My greatest BG achievement? I killed literally everyone that was killable in the game as my Blackguard. I used a guide to make sure I didn't miss any quests or anything and then killed people when they were no longer needed. It was kind of a challenge to complete quests and still kill the people as they walked away, but I managed it. I think Shandalar in Ulgoth's Beard was the only one to escape unscathed... What can I say, my father was the Lord of Murder; I had to follow in his footsteps.
Solo no-reload run as a dwarven defender (bgee), which included a fight atop the irons throne building that I still can't believe was won.
After reading this post, I returned to BG1 and loaded up my Dwarven Defender save, which was just after reaching Baldur's Gate after Candlekeep.
My first solo run ever.
Also my first time fighting SCS Improved Sarevok. (Not made it this far with my totemic druid yet. I usually have a few runs going at any one time and switch between them ,to prevent things from getting stale).
So close to being a no-reload run as well. But Helena died twice trying to figure out the best way to defeat SCS Sarevok. She was victorious in the end, and I'm pretty sure she owes almost all of it to being a Dwarven Defender. She had only Ashideena and 30 darts of stunning at her disposal, due to poor planning by yours truly.
After blasting through the whole of SCS BG1, I jumped the gun a little bit at the end. Ashideena had proven capable through the whole game, and for much of it I forgot that ranged combat even existed. This eventually resulted in Helena standing before Black Lily with little more than a warhammer and a potion bag filled with a hodgepodge of battlefield salvage. Helena would not even consider talking a pause to go shopping or find more equipment (This was the final chase scene, time is of the essence!).
Black Lily had 30 darts of stunning, but otherwise no ranged weapons that jumped out at me as being helpful. I didn't know anything about the fight, other than that I had always found killing Semaj quickly to be crucial in the vanilla version. I expected him to be only harder in SCS. The darts of stunning were for him.
Helena had no proficiencies in anything other than Warhammer and Sword+Shield. Still, I bought the darts and used a potion of invisibility to race through the maze and the under-city unmolested, only stopping to talk with Tamoko. Turns out you can talk her out of fighting you--I did not know this. And here I thought I was going to get some good full plate out of it...
I looked through my potion case to see what Helena possessed and chugged everything I thought might be helpful, then entered Bhaal's temple.
A working strategy soon became evident after a few tries. Helena used her darts sparingly, and even without a proficiency in darts she had a ranged THAC0 of 3 (thanks to potions of mind focusing). Her only other weapons were Ashideena and 4 long forgotten potions of explosion found at the bottom of the potion case. For healing we had 7 potions of healing, 1 potion of extra healing, 1 potion of regeneration. I cursed my lack of planning, wondering if it would be enough.
Helena rushed Sarevok and his goons, using her enhanced speed to even outpace the hasted Sarevok. The plan was simple. Run around in circles!
It was actually more heroic than that.
Helena opened up with potions of explosion to disrupt Semaj and Angelo from casting, running from corner to corner to draw her pursuers into tight groupings. After the grenades were used up (vital for disrupting Semaj and Angelo's powerful remove magic spells), Helena switched between darts and Ashideena. Diarmid was the first to fall in a straight toe-to-toe engagement. Not even Sarevok could help him; Helena hammered the henchman into the ground, though received great wounds. Her 132 hitpoints saved her, along with the potion of regeneration. Tazok had his annoying Berserk, and I wasted almost 10 darts on him before realizing he was enraged (when the message popped up about the berserk state ending). He also had to be taken toe-to-toe. Semaj was stunned by this point in the middle of the room, but always too close to his friends to suffer an effective attack from Helena.
Helena had only one hope to deal with Sarevok's goons. 1. Stun them with darts. 2. Run a wide circle around the room to draw the rest of the enemies away. 3. Use blinding speed to leave the enemies behind and bee-line for the stunned target.
Not even stoneskins were effective. Helena had 3 attacks per round and a THAC0 of -2 with Ashideena. She could get at least 2-3 attacks on a stunned opponent before Sarevok caught up. Round and round we all went, Helena taking them down one by one. Eventually only Angelo and Sarevok remained, and Helena used the last of her darts to stun the archer. From his corpse she salvaged acid arrows and a bow. She used them to weaken Sarevok, but it was not enough. The would-be Lord of Murder was only barely injured.
I must admit to panicking slightly at this point. The last thing I wanted was to put Helena within reach of Sarevok's sword. But with no ranged weapons, no healing potions, no ability to save, Helena decided to pull out all the stops and swallow her fear.
She engaged Defensive Stance. Speed was no longer needed.
Sarevok charged her. They swung wildly at each other. Helena survived the battering without much trouble, her AC so slow that defensive stance was actually applying a penalty. With her damage resistance, Sarevok was dealing between 8-12 damage a hit.
Helena was dealing in excess of 20 on every hit. Sarevok soon fell.
If there were 1000 threads on this forum praising the Dwarven Defender, it would not be enough.
The stuff of legends! Doing an SCS solo run with a dwarven defender should be an inspiration to us all.
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