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

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  • Serg_BlackStriderSerg_BlackStrider Member Posts: 210
    bengoshi said:
     You know, there was an unofficial rule (even before the update) that images attached to the posts in this thread shouldn't be bmp because they're very large and it's hard to load pages in this thread full of bmp images.
    Agree wholeheartedly. On Bioware forums we mostly tend to follow the same rule as it could be really nerve-racking to watch the loading of pages full of (especially un-spoilered) bmp images... 
    BillyYankJuliusBorisovYgramul
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    edited March 2016
    @BillyYank , Thanks for pointing me to the Irfanview utility. That will make it a little easier, although still not as convenient as before.

    @bengoshi , for some reason, when I try to use Snapper with my IWD:EE, it just makes blank white screens instead of a screen shot. At least it worked with MM6. Also, I didn't know about the difference in loading times for a bmp vs. a jpg, so thanks for educating me about that.

    EDIT: @semiticgod , I've had a lot of trouble with Fireball radius in IWD, too. It seems it's a good bit bigger than in BG2, and it calculates the event horizon of the damage effect differently.
    JuliusBorisovsemiticgoddessYgramullolien
  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,714

    @bengoshi , for some reason, when I try to use Snapper with my IWD:EE, it just makes blank white screens instead of a screen shot. At least it worked with MM6.
    I think it is not connected to IWDEE. It works fine for me no matter what I do: watch movies, browse Internet, play any game.

    The Snapper only saves screenshots into a certain folder in the JPEG format, it doesn't change the view, it only makes a photo of what you see on you desktop. I would check the settings - check so that you have Entire desktop enabled, and a certain folder chosen as a saving place. 
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    edited March 2016
    @bengoshi , nope. It just takes a picture of a big white square and saves it to the folder. The settings are fine. It's one of those mysterious computer incompatibility issues. The problem could be in my graphics card driver, my security software, Windows 8 settings, or almost anywhere. I don't want to spend time troubleshooting it further. I'll just use the Irfanview and do batch conversions. Thanks for trying to help, though.

    Here's a screenshot. The first three are what it's doing with IWD. The fourth is a successful screenshot I just took from MM6. So why is it working with one game and not the other?
    [spoiler]

    [/spoiler]
    JuliusBorisovsemiticgoddesslolien
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    Update on the BG canon party in IWD:

    We have completed the Vale of Shadows.

    Here, I *finally* Silence the second skellie mage after *three* casts. Trying this sort of thing legitimately (i.e. without using metaknowledge) is very dependent on having a character who can stealth and scout ahead, to determine the visual perimeter and exact location of enemies. So far, Imoen has managed it. Minsc could do it better, but I need him to stay in plate mail.
    [spoiler][/spoiler]

    Disaster! Jaheira gets killed by skeleton knights and archers before I realize she's in trouble. Retreat! As we fight while falling back, Minsc is almost killed. Dynaheir saves him by killing the spectral knight that was about to kill her Warder with Magic Missiles. She basically had to unload her whole first level spell book on it, but she did it.
    [spoiler][/spoiler]

    Back to Kuldahar to raise Jaheira. We return after days of recovery and travel to attack Kresselack's remaining army again. We basically lather, rinse and repeat the same strategy we used with the last skeleton mage. Imoen stealths and spies out his exact position. I stand behind her mark and cast Silence. Again, it takes three casts before he fails his save. Once he does, the rest is relatively easy.
    [spoiler][/spoiler]

    Now for Lysan. Dynaheir casts two Webs to hamper both Lysan and her Yeti army, finally beginning to earn her keep. I read a Chant scroll, which turns out to be a mistake. I had wanted to cast Hold Person and Silence at the beginning of this fight, and I forgot that Chant disables further spellcasting. Also, I figure out the hard way that Lysan is immune to normal weapons when I start getting "weapon ineffective" messages on all our attacks. So, we concentrate on the Yeti while Lysan keeps getting held in the Webs. At last, my Chant wears off, and I can cast Hold Person at Lysan. It works! The battle is effectively over.
    [spoiler][/spoiler]

    I had to stop using Shillelagh with Jaheira because of a game-breaking bug with the spell, where the "magical weapon in use" flag becomes permanent. I managed to repair the game by casting Doom on her and paying the temple to cast Dispel Magic. But, it means we can't use the spell any more, as we will soon be far away from easy access to the temple. That's a shame, because Shillelagh would have been very helpful against all the mummies and spectral undead in Kresselack's chambers. I managed to sell a bunch of potions and magic weapons to make enough money to buy the Spider Crusher club for Jaheira, though, so that will mitigate the loss of the spell.

    Next up: The Temple of the Forgotten God
    PteranJuliusBorisovYgramulSerg_BlackStrider
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    On to Dorn's Deep. I usually deal with the Ettins using Chromatic Orb, but since I've been getting terribly impatient with the pace of this run, I have been spamming Fireballs with Improved Alacrity on every low-intensity fight to speed things up. It takes ages to kill stuff in Heart of Fury, and our strategy is kind of monotonous. All I have to do to win almost every fight is throw out Fireballs every round for 6 rounds... which isn't particularly interesting when you do it enough times.

    Anyway, Dorn's Deep has some very high-intensity fights that I often struggle with. The Drow Vanguards, Drow Spellswords, and Drow Sorcerers are all nightmares. At 66 magic resistance, they're very hard to hurt with my normal magic-heavy parties, and they are inexplicably immune to the Siren's Yearning, as well as Greater Command. Worse yet, the Drow Sorcerers spam Magic Missiles, which can be devastating at high difficulties like Heart of Fury mode. The Drow Vanguards, with their Bolts of Biting, pose the same problem. And the Drow Spellswords come buffed with Stoneskin--they're that much harder to kill.

    But Entropy Shield blocks Magic Missiles as well as bolts. Although Insect Plague doesn't have much impact on the first fight, Valos tanks the enemies admirably, and Web and Death Fog are very effective once Espellier has cast Lower Resistance on the drow. When the battle drags on and the Drow Sorcerers won't go down, Fobie tosses a Special Snare from the hallway and holds them.

    In the next fight, I pay too little attention to our own sorcerers' defenses and both Poppy and Espellier get killed. I consider running away and resting, but decide to go ahead and try to finish off the remaining enemies. Between Webs and Special Snares, we weakened the surviving drow enough to polish them off.

    Krilag, as always, is a cinch. Big melee enemies like him are easy to knock out with Chromatic Orb. Fobie also lands a 122-damage backstab on him, not that it was really necessary.

    Snowy Tae has hit level 14 and can now cast Symbol of Hopelessness, one of the best disablers in the game. Unfortunately, now we have to fight Terikan the lich and his Greater Mummy buddies, who are immune to Symbol of Hopelessness... and can cast it themselves.

    I never knew how to handle hostile Symbols of Hopelessness, since I had heard that in IWD2, only Exaltation could cure it. That doesn't hold for IWD. Symbol of Hopelessness in IWD uses the sun opcode, so a Free Action spell can easily block it.

    Unfortunately, Poppy still gets disabled by a Symbol of Hopelessness spell in the fight with Terikan, as Terikan apparently can cast magic attacks, including Breach. She loses all of her defenses. We struggle to bring down Terikan and interrupt the Greater Mummies' spellcasting (they also cast Symbol of Pain, against which we have no defenses besides our saves) at the same time. Eventually, we paralyze one of the mummies with Hold Undead and trap the other one with a level 16 Special Snare from Fobie. We gradually wear down Terikan and quickly loot the nearby coffins before Terikan can come back. Terikan, unlike all other liches in the IE games, actually comes back until you destroy his phylactery, and it only takes him a few rounds.

    He also reappears in the next chamber and starts summoning undead again. Plus, the rooms nearby are often occupied by more Greater Mummies, and I always forget which room has his phylactery and which room can destroy the phylactery. This is a long fight that really taxes your resources, but thankfully Terikan didn't put much pressure on us, and so Valos and Snowy Tae had time to run around with the Boots of Speed while under the effects of Improved Invisibility and Sanctuary and search every room to find the phylactery.

    As usual, we had trouble with the Bronze Sentries that appear after Terikan has fallen. They're immune to fire, so our Fireballs are useless. We had to rely on Web and Death Fog instead, and the Bronze Sentries wouldn't stay in the Webs.

    Shortly after we start working on the Snow Trolls and Ice Trolls in the next area, Poppy and Espellier hit level 14. Our sorcerers can now pick level 7 spells. I've been waiting for this for a long time.
    PteranSerg_BlackStriderJuliusBorisovYgramul
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    @BelgarathMTH: I was in the same boat. My party was broke for much of the early game as well. Dragon's Eye in particular cost me a lot in resurrections.

    Make sure you cast Find Traps, since Dragon's Eye has the worst traps in the game, and you no longer have a thief to disarm them for you. You'll have to maneuver around them.

    And don't forget to memorize Chromatic Orb before you open the last door.
    BelgarathMTHdok0zhivagoJuliusBorisov
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    @semiticgod , I've never been much of a believer in Chromatic Orb, since in IWD, if the save is made, it does nothing. However, I had forgotten about Dynaheir's minus 2 to saves bonus, from being an invoker, so there's a shot in hell it might actually work, especially if Jaheira and I cast Doom first. Do you know if Doom stacks?

    I'm pretty sure we're not going to have access to Greater Malison by then.

    My canon BG-in-IWD party is "living in interesting times", indeed.

    However, this experience is really making me respect @Ygramul 's "Way it's Meant to Be Played" philosophy in his old IWD thread. If you want a challenging but manageable experience without mods, just avoid the + and - buttons on character creation, and take what comes, just like in pencil and paper. I'm actually thinking now about trying to roll for BG:EE 2.0 and SoD without using + and - to min-max.
    semiticgoddessYgramul
  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,714
    Thanks to fixes from @subtledoctor I've managed to install the SCS (v.30) on my current BG2EE beta. So this problem seems to be solved now.

    Which means, among everything, that as soon as the Monty Python crew finishes BGEE and survives in SoD, it will continue in BG2EE with the new version of the game and SCS.
    BelgarathMTH
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    edited March 2016
    Update on canon BG party in IWD:

    Dynaheir and Imoen use Web and Fireball to clean the house of cold wights. I stay mostly in Turn Undead mode, and I can Turn a lot of them, and chunk some of them. Having pure class clerics and mages in the party is very helpful here.
    plryfvagjiaj.jpg
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    Jaheira uses Find Traps to, well, find the traps. Then she bravely tanks them. The traps in the western half of the dungeon all Cause Disease. I have her use our last two Mummy's Tea's against the first two of these she tanks. On the third one, I figure I'll have her trip it and then wait out the disease. Whoops. I find out the hard way that this disease is permanent and fatal, and cannot be cured without Mummy's Tea or a Remove Disease spell. I have no choice but to trek back to Kuldahar to get Jaheira raised. There is no money to pay Mother Egenia. In Kuldahar, we sell a lot of potions to get the money to raise Jaheira. I will keep at least one Cure Disease spell memorized from now on. Diseases in IWD are a LOT more serious than in BG.

    We go back, and I use my Cure Disease spells to help Jaheira tank the last two Disease traps. Now we move to the western part of the dungeon. All the traps here are Skull Traps. Jaheira finds and tanks a couple of them, before we pull all the poison zombies and wights. The three wights with Magic Missiles throw their whole arsenal at Imoen. She survives. We retreat back over the bridge to a more defensible position. From there, it's not too hard to finish this mob. My Turn Undead is chunking a lot of them.

    Now for Presio. I have decided to allow Jaheira to use Beetles, because this game is freaking hard enough without restricting what spells I can use. So, she summons and sends in the Beetles to start harassing Presio and her remaining army.

    My strategy is to try to Silence her. First try doesn't work. Second try, from a scroll, does the trick.
    a8gxtsofnybe.jpg
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    Umm, no, too risky. Or is it? We come back later, armed with Dynaheir and Knocks. We eventually get the treasure here. Imoen will wear Presio's robe, which should come in handy when she finally gets her thief levels back.
    ktx1xhfsjz5g.jpg

    Against the false Eldathians we go. Not much to worry about here. Our usual tactics work well.
    xa9tw1x0xgcc.jpg
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    Jaheira tanks a trap and gets locked in. Luckily she has a corner next to the locked door where she can escape from the Cloud.
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    Jaheira dies to a Static Charge. Luckily she didn't get chunked. Back to Kuldahar we go.
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    Damn it! Hold Person did it this time. That's TWO more Raise Dead. Sigh.
    ukt9xzb45n80.jpg

    Okay we're back. The traps here are permanent without a thief, so we have to keep maneuvering around them. What a pain in the behind! I will never again voluntarily dual class Imoen. She will stay a thief in BG1, and make whatever level she makes. Hopefully SoD will let her preserve her thief levels when they do whatever they're going to do to her in SoD. (Don't spoil me if you already know.)
    159bhm2rhoct.jpg

    The battle we've all been dreading. The strategy is to summon Beetles, and three Invisible Stalkers via High Summoner's Staff. Avoid the traps. Cast Haste. The door locks behind us after Jaheira triggers the fight. (That didn't happen in my last run - not sure why - I had some Tweaks, while this run is unmodded?)

    Dynaheir's Haste gets messed up in the chaos. Only she and Imoen are Hasted, the two who need it the least. Jaheira and I both cast Doom, hoping at least one lands. Dynaheir then starts casting Chromatic Orbs at Yxunomei. Khalid is firing +2 arrows. The summons do a pretty good job of keeping the yuan-ti mages at bay. Webs and Fireballs are cast. Finally, Yxunomei succumbs to a Chromatic Orb from Dynaheir. Yay! (Thanks so much for the advice on Chromatic Orbs, @semiticgod .) CO's don't have a +6 to enemy save penalty like in BG, and Dynaheir gets her Invoker bonus. This spell is now paralyzing enemies almost every time Dynaheir casts it.
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    One more ROYGBIV party rainbow portrait, because I like rainbows.
    jtrndoergqfy.jpg

    Next up: On to the Severed Hand
    Post edited by BelgarathMTH on
    semiticgoddessGoturalSerg_BlackStriderJuliusBorisov
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    We encounter the Voice of Durdel Anatha. I don't know this quest, so I look it up and apparently we need to talk to Nym to keep Durdel Anatha from attacking us over and over again. To bring him down for the first time, Espellier lowers his resistance and we blast him with the scorcher loop. Turns out he's vulnerable to fire, despite using the same animation as the Bronze Sentries and Tarnished Sentries nearby, which are completely immune to fire.

    The scorcher loop won't work against the Salamanders and Tarnished Sentries in this area, so I hit them with Web, Symbol of Hopelessness, and Death Fog instead. Standard tactics bring down the Myconids, Minotaurs, and Umber Hulks in the next area.

    Our sorcerers hit level 16 and get their level 8 spell picks. Apparently there's a bug in which you can lose access to your spell picks by exiting the level up screen early. I correct it with EEKeeper, and also replace the bugged Emotion spell with Polymorph Other. Testing found that IWD:EE's Power Word Blind does not affect party members, so we have to use Doom and then Blindness on Fobie (his base save vs. spell is now 0) to let him set traps in battle.

    Buffed to the max, Valos has about -18 AC and can therefore tank the Iron Golems very effectively. Snowy Tae spends one of her precious Boon of Lathander spells to help bring down the Iron Golems faster, while the Umber Hulks behind them die in the Iron Golems' Cloudkill spells. Fobie tacks on a bit of damage with his regular traps, which currently do fire damage.

    Malavon's clone awaits us in the next room. He arrives unbuffed, so we kill him with the scorcher loop.

    Then the real Malavon appears, heavily buffed. My approach is very disorganized and I expose my party to Malavon's Invisible Stalkers, but I don't get punished for it. I send in Valos alone with a Moonblade.

    Moonblade causes 100% spell failure on hit for one round. It's a horribly broken spell that's only balanced by a druid's low APR. But it doesn't work on Malavon--his Minor Globe of Invulnerability blocks the effect outright. Interestingly enough, Malavon's Breach spell also fails to work on Valos. Malavon gets the spell off the ground without disruption, but it just doesn't remove any of Valos' defenses.

    After clearing up the Invisible Stalkers, I bring in the rest of the party to deal with Malavon. I remove Malavon's MGOI with a Secret Word from our bard, Marilyn Blueapple, then hit the drow with a triple Lower Resistance Spell Trigger from Espellier. Finally, while Malavon is a short distance away, Valos casts Nature's Beauty. Malavon is permanently blinded.

    We're having trouble with a couple of Malavon's Earth Elementals, so Fobie uses a Maze trap to remove them. A Phase Spider remains, which we decide to ignore for the time being (Chromatic Orb unfortunately does not work on IWD:EE spiders).

    Without his MGOI, Malavon is vulnerable to Moonblade. Valos repeatedly disrupts his spellcasting. But we get in trouble. I accidentally leave the game unpaused while distracted and Poppy loses a lot of HP to Phase Spider poison, but an Elixir of Health and some running keeps her safe.

    Espellier, however, is not so lucky. Valos fails to hit Malavon, allowing him to get a Cone of Cold off the ground, slaying Espellier. I finally remember to use Power Word: Silence from Marilyn Blueapple, Malavon loses his Stoneskins, and eventually falls to a backstab from Fobie.

    We kill Fleezum and Flozum with the scorcher loop just to keep things simple. We find the Morningstar +4: Defender as a random drop. It goes to Snowy Tae.

    Valos drinks a couple of Potions of Genius to make sure he can ask Marketh for his equipment (character with certain stats can take his items, but don't ask him to hand over his ring). Then thieves and Kraken Society Mages descend upon us. Things go well for a moment. The scorcher loop is very effective against the thieves, as Evasion doesn't work against it, but then Espellier gets hit by Breach, which apparently bypasses Spell Turning. She becomes vulnerable to fire while the scorcher loop is still active, and our own weapon takes her down to 3 HP. She only survives thanks to a Potion of Invisibility.

    Seven Eyes keeps the Kraken Society Mages alive and well against Symbol of Hopelessness and Fobie's normal snares. We struggle to bring back the scorcher loop, only to see Poppy Breached. We keep making progress despite being hit by Mordenkainen's Force Missiles, Cone of Cold, and Horrid Wilting from the enemy mages.

    But then Poppy gets chunked by another Cone of Cold spell, despite being at full health. Per the rules of my run, I reload to prevent the chunking.

    The next time around, we rely heavily on Web and Death Fog. We still get very badly hurt by Cone of Cold, but with multiple Webs on the map, the enemy just can't cast that many spells. It ends with a single mage who escapes our Webs and Death Fog spells, only to fail a save against Chromatic Orb. We free Ginafae and gain even more levels. Dorn's Deep appears to be much more dense with XP than previous dungeons. We've been gaining levels a lot faster than in the past.

    Finally I go to talk to Nym. But I accidentally choose the wrong dialogue option and turn him hostile, and when I lower his magic resistance and try to charm him in the hopes that I can use him to continue the Durdel Anatha questline or barter some stuff, I find that Nym is immune. I assume he had a unique immunity, but the reality was simply that he, as an elf, was 90% immune to charm spells. I would have had a decent chance of charming him had I continued, but I'm not sure if that would have made much difference anyway.

    We can no longer complete the Durdel Anatha questline, nor can we buy any of Nym's goods. And I never decided this was a cause for reloading, so we're stuck with the loss. We paralyze him with Chromatic Orb and kill him.

    I might not go into Heart of Winter. I've grown tired of this party and want to get this run over with, and HoW would just slow us down.
    BelgarathMTHGoturalJuliusBorisov
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    Endgame.

    The fight with the Idol isn't too special, save for one detail: the Voice of Durdel Anatha reappears, but this time, we're able to reason with it. Apparently you don't need to keep Nym alive to complete the quest. Merely speaking to him lets you tell the Voice of Durdel Anatha the information necessary to put him to rest. So killing Nym didn't prevent me from completing that quest (though it could have, if I killed Nym before talking to him). A scorcher loop fails to destroy the Idol and Valos makes a save against Flesh to Stone (I forgot the Idol even cast that spell), but it goes down with a few Death Fog spells, taking the Zombie Lord and Greater Mummies along with it.

    I neglect to look up how to complete the Durdel Anatha quest. You're supposed to take his remains somewhere, but I never did. I just fight Poquelin instead. I could kill Poquelin with a scorcher loop had I lowered his fire resistance using Protection from Fire, but after suffering a bit of damage from melee attacks, he teleported us to Easthaven.

    Pomab's fight was buggy. Typical. All that's left is Belhifet.
    GoturalJuliusBorisovdok0zhivagoBelgarathMTH
  • lunarlunar Member Posts: 3,460
    Very exciting, @semiticgod I always thought the final fight of iwd was very lack-luster, but ofcourse I never played on hof. It seems fun, in hof mode. Most impressive.
    JuliusBorisovsemiticgoddessBelgarathMTH
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