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The Nightmare Mode (Legacy of Bhaal) Thread

FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
Post your Nightmare Mode experiences here, from challenges to fun moments.

Here's me killing Niz, the Black Dragon in Suldanessellar.



Party
--------
FMT
Berserker 7/Cleric
Kensai 9/Mage
Inquisitor
Assassin 9/Fighter
Sorcerer

Apparantly Nightmare mode gives monsters 3 * Normal HP +80, so he should have 680 HP. I managed to deal 686, so that's pretty accurate. The reason I used such cautious tactics was to ensure easy tallying of damage.
Post edited by FinneousPJ on
lunarBlackravenlolienJuliusBorisovCrevsDaakGoturalbrusKlorox
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Comments

  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    Onto ToB. Anyone else playing on Nightmare?
    lolienJuliusBorisovCrevsDaak
  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,714
    Hey, I haven't personally tried it but it's VERY interesting to get an insight (of how the Nightmare is felt in BG). Please, carry on : )
    FinneousPJCrevsDaak
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    Thanks, @bengoshi. I have some more videos I could post.

    @Lord_Tansheron I invite you to test this new metagame.
    CrevsDaakJuliusBorisov
  • Lord_TansheronLord_Tansheron Member Posts: 4,211
    edited March 2015
    @FinneousPJ Nothing I would like more, but work has been relentless this last half-year. I got in maybe 2 hours of play the last three months, and it's only getting worse with family etc. in the mix. If it wasn't for internet at work, I wouldn't be on these forums either... :(

    Right now my highest hope is my summer vacation, but as soon as I can make some time to ACTUALLY play and not just load things up and stay 15 minutes, I'll be sure to post a comprehensive analysis.
    FinneousPJCrevsDaak
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    Here's Irenicus. Nothing special really.

    JuliusBorisovGemHoundbrus
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    edited March 2015


    Final Seal battle @Lord_Tansheron @bengoshi

    The rehearsal went better :P
    JuliusBorisov
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    Errors On Disk

    My RAID failed and I lost all my gameplay vids. I might start a narrated Nightmare run to better capture your imaginations :)
    elminsterJuliusBorisov
  • TredvoltTredvolt Member Posts: 62
    @FinneousPJ Been loving Nightmare mode! I'm just finishing my 5th playthrough with a 4 man party. I have the hardest time in the beginning similar to how the normal game went, and then the game gets progressively easier.

    I'll summarize my notes.

    #1 Ranged damage is king. I have the post in the powergaming thread showing my exact comp but it is entirely designed around the strength of my ranged contributions.

    #2 Summons are overpowered. This is one of those questionable aspects of increasing hit points across the board. The wand of monster summoning becomes such a powerful item. Even more so the skeleton warriors from cleric are intense. I use them for all the hardest fights (being careful to avoid death spell situations). Dragons in particular get completely destroyed by them.

    #3 Experience is very high. I've actually left off parts of the game that have poor loot (IMHO) and I find myself avoiding XP that isn't necessary to get. After finishing Watcher's Keep and Irenicus I have around 6.5 million on each of my 4 characters.

    #4 The mummy fight on watcher's level 4 (North East North East North West Archway) There is some randomness however I've counted up to 22 hits on my little guy and he still kills the mummy every time with this route. I only mention this because I saw two threads that mentioned that they couldn't get past this without reducing from nightmare.

    #5 Tanking is very difficult because monsters stay around so long and an accumulation of 20s even on the best geared tank will eat through stone or ironskins. Be prepared to kite more. I use my bard to kite on purpose even when i have sufficient summons.

    #6 I use only a couple of the options in the tweakpack and I have only messed around a bit with SCS. If you don't use AI mods, even nightmare becomes easy. I have a lot of respect for the mod makers but I get somewhat turned away from the ones that change so much.

    #7 I do all my runs on a tight timer. I sleep as little as possible to "role-play" the immediacy. My most recent run I finished SOA and Watchers by Day 28 Hour 5. TOB should take me about 8 days if I remember correctly. Disregarding forced sleeps (phaere, windspear cabin, boat ride etc) I slept 4 times and most of that was in the beginning.
    FinneousPJJuliusBorisovlolienNoobacca
  • JidokwonJidokwon Member Posts: 395
    I'm curious about this one, too. I'd like to give it a go, but I want to do a complete playthrough of the trilogy. While I don't mind opening EE Keeper to fix the joinable NPCs, I don't want it making my party's summoned creatures more powerful than they already are. I have a serious restartitis problem, though, so I'm sure I'll end up trying it in BG2EE before they patch them officially to both games.
    FinneousPJJuliusBorisov
  • TredvoltTredvolt Member Posts: 62
    Further Review of Nightmare

    I find Nightmare to be a much more rewarding and interesting setting of play. I enjoy the feeling of monsters taking time to work down. Mages are still high priority targets for example but I can't reliably take them out in the first half of the first round anymore, so I need to be prepared to deal with their onslaught. It forces me to max/min a bit more, but since I normally gravitate to this style of play anyways, I don't mind the extra push. Experience is plentiful which allows me to experiment with different size compositions and my overall strategy gets altered by a greater degree fight to fight. All this being said, I definitely think Nightmare has some small issues that are worth mentioning. Whether they should be adjusted is a matter of opinion.

    Problems with Nightmare

    #1 NPCs will have much higher hit points than normal. It doesn't bother me because I never use NPCs unless it is to take their gear to sell. Small confession, I've mutilated Nalia on several runs in a vain attempt to get that amazing ring to work for me. I have done things...... At some point even my created characters are starting to doubt the lawful goodness of my protagonist. They just don't understand..... but I've gotten off topic.

    #2 Summons (similar to NPCs) have significantly higher hit points than normal. This may in fact be intentional or desirable in either case. I feel as though the summoned creatures from spells used by the party should be stronger to keep consistency throughout the world, however I must mention that I've started to really abuse the wand of monster summoning. Later in the game these ogres and hobgoblins still explodicate (is a word) in 1 or 2 rounds max, but you can have 2 characters dumping them out non stop and it seems to be too good.

    #3 Damage spells become relatively weaker. I used to skull trap the world and single handedly increase global warming through cloud kill carbon emissions but lately this hasn't been the case. These spells have lost nearly all their utility, and are never chosen by me over buffs or debuffs any longer. Everything is relative... a hold person has more value when it works against a 200 hit point mob instead of a 40 hp mob. and the reverse is true of a magic missile. I don't see a clean fix for this, and it promotes a rather large shift in the curve. One could argue that magic was too strong before, and this simply brings it back to a better balance. With a lack of any other positive way of looking at it, I choose to prescribe to this mentality.

    #4 Minor annoyances, emphasis on minor. I can't kill certain npcs that run away too quickly - and some scripted fights between npcs (docks/pirates/drowfight) take a really long time. lets not even talk about ranged attacking down an adamantite golem in firkraag's dungeon. There's also the possible issue with the maze in watcher's keep level 4 that gets messed up from the higher hit point mummy.

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

    In the end - nightmare is just meant to be an optional mode to play in, and not supposed to replace the base game settings. Balance shifts, and character diversity drops but BG was never built on the assumption of balance anyways. I've finished quite a few runs, testing out my best character setups and only made a couple small adjustments.

    My advice for fixing nightmare is likely less than you'd imagine. I'd recommend taking a look at those minor annoyances and if there was an EASY fix to it, then go for it - otherwise leave those alone. Other than that just try to fix the NPC hit points for those that enjoy using them and don't want to have to keeper them to fix. Unless you find a REALLY clever way of making damage spells come up a bit i'd stay the hell away from messing with those and I don't think the summon fixes are worth it. Afterall just do not USE the wand of monster summoning if you feel it is too strong, or don't recharge it.

    GoturalFinneousPJlolien
  • TredvoltTredvolt Member Posts: 62
    I almost forgot the biggest annoyance I have with NM is that turn undead no longer works. I'm not sure if this is a function of the way they calculate the hit points but I was used to my ranger/cleric blowing up stuff throughout the game and was looking forward to the accelerated levels providing further bonus.

    Instead - I can't even turn an undead mosquito with my maxed level cleric/ranger. It isn't the end of the world, but it was one of those really cool aspects to the cleric/ranger that I enjoyed. From what I've read there is no way to edit this in eekeeper to fix it since your turn level is just hard coded based on your cleric level. If anyone has a solution to this I'd love to hear it.
    FinneousPJlolien
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    @Tredvolt Yeah I think NM adds like 12 levels to each mob. Try a pure or dual class cleric.
    elminster
  • Lord_TansheronLord_Tansheron Member Posts: 4,211
    @FinneousPJ Has it right, NM (like HoF in IWD) hugely inflates enemy levels, and since TU is based on your lvl vs. enemy lvl, it's extremely hard to turn in NM.

    In much the same way, hit dice are also greatly increased. This in turn changes the way several spells work, as they have effects based on HD. Keep that in mind when doing NM!

    I personally don't mind the TU thing too much. I always found TU to be a bit cheesy anyway, especially given that many of the difficult enemies in BG2 are undead (vampires, liches). Just going in there with a cleric and one-button chunking the entire room is a bit much for me.

    Nevertheless, it is definitely an iconic cleric ability. This is another case where I'd love to see mod support, e.g. an option to modify TU as desired to either work the same in NM, or work in a diminished fashion (deal damage each turn?), or something. My hope is that once NM is properly patched in and the bugs ironed out, that mod makers will incorporate it into a new paradigm and offer some nice tweaking options for the level of customization we so enjoy about BG and its mods.
    elminsterFinneousPJ
  • CurmudgeonCurmudgeon Member Posts: 57
    @Lord_Tansheron
    Looking forward to reading your evaluation of this very different iteration of your power-gaming party.
    With all the extra XP that Nightmare mode offers, I wonder why you don't take your Priest of Lathander to a level high enough to get two Boons.
    FinneousPJJuliusBorisov
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    Nice, although it sounds like the biggest challenges come from the revisions mods.
    JuliusBorisov
  • Lord_TansheronLord_Tansheron Member Posts: 4,211

    I wonder why you don't take your Priest of Lathander to a level high enough to get two Boons.

    I considered this for sure. However the jump in XP is quite significant from 9 to 10, and also from 10 to 11 on the Fighter side. That is a LOT of XP in early game, where you are most vulnerable. Don't forget the high XP also means you get to HLAs more quickly, and once you have GWW the extra Boon is essentially useless. You do not really get a lot else from the extra levels, the one bonus 4th/5th level spells are not a big deal. Of course, this is still only a first gander. It may very well turn out that going to lvl 10 is actually worth it.

    Nice, although it sounds like the biggest challenges come from the revisions mods.

    In part, certainly. You could make the same argument for SCS, of course. It's not a singular factor, but all the different changes coming together. The vast majority of the IR/SR changes make a lot of sense. There is no doubt that IH was completely overpowered, for example, centering the entire party composition around it. Certain weapons were also too good, considering when you get them (like FoA+3) while others were not good enough (Bastard Swords are quite viable all the way through now, for example). I think it's not a perfect balance yet, but it feels a LOT better than without the mods. If you haven't given IR/SR a try, I can only highly recommend that you do.
    FinneousPJArdulJuliusBorisov
  • Lord_TansheronLord_Tansheron Member Posts: 4,211
    UPDATE!

    So, now I've gone through most of early game, finishing up the majority of side quests. Shadow Dungeon is still left because of Liches, and Firkraag is not quite within reach yet either. Rest went down fairly smoothly, the only fight that was a bit difficult was TorGal but once I figured out how to isolate the two Yuan-Ti Mages it wasn't a big problem - the very fact that I even had to do that, by the way, speaks volumes as to the new approach! For years and years I just brute-forced this fight, storming in and slaughtering, safe in the knowledge that everything dangerous would die before it became a problem. No more!

    The party composition is working very well so far. The three front-liners are pretty tanky, and it turns out that you really can stand there forever under Mirror Image and Stoneskin :P Definitely F/M hybrids for tanking in this game, unlike IWD. Having M->F duals also doesn't seem too much of a problem. You don't actually need all that many spells, and having great THAC0s is becoming quite noticeable. It also makes it easier to use shields (they give THAC0 penalties in IR), a very valid option now that the +APR offhands only add 1/2 APR and IH doesn't double. I might switch over to dual-wield eventually anyway, but in the early game I found the extra AC to be quite handy when battles take forever.

    Speaking of fight length, a very real problem is arising with my two Archers. They are definitely performing very well, with well over 50% of party kills among the two of them, but... they are running out of arrows! I knew this might be a concern in NMM, but it is a much more pressing matter with TWO Archers. I am almost out of Arrows+2 and running low on +1, and that is with buying everything there is to buy. Luckily I now have Tansheron's Bow+3 for one of them, but I may have to go to WK lvl1 much earlier than expected to get the Quiver of Plenty for the other one. Annoys me to no end that there is only one such quiver in the game by the way...

    I am quite happy with how things are going in general. NMM is definitely something that was sorely needed. I am actually paying attention now, micromanaging things, etc. instead of just right-click attack and /afk until everything is dead. It's also interesting to manage buffs/debuffs with the long fight durations, those packs of trolls in De'Arnise Keep for example can take several minutes to defeat at lower levels making use and timing of your spells a very real concern.

    I haven't really had a big mage battle yet, though. The closest was Ihtafeer and friends, which involved a lot of running away and dispelling illusions, as well a large chunk of buff potions and scrolls... may come back to bite me at endgame, who knows! I gave the Daystar Lich a try or two, but got my butt whupped quite quickly; this may be tricky with two low-level mages and a low-level cleric. I don't think you can chunk Liches with Mace of Disruption in my setup, and their high HP means you can't just bomb them with Delayed Blast Fireballs etc. either. I probably need a few more levels to compete, it will definitely be a challenge.

    Next on the agenda is Firkraag, though. I'm not even close yet to UAI of course, but I expect to hit it during the Underdark part, if XP keeps going this way. Might depend on how deeply I venture into WK before I go to Spellhold, I probably won't do too much of it in this setup. XP is certainly plentiful, but it's not as out of hand as it is in IWD. I suspect it's because BG2 had a lot of XP from quests to begin with and that doesn't increase in NMM (at least not that I notice, am I wrong?). It might jump with enemies that give a lot of XP, like Beholders etc., and maybe jump me to those 3m sooner than anticipated. I'll see!
    FinneousPJCurmudgeonDexterJuliusBorisov
  • ChidojuanChidojuan Member Posts: 211
    edited August 2015
    General question on this, do you just enable it in the Baldur.ini file?
    Post edited by Chidojuan on
  • ChidojuanChidojuan Member Posts: 211
    Many thanks @FinneousPJ
    FinneousPJJuliusBorisov
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    @Chidojuan Please do report back with your experiences.
    JuliusBorisov
  • ChidojuanChidojuan Member Posts: 211
    So does saving disable Nightmare Mode? It seems that all of the characters revert back to their normal starting levels after saving, haven't tested the monsters yet. My game is heavily modded though, so that might be what is causing the issue. Anyone have any experience with this?
  • BiffTheUnderstudyBiffTheUnderstudy Member Posts: 7
    edited February 2016
    Just started to play the Nightmare Mode, with Ascension and SCS of course. I didn't install anything stupid (bye tactic trolls - I don't like them, it really doesn't feel organic to have such absurdly powerful foes randomly at that stage -, and I didn't put level based encounter at the absolute maximum either - no lich in Ulmar, I regret a bit). I want to taste the NM without getting into really stupid fight just yet; I'll do that next run through I guess.

    Few thoughts about the whole experience.

    - As mentioned earlier in this thread, XP is VERY high. That creates a different curve of difficulty than in the Vanilla, because my party levels up much earlier. The more we advance in the game, the more my partie's level compensates for the tougher foes.

    On top of that, I am playing, of course, with a 6 member party against a group of 4 usually, and it makes a HUGE difference.

    I expect the end of ToB to be really much harder again. As soon as my "normal" party would usually get HLA's and the leveling becomes a bit less dramatic (maybe 3,5 M xp), the NM real difficulty will kick again. So my first observation is that the NM makes the game harder at its beginning and probably at its end. In between, I think the fast leveling and absurd summons almost compensates.

    - Skeletons warriors are broken. I basically summon five of them in most areas and let them walk in front. They just won't die. And when they do, well... I resummon while throwing daggers, bolts, arrows and everything I can at whoever tries to take them down.

    Thing is that since your summons are just as unkillable as your enemies, the (range) damage output is what decides most fight.

    - Any fight that you don't have the possibility to prepare is a nightmare (well, that was the point I guess). I kept getting roflstomped again and again by orcs and bandits random encounter until I could basically throw 4 chaos at once at the very start of the fight. Without summons, you will die very, very, very fast.

    - I need to sleep a LOT. Just the summoning is exhausting I guess. My characters need to recharge their spells much much more often than usually because without there are no medium to hard fight that you can do without at least a couple of summons. You need them all the time.

    - On the party composition, I have a few remarks:

    a. Lord Tasheron mentioned that Inquisitor is not that good anymore because of the high level of your foes. I don't really agree for two reasons. First, you cast "only" 6 levels lower than you would in the normal game, because enemies are in average 12 level higher and you double your level with DM. And more importantly, you also will be at a higher level at almost any point of the game. So say that you are 2 level higher than you would be in a non NM game, that means you "only" lose 4 levels. Still efficient considering how broken Inquisitor DM is.

    b. Multi class shines. That is going to be controversial, but I opted for multi rather than dual. Thing is that there is so much XP that you really level up fast enough. I think the extra spell of the illusionists and the better fighter capabilities makes multi class perfectly viable.

    Now I really don't understand the concept of Conjurer -> Fighter. You will get your fighter HLA at the same time, and you deprive yourself of Time stop and such, for what? A slightly better THACO? Few more Hit points? I think a Fighter Illusionist stomps a Conjurer Fighter any day of the week.

    On top of that, as usual, I find the whole leveling process of dual really annoying and especially considering all your enemies are now REALLY strong and you don't want a character sitting behind reading books about how to cast fireballs while your party is fighting Torgal.

    c. Range is basically a matter of survival early game, but as soon as you have really good equipment and a reasonable level, you actually can start alternating with dual wielding again. I keep both options open, but I find more often than not that three of my characters are much more efficient in melee.

    d. I usually take a sorcerer (I know, I shouldn't), because they basically win half the fights by themselves as soon as they reach HLAs, and I kind of like abusing ADHW to death. But in NM, even ADHW is not really powerful enough to be worth a whole slot in your team. Also, I usually use my sorcerer to display magic with Kelben, Pierce Magic and such, getting into complex buff and display battles, but that's a bit irrelevant if you count on physical damages anyway to roast your foes.


    So here is my party:

    Felix Jaeger, semi elf, Skald.

    My song bot. I think on the long run, Blade would have been better (well, they simply are by a long margin as soon as you get the enhanced song), but I did the whole of BG1 with this team and I wanted to hear some music. I am planning on using Vailhor and go full Polyphonic Cheddar if things get too hairy later. Also, Felix is a REALLY strong secondary mage. So not only songs do an insane amount of indirect damage and enhance your team enormously, but he can occasionally cast some dual webs, breach, and so on. Amazing character. Probably really dumb to take him as PC, but I like the theatre. See, I am an artist myself.

    Gotrek Gurnisson, gnome (oh well, let's pretend he is a dwarf shall we...), Fighter/Illusionist.

    Weapons are throwing dagger, with a very high damage output or Pixie Prick/Belm. Eventually, I will give him a better weapon (I have some Axe of the Unyelding plans for my slayer), but I wanted him to be both efficient at ranged and dual melee. And god, he really is a beast.

    Ulrika Van Karstein, elfe, F/M/T

    A no brainer. I regret only not to have chosen a gnome. She dual wields Celestial Fury and Kundane for now. I didn't give her any range weapons, but she has the boots of speed and I use her as "light cavalry". She scouts, flanks, retreats a lot, backstab and when necessary MMM. She wears Vecna and rebuff instantly/ I think she will really, really shine later in the game.

    Kira, Inquisitor

    I am on my way to slay Firkraag, but until now she has been using Firetooth (the Xbow) almost exclusively which is basically the first weapon I bought. God that is useful in De Arnise hold. She has been one of my best character early on, now she is a bit less efficient because other characters have simply more APR, and I don't expect her to really make a difference other than her displays before the HLAs and GWW.

    Magdalena, elfe, archer

    Not much to say; she is using Tuigan and destroying everything. When I don't like someone, I Vailhor her, get a speed potion and drain their strength to 0 in one round. /fight. That's called the Roquefort Attack.

    Eltarion, half elfe, Ranger Cleric

    As stupidly good as ever, he is waving the Flail of Ages and DoE. With Armor of Faith and Iron Skins plus an AC at -12 when Felix is around, he just can hold forever, which is exactly what you want.


    One of the problem of those teams without sorcerers in my opinion is that you are constantly short of Arcane 6 spells. PaMW and Improved Hast are just needed all the time. How do you guys deal with that problem? I am NOT using IE and SE because it took me long enough to figure the damn game and I would rather avoid starting from scratch every runthrough. Maybe the revised IH makes those level 6 spells a bit irrelevant anyway?

    Anyway. It's not very original, but I have to say it's performing amazingly until now. Suggestions or remarks welcome...


    - Few remarks on the game itself until now. Torgal is REALLY hard. Maybe I did it too soon. I had to throw 6 webs and nuke everything from orbit. The Shade Lords blows as usual; he died really really fast and couldn't do much to my buffed RC. The shade dragons died basically instantly to a few skeletons and two speed archers (the Vailhor of Gruyère again). The beholder are ABSURDLY strong. Gauth accept to die eventually but Observers are just stupid. I threw so many death clouds from outside their range that the area is gonna smell for the next decades. I recommend doing the bard stronghold early, it's not that hard of you avoid the cells, that are totally deadly due to no time to summon.

    Multiple mages and cleric battles are very hard because SCS seems to have made it harder to interrupt spells and because your average mageling now has 100+ HP. I am waiting to see what happens in the Asylum fight and such when multiple strong mages are involved at once. It's going to be interesting.


    (A little trick of mine I never posted: if anyone is ever playing with a 4 or 5 person party again, a good advice if you are without a thief. Get Nalia (later Imoen), kill her. And keep her dead. When a thief is really needed, resurrect and kill her again once she has done her job. She will not take away any XP from the party and she will actually level up from the quests rewards. That's not very nice, that's pure camembert, but that does the trick.)
    Post edited by BiffTheUnderstudy on
    semiticgoddessJuliusBorisov
  • Lord_TansheronLord_Tansheron Member Posts: 4,211

    - Skeletons warriors are broken. I basically summon five of them in most areas and let them walk in front. They just won't die.

    I believe this is due to the still as of yet incomplete implementation of NM into BG2, resulting in summons that benefit from the NM HP increase of enemies. This is an oversight that is hopefully corrected soon, in the meantime I personally just don't use summons because they trivialize a lot of fights.

    - Any fight that you don't have the possibility to prepare is a nightmare (well, that was the point I guess). I kept getting roflstomped again and again by orcs and bandits random encounter until I could basically throw 4 chaos at once at the very start of the fight. Without summons, you will die very, very, very fast.

    Those random encounters at the beginning of the early game have always been some of the toughest battles for me, even without NM. As if being ambushed wasn't enough, some of these fights have so many enemies you can't even escape unless you get lucky and they don't box you in within 2 seconds. Considering your lower gear and spell levels, those fights can be more of a challenge than mid/end-game fights where you already have everything at your disposal.

    a. Lord Tasheron mentioned that Inquisitor is not that good anymore because of the high level of your foes. I don't really agree for two reasons.

    Yes, I do have to agree somewhat on this, and revise my earlier position. I've had some more time to test (not extensively, but a solid extra few hours) and Inquisitors are still pretty useful. They are in fact more in line with what they should be, i.e. a dispel that works a fair amount of the time, but isn't just an auto-win at the press of a button.

    b. Multi class shines. That is going to be controversial, but I opted for multi rather than dual. Thing is that there is so much XP that you really level up fast enough. I think the extra spell of the illusionists and the better fighter capabilities makes multi class perfectly viable.

    That's a very interesting point to investigate further. While more XP does benefit multis a lot, the extra HP on enemies also makes damage more important, i.e. the impact of Grand Mastery is higher. Which way the trade-offs ultimately go is up for debate. Personally I've moved away from duals pretty much entirely, though mainly for reasons to do with the Spell Revisions mod and what it does to IH.

    Now I really don't understand the concept of Conjurer -> Fighter. You will get your fighter HLA at the same time, and you deprive yourself of Time stop and such, for what? A slightly better THACO? Few more Hit points? I think a Fighter Illusionist stomps a Conjurer Fighter any day of the week.

    The idea was to get some of the useful mid-level things and focus the rest into fighter, with the reasoning that you don't really cast many high-level spells anyway but rather a lot of the mid-level buffs/debuffs. However, I have since come to largely agree that multiclass is superior (see above).

    On top of that, as usual, I find the whole leveling process of dual really annoying and especially considering all your enemies are now REALLY strong and you don't want a character sitting behind reading books about how to cast fireballs while your party is fighting Torgal.

    Actually, for those duals I did test, I found NM a lot easier for dualing. You go to e.g. the Windspear hills and plow through packs of Goblins and Orcs, which thanks to the static +1000xp actually give something now. Regain levels in no time at all.

    - Few remarks on the game itself until now. Torgal is REALLY hard.

    As I've mentioned in other places, TorGal is usually one of the hardest fights for me as well, largely because I go there very early. I think it has my highest reload % by far, above even Ascension etc. There's just so much to deal with, with so few tools!


    For reference, the party I'm currently testing is:

    Blackguard
    Inquisitor
    F/M/T
    F/M/C
    Archer
    Archer

    Looking to be the strongest setup I've tested so far, but since my time is limited and I can't play at work the way I can post on the forums, it'll be a while sadly until I have more solid data...
    semiticgoddessJuliusBorisov
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