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I'm kind of annoyed Morrigan failed to learn Spell Thrust because it was the only scroll of it until SoA. Anyhoo. Result of fourth stream:  Almost entirely city questing, lots of exp and loot. Only things left are the 5 ogre mage ambush, the helm & cloak tavern brawl and the iron throne building. Garrick is pretty handy. Wand user, can ID almost everything for free with his lore, contributes extra spells when needed, otherwise spends the crossbow bolts and darts that I find. I just wish his bard song would do more but he's already a very good contributor in combat. If this runs go far I might save the VODs and clip/screenshot notable moments in the run. Suspicious fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Jan 9, 2023 |
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Jan 4, 2023 07:02
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Tyago the Fighter/Druid is trying to wrap up BG1 SCS moves this Ogre Mage ambush to the front of Candlekeep. It's a little tricky zoning in and fighting them unbuffed but not too bad.  We fought Prat and his gang straight up and beat them easily enough.  Slythe and Kristin aren't too much different on SCS. As long as you keep Slythe out of stealth he dies easily enough, and Kristin has the same weaknesses as any other mage.  Sarevok's coronation gets a little chaotic. The Dopplegangers are a little tougher here (one backstabs, another few cast spells) but Duke Janath also casts her own spells so she's maybe even safer than she is on default bg. Belt gets hit by an emotion:hopelessness at some point which I was worried might bug out the interactions here but Janath would still talk to us so we were able to get through this.  I was feeling kinda cocky so I decided to fight the Undercity party straight up. The archer who shoots arrows of detonation got one or two off but we survived that and then got webs and cloudkill going and gradually turned this fight in our favor.  Time to take on the head honcho himself. SCS changes this fight in a few ways. For one thing, all the traps in the temple are completely removed. That's nice because it makes it easier to maneuver. However, SCS adds one ally to Sarevok (Diarmid, just a fighter with a bow/halberd. The guy who runs from you in the Candlekeep catacombs). SCS also gives this fight the gimmick of making Sarevok unkillable until you kill all his allies. I think you can still damage him but he won't die. When his allies die, they spawn as skeleton warriors upon dying. If all this sounds nasty, it kinda is, but kinda not. The added ability to maneuver around the temple really makes it easy to kite around when pressed. So I start this fight off by pulling Sarevok and company with Kagain. I also bait out their remove magic (Kagain eats it). Then I get a wall of summons up to keep Sarevok busy and start trying to go to work on his allies. Angelo is my first target because he can cast spells. Semaj is another target. Both have buffs up so it takes me a little bit of time to get through those and kill them. Unfortunately during all of this Kagain gets hit by a chaos from Semaj. I try with Tiax and Vicky to cast exaltation on him and save him, but both get interrupted before I can complete the cast. Kagain stands near Sarevok like an idiot and gets meleed down. Losing him is terrible and I thought for a moment that might cost me the fight, but I kept my composure and kept summons on Sarevok and then worked on his allies. Tyago took a few hits from meleeing the skeleton warriors and when he got to half health I had him quaff from Durlag's goblet. That was apparently a terrible mistake because I think Semaj hit me with a dispel at some point and so Durlags goblet made me run around in fear. I about poo poo my pants when I realized that. I only had one remove fear memmed and I cast it prefight (very dumb of me - I have two clerics and two mages...should have had more memmed). I had Baeloth chase my character around and hit him with improved invis. That bought me some time while I scoured my inventory to see if I had any resist fear scrolls in my bags. Fortune smiled on me because I did have one and I managed to hit my PC with it. With him back under my control, I was gradually able to finish Sarevoks allies and then the man himself. Tyago is victorious! Onto SOD Honors:  Ironling: Complete Baldur's Gate 1. Strategist: Complete Baldur's Gate 1 with the Sword Coast Stratagems mod. Librarian: Find every stat tome in Baldur's Gate 1. Trap Dodger: Complete Durlag's Tower. Honorable Trader: Do not steal any wares from merchants.  For posterity, it looks like Baeloth landed the killing blow on Sarevok. And SOD rezzed Kagain and left his gear for me so he's ready to continue with me through the SOD prologue. Nice. My Fighter/Druid dinged SOD at level 9 as well upon import so I now have the almighty Ironskins and Insect Plague  I appreciate it if you read that wall of text. I really should just start Twitch streaming these like Suspicious so I don't gotta type so many  . But I felt compelled to run down the final battle since it was an interesting one for me.Now to hopefully not suck it up in SOD. I played through it once or twice last year so have a decent memory of it. Not sure what my party will be there yet. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Jan 5, 2023 |
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Jan 5, 2023 04:23
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Fatboy Slim has been making slow but steady progress though Amn over the past few days. We went and do Tradement because it is pretty easy and I wanted Belm.  Wrap up the Trademet side quests.  There are a few decent things for sale here, and we do a bit of shopping.  Next we roll into the Keep to get my stronghold going.  I buff to hell and just destroy Torgal in about 5 seconds.  After this we get called to do Anomens dead sister quest and walking towards his house I got the event where the shadow thief is under chase by 3 vampires. They were never a threat to Fatboy Slim, but nearly take out Jan.  I go and turn in the gold for the main quest for the xp bump and the items. After that, I went around to various parts of the map to loot certain treasure chests. https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Random_treasure I found a complete list of these places on Reddit and got a horrid wilting (awesome) and a mantle (not great) out of it.    When I did the skinner murder earlier, I never actually went further into his house to deal with the loot / traps / other people downstairs. I was playing solo at that point and didn't want to mess with the traps, so just left it until later. I plan on wearing the armor in ToB, but cannot ever wear it in SoA because I'm neutral good. The Hell trial will change it. Viconia nearly died here to a backstab, but managed to avoid dying with some potion use and the melee burning down the thieves.  More cleaning up random map stuff.  I score a second copy off the guys in the sewers and will have Edwin use it later on once he can clone himself.  Fight well.  Not sure what I am going to do next.
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Jan 5, 2023 08:29
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Dugash and his gang met another assassin in Beregost. The dwarf was dealt with quickly, then Dugash started looking for the person he had come to find at the inn, some sort of potion merchant. A woman had promised Dugash a reward for helping his neighbor return back to normal, stupid man having consumed some dubious potions. The potion merchant demanded money for the antidote. Dugash told the merchant he either gives it to them for free or dies.  He died. Dugash couldn't care less about the neighbors dilemma, but he cared for gold. After returning the antidote the gang found the halfling that the sleazy bard was looking for.  He is super sleazy. The party spent a bit more time in Beregost, picking up a greedy little dwarf who was surprisingly tough. He was obviously only loyal to gold, but Dugash could work with that. Venturing south from Beregost they found a drow woman being chased by a flaming fist mercenary, requesting the gangs assistance. They immediately kill the man for his gear. Dugash figures they could use a cleric and lets the woman join them.  The gang is on its way to Nashkel. Finnish Flasher fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Jan 5, 2023 |
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Jan 5, 2023 09:39
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Result of fifth stream: Exposed Sarevok and now in Durlag's labyrinth, second floor. A couple of scary moments due to sloppiness but otherwise OK. Greater malison + wand of paralyzation is a hell of a combo. Suspicious fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Jan 9, 2023 |
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Jan 5, 2023 15:13
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Fatboy Slim is still rocking through Amn. I remembered these random people existing in the Bridge district and went and smashed them.  We went and did the Planar Prison which went pretty standard.   Jan got called home around this time so we went and cleared up his problems.   Anomen gets made a knight.  We now ditch Anomen, I'm planning on doing Planar Sphere next and don't want to kill Valgyr for his body and I figured I would rather my other party members over Anomen.  My reputation was starting to get high so I murdered a random dude.  Never found this quest to be that hard. You can actually sleep all you want on the main level of the sphere and you will never be interrupted. The other floors you will be interrupted. This means you can go full blast in any of the hard fights and not worry.  Buff up and attack, pop a wand of cloudkill to try to interrupt spell casting and he goes down quick.  I never like these golem spawns because of the tight passages and bad pathfinding can make it dicey and leave someone vulnerable out front or hard to get a heal off. It went okay though.  We say goodbye to Valgyr and get Anomen again.  We head to Watchers keep with the intent of clearing out level 1.  I normally come here earlier on and didn't realize/remember that there were more statues than the two as well as a spellcaster.  The final statue fight nearly ends in disaster as I forgot to enrage Fatboy Slim and Korgan who both got stunned by the epic level mage. Thankfully the mage dies to what I still had on the field and our remaining fighters are able to whittle people down. I had Edwin chug a potion of wisdom and go for a limited wish but realize that we have things under control and decide not to burn a 1 time wish and just ask for a repeatable heal.  Guarded compound was fairly easy. I invis everyone and go upstairs after buffing and had party AI turned off. Jan I had detect traps to give us a clear path forward and I realize at this point the enemy casters aren't using true seeing. Normally if you go invis near a neutral mage they will cast true seeing to reveal you but these guys didn't. I said thanks and parked Korgan, Fatboy Slim and Anomen right next to their mage and insta gibbed him to start the fight. Edwin threw out a couple horrid wiltings and it was over.  At this point I realize something is wrong. I came here at the start of the game and got the cult of the eyeless cutscene and talked to the priest guy to recruit me. I never followed up and went and talked to him and then spent dozens of hours doing other things. When I finally went to follow up on the quest I realized the priest was nowhere to be found. I've had this happen to me before so I always make sure to talk to him during that first cutscene. I check every inch of all 3 temples just in case I was remembering the wrong one. None of the NPCs had any dialogue related to this. At this point I just spawn him with the console command to unstuck the quest.  We go down and talk to Gaal for the key and then kill the Lich for what he is guarding and head to the bridge district instead of doing the rest of this quest.
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Jan 6, 2023 01:49
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New mini update for Fatboy Slim   We buff hard and my plan is to lay some traps where he spawns and then have Anomen and Viconia hit the lich from with Sunrays to bring the fight to phase 2. They never get their spells off because Korgan and Fatboy slim melt him in about 1 second. I have Viconia and Anomen run at this point because they are helpless against imprisonment. Korgan and Fatboy Slim are enraged and need to end this fight quick because it only lasts 1 turn. Another part of my plan involved giving Edwin the Ring of the Ram and Ring of Energy and have him do a simulacrum and hit Kangaxx with 2x Ring of the Ram. I forget to cast simulacrum first before using the Ring so that plan is blown but it doesn't matter anyway becuase Kangaxx is almost dead after 1 cast. I send Fatboy Slim and Korgan in pursuit and Edwin after them to use the Ring of Energy on him, this turns out to kill him and the entire fight only lasted about 15 seconds of actual combat time.
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Jan 6, 2023 02:23
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Jackie Daytona II has delved deep beneath Nashkel. He did admittedly take the scenic route.  After picking up Rasaad, we deliver a letter to Garrick from an adoring fan before sorting out Silke.  SCS can make Silke, like all spellcasters, pretty dangerous but Rasaad's Sun Soul Monk abilities actually prove useful here, interrupting her first spell (even if she does save against Helga's Command. We then just overwhelm her and that's that. You may recall that Colin Robinson met a rather grim fate at the hands of Tonder the unfortunate werewolf. Well this time  Thalantyr's cure actually works, and it's happy endings all around. Including for us since we get a +1 flaming longsword as a reward. (We get this reward no matter how the quest ends, except when it ends with our death of course.)  While we're upstairs in Feldepost's doing some completely innocent and honest pickpocketing, Helga shares a bit more about her life, namely that she has several grown children. So far, I enjoy her writing, if not her soundset. You may also recall the old man Pontag, and his quest to prove that invisible beetles are real, a quest which involves heading south of the Temple Lathander and getting high.  Yup, that is definitely an interdimensional beetle and/or a hallucination.  Pontag isn't convinced and tells us to meet him back here in a couple of days after he tries his next experiment.  We head back to the Friendly Arm Inn to sort out some odds and ends, most notably this trip to the basement, courtesy of Shades of the Sword Coast.  Not much on the basement's first level. (Not pictured; Rasaad getting beaten up by rats.) Things escalate a bit as we head down a couple more levels  Til we hit the lowest level, and find someone looking for some Bhaal-specific artifacts. He apparently hasn't found anything but an old cloak belonging to the Mirrorshades and he decides to take his frustration out on us. We indulge him.  It goes super well. We do win though, and Bentley lets us keep his family heirloom (which is a slightly rebranded cloak of protection, with an additional intelligence boost if you're a gnome. Which none of us are). He also warns us that no one knows what became of the symbol of Bhaal that got hauled out of the old temple down there years ago. We completely ignore this warning, have Neera raised, and head on our merry.  Helga's starting to get antsy about hunting down the Ogre King, so we had off to do that next, though we take a detour to murder some Ankhegs for fun and profit.  We find this shard, about which more later. We stop off in Beregost to commission some new armor for Helga (Breager having gotten the set from Nashkel already), and look in on Pontag, only to find his daughter waiting for us with some bittersweet news.  Seems he died of natural causes, but she tells us he really seemed more lively these past few days, working with us. So we didn't so much doom an old man by indulging his fantasies as we did give him a new lease on life before the end.  The Ogre King and company are camped out along Bear River, just north of the Gnoll Fortress. It's a bit of a tussle but we sort them out and Helga is pleased.  Somewhat ironically she eats a crit from an Ogre Berserker shortly thereafter. It's how she'd have wanted to go. (We totally bring her back though. gently caress you, Iron Party!) We capture/rescue Brage and deliver him to the temple. Mini Quests and Encounters gives us an opportunity to clear his name, though the quest is a bit convoluted (and I think bugged).  It starts with us getting more of the story behind how he got the Bad Sword in the first place. We bimble around the circus for a bit, and take on the search for some guy's missing brother.  This leads us to a cave with a mimic, and a rather nasty fight that drat near wrecks us, and gives me a new appreciation for the Grease spell. We win without any casualties (barely). Helga's armor done broke (thanks to some tweak or another extending the Iron Crisis to metal armor and shields and such) so we go back to pick up her new Ankheg armor, then it's off to the mines.  We run into an inconvenience of ghouls, and pick up the magical amber flower that someone up in Beregost asked us to find. (We're treated to a cutscene where the flower talks to us but eh.)  This is Isra, who we can recruit after we sort out Greywolf, though not this time because RASAAD IS HERE AND IT'S FINE. IT'S FINE.  None face Helga's Hold Person spell and live!  I'm skipping ahead to the third level of the mines. SCS puts some advanced kobolds here as well as a small army of the regular sort, and this can be a bit tricky, but we're frankly overleveled for the mines and we have both sleep spells and a wand of fireballs so it's really not a problem. Mulahey himself eats a Hold Person and Jackie's axe, in approximately that order.  We find this additional note among his belongings, shedding a bit of extra light on the Brage incident. I didn't show it, but the Helm Priest also contributes by confirming that the Cursed Berserking Sword +3 is...a cursed sword that causes the wielder to go berserk. Thank you, the All-Seeing Eye. We take all this evidence to Oublek who gets really nitpicky about how this doesn't TECHNICALLY prove Brage wasn't responsible. At this point, Laryssa is supposed to spawn in Nashkel and point us toward the next clue but either I've got the conditions wrong or something's broken the quest. So we'll see how this plays out. I'm getting a bit ahead of myself though. As we leave Mulahey's corpse (and Xan) behind, we run into a kobold with a magic shortbow and, more importantly to Breagar, some un-crisised iron.  Nimbul's a bit of a nightmare, with stoneskin and spell deflection and sequencers for days. We finally wear him down though. And, at last, we have solved the Iron Crisis and defeated the final villain of Baldur's Gate. Honors... Oh, wait, there's more? Bandits, eh? Fine, Jackie Daytona II is off to murder some bandits.
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Jan 6, 2023 05:30
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Result of sixth stream: Finished Durlag's, wiped the cult and the demon, cleared werewolf island. All that's left is ice island and the thief maze / undercity. I wanted to be done before tomorrow but I ran out of steam and stopped after killing Mendas. Thought I was going to die on the last floor of Durlag's when Morrigan got held in the fight vs Graal and his posse but the AI, instead of hyper-aggroing her just... ignored her until the effect ended. Uh, OK, thanks. Hot action shot:  Hard to tell but his was the mother of all emotion: hopelessness casts in the fight vs Karoug. Every single wolfwere was put to sleep, including the greater wolfwere. That fight was easy. 
Suspicious fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Jan 9, 2023 |
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Jan 6, 2023 06:17
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Fatboy Slim after finishing off Kangaxx decides to go dragon hunting. I load up Anomen and Viconia on anti undead spells for the pair of liches in the shadow temple.  Decide to do something I pretty rarely do which is rest inside a dungeon.  A couple of Sunrays explode the undead real well.  This is a new strategy for dragons in SoA that I just came up with the other day and am trying in a live setting for the first time. I had tested it on a test character and figured it would work but you never know. You get a cleric to cast magic resistance on the dragon to lower their magic resistance since it is considered a friendly spell it doesn't turn them hostile. You then have a mage start casting the level 1 spell blind. Blind doesn't turn a blue circle character hostile unless they fail their save. You can cast it all day on a neutral character and unless they fail their save they never turn hostile. I actually saw further weird behavior with the shadow dragon, where even once blinded they did not hurt hostile.  Being blind made them basically helpless and they died pretty much instantly. I don't think they even buffed themselves.  Edwin sorts out these folks with some horrid wilting.     And now for something completely different. Every little bit of XP helps.  I go and grab these at some point.  I decide I'm ready to tackle the Twisted Rune and march in with a sound strategy that soon goes slightly haywire. I put down some thief traps with Jan and 5 skull traps where the beholder spawns. I buff up and go to trigger the fight, the fight won't trigger. Walking into the other room did not cause any of the enemies to spawn. So I figure maybe I am just standing in the wrong spot. I send Fatboy Slim into the skull traps reluctantly. He had protection from magical energy and would be immune but I really wanted those for popping the beholder. Eventually I try to move the whole party into the room and this finally triggers the encounter.  The traps damage the lich a little bit before 2x sunrays destroy him. Korgan and Fatboy Slim burn down the beholder as quick as possible and then it's just kind of mopping up. The other human guy and the vampire go down quick and I move for the mage. At this point I notice our enrages have worn off and the mage cast timestop. I was worried at this point until I realized she was completely wasting her time. She did a protection from evil a gate and a meteor swarm none of which really concerned me. If she did a stun I would have been in trouble but I keep protection from evil 10' radius up as standard. She's dead basically as soon as the time stop is over.  We went after the cult of the eyeless next and things are going pretty smooth until I forget about a trap and nearly lose Korgan to a flesh to stone / finger of death(not sure which it was) which would have been my first death of BG2.  Sunrays deal with the undead pretty well.  I send Korgan around with the Shield of Balduran and its pretty easy.  Job well done and we consider our next course of action. There is not a lot of quests left in Act 2/3 with Firkraag being the only major one left besides advancing the main quest. I would like to get HLA's for the party before we head off to Spellhold so I might cycle some party members and do some personal quests for people.
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Jan 6, 2023 06:22
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Tyago is in Siege of Dragonspear now Korlasz' tomb has a lot of undead, but big groups of enemies are easy pickings for a party with two mages. Web anyone?  Fast forward to us getting ready to go on a trip with the Flaming Fist. We try to recruit our pal Tiax, but he's having none of it. I'll miss you you crazy bastard. May we meet again in Spellhold.  Vicky, however, is game to join us again  When we finally leave Baldur's Gate we pick up Glint to replace Tiax, and we also find Edwin and Baeloth who are in the same zone. From there, we enter Coldhearth's dungeon. We bring Corwin along too.  Coldhearth's dungeon has big mobs of enemies. SOD in general does a lot of that. It's more Icewind Dale in encounter design than Baldur's Gate. Fortunately with two mages we can control large groups of enemies with slows, webs, and fireballs.  I really do love web. It turns these big mob fights into cake walks.  We pew pew Coldhearth with the lich killing gem that Brother Whatshisname gives us  Then, we meet with Caelar. Words were exchanged. Lines were drawn. Or something. My long term plan is going to be to forgive her though and try to keep her on my side vs Belhifet because that fight is much easier when dealing with Hephernaan instead of her. And she can hit Belhifet too with her sword. We'll see if I get that far before screwing up though. My F/D has become the party tank in SOD. There's really nobody better suited, so he's going to be in the line of fire a bit more often than he was in bg1. Should be fine since he has Ironskins and strong elemental resistances. Whenever I need to get him off the front line my mages can tank in a pinch with their buffs. I'm undecided if I will keep Corwin or pick up someone to replace her. She's working ok for now. I'd ideally like to have another person who can use a good plus three weapon for Belhifet. Iirc there's only 60 +3 arrows in the game or some such. And no +3 scimitars so I don't even know who in my party right now would melee Belhifet lol Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 07:53 on Jan 6, 2023 |
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Jan 6, 2023 07:48
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Fatboy Slim is rapidly running out of Act 2 / 3 content and really wants to hit HLA's before Spellhold. We knockout Sir Sarles quest and keep the real metal for later.  Doing Firkraag next and 2 sunrays makes a nice roast of all the undead but I forgot to screenshot it. Had something weird happen where a stone golem came up to me, ran past all my party members and kept going into the area where all the djinni's were. No idea why.  We send in some Mordenkainen's swords to kill Tazok.  I don't choose the dialogue option to fight Firkraag because doing so causes Edwin to permanently leave. We go upstairs and kill the mage pretty easily then come back downstairs and kill Firkraag. I blind him and with that he falls over dead after a very short battle. Up next I will probably swap some party members around to do companion quests I haven't yet done to try to eek out some extra XP and see if there is any content in the city I missed.
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Jan 6, 2023 09:29
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Fatboy Slim has sailed for Spellhold. We say goodbye to Viconia for a short bit to complete Keldorns very short personal quest.   Any XP in a storm.  Still trying to grab whatever XP I can.  We do a couple of the main quests just for some quest XP.  I finish the fighters stronghold finally.  Not taking any chances I summoned 5 modenkainens swords hasted them and just sat back. The last sword unsummoned just after the last mindflayer died.  We grab Hexxat so I can get her bag of holding and then kick her out and never talk to her again.  We go and get Cernd to do his quest. Korgan leaves our service for this time.   At this point I decide I don't want to do EE content and take extreme measures to hit HLAs and just have Edwin and Jan start mass memorizing scrolls I feel aren't useful. This gets me and Edwin to the mark but everyone else is a few hundred thousand XP behind.    We go into Bodhi's lair loaded up with limited wishes and planetars and really wreck house.   We make one final stop while we are in the docks. 
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Jan 6, 2023 18:03
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Kronar the Sorcerer is slowly making progress. Xzar lived surpisinly long, considering I never made any attempts to keep him out of melee combat. I forgot to get a screenshot, but I nearly died during Dorn's intro event because the game decided to make the 6HP caster stand in front of the rest of the party. Lost 4HP to an arrow before I was able to hide behind my meat shields. Pick up Branwen, ditch Montaron, heading over to the Gnoll Stronghold to grab the gauntlets of dexterity.  Never got this reaction before, likely a consequency of starting as Chaotic Neutral.  Fun fact: It's possible to pay these guys to leave, if you negotiate to half price first. Of course, you would never actually want to do that, but the option is there. Picked up Dynaheir, and then briefly kicked out Imoen to pick up Minsc and send Dynaheir to live on a farm.  I'm sure she'll be very happy.  And with (almost) everyone to level 3, it's time to progress the plot. Kronar the Sorcerer has entered the Nashkel mines.
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Jan 6, 2023 19:36
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Anastasia has been going out and meeting several big goals in Amn. I forgot whether I included the Planar Prison in my last post, but that was knocked out too.  Being able to cast Sunray makes it so we can go and get another casting of Sunray.  We become the heroes of Trademeet.  Vera has been avenged, it turns out Lavok doesn't like being poked with a big Dispel Magic stick.  Your guarded compound should have been guarded better.  The shade lich is cast out by the sun.  And the Unseeing Eye is thoroughly poked out.  Shadow Dragon down to the classic trick of "hitting him repeatedly."   Did you know Kangaxx the Demilich has an attack other than Imprisonment? I do now! That's how Aerie died, but fortunately, Kangaxx also dies shortly after and I can resurrect her.  We just tear through the vampire compound.  We did not, in fact, feel their wrath.  Cats.  Hexxat's recruitment quest is supremely annoying, but luckily I've got just the right tool for dealing with undead.  I finally get HLAs!  Just in time, too. Having an extra hand makes this fight go a bit smoother and helps me pull away the golem when it makes a beeline to try and pound Nalia into the ground.  We straighten out the rune.  The whole thing was a trap, what a twist!  Rude.  And now it's time to go fishing. At present, Anastasia is past Spellhold.
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Jan 7, 2023 21:20
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Updated the OP to here, we've had some good progress the last few days.
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Jan 8, 2023 01:03
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Result of the seventh stream: Sarevok dead, intro dungeon of SoD cleared. Chaos is hilarious. It completely shut down the Korlasz fight before it started. Honors earned: ironling born hero purist librarian trap dodger honorable trader iron party battlemaster Morrigan the Clumsy elf is on her way to stop a crusade. Suspicious fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Jan 9, 2023 |
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Jan 8, 2023 04:18
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Tyago is trying to make slow but steady progress towards Dragonspear Castle. We staked our first vampire  We fought trolls  And more trolls. Trolls are really annoying SOD because they move fast and they ignore your tank and rush whoever is squishy. I wasn't having any of that so I made heavy use of web and slow on them.  We also dropped some cloud kill bombs on a few orc hordes. You may notice Corwin is dead in this screenshot. She got backstabbed by a few Orc thieves that I forgot to detect invis on, and who somehow made it past the web. Oops. She didn't get permaed, thankfully, and the camp is right there, so I rezzed her easily enough.  And fought yet more trolls, and a few Oytughs. And some slimes. Just a nasty little cave.  We battled through some spiders as well and eventually made our way to our first Dragon.  This Dragon I think does not have especially high resistances compared to BG2 dragons. I believe it only has 15% MR and no resistance to a lot of major damage types (fire for example).  We immediately unleashed a barrage of magic missiles and wand of heavens onto this Dragon. It went down very fast  We made our way deeper into these caves and slew many a Bugbear.  We fought a half dragon lady, but half dragons aren't so scary after fighting a full dragon  Then we fought the Neolithid. This monster is very cool. It summons a lot of magical swords, but with two mages I can destroy those easily enough. I tried detect invis on this thing but it didn't make it appear, so I guess whatever it's doing to make itself disappear is either immune to invis effects or it's some sort of burrowing thing like an Ankheg. In any case, it eventually resurfaced and got the business from my party.  And now we arrive to my most dreaded foe, the Shadow Aspect. I could have skipped this. I certainly don't need the sword with my party, and it's dangerous. But I wanted revenge. I don't know if anyone remembers last year's attempts, but my Blade was the furthest I got, and my Blade died to this thing. This time I was prepared with buffs, true sight (on both Vicky and me) and made sure to have a wall of summons up to eat the first few backstabs it tried before I got rid of its mislead. After that, it did go down. gently caress that thing.  After that, we slew a Mindflayer and its slaves. Tyago and party are now resting in the Flaming Fist camp and getting ready to check out Bridgefort. I hope I don't die to that stupid bridge encounter where the barrels can blow up!
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Jan 8, 2023 09:54
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Ignore everything else and snipe the mage. Thats worked for me every time I’ve played SoD. And Morentherene isn’t unique being vulnerable to fire, most of the dragons in BG2 are as well. Its just Reds that are immune to fire, I use acid and magic damage for those.
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Jan 8, 2023 14:23
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biscuits and crazy posted:Ignore everything else and snipe the mage. Thats worked for me every time I’ve played SoD. And Morentherene isn’t unique being vulnerable to fire, most of the dragons in BG2 are as well. Its just Reds that are immune to fire, I use acid and magic damage for those. I think I have some arrows of dispelling so that should probably work. A detect invis and Corwin sniping that mage with those arrows should be enough to quickly take her out. We shall see.
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Jan 8, 2023 20:19
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I forgot, if you surrender bridgefort do they still try to blow the bridge?
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Jan 8, 2023 20:22
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Suspicious posted:I forgot, if you surrender bridgefort do they still try to blow the bridge? I believe they do but I'm not 100% sure on that. I've never surrendered the fort. But I thought I remember reading that you still do the bridge fight regardless.
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Jan 8, 2023 20:31
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Anastasia's adventures in and under Amn continue. She encounters the thread-favorite Spectator and convinces him to just let her have a peek at the treasure.  You'd think people trapped like this would be more grateful for their freedom.  She's got a real Cavalier attitude toward demons.  The fighting pits hold no challenges for the most powerful paladin in the Realms.  Summoning a Planetar in a wizard duel doesn't exactly go with the spirit of a wizard duel, but it does make them go much easier.  More beholders get blown up.  Apparently, 25 Strength does not count as godlike strength.  Adalon gone.  Anastasia goes toe to toe with Drizz't this time instead of relying on summons, and even does it down a person. He still doesn't make it out.  It's risky to change casters now, but she wants to move forward with her Bhaal Buddy.  It's urgent to go in and save the city, so naturally Anastasia went back to the Underdark and killed every single drow there. You know, for  Black dragon lasts about a round.  Irenicus kept hitting Aerie with Power Word: Kill, and after the second time I just had her cast Spell Immunity: Conjuration to stop it.  Oh no, demons, what will Anastasia do against them?  Irenicus also doesn't like being poked with a dispel magic stick.  And here she is getting ready for the next challenge in Throne of Bhaal. Anastasia has killed Irenicus and reclaimed her soul. Honors: Ironwoman, The End of Suffering, Gaxkang's a Wuss, Victory for the Spiderqueen #2
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Jan 9, 2023 05:31
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Softface posted:Honors: Ironwoman, The End of Suffering, Gaxkang's a Wuss, Victory for the Spiderqueen #2[/b] Grats on the BG2 successful Ironman! Rooting for you to go all the way in TOB. Tyago has continued his adventures on the way to Dragonspear Castle  We had to stop a mage from messing with the Bridgefort defenders. Also important because we're going to use the Void shards from this quest to get 80 + 3 arrows for Corwin. Those will come in handy against Belhifet.  We did a few other minor tasks at Bridgefort and then kicked off the siege. We let the Flaming Fist lead the way to eat the first volley from the enemy.  I'm not sure if you can aoe with the Fist around so I played it safe and used party friendly spells like Chaos and Slow here. Between those and Insect Plague I chewed through the enemy lines.  I was nervous that the mage would get off the summoning spell here, but I had all of my party sniping at her. Corwin was using some arrows of dispelling which helped as well. We were able to interrupt and kill the mage. I was careful not to use any aoe spells of my own since I think it's possible for me to set the barrels off as well.  We win  I went back into the camp to tell everyone the good news. Somehow Khalid survived even though I started the attack with the Flaming Fist instead of from Bridgefort. Usually when I do that Khalid almost never survives as the Bridgefort defenders tend to get overwhelmed when they sally forth to help out with the attack unless you choose to join the attack with them instead of the Fist. Edwin and Baeloth both leveled up from the battle. Baeloth leveling up is particularly nice because he learned the spell "Enchanted Weapon". SCS changes how this spell works. I believe in the base game it summons +3 weapons for 24 hours, and you can choose from like a sword, mace, and something else. On SCS, it's simply a 5 round/level spell that makes any weapon of the person it's cast on +3. The base game spell is probably more useful, but oddly enough the SCS version will serve me well here if I get to Belhifet. That's because apart from Corwin and her 80 +3 arrows I have very little other weapons that can harm Belhifet. I have Aule's +3 staff in my bag of holding but my PC has no prof points in Staff. I might throw in into Staff if I get another one before game end. But with Baeloth's spell, I should be able to buff everyone up and have a much easier time damaging Belhifet, provided I can avoid dispels. Tyago is now into Chapter 10 and getting ever closer to sieging Dragonspear Castle and taking on the big bad himself, Belhifet. If I can make it through this last leg of Dragonspear I'll be in pretty good shape importing into BG2 with all the xp I'll have. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Jan 9, 2023 |
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Jan 9, 2023 07:19
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Ginette Reno posted:Grats on the BG2 successful Ironman! Rooting for you to go all the way in TOB. You might look into spears for next weapon proficiencies as a fighter/druid about to get to BG2. Impaler is great, and Ixil's Nail/Spike look amazing for Throne of Bhaal, but I haven't actually used those.
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Jan 9, 2023 10:57
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Skwirl posted:You might look into spears for next weapon proficiencies as a fighter/druid about to get to BG2. Impaler is great, and Ixil's Nail/Spike look amazing for Throne of Bhaal, but I haven't actually used those. I may dip into those. Not sure yet. My ultimate goal for this character is going to be primarily to use the Greater Earth Elemental form. SCS makes it so that Druid shapeshifts are tokens that you can equip as weapon slots. So you can shift back and forth more easily than base bg. The Earth Elemental token gives 50% physical damage resistance when equipped. So a high level Fighter/Druid can combine that, armor of faith, and hardiness to actually achieve 100% resistance to physical damage while those abilities are active. You can't cast spells when in Earth Elemental form but you don't really need to and you can shift out of it if you want to drop an Insect Plague or whatever else. And of course you still have Ironskins too on top of all of that. I think it takes 3 mil xp or something like that to unlock this combination of abilities but if I can make it that far my PC will be very tanky at least to physical damage. Spells will still be dangerous to me which is why I'll be stacking as many elemental resistances as I can for this character. So by late SOA/Tob this character will be in elemental form more often than not. If I get there anyhow. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Jan 9, 2023 |
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Jan 9, 2023 15:45
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Fatboy Slim is still alive and in the Underdark... However Edwin got perma killed by a beholder and it really demotivated me from continuing the character. Meet Neko Case Elven Sorceress.      Melicamp died, I grinded solo until max level and then blitzed through the main quest in about 2 hours. Honors: Ironling, purist, librarian, honorable trader, iron party, battlemaster, roleplayer, a god among men Dishonors: None
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Jan 10, 2023 00:26
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Tyago continues to get closer and closer to Caelar  I forgot about this annoying ambush. Irenicus sends some goons to attack you in a dead magic zone. One of them is a Shadowdancer and will continuously backstab your party. Naturally he loves to target squishy party members and in this case that meant poor Edwin who had no stoneskin up because of the dead magic zone. Tbh I was lucky Edwin didn't get permaed. What I forgot about this part is while you can't use spells you can use wands and potions. I'd highly recommend making your weaker party members invisible for this whole encounter so they don't get killed by the thief. Let some summons and your tanks handle it, they should be able to take a backstab.  Edwin died again while I was exploring the cave with the Mimic in it. He got stunned and I couldn't save him in time. Edwin had a rough time tonight.  Took out some cultists in Kanagrym.  I then rested and decided to use the goggles on the lich here because I wanted his robe (it has 1/day spell sequencer which is very nice). It uhh got a little messy. Edwin got power word killed. Lmao. Poor Edwin. I mostly ended up kiting this thing around and letting my summons keep it busy. I had to resummon a few times because it used death spells and horrid wiltings on them. It actually targeted my pc with a wilting once. I got a little panicked about that and popped a potion of magic shielding to make sure it didn't kill me. It eventually went down, but wasn't as clean a kill as I would have liked. I tried to breach it straight away (one of the nice things about SCS is it makes it so liches aren't immune to Breach. They're still immune to level 5 spells but Breach is an exception) but I think it had a spell shield up and ate the breach. I should have been more prepared for that, and probably with death wards up too on my mages.  I went to poison the water supplies and the mephit appeared and warned the whole keep, summoning Hephernaan and some goons. I was actually OK with this because I'd rather fight near the exit so I can easily get out after damaging Hephernaan. Fighting was a little hectic here, but nothing I couldn't handle. I have access to conjure animals now (6th level Druid spell). I don't remember if this spell is any good in base bg, but it's very strong with SCS. The bears regenerate, have a lot of health, and do good damage to boot. They're borderline overpowered honestly. They're a big power boost for my Fighter/Druid and nothing short of bosses or very powerful enemies can do much to them.  And here's the aftermath of that where I was getting ready to make my retreat. As usual chaos/web/cloudkill did a lot of work for me here.  Gave the crusaders a healthy dose of webs when they attacked the camp as well. I'm probably the biggest bg web whore there is itt, but man does this spell just do absolute work. It falls off a bit by late soa/tob but it's not entirely useless even then, and it's massively powerful in BG1 and in particular in SOD which loves to mob you with huge groups of enemies. Slow/chaos/web and aoe damage spells are extremely valuable in SOD.  More chaos Tyago is getting ready to complete the final assault on Dragonspear castle, and then into Belhifet's plane beyond. Both Edwin and Baeloth have lower resist and I plan to pelt Belhifet with that and then gradually lower his saves and hopefully land some spells on him. Tyago has a point in staffs now as well so can use the +3 staff to hit him if enchanted weapon wears off. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 08:45 on Jan 10, 2023 |
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Jan 10, 2023 08:37
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Ginette Reno posted:Tyago continues to get closer and closer to Caelar I've not tried it in SCS, but I know it works in Vanilla and I'm not sure they'd have bothered to include this in the mod: you know that item the dwarves give you to help you kill Coldheart? It works on this guy too. It absolutely trivializes the fight.
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Jan 10, 2023 15:04
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Softface posted:I've not tried it in SCS, but I know it works in Vanilla and I'm not sure they'd have bothered to include this in the mod: you know that item the dwarves give you to help you kill Coldheart? It works on this guy too. It absolutely trivializes the fight. It definitely works in SCS too.
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Jan 10, 2023 15:06
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Ginette Reno posted:
Did you fight Zhadroth without using The Secret Revealed? If so, thats bold. I don't think SCS changes Conjure Animals, I know the Tweaks Anthology does if you install Shapeshifter Rebalancing. In addition to buffing Shapeshifters so massively to the point that they become OP, it also turns the bears into what are essentially greater wolfweres. Its beyond broken. Updated the OP to here.
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Jan 10, 2023 15:12
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Jackie Daytona II has been questing throughout the Sword Coast.  One of Nimbul's drops is this rather fun thing from Weasels. I give it to Rasaad who won't miss the extra wisdom (I don't think it does poo poo for him unlike later edition monks), and where I will proceed to completely forget about it's 1/day ability to turn him into a somewhat competent fighter. (I don't even know if its speed bonus will work with his monk speed. Guess we'll find out someday).  A tip from a local child (named 'Brat') leads us to this cave north of Nashkel. Now this cave will have another purpose later on, but for now it's the home to:  THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN! Not all that incredible, really. He's been cursed by someone called Madame Potpourri who hangs out at the circus. But he doesn't seem to mind it that much, to the point that when we go to the trouble of acquiring the cure for him, he doesn't even want it. He gives us his old shirt.  It's not completely useless, except, you know, as armor.  Anyway, you may recall that we've been tasked by the leader of the Gorgon's Eye thieves guild to acquire a piece of a magical artifact. This person in the Gibberling Mountains has that piece. She's not exactly willing to negotiate, and also mentions that we're not the first rogues to come after it. It's an early spellcaster fight in SCS but not too bad of one; the snakes she summons are honestly more trouble than she is.  When we return to Beregost, Breagar says his goodbyes and leaves the party. You may suspect this isn't a permanent departure, and you'd be correct. We meet him in the smithy at night to witness him creating his crowning achievement, a Ring of Elemental Control.   It goes super well. We summon Revaniel, a cleric from the temple next door, and she heals him, but is unable to save his left arm. He agrees to rejoin us all the same.  He's taken a hit to his constitution, and can no longer equip anything in his left hand, like shields or rings. (He can still wield two-handed weapons for what are likely engine-limitation reasons). The point of two-weapon proficiency may feel like a cruel joke right now (and he technically shouldn't have been able to take it but Tweaks Anthology's 'weapon styles for everyone' thing overrides that I guess) but his story is quite far from over.  We return to Baldwin at the Gorgon's Eye with news of our success, as well as the news that apparently we aren't the only people after the artifact.  He sends us back to Rigaldo, who sends us back to Nashkel. Apparently Karp the farmer has been selling off magic items and he wants us to acquire a pair of rings of protection she's trying to unload. We're given a certain amount of latitude as to how we get them.  We try to pose as the merchant she was planning to sell them to, but it doesn't go well. She eventually agrees to hand them over in exchange for our promise to arrange safe passage away from the region (and from her abusive husband) for her and her son. Someone in the guild is able to set that up for her and all is well. While we're in the area, we decide to sort out Neera's terrible quest.  It goes super well. We are, at least, spared her little tantrum afterwards.  I don't think I actually showed this at the time, but among Mulahey's possessions was an overture from an organization called the Serpents of Abbathor, part of a major questline from Ascalon's Questpack. It points us to a meeting with Tarash in Beregost. We tell him Mulahey won't be coming to meet him on account of being dead, he takes that news about like you'd expect, and we kill him, netting us a +1 axe for Breagar and a note talking about a planned ambush on the road north of Beregost. We'll get to that later.  Aside from a sleep spell nailing Imoen, Tranzig isn't much trouble, and we're well on our way toward maybe progressing with the main quest again. You know, eventually.  Back to Gorgon's Eye HQ where we're sent back to Nashkel, this time to assist in a robbery of the gambling tents. Our job is to pickpocket some darts of stunning off the gamesmen in each tent, which is trivial for us at this point. We raise the concern that Nashkel, being in Amn, is in Shadow Thieves territory, and Rigaldo agrees with us but says the orders come straight from the boss. It'll probably be fine.  ...it's not fine. We proceed to fight a bunch of rogues up in the city. They're low-level so it's not a big deal, but they do hide and backstab which is annoying. Eventually we find one with some coded notes on his person.  We take these notes to Baldwin who realizes that the attack on the Beregost guild was a ruse, and they're actually headed toward the bandit camp to trade for another piece of the artifact. We're sent there to intercept. We're on the clock now. We are in no way on the clock.
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Jan 10, 2023 15:46
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biscuits and crazy posted:I don't think SCS changes Conjure Animals, I know the Tweaks Anthology does if you install Shapeshifter Rebalancing. In addition to buffing Shapeshifters so massively to the point that they become OP, it also turns the bears into what are essentially greater wolfweres. Its beyond broken. Yeah, I don't see any Conjure Animal changes in SCS, though there could well be a high level buff to bears in general. The 'improved shapeshifting' from Tweak's Anthology is ridiculous for the reasons you state (though honestly if you're running SCS on insane, you can do no wrong with other mods as far as I'm concerned). Confusingly, SCS's own changes to shapeshifting are similar in kind (but not in degree) to Tweaks Anthology's, but I don't think it implements the Greater Bearwere summons. Spell Revisions makes extensive changes to summoning spells, which I'll probably go into greater detail about later since I'm mostly playing Jackie as a summoner.
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Jan 10, 2023 16:00
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Softface posted:I've not tried it in SCS, but I know it works in Vanilla and I'm not sure they'd have bothered to include this in the mod: you know that item the dwarves give you to help you kill Coldheart? It works on this guy too. It absolutely trivializes the fight. I did. I actually forgot that even works on him. Good to remember for future runs. Because SCS makes liches Breachable they are actually beatable without cheese so I've traditionally just beaten this guy the normal way. Iirc he doesn't throw up the same level of crazy defenses that bg2 liches do. I think he'll use a spell shield/stoneskin and that's about it. Were it a bg2 SCS lich he'd have every defense under the sun up when you fight him but SCS doesn't affect the AI or spell choices of mobs in SOD I don't think. biscuits and crazy posted:Did you fight Zhadroth without using The Secret Revealed? If so, thats bold. You may be right. I forgot that I do have Tweaks Anthology installed, but I don't have every component from it. I know I don't have the Weimar version of Shapeshifter Rebalancing (or at least, not all of it) because I have the version from SCS installed instead (which is basically a watered down version of the insanely OP Weimar mod version). For example I think with the Weimar version of Shapeshifting you can cast spells while shifted which I definitely can't in my mods. But I checked the readme and it looks like that component does change that spell so it may be that the SCS Shapeshifting component overrides some but not all aspects of that mod. I know SCS specifically has its own Shapeshifting component that was designed to be less broken than what the Weimar one does.
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Jan 10, 2023 16:01
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Ginette Reno posted:You may be right. I forgot that I do have Tweaks Anthology installed, but I don't have every component from it. I know I don't have the Weimar version of Shapeshifter Rebalancing (or at least, not all of it) because I have the version from SCS installed instead (which is basically a watered down version of the insanely OP Weimar mod version). For example I think with the Weimar version of Shapeshifting you can cast spells while shifted which I definitely can't in my mods. Assuming you installed SCS after Tweaks Anthology (which is the recommended order), it makes total sense that SCS's shapeshifting would overwrite Tweaks' version, even if you did accidentally check the box for it (which is too damned easy to do) but would leave the spell changes it makes alone. I say roll with it. It's not like druid spellcasting is all that impressive otherwise, even with the Icewind Dale spell additions.
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Jan 10, 2023 16:05
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Good lord. This was like my 8th roll. Anyway, pretty obvious what my endgame is here. Let's see if I can get through BG1 and my never-gotten-past SoD with her. 
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Jan 10, 2023 16:08
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docbeard posted:Yeah, I don't see any Conjure Animal changes in SCS, though there could well be a high level buff to bears in general. The 'improved shapeshifting' from Tweak's Anthology is ridiculous for the reasons you state (though honestly if you're running SCS on insane, you can do no wrong with other mods as far as I'm concerned). Confusingly, SCS's own changes to shapeshifting are similar in kind (but not in degree) to Tweaks Anthology's, but I don't think it implements the Greater Bearwere summons. I do use the SCS version of shifting for sure instead of the Weimar one but it's possible that some part of Tweaks' changes from that component still apply to my install. Maybe that's what causes the change to that spell docbeard posted:Assuming you installed SCS after Tweaks Anthology (which is the recommended order), it makes total sense that SCS's shapeshifting would overwrite Tweaks' version, even if you did accidentally check the box for it (which is too damned easy to do) but would leave the spell changes it makes alone. Yeah I did install in whatever the recommended order was, though it has been a while. It is possible I checked a box for something I didn't intend to but I also think SCS' Shifting component overrides or otherwise ignores the Tweaks version I'll probably do a fresh install of some of my mods if/when this character dies just so I can remember what I've installed. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Jan 10, 2023 |
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Jan 10, 2023 16:13
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Ginette Reno posted:I'll probably do a fresh install of some of my mods if/when this character dies just so I can remember what I've installed. Hahaha yes I've definitely played the "did I actually install that mod or did I just dream I did' game before. I know there are ways to check but 
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Jan 10, 2023 18:04
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docbeard posted:Hahaha yes I've definitely played the "did I actually install that mod or did I just dream I did' game before. I know there are ways to check but It looks like you can actually check by going to the Weidu text file in your BG installation directory. Here's a SS of my mods:  SS rebalancing is listed there for me it looks like. I don't remember installing it but I installed my mods a year ago so apparently I did whether on purpose or accidentally. I think I will uninstall that component when I get to BG2 so that I can use the SCS version instead and just avoid using the spell any more for now since it's a little broken imo. I only recently unlocked it and have only used it on a few fights I was easily winning anyways so I don't think it made a difference in my run either way. Speaking of mods I've been thinking about trying Rogue Rebalancing at some point but haven't yet. It does some interesting things to Thief and Bard kits and a lot of people have spoken highly about it. It's supposed to be pretty balanced and actually nerfs some things even while it adds other stuff Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Jan 10, 2023 |
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Jan 10, 2023 19:23
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Ginette Reno posted:It looks like you can actually check by going to the Weidu text file in your BG installation directory. Here's a SS of my mods: Davaeorn on twitch does Baldut's Gate Iron man steams and has been playing alot of characters with Rogue/Monk rebalancing on if you wanna see how it looks in practice.
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Jan 10, 2023 20:21
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