The fight with Tolgerias is tremendous fun. The very first round, I know it's going to be great.
That's the Nymph Cloak for you. A 12-hour charm effect on a failed save vs. breath. Strikes as a level 8 spell and doesn't bypass MR. Doesn't turn neutral targets hostile. It's game-breaking under the right circumstances.
How game-breaking?
The other mage casts Vocalize. We still have one enemy to deal with.
You know what other spectacular disabler bypasses MGOI and doesn't use a save vs. spell? Polymorph Other.
That puts that mage at 5 HP, and Jaheira's Blackblood takes that down to 2. And yes, that is a Dragon's Breath spell about to hit.
But we break through her Stoneskins before it even hits. She explodes.
All that's left is to spend Tolgerias' spells and then crush him. I decide to use those spells on the nearest enemies.
I have Tolgerias spend a few more of his spells, then turn a high-level disabler on him.
It wasn't even necessary. Yoshimo paralyzes him. Tolgerias dies to his own Efreeti and his own Planetar.
We get the mage stronghold and get to teach a group of mages. Larz is a jerk and Morul is cold, but Nara is adorable.
We could have gotten a Ring of Wizardry, but I think that's very likely to result in death. Even though death is easily reversible in Faerun, I feel bad when I see the post-mortem dialogue from Morul. I choose the least risky option in each experiment and the students all make it to graduation. We also get a Golden Girdle from getting Ribald to send the Solamnic Knights back to Sigil.
Finally, I go report our success to Nalia.
Since Zalos is a Fighter/Mage, Nalia would have offered her the De'Arnise Hold had she not already had the mage stronghold I prefer, and it feels bad to say no to a woman who just lost her father and is about to lose her home. We invite Nalia into the party and immediately kick her out, allowing us to minimize the sadness without bringing in a new party member. That's why I took so long to report to Nalia.
The only major questlines remaining are the Planar Prison and the Unseeing Eye. First, I want to slay Gaius. We send out summons as a distraction, as usual.
Yoshimo throws a Special Snare their way. Now that he's level 16, his traps create a Resilient Sphere effect on the targets. Unfortunately, it stills uses the normal projectile, which means Physical Mirror bounces it right back. And both Zorl and Rengaard come with Physical Mirror prebuffs.
Whatever. We have damage spells, Fire Seeds, disablers, and summons to bring the enemy down instead.
No real setbacks besides Yoshimo's getting trapped.
We have more trouble with the Yuan-ti Mages upstairs in Mekrath's lair. It starts out normal, with offscreen traps, followed by Fire Seeds when the Coiled Cabal comes for us.
We can't stop Remove Magic, however, Edwin is vulnerable to Minute Meteors, and when Sphere of Chaos comes out despite our efforts to disrupt the Coiled Cabal's magic, I realize things are not going in our favor.
We flee downstairs, where the Yuan-ti follow us. Zalos scurries away to attack with Fire Seeds, Edwin scurries away to stay safe, and the rest of the party switches to melee attacks.
I have Minsc summon a simulacrum and hit one of the Yuan-ti with the Ring of the Ram, mostly just because I realized he could.
It wasn't a good idea, actually. It just pushed the Yuan-ti closer to Zalos, and convinced them to change targets. Zalos loses her buffs.
I still want to use Fire Seeds, so Zalos re-casts Protection from Fire. She has an extra copy of the spell for just this sort of occasion, though this is the first time she's ever needed it. We continue hurling around Fire Seeds.
Another Sphere of Chaos spell enters the field. Zalos makes her save despite having no save buffs active.
I move her out of the way; we have enough room to do so. Minsc's simulacrum gets to work disrupting the Yuan-ti's spells--not with Fire Seeds, but with the Necklace of Missiles.
The Yuan-ti Mages focus too much on our party. They neglect Anomen, who ends up being their downfall.
We encounter some more Yuan-ti Mages upstairs, those who failed to follow us down into the sewers to continue the fight. They're not much of a problem. Minsc and Edwin both die to a Sphere of Chaos spell, but Zalos stays safe with Shadow Door to boost her saves, and the Yuan-ti go down to simple melee pressure.
I forget to fight Mekrath and go back downstairs to complete the Unseeing Eye quest.
I don't know how I'm going to tackle Beholders. Beholders are level 9, so the Death Spell won't work without a level drain effect, which are terribly rare even in Throne of Bhaal, and I can't summon Skeleton Warriors to use as tanks. But the other parts of this quest should be pretty easy.
I don't like Vampiric Mists, so I wander around the trigger that spawns them. You can see the path with CTRL-4.
We get through many of the fights with ease, though we sneak past (CTRL-J) the first pack of Beholders. Later, when we're actually in the Beholder hive, I realize we have a marvelous option to use against those Beholders.
Nishruus are immune to magic.
They might not be able to deal any melee damage, but they do have a smattering of mage spells: 3 Magic Missiles, 2 Agannazar's Scorchers, 1 Melf's Acid Arrow, 1 Ghost Armor, 1 Stinking Cloud, and 1 Lightning Bolt.
A Wizard Eye can let us monitor the Nishruus from afar, and Pixie Dust lets us rest however many times we like. Nishruus aren't very efficient, but they work.
They struggle against a larger group of Beholders to the south. On the second try, they have more success.
We kill every Beholder in the area this way. We do get a brief scare, however, when I accidentally send a fully visible Zalos right into the gaze of a Beholder along with the Nishruus. The first ray, however, is benign.
She slips away in safety.
After roasting the Blind Priests with Fire Seeds, the area is finally clear. I decide we're ready to handle the Unseeing Eye. After putting the Rift Device together, we send down Edwin, fully buffed, to use it. The Unseeing Eye loses its many resistances and lots of HP, but gains a pair of Death Tyrants in the process. So far, so good.
I have a special weapon prepared. Anomen has only just hit level 14, and can now cast level 7 spells. The whole party is buffed with the right spells and it's safe to use.
Pit Fiends have high MR, cast Improved Invisibility at the start of combat, and have excellent damage output. They're very tough critters, so our Pit Fiend's death is met with disbelief.
That was pretty weak. I've seen Pit Fiends tear apart other enemies before. That was just bad luck.
Our Wizard Eye is next to go, dispatched, appropriately enough, with two eye-themed spells in a row.
Pit Fiend or no, we still have tons of magic-immune Nishruus at our disposal. Anomen goes out to guide them. Even after he gets charmed, he still clears the fog of war for us.
With careful management and targeting, the Nishruus can deal enough damage to bring down all three Beholders.
Their spells are low-level, but they get a lot of them. A pack of Nishruus has just enough spellpower to bring down a wannabe demigod.
We're almost done with Athkatla. Just a couple more things to do. First, we go after Neb.
Neb has a habit of running away, which prolongs the battle. To prevent him from drinking any potions we might want to pick off of his corpse, we disable him at the start of combat.
Apparently those Child Spirits are really, really deadly.
Jaheira has the Ring of Earth Control, so it's no problem. We get Edwin back in the party and plop Neb's head into the lap of the authorities in the Government District.
There's only one thing left to do before we head off to Spellhold. I want the Wand of Paralyzation from the Guarded Compound.
But I'm not going to fight Sion and the group. They have nothing I particularly want. I find what I'm looking for on the second level.
I consider running off to a merchant to recharge the wand before going to Spellhold, but as long as we're here, I figure it can't hurt to pick up a few other goodies. We sneak around the place grabbing whatever we like. Zalos finds a trap.
And so our run comes to a close, after a long string of victories using subpar weapons, subpar armor, subpar potions, subpar NPCs, and subpar spells. As always, the greatest threat to my characters is me.
It was nevertheless very enlightening, though I'd have liked to see how we fared against late-game enemies using those spells. Here are the spells we ended up using (or memorizing) in lieu of my normal selection, roughly in order of frequency:
Priest: Level 1: Bless, Cure Light Wounds, Entangle, Protection from Evil, Magical Stone Level 2: Chant, Barkskin, Aid, Resist Fire/Cold, Flame Blade Level 3: Cure Medium Wounds, Invisibility Purge, Dispel Magic, Glyph of Warding, Rigid Thinking Level 4: Poison, Cloak of Fear, Mental Domination, Neutralize Poison, Negative Plane Protection Level 5: Pixie Dust, Mass Cure Level 6: Fire Seeds, Heal Level 7: Gate, Symbol: Stun
Mage: Level 1: Reflected Image, Grease, Larloch's Minor Drain, Charm Person, Protection from Evil Level 2: Blur, Resist Fear, Horror, Stinking Cloud, Ghoul Touch, Power Word: Sleep, Ray of Enfeeblement Level 3: Haste, Protection from Fire, Minor Spell Deflection, Monster Summoning I, Ghost Armor, Protection from Normal Missiles, Hold Person, Dispel Magic, Protection from Cold Level 4: Spirit Armor, Enchanted Weapon Polymorph Other, Minor Globe of Invulnerability, Spider Spawn, Confusion, Wizard Eye Level 5: Shadow Door, Minor Spell Turning, Cone of Cold, Oracle, Domination Level 6: Death Spell, Summon Nishruu, Tenser's Transformation, Mislead, Chain Lightning
1. Bless and Chant are actually quite excellent spells. The casting time is horrible and the durations are short, but party-wide combat buffs aren't all that common in BG2. The effect isn't very dramatic, but since we were playing effectively without any immunities, our saves were vitally important.
2. Flame Blade is a nice spell, but generally it's preferable for a druid to just use Blackblood and a cleric to just use the Flail of Ages, if possible.
3. Healing spells are worth taking--but probably not that many. Cure Light Wounds, Cure Medium Wounds, and Cure Serious Wounds allow you to slightly strengthen the party when the priest is not busy doing something else. The higher-level healing spells occupy the same slots as very powerful spells like Death Ward, Chaotic Commands, Call Woodland Beings, Harm, Aerial Servant, and Conjure Fire Elemental. Mass Cure is probably the best healing spell we've got. It heals about as much as a Heal spell might, although spread across multiple characters, some of whom might not even be injured. Its advantage is that it can be cast while invisible or when distanced from the wounded character in need of healing. It also is the only healing spell that you can cast on a character that has spell turning/deflection/trap active. Because of its range and relatively short casting time, it is much less likely to be disrupted than other healing spells, and is therefore an excellent rescue option.
4. Poison isn't that bad of a spell for low-level mages. It offers a save vs. death, which mages will often fail, and deals damage through Stoneskin and over time. It even bypasses MGOI, but unfortunately, it will not bypass any other spell protections. This spell declines in usefulness as time goes on.
5. Cloak of Fear isn't quite as useful as I had hoped. It's a weak fear effect with a 25% chance of making the target drop an item, assuming the save is failed, but I found few opportunities to use this spell in SCS. Many enemies are immune to fear, either due to being undead, having a rage ability, or due to having a cleric ally, or have low saves vs. spell. Horror has the same weakness, as well as the added weakness of not bypassing MGOI, but I found many more uses for Horror, as it can be cast at a much further range and much quicker than Cloak of Fear. It's a moderately useful disabler at a spell level where priests have few other disablers available.
6. Pixie Dust is a more expensive but equally powerful alternative to Invisibility 10' Radius. It's a strong escape option, an excellent prebuff, and in general is a useful tactical tool. However, because of its spell level and the fact that it can only be cast by druids, a party would usually have Invisibility 10' Radius available, and Pixie Dust would therefore more likely not be worth the level 5 spell slot. It does have one crucial advantage over Invisibility 10' Radius, however: the Cowled Wizards don't object to it.
7. Fire Seeds are broken. If you abuse the trick that lets you create more of them, they do spectacular damage to enemy groups. Even without that trick, however, they're still excellent for disrupting spells. The fire damage bypasses both spell protections and weapon immunities, and unlike Poison Weapon, it can disrupt even a lich's spellcasting. Magic resistance will block the damage, however, and neither your THAC0 nor your APR will likely be very impressive with Fire Seeds.
8. Reflected Image is worth taking as a prebuff. It's not a reliable defense, but it occupies a very inexpensive spell slot.
9. Grease is a good area-denial spell, but SCS mages will walk right over it, whether because of their strong saves or their MGOI buffs. It will keep away melee fighters, but not much else. It's a poor man's Teleport Field.
10. Charm Person isn't a bad choice for the early game. Many enemies are human and fighters don't have very strong saves. It only lasts 5 rounds, but that can translate into a lot of damage dealt to the enemy and a lot of damage avoided for the party.
11. Horror is a decent early game spell and unlike Stinking Cloud and Web, it's always party-friendly. Many tough SCS enemies, however, come with Remove Fear or MGOI active, so Horror will only be able to affect certain critters.
12. Stinking Cloud suffers a lot in EE. The duration is strong, but now, enemies wake up on being hit. It's good if you have a character with a strong save vs. death, or if you want a low-risk alternative to Stinking Cloud.
13. Power Word: Sleep has a few narrow uses that tend to require advance knowledge. It only works on enemies who are already at 20 HP or below. That said, SCS enemies have a stubborn habit of recovering from harm, as all sorts of enemies have potions, and clerics will cast Sanctuary to chain-cast healing spells and re-enter the fight at full health a few rounds later. Power Word: Sleep can prevent that, if you're quick. It's not as useless as it might seem, but it's better suited for Edwin, who can spare the spell slots, than most anyone else. Combined with Polymorph Other, however, it is another story (see below).
14. Ghoul Touch is fantastic. I seldom used it in this run, but that was largely because of one critical factor: I could not use Belm. Combined with Belm, it's a brilliant disabler that strikes as a +6 weapon, albeit as a level 2 spell. It would be a strong option for disabling an enemy group of fighters, if not most mages. Disablers in no-reload runs tend not to be very reliable, but since Ghoul Touch forces many saves, the luck factor is much less important relative to other disablers.
15. Ghost Armor is a decent alternative to Shield. It's much more expensive, but a Fighter/Mage can benefit from it, as it's a slightly weaker version of Spirit Armor that doesn't take up slots for Stoneskin.
16. Monster Summoning I is a little broken when used correctly. SCS spellcasters don't prioritize targets very well when it comes to summons. It is very easy to bait out high-level spells with low-level summons, and fight a superior foe with an unusual advantage. SCS spellcasters can cut through the weakest critters with Minute Meteors instead of spells, but often, they will spend their spells on fighting low-level summons, when they could be safely ignoring them. Lots of summoning spells have the same trait. Bear in mind, however, that Yuan-ti Mages come in groups and each one of them will have a Death Spell--you can't expect to hold them off with summons so easily.
17. Protection from Normal Missiles is a brilliant early game buff. Many enemies use normal arrows, especially in SCS, and it takes time for them to realize their arrows are having no effect. That said, it's not hard to get the Boots of Avoidance or even the Shield of Reflection, so the window in which Protection from Normal Missiles would be useful is fairly narrow.
18. Spirit Armor is very useful in SCS. The thing is, SCS enemies have a habit of targeting the party member with the worst AC. Yoshimo and Hexxat are going to be high priority targets, and they will get killed often if they aren't protected. The same applies for any character without mage spells or metal armor, besides Valygar (whose armor already has basically a +4 enchantment). The +3 to saves vs. spell also helps with SCS, as enemy spellcasters love throwing around disablers. Even so, Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, and Remove Fear are better than save bonuses almost all of the time, and they're not necessarily any easier to dispel.
19. Polymorph Other is crazy powerful if it works--and it uses a save vs. polymorph, which few enemies can easily resist. If the polymorph effect was permanent but did not effect HP, it would still be terribly strong, but in my version, it reduces the target to 5 HP, because that's what the SQUIRP.itm applies on contact. It's effectively a faster-casting and cheaper ranged Harm spell that is blocked by a save vs. polymorph, spell protections, or magic resistance instead of an attack roll, weapon immunities, or Stoneskin (in my install, Harm does crushing damage and therefore will not bypass Stoneskin). It brings most any enemy to Near Death, and if you have Power Word: Sleep on hand, the enemy won't even have a chance to recover. In fact, you'll get an automatic hit on the final blow thanks to the unconsciousness effect.
20. Confusion is a pretty excellent spell, though I did not use it often. It's less likely to work than Chaos, but it comes much cheaper. Both level 4 and level 5 spells have stiff competition (Stoneskin and Spell Immunity are good examples), so it depends on the situation.
21. Cone of Cold is better suited for parties than Sunfire. Although it does carry the risk of destroying enemy loot, its shape is much less likely to result in friendly fire. It's a good choice for a frontline Fighter/Mage or Cleric/Mage tank.
22. Shadow Door is spectacular in BG2:EE, though overall it's not much of an improvement on Improved Invisibility. In fact, it's a little bit weaker, as Shadow Door and II have more value as prebuffs than escape options--and Invisibility is already just as fast-casting as Shadow Door, making it a superior means of escape. Shadow Door and II both grant +4 to all saves, which is a major boon for non-shorty character in SCS. No other spell gives such a monstrous bonus to saving throws.
23. Oracle. True Seeing is stronger, but Oracle is cheaper and faster. True Seeing will keep off illusion spells for 10 rounds and can also dispel higher-level illusion spells, but SCS spellcasters tend not to carry more than one or two illusion spells, so Oracle is often a permanent solution for enemy invisibility. A notable exception is SCS backstabbers with their many Potions of Invisibility, but by the time you get True Seeing or Oracle as a mage, you will probably have faced most of the backstabbers in the game already.
24. Death Spell just makes things easier. The De'Arnise Hold is so much less hassle with a level 12 non-illusionist mage around. You do have to know in advance which enemies it will work on--Umber Hulks and Trolls, but not Yuan-ti or Beholders--but it simplifies things greatly. Kuo-toa also fall to this spell.
25. Summon Nishruu is a slow but effective means of dealing with Beholders. They're not powerful and they don't last very long, but they work. In a no-reload context, where the stakes are higher, the slower pace of the fight would probably be worth the safety and the relatively low level at which it can be done.
26. Bala's Axe is ridiculous. It's a death sentence for almost any spellcaster, and since it forces multiple saves to prevent a hugely powerful effect, it's reliable even in a no-reload game. Inflicting 80% spell failure for 16 rounds is enough to doom any mage or cleric or druid in SCS. Only celestials, dragons, and genies have immunity to spell failure.
27. The Nymph Cloak only forces one save, or two if you're using a simulacrum, but it can win an entire fight if it works. A 12-hour charm effect is a death sentence for any spellcaster, as you can force them to waste their own spells. Bear in mind, however, that they will turn hostile if you make them cast a hostile spell against themselves.
28. Yuan-ti Mages and other SCS spellcasters love Sphere of Chaos, and it is a terrible spell for no-reload runs. It's a level 7 area-effect spell, and will therefore bypass any spell protections besides SI: Alteration. Death Ward and Chaotic Commands will block some of the effects, but not the polymorph effect, which, like Polymorph Other, will reduce the target to 5 HP.
29. You really should have Stoneskin or Mirror Image on your mages, and Iron Skins on your druids or ranger/clerics (depending on your .ini settings). It's very difficult to prevent spell disruption with positioning alone. That said, if you position your characters very carefully, you might never need more than one Stoneskin spell per day.
30. You don't need Negative Plane Protection to fight the Shade Lord. Unless you have excellent AC, HP, and either strong saves vs. death or Death Ward active, you shouldn't even be close enough to the Shade Lord to trigger his Darkling Aura, as his Black Blade of Disaster for the first 18 rounds of combat is just as deadly.
31. Running away from the enemy is a great solution to being utterly outmatched. Most strong enemies in SCS are strong because of their prebuffs, which will wear off eventually. The larger the area in which you fight, the more you can use this to your advantage. In close corners, however, you may have no such option. Fighting a Yuan-ti Mage in a small room could be more dangerous than a Lich out in the open.
32. Physical Mirror will reflect thief traps. You can easily harm or disable your own thief by trying to trap an SCS cleric.
33. TorGal isn't supposed to have a "second wind." He's supposed to fall down at Near Death like any other troll.
34. The only person in your party who should be finding traps is your thief.
Never thought of using Nishruu against beholders before. Don't know why, it seems so obvious now I read it in black and white Funnily enough my lastest BG2 run ended last night with a bit of bad luck on the unseeing eye quest against the first group of beholders. Gonna wait till we got Nishruu spell next time.
So much good advices here @semiticgod , I agree wholeheartly with @bengoshi . I had no idea that Physical Mirror would reflect traps or that Nishruus were an effective way of dealing with Beholders. I also like to use Bless / Chant (and Prayer / Recitation which comes from IWDification and are pretty much improved versions of these spells, but at level 3 and 4 respectively) and Reflected Image to some extent.
Your playthrough was absolutely brillant and it's sad to see Zalos goes away. You also showed us how some items were vastly underestimated, like the Cloak of the Nymph or Bala's Axe.
After killing Aran, the party went to Brynnlaw to seek Irenicus. They murdered Perth the Adept to take his wardstone, and entered the Asylum.
Irenicus captured the group with his powerful magic and drained the soul of Anselm, who resisted partially and fought his instinct in his own head.
Afterward, they were sent into the labyrinth where they solved lots of riddles and made their way through Yuan-Ti and Liches. As always I usually send Hexxat or Korgan alone to face some foes, especially spellcasters, to prevent them from wreaking havoc with their AoE spells.
After a bit of exploring, the party finally faced Jon, but not before freeing all the mad spellcasters who were trapped here.
My strategy here was first, to destroy the most dangerous clones he spawned, Dorn and Anselm in particular because they were using Poison Weapon and doing a lot of damage to our party, then Edwin. During that time, Edwin casted Warding Whip to break Irenicus's Spell Turning and Immunity : Abjuration, before using Breach to seal the deal.
Irenicus couldn't cast any offensive spells, he struggled to put back a spell protection after the initial assault, but Warding Whip actually trigger three times, so Edwin won the spellcasting contest here.
The others mad wizards weren't doing too much, except from one who casted True Sight which dispelled Irenicus's illusion spells which was handy.
After killing the clones I wanted first, Edwin used Mass Invisibility on all of us before dealing the final assault. Jon tried to protect himself one last time with PfMW but I always keep some mundane arrows and bolts for Anselm and Dorn.
[spoiler=Irenicus] [/spoiler]
The fight was won!
Then they headed back to Brynnlaw, escaped the town with Saemon, were attacked by Githyankis before being kidnapped by Sahuagins. They destroyed the whole Sahuagin city and looted the place, including the Cloak of Mirroring.
In the Underdark, Anselm and his crew fought dozens of Drows, Myconids and Kuo-Toas. They also met some Svirfneblins and decided to be friendly with them at the moment, before betraying them later.
At some point, they discovered a huge sphere, some kind of prison. They were able to free the people trapped in there, before killing them for their equipment.
Most of them fell easily to their attacks, until a Lich came from the sphere. Alchra Diagott was its name, a very powerful spellcaster indeed, probably the strongest they have met until now considering its spell selection.
It casted both Simulacrum and Project Image in its initial prebuffing, and even two screenshots could not show every spells it casted. Soon enough, the real battle started with a Time Stop, an Improved Alacrity and a Fallen Planetar. The Skeletons Warriors were carefully positioned to form a circle around her to allow Anselm to retreat.
After a few rounds, the Fallen Planetar made her way through the summons and reached Korgan while the Lich was still busy wasting Sphere of Chaos, Teleport Field, then another Time Stop plus two Meteor Swarm spells. Due to the delay between the casting of Meteor Swarm, and the actual damage, hasted Korgan managed to escape the area of effect of these spells. She followed him back to the rest of the party where Anselm could take care of her.
Finally Alchra came to the evil crew and was defeated by Korgan alone before walking away alone, like a badass. What a Dwarf.
[spoiler=Alchra Diagott] [/spoiler]
Then the party decided to help the Svirfneblins because they said they were able to help Anselm to infiltrate the Drow city.
They needed to kill a Balor and seal the tunnel from which it came, and that is what they did.
Great prgress @Gotural, your knowledge of the game doesn't seem to rust as fast as mine...
My playtrhough with Palla, which was going swell with her approaching the 2 million XP mark and several quests completed, came to an abrupt end yesterday when she got very needlessly Held by a Ghast in Prebek's home. (I didn't even watch to see if she'd make it thanks to her buffs.) As with Belle's fall in the old tunnels, this was yet another case of Blackraven stubbornly playing on when a RL intervention really demanded a short break from the game.
Edit: @bengoshi, something good did come out of this. Girlfriend and I didn't play together but after the last incident she felt guilty and decided she wanted to do a multiplayer run with me
Thank you @Blackraven I had the chance of playing another Blackguard, same name and portrait but one less Wisdom, last year with SCS. It was more or less a test run in minimal reload, as I used EEKeeper to give him Carsomyr +6 and 8,000,000 XP but it was fun, I also picked up Jan instead of Hexxat. I stopped in the Asylum so I actually played SCS2 once before. Now I'm pretty much playing blind which is very thrilling, it's deliciously stressful and I'm playing so carefully!
But I still know every creatures and encounters from at least 10 years of PnP, reading many reports on this forum and also because I always have sorcerers.net to guide me when I'm playing BG2 so I know what's coming next
In the Baldur's Gate city we (this time me, @Tresset and @Gotural) were lucky to meet an elven archer, Glíncúwen, managed by @CrevsDaak, who had 4 pips in longbows. Tyndor asked to visit his order fellows, so we could adventure with a new elven pretty.
The Glíncúwen's influence was felt from the beginning, with her inflicting the final blow to Desreta, and thus bringing 18/00 STR bracers to Moros.
"Quick and dead" - this was the first impression of Glíncúwen by others, when oir archer fell in too subsequent fights with Degrodel's puppets.
The mage himself was chuncked by another awesome backstab by Gowrek, this time for 92 damage.
Soon enough, Gotural noticed we were playing on the Insane difficulty (I forgot to switch the difficulty from one of my own runs).
CrevsDaak: "I played as if we were in normal"
Gotural: "Yes, me too"
CrevsDaak: "I have -4 AC, I can tank a few hits"
CrevsDaak: "*gets oneshotted"
After getting both Balruran's items, the group decided to go to Scar, only for Loki to completely forget about the Scar's quest about the Seven Suns building. So, we quickly proceeded to the meeting with Duke Eltan, and then decided to help Aldeth to clear his guild from dopplegangers. It wasn't hard but we still couldn't complete the quest because of a bug (Aldeth didn't get we killed all dopplegangers).
When travelling through the city, Glíncúwen accidentally clicked on one of the sewer's entrance, and suddenly we were right infront of the ogre-mage.
But even while it was completely sudden, we still dealt fine thanks to webs and the Gowrek's sword.
The same approach was used against the Iron Throne mercenaries. This battle, often very hard because of the SCS, went smoothly (of course, the no pre-buffing component for enemies helped here, but still).
After the battle Moros was given the Ring of Free Action, so that he too could fight in the area full of webs. With 2 fighters meleeing webbed enemies, 2 archers (Glíncúwen and Llolnae) attacking from a distance, 1 support character (Gotural dealing with enemies that were not webbed) the group is becoming to look solid now. Soon Loki will get an access to the 5th level spells, so that he could add Chaos to Web.
I've started and stopped several runs this week and I'm not sure how to proceed. I took an interest in Spell Revisions and Item Revisions, Nightmare mode, Jesters, a new character portrait that fit a Kensai, and Spirit Animals--as their attacks at level 10 strike as +6 weapons, the wolf attacks do cold damage, and they're immune to practically all disablers--but the runs I began which involved those things tended to fall apart in Chateau Irenicus, which I don't like to skip for some reason.
I considered trying out a butterfly-themed run like @dockaboomski suggested a while back, in the Party of Spiders thread, but I'm not sure I want to create a new kit, as the spell list which fit the butterfly concept I had contains druid, cleric, and mage spells. I also considered doing an inverse Party of Spiders run, in which I would play a group of fighters who would use items to act like spellcasters. But when I plot out their options, it seems boring. I considered a disabler-based run, but thought it might be unsatisfying to have to switch to other tactics for enemies like Lavok. I've also considered an immunity-less run, in which all immunities are wiped from the game, but it seems too cheaty at the moment. I wondered about a solo Nightmare mode run, but got tired of a Cleric/Illusionist early on. I've thought about Shadowdancers, but I've already done so much with Hide With No Sight already. I've thought about Archers, but I've done so much with them as well. And I put a tremendous amount of thought into all the ways to deal damage through MGOI, PFMW, Stoneskin, and other spell protections, without being high-level, only to realize it'd make more sense to just go back to using the debuffers that I've been neglecting for ages. I'd like to use a Skald-focused party, but it wouldn't have good enough saves or enough immunities.
I even considered trying an all-out run, in which I use every dirty trick I can to cruise through the game unopposed. It's been a while since I had a truly easy run of the game.
Most of all, I want to start using HLAs again. So many of my runs end before any of my characters get any HLAs. But to get them soon, I'd want to play a solo character, and I want lots of versatility in my group. I could pick a multiclass, but I'm not a fan of multiclasses besides Cleric/Mages, and I've already played those things to death.
OK, in the last session, the Monty Python's crew pulled off several quests in the city of Baldur's Gate, mainly killing Ramazith, Ragefast and freeing the Nymph, getting the kid's body from the Priestess of Umberlee and giving it back, getting another body, but for Arkion this time, and did some shopping (basically spending all of our gold in Darts, Potions and Scrolls. We love magikz!).
We wanted to kill Yago, but we hadn't talked to Brielbara, and we also killed the guards and looted that place where the guy with the Blink Dogs and the +2 Spear is (the spear is EE new for the vanilla vets out there), and, of course, we gave some random guy a Sphene Gem 'cause he rewarded us with one thousand XP, fair deal.
Now, behold! A bunch of pictures in a resolution big enough to crush your browser... Well, apparently the 8 megabytes picture won't upload. I might put 'em on dropbox and post them then. Edit 1: Added pictures. Enjoy! Edit 2: Changed the pictures to .jpg and uploaded them to the forums. Enjoy now that you can actually see them!
@bengoshi they're just .png files, not .bmp, it's just that 1) dropbox's not showing them as usual 2) they're too big and didn't load.
I changed them to .jpg with Photoshop (remember, I'm on Mac) and uploaded them to the post.
Edit: If anyone STILL doesn't see the image, Quote the post, copy the links and paste them in a new Tab. If it doesn't load them then, blame Vanilla (they're all within the 400-800Kb scale), I mean, I don't know what else to do.
I started a new run and I think this one will stick. I've decided to uninstall SR and IR and turn off Nightmare mode, to simplify things. I tend to do too much planning with SR and IR installed, and Nightmare mode takes forever.
Our Charname this time is Viora, a Shadowdancer I'm dual-classing to Cleric.
Why cleric? Well, we were short of a cleric and I've heard too much praise for Shadowdancer->Fighters and Shadowdancer->Mages. I made Viora our Bhaalspawn for safety's sake, as she is the least likely to get trapped. All her skill points go to stealth.
Our frontline fighter is Zulfer, an Assassin I'm dual-classing to Fighter.
He maxed out Detect Illusions, with a little left over for stealth. I wanted Poison Weapon, but Assassin->Mages and Blackguards get a lot of praise already, so I didn't want them, and an Assassin/Cleric would have poor APR.
Our third and final dual-class character is Ruva, a Wizard Slayer->Thief.
I found a spectacular portrait for a fighter, but to make it show up and look right in-game, I had to crop most of the picture. Ruva's portrait looks a lot more cool in the original.
Very vicious-looking critter, she is. Unfortunately, that picture made her look like a witch instead of a fighter when I first tweaked it, so I had to change the coloring and crop out that badass pose.
Why Wizard Slayer? I checked the files again and apparently Wizard Slayers impose a 25% spell failure effect on hit, not 10%, which means Wizard Slayers are a lot stronger than I had thought. I don't care about the MR; the only reason she's dualing to thief is because I need a full-time thief, and Viora and Zulfer don't have the skill points to do everything I need from a thief.
We also have an Archer, Azelos, because I still haven't really made full use of Called Shot in my no-reload runs.
The deal with Called Shot is that it imposes severe save penalties and can therefore force enemies to fail saves vs. spell. Disablers are usually dicey and unreliable in no-reload runs, but with Called Shot, you no longer have to rely on luck to make those disablers work.
To make the most of our Wizard Slayer, Assassin, and eventually our Archer, I want Fire Seeds, to let us impose spell failure, poison, and Called Shot penalties despite enemy weapon immunities. And because Spirit Animals strike with +6 weapons at level 10, I choose a Totemic Druid, Laosha. Nibidda's old portrait is back.
Laosha means old fool. Spirit Wolves can deal cold damage, paralyze, and even drain levels through Improved Mantle, and Spirit Snakes can poison enemies through Improved Mantle, so they're pretty deadly.
Finally, we have Yoren Zovai, a sorcerer, because I don't use them very often and we need at least one mage.
Just using some different names and portraits makes things seem a lot fresher and newer.
This party should do very well against mages. With Laosha's Fire Seeds, Zulfer and Ruva can impose poison and spell failure through all spell protections and all weapon immunities.
Viora uses Hide in Plain Sight to activate the Sewage Golem without alerting the Duergar, and then clears up the remaining enemies in our path with backstabbing. Zulfer pitches in when she goes back to the earlier Duergar and slays them just for the XP.
Laosha brings out the Spirit Animals for the fight with the Mephits. They also help protect us from the Ellesime clone's spells.
After clearing everything in the next hall, we rest and go for Ilyich. I initially plan on using Laosha's animal summons as a shield against the Duergar, but on reviewing our AC, I realize that our best tank for this fight is actually Yoren Zovai, our sorcerer, at 0 AC and with both Mirror Image and Stoneskin to block attacks. She absorbs most all of the Duergar's attacks, allowing us to fight in safety.
She even tanks the Cambion.
We get disabled by the Mage on the next level, but our summons stay intact. Summons also help against the Assassins on the way out.
We already dual-classed Ruva, our Wizard Slayer, earlier on. Right before we leave Chateau Irenicus, we also dual Viora to Cleric and Zulfer to Fighter, so the quest XP after the next cutscene will give us a few levels.
The Ring of Human Influence turns Cohrvale against his friend. Once Bregg is down, we blast Cohrvale.
I feel this party is pretty strong, so I deliberately trigger the Suna Seni ambush early on. We bought some Acid Arrows beforehand (I used a Friends scroll to get the Glasses of Identification, and wanted to make use of the extra CHA before it wore off), which help us minimize the spell pressure in this fight.
With our Assassin and Wizard Slayer still recovering their thief and fighter levels, we don't have many good options for disrupting spells. Not yet.
Our summons crush Suna Seni, much faster than I expected. But a mage appears behind us, fully buffed, with an enchantment spell already on the way.
We can't stop it in time, even with Acid Arrows. Only Viora and Yoren Zovai, our cleric and sorcerer, make their saves against Confusion. Our Archer almost dies before a Spirit Wolf can remove her attacker.
That same Spirit Wolf keeps that mage from casting any further spells. Her spell protections won't stop its cold damage, or its paralysis on hit. With the mage gone, we go hunting for Eldarin, who fails a save against Viora's Hold Person spell.
Hold Person is devastating in the early game in Athkatla, when most of the enemies are still human.
After grabbing the Nymph Cloak from Gorch, we head to the Graveyard, earlier than normal. That cloak lets us charm Pai'Na.
This opens up a cute exploit. As a Totemic Druid, Laosha can't shapeshift. But SCS allows all druids to conjure shapeshifting tokens, and all druids can equip them. We get Pai'Na to conjure the tokens we want, so we can loot them from her corpse.
Pai'na's best spells are cast via script, however, which means we can't make her waste her Insect Plague or Chain Lightning spell. The Nymph Cloak can't get us that far.
We don't have any area-effect spells in our spellbooks, but we have scrolls to fill the void. A Fireball scroll disrupts Pai'Na's first spell and destroys most of her allies. With no spiders to distract us, we can mob Pai'Na. The pressure is too much; druid spells are very slow-casting and easy to disrupt.
Now Laosha can shapeshift, just like any other druid. I don't know if I'll use it much, but I like that it's possible.
A lot of SCS mages cast Protection from Fire or Protection from Cold as prebuffs, but they basically never cast Protection from Lightning or Protection from Acid. This means weapons that deal electricity or acid damage can more reliably deal damage through Stoneskin. The Halcyon spear deals 1 electricity damage per hit, and can be obtained with little fuss--much less than Borok's Fist or Blackblood or the Flail of Ages. We use summons to kill the undead in the lower tombs, since some of the enemies can drain levels. Pixie Dust keeps us out of harm's way.
The Vampyre turns into a bat and runs away, slipping through a secret door somehow. We have to rest again to finish it off, as our buffs have worn down.
We push forward with our summons just far enough to get the spear, which goes to Zulfer.
We trigger the Renfeld ambush, which is always unexciting after the much tougher Suna Seni ambush, and go visit Prebek. Unfortunately, his dialog turns him hostile even after we charmed him with the Nymph Cloak before the fight began.
We're not in too much trouble. We have more options for disrupting spells than we did before. For one thing, Ruva regained her fighter levels, which means she applies 25% spell failure per hit.
A Spirit Wolf breaks through Prebek's defenses. A Spirit Snake breaks through Sanasha's.
This party just screams anti-mage, so I decide to take on Rayic Gethras earlier than normal. Laosha brings in a snake. Poison is great against Ray-Ray.
His save vs. spell is 1, but his other saves are normal. With poison applied, he can't cast any spells. It's just a matter of time before his Stoneskins go down.
Mae'Var is much more difficult. We get off to a bad start. Zulfer tries to charm him with the Nymph Cloak, but it fails, leaving him in full view of the enemy.
I pull back Zulfer to keep the enemy focused on our summons, and have Zulfer focus his darts on the enemy cleric. At the back of the room, the rest of the party prepares for Mae'Var's approach with buffs, summons, and traps.
Our summons weren't enough to distract the enemy backstabbers from Zulfer. Zulfer loses some Potions of Extra Healing to backstabs, but they aren't enough. He gets trapped, and he can't drink a Potion of Invisibility in time.
Mae'Var moves on to backstab Ruva, our Wizard Slayer/Thief. I hoped to have her throw darts at him so she could inflict spell failure without getting hurt by Fire Shield, but Mae'Var is persistent. To keep the other enemies from mobbing us, I send out Yoren Zovai, our sorcerer, to tank their attacks, and also frustrate the enemy cleric's spellcasting. Meanwhile, Viora hides behind some boxes--Mae'Var can cast Chaos, and she can't guarantee a save against it.
Yoren Zovai's Slow spells decrease the pressure from the Assassins, but the main problem is Mae'Var, whose MGOI blocks all of our disablers. I hoped our Spirit Wolf could paralyze him and disrupt his spells, but Mae'Var recognizes the threat.
To my confusion, Azelos, our Archer, dies. She was at full health. Only when I review her stats do I realize what happened.
Azelos, as a slow-leveling ranger, was only level 8. Death Spell kills everything below level 9, without a saving throw, as well as all summoned critters.
But she was not the only one who was level 8. Viora, our Bhaalspawn, was also level 8, due to her dual-classing, and she was right next to the group when Death Spell hit. Why did she survive?
She had Death Ward active. Death Ward blocks opcode 55, which is what the Death Spell uses to kill critters below level 8. Death Ward does not, however, protect summons from the Death Spell, as it uses a different opcode to kill summons. I only put up Death Ward for fear that Mae'Var would hit Viora with a Chromatic Orb.
Yuan-ti Mages also cast Death Spell, as do many SCS mages. Any character below level 9 needs Death Ward to survive that spell.
The enemy cleric is almost dead, but Yoren Zovai can't land a hit with Minute Meteors in such close quarters. She uses Agannazar's Scorcher instead, the only damage spell she currently has.
Mae'Var finally casts Chaos. We're in luck: only one of us got disabled.
This is a problem. Laosha can't bring in any more Spirit Animals, which means we can't deal damage through Stoneskin.
But Ruva can still inflict spell failure.
He can't get many spells off the ground. His Fire Shield punishes attackers, but I figure it's worth dipping into our potion supplies to bring him down early. His Stoneskins very slowly go down.
Anselm and his party traveled to the easterns tunnels and were captured by the Mind Flayers. Soon after they were forced to fight their way through their city. They killed many Illithids, Ulitharids and Umber Hulks during their escape. They also freed the slaves only to kill them themselves later, enslaved an Illithid to open the doors to the Master Brain before sending Korgan to fight it alone.
Each time someone was Int drained, they immediately drank a Potion of Genius or Potion of Mind Focusing to counteract the effects. Anselm in particular raised his Int to 25, just to be sure.
[spoiler=Mind Flayer] [/spoiler]
Korgan took a lot of damages during the Elder Brain fight, but he managed to kill it before retreating to the rest of the crew. At this moment, Anselm was able to greet the remaining foes with a new ally.
[spoiler=First HLA] [/spoiler]
After doing this quest, the crew met with Adalon the Silver Dragon and entered Ust Natha, disguised as Drows. They did all the errands they were asked, killed Deirex (with Poison Weapon), Solaufein, Phaere and the Matron Mother. The fight with the Demon Lord didn't go as planned when it instantly casted Wall of the Banshee, killing both Hexxat and Edwin in the process. It is also immune to weapons +4 or less, so only Viconia was able to it with her Sling of Everard +5. So they resurrected Edwin to cast Improved Haste on Viconia to speed up the process.
[spoiler=Demon Lord][/spoiler]
Then they went out of Ust Natha, killing every Drows on their bloody path. Edwin unleashed a Time Stop x4 + Dragon's Breath + every buffs he could during the 12 rounds time was stopped.
Next stop, the Beholder's Lair. The party sent Korgan with his squad of 4 Skeletons Warriors + a Fallen Deva. Together, they dispatched a large part of the caverns before the summons were destroyed. Viconia summoned 4 others Skeletons Warriors, Dorn another Fallen Deva and they repeated the process.
The Elder Orbs had a Spell Sequencer with Flame Arrows x3 which was truely scary and took a lot of health from Korgan.
[spoiler=Beholder][/spoiler]
Afterwards, the Kuo-Toan dungeon which was really easy except the Demon Knights fight. These guys are nasty with SCS and I wasn't expecting such retaliation. They can instacast at will a lot of powerful spells.
They managed to fear Viconia through Remove Fear, then they stunned her before killing both her and Korgan with Power Word : Death. They also casted Greater Malison + Symbols spells while being extremely good melee warriors.
With Korgan gone, I was really afraid to send Anselm in melee because he was affected by Greater Malison and his saves were no longer in the negatives. A single Symbol : Death could end the run. So I had to play even more carefully, sending another Fallen Deva + Anselm's Simulacrum with Dorn to give vision and the evil crew finally prevailed.
[spoiler=Demon Knights] [/spoiler]
And finally, they talked to Adalon to flee the Underdark.
Initially I wanted to kill her but when I looked on the internet I learned that you can't earn both the huge 78,500 XP per character from the quest AND kill her, so I chose the greater reward with less risks. Maybe in a future playthrough ...
Thanks to a fight in the Gates District, I lost track of Flydian.
He's not in the inn, either. Luckily, we can get the location of Trademeet from Mazzy once we get to the Umar Hills.
The Temple Ruins are a non-issue. At level 10, a Totemic Druid's Spirit Animals are immune to nonmagical weapons, and with SCS installed, even the Skeleton Warriors use nonmagical weapons. Fire Elementals have the same immunity.
That group of elementals and Spirit Animals takes down the entire dungeon. Only Thaxll'silliyia and the Shade Lord remains. As always, we sneak past the dragon. That breath weapon is a nightmare.
For once, I actually have defense against the Shade Lord's Darkling Aura. Yorun Zovai has Spell Immunity (SI: Necromancy can block the spell), and with a druid and a cleric in the party, we have a fair amount of slots for Negative Plane Protection--but nowhere near enough to cover the whole party for the whole battle. The Shade Lord has a habit of casting Finger of Death, and his Black Blade of Disaster uses the same opcode, so after we find a hiding spot to the south of the Shade Lord, I make sure she's safe.
The Shade Lord never uses Remove Magic, so our buffs should be safe. Some light summons occupy the Shade Lord's attention while Viora takes down the Shadow Altar with Sunstone Bullets.
The Shade Lord moves very slowly, and his Darkling Aura has a limited area of effect, so missile weapons work well against him. Which I suppose is why he's fond of this spell.
Notice Laosha is casting Pixie Dust. The Shade Lord is advancing with the Black Blade of Disaster, and we don't have enough room to run away from the Darkling Aura even if we stall him with summons, so invisibility is a must for escaping those two threats. We leave him alone at the south.
But when we bring out the Berserk Warrior, the Shade Lord comes back north to us. Viora is stuck in Azelos' Entangle spell, so she can't run from the Darkling Aura.
We don't have enough magical weapons, and the Shade Lord's Spell Turning would bounce any damage spells back onto us. The solution? A Pierce Magic scroll.
Laosha follows up with Call Lightning, though he nearly dies in the process.
Yorun Zovai tries to re-cast SI: Necromancy, but is disrupted by a Chromatic Orb. If she was a mage, she'd have had Minor Spell Deflection to block that. Luckily, Spell Immunity can be cast more than once per round in BG2:EE. She renews her immunity to Darkling Aura before the Shade Lord has a chance to disrupt her again.
Laosha's first Call Lightning failed to deal any damage, but the second time works. Yorun Zovai pitches in with a Wand of Fire.
But the Shade Lord renews his Spell Turning--if I'm not mistaken, this is actually the second time has done so. I'm not sure if that's supposed to happen.
Azelos finally brings down Shadow Patrick, but the Shade Lord catches up to her.
While Azelos is on the run, the Shade Lord re-casts Black Blade of Disaster, which I didn't think he could do. When Azelos tries to flee and attack from range, he blinds her again.
But now his Blade Barrier has worn off. It's no longer quite as dangerous to attack him in melee. Laosha brings out a trio of Spirit Wolves, since they cast deal damage through Stoneskin, though it's cold damage and the Shade Lord is immune. The rest of the party uses ranged attacks. Spirit Wolves have 3 APR, so the Shade Lord doesn't last very long.
Next is Trademeet. Yorun Zovai has Protection from Petrification, but the djinn never even have a chance to cast Flesh to Stone.
Trolls aren't a problem for us, but I'm not sure we'd do so well against Giant Trolls, so I use stealth in the Troll Mound instead of fighting them.
Kyland Lind's group and the enemies before him all collapse under disablers. Laosha takes advantage of the outdoor setting.
Kyland Lind tries to flee while still invisible, but the Wand of Fire and our Efreeti get us the XP before it runs away.
We hurt a Spore Colony in the process, so I move on to the Myconids without resting. I keep the party at the back, since none of us have any immunities to confusion. Spirit Animals, however, are immune to basically all disablers.
The fight with Dalok ends with two blows. His first spell fails to disruption, and a combination of Greater Malison and Silence 15' Radius forces him to make a save vs. spell at a -9 penalty to keep a hold of his spellcasting.
Druids and clerics have no Vocalize spells, so silence is something of a death sentence for them.
Cernd kills Faldorn. I could have had Laosha fight Faldorn instead, and with three Spirit Animals out in the first round, he could probably manage it. But whatever.
The Ruhk Transmuter isn't too tough. A Fire Elemental works great against him. The rakshasa's physical attacks do nothing, and its evocation spells are mostly wasted on just one target.
When its Fire Shield has run out, we send out Spirit Wolves for their cold damage. Their THAC0 isn't too great considering the rakshasa's excellent AC, but they hit enough.
Ruva only needs a moment to inflict crippling spell failure on an opponent. A little disruption is all it takes.
The spell failure doesn't apply to cleric and druid spells, but those are easier to shut down through other means, as clerics and druids lack MGOI, Vocalize, or most spell protections, though Melf's Acid Arrow and Flame Arrow will bounce off of Physical Mirror.
My inventory has been overflowing with magical ammunition I need for emergencies, and our Archer could really stand to use a Quiver of Plenty, which means we need to pay a visit to Watcher's Keep. The Vampiric Wraiths I so fear turn out rather fragile.
Spirit Animals do lots of damage, even though they're immune to haste.
I normally fight the first group of Statues before leaving, since the second group has epic-level mages and a lot more enemies. Viora uses Hide in Plain Sight to activate the Statues without the party getting mobbed.
The rest of the group is invisible thanks to Invisibility 10' Radius, which Yorun Zovai, our sorcerer, chose after a recent level up. This saves up spell slots Laosha has been using for Pixie Dust, and ensures we always have a reliable supply of escape options.
We scurry down south and send a Skeleton Warrior off to its death, although we only drain a single HLA from the enemy.
Zulfer, our Assassin/Fighter (still yet to recover his Assassin levels, by the way), goes out to check on the enemy, and provokes a divination spell. The whole party goes visible, but not before Zulfer can slip away.
We march out more summons, but this time use a batch of them at once.
Single summons are better for drawing out spells, but for offensive purposes, it's more effective to have them swarm the opponent, rather than sending them out one at a time.
We eventually bring the party forward. One of the clerics tries to charm Zulfer, but the Helmet of Charm Protection, switched out at the last second, keeps him safe.
Yorun Zovai, with her Mirror Image and Stoneskin spells, can stick close to the enemies without endangering herself too much, so I keep her around with her Minute Meteors to disrupt the enemy's spells, with the rest of the party far to the south.
The enemy manages to disable Zulfer with Hold Person. I consider using Remove Paralysis, but I've only got one left and I'm sure that there are more Hold Person spells around. I just hide him instead.
Since only one character got disabled, it's not as necessary to use that Remove Paralysis spell, anyway.
By now we've had enough time to bring out our most important summons, the Spirit Animals, and buff up the party. A coordinated rush brings the encounter to an end.
It's a rather effective tactic I developed when I was on my first Nightmare mode run. Start out with limited buffs, flee from the enemy, and then gradually draw out the enemy's strongest spells and wait out its strongest buffs. Then, when the enemy is weakened and vulnerable, you bring out your best buffs and strongest summons and attack the enemy all at once. This way, you attack the enemy at full power, when the enemy has lost its most important resources.
For whatever reason, I didn't finish Firkraag's lair. Time to go back. I slip around the trigger for the undead room, which is probably why it's not filled with Ancient Vampires. We bring in Samia's gang, with Zulfer at the front, but his incredibly low AC and Girdle of Piercing do not protect him.
But it's not so bad. We have three Nymphs on the field already, safely out of reach but close enough to launch their disablers all at once. Only Kaol, the enemy mage, escapes. The others aren't so lucky.
With the enemy uncoordinated, we can attack in relative safety.
What about Kaol? He emerges from the hallway when the carnage is over, only to find his spellcasting shut down by a handful of darts from our Wizard Slayer/Thief.
Mages tend to have terrible AC, so it's not hard for a Wizard Slayer to shut them down. And contrary to popular opinion, being able to hit a mage does not mean they're doomed--not in SCS, where enemies regularly re-cast their buffs, and some mages, like Lavok and all liches, are immune to poison. I have seen mages on multiple occasions fail to cast a spell despite receiving no damage. Damage was not enough to stop them--only our Wizard Slayer made that happen.
The Guardians in the maze are always a chore, since every fight is identical, but there is one thing I'm quite proud of. When one of the Guardians was running away, I managed to put a stop to his flight by running around a corner and setting a trap.
It's nice to see the little optimizations pay off.
I always forget the Lightning Bolt trap before the Air Elemental. It nearly slays Viora.
I want to take on the Adamantite Golem, and Ruva and Azelos, our Wizard Slayer and Archer, can kill it from afar with the Crimson Dart and Firetooth, but I'm not willing to drink the two Potions of Invulnerability that I'd need to protect Azelos from the poison effect (Ruva couldn't drink them in the first place). Instead, I decide to just memorize a whole bunch of healing spells. Whenever Ruva gets poisoned, which is almost every time the golem uses its poison cloud ability, I cure her.
That poison ability is the Adamantite Golem's cure for choke points. But by moving to the side before the cloud hits, and running away when it does, you can minimize your exposure to the cloud, and with a cleric and a druid in the party, it's easy to cure the poison over and over again.
Tazok hurts Ruva really badly and costs us some potions. Zulfer, who has recently recovered his Assassin levels, has to poison Tazok to keep Ruva from dying. Even so, we lose a lot of potions.
Conster's buffs don't arrive in time to protect him from trap damage, so the last fight is very underwhelming.
It doesn't make much difference. Both our Assassin/Fighter and our Wizard Slayer/Thief have two pips in darts, and we've got both Darts +5 via the Cloak of Stars as well as nonmagical darts. For a human mage like Conster, we can deal poison damage and inflict spell failure through any spell besides Absolute Immunity, which Conster is too low-level to cast.
We've been playing a very long time without Full Plate Mail. Also, now that Viora has recovered her Shadowdancer levels, we could really use a Cloak of Non-Detection. This gives us a very good reason to cause an incident at Waukeen's Promenade.
@OlvynChuru has pointed out that it should be possible to disarm enemies using cursed weapons by hitting them with Remove Curse. I decide to test it out on Smaeluv Orcslicer, the rather hard-hitting early-game fighter alongside Mencar Pebblecrusher.
It works.
20% of the enemy party, neutralized. This is a game-changer for early BG2. This encounter can be very challenging and very rewarding for early-game parties.
I try out poisoned Fire Seeds for the first time. Works fine.
Another nice benefit from Zulfer's newly-recovered Assassin levels is that he can now use Detect Illusions. He has 100 points in it, since all our other thieving needs were covered by our Shadowdancer/Cleric and Wizard Slayer/Thief. Brennan Risling cannot hide from us.
An Assassin's poison is devastating. With Fire Seeds, it has an area-effect. It's just not fair.
I've been neglecting the slaver questline. I got tired of doing it the same time in every run, right after meeting Gaelan Bayle. As long as we're around, I figure I should get it over with. After all, our Archer has Grandmastery in short bows, and we still haven't gotten the Tuigan Bow.
Our summons clobber the enemy. We do, however, get one close call. While Viora is watching over the other characters, she gets hit by Remove Magic. Her buffs vanish.
She's still invisible, since her invisibility came from stealth, but she's perfectly vulnerable to an area-effect disabler. I restore her immunities. Sure enough, a moment later, she fails a save against a disabler.
Since Viora has no mage levels and therefore no SI: Abjuration, I keep a spare casting of Chaotic Commands on hand in case she gets debuffed. I could use it to protect another character instead, but protecting Charname is always the most important thing.
Zulfer has three pips in Katanas, but only has a nonmagical katana at his disposal. He's been using the Halcyon spear and the Spear of the Unicorn in melee, which means he can't wear a shield. I planned on waiting until later in the game to get Celestial Fury. The problem with Celestial Fury is that, in my install, Cookies the Acid Kensai attacks you whenever you're in Athkatla unless you hand over the second-best katana in the game.
But I just hit 100,000 gold, and Yorun Zovai just hit level 12, which means we can now buy a whole bunch of cool stuff, as well as cast Improved Haste three times per day. I buy Vhailor's Helm, some scrolls of Protection from Acid, 5 Arrows of Dispelling, the Robe of Vecna, a scroll of Protection from Magical Weapons and two scrolls of Protection from Undead, and the Staff of Arundel. By the time our shopping is done, we can't even pay off Bodhi. We have more pressing matters anyway.
I have a new tactic set up thanks to our new equipment. I test it out on the Efreeti on the first level of the Guarded Compound. Azelos, our Archer, equips 20 Darts of Stunning, casts Simulacrum via Vhailor's Helm, and Yorun Zovai casts Improved Haste on the clone. SCS (depending, as always, on your install options) prevents clones from using magic items, but that only applies to quick slot items. Weapons, armor, and even stuff like the Ring of the Ram can all be used by clones. The important thing here is that we can use the every-precious Darts of Stunning without running out, by having our clone throw them instead of Azelos. The disadvantage is that Azelos' clone is only level 5 (I understand that simulacra are actually 50% of the caster's level for single-classed characters), so its THAC0 is much worse.
It works anyway. I love the 3 APR on darts.
We rest and head upstairs, already invisible. We make sure to disarm the traps before proceeding.
The traps around the party can turn them visible, if my memory is correct.
We hurry into the nearby room and grab the Wand of Paralyzation from one of the chests. I decide in advance not to loot any other containers in this area, since the last time I did that, my Charname got fried by a Finger of Death trap. We stake out a position far to the south. We buff up Zulfer with Chaotic Commands.
Zulfer has summoned a clone via Vhailor's Helm and both are getting buffed with Chaotic Commands and Improved Haste. For once, the Chaotic Commands isn't there to block confusion; it's there to block stun from Koshi's katana.
But Koshi is not our target. Sion is. That's why we're using Zulfer and a clone, instead of Azelos' clone by itself. Sion's save vs. spell is too good for us to reliably stun him, since Darts of Stunning force a save vs. spell.
Why not use Ruva, our Wizard Slayer, if she's so good at dealing with mages? The reality of the matter is that Zulfer is better at dealing with normal mages. Ruva is just more useful for dealing with poison-immune mages like liches. But Sion has no immunity to poison. And Poison Weapon deals damage even on a successful save.
What I don't expect, however, is Sion's Chain Contingency. Zulfer dies instantly. As an Assassin/Fighter, his HP is rather low. His clone barely escapes the area of effect, and therefore outlives its creator.
But the gambit worked. Sion is poisoned. And he doesn't have enough HP to handle the damage, either.
I try to poison Koshi as well, since the clone is still well alive, but Koshi slays the poor clone in three hits. And since I sent out a party member under invisibility to guide the clone (clones have no field of vision of their own, much like any summons), Stalman catches wise to our presence and dispels our invisibility--but not before we get the party back together at a safe distance.
We use the quick loot feature to grab Zulfer's and Sion's equipment and raise (CTRL-R) Zulfer outside. After resting, we go back in to finish the job.
This time, Azelos uses Vhailor's Helm. But the Darts of Stunning aren't much help. Koshi's AC is too good, and when the clone does hit, Koshi resists the effect.
Kiting is unsuccessful. Koshi isn't the only enemy she has to run from.
In the dialog box, all clones use Charname's name, not the name of their summoner. Hence the message that Viora has died.
Koshi is alive and well, but we have a backup plan. Zulfer slows down Koshi with poisoned darts. The damage comes so fast that Koshi can't even reach the party before he goes down.
We lose some potions to the other enemies, but the rest of the battle is straightforward. None of the enemies have very special defenses, and Zulfer can reveal Ketta when she goes invisible. Celestial Fury is ours.
Comments
That's the Nymph Cloak for you. A 12-hour charm effect on a failed save vs. breath. Strikes as a level 8 spell and doesn't bypass MR. Doesn't turn neutral targets hostile. It's game-breaking under the right circumstances.
How game-breaking?
The other mage casts Vocalize. We still have one enemy to deal with.
You know what other spectacular disabler bypasses MGOI and doesn't use a save vs. spell? Polymorph Other.
That puts that mage at 5 HP, and Jaheira's Blackblood takes that down to 2. And yes, that is a Dragon's Breath spell about to hit.
But we break through her Stoneskins before it even hits. She explodes.
All that's left is to spend Tolgerias' spells and then crush him. I decide to use those spells on the nearest enemies.
I have Tolgerias spend a few more of his spells, then turn a high-level disabler on him.
It wasn't even necessary. Yoshimo paralyzes him. Tolgerias dies to his own Efreeti and his own Planetar.
We get the mage stronghold and get to teach a group of mages. Larz is a jerk and Morul is cold, but Nara is adorable.
We could have gotten a Ring of Wizardry, but I think that's very likely to result in death. Even though death is easily reversible in Faerun, I feel bad when I see the post-mortem dialogue from Morul. I choose the least risky option in each experiment and the students all make it to graduation. We also get a Golden Girdle from getting Ribald to send the Solamnic Knights back to Sigil.
Finally, I go report our success to Nalia.
Since Zalos is a Fighter/Mage, Nalia would have offered her the De'Arnise Hold had she not already had the mage stronghold I prefer, and it feels bad to say no to a woman who just lost her father and is about to lose her home. We invite Nalia into the party and immediately kick her out, allowing us to minimize the sadness without bringing in a new party member. That's why I took so long to report to Nalia.
Yoshimo throws a Special Snare their way. Now that he's level 16, his traps create a Resilient Sphere effect on the targets. Unfortunately, it stills uses the normal projectile, which means Physical Mirror bounces it right back. And both Zorl and Rengaard come with Physical Mirror prebuffs.
Whatever. We have damage spells, Fire Seeds, disablers, and summons to bring the enemy down instead.
No real setbacks besides Yoshimo's getting trapped.
We have more trouble with the Yuan-ti Mages upstairs in Mekrath's lair. It starts out normal, with offscreen traps, followed by Fire Seeds when the Coiled Cabal comes for us.
We can't stop Remove Magic, however, Edwin is vulnerable to Minute Meteors, and when Sphere of Chaos comes out despite our efforts to disrupt the Coiled Cabal's magic, I realize things are not going in our favor.
We flee downstairs, where the Yuan-ti follow us. Zalos scurries away to attack with Fire Seeds, Edwin scurries away to stay safe, and the rest of the party switches to melee attacks.
I have Minsc summon a simulacrum and hit one of the Yuan-ti with the Ring of the Ram, mostly just because I realized he could.
It wasn't a good idea, actually. It just pushed the Yuan-ti closer to Zalos, and convinced them to change targets. Zalos loses her buffs.
I still want to use Fire Seeds, so Zalos re-casts Protection from Fire. She has an extra copy of the spell for just this sort of occasion, though this is the first time she's ever needed it. We continue hurling around Fire Seeds.
Another Sphere of Chaos spell enters the field. Zalos makes her save despite having no save buffs active.
I move her out of the way; we have enough room to do so. Minsc's simulacrum gets to work disrupting the Yuan-ti's spells--not with Fire Seeds, but with the Necklace of Missiles.
The Yuan-ti Mages focus too much on our party. They neglect Anomen, who ends up being their downfall.
We encounter some more Yuan-ti Mages upstairs, those who failed to follow us down into the sewers to continue the fight. They're not much of a problem. Minsc and Edwin both die to a Sphere of Chaos spell, but Zalos stays safe with Shadow Door to boost her saves, and the Yuan-ti go down to simple melee pressure.
I forget to fight Mekrath and go back downstairs to complete the Unseeing Eye quest.
I don't like Vampiric Mists, so I wander around the trigger that spawns them. You can see the path with CTRL-4.
We get through many of the fights with ease, though we sneak past (CTRL-J) the first pack of Beholders. Later, when we're actually in the Beholder hive, I realize we have a marvelous option to use against those Beholders.
Nishruus are immune to magic.
They might not be able to deal any melee damage, but they do have a smattering of mage spells: 3 Magic Missiles, 2 Agannazar's Scorchers, 1 Melf's Acid Arrow, 1 Ghost Armor, 1 Stinking Cloud, and 1 Lightning Bolt.
A Wizard Eye can let us monitor the Nishruus from afar, and Pixie Dust lets us rest however many times we like. Nishruus aren't very efficient, but they work.
They struggle against a larger group of Beholders to the south. On the second try, they have more success.
We kill every Beholder in the area this way. We do get a brief scare, however, when I accidentally send a fully visible Zalos right into the gaze of a Beholder along with the Nishruus. The first ray, however, is benign.
She slips away in safety.
After roasting the Blind Priests with Fire Seeds, the area is finally clear. I decide we're ready to handle the Unseeing Eye. After putting the Rift Device together, we send down Edwin, fully buffed, to use it. The Unseeing Eye loses its many resistances and lots of HP, but gains a pair of Death Tyrants in the process. So far, so good.
I have a special weapon prepared. Anomen has only just hit level 14, and can now cast level 7 spells. The whole party is buffed with the right spells and it's safe to use.
Pit Fiends have high MR, cast Improved Invisibility at the start of combat, and have excellent damage output. They're very tough critters, so our Pit Fiend's death is met with disbelief.
That was pretty weak. I've seen Pit Fiends tear apart other enemies before. That was just bad luck.
Our Wizard Eye is next to go, dispatched, appropriately enough, with two eye-themed spells in a row.
Pit Fiend or no, we still have tons of magic-immune Nishruus at our disposal. Anomen goes out to guide them. Even after he gets charmed, he still clears the fog of war for us.
With careful management and targeting, the Nishruus can deal enough damage to bring down all three Beholders.
Their spells are low-level, but they get a lot of them. A pack of Nishruus has just enough spellpower to bring down a wannabe demigod.
Neb has a habit of running away, which prolongs the battle. To prevent him from drinking any potions we might want to pick off of his corpse, we disable him at the start of combat.
Apparently those Child Spirits are really, really deadly.
Jaheira has the Ring of Earth Control, so it's no problem. We get Edwin back in the party and plop Neb's head into the lap of the authorities in the Government District.
There's only one thing left to do before we head off to Spellhold. I want the Wand of Paralyzation from the Guarded Compound.
But I'm not going to fight Sion and the group. They have nothing I particularly want. I find what I'm looking for on the second level.
I consider running off to a merchant to recharge the wand before going to Spellhold, but as long as we're here, I figure it can't hurt to pick up a few other goodies. We sneak around the place grabbing whatever we like. Zalos finds a trap.
No, Yoshimo didn't find the trap. Zalos did.
What a doofus!
It was nevertheless very enlightening, though I'd have liked to see how we fared against late-game enemies using those spells. Here are the spells we ended up using (or memorizing) in lieu of my normal selection, roughly in order of frequency:
Priest:
Level 1: Bless, Cure Light Wounds, Entangle, Protection from Evil, Magical Stone
Level 2: Chant, Barkskin, Aid, Resist Fire/Cold, Flame Blade
Level 3: Cure Medium Wounds, Invisibility Purge, Dispel Magic, Glyph of Warding, Rigid Thinking
Level 4: Poison, Cloak of Fear, Mental Domination, Neutralize Poison, Negative Plane Protection
Level 5: Pixie Dust, Mass Cure
Level 6: Fire Seeds, Heal
Level 7: Gate, Symbol: Stun
Mage:
Level 1: Reflected Image, Grease, Larloch's Minor Drain, Charm Person, Protection from Evil
Level 2: Blur, Resist Fear, Horror, Stinking Cloud, Ghoul Touch, Power Word: Sleep, Ray of Enfeeblement
Level 3: Haste, Protection from Fire, Minor Spell Deflection, Monster Summoning I, Ghost Armor, Protection from Normal Missiles, Hold Person, Dispel Magic, Protection from Cold
Level 4: Spirit Armor, Enchanted Weapon Polymorph Other, Minor Globe of Invulnerability, Spider Spawn, Confusion, Wizard Eye
Level 5: Shadow Door, Minor Spell Turning, Cone of Cold, Oracle, Domination
Level 6: Death Spell, Summon Nishruu, Tenser's Transformation, Mislead, Chain Lightning
Our preferred weapons:
Bala's Axe
Frostreaver
Fire Seeds
Mace +3 (from Enchanted Weapon)
Blackblood
Jerrod's Mace
Katana +2
1. Bless and Chant are actually quite excellent spells. The casting time is horrible and the durations are short, but party-wide combat buffs aren't all that common in BG2. The effect isn't very dramatic, but since we were playing effectively without any immunities, our saves were vitally important.
2. Flame Blade is a nice spell, but generally it's preferable for a druid to just use Blackblood and a cleric to just use the Flail of Ages, if possible.
3. Healing spells are worth taking--but probably not that many. Cure Light Wounds, Cure Medium Wounds, and Cure Serious Wounds allow you to slightly strengthen the party when the priest is not busy doing something else. The higher-level healing spells occupy the same slots as very powerful spells like Death Ward, Chaotic Commands, Call Woodland Beings, Harm, Aerial Servant, and Conjure Fire Elemental. Mass Cure is probably the best healing spell we've got. It heals about as much as a Heal spell might, although spread across multiple characters, some of whom might not even be injured. Its advantage is that it can be cast while invisible or when distanced from the wounded character in need of healing. It also is the only healing spell that you can cast on a character that has spell turning/deflection/trap active. Because of its range and relatively short casting time, it is much less likely to be disrupted than other healing spells, and is therefore an excellent rescue option.
4. Poison isn't that bad of a spell for low-level mages. It offers a save vs. death, which mages will often fail, and deals damage through Stoneskin and over time. It even bypasses MGOI, but unfortunately, it will not bypass any other spell protections. This spell declines in usefulness as time goes on.
5. Cloak of Fear isn't quite as useful as I had hoped. It's a weak fear effect with a 25% chance of making the target drop an item, assuming the save is failed, but I found few opportunities to use this spell in SCS. Many enemies are immune to fear, either due to being undead, having a rage ability, or due to having a cleric ally, or have low saves vs. spell. Horror has the same weakness, as well as the added weakness of not bypassing MGOI, but I found many more uses for Horror, as it can be cast at a much further range and much quicker than Cloak of Fear. It's a moderately useful disabler at a spell level where priests have few other disablers available.
6. Pixie Dust is a more expensive but equally powerful alternative to Invisibility 10' Radius. It's a strong escape option, an excellent prebuff, and in general is a useful tactical tool. However, because of its spell level and the fact that it can only be cast by druids, a party would usually have Invisibility 10' Radius available, and Pixie Dust would therefore more likely not be worth the level 5 spell slot. It does have one crucial advantage over Invisibility 10' Radius, however: the Cowled Wizards don't object to it.
7. Fire Seeds are broken. If you abuse the trick that lets you create more of them, they do spectacular damage to enemy groups. Even without that trick, however, they're still excellent for disrupting spells. The fire damage bypasses both spell protections and weapon immunities, and unlike Poison Weapon, it can disrupt even a lich's spellcasting. Magic resistance will block the damage, however, and neither your THAC0 nor your APR will likely be very impressive with Fire Seeds.
8. Reflected Image is worth taking as a prebuff. It's not a reliable defense, but it occupies a very inexpensive spell slot.
9. Grease is a good area-denial spell, but SCS mages will walk right over it, whether because of their strong saves or their MGOI buffs. It will keep away melee fighters, but not much else. It's a poor man's Teleport Field.
10. Charm Person isn't a bad choice for the early game. Many enemies are human and fighters don't have very strong saves. It only lasts 5 rounds, but that can translate into a lot of damage dealt to the enemy and a lot of damage avoided for the party.
11. Horror is a decent early game spell and unlike Stinking Cloud and Web, it's always party-friendly. Many tough SCS enemies, however, come with Remove Fear or MGOI active, so Horror will only be able to affect certain critters.
12. Stinking Cloud suffers a lot in EE. The duration is strong, but now, enemies wake up on being hit. It's good if you have a character with a strong save vs. death, or if you want a low-risk alternative to Stinking Cloud.
13. Power Word: Sleep has a few narrow uses that tend to require advance knowledge. It only works on enemies who are already at 20 HP or below. That said, SCS enemies have a stubborn habit of recovering from harm, as all sorts of enemies have potions, and clerics will cast Sanctuary to chain-cast healing spells and re-enter the fight at full health a few rounds later. Power Word: Sleep can prevent that, if you're quick. It's not as useless as it might seem, but it's better suited for Edwin, who can spare the spell slots, than most anyone else. Combined with Polymorph Other, however, it is another story (see below).
14. Ghoul Touch is fantastic. I seldom used it in this run, but that was largely because of one critical factor: I could not use Belm. Combined with Belm, it's a brilliant disabler that strikes as a +6 weapon, albeit as a level 2 spell. It would be a strong option for disabling an enemy group of fighters, if not most mages. Disablers in no-reload runs tend not to be very reliable, but since Ghoul Touch forces many saves, the luck factor is much less important relative to other disablers.
15. Ghost Armor is a decent alternative to Shield. It's much more expensive, but a Fighter/Mage can benefit from it, as it's a slightly weaker version of Spirit Armor that doesn't take up slots for Stoneskin.
16. Monster Summoning I is a little broken when used correctly. SCS spellcasters don't prioritize targets very well when it comes to summons. It is very easy to bait out high-level spells with low-level summons, and fight a superior foe with an unusual advantage. SCS spellcasters can cut through the weakest critters with Minute Meteors instead of spells, but often, they will spend their spells on fighting low-level summons, when they could be safely ignoring them. Lots of summoning spells have the same trait. Bear in mind, however, that Yuan-ti Mages come in groups and each one of them will have a Death Spell--you can't expect to hold them off with summons so easily.
17. Protection from Normal Missiles is a brilliant early game buff. Many enemies use normal arrows, especially in SCS, and it takes time for them to realize their arrows are having no effect. That said, it's not hard to get the Boots of Avoidance or even the Shield of Reflection, so the window in which Protection from Normal Missiles would be useful is fairly narrow.
18. Spirit Armor is very useful in SCS. The thing is, SCS enemies have a habit of targeting the party member with the worst AC. Yoshimo and Hexxat are going to be high priority targets, and they will get killed often if they aren't protected. The same applies for any character without mage spells or metal armor, besides Valygar (whose armor already has basically a +4 enchantment). The +3 to saves vs. spell also helps with SCS, as enemy spellcasters love throwing around disablers. Even so, Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, and Remove Fear are better than save bonuses almost all of the time, and they're not necessarily any easier to dispel.
19. Polymorph Other is crazy powerful if it works--and it uses a save vs. polymorph, which few enemies can easily resist. If the polymorph effect was permanent but did not effect HP, it would still be terribly strong, but in my version, it reduces the target to 5 HP, because that's what the SQUIRP.itm applies on contact. It's effectively a faster-casting and cheaper ranged Harm spell that is blocked by a save vs. polymorph, spell protections, or magic resistance instead of an attack roll, weapon immunities, or Stoneskin (in my install, Harm does crushing damage and therefore will not bypass Stoneskin). It brings most any enemy to Near Death, and if you have Power Word: Sleep on hand, the enemy won't even have a chance to recover. In fact, you'll get an automatic hit on the final blow thanks to the unconsciousness effect.
20. Confusion is a pretty excellent spell, though I did not use it often. It's less likely to work than Chaos, but it comes much cheaper. Both level 4 and level 5 spells have stiff competition (Stoneskin and Spell Immunity are good examples), so it depends on the situation.
21. Cone of Cold is better suited for parties than Sunfire. Although it does carry the risk of destroying enemy loot, its shape is much less likely to result in friendly fire. It's a good choice for a frontline Fighter/Mage or Cleric/Mage tank.
22. Shadow Door is spectacular in BG2:EE, though overall it's not much of an improvement on Improved Invisibility. In fact, it's a little bit weaker, as Shadow Door and II have more value as prebuffs than escape options--and Invisibility is already just as fast-casting as Shadow Door, making it a superior means of escape. Shadow Door and II both grant +4 to all saves, which is a major boon for non-shorty character in SCS. No other spell gives such a monstrous bonus to saving throws.
23. Oracle. True Seeing is stronger, but Oracle is cheaper and faster. True Seeing will keep off illusion spells for 10 rounds and can also dispel higher-level illusion spells, but SCS spellcasters tend not to carry more than one or two illusion spells, so Oracle is often a permanent solution for enemy invisibility. A notable exception is SCS backstabbers with their many Potions of Invisibility, but by the time you get True Seeing or Oracle as a mage, you will probably have faced most of the backstabbers in the game already.
24. Death Spell just makes things easier. The De'Arnise Hold is so much less hassle with a level 12 non-illusionist mage around. You do have to know in advance which enemies it will work on--Umber Hulks and Trolls, but not Yuan-ti or Beholders--but it simplifies things greatly. Kuo-toa also fall to this spell.
25. Summon Nishruu is a slow but effective means of dealing with Beholders. They're not powerful and they don't last very long, but they work. In a no-reload context, where the stakes are higher, the slower pace of the fight would probably be worth the safety and the relatively low level at which it can be done.
26. Bala's Axe is ridiculous. It's a death sentence for almost any spellcaster, and since it forces multiple saves to prevent a hugely powerful effect, it's reliable even in a no-reload game. Inflicting 80% spell failure for 16 rounds is enough to doom any mage or cleric or druid in SCS. Only celestials, dragons, and genies have immunity to spell failure.
27. The Nymph Cloak only forces one save, or two if you're using a simulacrum, but it can win an entire fight if it works. A 12-hour charm effect is a death sentence for any spellcaster, as you can force them to waste their own spells. Bear in mind, however, that they will turn hostile if you make them cast a hostile spell against themselves.
28. Yuan-ti Mages and other SCS spellcasters love Sphere of Chaos, and it is a terrible spell for no-reload runs. It's a level 7 area-effect spell, and will therefore bypass any spell protections besides SI: Alteration. Death Ward and Chaotic Commands will block some of the effects, but not the polymorph effect, which, like Polymorph Other, will reduce the target to 5 HP.
29. You really should have Stoneskin or Mirror Image on your mages, and Iron Skins on your druids or ranger/clerics (depending on your .ini settings). It's very difficult to prevent spell disruption with positioning alone. That said, if you position your characters very carefully, you might never need more than one Stoneskin spell per day.
30. You don't need Negative Plane Protection to fight the Shade Lord. Unless you have excellent AC, HP, and either strong saves vs. death or Death Ward active, you shouldn't even be close enough to the Shade Lord to trigger his Darkling Aura, as his Black Blade of Disaster for the first 18 rounds of combat is just as deadly.
31. Running away from the enemy is a great solution to being utterly outmatched. Most strong enemies in SCS are strong because of their prebuffs, which will wear off eventually. The larger the area in which you fight, the more you can use this to your advantage. In close corners, however, you may have no such option. Fighting a Yuan-ti Mage in a small room could be more dangerous than a Lich out in the open.
32. Physical Mirror will reflect thief traps. You can easily harm or disable your own thief by trying to trap an SCS cleric.
33. TorGal isn't supposed to have a "second wind." He's supposed to fall down at Near Death like any other troll.
34. The only person in your party who should be finding traps is your thief.
P.S. What a death for Zalos! After all he's been through...
Funnily enough my lastest BG2 run ended last night with a bit of bad luck on the unseeing eye quest against the first group of beholders.
Gonna wait till we got Nishruu spell next time.
I had no idea that Physical Mirror would reflect traps or that Nishruus were an effective way of dealing with Beholders. I also like to use Bless / Chant (and Prayer / Recitation which comes from IWDification and are pretty much improved versions of these spells, but at level 3 and 4 respectively) and Reflected Image to some extent.
Your playthrough was absolutely brillant and it's sad to see Zalos goes away. You also showed us how some items were vastly underestimated, like the Cloak of the Nymph or Bala's Axe.
What a run, I mean it.
After killing Aran, the party went to Brynnlaw to seek Irenicus.
They murdered Perth the Adept to take his wardstone, and entered the Asylum.
Irenicus captured the group with his powerful magic and drained the soul of Anselm, who resisted partially and fought his instinct in his own head.
Afterward, they were sent into the labyrinth where they solved lots of riddles and made their way through Yuan-Ti and Liches.
As always I usually send Hexxat or Korgan alone to face some foes, especially spellcasters, to prevent them from wreaking havoc with their AoE spells.
After a bit of exploring, the party finally faced Jon, but not before freeing all the mad spellcasters who were trapped here.
My strategy here was first, to destroy the most dangerous clones he spawned, Dorn and Anselm in particular because they were using Poison Weapon and doing a lot of damage to our party, then Edwin.
During that time, Edwin casted Warding Whip to break Irenicus's Spell Turning and Immunity : Abjuration, before using Breach to seal the deal.
Irenicus couldn't cast any offensive spells, he struggled to put back a spell protection after the initial assault, but Warding Whip actually trigger three times, so Edwin won the spellcasting contest here.
The others mad wizards weren't doing too much, except from one who casted True Sight which dispelled Irenicus's illusion spells which was handy.
After killing the clones I wanted first, Edwin used Mass Invisibility on all of us before dealing the final assault.
Jon tried to protect himself one last time with PfMW but I always keep some mundane arrows and bolts for Anselm and Dorn.
[spoiler=Irenicus]
[/spoiler]
The fight was won!
Then they headed back to Brynnlaw, escaped the town with Saemon, were attacked by Githyankis before being kidnapped by Sahuagins. They destroyed the whole Sahuagin city and looted the place, including the Cloak of Mirroring.
And now they are in the Underdark ...
In the Underdark, Anselm and his crew fought dozens of Drows, Myconids and Kuo-Toas. They also met some Svirfneblins and decided to be friendly with them at the moment, before betraying them later.
At some point, they discovered a huge sphere, some kind of prison. They were able to free the people trapped in there, before killing them for their equipment.
Most of them fell easily to their attacks, until a Lich came from the sphere. Alchra Diagott was its name, a very powerful spellcaster indeed, probably the strongest they have met until now considering its spell selection.
It casted both Simulacrum and Project Image in its initial prebuffing, and even two screenshots could not show every spells it casted. Soon enough, the real battle started with a Time Stop, an Improved Alacrity and a Fallen Planetar. The Skeletons Warriors were carefully positioned to form a circle around her to allow Anselm to retreat.
After a few rounds, the Fallen Planetar made her way through the summons and reached Korgan while the Lich was still busy wasting Sphere of Chaos, Teleport Field, then another Time Stop plus two Meteor Swarm spells. Due to the delay between the casting of Meteor Swarm, and the actual damage, hasted Korgan managed to escape the area of effect of these spells.
She followed him back to the rest of the party where Anselm could take care of her.
Finally Alchra came to the evil crew and was defeated by Korgan alone before walking away alone, like a badass. What a Dwarf.
[spoiler=Alchra Diagott]
Then the party decided to help the Svirfneblins because they said they were able to help Anselm to infiltrate the Drow city.
They needed to kill a Balor and seal the tunnel from which it came, and that is what they did.
Next episode, the Mind Flayers city.
My playtrhough with Palla, which was going swell with her approaching the 2 million XP mark and several quests completed, came to an abrupt end yesterday when she got very needlessly Held by a Ghast in Prebek's home. (I didn't even watch to see if she'd make it thanks to her buffs.) As with Belle's fall in the old tunnels, this was yet another case of Blackraven stubbornly playing on when a RL intervention really demanded a short break from the game.
Edit: @bengoshi, something good did come out of this. Girlfriend and I didn't play together but after the last incident she felt guilty and decided she wanted to do a multiplayer run with me
I had the chance of playing another Blackguard, same name and portrait but one less Wisdom, last year with SCS. It was more or less a test run in minimal reload, as I used EEKeeper to give him Carsomyr +6 and 8,000,000 XP but it was fun, I also picked up Jan instead of Hexxat. I stopped in the Asylum so I actually played SCS2 once before.
Now I'm pretty much playing blind which is very thrilling, it's deliciously stressful and I'm playing so carefully!
But I still know every creatures and encounters from at least 10 years of PnP, reading many reports on this forum and also because I always have sorcerers.net to guide me when I'm playing BG2 so I know what's coming next
In the Baldur's Gate city we (this time me, @Tresset and @Gotural) were lucky to meet an elven archer, Glíncúwen, managed by @CrevsDaak, who had 4 pips in longbows. Tyndor asked to visit his order fellows, so we could adventure with a new elven pretty.
The Glíncúwen's influence was felt from the beginning, with her inflicting the final blow to Desreta, and thus bringing 18/00 STR bracers to Moros.
"Quick and dead" - this was the first impression of Glíncúwen by others, when oir archer fell in too subsequent fights with Degrodel's puppets.
The mage himself was chuncked by another awesome backstab by Gowrek, this time for 92 damage.
Soon enough, Gotural noticed we were playing on the Insane difficulty (I forgot to switch the difficulty from one of my own runs).
CrevsDaak: "I played as if we were in normal"
Gotural: "Yes, me too"
CrevsDaak: "I have -4 AC, I can tank a few hits"
CrevsDaak: "*gets oneshotted"
After getting both Balruran's items, the group decided to go to Scar, only for Loki to completely forget about the Scar's quest about the Seven Suns building. So, we quickly proceeded to the meeting with Duke Eltan, and then decided to help Aldeth to clear his guild from dopplegangers. It wasn't hard but we still couldn't complete the quest because of a bug (Aldeth didn't get we killed all dopplegangers).
When travelling through the city, Glíncúwen accidentally clicked on one of the sewer's entrance, and suddenly we were right infront of the ogre-mage.
But even while it was completely sudden, we still dealt fine thanks to webs and the Gowrek's sword.
The same approach was used against the Iron Throne mercenaries. This battle, often very hard because of the SCS, went smoothly (of course, the no pre-buffing component for enemies helped here, but still).
After the battle Moros was given the Ring of Free Action, so that he too could fight in the area full of webs. With 2 fighters meleeing webbed enemies, 2 archers (Glíncúwen and Llolnae) attacking from a distance, 1 support character (Gotural dealing with enemies that were not webbed) the group is becoming to look solid now. Soon Loki will get an access to the 5th level spells, so that he could add Chaos to Web.
Also you forgot when I was controlling Llolnae and she got oneshotted by the Thief in that fight (who had been held while invisible before I believe).
I've started and stopped several runs this week and I'm not sure how to proceed. I took an interest in Spell Revisions and Item Revisions, Nightmare mode, Jesters, a new character portrait that fit a Kensai, and Spirit Animals--as their attacks at level 10 strike as +6 weapons, the wolf attacks do cold damage, and they're immune to practically all disablers--but the runs I began which involved those things tended to fall apart in Chateau Irenicus, which I don't like to skip for some reason.
I considered trying out a butterfly-themed run like @dockaboomski suggested a while back, in the Party of Spiders thread, but I'm not sure I want to create a new kit, as the spell list which fit the butterfly concept I had contains druid, cleric, and mage spells. I also considered doing an inverse Party of Spiders run, in which I would play a group of fighters who would use items to act like spellcasters. But when I plot out their options, it seems boring. I considered a disabler-based run, but thought it might be unsatisfying to have to switch to other tactics for enemies like Lavok. I've also considered an immunity-less run, in which all immunities are wiped from the game, but it seems too cheaty at the moment. I wondered about a solo Nightmare mode run, but got tired of a Cleric/Illusionist early on. I've thought about Shadowdancers, but I've already done so much with Hide With No Sight already. I've thought about Archers, but I've done so much with them as well. And I put a tremendous amount of thought into all the ways to deal damage through MGOI, PFMW, Stoneskin, and other spell protections, without being high-level, only to realize it'd make more sense to just go back to using the debuffers that I've been neglecting for ages. I'd like to use a Skald-focused party, but it wouldn't have good enough saves or enough immunities.
I even considered trying an all-out run, in which I use every dirty trick I can to cruise through the game unopposed. It's been a while since I had a truly easy run of the game.
Most of all, I want to start using HLAs again. So many of my runs end before any of my characters get any HLAs. But to get them soon, I'd want to play a solo character, and I want lots of versatility in my group. I could pick a multiclass, but I'm not a fan of multiclasses besides Cleric/Mages, and I've already played those things to death.
We wanted to kill Yago, but we hadn't talked to Brielbara, and we also killed the guards and looted that place where the guy with the Blink Dogs and the +2 Spear is (the spear is EE new for the vanilla vets out there), and, of course, we gave some random guy a Sphene Gem 'cause he rewarded us with one thousand XP, fair deal.
Now, behold! A bunch of pictures in a resolution big enough to crush your browser... Well, apparently the 8 megabytes picture won't upload. I might put 'em on dropbox and post them then.
Edit 1: Added pictures. Enjoy!
Edit 2: Changed the pictures to .jpg and uploaded them to the forums. Enjoy now that you can actually see them!
@CrevsDaak Your images are not seen. In this thread we try to post not bmps, but jpegs or pngs. Use an image converter (there're many online).
Also, I really recommend to use the Snapper program. https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/44455/theres-a-way-to-always-make-screenshots-in-the-jpeg-format-right-off#latest It's much easier to upload screenshots made by that program.
1) dropbox's not showing them as usual
2) they're too big and didn't load.
I changed them to .jpg with Photoshop (remember, I'm on Mac) and uploaded them to the post.
Edit: If anyone STILL doesn't see the image, Quote the post, copy the links and paste them in a new Tab. If it doesn't load them then, blame Vanilla (they're all within the 400-800Kb scale), I mean, I don't know what else to do.
Our Charname this time is Viora, a Shadowdancer I'm dual-classing to Cleric.
Why cleric? Well, we were short of a cleric and I've heard too much praise for Shadowdancer->Fighters and Shadowdancer->Mages. I made Viora our Bhaalspawn for safety's sake, as she is the least likely to get trapped. All her skill points go to stealth.
Our frontline fighter is Zulfer, an Assassin I'm dual-classing to Fighter.
He maxed out Detect Illusions, with a little left over for stealth. I wanted Poison Weapon, but Assassin->Mages and Blackguards get a lot of praise already, so I didn't want them, and an Assassin/Cleric would have poor APR.
Our third and final dual-class character is Ruva, a Wizard Slayer->Thief.
I found a spectacular portrait for a fighter, but to make it show up and look right in-game, I had to crop most of the picture. Ruva's portrait looks a lot more cool in the original.
Very vicious-looking critter, she is. Unfortunately, that picture made her look like a witch instead of a fighter when I first tweaked it, so I had to change the coloring and crop out that badass pose.
Why Wizard Slayer? I checked the files again and apparently Wizard Slayers impose a 25% spell failure effect on hit, not 10%, which means Wizard Slayers are a lot stronger than I had thought. I don't care about the MR; the only reason she's dualing to thief is because I need a full-time thief, and Viora and Zulfer don't have the skill points to do everything I need from a thief.
We also have an Archer, Azelos, because I still haven't really made full use of Called Shot in my no-reload runs.
The deal with Called Shot is that it imposes severe save penalties and can therefore force enemies to fail saves vs. spell. Disablers are usually dicey and unreliable in no-reload runs, but with Called Shot, you no longer have to rely on luck to make those disablers work.
To make the most of our Wizard Slayer, Assassin, and eventually our Archer, I want Fire Seeds, to let us impose spell failure, poison, and Called Shot penalties despite enemy weapon immunities. And because Spirit Animals strike with +6 weapons at level 10, I choose a Totemic Druid, Laosha. Nibidda's old portrait is back.
Laosha means old fool. Spirit Wolves can deal cold damage, paralyze, and even drain levels through Improved Mantle, and Spirit Snakes can poison enemies through Improved Mantle, so they're pretty deadly.
Finally, we have Yoren Zovai, a sorcerer, because I don't use them very often and we need at least one mage.
Just using some different names and portraits makes things seem a lot fresher and newer.
This party should do very well against mages. With Laosha's Fire Seeds, Zulfer and Ruva can impose poison and spell failure through all spell protections and all weapon immunities.
Viora uses Hide in Plain Sight to activate the Sewage Golem without alerting the Duergar, and then clears up the remaining enemies in our path with backstabbing. Zulfer pitches in when she goes back to the earlier Duergar and slays them just for the XP.
Laosha brings out the Spirit Animals for the fight with the Mephits. They also help protect us from the Ellesime clone's spells.
After clearing everything in the next hall, we rest and go for Ilyich. I initially plan on using Laosha's animal summons as a shield against the Duergar, but on reviewing our AC, I realize that our best tank for this fight is actually Yoren Zovai, our sorcerer, at 0 AC and with both Mirror Image and Stoneskin to block attacks. She absorbs most all of the Duergar's attacks, allowing us to fight in safety.
She even tanks the Cambion.
We get disabled by the Mage on the next level, but our summons stay intact. Summons also help against the Assassins on the way out.
The Ring of Human Influence turns Cohrvale against his friend. Once Bregg is down, we blast Cohrvale.
I feel this party is pretty strong, so I deliberately trigger the Suna Seni ambush early on. We bought some Acid Arrows beforehand (I used a Friends scroll to get the Glasses of Identification, and wanted to make use of the extra CHA before it wore off), which help us minimize the spell pressure in this fight.
With our Assassin and Wizard Slayer still recovering their thief and fighter levels, we don't have many good options for disrupting spells. Not yet.
Our summons crush Suna Seni, much faster than I expected. But a mage appears behind us, fully buffed, with an enchantment spell already on the way.
We can't stop it in time, even with Acid Arrows. Only Viora and Yoren Zovai, our cleric and sorcerer, make their saves against Confusion. Our Archer almost dies before a Spirit Wolf can remove her attacker.
That same Spirit Wolf keeps that mage from casting any further spells. Her spell protections won't stop its cold damage, or its paralysis on hit. With the mage gone, we go hunting for Eldarin, who fails a save against Viora's Hold Person spell.
Hold Person is devastating in the early game in Athkatla, when most of the enemies are still human.
After grabbing the Nymph Cloak from Gorch, we head to the Graveyard, earlier than normal. That cloak lets us charm Pai'Na.
This opens up a cute exploit. As a Totemic Druid, Laosha can't shapeshift. But SCS allows all druids to conjure shapeshifting tokens, and all druids can equip them. We get Pai'Na to conjure the tokens we want, so we can loot them from her corpse.
Pai'na's best spells are cast via script, however, which means we can't make her waste her Insect Plague or Chain Lightning spell. The Nymph Cloak can't get us that far.
We don't have any area-effect spells in our spellbooks, but we have scrolls to fill the void. A Fireball scroll disrupts Pai'Na's first spell and destroys most of her allies. With no spiders to distract us, we can mob Pai'Na. The pressure is too much; druid spells are very slow-casting and easy to disrupt.
Now Laosha can shapeshift, just like any other druid. I don't know if I'll use it much, but I like that it's possible.
A lot of SCS mages cast Protection from Fire or Protection from Cold as prebuffs, but they basically never cast Protection from Lightning or Protection from Acid. This means weapons that deal electricity or acid damage can more reliably deal damage through Stoneskin. The Halcyon spear deals 1 electricity damage per hit, and can be obtained with little fuss--much less than Borok's Fist or Blackblood or the Flail of Ages. We use summons to kill the undead in the lower tombs, since some of the enemies can drain levels. Pixie Dust keeps us out of harm's way.
The Vampyre turns into a bat and runs away, slipping through a secret door somehow. We have to rest again to finish it off, as our buffs have worn down.
We push forward with our summons just far enough to get the spear, which goes to Zulfer.
We trigger the Renfeld ambush, which is always unexciting after the much tougher Suna Seni ambush, and go visit Prebek. Unfortunately, his dialog turns him hostile even after we charmed him with the Nymph Cloak before the fight began.
We're not in too much trouble. We have more options for disrupting spells than we did before. For one thing, Ruva regained her fighter levels, which means she applies 25% spell failure per hit.
A Spirit Wolf breaks through Prebek's defenses. A Spirit Snake breaks through Sanasha's.
His save vs. spell is 1, but his other saves are normal. With poison applied, he can't cast any spells. It's just a matter of time before his Stoneskins go down.
Mae'Var is much more difficult. We get off to a bad start. Zulfer tries to charm him with the Nymph Cloak, but it fails, leaving him in full view of the enemy.
I pull back Zulfer to keep the enemy focused on our summons, and have Zulfer focus his darts on the enemy cleric. At the back of the room, the rest of the party prepares for Mae'Var's approach with buffs, summons, and traps.
Our summons weren't enough to distract the enemy backstabbers from Zulfer. Zulfer loses some Potions of Extra Healing to backstabs, but they aren't enough. He gets trapped, and he can't drink a Potion of Invisibility in time.
Mae'Var moves on to backstab Ruva, our Wizard Slayer/Thief. I hoped to have her throw darts at him so she could inflict spell failure without getting hurt by Fire Shield, but Mae'Var is persistent. To keep the other enemies from mobbing us, I send out Yoren Zovai, our sorcerer, to tank their attacks, and also frustrate the enemy cleric's spellcasting. Meanwhile, Viora hides behind some boxes--Mae'Var can cast Chaos, and she can't guarantee a save against it.
Yoren Zovai's Slow spells decrease the pressure from the Assassins, but the main problem is Mae'Var, whose MGOI blocks all of our disablers. I hoped our Spirit Wolf could paralyze him and disrupt his spells, but Mae'Var recognizes the threat.
To my confusion, Azelos, our Archer, dies. She was at full health. Only when I review her stats do I realize what happened.
Azelos, as a slow-leveling ranger, was only level 8. Death Spell kills everything below level 9, without a saving throw, as well as all summoned critters.
But she was not the only one who was level 8. Viora, our Bhaalspawn, was also level 8, due to her dual-classing, and she was right next to the group when Death Spell hit. Why did she survive?
She had Death Ward active. Death Ward blocks opcode 55, which is what the Death Spell uses to kill critters below level 8. Death Ward does not, however, protect summons from the Death Spell, as it uses a different opcode to kill summons. I only put up Death Ward for fear that Mae'Var would hit Viora with a Chromatic Orb.
Yuan-ti Mages also cast Death Spell, as do many SCS mages. Any character below level 9 needs Death Ward to survive that spell.
The enemy cleric is almost dead, but Yoren Zovai can't land a hit with Minute Meteors in such close quarters. She uses Agannazar's Scorcher instead, the only damage spell she currently has.
Mae'Var finally casts Chaos. We're in luck: only one of us got disabled.
This is a problem. Laosha can't bring in any more Spirit Animals, which means we can't deal damage through Stoneskin.
But Ruva can still inflict spell failure.
He can't get many spells off the ground. His Fire Shield punishes attackers, but I figure it's worth dipping into our potion supplies to bring him down early. His Stoneskins very slowly go down.
Anselm and his party traveled to the easterns tunnels and were captured by the Mind Flayers.
Soon after they were forced to fight their way through their city. They killed many Illithids, Ulitharids and Umber Hulks during their escape.
They also freed the slaves only to kill them themselves later, enslaved an Illithid to open the doors to the Master Brain before sending Korgan to fight it alone.
Each time someone was Int drained, they immediately drank a Potion of Genius or Potion of Mind Focusing to counteract the effects. Anselm in particular raised his Int to 25, just to be sure.
[spoiler=Mind Flayer]
[/spoiler]
Korgan took a lot of damages during the Elder Brain fight, but he managed to kill it before retreating to the rest of the crew. At this moment, Anselm was able to greet the remaining foes with a new ally.
[spoiler=First HLA]
[/spoiler]
After doing this quest, the crew met with Adalon the Silver Dragon and entered Ust Natha, disguised as Drows.
They did all the errands they were asked, killed Deirex (with Poison Weapon), Solaufein, Phaere and the Matron Mother.
The fight with the Demon Lord didn't go as planned when it instantly casted Wall of the Banshee, killing both Hexxat and Edwin in the process.
It is also immune to weapons +4 or less, so only Viconia was able to it with her Sling of Everard +5. So they resurrected Edwin to cast Improved Haste on Viconia to speed up the process.
[spoiler=Demon Lord]
Then they went out of Ust Natha, killing every Drows on their bloody path. Edwin unleashed a Time Stop x4 + Dragon's Breath + every buffs he could during the 12 rounds time was stopped.
Next stop, the Beholder's Lair. The party sent Korgan with his squad of 4 Skeletons Warriors + a Fallen Deva. Together, they dispatched a large part of the caverns before the summons were destroyed.
Viconia summoned 4 others Skeletons Warriors, Dorn another Fallen Deva and they repeated the process.
The Elder Orbs had a Spell Sequencer with Flame Arrows x3 which was truely scary and took a lot of health from Korgan.
[spoiler=Beholder]
Afterwards, the Kuo-Toan dungeon which was really easy except the Demon Knights fight. These guys are nasty with SCS and I wasn't expecting such retaliation. They can instacast at will a lot of powerful spells.
They managed to fear Viconia through Remove Fear, then they stunned her before killing both her and Korgan with Power Word : Death. They also casted Greater Malison + Symbols spells while being extremely good melee warriors.
With Korgan gone, I was really afraid to send Anselm in melee because he was affected by Greater Malison and his saves were no longer in the negatives. A single Symbol : Death could end the run. So I had to play even more carefully, sending another Fallen Deva + Anselm's Simulacrum with Dorn to give vision and the evil crew finally prevailed.
[spoiler=Demon Knights]
[/spoiler]
And finally, they talked to Adalon to flee the Underdark.
Initially I wanted to kill her but when I looked on the internet I learned that you can't earn both the huge 78,500 XP per character from the quest AND kill her, so I chose the greater reward with less risks. Maybe in a future playthrough ...
He's not in the inn, either. Luckily, we can get the location of Trademeet from Mazzy once we get to the Umar Hills.
The Temple Ruins are a non-issue. At level 10, a Totemic Druid's Spirit Animals are immune to nonmagical weapons, and with SCS installed, even the Skeleton Warriors use nonmagical weapons. Fire Elementals have the same immunity.
That group of elementals and Spirit Animals takes down the entire dungeon. Only Thaxll'silliyia and the Shade Lord remains. As always, we sneak past the dragon. That breath weapon is a nightmare.
For once, I actually have defense against the Shade Lord's Darkling Aura. Yorun Zovai has Spell Immunity (SI: Necromancy can block the spell), and with a druid and a cleric in the party, we have a fair amount of slots for Negative Plane Protection--but nowhere near enough to cover the whole party for the whole battle. The Shade Lord has a habit of casting Finger of Death, and his Black Blade of Disaster uses the same opcode, so after we find a hiding spot to the south of the Shade Lord, I make sure she's safe.
The Shade Lord never uses Remove Magic, so our buffs should be safe. Some light summons occupy the Shade Lord's attention while Viora takes down the Shadow Altar with Sunstone Bullets.
The Shade Lord moves very slowly, and his Darkling Aura has a limited area of effect, so missile weapons work well against him. Which I suppose is why he's fond of this spell.
Notice Laosha is casting Pixie Dust. The Shade Lord is advancing with the Black Blade of Disaster, and we don't have enough room to run away from the Darkling Aura even if we stall him with summons, so invisibility is a must for escaping those two threats. We leave him alone at the south.
But when we bring out the Berserk Warrior, the Shade Lord comes back north to us. Viora is stuck in Azelos' Entangle spell, so she can't run from the Darkling Aura.
We don't have enough magical weapons, and the Shade Lord's Spell Turning would bounce any damage spells back onto us. The solution? A Pierce Magic scroll.
Laosha follows up with Call Lightning, though he nearly dies in the process.
Yorun Zovai tries to re-cast SI: Necromancy, but is disrupted by a Chromatic Orb. If she was a mage, she'd have had Minor Spell Deflection to block that. Luckily, Spell Immunity can be cast more than once per round in BG2:EE. She renews her immunity to Darkling Aura before the Shade Lord has a chance to disrupt her again.
Laosha's first Call Lightning failed to deal any damage, but the second time works. Yorun Zovai pitches in with a Wand of Fire.
But the Shade Lord renews his Spell Turning--if I'm not mistaken, this is actually the second time has done so. I'm not sure if that's supposed to happen.
Azelos finally brings down Shadow Patrick, but the Shade Lord catches up to her.
While Azelos is on the run, the Shade Lord re-casts Black Blade of Disaster, which I didn't think he could do. When Azelos tries to flee and attack from range, he blinds her again.
But now his Blade Barrier has worn off. It's no longer quite as dangerous to attack him in melee. Laosha brings out a trio of Spirit Wolves, since they cast deal damage through Stoneskin, though it's cold damage and the Shade Lord is immune. The rest of the party uses ranged attacks. Spirit Wolves have 3 APR, so the Shade Lord doesn't last very long.
Trolls aren't a problem for us, but I'm not sure we'd do so well against Giant Trolls, so I use stealth in the Troll Mound instead of fighting them.
Kyland Lind's group and the enemies before him all collapse under disablers. Laosha takes advantage of the outdoor setting.
Kyland Lind tries to flee while still invisible, but the Wand of Fire and our Efreeti get us the XP before it runs away.
We hurt a Spore Colony in the process, so I move on to the Myconids without resting. I keep the party at the back, since none of us have any immunities to confusion. Spirit Animals, however, are immune to basically all disablers.
The fight with Dalok ends with two blows. His first spell fails to disruption, and a combination of Greater Malison and Silence 15' Radius forces him to make a save vs. spell at a -9 penalty to keep a hold of his spellcasting.
Druids and clerics have no Vocalize spells, so silence is something of a death sentence for them.
Cernd kills Faldorn. I could have had Laosha fight Faldorn instead, and with three Spirit Animals out in the first round, he could probably manage it. But whatever.
When its Fire Shield has run out, we send out Spirit Wolves for their cold damage. Their THAC0 isn't too great considering the rakshasa's excellent AC, but they hit enough.
Ruva only needs a moment to inflict crippling spell failure on an opponent. A little disruption is all it takes.
The spell failure doesn't apply to cleric and druid spells, but those are easier to shut down through other means, as clerics and druids lack MGOI, Vocalize, or most spell protections, though Melf's Acid Arrow and Flame Arrow will bounce off of Physical Mirror.
My inventory has been overflowing with magical ammunition I need for emergencies, and our Archer could really stand to use a Quiver of Plenty, which means we need to pay a visit to Watcher's Keep. The Vampiric Wraiths I so fear turn out rather fragile.
Spirit Animals do lots of damage, even though they're immune to haste.
I normally fight the first group of Statues before leaving, since the second group has epic-level mages and a lot more enemies. Viora uses Hide in Plain Sight to activate the Statues without the party getting mobbed.
The rest of the group is invisible thanks to Invisibility 10' Radius, which Yorun Zovai, our sorcerer, chose after a recent level up. This saves up spell slots Laosha has been using for Pixie Dust, and ensures we always have a reliable supply of escape options.
We scurry down south and send a Skeleton Warrior off to its death, although we only drain a single HLA from the enemy.
Zulfer, our Assassin/Fighter (still yet to recover his Assassin levels, by the way), goes out to check on the enemy, and provokes a divination spell. The whole party goes visible, but not before Zulfer can slip away.
We march out more summons, but this time use a batch of them at once.
Single summons are better for drawing out spells, but for offensive purposes, it's more effective to have them swarm the opponent, rather than sending them out one at a time.
We eventually bring the party forward. One of the clerics tries to charm Zulfer, but the Helmet of Charm Protection, switched out at the last second, keeps him safe.
Yorun Zovai, with her Mirror Image and Stoneskin spells, can stick close to the enemies without endangering herself too much, so I keep her around with her Minute Meteors to disrupt the enemy's spells, with the rest of the party far to the south.
The enemy manages to disable Zulfer with Hold Person. I consider using Remove Paralysis, but I've only got one left and I'm sure that there are more Hold Person spells around. I just hide him instead.
Since only one character got disabled, it's not as necessary to use that Remove Paralysis spell, anyway.
By now we've had enough time to bring out our most important summons, the Spirit Animals, and buff up the party. A coordinated rush brings the encounter to an end.
It's a rather effective tactic I developed when I was on my first Nightmare mode run. Start out with limited buffs, flee from the enemy, and then gradually draw out the enemy's strongest spells and wait out its strongest buffs. Then, when the enemy is weakened and vulnerable, you bring out your best buffs and strongest summons and attack the enemy all at once. This way, you attack the enemy at full power, when the enemy has lost its most important resources.
Provoke, weaken, withdraw, pounce.
But it's not so bad. We have three Nymphs on the field already, safely out of reach but close enough to launch their disablers all at once. Only Kaol, the enemy mage, escapes. The others aren't so lucky.
With the enemy uncoordinated, we can attack in relative safety.
What about Kaol? He emerges from the hallway when the carnage is over, only to find his spellcasting shut down by a handful of darts from our Wizard Slayer/Thief.
Mages tend to have terrible AC, so it's not hard for a Wizard Slayer to shut them down. And contrary to popular opinion, being able to hit a mage does not mean they're doomed--not in SCS, where enemies regularly re-cast their buffs, and some mages, like Lavok and all liches, are immune to poison. I have seen mages on multiple occasions fail to cast a spell despite receiving no damage. Damage was not enough to stop them--only our Wizard Slayer made that happen.
The Guardians in the maze are always a chore, since every fight is identical, but there is one thing I'm quite proud of. When one of the Guardians was running away, I managed to put a stop to his flight by running around a corner and setting a trap.
It's nice to see the little optimizations pay off.
I always forget the Lightning Bolt trap before the Air Elemental. It nearly slays Viora.
I want to take on the Adamantite Golem, and Ruva and Azelos, our Wizard Slayer and Archer, can kill it from afar with the Crimson Dart and Firetooth, but I'm not willing to drink the two Potions of Invulnerability that I'd need to protect Azelos from the poison effect (Ruva couldn't drink them in the first place). Instead, I decide to just memorize a whole bunch of healing spells. Whenever Ruva gets poisoned, which is almost every time the golem uses its poison cloud ability, I cure her.
That poison ability is the Adamantite Golem's cure for choke points. But by moving to the side before the cloud hits, and running away when it does, you can minimize your exposure to the cloud, and with a cleric and a druid in the party, it's easy to cure the poison over and over again.
Tazok hurts Ruva really badly and costs us some potions. Zulfer, who has recently recovered his Assassin levels, has to poison Tazok to keep Ruva from dying. Even so, we lose a lot of potions.
Conster's buffs don't arrive in time to protect him from trap damage, so the last fight is very underwhelming.
It doesn't make much difference. Both our Assassin/Fighter and our Wizard Slayer/Thief have two pips in darts, and we've got both Darts +5 via the Cloak of Stars as well as nonmagical darts. For a human mage like Conster, we can deal poison damage and inflict spell failure through any spell besides Absolute Immunity, which Conster is too low-level to cast.
@OlvynChuru has pointed out that it should be possible to disarm enemies using cursed weapons by hitting them with Remove Curse. I decide to test it out on Smaeluv Orcslicer, the rather hard-hitting early-game fighter alongside Mencar Pebblecrusher.
It works.
20% of the enemy party, neutralized. This is a game-changer for early BG2. This encounter can be very challenging and very rewarding for early-game parties.
I try out poisoned Fire Seeds for the first time. Works fine.
Another nice benefit from Zulfer's newly-recovered Assassin levels is that he can now use Detect Illusions. He has 100 points in it, since all our other thieving needs were covered by our Shadowdancer/Cleric and Wizard Slayer/Thief. Brennan Risling cannot hide from us.
An Assassin's poison is devastating. With Fire Seeds, it has an area-effect. It's just not fair.
I've been neglecting the slaver questline. I got tired of doing it the same time in every run, right after meeting Gaelan Bayle. As long as we're around, I figure I should get it over with. After all, our Archer has Grandmastery in short bows, and we still haven't gotten the Tuigan Bow.
Our summons clobber the enemy. We do, however, get one close call. While Viora is watching over the other characters, she gets hit by Remove Magic. Her buffs vanish.
She's still invisible, since her invisibility came from stealth, but she's perfectly vulnerable to an area-effect disabler. I restore her immunities. Sure enough, a moment later, she fails a save against a disabler.
Since Viora has no mage levels and therefore no SI: Abjuration, I keep a spare casting of Chaotic Commands on hand in case she gets debuffed. I could use it to protect another character instead, but protecting Charname is always the most important thing.
Zulfer has three pips in Katanas, but only has a nonmagical katana at his disposal. He's been using the Halcyon spear and the Spear of the Unicorn in melee, which means he can't wear a shield. I planned on waiting until later in the game to get Celestial Fury. The problem with Celestial Fury is that, in my install, Cookies the Acid Kensai attacks you whenever you're in Athkatla unless you hand over the second-best katana in the game.
But I just hit 100,000 gold, and Yorun Zovai just hit level 12, which means we can now buy a whole bunch of cool stuff, as well as cast Improved Haste three times per day. I buy Vhailor's Helm, some scrolls of Protection from Acid, 5 Arrows of Dispelling, the Robe of Vecna, a scroll of Protection from Magical Weapons and two scrolls of Protection from Undead, and the Staff of Arundel. By the time our shopping is done, we can't even pay off Bodhi. We have more pressing matters anyway.
I have a new tactic set up thanks to our new equipment. I test it out on the Efreeti on the first level of the Guarded Compound. Azelos, our Archer, equips 20 Darts of Stunning, casts Simulacrum via Vhailor's Helm, and Yorun Zovai casts Improved Haste on the clone. SCS (depending, as always, on your install options) prevents clones from using magic items, but that only applies to quick slot items. Weapons, armor, and even stuff like the Ring of the Ram can all be used by clones. The important thing here is that we can use the every-precious Darts of Stunning without running out, by having our clone throw them instead of Azelos. The disadvantage is that Azelos' clone is only level 5 (I understand that simulacra are actually 50% of the caster's level for single-classed characters), so its THAC0 is much worse.
It works anyway. I love the 3 APR on darts.
We rest and head upstairs, already invisible. We make sure to disarm the traps before proceeding.
The traps around the party can turn them visible, if my memory is correct.
We hurry into the nearby room and grab the Wand of Paralyzation from one of the chests. I decide in advance not to loot any other containers in this area, since the last time I did that, my Charname got fried by a Finger of Death trap. We stake out a position far to the south. We buff up Zulfer with Chaotic Commands.
Zulfer has summoned a clone via Vhailor's Helm and both are getting buffed with Chaotic Commands and Improved Haste. For once, the Chaotic Commands isn't there to block confusion; it's there to block stun from Koshi's katana.
But Koshi is not our target. Sion is. That's why we're using Zulfer and a clone, instead of Azelos' clone by itself. Sion's save vs. spell is too good for us to reliably stun him, since Darts of Stunning force a save vs. spell.
Why not use Ruva, our Wizard Slayer, if she's so good at dealing with mages? The reality of the matter is that Zulfer is better at dealing with normal mages. Ruva is just more useful for dealing with poison-immune mages like liches. But Sion has no immunity to poison. And Poison Weapon deals damage even on a successful save.
What I don't expect, however, is Sion's Chain Contingency. Zulfer dies instantly. As an Assassin/Fighter, his HP is rather low. His clone barely escapes the area of effect, and therefore outlives its creator.
But the gambit worked. Sion is poisoned. And he doesn't have enough HP to handle the damage, either.
I try to poison Koshi as well, since the clone is still well alive, but Koshi slays the poor clone in three hits. And since I sent out a party member under invisibility to guide the clone (clones have no field of vision of their own, much like any summons), Stalman catches wise to our presence and dispels our invisibility--but not before we get the party back together at a safe distance.
We use the quick loot feature to grab Zulfer's and Sion's equipment and raise (CTRL-R) Zulfer outside. After resting, we go back in to finish the job.
This time, Azelos uses Vhailor's Helm. But the Darts of Stunning aren't much help. Koshi's AC is too good, and when the clone does hit, Koshi resists the effect.
Kiting is unsuccessful. Koshi isn't the only enemy she has to run from.
In the dialog box, all clones use Charname's name, not the name of their summoner. Hence the message that Viora has died.
Koshi is alive and well, but we have a backup plan. Zulfer slows down Koshi with poisoned darts. The damage comes so fast that Koshi can't even reach the party before he goes down.
We lose some potions to the other enemies, but the rest of the battle is straightforward. None of the enemies have very special defenses, and Zulfer can reveal Ketta when she goes invisible. Celestial Fury is ours.
Now we have to deal with Cookies.