The Crusader challenge is far too easy for @histamiini so maybe we should add some more rules to keep up the fun. @Grond0 stated once that misc items should force the player to use one star and after looking at the abuse of summons and durlags goblet i am close to agreeing.
P.S. Even though @Vynn is lacking time he has already beaten Illasera, Gromnir and Yaga-Shura with his no-reload poverty druid. Awesome. Maybe poverty is the only real challenge for you @histamiini as well...
@Harpagornis Yeah I was thinking this just today, how can you make the game harder from this. Poverty, I don't really like it because it limits the challenge to only for few classes, where as every class can play Crusaders. I don't really like the idea of removing individual items either. Removing quick slot items for images is something that I'll definitely do next playthrough, but I'm waiting 2.5 (perhaps forever) before I can make a new install. Double apr Oil of Speed would make many classes more playable in harder challenges, I've so many builds in mind, like 7 apr machine gun archer from the get go.
Natural passed Druid Grove with invisibility, and skelis cleared the few druids and bears at the end. Invisible Cernd got Faldorn with Insect Plague and then hacked her to pieces with summons and Greater Werewolf form. Easily killed the Djinnis at Trademeet with skelis and did the last guest for them too, hit 20/20 economy. Prebek and Sanasha level skipped and smacked down. Easily smacked the Mephits at Gethras place, four skelis then distracted as I smacked the Golems. Hasted skelis and Natural then ganged on Gethras and he didn't get a spell off. Mae'var, 3 skelis, dominated the cleric who cast another skeli, haste, farsight and made them attack Mae'var who was easily killed. Skelis then cleared rest of them on the same go. Level up and Two-Weapon Style ***.
After doing Circus which was ridiculously easy at this point, started chapter 3 with the price of 60k. Went onto the Bodhi's lair invisible, and picked up Mace of Distruption and improved it with Cromwell and I was completely broke. Back, PfU and cleared the place with the Mace and skelis, Bodhi was just waited out. Crypt King was easily smacked and found Namarra, which I had forgotten completely. Silence should be useful tool for breaking some dialogue scripts. Also got another level up to 15/15 which meant I now had five top of the line skelis.
Time to put Namarra to a work immidiatelly. Temple sewers and tried to Silence them, but it didn't work. So I summoned 5 hasted skelis, buffed and quickly ganged on the mage, then cleric and after that all others. Seven Vales was done the same way too, first the mage, then Pooky and rest. Risling tried to escape again but I didn't allow it. Apparently Namarra's Silence only works against red circles, where's Cleric Silence works against everybody.
@kingnight Yeah, LoB with SCS and Ascension (and EET).
Then I really curious about several things in the Belhifet fight: 1. Why you just takes 10 slashing damage from Bone Fiend, while my fully buffered up Inquisitor takes at least 22 with 11 damage bonus; 2. Why you can hit Belhifet with Martyr's Monringstar +2( a +2 weapon, Belhifet can only be hit by +3 weapon) and cause 35 crushing damage, while I have to use Dragon Blade +3 and only cause 21 damage;
In my last play(only LOB, not SCS), the battle against Belhifet is the most critical one. I have 4 archers to deal with minions only, and have my Inquisitor to deal with Belhifet. All my archers get at least ++ ranged weapon proficiencies and armed with +2 arrows and bullets, event though, my killing speed can't event catch up the spawning speed, so I have to use summon monsters for distraction, because my Inquisitor takes at least 45-55+ damage from Belhifet, if my tank is crowded by minions, blood could drops too rapidly. The entire fight last totally 2 hour on game time, and takes me 14 cups of Goblet, the bodies of summon monsters and fiends pipe up and litter the floor, until my frame rate drops to 15FPS, a really hard battle. I'm very curious how can you event mange to clean the scene, judging from the data seems the game you are playing have the difficulty greatly reduced, can you make sure the LOB setting really takes effects at the time?
@kingnight - Martyr's Morningstar can be made to function as a +3 weapon by casting Enchant Weapon on it. - From your screenshot you were attacking with 24 strength using a weapon you had specialization with. I imagine Natural Redux had 25 strength and grand mastery (and was using a crushing weapon that Belhifet doesn't have resistance to). There are also various items that give damage bonuses that could push damage up to 35 with a morningstar. - I can't though understand why no damage bonus would be shown when taking hits. @histamiini is it possible you've ticked the gameplay option for no difficulty-based damage increase?
@kingnight Yeah as @Grond0 said, Enchanted Weapon spell makes weapons hit as +3. Martyr's is easily the weapon of choice against Belhifet because with critical hit it does bonus 15% of max hp damage, a whopping 169,5 against LoB Belhifet, so you only need 6-7 hits from it. And Single-Weapon Style gives critical at 19 too, which makes it twice as fast. 35 (+11 resisted) crushing damage in the screenshot was from a critical double damage hit. Belhifet has 50 DR vs missiles, and 25 DR vs. melee. On the case of damage taken it seems that I had ticked the no difficulty-based damage increase, well spotted, took it out. No wonder the game has felt too easy.
Natural is currently at Brynnlaw, farmed Gauths to 6M xp so I got 9th level spells and a Planetar. Also killed all the Cowled Wizards at Athkatla. Turns out guards will attack them but they don't attack guards. Got few high level spells and first time ever killed Zallanora.
Hi there, @histamiini and @Grond0 , thanks for the information very much, I have modifed my character making him fitting in your pattern. And after a several try, I did manage to fight the battle as I was expected. Thanks again.
Hi, I was wondering if one of you guys could give me some information. In SCS there is an option to increase dragon HP. In the readme it states that it triples the HP of dragons. Does LOB mode then triple that number and add 80? If so then dragons would have 1500 to 1800 HP or 10X what they originally had? Could anyone verify this. How many hitpoints do firecrag and the shadow dragon have in LOB+SCS? This solo thread seems to be the only one that deals with SCS AND LOB so I figured I would post it here. I didn't want to start a new thread and I figured my chances of finding someone who could help me would be best in this thread.
@the_sextein Yes I believe it tribles them before LoB bonuses are added, which are added during the game. So example Firkraag would've 184 hp * 3 * 3 + 80 hp = 1736 hp if you selected that option. Which btw doesn't really matter if you're using the Wand of Wonder.
@the_sextein Yes I believe it tribles them before LoB bonuses are added, which are added during the game. So example Firkraag would've 184 hp * 3 * 3 + 80 hp = 1736 hp if you selected that option. Which btw doesn't really matter if you're using the Wand of Wonder.
I have the improved dragon component installed on LOB mode and I beat the shadow dragon the other day which is what made me question how much damage I landed during the fight. My party is level 14 about to go to spell hold. The mage that cast improved haste was level 14 so Improved haste would have lasted 17 rounds. I probably wasted five rounds pre-buffing and getting into position. The haste wore off just as the shadow dragon died so the fight must have went on for about 12 rounds.
I use a full party and while I respect being clever and ruining a tough enemies day with a chromatic orb or a feeblemind, I have been forced to use those tactics in the past when I wasn't strong enough to win in an all out fight. Now after years of playing and optimizing I thought it would be cool to just tank the dragon head on and kill it before it can kill any of my party members. LOB and SCS combined give dragons some serious oomph. I was using potions of wind giant strength (24) on minsc and my main character so my thac0 was in the negative numbers. I probably landed a decent amount of blows. Still, it's hard to say how much HP they have unless someone here uses near infinity and can check. Personally I have never used it but maybe I should look into it. If you are correct then the shadow dragon would have had 1,520 HP. Pretty monstrous but fitting for one of the largest and strongest enemy in the game.
When you go up against a lich, the hardest part is breaking down it's protections but once you have done that the extra HP doesn't really matter because you can just beat them into oblivion and they can't cast anything because you are hitting them so much. A dragon is all about brute force and the more HP it has the more super powered attacks he will get off before he dies. LOB makes dragon fights much more fun but it doesn't do much for liches. It also makes Beholders even more annoying because their eye stocks spam so much longer.
Anyhoo, sorry for the derail. If anyone gets more concrete information please let me know, it will be appreciated. One last thing I would like to mention is that the red wizard enclave has a wand of breach/pierce magic. This wand is not effected by SCS. Just a warning, with pierce magic you will have to actually select targets instead of using it with a small AOE effect and breach will just rip through enemy protections even if you haven't properly neutralized your enemies high level protections. If you are trying to make the game hard then I would steer clear of this wand for the reasons mentioned above. It still treats breach and pierce magic like the vanilla game which destroys all of the spell tweak work that SCS adds to the game.
The reason SCS bonuses to HP apply before LoB bonuses is because SCS changes the underlying creature files, not by bumping them up in-game via a script or something. The game doesn't use separate critter files in LoB mode; it uses the normal ones and then tweaks the numbers.
Spell Revisions and Item Revisions would add to the difficulty of this challenge by removing some of the more overpowered options. But I still have to mention that this challenge is already stupidly challenging, and making the challenge more difficult is crazy.
I agree, I'm totally satisfied at the level of difficulty that I am experiencing on LOB with SCS. Maybe further revision would be welcome if I beat this level of difficulty multiple times over years of time but I think it's about as hard as it can get without making it annoying. LOB was boarder line for me. When it first came out I didn't like it because it changes the gameplay from it's original intention and forces full knowledge of items and spells plus it makes the user leave and come back to powerful enemies unless you opt to cheese the system. After adjusting to it and finding a way to play in this new atmosphere without sacrificing the gameplay that I enjoy, it became very fun and rewarding.
I set SCS as hard as it can go with the exception of a few item tweaks that go against my enjoyment of certain character classes. With reputation lowered to 1/4th, potion drops discarded and the asking price from the shadow thieves being set at 120,000, the economy is actually pretty solid for the first time. The only self imposed rule I follow is that I can't steal from venders because it's implementation is terrible and I will reload if any of my party members die in a fight. This forces maximum strategy and makes for a very fun and rewarding challenge. Pushing it further would probably not be fun to me at this point. I don't like to kite enemies or use exploits and it's certainly possible to avoid that kind of behavior even under these harsh conditions. It just means that some time and effort must be spent to re-adjust to the higher level enemies and the large HP pools, new strategies must be formed plus item and character class synergy must be maximized while having some RTS understanding regarding the environment. SOD is great in my opinion but LOB mode really gave the entire series a new boost of fun and challenge.
While I admit, as a gamer who fights everything and often uses brute force for my own personal enjoyment, the game can be slow progress wise and it can feel tedious at times but I think even that will work it's way out of my trilogy runs as I remember encounters in this mode and quickly deal with problematic fights in the future.
Since this board has been slow and nobody has posted since my last post I decided to leave these here. Mainly because I used the CTRL+M trick harpagornis mentioned and to show off my victory of such an epic and fun battle. I thought it might interest a few of you to see a screenshot of the boosted dragon HP. However, I promise not to derail this thread further with my party based game.
This is the Final Red Dragon on the upgraded Abizagal lair entrance fight. Check the dialog box for the HP total:
Here is the final shot of the carnage after victory.
This fight really makes you work for your victory. Despite having 10APR with mislead and critical strike these bad boys were immune to backstab and critical strike. I still managed to kill one of the dragons with my FMT during my timestop traps and then the other 3 dragons needed to be taken out using the brute force method. The green and red dragon's would heal themselves to full HP once their HP hit 50% which added even more time to the fight. All things considered you need to land about 10,000 points of damage through dragon protections to finish this one up. Probably my favorite fight of the game so far.
EDIT: One thing that did strike me as odd this play through was the final battle with Abizagal. I always remember the improved battle having two dragons but this time it had three for some reason. Is this a bug or did someone patch it to be even harder?
Someday the thread will be reborn @the_sextein but at the moment - at least for me - other games are calling for challenges as well. Once i have finished my poverty Monk in ADOM i might give BG another chance. We will see!
However: Nice to see that you seem to had a lot of fun playing around with some "cute" dragons - keep going!
P.S. The poverty madness of @Vynn playing Totemic Druid continues. Sendai still has to be beaten...
Hi guys. I enjoyed reading some of the posts in this topic (mostly near the start) and started trying LOB SCS solo myself with Caeli, a gnome fighter/illusionist. I'm doing minimal reloads when I play for real, but I'll also save and then intentionally test stuff to learn how it works better.
Caeli got max level (7/7) before doing Nashkel mines. She killed Shoal the Nereid and a couple carrion crawlers, then basilisks, a few quests, sirines, durlag basilisks. and a few ankhegs and random things. I also cheesed Drizzt early – I watched the gnolls kill him because he's apparently bugged and can't attack them. My proficiencies are 2 scimitars, 2 longbow, and 2 two weapon fighting. I pretty much ran away from all low xp enemies because they aren't worth killing on LOB. Mulahey was easy by triggering him and running out the door, then peak back in and shoot a fireball and leave again. He can't target me with improved invis, and was weaker than me in 1v1 melee, so I didn't even use summons. I killed all his friends that way and then fought him. It was fun killing the bandit camp by running around with 100 fire resist, speed potion, and fireball wands. (That wasn't very safe, I died a few times before figuring out how to do it better, but I wanted to blow them all up at once for fun.) I skipped everything in cloakwood (free action ring + invis) until Drasus. I killed him and his friends to see what my character could do and test what was safe. The important things were luring the fighters away from the mages and killing them first (with monster summong wand), then dodging mage spells by going in the building's door. I ran through the mines with invis and mirror image to reach Davaeorn.
Davaeorn, it turns out, is hard. If I use protection from magic scroll, I don't have enough buffs to fight very well, and his spells still kill my summons. If I don't use the scroll, he's very dangerous and has Remove Magic, and if I don't kill him fast then a bunch of guards come. I had to find a good strategy! This is important because if you can get through Davaeorn pretty easily, then you can get access to all the resources in Baldur's Gate quickly instead of having to farm a lot first. Mulahey isn't that hard (at least if you abuse the doorway) and you can use invis and free action to basically skip the bandits, cloakwood forest and the earlier cloakwood mines levels. So with a good strategy on Davaeorn you can rush to Sorcerous Sundries and other nice things early.
I found a strategy I'm really happy with and made a video to show how it works.
My next forum post, right after this one, will have a text description of the strategy. You should watch at least from 2:45 to 9:00 to be able to understand what I mean because the text isn't clear enough about the locations to do things. (You can skip ahead a bit where I'm waiting for all 20 guards to come.) Then the rest of the video has extra details and shows repeat attempts to pull off the hard part.
This is one of the game's hardest fights, but this strategy is safe and easy enough for a no-reload run, after you've practiced it a few times.
The must watch part of the video, showing how to do steps 5-13, is from 2:45 to 9:00. After the first demonstration, I repeat to show the strategy's reliability, how to handle things going wrong, and some details. If you're using reloads, you can probably get it in a few tries without watching the rest of the video.
This works with any class except Wizard Slayer (but it's harder if you can't use monster summong wand). Gear and level requirements are low. Steps:
1) Kill the one guard at the start of the level. 2) Wait for your summons to disappear if you have any left over. 3) Invis + protections + go trigger Davaeorn's traps and then go back to the start of the level. (You can go back to town and rest now, if you play no-reload and want to be careful.) 4) Put on speed boots or speed potion. Optionally put on invis and protections. 5) Run forward and shoot Davaeorn once. Pause. 6) Immediately run to the upper room to dodge the web and stinking cloud. Pause. 7) Don't waste any time. Get around the corner, pause, turn invisible, pause. 8) Run behind where Davaeorn and the Battle Horrors were and go into the little room in the upper back. 9) Position correctly for Davaeorn to teleport to you and leave him in the corner. 10) Patiently wait for all 20 guards to walk over to Davaeorn. 11) Kill the battle horrors who are near the start of the level. Monster summoning wand recommended. 12) Shoot around 18 fireballs with the necklace into the room with Davaeorn and 20 guards. 13) Use protection from magic scroll and monster summoning wand to finish off Davaeorn and possibly a couple near-death guards.
Gear list:
- speed boots or potion (speed boots drop right before the mines, outdoors) - protection from magic scroll (high hedge) - 25 charges of fireball (nashkel carnival – sell and rebuy to increase to 25 charges) - 2 charges of invis (3 if you want to run down to Davaeorn without fighting anything – just use a few protections for traps and it's easy). If you can't cast invis, you can buy invis ring at Ulgoth's Beard or find potions. - monster summoning wand (Valley of the Tombs). If you can't use this, you need to either leave the battle horrors alone once they are sitting by the level entrance, or find some other way to kill them. You also may need heal potions and decent gear for fighting Davaeorn, especially if you don't have cleric or druid summons either.
Extra Notes:
At the start of the fight, after the web/stinking cloud sequencer, Davaeorn will say "Dimension Door" and teleport somewhere while you're running in back. Then he will say "Dimension Door: [you character's name]" which means he will now teleport to the location where you were standing when that message appeared, so you need to be in position quickly before that message shows up. If you don't move after that message, it will typically put him above you since he can't be on top of you and the game seems to move him up as it's first choice to find open ground.
You don't want to be seen by Davaeorn or the Battle Horrors when you run behind them. Use invis before showing yourself.
You could probably do this with just one invis if you don't pre-trigger the traps. Just ignore the traps, walk up without invis, shoot davaeorn one time like normal, then go up and around, and use invis and go in back. It should be fine to do this all at once, instead of two phases, but I didn't test that.
Once Davaeorn is alone, I'm sure there are other ways to kill him without protection from magic scroll, if you don't want to use that up. But he's one of the game's hardest fights, so there isn't much else to save it for.
Hello y'all. And nice to see new challengers, great tactic against Davaeorn. @curi I pretty much burnt out last time with the game and needed a break, been playing ultra modded Morrowind and Skyrim in the mean time. But now I'm beginning to be finished with them, and saw that BG2 got the 2.5 update, so I thought I could give the game another swing.
Anyone know the eta for rest of the 2.5 updates? Waiting those I still seem to have some unfinished characters, it's been so long that I don't even remember the characters, or the challenges, nevermind the mechanics or the tactics. I remember couple being very close at the end, which I could try to finish before 2.5 run.
EDIT: after couple hours of investigating what the hell have I've been doing, I have two characters running still. Pi, F/C/M, (NR) Archimandrite with scrolls, wands and boots/gauntlets and she's apparently standing before the final battle at ToB. And Natural Redux, F/M, (NR) Favored of Bhaal with only scrolls and she's in Irenicus Dungeon currently. Kayla the Blade killed Melissan after couple reloads, so you can move her normal run to Hall of Fame @Harpagornis
Hall of Fame is updated @histamiini. Oh, and nice to see you are rolling again! I am still not in the mood for BG as there are too many other things to do. But if i will ever return i may join poor @Vynn and his poverty madness. ToB still refuses to get beaten...
So after figuring out the game some time I, somewhat foolishly, jumped right on the battle of Throne of Bhaal and the treaded Solars with PI. My plan was to use Sim + Time Stops to hack them out. Buffed up, invisibility and started the battle. Balty attacked Bodhi and lured everybody onto a big mass, where as I escaped on top of the room. Cast Simulacrum, and just when Sim was casting Time Stop, one Solar got a whiff of me, and of course before Sim had time to stop time, Solar attacked me with a dispelling missile, and without Reflection Shield, my Sim disappeared. There was no way of escaping the Solars now. I pretty much froze, I should have used my Time Stops, casted uninterrupted from scrolls, I may have recovered and beat the two Solars. But I'm far too rusty atm, Balty died and everyone then just ganged on me. I should've probably used Harm tactic, and at least had a Physical Mirror on to stop the dispelling Solar missiles. Either way, Pi dead, and buried.
Caeli (7/7 fighter/illusionist) cleared ice island and most of baldur's gate. I've been fighting all the mages even though I don't need to. My basic strategy for mages is to put up a spell protection (minor deflection or minor globe) and use monster summon wand. I also run around corners or through doors into buildings a bunch to dodge spells. I tried playing more offensive with spellthrust and remove magic, but i found it worked fine to be more patient and focus my spells on defense. It seems like it'd be a LOT harder for a non-mage with no monster summoning wand, especially without cleric or druid summons either. Also damage spells are way less good on LOB – you need consistent damage output over time to kill stuff, you can't just blow it up fast with a few spells – so i feel like killing stuff would be rather slow without my fighter levels.
Caeli now has a save of 0 vs. spells just from levels, racial bonuses and gear. gear: drizzt scimitars, +2 protection ring, helm and cloak of balduran (also carry non detection cloak), +2 longbow, speed boots, legacy of masters, elve's bane, everymemory, meta spell neck. carrying backup jewelry: free action ring, fire resist ring, greenstone neck, shield neck, fireball neck, invis ring, and some extra high value jewelry/gems to sell in dragonspear since it takes your gold.
Caeli had a pretty easy time fighting the group at the top of the iron throne. i lured a few at a time down the stairs. when i ran out of spell protections i left for an inn and got all my spells back, twice (could have done it without resting using a bunch of greenstone amulet charges, and more monster summon wands, and more arrows or damage wands).
went to candlekeep, got the tomes and some loot (you can rest in the first room you get teleported to, so it's no problem to put up buffs and invisibly run through traps safely, get enough knocks, etc). i wanted to kill prat for the axe so i can carry fewer arrows and save inventory space. then i went past stuff invis but cleared a few dopplegangers at the end of the level before prat so i'd have space to retreat and lure enemeis (i left the elminster group alone).
On Ice Island a while ago, Caeli was extremely careful to scout everything, trigger all traps, rest, clear winter wolves and polarbears, rest, then carefully pick what order to do the fights to have enough space to be safe (to dodge spells around corners without running into other enemies). Caeli was scared of the first fight with 3 mages so she picked off others first to create a safe loop she could run circles around. The caution worked out well. Keeping up spell protections and some summoned monsters killed everything. I had one death because, late in a fight, i underestimated acid arrow damage and didn't think to remove it with a potion. i got hit with 2 acid arrows because i didn't think i was in danger and the mage was out of bigger spells. i was just drinking heal potions and died way faster than i expected. totally my fault. i think that was the only death there. (i'm playing minimal reloads. i won't use strategies like use paralyze wand to start the first and just reload if they make their save.)
For Prat, Caeli decided to be brave. After scouting the level, she started the fight without clearing any spiders or basilisks first. She wanted to test her power. The fight started off well with Caeli running around corners to dodge spells and getting some damage in while the first round or two of summons distracted people. There's not much danger to show herself briefly with shield, mirror image, stoneskin, and either globe or spell deflection. But then some summons got charmed, feared, confused or something and went and triggered some spiders, most of which kept teleporting on Caeli. To deal with the more difficulty fight, Caeli drank potions of regeneration, heroism, strength and invulnerability. A spider poisoned her and she used elixir of health. While kiting and summons wandering around, more spiders got triggered, around 6. Caeli hadn't killed anything yet, and was taking some arrow and spider attack damage now and then, but had successfully avoided the most dangerous spells. Caeli retreated up the stairs and was followed by two spiders, which she was killing just fine when Prat came up. Caeli wasn't scared, she summoned more monsters and figured she could finish prat off without his friends. Prat went invisible and ran away deeper into the level with the dopplegangers Caeli had skipped. So Caeli finished off the two spiders and went back down and eventually killed everyone with more kiting (she also lured a couple more spiders up the stairs to kill them easier).
But, no +2 returning throwing axe! Caeli had to go look for Prat. She had detect invis + mirror image on a sequencer but had no idea where prat was. She went invis and searched the whole level (with dopplegangers) and couldn't find him. She gave up and returned to the start and rested repeatedly. She went back down and Prat hadn't returned to his starting location, but she eventually found him on his original level but lost in the tunnels. Caeli started fighting him but he went invisible. She cast detect invisibility but he'd already run around a corner. Caeli cleared the remaining spiders and the basilisks so she'd have the whole level open to fight Prat instead of Prat running into other enemies. She still couldn't find Prat though. She went back and rested a few more times, then came back. She found prat in another hiding spot in the tunnels, ran up invis right next to him, attacked him once, and then did detect invis immediately (his precast spells from SCS include improved invis). This time the detection hit and he was apparently out of invis potions from the earlier fights (i think he used 2. not sure though.) He didn't go invis again, and didn't cast much, just died to one use of monster summoning and Caeli's blade, long before her spell protections ran out.
Caeli took Duke Eltan to the harbor master. The situation is dire, but Caeli decided it's time to go adventuring elsewhere. She feels confident she can get back in time even if she's gone for a few months... She's heading off on a sea voyage! Then she'll be raiding the gnoll stronghold for the tome, exploring the lighthouse, clearing ulcaster and firewine ruins, picking a fight with the ogre mage by melium (she tried him at lower level, before nashkel mines, and had to ran away), and looking around to see if there's any other particularly dangerous encounters left (e.g. red wizards in the forest). She also aspires to rob the silvershield estate and explore more of cloakwood. Then, finally, she'll see how Durlag's Tower goes before returning to the main plot.
I'm a lot less experienced than some of you guys. E.g. I've only ever done Durlag's and Werewolves once before, and that was without SCS or LOB and with 6 high level characters, and it was a few years ago. I didn't remember half the quests in BG city very well. I know the early game better but not as well as the real veterans here. I played through BG1 back when it originally released, and some more when BGEE first came out. I also played around half of bg2, IWD, and planescape torment years ago. More recently I did one full playthrough of bg2, tob and dragonspear, but with a full party, no mods, and mostly core rules except i did the first 75% of dragonspear on insane without the damage boost, then i lowered the difficulty and rushed through the ending because i didn't like my party that much anyway, so i didn't want to spend a lot of time on them. I had just rolled a new sorc for dragonspear and grabbed some kinda random companions, then decided i didn't like my party – especially the goblin shaman is really annoying with the modern political stuff about racism. But the main issue was i wasn't happy with how they were handling fights cuz I'd just carelessly grabbed some ppl, so i thought about what party i wanted and got some other characters, but then they were kinda underleveled (i also skipped a lot of side quests in dragonspear. but i did the majority and SoA and i think pretty much everything in ToB, not that you appear to have much choice in ToB.)
BTW, in 2015 I wrote some long, detailed notes on my mostly blind bg2 core rules playthrough (full party, no mods), trying to minimize deaths and reloads: blog post covering my bg2 playthrough up through part of the underdark with a cleric who dueled to mage at 11 (and kicked out all his companions and had intentionally saved up a ton of scrolls and gold for buying more, and learned so many spells – some of them more than once – that he finished the duel and reached mage level 12 immediately without fighting).
I'm a lot less experienced than some of you guys. E.g. I've only ever done Durlag's and Werewolves once before, and that was without SCS or LOB and with 6 high level characters, and it was a few years ago.
Best of luck @curi. If you're planning on taking on SCS/LoB werewolves I fear you're going to need that .
I finished the werewolves @Grond0! Cleared the ship a few enemies at a time carefully. Karoug dead first try (1v1), no problem. Kaishas second try. Mendas was easy.
details:
before karoug: cleared the ship out a few guys at a time. rested a bunch at the cabin. no problem. for the top level, the mage followed me down stairs without any wolves on my first try to lure something. i killed the mage with one monster summon charge and no spell protections, just dodged everything with the stairs. next i pull i got one wolfwere + karoug, so i killed the wolfwere and left. went back invis and got the balduran sword and other loot (i used one monster summon to distract the wolfweres while i looted and went invis again. the traps hurt some but i was expecting traps and had enough buffs). left again and prepared for Karoug. there's still 3 wolfweres on the top level i'm just gonna ignore.
vs. karoug: dual wielding sword of balduran and werebane +1 (no proficiencies). used stoneskin, fire shield, blur, mirror image, protection from evil, draw upon holy might (bhaalspawn power), and potions: speed, cloud giant str, heroism, power, defense, regeneration. i used some magic missiles and ice wand during the fight, and one monster summoning (they can't hurt Karoug, and Karoug didn't attack the summons much, oh well). thaco -2 and 2, dmg 24-30 and 23-26 (to get those numbers, i took the in game stats and added the anti-lycanthrope bonuses from the weapons and necklace). AC -12 (-15 vs slashing due to my belt, and another -2 from protection from evil.). i didn't even get around to using my 3x flame arrow i memorized or my 2x acid arrow sequencer.
i had 5 more heroism potions and i know they stack, but i didn't want to do it that way if i didn't need to. in general, i think stacking multiples of the same effect, from two of the exact same thing, is kinda cheap and probably shouldn't work in general, so i prefer to use one each of a variety of potions. i forgot to use absorbtion potion, and he hit me a fair amount, so that actually would have helped a lot at preventing most of the incoming damage and making it safer.
i did die once on easier enemies in the ship because i didn't know vampire wolves had paralyze... oops. wore free action ring for them after that.
i didn't remember the plot very clearly so i used know alignment on Kaishas (evil) and Dradeel (good). Dradeel just left without helping though, lol. I also used clairvoyance on both island maps right at the start and it shows the second ship to the east with a "Kaishas" label. i think i did all the side quests.
I left the island without fighting Kaishas, then reloaded to try the fight. First try I forgot to renew DUHM right away. I kept the extra guys away with summons while 1v1ing kaishas with my buffs (except no potion of power cuz i only had the one, but i used absorbtion potion here.). Second try I counted my attacks more carefully to know when to throw in a spell, and i renewed DUHM right away, and i won one or two rounds after the second DUHM anyway (better attack roll luck i think).
Since I didn't use any arrows on the island, and brought too many wands, i left behind the staffmace +2 and a pile of 22 heal potions (i rarely use heal potions and i have 12 extra healing potions now and my potion bag is full without including those 22 heal potions). no big deal.
mendas mage form was easy. seeing a mage, i left and got spell protections at the inn. he came out of the house and i had globe of invulnerability and he mostly ran around while i attacked him. i used one arrow of dispelling at the start, but he cast a new mirror image after so it took a while. then i went to the inn and set up for mass buffing to fight a highly regenerating werewolf, came out and killed him no problem. didn't even take damage.
then i go in his house to kill the other guy and there are two loup garou in the house. is that a bug? i only saw mendas and that other guy i talked to, two people not three. looking online i think it was a bug that somehow added an extra one because i killed mendas separately i guess. anyway i still had most of my buffs but they didn't want to come out of the building and i didn't want to fight 1v2, so i tried wand of paralyzation. i quickly paralyzed one and then focused on killing that one while having to recast stone skin and mirror image and drinking a few heal pots. when there was one left i paralyzed it in a few tries and then easily killed it.
next: random adventures outdoors. should be pretty easy at this point, but I wanna go try some areas i don't remember well and see how hard some of the fights are/aren't. i like exploring with clairvoyance. then firewine and ulcaster probably won't be that hard either, although it may be harder to find somewhere convenient to rest than it was with the werewolves. (i'll travel to rest if i have to but it'll take extra time). Looking forward to Durlag's Tower (though i hope i can find a good rest spot so it's not too tedious) and to Sarevok fight. Also looking forward to bag of holding and ammo belt in SoD... I've acquired around 15 invis potions so far (old discussions i read suggest i may need 100+ on belhifet, and that you get most of them in SoD).
I finished the werewolves @Grond0! Cleared the ship a few enemies at a time carefully. Karoug dead first try (1v1), no problem. Kaishas second try. Mendas was easy.
I left the island without fighting Kaishas, then reloaded to try the fight. First try I forgot to renew DUHM right away. I kept the extra guys away with summons while 1v1ing kaishas with my buffs (except no potion of power cuz i only had the one, but i used absorbtion potion here.). Second try I counted my attacks more carefully to know when to throw in a spell, and i renewed DUHM right away, and i won one or two rounds after the second DUHM anyway (better attack roll luck i think).
Well done @curi. I agree that Karoug and Mendas are not too hard, but you found Kaishas easier than I expected. You mentioned that you were able to leave the island initially without fighting her - how did you manage that without the map?
Comments
P.S. Even though @Vynn is lacking time he has already beaten Illasera, Gromnir and Yaga-Shura with his no-reload poverty druid. Awesome. Maybe poverty is the only real challenge for you @histamiini as well...
After doing Circus which was ridiculously easy at this point, started chapter 3 with the price of 60k. Went onto the Bodhi's lair invisible, and picked up Mace of Distruption and improved it with Cromwell and I was completely broke. Back, PfU and cleared the place with the Mace and skelis, Bodhi was just waited out. Crypt King was easily smacked and found Namarra, which I had forgotten completely. Silence should be useful tool for breaking some dialogue scripts. Also got another level up to 15/15 which meant I now had five top of the line skelis.
Time to put Namarra to a work immidiatelly. Temple sewers and tried to Silence them, but it didn't work. So I summoned 5 hasted skelis, buffed and quickly ganged on the mage, then cleric and after that all others. Seven Vales was done the same way too, first the mage, then Pooky and rest. Risling tried to escape again but I didn't allow it. Apparently Namarra's Silence only works against red circles, where's Cleric Silence works against everybody.
1. Why you just takes 10 slashing damage from Bone Fiend, while my fully buffered up Inquisitor takes at least 22 with 11 damage bonus;
2. Why you can hit Belhifet with Martyr's Monringstar +2( a +2 weapon, Belhifet can only be hit by +3 weapon) and cause 35 crushing damage, while I have to use Dragon Blade +3 and only cause 21 damage;
In my last play(only LOB, not SCS), the battle against Belhifet is the most critical one. I have 4 archers to deal with minions only, and have my Inquisitor to deal with Belhifet. All my archers get at least ++ ranged weapon proficiencies and armed with +2 arrows and bullets, event though, my killing speed can't event catch up the spawning speed, so I have to use summon monsters for distraction, because my Inquisitor takes at least 45-55+ damage from Belhifet, if my tank is crowded by minions, blood could drops too rapidly. The entire fight last totally 2 hour on game time, and takes me 14 cups of Goblet, the bodies of summon monsters and fiends pipe up and litter the floor, until my frame rate drops to 15FPS, a really hard battle. I'm very curious how can you event mange to clean the scene, judging from the data seems the game you are playing have the difficulty greatly reduced, can you make sure the LOB setting really takes effects at the time?
- Martyr's Morningstar can be made to function as a +3 weapon by casting Enchant Weapon on it.
- From your screenshot you were attacking with 24 strength using a weapon you had specialization with. I imagine Natural Redux had 25 strength and grand mastery (and was using a crushing weapon that Belhifet doesn't have resistance to). There are also various items that give damage bonuses that could push damage up to 35 with a morningstar.
- I can't though understand why no damage bonus would be shown when taking hits. @histamiini is it possible you've ticked the gameplay option for no difficulty-based damage increase?
Natural is currently at Brynnlaw, farmed Gauths to 6M xp so I got 9th level spells and a Planetar. Also killed all the Cowled Wizards at Athkatla. Turns out guards will attack them but they don't attack guards. Got few high level spells and first time ever killed Zallanora.
But I haven't tested it, might do a bit later.
I use a full party and while I respect being clever and ruining a tough enemies day with a chromatic orb or a feeblemind, I have been forced to use those tactics in the past when I wasn't strong enough to win in an all out fight. Now after years of playing and optimizing I thought it would be cool to just tank the dragon head on and kill it before it can kill any of my party members. LOB and SCS combined give dragons some serious oomph. I was using potions of wind giant strength (24) on minsc and my main character so my thac0 was in the negative numbers. I probably landed a decent amount of blows. Still, it's hard to say how much HP they have unless someone here uses near infinity and can check. Personally I have never used it but maybe I should look into it. If you are correct then the shadow dragon would have had 1,520 HP. Pretty monstrous but fitting for one of the largest and strongest enemy in the game.
When you go up against a lich, the hardest part is breaking down it's protections but once you have done that the extra HP doesn't really matter because you can just beat them into oblivion and they can't cast anything because you are hitting them so much. A dragon is all about brute force and the more HP it has the more super powered attacks he will get off before he dies. LOB makes dragon fights much more fun but it doesn't do much for liches. It also makes Beholders even more annoying because their eye stocks spam so much longer.
Shadow Dragon: 1529 HP
Firkraag: 1736 HP
Nizidramanii'yt: 1880 HP
Adalon: 2366 HP
Good hunting!
Spell Revisions and Item Revisions would add to the difficulty of this challenge by removing some of the more overpowered options. But I still have to mention that this challenge is already stupidly challenging, and making the challenge more difficult is crazy.
I set SCS as hard as it can go with the exception of a few item tweaks that go against my enjoyment of certain character classes. With reputation lowered to 1/4th, potion drops discarded and the asking price from the shadow thieves being set at 120,000, the economy is actually pretty solid for the first time. The only self imposed rule I follow is that I can't steal from venders because it's implementation is terrible and I will reload if any of my party members die in a fight. This forces maximum strategy and makes for a very fun and rewarding challenge. Pushing it further would probably not be fun to me at this point. I don't like to kite enemies or use exploits and it's certainly possible to avoid that kind of behavior even under these harsh conditions. It just means that some time and effort must be spent to re-adjust to the higher level enemies and the large HP pools, new strategies must be formed plus item and character class synergy must be maximized while having some RTS understanding regarding the environment. SOD is great in my opinion but LOB mode really gave the entire series a new boost of fun and challenge.
While I admit, as a gamer who fights everything and often uses brute force for my own personal enjoyment, the game can be slow progress wise and it can feel tedious at times but I think even that will work it's way out of my trilogy runs as I remember encounters in this mode and quickly deal with problematic fights in the future.
This is the Final Red Dragon on the upgraded Abizagal lair entrance fight. Check the dialog box for the HP total:
Here is the final shot of the carnage after victory.
This fight really makes you work for your victory. Despite having 10APR with mislead and critical strike these bad boys were immune to backstab and critical strike. I still managed to kill one of the dragons with my FMT during my timestop traps and then the other 3 dragons needed to be taken out using the brute force method. The green and red dragon's would heal themselves to full HP once their HP hit 50% which added even more time to the fight. All things considered you need to land about 10,000 points of damage through dragon protections to finish this one up. Probably my favorite fight of the game so far.
EDIT: One thing that did strike me as odd this play through was the final battle with Abizagal. I always remember the improved battle having two dragons but this time it had three for some reason. Is this a bug or did someone patch it to be even harder?
However: Nice to see that you seem to had a lot of fun playing around with some "cute" dragons - keep going!
P.S. The poverty madness of @Vynn playing Totemic Druid continues. Sendai still has to be beaten...
Caeli got max level (7/7) before doing Nashkel mines. She killed Shoal the Nereid and a couple carrion crawlers, then basilisks, a few quests, sirines, durlag basilisks. and a few ankhegs and random things. I also cheesed Drizzt early – I watched the gnolls kill him because he's apparently bugged and can't attack them. My proficiencies are 2 scimitars, 2 longbow, and 2 two weapon fighting. I pretty much ran away from all low xp enemies because they aren't worth killing on LOB. Mulahey was easy by triggering him and running out the door, then peak back in and shoot a fireball and leave again. He can't target me with improved invis, and was weaker than me in 1v1 melee, so I didn't even use summons. I killed all his friends that way and then fought him. It was fun killing the bandit camp by running around with 100 fire resist, speed potion, and fireball wands. (That wasn't very safe, I died a few times before figuring out how to do it better, but I wanted to blow them all up at once for fun.) I skipped everything in cloakwood (free action ring + invis) until Drasus. I killed him and his friends to see what my character could do and test what was safe. The important things were luring the fighters away from the mages and killing them first (with monster summong wand), then dodging mage spells by going in the building's door. I ran through the mines with invis and mirror image to reach Davaeorn.
Davaeorn, it turns out, is hard. If I use protection from magic scroll, I don't have enough buffs to fight very well, and his spells still kill my summons. If I don't use the scroll, he's very dangerous and has Remove Magic, and if I don't kill him fast then a bunch of guards come. I had to find a good strategy! This is important because if you can get through Davaeorn pretty easily, then you can get access to all the resources in Baldur's Gate quickly instead of having to farm a lot first. Mulahey isn't that hard (at least if you abuse the doorway) and you can use invis and free action to basically skip the bandits, cloakwood forest and the earlier cloakwood mines levels. So with a good strategy on Davaeorn you can rush to Sorcerous Sundries and other nice things early.
I found a strategy I'm really happy with and made a video to show how it works.
Video Link
My next forum post, right after this one, will have a text description of the strategy. You should watch at least from 2:45 to 9:00 to be able to understand what I mean because the text isn't clear enough about the locations to do things. (You can skip ahead a bit where I'm waiting for all 20 guards to come.) Then the rest of the video has extra details and shows repeat attempts to pull off the hard part.
This is one of the game's hardest fights, but this strategy is safe and easy enough for a no-reload run, after you've practiced it a few times.
The must watch part of the video, showing how to do steps 5-13, is from 2:45 to 9:00. After the first demonstration, I repeat to show the strategy's reliability, how to handle things going wrong, and some details. If you're using reloads, you can probably get it in a few tries without watching the rest of the video.
This works with any class except Wizard Slayer (but it's harder if you can't use monster summong wand). Gear and level requirements are low. Steps:
1) Kill the one guard at the start of the level.
2) Wait for your summons to disappear if you have any left over.
3) Invis + protections + go trigger Davaeorn's traps and then go back to the start of the level. (You can go back to town and rest now, if you play no-reload and want to be careful.)
4) Put on speed boots or speed potion. Optionally put on invis and protections.
5) Run forward and shoot Davaeorn once. Pause.
6) Immediately run to the upper room to dodge the web and stinking cloud. Pause.
7) Don't waste any time. Get around the corner, pause, turn invisible, pause.
8) Run behind where Davaeorn and the Battle Horrors were and go into the little room in the upper back.
9) Position correctly for Davaeorn to teleport to you and leave him in the corner.
10) Patiently wait for all 20 guards to walk over to Davaeorn.
11) Kill the battle horrors who are near the start of the level. Monster summoning wand recommended.
12) Shoot around 18 fireballs with the necklace into the room with Davaeorn and 20 guards.
13) Use protection from magic scroll and monster summoning wand to finish off Davaeorn and possibly a couple near-death guards.
Gear list:
- speed boots or potion (speed boots drop right before the mines, outdoors)
- protection from magic scroll (high hedge)
- 25 charges of fireball (nashkel carnival – sell and rebuy to increase to 25 charges)
- 2 charges of invis (3 if you want to run down to Davaeorn without fighting anything – just use a few protections for traps and it's easy). If you can't cast invis, you can buy invis ring at Ulgoth's Beard or find potions.
- monster summoning wand (Valley of the Tombs). If you can't use this, you need to either leave the battle horrors alone once they are sitting by the level entrance, or find some other way to kill them. You also may need heal potions and decent gear for fighting Davaeorn, especially if you don't have cleric or druid summons either.
Extra Notes:
At the start of the fight, after the web/stinking cloud sequencer, Davaeorn will say "Dimension Door" and teleport somewhere while you're running in back. Then he will say "Dimension Door: [you character's name]" which means he will now teleport to the location where you were standing when that message appeared, so you need to be in position quickly before that message shows up. If you don't move after that message, it will typically put him above you since he can't be on top of you and the game seems to move him up as it's first choice to find open ground.
You don't want to be seen by Davaeorn or the Battle Horrors when you run behind them. Use invis before showing yourself.
You could probably do this with just one invis if you don't pre-trigger the traps. Just ignore the traps, walk up without invis, shoot davaeorn one time like normal, then go up and around, and use invis and go in back. It should be fine to do this all at once, instead of two phases, but I didn't test that.
Once Davaeorn is alone, I'm sure there are other ways to kill him without protection from magic scroll, if you don't want to use that up. But he's one of the game's hardest fights, so there isn't much else to save it for.
Video Link
Anyone know the eta for rest of the 2.5 updates? Waiting those I still seem to have some unfinished characters, it's been so long that I don't even remember the characters, or the challenges, nevermind the mechanics or the tactics.
EDIT: after couple hours of investigating what the hell have I've been doing, I have two characters running still. Pi, F/C/M, (NR) Archimandrite with scrolls, wands and boots/gauntlets and she's apparently standing before the final battle at ToB. And Natural Redux, F/M, (NR) Favored of Bhaal with only scrolls and she's in Irenicus Dungeon currently. Kayla the Blade killed Melissan after couple reloads, so you can move her normal run to Hall of Fame
Caeli now has a save of 0 vs. spells just from levels, racial bonuses and gear. gear: drizzt scimitars, +2 protection ring, helm and cloak of balduran (also carry non detection cloak), +2 longbow, speed boots, legacy of masters, elve's bane, everymemory, meta spell neck. carrying backup jewelry: free action ring, fire resist ring, greenstone neck, shield neck, fireball neck, invis ring, and some extra high value jewelry/gems to sell in dragonspear since it takes your gold.
Caeli had a pretty easy time fighting the group at the top of the iron throne. i lured a few at a time down the stairs. when i ran out of spell protections i left for an inn and got all my spells back, twice (could have done it without resting using a bunch of greenstone amulet charges, and more monster summon wands, and more arrows or damage wands).
went to candlekeep, got the tomes and some loot (you can rest in the first room you get teleported to, so it's no problem to put up buffs and invisibly run through traps safely, get enough knocks, etc). i wanted to kill prat for the axe so i can carry fewer arrows and save inventory space. then i went past stuff invis but cleared a few dopplegangers at the end of the level before prat so i'd have space to retreat and lure enemeis (i left the elminster group alone).
On Ice Island a while ago, Caeli was extremely careful to scout everything, trigger all traps, rest, clear winter wolves and polarbears, rest, then carefully pick what order to do the fights to have enough space to be safe (to dodge spells around corners without running into other enemies). Caeli was scared of the first fight with 3 mages so she picked off others first to create a safe loop she could run circles around. The caution worked out well. Keeping up spell protections and some summoned monsters killed everything. I had one death because, late in a fight, i underestimated acid arrow damage and didn't think to remove it with a potion. i got hit with 2 acid arrows because i didn't think i was in danger and the mage was out of bigger spells. i was just drinking heal potions and died way faster than i expected. totally my fault. i think that was the only death there. (i'm playing minimal reloads. i won't use strategies like use paralyze wand to start the first and just reload if they make their save.)
For Prat, Caeli decided to be brave. After scouting the level, she started the fight without clearing any spiders or basilisks first. She wanted to test her power. The fight started off well with Caeli running around corners to dodge spells and getting some damage in while the first round or two of summons distracted people. There's not much danger to show herself briefly with shield, mirror image, stoneskin, and either globe or spell deflection. But then some summons got charmed, feared, confused or something and went and triggered some spiders, most of which kept teleporting on Caeli. To deal with the more difficulty fight, Caeli drank potions of regeneration, heroism, strength and invulnerability. A spider poisoned her and she used elixir of health. While kiting and summons wandering around, more spiders got triggered, around 6. Caeli hadn't killed anything yet, and was taking some arrow and spider attack damage now and then, but had successfully avoided the most dangerous spells. Caeli retreated up the stairs and was followed by two spiders, which she was killing just fine when Prat came up. Caeli wasn't scared, she summoned more monsters and figured she could finish prat off without his friends. Prat went invisible and ran away deeper into the level with the dopplegangers Caeli had skipped. So Caeli finished off the two spiders and went back down and eventually killed everyone with more kiting (she also lured a couple more spiders up the stairs to kill them easier).
But, no +2 returning throwing axe! Caeli had to go look for Prat. She had detect invis + mirror image on a sequencer but had no idea where prat was. She went invis and searched the whole level (with dopplegangers) and couldn't find him. She gave up and returned to the start and rested repeatedly. She went back down and Prat hadn't returned to his starting location, but she eventually found him on his original level but lost in the tunnels. Caeli started fighting him but he went invisible. She cast detect invisibility but he'd already run around a corner. Caeli cleared the remaining spiders and the basilisks so she'd have the whole level open to fight Prat instead of Prat running into other enemies. She still couldn't find Prat though. She went back and rested a few more times, then came back. She found prat in another hiding spot in the tunnels, ran up invis right next to him, attacked him once, and then did detect invis immediately (his precast spells from SCS include improved invis). This time the detection hit and he was apparently out of invis potions from the earlier fights (i think he used 2. not sure though.) He didn't go invis again, and didn't cast much, just died to one use of monster summoning and Caeli's blade, long before her spell protections ran out.
Caeli took Duke Eltan to the harbor master. The situation is dire, but Caeli decided it's time to go adventuring elsewhere. She feels confident she can get back in time even if she's gone for a few months... She's heading off on a sea voyage! Then she'll be raiding the gnoll stronghold for the tome, exploring the lighthouse, clearing ulcaster and firewine ruins, picking a fight with the ogre mage by melium (she tried him at lower level, before nashkel mines, and had to ran away), and looking around to see if there's any other particularly dangerous encounters left (e.g. red wizards in the forest). She also aspires to rob the silvershield estate and explore more of cloakwood. Then, finally, she'll see how Durlag's Tower goes before returning to the main plot.
I'm a lot less experienced than some of you guys. E.g. I've only ever done Durlag's and Werewolves once before, and that was without SCS or LOB and with 6 high level characters, and it was a few years ago. I didn't remember half the quests in BG city very well. I know the early game better but not as well as the real veterans here. I played through BG1 back when it originally released, and some more when BGEE first came out. I also played around half of bg2, IWD, and planescape torment years ago. More recently I did one full playthrough of bg2, tob and dragonspear, but with a full party, no mods, and mostly core rules except i did the first 75% of dragonspear on insane without the damage boost, then i lowered the difficulty and rushed through the ending because i didn't like my party that much anyway, so i didn't want to spend a lot of time on them. I had just rolled a new sorc for dragonspear and grabbed some kinda random companions, then decided i didn't like my party – especially the goblin shaman is really annoying with the modern political stuff about racism. But the main issue was i wasn't happy with how they were handling fights cuz I'd just carelessly grabbed some ppl, so i thought about what party i wanted and got some other characters, but then they were kinda underleveled (i also skipped a lot of side quests in dragonspear. but i did the majority and SoA and i think pretty much everything in ToB, not that you appear to have much choice in ToB.)
BTW, in 2015 I wrote some long, detailed notes on my mostly blind bg2 core rules playthrough (full party, no mods), trying to minimize deaths and reloads: blog post covering my bg2 playthrough up through part of the underdark with a cleric who dueled to mage at 11 (and kicked out all his companions and had intentionally saved up a ton of scrolls and gold for buying more, and learned so many spells – some of them more than once – that he finished the duel and reached mage level 12 immediately without fighting).
details:
before karoug: cleared the ship out a few guys at a time. rested a bunch at the cabin. no problem. for the top level, the mage followed me down stairs without any wolves on my first try to lure something. i killed the mage with one monster summon charge and no spell protections, just dodged everything with the stairs. next i pull i got one wolfwere + karoug, so i killed the wolfwere and left. went back invis and got the balduran sword and other loot (i used one monster summon to distract the wolfweres while i looted and went invis again. the traps hurt some but i was expecting traps and had enough buffs). left again and prepared for Karoug. there's still 3 wolfweres on the top level i'm just gonna ignore.
vs. karoug: dual wielding sword of balduran and werebane +1 (no proficiencies). used stoneskin, fire shield, blur, mirror image, protection from evil, draw upon holy might (bhaalspawn power), and potions: speed, cloud giant str, heroism, power, defense, regeneration. i used some magic missiles and ice wand during the fight, and one monster summoning (they can't hurt Karoug, and Karoug didn't attack the summons much, oh well). thaco -2 and 2, dmg 24-30 and 23-26 (to get those numbers, i took the in game stats and added the anti-lycanthrope bonuses from the weapons and necklace). AC -12 (-15 vs slashing due to my belt, and another -2 from protection from evil.). i didn't even get around to using my 3x flame arrow i memorized or my 2x acid arrow sequencer.
i had 5 more heroism potions and i know they stack, but i didn't want to do it that way if i didn't need to. in general, i think stacking multiples of the same effect, from two of the exact same thing, is kinda cheap and probably shouldn't work in general, so i prefer to use one each of a variety of potions. i forgot to use absorbtion potion, and he hit me a fair amount, so that actually would have helped a lot at preventing most of the incoming damage and making it safer.
i did die once on easier enemies in the ship because i didn't know vampire wolves had paralyze... oops. wore free action ring for them after that.
i didn't remember the plot very clearly so i used know alignment on Kaishas (evil) and Dradeel (good). Dradeel just left without helping though, lol. I also used clairvoyance on both island maps right at the start and it shows the second ship to the east with a "Kaishas" label. i think i did all the side quests.
I left the island without fighting Kaishas, then reloaded to try the fight. First try I forgot to renew DUHM right away. I kept the extra guys away with summons while 1v1ing kaishas with my buffs (except no potion of power cuz i only had the one, but i used absorbtion potion here.). Second try I counted my attacks more carefully to know when to throw in a spell, and i renewed DUHM right away, and i won one or two rounds after the second DUHM anyway (better attack roll luck i think).
Since I didn't use any arrows on the island, and brought too many wands, i left behind the staffmace +2 and a pile of 22 heal potions (i rarely use heal potions and i have 12 extra healing potions now and my potion bag is full without including those 22 heal potions). no big deal.
mendas mage form was easy. seeing a mage, i left and got spell protections at the inn. he came out of the house and i had globe of invulnerability and he mostly ran around while i attacked him. i used one arrow of dispelling at the start, but he cast a new mirror image after so it took a while. then i went to the inn and set up for mass buffing to fight a highly regenerating werewolf, came out and killed him no problem. didn't even take damage.
then i go in his house to kill the other guy and there are two loup garou in the house. is that a bug? i only saw mendas and that other guy i talked to, two people not three. looking online i think it was a bug that somehow added an extra one because i killed mendas separately i guess. anyway i still had most of my buffs but they didn't want to come out of the building and i didn't want to fight 1v2, so i tried wand of paralyzation. i quickly paralyzed one and then focused on killing that one while having to recast stone skin and mirror image and drinking a few heal pots. when there was one left i paralyzed it in a few tries and then easily killed it.
next: random adventures outdoors. should be pretty easy at this point, but I wanna go try some areas i don't remember well and see how hard some of the fights are/aren't. i like exploring with clairvoyance. then firewine and ulcaster probably won't be that hard either, although it may be harder to find somewhere convenient to rest than it was with the werewolves. (i'll travel to rest if i have to but it'll take extra time). Looking forward to Durlag's Tower (though i hope i can find a good rest spot so it's not too tedious) and to Sarevok fight. Also looking forward to bag of holding and ammo belt in SoD... I've acquired around 15 invis potions so far (old discussions i read suggest i may need 100+ on belhifet, and that you get most of them in SoD).