Restoration scrolls--I decide to take him on.
First, we go invisible before we enter his lair.
As I learned from @Blackraven me a while ago, a Sunstone Bullet can take down the Shadow Altar in one hit.
The Call Woodland Beings visual effect at the top of the screen is our Berserk Warrior entering the field. This provokes the Shade Lord's buffs.
We had hoped to keep the Shade Lord at bay for many rounds, but the Berserk Warrior is out of our control, and both he and Kitty fail to stand up to the Shade Lord's Black Blade of Disaster, Finger of Death, and Darkling Aura.
Other spells, however, are a little less intimidating against a party like ours.
The Shade Lord comes for us. We scatter, but cannot escape the Darkling Aura. We try attacking from range, but it's not always successful. Nibidda's 80 Set Traps skill, a product of his need to pick locks and disarm traps, makes his traps considerably less reliable than Zalos'.
But our traps and Firetooth start to wear down the Shade Lord's Stoneskins. We hurry in for some melee attacks, hoping to stun-lock him.
Stoneskin breaks down! His spellcasting is no longer assured.
We fail to stun-lock him, but the pressure wears him down nonetheless.
An excellent update, well-written, @Tresset ! And by the way, if it was not this because of this run, your post here would be unlikely So, welcome to the world of no-reloaders!
I can add several screenshots.
First, the highest damage from the backstab by Tresset so far is 50:
The dialogue about dangers in the SCS, including the lines Meyahi referred to:
The fun of getting random scrolls is sometimes bigger than getting a new level up:
So far, the Bhaalspawn was quite lucky in terms of his HP rolls (9, 3 and 7) - Loki is of the 4th level and has 29 HPs. As an Avenger, he has 4 spell slots for the second level - they all could be Web but the party play dictates to take at least 2 Charm Mammal. His Chromatic Orbs now can blind targets for 1 turn.
But as the Bhaalspawn, Loki is always in the safest place, generally healing our biggest critters - Moros and Gowrek. With more levels under his belt, Loki will become more active in battles.
The most useful spell - Command by Poppy. Only one round was enough for Gowrek to finish Zal.
Another ambush confronts us. This time, we have two mages to deal with.
This one might be tough. I disable the first one with a Bolt of Biting. Their buffs trigger.
We retreat, setting traps to thwart the enemy's progress, but backstabbers give us trouble.
What's especially problematic is that invisible characters can prevent blind thieves from hiding or setting traps, since you can't know if they're nearby.
The backstabbers don't do much damage per hit, but they hit very often.
Zalos struggles to escape, but she can't hide with enemies right next to her, and it's hard to run from what you can't see.
Azorre keeps the mages busy, allowing us to concentrate on the thieves, who are running low on Potions of Invisibility, and start removing the backstabbers from the area.
Zalos escapes. But Azorre is in trouble. I've been neglecting her health, and the pressure on her is quite extreme. There is another mage, out of our sight, who is pelting Azorre with Minute Meteors. Azorre gets AC bonuses vs. missiles thanks to her monk levels, but her AC is still very poor.
Azorre approaches death. One of the mage chooses an excellent spell, which normally receives no attention.
The end result is obvious. Azorre is gone, and now the mages may turn their attention to the rest of the party.
But we have a pricy but effective check for mages without PFMW. Bolts of Biting and Darts of Wounding deal damage through Stoneskin in my install. I actually preferred when Stoneskin blocked poison effects, but I'm more than willing to exploit that vulnerability.
But one of the mages makes several saves vs. death, and hits us hard with disablers. But Xiaohei's darts keep coming, and those saves can't last forever. The mage even fails a save against a Special Snare.
We leave the disabled mage alone and go over to finish off her partner. By the time we're done, that hold effect has worn off--it only lasts 5 rounds, not 10 like a Hold Person spell.
To my amusement, she tries to disable us with Glitterdust. Our Archers lose their sight, but we don't need them when the enemy is this badly damaged and her Stoneskins are low. We trap her.
The lingering poison damage ensures she cannot recover. We collect Azorre's belongings and raise her later on.
We hit another ambush, which I normally find very challenging and prefer to run from. This is the gang of Orogs and the mage who accompanies them. It's a lot of melee pressure all at once. But area-effect spells work great against them. We slay almost the entire group with two traps at the beginning of the fight.
The mage can't operate with lingering poison damage active. We finish off the group and continue to Trademeet. Now that our normal traps do poison damage--but do not use the poison opcode--we can slay fallen Trolls much more easily than we otherwise could.
I wasn't there last time, so I take a moment to fuss with our inventory. I'm controlling Llolnae this time as well as Poppy. We have some Darts of Stunning and Darts of Wounding, but apparently none of us have pips in darts when I ask around.
Nothing happens for a moment as the other players get ready. With nothing else to keep me busy, I start typing out a song. I end up having to explain it.
"Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy, a kid'll eat ivy, too, wouldn't you?" "What?" "It's a song... My dad used to sing it."
We run into the Dorn encounter, the first time I've ever seen it. Dorn does much of the work; our frontliners clean up the rest. Llolnae gets a new Wakizashi +1 to backstab with. We also encounter the item duplication bug once more.
Near the mines, Gowrek spots a Ghast. Loki recommends sending Tyndor, our Undead Hunter, out to handle them, since he's immune to the Ghast's hold effect. But @Tresset decides to go it alone, because relying on immunities is for sissies! He explodes it.
@bengoshi asks if I remember Silverpooch, our next target. I remember. He's the guy who attacks Rainbow the artist just south of the nickel mines. We do some high-level strategic thinking before we take him on.
We get Varscona! Then we realize one of the best weapons we've got isn't useful to us.
@bengoshi experiences a crash, but compulsive quick saving lets us continue without fighting Silverpooch again. We enter the nickel mines, where a naked old man warns us about evil demons infesting the mines.
The other party members explore the mines, talking to the right people and eliminating scattered groups of kobolds. I wander around accomplishing nothing while everyone else does all the work. That's what fighters are for, right?
We first come across the Vial of Mysterious Liquid, which has a fatal effect on anyone who drinks it. @Tresset makes a joke about drinking the thing. Since everyone knows I'm a greenhorn for BG1, I decide to run with the joke.
Since I'm not familiar with BG1, I have to ask where Llolnae should be directing traps. @bengoshi points me in the right direction.
Loki drops a comment that reminds me of another song. Midway through the message, I realize we've just run into a huge group of kobolds.
"Use Sleep!" "I ran out of Sleep spells." "Oh."
The rest of the party hurries in to address the problem. I notice there are two Kobold Commandos in a separate cabal of kobolds to the south. I send in Poppy to disable one of them with Command. I don't want their Arrows of Fire to hurt the rest of the party.
The good news is, nobody else in the party got hit by those arrows. The bad news is Poppy never got to cast Command.
@bengoshi runs in to take care of the kobolds to the west. A single Web spell immobilizes the entire group. Crisis contained.
I assign Llolnae to attack the webbed kobolds. To our collective amazement, she suddenly dies. I am left without any characters.
The Web still holds the other kobolds at bay, which lets the party focus on the ones to the south. Avengers are awesome.
I think it over while the others are fighting and realize what happened. When the kobolds are gone, I explain how we lost two characters in a single round. Loki reminds me of another song, this time from Monty Python.
They gather Poppy and Llolnae's equipment and raise us back at the temple. We lost hundreds of gold and lots of time, but we learned a valuable lesson about kobolds:
@Meyahi: Nothing happened after that part, actually. I had to leave to give a short speech at my former college about the local homeless shelter and the proper definition of a chair. We still have yet to get through the mines.
Ugh... I just finished fighting with TorGal in my other no-reload run. TorGal refused to die, round after round after round after round. The Yuan-ti Mages arrived and cast Sphere of Chaos, forcing us to retreat, but even then, without party pressure, TorGal refused to fall down. We couldn't escape the area because the exit wouldn't open until TorGal was dead. The only way to get rid of him was to reload and use CTRL-Y. I hit him about 20 times while paused. Only then would he fall down. I dumped some of our potions based on what we had drank during the fight, but it feels wrong anyway, to have to resort to a cheat to get any further in the game.
There aren't many things more frustrating in BG2 than being locked into a room and not being let out until a certain critter is dead... and then discovering that the critter can't be killed in the first place.
The Merries absolutely did not buy their equipment at Pomab's, they showed up in Easthaven already equipped. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Robin: Longbow, longsword, helmet Will: Longbow, longsword, helmet, medium shield, studded leather John: Longbow, quarterstaff, helmet, studded leather Nasir: Shortbow, short sword Tuck: Sling, club, helmet Alan: Shortbow, short sword
I'm not going to get too long-winded about the Easthaven quests.
They killed some bugs
Helped Jhonen and Elisia
And killed a wolf
While helping a young boy who'd been accosted by goblins, John was killed by a goblin archer. It cost the party the pearl Elisia had given them to have him raised at the temple.
Robin decided to help an old drunk, and this was enough for the rogues to level up. Alan can now cast spells, or he could if he had any in his spellbook.
Hunting for the caravan
The Merries met the leader of Easthaven, an old warrior named Hrothgar. The town of Kuldahar had requested aid against an unspecified threat, and Hrothgar was recruiting adventurers for an expedition. Robin agreed to join up, and Hrothgar asked the Merries to investigate a missing caravan while he made preparations for the force to set out.
Following the route of the caravan, the band encounters a small pack of wolves.
Then something truly strange happens. Continuing along the trail, John spots a cave with an orc standing guard at the entrance. The sentry moves to attack the party, but as he passes near the canyon wall, he disappears into thin air.*
*Seriously. I expected to find the orc stuck in a LoS shadow or something, but it was just gone. I have no idea what happened to it, but I assume it was something like this:
Only with an orc instead of a baseball player.
The Merries entered the cave and proceeded to kill the orc guards.
Then as they moved against the main force, Will falls to the archers.
The band goes back to town, raises Will, and comes back to clear out the rest of the orcs. Aaannndd...
This is what boxers call "leading with your chin."
Another trip back to town, another 100 bucks, another night at the inn.
The Merries come back to explore the heavily defended Southwest corridor.
Will scouted ahead and found an ogre with a group of orcs. He led them back to the choke-point in the corridor.
The party got lucky. The ogre was stuck behind his minions and couldn't reach Will until they were all dead. Also, I finally remembered why Alan is here. Tuck levels up.
After Will tried to fight the ogre, the band decided that kiting was much more practical.
Wait, did that ogre just heal himself?
On to the loot.
The Merries report back to Hrothgar, then take the supply list to Pomab.
Will levels up
Robin and John level up
In preparation for the expedition, the party buys better armor and a few healing potions, then gets a good nights rest.
Party status
Robin: Archer level 2, 22 hp Longbow, longsword, helmet, small shield, studded leather
Will: Fighter level 2, 20 hp - 2 deaths Longbow, longsword, helmet, large shield, splint mail
John: Berserker level 2, 22 hp - 1 death Longbow, quarterstaff, helmet, splint mail
Nasir: Assassin level 2, 12 hp Shortbow, HQ dagger
Tuck: Priest of Lathander level 2, 16 hp Sling, club, helmet, medium shield, studded leather
Alan's got several scrolls, including sleep, but with a 13 INT, I'm not even going to try to write them until he gets a potion.
Three deaths in the prologue, not good. I need to get better at prioritizing in combat. Both times Will died, I was concentrating on the shamen when there were more deadly threats to worry about. Curse isn't that big a deal, and I could have countered it with bard song and bless. Also, I need to remember to use bard song more often, that's the main reason I decided to use Alan instead of "Mage Marian".
I have nearly nothing to add in terms of screenshots.
In this run dealing with a single (even tough) target is a lot easier - see that already dead Greywolf is being attacked by simultaneus Chromatic Orb with Blindness effect and Hold Person:
As for the enemy groups, we shouldn't underestimate them.
This is bad:
Because when this happens,
Something like this should be an answer:
Anyway, after resurrecting both Llolnae and Poppy the gnome girl informed us that she has to be involved somewhere else and has to leave the party for a long time (semiticgod won't be able to play for an uncertain time because his holiday has ended).
Much against our will, we had to part ways with Poppy. We'll be happy to reunite with her any time in the future but for now there're only 5 of us left (the Poppy character has been exported so that all her abilities, spells and stats are saved, the bag of holding has been created for current and future items suitable for Poppy).
This run will probably last for many and many month, so everyone is welcomed to participate!
Alright, I suppose I'm supposed to update the multiplayer this time with my... lack of screenshots. I have 5; @Gemhound, you have yours by any chance?
Anyhow. We were on a timer from the beginning of the session; I left my charger at home and was on campus, so we ended up starting with only 3, @bengoshi, @Gemhound, and myself. Bengoshi took control of Gowrek, and I took control of Moros; Gemhound actually had to make decisions on what to cast, and Loki couldn't be put into any real danger, so Bengoshi got to do a bit of dangerous stuff on our resident Half-orc.
Session began in the temple of Helm, or very near to it. Llolnae had just been Raise Dead'd, and Loki had run out of healing spells. Being too cheapskate to purchase additional healing from Helm, we elect to go to the inn. Before we enter, Bengoshi reminds us that we hadn't killed Neira yet. We decided that we could probably take her, with Moros' Rage and Tyndor's immunity to Hold nullifying the majority of her spells. Gowrek proves that you don't need immunities to fight clerics, and the best status to inflict to an enemy is Dead.
A thing to note here is that I'm not sure what's up with the internet at campus; I was in a student lounge, and I'm fairly sure that the IP addresses are being reassigned occasionally. But what that means is that there's a split second of disconnect, enough to kick me out of the game. This happens every 10 minutes or so, and can kick me out of battles. I missed a few due to this, so...
Anyways, our crew heads to the mines, slaughtering hordes of kobolds and commandoes on the way. Both Gemhound and I seem to have bugs, textual or otherwise, in our installs; most of my remaining screenshots deal with them.
Gemhound identified this strings at one point; I still don't know where my dialog.tlk is corrupted and making these funny things happen. Llolnae... Died here, I think? Lost a lot of health, regardless, but we established it as a lag bug and Bengoshi Ctrl-R'd her back to health.
Iron crisis rears its ugly head in the mines:
The name of the Kobold Shaman (I think):
I disconnected this battle soon after. I take it that the sniping was successful. We returned up to rest with the guards; two further, and we successfully sleep to heal, and then... well, first I crashed again. Second, Gemcraft and I starting seeing things.
Those are Biff the Understudy's. There's one for every Kobold, in the same space that the Kobolds currently occupy. I understand that this is even worse for Gemhound, but...
Tresset came online around here, thinking he'd missed the game session. We waited for him to join around Mulahey, but no dice. We continued without him after waiting for 10 minutes or so.
We got Mulahey to fire off his scripts for his minions, but they all got caught in Loki's Web at the chokepoint. Backstabs and arrows prove too much for the cleric to handle, and he quickly keels over without a single spell being cast. Ranged weapons take out the reinforcements, and the mines are finished.
Outside, we decide to fight some undead and loot some tombs. I'm stubbornly still not switching armor with Moron, so Tyndor's AC is -3 at best in splint and a +1 Medium Shield, effective -5 with Pro. Evil. So I decide that I'll try fighting the Revenant. He still hits on a 10, and Tyndor ends up running back out of the cave. Moron and Gowrek join the fight outside after a backstab or two, and eventually the dead is put back to rest with a nifty new dagger that no one really wants to use in our possession. The Ghoul and three Ghasts are also put back under the ground.
I can't comment on the Nimbul fight that we ended with, as I disconnected just as it started. I understand that he got hit with Blind, Sleep nearly murdered everyone, Rasaad was annoying, and Loki's Webs caught the party as much as Nimbul, but... Anyone else have screenshots?
The Merries left Easthaven as part of Hrothgar's militia and were the only survivors of the frost giant's ambush. They met an old hermit who told them the way to Kuldahar and warned them of goblins.
The band fought their way through the goblins and went straight on to the town.
Chapter One - Kuldahar
When they reached the village, they were met by a young boy who guided them to Arundel, the Archdruid who had sent the messenger to Easthaven. He filled in the Merries on what he knew of the evils affecting Kuldahar and suggested they investigate the Vale of Shadows, a haunted burial ground near town.
They decided to go back to Kuldahar pass first and clear out the goblins. Robin and Will didn't want to leave an enemy behind them while the Merries were off exploring the tombs.
First though, they needed to sell off the weapons they'd taken from the goblins and rest for the night. On the way to the blacksmith's shop, they saved a man named Mirek from a pair of tundra yetis.
Alan and Nasir level up.
Mirek told Robin his brother had been killed by the yetis and had lost a family heirloom. Robin agreed to try to get it back.
The Merries met Conlin at the smithy and sold off their excess equipment. Then, they went to tavern to relax a bit before heading to the inn. After talking with the barmaid, Alan and Nasir poked around and found that the owner of the inn had come into ownership under false pretenses.
Tuck levels up.
Back to the Valley
The well rested Merries returned to the pass and began clearing it of the goblins.
They met an ogre with a headache, and then they came upon a large group of goblins fighting giant beetles.
Next, the Merries set about clearing the mill. Outside was a goblin marshall who seemed to be suffering from the same malady as the ogre they'd met earlier, though he said something about being called to the valley.
Inside the mill, the party was set upon by orcs. This was a close quarters fight that saw Robin and Alan wounded before Will was able to wade into the fray and block the remaining orcs. One of the orcs was carrying a magic shield known as Stoutward, which Robin took to replace his small shield.
The room downstairs was filled with goblins, but with Alan bolstering the band with his song, and Will running interference, the creatures fell like ninepins without landing a blow.
Robin found a boy hiding in the closet, when he saw that the goblins were dead, he left for the temple of Ilmater in Kuldahar.
The last room in the mill was another close-quarters fight, but Robin killed the goblin flanking the Merries from behind with a single arrow. John and Will kept the other axe wielding goblins busy, while Robin, Nasir and Tuck made short work of the enemy archers.
With the valley now cleared, the Merries headed back to Kuldahar to prepare for their foray into the vale of shadows. Along the way, they checked in with Arundel and mentioned the strange symptoms the ogre had reported. Arundel suggested an herbal remedy and the band went back to tell Ghereg about it.
After selling all the loot taken in the valley, the band had enough money to buy everfull quivers for everyone and leather armor for Nasir and Alan.
Alan still hasn't scribed any of his scrolls, Fiddlebender doesn't sell potions of genius, only potions of mind focusing, and the party hasn't had enough money anyway. I'm getting more comfortable with the combat dynamics after the rocky start last session. This party is turning out to be far less fragile and much more deadly than Gudrun's party. Robin is the first archer I've ever played and it's amazing how much damage he puts out even at second level. It's also nice having a group where the lowest strength score is 14. That makes carrying loot so much easier.
'Bawdy' Belle Hornswoggle, Halfling Swashbuckler enters the no-reload challenge:
As her nickname suggests, Belle is not one to mince her words. She's an outspoken lass with a sense of humor raunchy enough to hush even Winthrop when necessary. Belle's scurrilousness is a direct consequence of her growing up as a wee little Halfling girl amidst big Humans that kept treating her like a child long after she had ceased to be one, e.g. squeezing her freckled cheeks as a way of greeting her, or patting her on the head. Besides, Belle used to spend more time with the foul-mouthed Watchers, her instructors, than with Candlekeep's monks and priests. Irrespective of the above, Belle does have her heart in the right place. She won't exploit others for her own gain, at least not grievously, and she's more likely to help defenseless folk in need than not.
After her foster father's violent death at the hands of a huge armored figure, Belle traveled the Sword Coast on her own. Early on, her big mouth got her into trouble more than once. In Beregost for instance she insulted a couple of Red Wizards of Thay who were threatening to kill a pacific, Half-Elven sorceress of some sort. Belle was hesitant to fight the Thayans, and fled into to the Travenhurst mansion. When she went outside she discovered that the Red Wizards had killed the Half-Elf.
Belle avenged the victim by slaying one of the wizards.
More problems presented themselves on the Coast Way, where thin-skinned Flaming Fist Mercenaries teamed up with Hobgoblins and chased her back to Beregost while Belle had wanted to travel south from said town.
At Thalantyr the Conjurer's mansion Belle reluctantly bought a Wand of Sleep from the grupmy wizard in order to deal with a pack of Gnolls that had followed her inside, given that Thalantyr himself refused to lift a finger.
The wizard would later disappoint Belle further by failing to rescue his old apprentice Melicamp who had accidentally turned himself into a rooster.
Hardships and disappointments like the aforementioned didn't stop Belle from growing into a seasoned adventurer though. There were successful campaigns against dominated Basilisks and their master, and against Ankhegs north of the Friendly Arm Inn. There were bandits and brigands who would not live to regret crossing Belle.
And there were several bounty hunters, since for some reason there was a price on Belle's head. She defeated one at the FAI, one in Beregost and another one in Nashkel.
One of the nicest things of being an adventurer were the gold and the loot. Sporting a suit of Shadow Armor, Boots of Stealth, an enchanted short sword named Sound Defense (a Song & Silence item), and Buckley's Buckler, and equipped with precious items such as the Legacy of the Masters gauntlets, the Claw of Kazgaroth, a Ring of Free Action she nicked from a Gnome in Ulgoth's Beard, a Ring of Human Influence, a Cloak of Displacement, a Returning Frost Dart, and several protective belts, Belle quite looked the part of swell Swashbuckler. Her wealth and her powerful gear did more than make the Halfling look pretty though. They also helped her defeat imposing foes such as the Battle Horrors that guarded Durlag's Tower,
and Bassilus the murderous cleric whom she cleverly tempted into casting a detection spell when she was hidden in shadows, clouding his aura so she had all the time in the world to stun him with darts especially enchanted for that purpose.
In Nashkel Belle accepted a commission for mayor Berrun Ghastkill, to investigate a series of killings and the contamination of iron ore in the Nashkel Mines.
Belle is bellissima, you should definitely tweak her CHA to 18, @Blackraven!
As for the multiplayer run, I didn't see all those Biffs and strange pieces of text. Meanwhile, I can add several screenshots.
The Mulahey's quick demise:
The battle against Nimbul - below you can see that we managed to blind him in the start (thanks to Chromatic Orb) but then all 3 our fighters fell to sleep and Loki and Llolnae had to chase running blind Nimbul (aka Silke number 2).
I decided that the best strategy in this situation would be an attempt to Web Nimbul even with the price of being webbed myself - the drow's Magic Resistance would give an advantage here.
After this fight Loki reached the 5th level (thus becoming immune to Sleep) and the number of this 2nd level spells (Webs) became 6 (!). Also he got 3rd level spells (Invisibility Purge among them) which provided a good resourse against assassin ambushes from the SCS.
@bengoshi, remember that the word subtlety isn't in Belle's vocabulary and that she's given to using foul language whenever she feels she needs to assert herself
'Bawdy' Belle Hornswoggle, Halfling Swashbuckler, 2nd & final BG1 report
Belle's decision to look into the troubled Nashkel Mines for Berrun Ghastkill set in motion a chain of events that led to the Halfling learning about an evil plot to lead the Sword Coast to war, and about her own hitherto mysterious roots.
She didn't really understand the fuss about the Nashkel Mines. The evil there was just a bunch of Kobolds led by a Half-Orc priest. Belle slew the Kobolds that stood in her way, and stunned and then slew the priest with her darts. Nothing the Amnian military couldn't have accomplished themselves she reckoned.
Through an assassin named Nimbul (slain by Amnian soldiers) and a wizard she killed in self-defense in Beregost, Belle discovered that the iron crisis and the bandit epidemic were somehow related. As she searched for the bandits' base of operations, four amazons, and later a quartet of male brigands tried to stop her. The amazons were no match for the well-prepared duelist,
but the males had a Gnomish mage in their midst who did give her a run for her money. Belle used the wizard's magics against him and his friends, and she used a Sandthief's ring to go invisible and set two snares to debilitate her enemies.
She managed to finish the Gnome and then successfully dueled the other males.
A Greenstone Amulet she had bought in Ulgoth's Beard was invaluable in Belle's battles against wizards and priests such as the above-mentioned troublemakers.
Belle infiltrated the bandit camp via an unsuspecting bandit who seemed to have fallen for her charms. At the camp, her anti-missile gear (Cloak of Displacement, Boots of Avoidance, Elves' Bane girdle), a potion of defense, an oil of speed and a Greenstone Amulet charge helped Belle prevail against the leading bandits. One of them was a wizard. The Halfling neutralized this threat with darts of wounding before she struck him down.
The remainder of the fight was pretty straightforward, though it must be observed that Belle had to resort to drinking several healing potions and elixirs of health (to neutralize Black Talon and Hobgoblin Elite critical hits).
An Elven prisoner she released, pointed her to an Iron Throne base in Cloakwood, according to him the masterminds behind the iron crisis and the bandit plague. Belle cruised through the forest, killing a pedantic hunter who had slain a Druid, and eliminating all kinds of Spiders, before she indeed reached the Iron Throne base, a mine. By the entrance she defeated a hasted, potion of frost giant strength quaffing berserker, relying on the protection of a potion of absorption and her girdle of bluntness to stand up to the warrior.
She also felled a second warrior, but she left two wizards to their own devices after they went invisible, frustrated as they must have been by her use of a green PfMagic scroll. Inside the mine Belle snuck through the many corridors while hidden in shadows, until deep down she found the master of the mine, a wizard named Davaeorn. Before she could touch him, she had to deal with two Battle Horrors though, and with a contingent of guards. The Battle Horrors fell in melee combat; the guards succumbed to the crafty Halfling's Necklace of Missiles.
Darts of wounding and Belle's returning frost dart then did the wizard in.
As the Iron Throne HQ were located in Baldur's Gate, Belle's logical next step was to visit that great city. Although she was more than eager to get rid of the Throne both for her own sake - she was getting tired of being followed by assassins and bounty hunters everywhere she went - and for that of the people of the Sword Coast, the Halfling didn't rush her dealings with them. Instead, she indulged in several lucrative side-quests, leading her to increase her dexterity, intelligence and wisdom, and to obtain more valuable items (mostly scrolls, potions, ammo). She encountered the Iron Throne offices heavily guarded, but successfully snuck past the watchmen and learned from one of the employees, after he felt her cold blade against his throat, that the Throne board were in Candlekeep on business.
A potion of magic blocking helped her past five Charm Person casting Ogre Mages,
in front of the gates of Candlekeep, and into the ostensible safety of the citadel she had long known as her home. Belle's stay would be a short one though. Before she knew it, the Gatewarden arrested her for murdering the Iron Throne leaders. In reality she had done no such thing; Belle had been framed by a man named Sarevok who, as she would read in a letter Gorion had left for her, was her 'brother'. Apparently Sarevok and Belle had both been engendered by the dead Lord of Murder, Bhaal. Belle also understood that Sarevok had been the killer of her foster father.
The Halfling was slightly shaken by these ill tidings, but still sensible enough to loot the catacombs below Candlekeep where Tethtoril had kindly teleported her, and to find her way past monsters and villains, back to the surface, and back to Baldur's Gate. There, a meeting with two assassins, a male rogue and a female mage hired by Sarevok to kill the Grand Dukes in order for him to become a Grand Duke himself, turned into a very bloody affair that had Belle fear for her life more than once. She successfully shook off the wizard but had more than her hands full with the rogue. The two had very distinct fighting styles, with Belle being a flashy duelist and her opponent preferring painfully precise attacks from the shadows. Initially the latter style seemed more effective, not least because the rogue had several invisibility potions at his disposal.
The two took their fight outside where they continued their cat and mouse game until Belle successfully dispelled the last of her opponent's potion-induced invisibilities. The open duel that ensued was much more to Belle's liking, and she soon defeated her opponent.
On the man's corpse the Swashbuckler found two invitations for the inauguration of Sarevok as Grand Duke of Baldur's Gate the following night at the Ducal Palace.
Belle convinced the Palace guards to let her in before the festivities were to begin, in order to inspect the premises. She strategically placed no less than seven snares, a security measure she considered reasonable given Sarevok's plans to kill the city's Dukes. On the night of the event, Belle prepared as well as she could to prevent or quash a possible assault on the Grand Dukes, using a green PfMagic scroll and numerous potions (violet, fortitude, agility, mind focusing, defense, speed, power, regeneration).
With a phial of poison she had bought from Black Lily at the Thieves Guild, the Halfling poisoned several arrows. (She wasn't proficient in the use of bows. In fact she had only used her bow once, to kill a sewer-dwelling Ogre Mage with an arrow of slaying.)
Belle's precautions proved warranted. Six nobles present at the event turned out to be Doppelgangers employed by Sarevok. Belle's snares instantly killed one or two of them (including one Mage), and her poisoned arrows of dispelling did a great job at slowing the remaining Doppelgangers down. Belle switched to dual wielding two short swords (taking a Short Sword of Backstabbing with its massive Thac0 bonus in her off-hand), and made short work of the shapeshifting creatures.
She nevertheless had to fear her efforts would be in vain, when Sarevok slew Duchess Liia Jannath and Belt, at near death status proceeded to attack the huge warrior. Belle stepped in and managed to draw Sarevok's attention away from Belt, to herself. She suffered a blow or two before a wizard teleported in and took Sarevok with him.
Duke Belt cast a Divination spell, and discovered Sarevok and the wizard had entered an underground maze from the Thieves Guild. Belle followed suit and found her nemesis and four henchmen in an old Bhaal temple. She had a batch of arrows of detonation, coated several of them in poison using another phial of poison, and inflicted a lot of pain with them.
(Interestingly, Tazok died when the expiration of his Berserker rage knocked him unconscious. The scripted Flamestrike seemed to kill him.)
Soon all four henchmen lay dead, but four Skeletal Warriors rose from their corpses. Belle dealt with the undead creatures in melee combat before she could finally focus on Sarevok.
The Halfling used her last phial of poison to debilitate her foe, and then challenged him to a dual. She used her movement speed advantage (having dispelled her opponent's haste), and her light blade for swift attacks and retreats.
The bulky warrior had no answer to Belle's celerity and dexterity. He managed to land one desperate blow but fell right after that.
Congrats on beating BG1! No matter how many times you've done it, I can't stop admiring it.
As for the multiplayer run, here's an update.
After dealing with Mulahey and Nimbul the party decided to go for Tranzig. The mage couldn't deal with the group.
During the next area transition, we were ambushed by Morvin and his fellow mercenaries. The fight went smoothly thanks to stunning an enemy mage in the first round.
Soon after, the party reached the highest reputation after saving a farmer's cow from xvarts.
Several web spells proved to be enough to defeat a powerful enemy - an ogre-mage that spawned nearby.
After clearing that map we decided to take on Bassilus. Our goodies almost died because of his area spell but Web once again helped.
Melicamp was lucky to survive the transformation. Both Loki and Gowrek were happy to know their votes for "Life" opposed to the Llolnae's vote for "Death" turned right.
Then we decided to go to the Sword Coast. Tyndor (shhh! don't tell @Neverused as he missed this session) was chosen to be sacrificed to the beautiful nereid. Her master, Droth, failed his saving throw against Blindness and was defeated without much hassle.
A close call came on the next location, when due to a lag that happened on the @Tresset 's PC, Loki couldn't time gulping an antidote and had to repeat it - thankfully he had a lot of HPs to survive the poison from sirines' arrows. Moros was charmed by the sirens due to not having the rage. @GemHound brilliantly summoned monsters with the wand and it decided the encounter into our favour.
Yeah, that lag at the end there was really odd... I was scouting ahead with stealth to see if I could locate the sirines by the row boat. I saw no sirines there at all and was quite confused. Then my stealth must have failed without my noticing and when my computer caught up with everyone else I saw the visual effects of 3 improved invisibilities go off all at once. At this moment I thought to myself "Oh crap!" and I ran to the rest of the group. The sirines and the nearby hobgoblins obviously followed me and then we nearly lost the whole run. I would say that that bit of misfortune was our closest call yet...
And another update (to catch up to the actual state of the run).
Sil and her sirens managed to charm Tyndor but Llolnae blinded the paladin so that he couldn't damage his friends. With berserkering Moros these sirens were not a problem.
For a reason, the Llolnae's disarm traps skill was not enough for the traps in the cave, so Moros, still under the rage effect, triggered them. Our fighters dealt with golems just fine. Gowrek, as someone who used to get not so favourable HP rolls, was given a CON tome.
The last Sword Coast area gave a hard fight in the form of the Doomsayer. Thanks to the Tresset's advice Loki didn't cast Lightning on the Doomsayer (who had more than 100% electricity resistance). Instead, Llolnae used her Wand of Cold 5 times while others were busy with healing potions while meleeing the enemy.
When the party returned to Nashkel with Brage, whom they saved from the complete madness, it was decided to prepare for the basilisk hunting, thus we moved to the Carnival to buy the green scroll of Protection from Petrification.
While we were at the Carnival, we dealt a problem with Zordral. The mage went invisible 2 times but Loki had two Invisibility Purge spells which helped here.
Upon arriving to the Mutamin's garden, the party decided to take on the mercenaries at first - they turned to be evil (thanks to the Tyndor's ability). Not a single hit, although our half-orc, who opened the fight with a nice backstab, fell under the Hold Person spell effect.
The subsequent events were called the Show of Gowrek. "Full plate and packing steel", he dealt with all the basilisks in the area, as well as Mutamin (thanks to using an invisibility and explosion potions).
From the left areas we chose Larswood and Peldvale. Baeloth caused a giggle in Tresset:
During the area transition we were ambushed by amazon assassins, the group I feared the most since Loki reached the 3rd level. Thankfully, the backstab by an enemy thief didn't kill anyone, and the assassins were defeated.
In Peldvale, Loki reached the 7th level, thus getting all Avenger shapeshift forms, as well Improved Invisibility and other 4th level spells.
@semiticgod would approve of the Web+spider form combination
In the end, @Tresset spawned a big wyvern, a "friend for Loki".
Loki: "Did you eat today?" Tresset: "Yep, 4 cows" Loki: "I ate only one" Moros: "My 4 sisters disappeared, is it a coincidence?" Moros (later): "That must be mother"
And today we got a pleasant surprise - @Gotural ( @Yami now) managed to scratch up and crawl his way back into the world of BG, and all this thanks to this run. His F/M/C heard about the Monty Python crew adventuring through the Sword Coast and left his dwarven clan to join the fun.
While still in The Wood of Sharp Teeth, we were approached by a dwarf called Gotural. Lawful good, he offered magical talents of any kind. He also brought a lot of ale so nobody could turn down his offer to join.
After spending some time in the FAI tasting the new ale and watching how Gotural was quickly learning all the spells the party found so far thanks to the blue potions (Llolnae was less than impressed that rare spells like Spell Thrust and Cloudkill were learned by the dwarf), the party went straight after the bandits.
While discussing ins and outs of Spell Thrust, Meyahi pasted the forum link into the game (that thread by @Jaheiras_Witness is a must read for every no-reloader), @Tresset now included (who unfortunately said that spell sucked):
We managed to speak to Tazok and pretend we were just another group of mercenaries wanting to put the Sword Coast into a chaos. After that, we attacked when enemies didn't expect it.
It was the biggest fight in the game so far, and I wish others could share their impressions as well, because for me it was so so quick. Constant Webs, poison arrows from Llolnae, summoning Driads, again poison arrows. To me, it looked like the enemies didn't have a chance.
The Llolnae's open locks skill wasn't enough for all the containters in the camp but thanks to a potion found by Gotural, the problem was solved.
After the main fight, we had a close call for Moros. Loki tested his Dispel Magic - thanks to a high level of the druid and some luck Moros was saved from Web and could stop getting hit by hobgoblins' arrows. Thankfully, during a subsequent rest, Loki got a Slow Poison ability.
Then it was voted with the score 3-1 that we should visit Ulgoth's Beard for items. While going there we found Knock on an ahkheg and had a scare moment when Tresset couldn't find potions in his duplicated container:
We bought a staff for our half-orc, 3 very useful spells for Llolnae, a cloak for Loki and some other stuff (Greenstone Amulet went to Gowrek as well). Now, we were ready to hunt bandits in the Cloakwood forest. After clearing the first location and surviving an ettercap ambush after that, we had to make a pause till the next week.
The funniest moment happened after that. Meyahi left the game and we were talking for about 10 minutes about how a FMC can be used in the group and other things (Gotural said that if a situation happens when there're more than 6 people willing to play (for example, when semiticgod returns), he could miss a playing session), when suddenly, out of nowhere, a phase spider teleported to the group:
Comments
Blind people running like headless chicken is kinda stupid. It made Silke so annoying (she was hasted). We also discovered a bug (?) with Neera when one of the fighters ran off and we had to search for him.
I'm surprised my 16 STR berserker can do work with mundane weapons.
First, and most importantly, I'm starting out with new faces only. I'm limiting my re-use of the same old soundsets, portraits, and names. I desperately need to keep the parties fresh. Second, I'm structuring an entire party around the blind thief trick. This party has two blind Bounty Hunters (because Maze traps), two blind unkitted Monks (because Stunning Blow), and two non-blind Archers (because Called Shot) to guide the others.
Everyone can use stealth, and the monks and thieves can hide in plain sight. Basically no spellcasting, big THAC0 and AC penalties on our frontline monks, and no missile weapons besides the ones the Archers use. It's a weird group.
Our Bhaalspawn? Zalos, a halfling Bounty Hunter. I judged this to be the safest position for the Bhaalspawn, as it had the best saving throws.
The blindness negates her DEX bonus to AC and costs her 9 levels of THAC0 bonuses. She is very squishy in combat, but she won't be engaging in much.
Our other Bounty Hunter? Also a halfling. Meet Nibidda.
We got some really crazy stat rolls on some of these people. I really like this picture... there need to be more interesting-looking old people portraits for these games. Barely any male in fantasy portraits looks older than 40, and barely any female looks older than 30.
And our Archers? First is a deathly pale half-elf with an inexplicably high STR and the curious name of Xiaohei, Little Black. She specializes in slings because of the STR bonus, and darts because she can switch between them easily while using a shield.
Actually a pretty bad name in Chinese, but, you know, whatever. All three of those portraits are from a Buzzfeed article about some artists' vivid and photorealistic portraits.
Our other Archer is Gloomwort, the only recurring character here, who used to be a druid in an IWD run.
He specializes in shortbows and crossbows, filling in the pips that Xiaohei lacks. Doesn't he look like John Kerry? Or an old tree?
The monks? First is Gelimbi, with a portrait I'm very fond of.
It's a redone version of a painting from Ocarina of Time, which I only noticed years after I played the game was supposed to be two hands holding a mask. But I always saw it as a bejowled green man in a black and white sweater with Krusty the Clown hair in a crouched position, a solemn expression on his eyeless face. That image stuck in my memory more than any other image in that game, because it was so creepy. He's barely visible in this version, however.
Our other monk is Azorre. I thought this portrait was kind of cute.
I like this group. It looks new and sounds new. And the playstyle is utterly foreign.
Since everyone in the group can hide, we sneak past the Duergar and mob the Mineral Mephit. We can now steal the Sewage Golem key!
Even though we get more XP from using the Activation Stone instead.
We don't do a very good job of sneaking past the Otyugh. Nibidda, our designated lockpicker and trap disarmer, had to break invisibility within the Otyugh's field of vision, but he couldn't quite hide afterward, and had to run.
Azorre blocks the Otyugh while still invisible, granting Nibidda some breathing room.
Eventually I give up on trying to hide from the Otyugh and just whomp it.
We do pretty good, handling much of the danger while weathering the damage. And when our frontliners get hurt--which they will, because they're low-level monks with a +4 AC penalty due to blindness--they can Hide with No Sight and get enough room to use Lay on Hands.
Hide with No Sight also lets us steal an Oil of Speed without drawing the attention of Ilyich's men.
It makes traps a pain, however, as Nibidda has to be practically on top of them in order to detect them.
The Mephit Portals are rather easy to hit. And they can be backstabbed, unlike any other construct.
I want to rest before we face Ilyich, so I make sure we use our per-day abilities on the other enemies around the place. Special Snares wreck the final group of Duergar, but our Bounty Hunters don't hang back after the enemy gets slowed.
We move the monks ahead to fight the Mage, who can only hit two party members with Horror due to the way we spread out the group.
A Special Snare slows the mage as well and eases his fall.
We still have traps left, so we go to the Assassins on the way out. Nibidda gets targeted when he fails to hide--as he didn't realize one of the enemies was right next to him when he tried to do so.
SCS backstabbers go for the characters with the worst AC, which means thieves are always very vulnerable. But being able to set traps mid-combat is a powerful offensive tool.
We lay our remaining traps near Ilyich and rest. The traps take care of the Smoke Mephit, though that's not much benefit to us on its own.
Mid-combat traps thin out the Duergar when we lure them out, and Stunning Blow keeps attacks off of us.
Ilyich's mage friend disables many of us, but he can't handle trap damage combined with missile fire. It's too much for a single Mirror Image to absorb.
We leave Chateau Irenicus in good shape.
To me, it's also the first experience of an international MP, my previous attempts included only me and my wife playing BG.
So far, so good. Everything is so quick in the multiplayer. Unexpected things happen quickly, lucky and unlucky moments come quickly. But the best thing about the MP is the contant conversation between the participants. Thanks, @semiticgod for reporting the lines
I'll add several screenshots.
This is the Poppy's selfie:
The drow's magic resistance at hand:
The Gowrek's moment of fame: "A mage? What mage?"
Followed by an instant death:
The Iron Crisis leads to not only weapons breaking, but mouses (or should I say "mice" - http://grammarist.com/usage/mice-mouses/) as well:
Moments of scare: A bandit archers ambush, Silke making sleep nearly the entire party.
A LoL moment: Silke going invisible and thus making all our previous actions go to a waste so that we had to witchhunt through the entire town.
The most useful spell: Command - it helps a lot against mages with Mirror Images.
Narrator: Chromatic Orb is an excellent spell. I never realized. The party has entirely switched over from Magic Missiles to COs by now. Although CO is save reliant and doesn't do as much damage, it synergizes with the party's spells so much better. Much of Epona's firepower stems from being able to one-hit-kill, and the other party members are following the same track.
After leaving Trademeet, Epona returns to the Wild refuge and speaks to Telana. She tells us to meet Hayes in the Bridge District and find a wild mage by the name of Daxus. Sounds easy enough.
We get ambushed in the Delosar Inn, then again outside. Both fights last only seconds. Epona wipes the floor with the Red Wizards. Three of the mercenaries are petrified, then another is death spelled. The Amnian Guards take down the remaining archer.
Epona had a Talisman of the Hearthfire, but decided to keep Daxus around for the battle. She had no idea it would be over so quickly, or that the Red Wizard assault wouldn't be stronger.
Frustratingly, keeping Daxus around for the fight means that the option to teleport is no longer available. Why? No reason. It's just not there anymore. Very frustrating. We tell Daxus to follow us outside.
We are whisked away by the game, even though Epona and Daxus are perfectly capable of walking out the door all by themselves.
I looked up the definition of 'Follow' in the dictionary. It does not involve anything like this:
Narrator: This kind of stuff annoys me at times. Why is the party arranged like that? Why is Daxus, a man we're supposed to defend--and who was supposed to follow behind us--purposely thrust out into the line of fire like that? Why can't I just play this damn game my own way, instead of having my people arranged like chess pieces on whatever board the programmers decide they wanted me to play? Sheesh...
I was expecting Daxus to get murderized because he's dropped out in front of the party. The Red Wizards ignore him, however. Thankfully.
Skull traps disurpt the enemy's ranks, then chromatic orbs petrify them. They are broken down into chunks. I was getting great mileage out of this level 1 spell this point, and the party's higher level abilities were more or less still fully available. Things were looking up.
We send Daxus off with Hayes and return to the Wild Refuge.
Epona: Oh crackers, did I leave the oven on?
We speak with Telana and discover that the Red Wizards have taken the wild mages to Waukeen's Promenade. Neera blows up the bouncer and begins to act like an idiot, even by the standards normally allowed for vengeance-seeking hotheads. Once again, Epona must fight against the dark urge to slap someone.
She also meets an old friend.
Epona: I'm definitely going to come back as a shadowdancer!
Narrator: Epona doesn't partake in melee combat, but she purchases the dagger anyway. For nostalgia's sake. Maybe she can get off a backstab at some point. She doesn't really have the strength or THAC0 for it, but you never know.
We convince Gul Dukeem to open door number 1. She is recognized, but chromatic orbs and Yoshimo's traps make quick work of the attackers.
I've done this quest once before. The last time I did it, there was an entire company of mercenaries on the other side. Epona opens the door while cloaked do a little recon.
It's not what we were expecting.
Epona: Wait a minute... you knew what was going to be on the other side of that door, and you sent me to open it up anyway?
Narrator: I have no recollection of the event in question.
Epona: Mm-hmmmmm.... riiiiight.
Narrator: It seems that doing some of the wild mage quests changes how the assault on the Wizard Enclave plays out. Mironda, rather than a non-descript Bernard-type NPC, is behind the bar. Instead of finding a room full of hostile mercenaries, we find people sipping cocktails.
As she explores, Epona sees evidence that the relationship between wizard and mercenary is on the rocks. Fadell's journal makes clear that losses are high but morale is low. Epona even spots a Red Wizard trying to extort sex out of a female merc. She tries to get Fadell to down a few more drinks in honour of her fallen comrades, but the merc leader doesn't go for it. So Epona decides to try Mironda.
Epona starts the brawl by disintegrating the closest Red Wizard. Then runs like hell, taking care to avoid running into anyone's knees. Hardly anyone pays attention to her in the scuffle.
She eventually makes her way to the slave pen to free Ghallus, but a Thayan Fighter surprises her. Epona deals with him in a swift and humorous manner.
Polymorph Other might as well be a kill-weapon like Disintegrate. When the target fails a save and is transformed, their hitpoints are dramatically reduced. So much so that 1 or 2 minute meteors from Jan's robe, a chromatic orb or magic missile can finish them off. It's a decent option for times when you've expended all of your other insta-kill abilities.
Offscreen, the rest of the party prepares to breach the door between Gul Dukeem's shop and the bar. When they do, a hail of poisonous trap-arrows flood the room, decimating the Thayan forces and giving the disgruntled mercs a helpful boost.
One interesting thing I learned during this battle is that charmed enemies don't turn hostile if they are harmed by allies. Epona turns a few of the Red Wizards with her POV gun, then allows the mercenaries to cut them down without retaliation.
Narrator: The mercs leave after the battle and Epona makes her way deeper into the enclave, where she finds Lanneth. Ghallus returns with some beefy Amnian Legionnaires in tow, who make mincemeat out of the red wizards.
Epona: Let's see what's behind door number 2 then, shall we?
Image: Epona breaches the door to Lanneth's lab with traps, seriously wounding the Red Wizards and fighters on the otherside. However, Lanneth has enough to potions to fully heal herself back up again.
Luckily, while waiting for the poison to do it's work, some of Lanneth's protections wear off.
Epona elects to deal with the Red Witch in other way.
Image: A dominated Lanneth shreds her former comrades at upper-right, stripping them of protections and pelting them with missiles.
Epona, meanwhile, death rays anyone who attempts to flee out the door.
Image: Lanneth, unable to respond due to being dominated, is put down before she can return to her senses and unleash any sunfire spells on the party.
It's actually kind of a horrible way to kill someone, when you think about it. They can see it all about to happen but cannot do anything to stop it; Then it's all over too soon for them to regain their senses. What a sucky way to go. Epona's not all that keen on it either, but sometimes you just have to do what works.
Narrator: Neera's quest was a slaughterfest the first time I did it on another playthrough, so it was nice to see that there was another way to do it. If you don't get Halfling's Help for Mironda in the Wild Refuge, then you end up facing a room of already hostile mercenaries. It was a relief to turn them on their Red Wizard masters and get some help this time through.
With Lanneth out of the picture Epona rescues the wild mages and returns to the Wild Refuge. Though she needs to make sure everything is okay and get some closure, in truth there is only one person on her mind. Zaviak. She has something to show him.
Narrator: Zaviak only has one person on his mind, though. Telana. Epona loses yet another romantic opportunity. The man also makes no mention of Wilson.
Seriously. Epona saved his life, found his bear and traveled an entire day just to come see him, and all the guy can do is gawk at Telana. What is a female gnome honestly supposed to do in this game?
Epona: [sigh] Just can't give this away.
Narrator: Still, all in all this was a very lucrative mission. Epona and her gang left with an entire arsenal of new wands and gear. Most importantly we got our hands on a spellstrike wand. This should make taking down mages so much easier, especially now that Epona also has a true seeing gem.
Now Epona is all set to face Bodhi.... except for the whole level drain thing. Realizing we'll need some help against the undead, Epona sinks to a new low.
Anomen: Hellooooooo, My Lady. You couldn't get the best, so no everything is coming up Anomen! Huzzah!
Epona: Not my finest moment.
Narrator: I neglected to tell Epona that I'd forgotten all about the Protection from Undead scrolls we had. Nobody tell her this. My fault, totally. She'd kill me if she found out.
Bodhi's lair was actually quite easy. Vampires don't seem to do well with Disintegration. Every single vampire hit was vapourized. I can't even recall if they actually got to save against Epona's death ray.
For the larger groups of enemies, Anomen made a useful tool (pun intended) on point, invisible and pinging Turn Undead every round. He was able to scatter the vampires, allowing Epona to hunt them down singularly with Disintegration or the Wand of Paralyzation. The wand got a lot of use zapping the held enemies.
Epona: I like to pretend I'm a stormtrooper. Pew pew!
When the vampire lair was cleared, the party confronted Bodhi.
Epona: Bodhi, you have a drinking problem.
Yoshimo: You have a built a fortress literally flowing with red wine. Creating such copious amounts of your own brew takes alcoholism to a whole new level. You're grog is cutting into the Shadow Thieves' market; they've tasked us with taking you to rehab. Of course, though, we do this because we're your friends.
Anomen: Yes, we care about you.
Bodhi: Ano... Anomen? What are you doing here?
Anomen: You never called...
Epona: Don't tell me you two... you know.
Bodhi: Yes, okay. We did. Who do you think drove me to the bottle?
Epona: It's time to get some help.
Bodhi: I don't have a problem. Quit badgering me. I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe you have a problem. You're not my brother, I'm moving out of this place, I don't live here anymore, you can't tell me what to do!
[Bodhi retreats]
Anomen: Another victory for Anomen!
Epona: Sheesh, he wouldn't shut up about that. The tale grew with each telling, as well. After a night in the Five Flagons he was telling everyone that he jumped on Bodhi's back and impaled her with a spear.
The party underwent some changes before departing for Spellhold. Jan returned from his romantic night with Lissa.
Epona and gang tolerated Anomen for as long as was gnomishly possible, but in the end they were broken like a battered ship upon the unyielding rock of his abrasive barnacle-strewn personality. 'Chalk up another one for Anomen' quickly became a broken-record mantra, repeated at the end of every retelling of his glorious--and apparently solo--victory over the vampire Bodhi. Everytime he opened his mouth the party lost a measure of its sanity. Wilson went berserk and mauled him.
Epona now had a dead body on her hands, but she handled the issue adroitly.
Epona: Yes, I'd like to report another Skinner Murder.
The team then went to Spellhold. During the week long voyage Epona and Yoshimo had plenty of time to discuss and rehearse how they would play his betrayal and eventual death. Since Yoshimo has officially been killed more times than Sean Bean, he was up for a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Five Flagon's Acting Guild. Th two decided to plan something special.
Yoshimo is of the mind to play his death in a soulful and thought provoking way, drawing inspiration from Delivio's death in Enter The Ninja. He hopes to capture man's futile struggle of free-will vs. circumstance with a single poignant facial expression.
Epona thinks he should go for gold. Ray guns open up a whole new spectrum of death options not available among the standard stock of death-throes offered by sword play, and she was favouring a more dramatic approach that would be remembered through the ages, a la 1974's Karate Girl.
We'll just have to see.
Once at Brynnlaw, Epona heard about a certain Perth the Adept. Unfortunately, the film studio was having serious technical problems with its animatronic extras. Perth was all scrambled and attacked.
Luckily, Epona had her true seeing gem and wand of spell strikes. With no defences, Perth was easy prey for poison traps and chromatic orbs.
We all know what happens. Go to spellhold, find Imoen, get captured, lose soul, get thrown out by Ireniucs like an overdue parking ticket.
Fortunately, an unexpected ally intervened.
Bodhi: I've thought about what you said, Epona, and I've decided you're right. I've been doing a lot of thinking. Guess what, I'm in rehab!
Also... [magical sparkly gesticulating] I'm gaaaAAAAaaaay!!!!
Jan: Well, chalk up another one for Ano--
Epona: Don't say it.
Narrator: Until next time, folks.
Epona: Oooooh, that Delayed Blast Fireball schematic is gonna be sweet. So close, now!
So I guess it is my turn to tell the tale of our day's adventures. I am not used to taking screenshots every few minutes so I only managed 3 today.
We started our adventure where we left off last time in the area south, southwest of Beregost. At this time it was just @GemHound @bengoshi and I, each of us controlling our own party member and an extra one for the other three who were absent at the time. The first thing we did was go to kill the half-ogres that Bjornin had sent us after earlier. Having done this we left the area to report back to the recovering paladin and get a nice new shield. Then we decided to do some shopping at the High Hedge to get some scrolls for our mages Llolnae and Poppy. I was informed that we could get ambushed at any point by dangerous assassins so we stocked up on a few spells to prepare for this, primarily Detect Invisibility. After this we went to The FAI temple to buy potions to increase our mages' brain power so they could better learn the spells we had bought. After doing this I suggested we head to the Cloudpeak Mountains to hunt some winter wolves which we did. On the way there we were waylaid by, surprise surprise, a winter wolf which I destroyed in two hits.
I had taken to scouting around in advance of the rest of the group one we reached the cloudpeaks now that my stealth was good enough to succeed most of the time. We encountered some bears and winter wolves and killed them as we went. I was backstabbing just about everything that got in our way, including a gnoll that looked like trouble by the name of ingot.
We met a group of gnolls led by Ludrug who challenged our mightiest champion (which turned out to be Moros) to a duel. Ludrug was beaten soundly and surrendered, allowing us passage through the area. It was right after this that misfortune befell our group as, while Llolnae was busy leveling up, a cave bear wandered over to Poppy and killed her before the group could regain its bearings. We decided to clear the area before bringing her back at a temple. Right after this happened we were joined by @Meyahi who took control of his character, Moros. We met a dryad and protected her tree from some morons who we webbed and greased up while shooting them down from afar. We rescued a dead cat from a waterfall and returned it to the girl who owned it. At this point @GemHound had to leave the group for the day and so we continued on without him.
We cleared the area and returned to Nashkel to have poppy resurrected and then moved to the area of the mountains southwest of Nashkel. Upon entering our first battle in the area the combat music bugged out and refused to stop so I stopped time for a short while, which we had previously discovered fixes the issue somehow. (Check out the code I used!)
Despite my desires for a new suit of leathers, we decided to leave Sendai and her deadly archer buddies alone for now and instead take on Vax and Zal. This almost cost us dearly as bad timing, a bit of confusion, some misplaced webs, and some bad luck nearly killed Moros and Tyndor. While we dealt with Vax, who had come up to challenge us alone before we were quite ready, Zal had wandered out of the range of the webs that Loki had cast. As we were looking for Zal after killing Vax we were spotted by a winter wolf and Moros and Tyndor accidentally wandered into the web. Vax must have heard the commotion of all this because he came back and started throwing his darts. Fortunately a quick thinking Poppy (who was under @Meyahi's control) cast Command on Vax as Gowrek rushed up to him to kill him before he could toss more than one dart. The web had worn off just in time for Moros to get the Antipode belt passed to him and slapped around his waist to save him from the cold of the winter wolf. Having narrowly escaped this encounter we left for Beregost to do some trading and recover from our wounds.
Deciding that the one suit of ankheg we found in Nashkel was not enough we headed to the ankheg farm to collect some shells for the making of a new suit. We killed an ankheg and rushed back to the Thunderhammer smithy to have a new suit of ankheg plate made for Gowrek. When we had our new suit we couldn't think of anywhere to go except back to the ankheg farm to kill more ankhegs in hopes of gaining some valuable experience. We had little trouble clearing out a tunnel full of the critters and we only interrupted our bug hunting once to dump more shells on Taerom's doorstep. After clearing out the ankheg tunnels we returned to Beregost again and decided to stop for the day.
I was very pleased with our work today. We got a lot of things done and I think we are starting to get the hang of working together with each other. By now our multi-class characters are about level 3 and our single-class characters are about level 4. It was great fun and I am having a blast! Gowrek is still doing the majority of the killing in the group, but Moros is slowly catching up to him.
The wand of fire in the Ankheg cave should let us do the nashkel mines. I quote @bengoshi describing the Mulahey encounter in SCS:
"Kobolds come and come
and come and come
and come and come"
This clears up most of the enemies, and another setting clears up the rest. With blindness, traps are instant-casting, uninterruptible area-effect physical damage spells with no save that bypass spell protections and resistances, and also apply some other effects on contact (lingering poison damage, fire damage, paralysis, etc.).
That said, I really wish Zalos could get the spells Irenicus promises us.
If only Liches, Mind Flayers, and Vampires went down that easily.
We start the Mae'Var questline for easy XP, but blindness slows Nibidda's trap disarming to a crawl. He can only detect one at a time.
Blindness has lots of uses, but it comes at a cost.
I always travel with the entire party hidden, which lets us get the jump on ambushing bandits.
Traps frustrate their approach and weaken the enemy fighters.
This gives us the time to put our ranger spells to use.
Our monks appear and fade to waste the enemy mage's spells. We send in a monk while he or she is invisible, let the invisibility wear off, and then hide in plain sight while the mage is casting a spell. This lets us drain their spells as well as their pre-buffs.
We now have Arbane's Sword! This might come in handy if a disabler comes our way. We also trigger the Renfeld ambush, which we win mostly just using traps, and begin the Harper questline. Prebek and Sanasha have lots of disablers, but Called Shot allows us to increase our chance of a successful Stunning Blow. We slay both mages this way.
Called Shot at level 8 penalizes the target's save vs. spell by 1 every hit, for 15 seconds. Stunning Blow lasts 2 rounds and stuns the target for one round on a failed save vs. spell. With our high APR, we can force the enemy to make many saves at a considerable penalty to avoid getting stun-locked, although we're a ways away from getting guaranteed failed saves against stuff like Stunning Blow.
Called Shot is actually a lot more useful in mage-heavy parties, since mages have so many more things that are improved by save penalties, but Stunning Blow, unlike mage spells, bypasses MR and spell protections.
We take on the Crypt King, which proves to be unwise. Half our party fails its save against Horror, and the remainder suffers lots of damage from Namarra, costing us many potions. We could have slain most solo enemies here easily, but the Crypt King has high resistances to missile damage for some reason, which negates most of our trap damage. And there's not much else our thieves can do if their traps fall flat.
Pai'Na will be easier. Our traps will instantly slay all of her spiders simultaneously. As for Pai'Na herself, we launch an ambush with Stunning Blow, letting us bring her down to Badly Injured before her spiders even show up.
We snatch Kitty from Pai'Na's body. It's a pity EE didn't upgrade Kitty at all, but it's still nice to have her.
We get caught off-guard by another random ambush. This time, we're all completely visible.
The party is all shiny because I used CTRL-J to get them to the district exit before the ambush.
It's daytime, so our attempts to hide fail. But we can still set our traps, and since we just hit level 11, the Special Snares are crazy powerful against humanoids.
The enemy mage disables us, but we have enough offensive power thanks to our traps that we weaken them a lot faster than they can weaken us.
Another nice thing about traps is that they seek out invisible enemies. On top of that, the lingering poison effect of normal (non-Bounty Hunter) traps is great at disrupting enemy mage spells.
There's no save against that damage. They can't escape it.
We have a lot of options from here, but I decide to stick our normal route. To the Umar Hills!
Against the Killer Mimic, we take advantage of our traps' ability to hit invisible critters.
It doesn't fight back at all.
Next, we'll be heading to the Temple Ruins, but first, I want to loot a bit of Watcher's Keep. It would be great if we could get the Crimson Dart for Xiaohei, and an Ammo Belt for Gloomwort so his inventory wouldn't be crowded with arrows and bolts all the time. As our bowman and crossbowman, he has to have lots of ammo on hand for whatever situation confronts us.
We don't have immunity to level drain, but we should be able to destroy the Vampiric Wraiths using traps. We get 7 on round one, and then 2 per round thereafter. We lay our traps and open the door to the main chamber.
The Vampiric Wraiths go down to Badly Injured and Near Death. We use Gelimbi to tank the wraiths while our Bounty Hunters keep laying traps.
But the Vampiric Wraiths regenerate faster than I thought. They heal 1 HP per second, but apparently their haste boosts that in EE as well as vanilla. We can't deal damage fast enough to kill them. Our tank falls.
This is immensely frustrating. It's not that we have to raise Gelimbi. The problem is that our greatest advantage in that fight is now lost. When we return, those Vampiric Wraiths will be waiting for us, and we won't be able to outrun them or hide from them--they can see through invisibility and have haste--in order to set up some more traps and try again at a higher level. Our only options are to use the Mace of Disruption with low APR and hope for the best, or use one or more Protection from Undead scrolls.
After raising Gelimbi, we go back to the Athkatla and go buy Protection from Undead scrolls from every place I suspect I might find them: at the Adventurer's Mart, from the Spell Store in the Promenade, and at every temple in Athkatla, from the temples of Helm in the Bridge District and the Temple District, to the Talos and Lathander temples in the latter district, to the temples of Ilmater in the Slums and the Promenade.
I gather 14 such scrolls. That's not much.
Thing is, since our Charname is a single-classed thief, we can't side with Bodhi. We're going to have to face vampires in Chapter 2. I'd really like to have Protection from Undead scrolls for that, because the only party members who will be able to get Negative Plane Protection are our Archers, who are pretty poor in melee, and have no defense against Giant Rat disease damage or the Constitution drain of SCS vampires. We have to ration those scrolls very closely. As I realize just now, this party isn't very well equipped to handle undead.
We go to the Temple Ruins without the Crimson Dart. The undead there don't drain levels, besides the Shade Lord, so we can bring them down with traps and weapons. An interesting discovery is that Bone Golems, who are the toughest enemies you'll find here at low levels (the high levels being dominated by liches), are vulnerable to Stunning Blow.
I used to avoid the Shade Lord and would just clear out the preceding area, but recently I've been going after him regularly. Even though we have no defense against level drain--we don't even have Restoration scrolls--I decide to take him on.
First, we go invisible before we enter his lair.
As I learned from @Blackraven me a while ago, a Sunstone Bullet can take down the Shadow Altar in one hit.
The Call Woodland Beings visual effect at the top of the screen is our Berserk Warrior entering the field. This provokes the Shade Lord's buffs.
We had hoped to keep the Shade Lord at bay for many rounds, but the Berserk Warrior is out of our control, and both he and Kitty fail to stand up to the Shade Lord's Black Blade of Disaster, Finger of Death, and Darkling Aura.
Other spells, however, are a little less intimidating against a party like ours.
The Shade Lord comes for us. We scatter, but cannot escape the Darkling Aura. We try attacking from range, but it's not always successful. Nibidda's 80 Set Traps skill, a product of his need to pick locks and disarm traps, makes his traps considerably less reliable than Zalos'.
But our traps and Firetooth start to wear down the Shade Lord's Stoneskins. We hurry in for some melee attacks, hoping to stun-lock him.
Stoneskin breaks down! His spellcasting is no longer assured.
We fail to stun-lock him, but the pressure wears him down nonetheless.
Back to Athkatla for shopping.
I can add several screenshots.
First, the highest damage from the backstab by Tresset so far is 50:
The dialogue about dangers in the SCS, including the lines Meyahi referred to:
The fun of getting random scrolls is sometimes bigger than getting a new level up:
So far, the Bhaalspawn was quite lucky in terms of his HP rolls (9, 3 and 7) - Loki is of the 4th level and has 29 HPs. As an Avenger, he has 4 spell slots for the second level - they all could be Web but the party play dictates to take at least 2 Charm Mammal. His Chromatic Orbs now can blind targets for 1 turn.
But as the Bhaalspawn, Loki is always in the safest place, generally healing our biggest critters - Moros and Gowrek. With more levels under his belt, Loki will become more active in battles.
The most useful spell - Command by Poppy. Only one round was enough for Gowrek to finish Zal.
This one might be tough. I disable the first one with a Bolt of Biting. Their buffs trigger.
We retreat, setting traps to thwart the enemy's progress, but backstabbers give us trouble.
What's especially problematic is that invisible characters can prevent blind thieves from hiding or setting traps, since you can't know if they're nearby.
The backstabbers don't do much damage per hit, but they hit very often.
Zalos struggles to escape, but she can't hide with enemies right next to her, and it's hard to run from what you can't see.
Azorre keeps the mages busy, allowing us to concentrate on the thieves, who are running low on Potions of Invisibility, and start removing the backstabbers from the area.
Zalos escapes. But Azorre is in trouble. I've been neglecting her health, and the pressure on her is quite extreme. There is another mage, out of our sight, who is pelting Azorre with Minute Meteors. Azorre gets AC bonuses vs. missiles thanks to her monk levels, but her AC is still very poor.
Azorre approaches death. One of the mage chooses an excellent spell, which normally receives no attention.
The end result is obvious. Azorre is gone, and now the mages may turn their attention to the rest of the party.
But we have a pricy but effective check for mages without PFMW. Bolts of Biting and Darts of Wounding deal damage through Stoneskin in my install. I actually preferred when Stoneskin blocked poison effects, but I'm more than willing to exploit that vulnerability.
But one of the mages makes several saves vs. death, and hits us hard with disablers. But Xiaohei's darts keep coming, and those saves can't last forever. The mage even fails a save against a Special Snare.
We leave the disabled mage alone and go over to finish off her partner. By the time we're done, that hold effect has worn off--it only lasts 5 rounds, not 10 like a Hold Person spell.
To my amusement, she tries to disable us with Glitterdust. Our Archers lose their sight, but we don't need them when the enemy is this badly damaged and her Stoneskins are low. We trap her.
The lingering poison damage ensures she cannot recover. We collect Azorre's belongings and raise her later on.
We hit another ambush, which I normally find very challenging and prefer to run from. This is the gang of Orogs and the mage who accompanies them. It's a lot of melee pressure all at once. But area-effect spells work great against them. We slay almost the entire group with two traps at the beginning of the fight.
The mage can't operate with lingering poison damage active. We finish off the group and continue to Trademeet. Now that our normal traps do poison damage--but do not use the poison opcode--we can slay fallen Trolls much more easily than we otherwise could.
I wasn't there last time, so I take a moment to fuss with our inventory. I'm controlling Llolnae this time as well as Poppy. We have some Darts of Stunning and Darts of Wounding, but apparently none of us have pips in darts when I ask around.
Nothing happens for a moment as the other players get ready. With nothing else to keep me busy, I start typing out a song. I end up having to explain it.
"Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy, a kid'll eat ivy, too, wouldn't you?"
"What?"
"It's a song... My dad used to sing it."
We run into the Dorn encounter, the first time I've ever seen it. Dorn does much of the work; our frontliners clean up the rest. Llolnae gets a new Wakizashi +1 to backstab with. We also encounter the item duplication bug once more.
Near the mines, Gowrek spots a Ghast. Loki recommends sending Tyndor, our Undead Hunter, out to handle them, since he's immune to the Ghast's hold effect. But @Tresset decides to go it alone, because relying on immunities is for sissies! He explodes it.
@bengoshi asks if I remember Silverpooch, our next target. I remember. He's the guy who attacks Rainbow the artist just south of the nickel mines. We do some high-level strategic thinking before we take him on.
We get Varscona! Then we realize one of the best weapons we've got isn't useful to us.
@bengoshi experiences a crash, but compulsive quick saving lets us continue without fighting Silverpooch again. We enter the nickel mines, where a naked old man warns us about evil demons infesting the mines.
The other party members explore the mines, talking to the right people and eliminating scattered groups of kobolds. I wander around accomplishing nothing while everyone else does all the work. That's what fighters are for, right?
We first come across the Vial of Mysterious Liquid, which has a fatal effect on anyone who drinks it. @Tresset makes a joke about drinking the thing. Since everyone knows I'm a greenhorn for BG1, I decide to run with the joke.
Since I'm not familiar with BG1, I have to ask where Llolnae should be directing traps. @bengoshi points me in the right direction.
Loki drops a comment that reminds me of another song. Midway through the message, I realize we've just run into a huge group of kobolds.
"Use Sleep!"
"I ran out of Sleep spells."
"Oh."
The rest of the party hurries in to address the problem. I notice there are two Kobold Commandos in a separate cabal of kobolds to the south. I send in Poppy to disable one of them with Command. I don't want their Arrows of Fire to hurt the rest of the party.
The good news is, nobody else in the party got hit by those arrows. The bad news is Poppy never got to cast Command.
@bengoshi runs in to take care of the kobolds to the west. A single Web spell immobilizes the entire group. Crisis contained.
I assign Llolnae to attack the webbed kobolds. To our collective amazement, she suddenly dies. I am left without any characters.
The Web still holds the other kobolds at bay, which lets the party focus on the ones to the south. Avengers are awesome.
I think it over while the others are fighting and realize what happened. When the kobolds are gone, I explain how we lost two characters in a single round. Loki reminds me of another song, this time from Monty Python.
They gather Poppy and Llolnae's equipment and raise us back at the temple. We lost hundreds of gold and lots of time, but we learned a valuable lesson about kobolds:
@semiticgod doesn't know how to handle them.
How did it go after that?
There aren't many things more frustrating in BG2 than being locked into a room and not being let out until a certain critter is dead... and then discovering that the critter can't be killed in the first place.
The Merrie Men of Easthaven
A no-reload full party modded IWD run
Starting in Easthaven
The Merries absolutely did not buy their equipment at Pomab's, they showed up in Easthaven already equipped. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.Robin: Longbow, longsword, helmet
Will: Longbow, longsword, helmet, medium shield, studded leather
John: Longbow, quarterstaff, helmet, studded leather
Nasir: Shortbow, short sword
Tuck: Sling, club, helmet
Alan: Shortbow, short sword
I'm not going to get too long-winded about the Easthaven quests.
They killed some bugs
Helped Jhonen and Elisia
And killed a wolf
While helping a young boy who'd been accosted by goblins, John was killed by a goblin archer. It cost the party the pearl Elisia had given them to have him raised at the temple.
Robin decided to help an old drunk, and this was enough for the rogues to level up. Alan can now cast spells, or he could if he had any in his spellbook.
Hunting for the caravan
The Merries met the leader of Easthaven, an old warrior named Hrothgar. The town of Kuldahar had requested aid against an unspecified threat, and Hrothgar was recruiting adventurers for an expedition. Robin agreed to join up, and Hrothgar asked the Merries to investigate a missing caravan while he made preparations for the force to set out.Following the route of the caravan, the band encounters a small pack of wolves.
Then something truly strange happens. Continuing along the trail, John spots a cave with an orc standing guard at the entrance. The sentry moves to attack the party, but as he passes near the canyon wall, he disappears into thin air.*
Then as they moved against the main force, Will falls to the archers.
The band goes back to town, raises Will, and comes back to clear out the rest of the orcs. Aaannndd...
This is what boxers call "leading with your chin."
Another trip back to town, another 100 bucks, another night at the inn.
The Merries come back to explore the heavily defended Southwest corridor.
Will scouted ahead and found an ogre with a group of orcs. He led them back to the choke-point in the corridor.
The party got lucky. The ogre was stuck behind his minions and couldn't reach Will until they were all dead. Also, I finally remembered why Alan is here.
Tuck levels up.
After Will tried to fight the ogre, the band decided that kiting was much more practical.
Wait, did that ogre just heal himself?
On to the loot.
The Merries report back to Hrothgar, then take the supply list to Pomab.
Will levels up
Robin and John level up
In preparation for the expedition, the party buys better armor and a few healing potions, then gets a good nights rest.
Party status
Robin: Archer level 2, 22 hpLongbow, longsword, helmet, small shield, studded leather
Will: Fighter level 2, 20 hp - 2 deaths
Longbow, longsword, helmet, large shield, splint mail
John: Berserker level 2, 22 hp - 1 death
Longbow, quarterstaff, helmet, splint mail
Nasir: Assassin level 2, 12 hp
Shortbow, HQ dagger
Tuck: Priest of Lathander level 2, 16 hp
Sling, club, helmet, medium shield, studded leather
Alan: Bard level 2, 12 hp
Shortbow, Apsel's dagger (HQ dagger), buckler
Total raise cost: 300
Alan's got several scrolls, including sleep, but with a 13 INT, I'm not even going to try to write them until he gets a potion.
Three deaths in the prologue, not good.
I need to get better at prioritizing in combat. Both times Will died, I was concentrating on the shamen when there were more deadly threats to worry about. Curse isn't that big a deal, and I could have countered it with bard song and bless. Also, I need to remember to use bard song more often, that's the main reason I decided to use Alan instead of "Mage Marian".
In this run dealing with a single (even tough) target is a lot easier - see that already dead Greywolf is being attacked by simultaneus Chromatic Orb with Blindness effect and Hold Person:
As for the enemy groups, we shouldn't underestimate them.
This is bad:
Because when this happens,
Something like this should be an answer:
Anyway, after resurrecting both Llolnae and Poppy the gnome girl informed us that she has to be involved somewhere else and has to leave the party for a long time (semiticgod won't be able to play for an uncertain time because his holiday has ended).
Much against our will, we had to part ways with Poppy. We'll be happy to reunite with her any time in the future but for now there're only 5 of us left (the Poppy character has been exported so that all her abilities, spells and stats are saved, the bag of holding has been created for current and future items suitable for Poppy).
This run will probably last for many and many month, so everyone is welcomed to participate!
Anyhow. We were on a timer from the beginning of the session; I left my charger at home and was on campus, so we ended up starting with only 3, @bengoshi, @Gemhound, and myself. Bengoshi took control of Gowrek, and I took control of Moros; Gemhound actually had to make decisions on what to cast, and Loki couldn't be put into any real danger, so Bengoshi got to do a bit of dangerous stuff on our resident Half-orc.
Session began in the temple of Helm, or very near to it. Llolnae had just been Raise Dead'd, and Loki had run out of healing spells. Being too cheapskate to purchase additional healing from Helm, we elect to go to the inn. Before we enter, Bengoshi reminds us that we hadn't killed Neira yet. We decided that we could probably take her, with Moros' Rage and Tyndor's immunity to Hold nullifying the majority of her spells. Gowrek proves that you don't need immunities to fight clerics, and the best status to inflict to an enemy is Dead.
A thing to note here is that I'm not sure what's up with the internet at campus; I was in a student lounge, and I'm fairly sure that the IP addresses are being reassigned occasionally. But what that means is that there's a split second of disconnect, enough to kick me out of the game. This happens every 10 minutes or so, and can kick me out of battles. I missed a few due to this, so...
Anyways, our crew heads to the mines, slaughtering hordes of kobolds and commandoes on the way. Both Gemhound and I seem to have bugs, textual or otherwise, in our installs; most of my remaining screenshots deal with them.
Gemhound identified this strings at one point; I still don't know where my dialog.tlk is corrupted and making these funny things happen. Llolnae... Died here, I think? Lost a lot of health, regardless, but we established it as a lag bug and Bengoshi Ctrl-R'd her back to health.
Iron crisis rears its ugly head in the mines:
The name of the Kobold Shaman (I think):
I disconnected this battle soon after. I take it that the sniping was successful. We returned up to rest with the guards; two further, and we successfully sleep to heal, and then... well, first I crashed again. Second, Gemcraft and I starting seeing things.
Those are Biff the Understudy's. There's one for every Kobold, in the same space that the Kobolds currently occupy. I understand that this is even worse for Gemhound, but...
Tresset came online around here, thinking he'd missed the game session. We waited for him to join around Mulahey, but no dice. We continued without him after waiting for 10 minutes or so.
We got Mulahey to fire off his scripts for his minions, but they all got caught in Loki's Web at the chokepoint. Backstabs and arrows prove too much for the cleric to handle, and he quickly keels over without a single spell being cast. Ranged weapons take out the reinforcements, and the mines are finished.
Outside, we decide to fight some undead and loot some tombs. I'm stubbornly still not switching armor with Moron, so Tyndor's AC is -3 at best in splint and a +1 Medium Shield, effective -5 with Pro. Evil. So I decide that I'll try fighting the Revenant. He still hits on a 10, and Tyndor ends up running back out of the cave. Moron and Gowrek join the fight outside after a backstab or two, and eventually the dead is put back to rest with a nifty new dagger that no one really wants to use in our possession. The Ghoul and three Ghasts are also put back under the ground.
I can't comment on the Nimbul fight that we ended with, as I disconnected just as it started. I understand that he got hit with Blind, Sleep nearly murdered everyone, Rasaad was annoying, and Loki's Webs caught the party as much as Nimbul, but... Anyone else have screenshots?
The Merrie Men of Easthaven
A no-reload full party modded IWD run
Goblin Gauntlet
The Merries left Easthaven as part of Hrothgar's militia and were the only survivors of the frost giant's ambush. They met an old hermit who told them the way to Kuldahar and warned them of goblins.The band fought their way through the goblins and went straight on to the town.
Chapter One - Kuldahar
When they reached the village, they were met by a young boy who guided them to Arundel, the Archdruid who had sent the messenger to Easthaven. He filled in the Merries on what he knew of the evils affecting Kuldahar and suggested they investigate the Vale of Shadows, a haunted burial ground near town.They decided to go back to Kuldahar pass first and clear out the goblins. Robin and Will didn't want to leave an enemy behind them while the Merries were off exploring the tombs.
First though, they needed to sell off the weapons they'd taken from the goblins and rest for the night. On the way to the blacksmith's shop, they saved a man named Mirek from a pair of tundra yetis.
Alan and Nasir level up.
Mirek told Robin his brother had been killed by the yetis and had lost a family heirloom. Robin agreed to try to get it back.
The Merries met Conlin at the smithy and sold off their excess equipment. Then, they went to tavern to relax a bit before heading to the inn. After talking with the barmaid, Alan and Nasir poked around and found that the owner of the inn had come into ownership under false pretenses.
Tuck levels up.
Back to the Valley
The well rested Merries returned to the pass and began clearing it of the goblins.They met an ogre with a headache, and then they came upon a large group of goblins fighting giant beetles.
Next, the Merries set about clearing the mill. Outside was a goblin marshall who seemed to be suffering from the same malady as the ogre they'd met earlier, though he said something about being called to the valley.
Inside the mill, the party was set upon by orcs. This was a close quarters fight that saw Robin and Alan wounded before Will was able to wade into the fray and block the remaining orcs. One of the orcs was carrying a magic shield known as Stoutward, which Robin took to replace his small shield.
The room downstairs was filled with goblins, but with Alan bolstering the band with his song, and Will running interference, the creatures fell like ninepins without landing a blow.
Robin found a boy hiding in the closet, when he saw that the goblins were dead, he left for the temple of Ilmater in Kuldahar.
The last room in the mill was another close-quarters fight, but Robin killed the goblin flanking the Merries from behind with a single arrow. John and Will kept the other axe wielding goblins busy, while Robin, Nasir and Tuck made short work of the enemy archers.
With the valley now cleared, the Merries headed back to Kuldahar to prepare for their foray into the vale of shadows. Along the way, they checked in with Arundel and mentioned the strange symptoms the ogre had reported. Arundel suggested an herbal remedy and the band went back to tell Ghereg about it.
After selling all the loot taken in the valley, the band had enough money to buy everfull quivers for everyone and leather armor for Nasir and Alan.
Party status
Robin: Archer level 2, 22 hpLongbow, longsword, helmet, Stoutward +1 (small shield), studded leather
Will: Fighter level 2, 20 hp - 2 deaths
Longbow, longsword, helmet, large shield, splint mail
John: Berserker level 2, 22 hp - 1 death
Longbow, quarterstaff, helmet, splint mail
Nasir: Assassin level 3, 18 hp
Shortbow, HQ dagger, leather
Tuck: Priest of Lathander level 3, 24 hp
Sling, club, helmet, medium shield, studded leather
Alan: Bard level 3, 18 hp
Shortbow, Apsel's dagger (HQ dagger), buckler, leather
Total raise cost: 300
Alan still hasn't scribed any of his scrolls, Fiddlebender doesn't sell potions of genius, only potions of mind focusing, and the party hasn't had enough money anyway. I'm getting more comfortable with the combat dynamics after the rocky start last session. This party is turning out to be far less fragile and much more deadly than Gudrun's party. Robin is the first archer I've ever played and it's amazing how much damage he puts out even at second level. It's also nice having a group where the lowest strength score is 14. That makes carrying loot so much easier.
Irrespective of the above, Belle does have her heart in the right place. She won't exploit others for her own gain, at least not grievously, and she's more likely to help defenseless folk in need than not.
After her foster father's violent death at the hands of a huge armored figure, Belle traveled the Sword Coast on her own. Early on, her big mouth got her into trouble more than once. In Beregost for instance she insulted a couple of Red Wizards of Thay who were threatening to kill a pacific, Half-Elven sorceress of some sort. Belle was hesitant to fight the Thayans, and fled into to the Travenhurst mansion. When she went outside she discovered that the Red Wizards had killed the Half-Elf.
Hardships and disappointments like the aforementioned didn't stop Belle from growing into a seasoned adventurer though. There were successful campaigns against dominated Basilisks and their master, and against Ankhegs north of the Friendly Arm Inn. There were bandits and brigands who would not live to regret crossing Belle.
One of the nicest things of being an adventurer were the gold and the loot. Sporting a suit of Shadow Armor, Boots of Stealth, an enchanted short sword named Sound Defense (a Song & Silence item), and Buckley's Buckler, and equipped with precious items such as the Legacy of the Masters gauntlets, the Claw of Kazgaroth, a Ring of Free Action she nicked from a Gnome in Ulgoth's Beard, a Ring of Human Influence, a Cloak of Displacement, a Returning Frost Dart, and several protective belts, Belle quite looked the part of swell Swashbuckler. Her wealth and her powerful gear did more than make the Halfling look pretty though. They also helped her defeat imposing foes such as the Battle Horrors that guarded Durlag's Tower,
As for the multiplayer run, I didn't see all those Biffs and strange pieces of text. Meanwhile, I can add several screenshots.
The Mulahey's quick demise:
The battle against Nimbul - below you can see that we managed to blind him in the start (thanks to Chromatic Orb) but then all 3 our fighters fell to sleep and Loki and Llolnae had to chase running blind Nimbul (aka Silke number 2).
I decided that the best strategy in this situation would be an attempt to Web Nimbul even with the price of being webbed myself - the drow's Magic Resistance would give an advantage here.
After this fight Loki reached the 5th level (thus becoming immune to Sleep) and the number of this 2nd level spells (Webs) became 6 (!). Also he got 3rd level spells (Invisibility Purge among them) which provided a good resourse against assassin ambushes from the SCS.
'Bawdy' Belle Hornswoggle, Halfling Swashbuckler, 2nd & final BG1 report
Belle's decision to look into the troubled Nashkel Mines for Berrun Ghastkill set in motion a chain of events that led to the Halfling learning about an evil plot to lead the Sword Coast to war, and about her own hitherto mysterious roots.
She didn't really understand the fuss about the Nashkel Mines. The evil there was just a bunch of Kobolds led by a Half-Orc priest. Belle slew the Kobolds that stood in her way, and stunned and then slew the priest with her darts. Nothing the Amnian military couldn't have accomplished themselves she reckoned.
Belle infiltrated the bandit camp via an unsuspecting bandit who seemed to have fallen for her charms. At the camp, her anti-missile gear (Cloak of Displacement, Boots of Avoidance, Elves' Bane girdle), a potion of defense, an oil of speed and a Greenstone Amulet charge helped Belle prevail against the leading bandits. One of them was a wizard. The Halfling neutralized this threat with darts of wounding before she struck him down.
An Elven prisoner she released, pointed her to an Iron Throne base in Cloakwood, according to him the masterminds behind the iron crisis and the bandit plague. Belle cruised through the forest, killing a pedantic hunter who had slain a Druid, and eliminating all kinds of Spiders, before she indeed reached the Iron Throne base, a mine. By the entrance she defeated a hasted, potion of frost giant strength quaffing berserker, relying on the protection of a potion of absorption and her girdle of bluntness to stand up to the warrior.
Inside the mine Belle snuck through the many corridors while hidden in shadows, until deep down she found the master of the mine, a wizard named Davaeorn. Before she could touch him, she had to deal with two Battle Horrors though, and with a contingent of guards. The Battle Horrors fell in melee combat; the guards succumbed to the crafty Halfling's Necklace of Missiles.
As the Iron Throne HQ were located in Baldur's Gate, Belle's logical next step was to visit that great city. Although she was more than eager to get rid of the Throne both for her own sake - she was getting tired of being followed by assassins and bounty hunters everywhere she went - and for that of the people of the Sword Coast, the Halfling didn't rush her dealings with them. Instead, she indulged in several lucrative side-quests, leading her to increase her dexterity, intelligence and wisdom, and to obtain more valuable items (mostly scrolls, potions, ammo).
She encountered the Iron Throne offices heavily guarded, but successfully snuck past the watchmen and learned from one of the employees, after he felt her cold blade against his throat, that the Throne board were in Candlekeep on business.
A potion of magic blocking helped her past five Charm Person casting Ogre Mages,
The Halfling was slightly shaken by these ill tidings, but still sensible enough to loot the catacombs below Candlekeep where Tethtoril had kindly teleported her, and to find her way past monsters and villains, back to the surface, and back to Baldur's Gate.
There, a meeting with two assassins, a male rogue and a female mage hired by Sarevok to kill the Grand Dukes in order for him to become a Grand Duke himself, turned into a very bloody affair that had Belle fear for her life more than once. She successfully shook off the wizard but had more than her hands full with the rogue. The two had very distinct fighting styles, with Belle being a flashy duelist and her opponent preferring painfully precise attacks from the shadows. Initially the latter style seemed more effective, not least because the rogue had several invisibility potions at his disposal.
Belle convinced the Palace guards to let her in before the festivities were to begin, in order to inspect the premises. She strategically placed no less than seven snares, a security measure she considered reasonable given Sarevok's plans to kill the city's Dukes. On the night of the event, Belle prepared as well as she could to prevent or quash a possible assault on the Grand Dukes, using a green PfMagic scroll and numerous potions (violet, fortitude, agility, mind focusing, defense, speed, power, regeneration).
Belle's precautions proved warranted. Six nobles present at the event turned out to be Doppelgangers employed by Sarevok. Belle's snares instantly killed one or two of them (including one Mage), and her poisoned arrows of dispelling did a great job at slowing the remaining Doppelgangers down. Belle switched to dual wielding two short swords (taking a Short Sword of Backstabbing with its massive Thac0 bonus in her off-hand), and made short work of the shapeshifting creatures.
Duke Belt cast a Divination spell, and discovered Sarevok and the wizard had entered an underground maze from the Thieves Guild. Belle followed suit and found her nemesis and four henchmen in an old Bhaal temple. She had a batch of arrows of detonation, coated several of them in poison using another phial of poison, and inflicted a lot of pain with them.
The Halfling used her last phial of poison to debilitate her foe, and then challenged him to a dual. She used her movement speed advantage (having dispelled her opponent's haste), and her light blade for swift attacks and retreats.
As for the multiplayer run, here's an update.
After dealing with Mulahey and Nimbul the party decided to go for Tranzig. The mage couldn't deal with the group.
During the next area transition, we were ambushed by Morvin and his fellow mercenaries. The fight went smoothly thanks to stunning an enemy mage in the first round.
Soon after, the party reached the highest reputation after saving a farmer's cow from xvarts.
Several web spells proved to be enough to defeat a powerful enemy - an ogre-mage that spawned nearby.
After clearing that map we decided to take on Bassilus. Our goodies almost died because of his area spell but Web once again helped.
Melicamp was lucky to survive the transformation. Both Loki and Gowrek were happy to know their votes for "Life" opposed to the Llolnae's vote for "Death" turned right.
Then we decided to go to the Sword Coast. Tyndor (shhh! don't tell @Neverused as he missed this session) was chosen to be sacrificed to the beautiful nereid. Her master, Droth, failed his saving throw against Blindness and was defeated without much hassle.
A close call came on the next location, when due to a lag that happened on the @Tresset 's PC, Loki couldn't time gulping an antidote and had to repeat it - thankfully he had a lot of HPs to survive the poison from sirines' arrows. Moros was charmed by the sirens due to not having the rage. @GemHound brilliantly summoned monsters with the wand and it decided the encounter into our favour.
Sil and her sirens managed to charm Tyndor but Llolnae blinded the paladin so that he couldn't damage his friends. With berserkering Moros these sirens were not a problem.
For a reason, the Llolnae's disarm traps skill was not enough for the traps in the cave, so Moros, still under the rage effect, triggered them. Our fighters dealt with golems just fine. Gowrek, as someone who used to get not so favourable HP rolls, was given a CON tome.
The last Sword Coast area gave a hard fight in the form of the Doomsayer. Thanks to the Tresset's advice Loki didn't cast Lightning on the Doomsayer (who had more than 100% electricity resistance). Instead, Llolnae used her Wand of Cold 5 times while others were busy with healing potions while meleeing the enemy.
When the party returned to Nashkel with Brage, whom they saved from the complete madness, it was decided to prepare for the basilisk hunting, thus we moved to the Carnival to buy the green scroll of Protection from Petrification.
While we were at the Carnival, we dealt a problem with Zordral. The mage went invisible 2 times but Loki had two Invisibility Purge spells which helped here.
Upon arriving to the Mutamin's garden, the party decided to take on the mercenaries at first - they turned to be evil (thanks to the Tyndor's ability). Not a single hit, although our half-orc, who opened the fight with a nice backstab, fell under the Hold Person spell effect.
The subsequent events were called the Show of Gowrek. "Full plate and packing steel", he dealt with all the basilisks in the area, as well as Mutamin (thanks to using an invisibility and explosion potions).
From the left areas we chose Larswood and Peldvale. Baeloth caused a giggle in Tresset:
During the area transition we were ambushed by amazon assassins, the group I feared the most since Loki reached the 3rd level. Thankfully, the backstab by an enemy thief didn't kill anyone, and the assassins were defeated.
In Peldvale, Loki reached the 7th level, thus getting all Avenger shapeshift forms, as well Improved Invisibility and other 4th level spells.
@semiticgod would approve of the Web+spider form combination
In the end, @Tresset spawned a big wyvern, a "friend for Loki".
Loki: "Did you eat today?"
Tresset: "Yep, 4 cows"
Loki: "I ate only one"
Moros: "My 4 sisters disappeared, is it a coincidence?"
Moros (later): "That must be mother"
And today we got a pleasant surprise - @Gotural ( @Yami now) managed to scratch up and crawl his way back into the world of BG, and all this thanks to this run. His F/M/C heard about the Monty Python crew adventuring through the Sword Coast and left his dwarven clan to join the fun.
While still in The Wood of Sharp Teeth, we were approached by a dwarf called Gotural. Lawful good, he offered magical talents of any kind. He also brought a lot of ale so nobody could turn down his offer to join.
After spending some time in the FAI tasting the new ale and watching how Gotural was quickly learning all the spells the party found so far thanks to the blue potions (Llolnae was less than impressed that rare spells like Spell Thrust and Cloudkill were learned by the dwarf), the party went straight after the bandits.
While discussing ins and outs of Spell Thrust, Meyahi pasted the forum link into the game (that thread by @Jaheiras_Witness is a must read for every no-reloader), @Tresset now included (who unfortunately said that spell sucked):
We managed to speak to Tazok and pretend we were just another group of mercenaries wanting to put the Sword Coast into a chaos. After that, we attacked when enemies didn't expect it.
It was the biggest fight in the game so far, and I wish others could share their impressions as well, because for me it was so so quick. Constant Webs, poison arrows from Llolnae, summoning Driads, again poison arrows. To me, it looked like the enemies didn't have a chance.
The Llolnae's open locks skill wasn't enough for all the containters in the camp but thanks to a potion found by Gotural, the problem was solved.
After the main fight, we had a close call for Moros. Loki tested his Dispel Magic - thanks to a high level of the druid and some luck Moros was saved from Web and could stop getting hit by hobgoblins' arrows. Thankfully, during a subsequent rest, Loki got a Slow Poison ability.
Then it was voted with the score 3-1 that we should visit Ulgoth's Beard for items. While going there we found Knock on an ahkheg and had a scare moment when Tresset couldn't find potions in his duplicated container:
We bought a staff for our half-orc, 3 very useful spells for Llolnae, a cloak for Loki and some other stuff (Greenstone Amulet went to Gowrek as well). Now, we were ready to hunt bandits in the Cloakwood forest. After clearing the first location and surviving an ettercap ambush after that, we had to make a pause till the next week.
The funniest moment happened after that. Meyahi left the game and we were talking for about 10 minutes about how a FMC can be used in the group and other things (Gotural said that if a situation happens when there're more than 6 people willing to play (for example, when semiticgod returns), he could miss a playing session), when suddenly, out of nowhere, a phase spider teleported to the group: