*** How do people prepare for the SCS-enhanced Sarevok fight? ***
Here's how I do it (spoiler hidden in case others haven't done it or want to experiment)
You need: * potions of invisibility * potions of haste * some kind of defense against magic. immunities to fire/ice/poison etc; shield amulet charges; negative saves -- or a protection from magic scroll * antidote potions if you don't have protection from poison up * a way to dispel haste. Dispel arrow, dispel magic (probably need more than one here), slow spell could all work. * a way to cause damage from a distance. Arrows, darts, bullets, wands, etc. * boots of speed make it more convenient * healing potions help 'cause Diarmid usually hits a lot
I use my companions to buff but don't overdo it because as you noted, enemy spell casters open with remove magic (unless you have your PfM scroll up, and then they hide unless there are other targets available).
Early on, dispel Sarevok's haste.
I find this battle easier to solo, so I make my companions invisible with potions or spells and tell them to go hide. You can use them to draw problematic people out of the way and park them in corners this way too. Fortunately the mages don't have true sight or invisibility purge, as a typical rule. But extra potions of invisibility can be helpful if needed to duck out of the action. One character then does most of the work, using movement speed advantage through boots of speed and/or oil of speed, and causing damage from a distance.
Summons can be temporarily helpful to get the enemies to stay in one place if you can get them to target the summons. But mostly they don't last long enough to matter.
I usually kill Diarmid first because his arrows of biting are dangerous. The spell casters can be dangerous, but not if you have a PfM scroll up. Tazok and Sarevok can't hit you from a distance. Nor can the skellys that show up after you kill one of the lackeys. (If @DavidW made those into skelly archers with biting arrows... ouch).
Sometimes you need to have one of your helpers break invisibility to draw out an invisible mage. Wait until Diarmid and Tazok are gone before doing this. True sight or invisibility purge also work. Or you can let your PfM scroll expire (although that's a bit more dangerous if you're not prepared for spell defense afterward).
It takes a long time and lots of running, but you can wear them all down with poison arrows or wand charges or whatnot. Not glamorous. But effective.
I'm sure there are other ways. Grond0 and other veterans probably have developed more. But this one is consistent and doable with many classes.
Sorry to hear that your run ended in the temple! I'm sure you'll crush it next time...
*** How do people prepare for the SCS-enhanced Sarevok fight? ***
Here's how I do it (spoiler hidden in case others haven't done it or want to experiment)
You need: * potions of invisibility * potions of haste * some kind of defense against magic. immunities to fire/ice/poison etc; shield amulet charges; negative saves -- or a protection from magic scroll * antidote potions if you don't have protection from poison up * a way to dispel haste. Dispel arrow, dispel magic (probably need more than one here), slow spell could all work. * a way to cause damage from a distance. Arrows, darts, bullets, wands, etc. * boots of speed make it more convenient * healing potions help 'cause Diarmid usually hits a lot
I use my companions to buff but don't overdo it because as you noted, enemy spell casters open with remove magic (unless you have your PfM scroll up, and then they hide unless there are other targets available).
Early on, dispel Sarevok's haste.
I find this battle easier to solo, so I make my companions invisible with potions or spells and tell them to go hide. You can use them to draw problematic people out of the way and park them in corners this way too. Fortunately the mages don't have true sight or invisibility purge, as a typical rule. But extra potions of invisibility can be helpful if needed to duck out of the action. One character then does most of the work, using movement speed advantage through boots of speed and/or oil of speed, and causing damage from a distance.
Summons can be temporarily helpful to get the enemies to stay in one place if you can get them to target the summons. But mostly they don't last long enough to matter.
I usually kill Diarmid first because his arrows of biting are dangerous. The spell casters can be dangerous, but not if you have a PfM scroll up. Tazok and Sarevok can't hit you from a distance. Nor can the skellys that show up after you kill one of the lackeys. (If @DavidW made those into skelly archers with biting arrows... ouch).
Sometimes you need to have one of your helpers break invisibility to draw out an invisible mage. Wait until Diarmid and Tazok are gone before doing this. True sight or invisibility purge also work. Or you can let your PfM scroll expire (although that's a bit more dangerous if you're not prepared for spell defense afterward).
It takes a long time and lots of running, but you can wear them all down with poison arrows or wand charges or whatnot. Not glamorous. But effective.
I'm sure there are other ways. Grond0 and other veterans probably have developed more. But this one is consistent and doable with many classes.
Sorry to hear that your run ended in the temple! I'm sure you'll crush it next time...
Wow. This is really detailed and insightful, @Blind_Visionary Thank you.
I have, in the past, finished this fight many a time. (My success rate is about 70-80%.) -- BUT I usually only play casters or caster hybrids.
I was taken by surprise, when my supposedly invulnerable Cavalier's buffs and protections (through about 8 potions/scrolls) were removed with a single Remove Magic, which was followed up by some nasty spells. (To my credit, I gulped down a 5-rounds-of-no-spells-affect-you potion immediately. But was beaten down a bit, ran around, and then promptly zapped to very low health.)
@Ygramul: SCS casters basically always have a divination attack of some sort, but they only have so many of them--usually one or two, I think. Memorize enough invisibility spells or carry enough invisibility potions, and they'll run out.
*** How do people prepare for the SCS-enhanced Sarevok fight? ***
Grond0 and other veterans probably have developed more. But this one is consistent and doable with many classes.
Sometimes I play fair with this fight, but if you want to make things as easy as possible then
send one character up towards Sarevok to activate his speech. Continue on into the corner and use an invisibility potion - that will park not only Sarevok, but all the others except Angelo as well. Draw Angelo out from invisibility (being careful not to get close enough to the others to activate them again) and kill him. You are then free to fireball the others from out of range (if you want to kill Diarmid like that you will have to wait until his PfM scroll wears off). Fireballing the skeleton warriors will eventually damage them as well - bringing them out to be hammered. Once Sarevok is on his own he's helpless without a distance attack, so you don't need to continue with fireballs at that stage.
After a week away I picked up again with my attempt to make progress with a wild mage in the Enhanced Edition. Even that short break made concentration easier while working through early challenges with a sling and picking travel routes to avoid archer ambushes. Once a few wands are available things become pretty simple and I got carried away clearing wilderness areas - hitting the level cap before even going to the Nashkel Mines.
There were no significant mistakes this time as I proceeded on to the palace fight that's proved fatal in the last couple of attempts. There I once again went invisible to leave the battle to Belt. However, this time I checked Belt's HPs in EEKeeper and kept track of damage to him in order to be able to intervene if necessary. Intervention wasn't necessary though as Belt still had 36 HPs when the last doppleganger died, so the only action I took was some invisible blocking to try and delay Belt attacking dopplegangers until they were already engaged with Flaming Fist guards.
In no mood to give things away now I moved on to the final battle at the temple where endless waves of summons eventually suffocated Sarevok and his allies under the piles of dead (apart from Semaj who I persuaded Tazok to kill by going invisible immediately after a sunfire had damaged him - leaving no other enemies visible).
Before posting this update I thought I should try and get out of Jon's dungeon - the absence of items there makes this a relatively dangerous part of a wild mage run. After casting only 4 spells in BG1 (find familiar and friends x 3), far more were used here - though always from out of sight of enemies to reduce the potential danger from a surge. - invisibility took me past the ogre mage and a skull trap allowed access past the goblins blocking the passage in order to go and recover the Claw of Kazgaroth.
- similar tactics dealt with some other groups, while summoned monsters and MMMs quickly sorted out the golems and various mephits.
- vampiric touch on summons helped with spike traps. There were several surges during that lot, but nothing harmful (and there was one nice one).
I got up to level 10 before the end of the dungeon
and celebrated by killing Ulvaryl (though there was a slight mistake there when I forgot that the wand of frost was not single target as in BGEE).
I run at 60 fps in single player. The option to change that is in the LUA file in the BGEE (or BG2EE) root directory. That file is broadly equivalent to the old configuration settings file, but I'm afraid I haven't seen anything about making changes specific to the EE (but I haven't looked for that either). As I play multi-player at 30 fps with the same installation I do change that setting regularly - it only takes a few seconds to open the file, search for 30 (or 60) and overtype the result.
Edit: @Blind_Visionary - just checking I do have a summary note of config options for vanilla BG2. I can't remember where I got that from, but can email it to you if you want.
Unyo, Pins and Coretank are at Windspear. First task is to cut down some lycanthropes, a task made harder while Unyo is shapeshifted himself so mind the one with more hair, or less hair, the one over there. Pins and Coretank manage to work it out.
Conster FoD's Unyo, yeah yeah that's no bother as Death Ward is up and running. Have some insects.
Big Red almost makes a meal of Coretank. While the Undead Hunter retreats to consume vast quantities of blue liquids, Unyo renews his druidic protection from fire and shapeshifts to greater lycanthrope form. His ironskins are used in claw to claw combat, allowing Pins to spell out Dead Red.
Conventional wisdom dictates the remainder of the dungeon should be a foregone conclusion, but failure to rest before dealing with Samia leads to problems. First, Coretank is given a dose of chaos and reluctantly left to his fate (Pins is badly wounded and Unyo's remaining Ironskins fail). Coretank is soon cut down to size.
Pins and Unyo start a divide and conquer but that is called to a halt by Pins opening the wrong door and chunking herself on a hefty trap.
Unyo has inherited Pin's gem bag and quickly obtains a ring of invisibility. He uses that but is foiled by a detect illusions and resorts to slamming a door into the face of the enemy. Coretank had a Rod of Resurrection so Unyo uses that to raise the Undead Hunter. A minute or two later, Coretank is re-equipped and Unyo opens the door to lure out the first attacker.
The enemies regroup and Unyo uses a couple of healing potions until his attacker dies, and the remaining enemies are cut down while their focus remains on Coretank.
It's a mess. Coretank and Unyo have survived, but Unyo decides to retire and not continue without Pins.
Well if you thought the previous run was a mess, then try this one for size!
As usual, we all generated characters independently, but also as usual there did seem to be some commonality of thought processes. Everyone steered clear of casters this time - I went for Slice (barbarian), Corey for Gik (fighter/thief) and Gate70 for Tuskar (swashbuckler).
Things started off reasonably smoothly as the trio picked up an early level from Shoal before progressing on through Beregost and Nashkel on a meandering journey towards some basilisks. Gik was nearly killed on the way there by a kobold ambush, but after resting up the basilisks were sorted out with the help of the green scroll before Mutamin was shot down from distance.
With the clock showing that time for the session was up I attempted to squeeze in a final encounter with Kirian's mob. The intention was for Korax to deal with her, while Slice raged and absorbed Peter's spells. However, Kirian managed to complete her opening spells while Slice took a couple of hits from Lindin. Down to about 30 HPs he decided to get on his bike and do a bit of running round while the thieves provided supporting fire from a distance. His running proved a bit too energetic though when Kirian super-charged him with a lightning bolt
Selûna got quite a shock when she ended up in the nine hells. She thought that the battle was almost won. Underneath Dragonspear there were multiple deaths, Nikita being chunked and Starlight being killed. When Starlight was resurrected there was no time for her to sleep, so she was not much help when the crusaders stormed the coalition camp.
However, Selûna had finished quests far better than she thought and drove the crusaders back with the help of her allies.
At Dragonspear Selûna fought in a duel with the crusader's camp comander, and whilst the battle was fierce, she eventually prevailed. (In another game she will be better prepared.)
She had used up all her potions of extra healing though there were plenty in the party.
However only just winning is still winning.
Images will be posted here tomorrow as I am going out on the streets now.
I'm a street angel if you know what that is. If not look on the web. We have RL adventures.
I failed to take your advice about letting sleeping dragons lie. Cavan came very close to death - 10% of HP left. It is pure luck that his campaign continues.
I'm not sure how I woke her up going for the treasure. Apparently she can see through invisibility. That was nearly the end.... but, after a terrifying experience with being a pincushion for greater wyverns... and getting wing buffeted across the cave... Cavan barely lives to fight another day.
Retreating to spend the night with the Flaming Fist healer!
the old temple of Bhaal, freeing a priestess who witnessed Cyric kill his divine father... the closest he has ever come to learning about his real heritage. He couldn't help but let the woman free.
(oops, no screenshots).
This was the most dangerous area of the campaign so far. He nearly met his doom at the claws of a dragon... then used a substantial number of wand charges to get past some aerial servants and a crazed priest... then nearly got backstabbed to death by some kind of guardian who was protecting a sword in a hidden chest -- hasted backstabs, two criticals in a row, took him from 90 HP to less than 20 in a fraction of a second.
I have to say, the mad priest kicking the bookshelf into submission was a nice touch.
Cavan is now turning his attention towards Boresky Bridge. Number of reloads so far: 0....
After donating all the proceeds of the dungeon to charity reputation, I produced just enough MMMs to shoot down Kalah at the circus.
After checking in with Gaelan Bayle and resting more MMMs were not enough for Amalas, but he was cut down to size with a spear staff before I needed to resort to wand use - providing me with level 11 as a result.
Immediately after that though I had the first nasty surge of the run when trying to produce some MMMs before resting. I had carefully gone in a side room out of the way to cast the spell, but someone wandered in during the casting and just got within the blast radius of a burst. In addition there were also 2 separate gold vanishes effects in that surge, but I suppose the silver lining was that there wasn't much left of that to disappear anyway after paying for the wasted reputation increases.
I expected that to be the end of the problem, only to find as I came out of the room that a number of people had gone hostile.
Fortunately Bernard and Lehtinan were not affected and after killing the bouncer and dodging Tiana I was able to go ahead and beat up the Beastmaster and turn the inn over to Hendak.
Summons helped forge a path through the sewers before Captain Haegan and his guards were pulled back into the sewers and shot down.
Vampiric touch pushed HPs up to 74 to fend off the acid blob trap before more summons and a first use of a cloudkill saw off the slaver mages.
The funds earned from that were invested (again) in reputation before reporting back to Hendak.
A trip to the Docks saw the end of a nest of pirates before setting off in search of a necklace for Mae'Var. Suna Seni tried an ambush, but discovered that's not so easy to spring against an invisible enemy.
After securing the necklace a series of summons from out of sight was too much for Rayic Gethras despite him hitting me with a stray lightning bolt.
Doing the remaining tasks to expose Mae'Var was enough for level 12 before the guild was invaded using invisibility to set up groups of summons - a chaos being added for good measure in the last fight.
Feeling a bit constrained by not being able to cast spells freely in the city I decided it was time to do something about the Cowled Wizards. Obviously I needed to keep the 37k gold in the bank in order to have something to destroy with a surge so needed to find a different method to paying for a license . Casting invisibility and running out of sight as the enforcers turned up allowed me to pour in webs, stinking clouds and cloudkills. A few variations of that saw a number of surges, but nothing too problematic and the reign of the Cowled Wizards was ended when Zallanora (as the last surviving wizard) cast a time stop and dimension doored away for good.
The Adventures of Kythran: Part 10 - That One Time at Bandit Camp.
So, the party headed to the bandit camp, under the guise of wanting to join the bandits. Which succeeded, and they headed to the main tent. Where a battle ensued.
Khalid cast a resist fear spell, Dynaheir cast magic missile on the enemy wizard, and the enemy wizard went down quickly. Next was a human archer. Down he went, Dynaheir cast Agannazar's Scorcher on the hobgoblin archer. While, the rest of the party dealt with the gnoll, which went down quickly. Then the whole group focused on the Hobgoblin. Of course, when that happened, the Hobgoblin Archer died.
After that, the group spoke to Ender Sai, who told them that the Zhents weren't behind the Iron Crisis, and that Kythran needed to go to the mines in Cloakwood.
Run type: BG 2/ToB no-reload only, Core Rules, Gore on (characters can be chunked) Install: vanilla BG 2 and ToB with official patches, no mods
Hax made some progress. Specifically, he obtained his last party members (until we can rescue Imoen) and got rid of Yoshimo, since Hax can take care of the thief duties. This will also allow slightly faster leveling with only 5 party members.
* The party had enough magical weapons for the circus right after escaping the dungeon - Jaheira used flame blade since she probably won't get a magic weapon until Trademeet. One concern is practically the whole party uses blunt weapons - we'll have to watch that situation carefully. Magic missiles from Aerie and Hax made sure Kalah wasn't going to live long...
* With 100% locks/traps for Hax, cleaning out Galen's place was a cinch. Hax is currently working on snares (he can always use a spell for invisibility, if he really wants to get a backstab in).
* At this point, we just needed Viconia so went and rescued her. Our mages can't cast their arcane spells yet, but hold persons from Aerie and a call lightning from Jaheira made certain the enemies were going down, though Minsc did take some considerable damage (but lived).
* Before ending this session, wanted to buy some basic small shields from Waukeen's Promenade for Viconia and Aeire - but this triggered Suna Seni. However, with the party's spells, and especially that the arcane party members can help in this one, made short work of the ambushers. Hax does surprising damage with his dual-wielding axes, despite having only 1 pip in axes and two weapon style and only having 17 strength.
* We got our small shields, sold our junk, rested, and headed to the slums. We talked to Letithan and will free Hendak next session.
Travelling to Watcher's Keep I came across Renfeld and saved him with no problem (travelling invisibly again). The first time I did that I tried taking a screenshot, but that locked my entire computer - I've come across that issue before in some of the ambush areas, so didn't bother trying the screenshot once I'd restarted and found Renfeld again ...
Continuing on to Watcher's Keep I bought a potion case before entering. The stone golem just failed to kill 3 skeleton warriors (who couldn't hit it in return) before I could finish it off with my staff spear (should have used MMM's there).
I picked up the golem manual for possible use later, though inadequate intelligence means that wouldn't be easy. I opened up the main room to find some vampiric wraiths waiting and killed one of those with a skull trap (first spell of the run cast in combat) after MMMs proved pretty useless against them due to their fire and piercing resistances. The second wraith then fell to the wand of lightning carried out of the dungeon.
Summons and missile weapons cleared the rest of the active enemies on the top floor and everything was looted (using improved invisibility and spirit armour to protect against traps). I decided not to bother with the statues for now though.
Back in Athkatla I entered Prebek's house invisibly and killed the goblins with weapons before casting out of sight of the mages.
I painfully opened the containers there - really must get around to learning stoneskin - before looting the harpers. Reporting to Xzar got me to level 13 and I tried to get a bonus kill from Lucette - but didn't use haste and she teleported away while at near death.
Moving on to the Bridge District the Rune Assassins didn't last long against a prepared ambush upstairs.
There were similar tactics for Dracandros,
before a malison and chaos helped ensure Captain Dennis and his merrie men all died in situ.
I hadn't learnt spell immunity yet so couldn't get the berserker horn, but there was some further work in the area with the Fallen Paladins.
While doing the Sir Sarles quest there was an interesting encounter with Neb. I was invisible and surrounded him with summons and when they attacked him he instantly disappeared by script. However, that didn't prevent the attack continuing and he died shortly afterward.
The orog ambush finally turned up on the way back to Sir Sarles before handing in Neb's head got me to reputation 20. With nearly 80k gold burning a hole in my wallet, no sixth level spells and many crucial lower level ones missing, I decided it was finally time to splash out. Potions of genius ensured success with a range of spells while other purchases included the Ring of Air Control, Vecna and various potions from Roger. Learning spells took me up to level 14 before I went back to the Bridge District to get the horn.
By this time all the vampire ambushes had taken place (all resolved peacefully), so I had a clear out of containers to raise enough funds to pay Gaelan Bayle. After reporting to Aran Linvail, Lassal didn't last long against MMMs. Moving on, the Guild Contact was no problem in theory, but I had my first petrification surge there when preparing - fortunately spirit armour was already active and my save vs spell of 0 gave automatic success.
It is possible to use the RoAC to give an automatic save at a lower level, but I haven't been bothering to be that careful in this run. I'll be hunting vampires next time.
· Imoen is just Imoen, a human thief included for plot reasons
Mods: this run has no mods but I did edit the gamesave to allow Sarah to be LG elf blade & I Gave her the "permafrost" sword... I’m playing on top level with extra damage turned off.
I failed to take your advice about letting sleeping dragons lie. Cavan came very close to death - 10% of HP left. It is pure luck that his campaign continues.
I'm not sure how I woke her up going for the treasure. Apparently she can see through invisibility. That was nearly the end.... but, after a terrifying experience with being a pincushion for greater wyverns... and getting wing buffeted across the cave... Cavan barely lives to fight another day.
I failed to follow my own advice, but like you survived. Probably not the best tactics for no reload, but there are significant rewards for taking the risk.
Rondo, update 1: The early-game's been going fairly well, with a few missteps here and there. Shoal is killed off first, and we head for Melicamp. A critical wolf's bite kills Grant, so off to Beregost's temple area to fix that. And while fighting a random group of 3 ghasts in Bassilus' area, Truth and Grant both die after an ill-placed Entangle caught them as well as the ghasts. Another round of Raise Deads: the Star Sapphire we stole in Candlekeep did serious lifting here.
No more problems for awhile. Melicamp's saved successfully, Marl's talked down, we fought the Spiders in Landrin's house, the belted Ogre is kited to death. Tarnesh dies with two arrows, unable to complete a single spell. The Ring of Wizardry is sold since there's no one that can actually use it in this party, so 9k in our coffers! Basillus is also killed before we move on: a Command spell from Truth gets us a few free hits, and Basillus didn't manage to get his level 6 spell off this time.
We head to Nashkel. A random encounter here of two Vampiric Wolves surprises us, and we only have two magic weapons. Truth's Seeking Sword is used for the first time, and the 3 APR plus Rondo's song make mincemeat out of them, even though Quinn got himself Held by one of the wolves. We kill Greywolf and pick up the Pro. Petrification scroll before heading to the Basilisk area. Rondo invisibly assists Grant, Korax, and a Spirit Bear as they take down basilisk after basilisk. Mutamin took awhile to kill, but there were no deadly spells coming from him this time.
We've just been exploring the western area, no casualties, and brought Brage in. All at level 5, so no worries about Sleep finally!
Cavan interfered with the plans of a servant of the god of undead. Worried that his growing fame would expose her to harm, Viconia abandoned the team in the dark of night.
Cavan looked for her for a time, exploring the woods outside of Bridgefort. But she is gone. Her fate is now her own to determine. Cavan tried not to blame himself. Each must be true to his or her own nature, he thought.
He retreated to the Flaming Fist camp to see if another healer might be persuaded to join him at the tip of the spear.
The next day, Viconia came wandering back into the Flaming Fist camp, reconsidering her rush to judgement. Cavan welcomed her back, despite her drow nature, and her dedication to a dark god. She is a skilled cleric, and he believes that deep down, she has a good heart.
She returns with full knowledge that Cavan will continue to serve the cause of righteousness, and uphold the law, as is his duty as a paladin.
An odd pairing to be sure, but one that Cavan is not willing to abandon. Viconia will be redeemed in time... assuming they all survive this crusade.
Selûna battled her way through the nine hells and finally defeated Belhifet. Caelar proved herself at last to have a righteous streak. The battle against Belhifet was long and arduous. One thing that I didn't like was the fact that party members with mind shields got charmed. However despite that Belhifet fell. I was glad tat the party was well stocked with powerful healing potions. I discovered that I should have bought more potions of fire resistance. In the battle both Glint and Neera were killed but have been raised again.
EDIT
Every time that I think that the extension is over, I discover that it isn't. Selûna became a hero for a night but is now no longer a hero.
Edit
Siege of Dragonspear finished. An enjoyable extension. Just realised that this is the first time that I have entered SoA with anything but a good character. It is also the first time that I have played a barbarian, and I quite like it.
A short session today made a bit of progress, but a very laggy connection limited the amount done. We cleared Jon's dungeon with just one slight glitch when Toriac was stunned by the salt mephit in sight of a group of goblins. Ozzy threw in a skull trap to kill a number of those and give Toriac the chance to recover and take revenge on the mephit.
The only other bit of work done was sorting out problems at the circus. Ozzy, fighter 8 / mage 9, 72 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 67 kills (232 in BG1) Toriac, undead hunter 8, 111 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 21 kills (172 in BG1), 0 deaths (1 in BG1)
Comments
You need:
* potions of invisibility
* potions of haste
* some kind of defense against magic. immunities to fire/ice/poison etc; shield amulet charges; negative saves -- or a protection from magic scroll
* antidote potions if you don't have protection from poison up
* a way to dispel haste. Dispel arrow, dispel magic (probably need more than one here), slow spell could all work.
* a way to cause damage from a distance. Arrows, darts, bullets, wands, etc.
* boots of speed make it more convenient
* healing potions help 'cause Diarmid usually hits a lot
I use my companions to buff but don't overdo it because as you noted, enemy spell casters open with remove magic (unless you have your PfM scroll up, and then they hide unless there are other targets available).
Early on, dispel Sarevok's haste.
I find this battle easier to solo, so I make my companions invisible with potions or spells and tell them to go hide. You can use them to draw problematic people out of the way and park them in corners this way too. Fortunately the mages don't have true sight or invisibility purge, as a typical rule. But extra potions of invisibility can be helpful if needed to duck out of the action. One character then does most of the work, using movement speed advantage through boots of speed and/or oil of speed, and causing damage from a distance.
Summons can be temporarily helpful to get the enemies to stay in one place if you can get them to target the summons. But mostly they don't last long enough to matter.
I usually kill Diarmid first because his arrows of biting are dangerous. The spell casters can be dangerous, but not if you have a PfM scroll up. Tazok and Sarevok can't hit you from a distance. Nor can the skellys that show up after you kill one of the lackeys. (If @DavidW made those into skelly archers with biting arrows... ouch).
Sometimes you need to have one of your helpers break invisibility to draw out an invisible mage. Wait until Diarmid and Tazok are gone before doing this. True sight or invisibility purge also work. Or you can let your PfM scroll expire (although that's a bit more dangerous if you're not prepared for spell defense afterward).
It takes a long time and lots of running, but you can wear them all down with poison arrows or wand charges or whatnot. Not glamorous. But effective.
I'm sure there are other ways. Grond0 and other veterans probably have developed more. But this one is consistent and doable with many classes.
Sorry to hear that your run ended in the temple! I'm sure you'll crush it next time...
Thank you.
I have, in the past, finished this fight many a time. (My success rate is about 70-80%.) -- BUT I usually only play casters or caster hybrids.
I was taken by surprise, when my supposedly invulnerable Cavalier's buffs and protections (through about 8 potions/scrolls) were removed with a single Remove Magic, which was followed up by some nasty spells. (To my credit, I gulped down a 5-rounds-of-no-spells-affect-you potion immediately. But was beaten down a bit, ran around, and then promptly zapped to very low health.)
Love SCS. It bulldozed me fair and square!
yes that was a Legacy run and yes it is nuts... all summoms are 10 levels bigger which overpowers any normal tactic.
Puk will ride again soon.
an invisibility potion so you can rebuff in peace
A lich. Two of them, it looks like.
If there is a choice to avoid fighting here.... I'm going to take it.
Edit: Cavan figured a way through without casualties. His run continues...
*slaps forehead on desk*
I was sitting on a whole pile of invisibility potions.
(Wait. Hold on. I thought SCS casters were adept at Detect Invisible stuff. No?)
After a week away I picked up again with my attempt to make progress with a wild mage in the Enhanced Edition. Even that short break made concentration easier while working through early challenges with a sling and picking travel routes to avoid archer ambushes. Once a few wands are available things become pretty simple and I got carried away clearing wilderness areas - hitting the level cap before even going to the Nashkel Mines.
There were no significant mistakes this time as I proceeded on to the palace fight that's proved fatal in the last couple of attempts. There I once again went invisible to leave the battle to Belt. However, this time I checked Belt's HPs in EEKeeper and kept track of damage to him in order to be able to intervene if necessary. Intervention wasn't necessary though as Belt still had 36 HPs when the last doppleganger died, so the only action I took was some invisible blocking to try and delay Belt attacking dopplegangers until they were already engaged with Flaming Fist guards.
In no mood to give things away now I moved on to the final battle at the temple where endless waves of summons eventually suffocated Sarevok and his allies under the piles of dead (apart from Semaj who I persuaded Tazok to kill by going invisible immediately after a sunfire had damaged him - leaving no other enemies visible).
Before posting this update I thought I should try and get out of Jon's dungeon - the absence of items there makes this a relatively dangerous part of a wild mage run. After casting only 4 spells in BG1 (find familiar and friends x 3), far more were used here - though always from out of sight of enemies to reduce the potential danger from a surge.
- invisibility took me past the ogre mage and a skull trap allowed access past the goblins blocking the passage in order to go and recover the Claw of Kazgaroth.
There were several surges during that lot, but nothing harmful (and there was one nice one).
Edit: @Blind_Visionary - just checking I do have a summary note of config options for vanilla BG2. I can't remember where I got that from, but can email it to you if you want.
Unyo, Pins and Coretank are at Windspear. First task is to cut down some lycanthropes, a task made harder while Unyo is shapeshifted himself so mind the one with more hair, or less hair, the one over there. Pins and Coretank manage to work it out.
Conster FoD's Unyo, yeah yeah that's no bother as Death Ward is up and running. Have some insects.
Big Red almost makes a meal of Coretank. While the Undead Hunter retreats to consume vast quantities of blue liquids, Unyo renews his druidic protection from fire and shapeshifts to greater lycanthrope form. His ironskins are used in claw to claw combat, allowing Pins to spell out Dead Red.
Conventional wisdom dictates the remainder of the dungeon should be a foregone conclusion, but failure to rest before dealing with Samia leads to problems. First, Coretank is given a dose of chaos and reluctantly left to his fate (Pins is badly wounded and Unyo's remaining Ironskins fail). Coretank is soon cut down to size.
Unyo has inherited Pin's gem bag and quickly obtains a ring of invisibility. He uses that but is foiled by a detect illusions and resorts to slamming a door into the face of the enemy. Coretank had a Rod of Resurrection so Unyo uses that to raise the Undead Hunter. A minute or two later, Coretank is re-equipped and Unyo opens the door to lure out the first attacker.
The enemies regroup and Unyo uses a couple of healing potions until his attacker dies, and the remaining enemies are cut down while their focus remains on Coretank.
It's a mess. Coretank and Unyo have survived, but Unyo decides to retire and not continue without Pins.
Well if you thought the previous run was a mess, then try this one for size!
As usual, we all generated characters independently, but also as usual there did seem to be some commonality of thought processes. Everyone steered clear of casters this time - I went for Slice (barbarian), Corey for Gik (fighter/thief) and Gate70 for Tuskar (swashbuckler).
Things started off reasonably smoothly as the trio picked up an early level from Shoal before progressing on through Beregost and Nashkel on a meandering journey towards some basilisks. Gik was nearly killed on the way there by a kobold ambush, but after resting up the basilisks were sorted out with the help of the green scroll before Mutamin was shot down from distance.
With the clock showing that time for the session was up I attempted to squeeze in a final encounter with Kirian's mob. The intention was for Korax to deal with her, while Slice raged and absorbed Peter's spells. However, Kirian managed to complete her opening spells while Slice took a couple of hits from Lindin. Down to about 30 HPs he decided to get on his bike and do a bit of running round while the thieves provided supporting fire from a distance. His running proved a bit too energetic though when Kirian super-charged him with a lightning bolt
Underneath Dragonspear there were multiple deaths, Nikita being chunked and Starlight being killed. When Starlight was resurrected there was no time for her to sleep, so she was not much help when the crusaders stormed the coalition camp.
However, Selûna had finished quests far better than she thought and drove the crusaders back with the help of her allies.
At Dragonspear Selûna fought in a duel with the crusader's camp comander, and whilst the battle was fierce, she eventually prevailed. (In another game she will be better prepared.)
She had used up all her potions of extra healing though there were plenty in the party.
However only just winning is still winning.
Images will be posted here tomorrow as I am going out on the streets now.
I'm a street angel if you know what that is. If not look on the web.
I failed to take your advice about letting sleeping dragons lie. Cavan came very close to death - 10% of HP left. It is pure luck that his campaign continues.
I'm not sure how I woke her up going for the treasure. Apparently she can see through invisibility. That was nearly the end.... but, after a terrifying experience with being a pincushion for greater wyverns... and getting wing buffeted across the cave... Cavan barely lives to fight another day.
Retreating to spend the night with the Flaming Fist healer!
the old temple of Bhaal, freeing a priestess who witnessed Cyric kill his divine father... the closest he has ever come to learning about his real heritage. He couldn't help but let the woman free.
(oops, no screenshots).
This was the most dangerous area of the campaign so far. He nearly met his doom at the claws of a dragon... then used a substantial number of wand charges to get past some aerial servants and a crazed priest... then nearly got backstabbed to death by some kind of guardian who was protecting a sword in a hidden chest -- hasted backstabs, two criticals in a row, took him from 90 HP to less than 20 in a fraction of a second.
I have to say, the mad priest kicking the bookshelf into submission was a nice touch.
Cavan is now turning his attention towards Boresky Bridge. Number of reloads so far: 0....
After donating all the proceeds of the dungeon to
charityreputation, I produced just enough MMMs to shoot down Kalah at the circus.Summons helped forge a path through the sewers before Captain Haegan and his guards were pulled back into the sewers and shot down.
A trip to the Docks saw the end of a nest of pirates before setting off in search of a necklace for Mae'Var. Suna Seni tried an ambush, but discovered that's not so easy to spring against an invisible enemy.
Feeling a bit constrained by not being able to cast spells freely in the city I decided it was time to do something about the Cowled Wizards. Obviously I needed to keep the 37k gold in the bank in order to have something to destroy with a surge so needed to find a different method to paying for a license
So, the party headed to the bandit camp, under the guise of wanting to join the bandits. Which succeeded, and they headed to the main tent. Where a battle ensued.
Khalid cast a resist fear spell, Dynaheir cast magic missile on the enemy wizard, and the enemy wizard went down quickly. Next was a human archer. Down he went, Dynaheir cast Agannazar's Scorcher on the hobgoblin archer. While, the rest of the party dealt with the gnoll, which went down quickly. Then the whole group focused on the Hobgoblin. Of course, when that happened, the Hobgoblin Archer died.
After that, the group spoke to Ender Sai, who told them that the Zhents weren't behind the Iron Crisis, and that Kythran needed to go to the mines in Cloakwood.
Traveling with: Minsc, Jaheira, Aerie, Viconia
Run type: BG 2/ToB no-reload only, Core Rules, Gore on (characters can be chunked)
Install: vanilla BG 2 and ToB with official patches, no mods
Hax made some progress. Specifically, he obtained his last party members (until we can rescue Imoen) and got rid of Yoshimo, since Hax can take care of the thief duties. This will also allow slightly faster leveling with only 5 party members.
* The party had enough magical weapons for the circus right after escaping the dungeon - Jaheira used flame blade since she probably won't get a magic weapon until Trademeet. One concern is practically the whole party uses blunt weapons - we'll have to watch that situation carefully. Magic missiles from Aerie and Hax made sure Kalah wasn't going to live long...
* With 100% locks/traps for Hax, cleaning out Galen's place was a cinch. Hax is currently working on snares (he can always use a spell for invisibility, if he really wants to get a backstab in).
* At this point, we just needed Viconia so went and rescued her. Our mages can't cast their arcane spells yet, but hold persons from Aerie and a call lightning from Jaheira made certain the enemies were going down, though Minsc did take some considerable damage (but lived).
* Before ending this session, wanted to buy some basic small shields from Waukeen's Promenade for Viconia and Aeire - but this triggered Suna Seni. However, with the party's spells, and especially that the arcane party members can help in this one, made short work of the ambushers. Hax does surprising damage with his dual-wielding axes, despite having only 1 pip in axes and two weapon style and only having 17 strength.
* We got our small shields, sold our junk, rested, and headed to the slums. We talked to Letithan and will free Hendak next session.
Travelling to Watcher's Keep I came across Renfeld and saved him with no problem (travelling invisibly again). The first time I did that I tried taking a screenshot, but that locked my entire computer - I've come across that issue before in some of the ambush areas, so didn't bother trying the screenshot once I'd restarted and found Renfeld again ...
Continuing on to Watcher's Keep I bought a potion case before entering. The stone golem just failed to kill 3 skeleton warriors (who couldn't hit it in return) before I could finish it off with my staff spear (should have used MMM's there).
Back in Athkatla I entered Prebek's house invisibly and killed the goblins with weapons before casting out of sight of the mages.
Moving on to the Bridge District the Rune Assassins didn't last long against a prepared ambush upstairs.
While doing the Sir Sarles quest there was an interesting encounter with Neb. I was invisible and surrounded him with summons and when they attacked him he instantly disappeared by script. However, that didn't prevent the attack continuing and he died shortly afterward.
By this time all the vampire ambushes had taken place (all resolved peacefully), so I had a clear out of containers to raise enough funds to pay Gaelan Bayle. After reporting to Aran Linvail, Lassal didn't last long against MMMs. Moving on, the Guild Contact was no problem in theory, but I had my first petrification surge there when preparing - fortunately spirit armour was already active and my save vs spell of 0 gave automatic success.
A new look,
I’m re-entering the challenge with another group;
· Puk Redback a stock Human Chaotic Good Stalker
· Sarah Truesight a Elf Lawful Good Blade
· Imoen is just Imoen, a human thief included for plot reasons
Mods: this run has no mods but I did edit the gamesave to allow Sarah to be LG elf blade & I Gave her the "permafrost" sword... I’m playing on top level with extra damage turned off.
The early-game's been going fairly well, with a few missteps here and there. Shoal is killed off first, and we head for Melicamp. A critical wolf's bite kills Grant, so off to Beregost's temple area to fix that. And while fighting a random group of 3 ghasts in Bassilus' area, Truth and Grant both die after an ill-placed Entangle caught them as well as the ghasts. Another round of Raise Deads: the Star Sapphire we stole in Candlekeep did serious lifting here.
No more problems for awhile. Melicamp's saved successfully, Marl's talked down, we fought the Spiders in Landrin's house, the belted Ogre is kited to death. Tarnesh dies with two arrows, unable to complete a single spell. The Ring of Wizardry is sold since there's no one that can actually use it in this party, so 9k in our coffers! Basillus is also killed before we move on: a Command spell from Truth gets us a few free hits, and Basillus didn't manage to get his level 6 spell off this time.
We head to Nashkel. A random encounter here of two Vampiric Wolves surprises us, and we only have two magic weapons. Truth's Seeking Sword is used for the first time, and the 3 APR plus Rondo's song make mincemeat out of them, even though Quinn got himself Held by one of the wolves. We kill Greywolf and pick up the Pro. Petrification scroll before heading to the Basilisk area. Rondo invisibly assists Grant, Korax, and a Spirit Bear as they take down basilisk after basilisk. Mutamin took awhile to kill, but there were no deadly spells coming from him this time.
We've just been exploring the western area, no casualties, and brought Brage in. All at level 5, so no worries about Sleep finally!
Cavan looked for her for a time, exploring the woods outside of Bridgefort. But she is gone. Her fate is now her own to determine. Cavan tried not to blame himself. Each must be true to his or her own nature, he thought.
He retreated to the Flaming Fist camp to see if another healer might be persuaded to join him at the tip of the spear.
She returns with full knowledge that Cavan will continue to serve the cause of righteousness, and uphold the law, as is his duty as a paladin.
An odd pairing to be sure, but one that Cavan is not willing to abandon. Viconia will be redeemed in time... assuming they all survive this crusade.
Caelar proved herself at last to have a righteous streak.
The battle against Belhifet was long and arduous.
One thing that I didn't like was the fact that party members with mind shields got charmed.
However despite that Belhifet fell.
I was glad tat the party was well stocked with powerful healing potions.
I discovered that I should have bought more potions of fire resistance.
In the battle both Glint and Neera were killed but have been raised again.
EDIT
Every time that I think that the extension is over, I discover that it isn't. Selûna became a hero for a night but is now no longer a hero.Edit
Siege of Dragonspear finished. An enjoyable extension. Just realised that this is the first time that I have entered SoA with anything but a good character. It is also the first time that I have played a barbarian, and I quite like it.Ozzy, elf fighter/mage (Grond0) & Toriac, human undead hunter (Gate70)
A short session today made a bit of progress, but a very laggy connection limited the amount done. We cleared Jon's dungeon with just one slight glitch when Toriac was stunned by the salt mephit in sight of a group of goblins. Ozzy threw in a skull trap to kill a number of those and give Toriac the chance to recover and take revenge on the mephit.
The only other bit of work done was sorting out problems at the circus.
Ozzy, fighter 8 / mage 9, 72 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 67 kills (232 in BG1)
Toriac, undead hunter 8, 111 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 21 kills (172 in BG1), 0 deaths (1 in BG1)