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Both, definitely.
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Dec 24, 2018 04:12
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Looks like a lot (maybe all, I haven't looked that closely) of G3's mods can be found at https://github.com/Gibberlings3
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Dec 24, 2018 11:50
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JustJeff88 posted:Relentlessimp, could you show me the mods that remove class-based weapon restrictions and increase companion experience to (mostly) match the protagonist's? Those are two of my major quibbles with 2nd edition D&D and the Infinity Engine games, be extension. Tweaks Anthology (I think) has an option for removing racial restrictions on classes and kits. Unfortunately the multi/dual class combos are baked into the engine but there are a few mods (Might and Guile being the one I'm most familiar with) that try to simulate these by adding 'multiclass kits' that add/remove class features to resemble, say, a ranger/mage. I'm definitely gonna roll a character or twenty but I'm not sure what I want to do yet.
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Dec 26, 2018 21:37
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Ulvino posted:Wait, what? I haven't seen any traps in Candlekeep and the only chests I didn't open this run are the ones in the Barracks. I'm not sure if there is a version difference between Android and PC but I think I'm running the latest one. I think that chest in the lobby with the armor and infravision scrolls is technically trapped (in that a thief can detect/disarm it) but I've never noticed any consequences for it going off (and I usually bash that chest open), so I suspect it's there just as a "hey, newbie, here's what traps look like" thing.
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Dec 28, 2018 12:35
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 Critical Mister is a promising young talent in the Candlekeep EDM* scene, but the audiences there, well, they're rats.  So he's decided to set out into the wider world to see what opportunities lie in store. (Also not only did someone done killed his pa, but the assholes at Candlekeep changed all the locks the instant he set foot outside.)  He was given strict instructions to hook up with some aged relations at the Friendly Arms Inn, instructions he promptly ignored to seek out life in The Big City. Well, a big city. Well, Beregost. It's bigger than Candlekeep! (I'm running with a few mods and tweaks and such, most notably SCS on Tactical difficulty.) ___ *Enchanted Dance Music
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Jan 1, 2019 04:26
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Critical Mister's got some no-hopers, jokers and rogues assembled. I'll try not to overdo it, but I do tend toward chattier updates. You have been warned. After hitting Beregost (and, not pictured, robbing the place blind), C.M. and Imoen headed to the Feldepost Inn to look for work and do a bit of shopping. A very little bit of shopping, because even with a diamond and a liberated magic bastard sword burning a hole in our pocket, we ain't exactly rich.  In addition to a glitterdust scroll and the book that Elvenpants next door wants, we buy these Guril berries. Why? SHUT UP, THAT'S-, uh, I mean all will become clear. We also recruit Kagain as a (temporary) meatshield. And speaking of recruits, the real reason we came here first was to pick up some mod-added local talent, starting with:  Vynd. He's a drow assassin who fled the Underdark because he has a heart of gold. Er, a heart that loves gold. He's been cooling his heels in the Burning Wizard and we have to pay him off to get him to join up. (For some reason he refuses to appear where he should and I have to console him in.) And then I make a huge mistake. I send him in, stealthed, to hang out behind Silke in the hopes of catching her with a poison backstab before she can get a spell off. Except, of course, SCS won't allow that because gently caress you, you're in cutscene hell with no breaks to position yourself before the fight kicks off. (It also cheats me out of the extra hundred GP I should get for having high charisma, but whatever.) So instead we end up with Vynd way off in left field for the fight beginning. Fortunately Kagain smashed her in the face (and she doesn't have an convenient stoneskin like half the other mages in the game, thank Christ) and we come through it okay.  There's also this fun interjection when Vynd finds out that Garrick's been waiting outside all this time trying to hire some mercenaries. Anyway, we go in the Red Sheaf, deal with the assassin in there, and pick up our last Beregost recruit:  Finch! She's a hero and a librarian! Most of a party thus recruited, we take care of some important heroic business:  Mug Neera for her gems:  drat near get murdered by wolves on the road north (not pictured, but there was a pack of five of them and then a dire wolf for good measure and then an ambush by two worgs on top of that before we finally got to the Friendly Arm Inn. Nobody died, but it was a close one. Jester song's proving worth its weight in gold so far, though.) Tarnesh goes down like a punk thanks to a Command spell from Finch and a one-two backstab/facesmash from Vynd and Kagain, we recruit Jaheira, and then head upstairs to find...a statue?  The dude in here isn't especially forthcoming (I'm not sure if there are dialogue combinations where he might be) but one stone-to-flesh scroll that I picked up on the way later, and...  And of course I forgot to rest up so we're running on no spells whatsoever. But fortunately for us, he opens with Sleep, and Kagain has a trillion hit points and Vynd is an elf, so we're good. And then we recruit:  Something that I reeeeeeealllly hope isn't a furry sex mod. (I've played with this NPC a bit but not too far in, and it wasn't notably terrifying, but, well, we'll see!)
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Jan 2, 2019 05:01
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Skwirl posted:Does it have Rakshasa immunities? Hahaha I hadn't even thought of that but no, I don't think it does.
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Jan 2, 2019 08:56
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Olive Branch posted:Critical Mister the Jester continues to inspire a new generation of musicians in the EDM (enchanted dance music) scene, picking up a goth, a nerd, and a furry to round out the roadie association. Add one aging hippie and, um, whatever Imoen is, and we've got ourselves a stew goin'! Anyway, when last we left our, uh, heroes, Critical Mister and co. had just arrived at the Friendly Arms Inn. While exploring the surrounding area, Vynd decided to reveal just why he'd left the Underdark behind.  It's hard to argue with his logic. After sorting out Joia's ring, we start to generally head southward. Verr'sza wants to stop by the ring of stones where Gorion died, as that's where the slavers who turned him into a cat figurine were going to meet up. We go there. (For the record, it looks like the only special immunity Verr'sza has is 5% magic resistance.)  Looks like we're in the right place. Thanks to SCS, this guy comes prebuffed with stoneskin which my party really has no way of dealing with.  ...with few exceptions.  Being an eeeeevil monster from another plane, Verr'sza's objections to slavers tend to be more personal than ethical. Most of his dialogue so far appears to center around him trying to sound you out to see just how murderous you're willing to be, and/or taking you to task for not being even remotely prepared to avenge Gorion. (There's also been at least one potential romantic dialogue option, which I am, uh, avoiding.) We head on to High Hedge where, in addition to doing a bit of shopping, we have an opportunity to help out a dissatisfied customer.  Well, specifically she's someone seeking Thalantyr's help for her husband, who's come down with a bad case of werewolf. This is what the guril berries are for. Thalantyr offers three options for making a cure, with varying odds of success, and the guril berries make it a coin flip. The only better odds require belladonna from Werewolf Isle and who has that kind of time?  We also pick up this essential piece of early equipment. I contemplating selling off Evermemory, since I'm not rolling with a proper mage until Imoen dual-classes and bards can't use it (and by then I'll be able to pick up another one), but we decide to hold that in reserve.  Verr'sza makes some light conversation.  Before we can sort out Aiwell's husband, a ghastly groupie takes us out of the running for the Iron Party honor. We go get Jaheira raised.  Verr'sza's not what you'd call a fan of Lathander.  Back to High Hedge. Aiwell's husband lives in the house up to the northwest of High Hedge. Let's see if this potion works!  Welp.  He's not a particularly powerful werewolf, though we'd be hosed if we didn't have any magic weapons at all, which could easily have happened.  Thalantyr rewards us for bringing him the body. (If we'd succeeded, Aiwell and her husband would have given us this sword instead.)  We continue to head south, where we face a Call To Epic Adventure. But Jaheira's getting antsy about getting to Nashkel so we'll come back to this.  AFFAB!  We make it to Nashkel without any real further incident, aside from this assassin. A command spell sorts her out. Critical Mister has made it to Nashkel.
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Jan 3, 2019 11:37
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Vichan posted:...I'm going to regret installing this, aren't I? The BG1 NPC project is, um, a land of contrasts. I kind of can't play without it any more, though.
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Jan 4, 2019 21:35
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So. Uh. I just found out that Beamdog made the jester song break invisibility a couple updates ago. GUESS HOW I FOUND OUT? RIP Critical Mister, having run into the middle of a bunch of goblins screaming WOOOOEEEOOOOEEEOOOO I'M INVISIBLE I'M INVIS oh fu-
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Jan 5, 2019 22:00
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Attempt#2: This is Rayvek because I will inevitably steal most of my character names from podcasts.  She's a kensai who will eventually dual-class to a druid, which requires insane stats. Fortunately, my broken af autoroller is happy to oblige!  It turns out that a quarterstaff-focused kensai doesn't really need to do a lot of initial shopping! So, we do the usual whirlwind tour of all the early areas, but since the BG1 NPC project's come up a bit, I wanted to show off one of my favorite little moments that it adds. Specifically, if you go back to Candlekeep with Imoen in the party...  You get the option to ask to have Gorion taken home for burial.   No mechanical or xp benefits or anything, it's just a neat little touch. As usual, I nip down to High Hedge, skirt the top of the map, and go straight to Beregost. It's by far the safest way to get there (if you don't get a particular random encounter on the way). In addition to robbing the town blind, I start the recruiting process. Now I could go with more or less the same party I had last time, but what fun is that? So, first we pick up:  Drake, an extremely drunk and cynical priest of Tyr. His heart's in the right place, he believes firmly in justice, but doesn't see a whole lot of it being done. He's the only NPC (modded or otherwise) we're picking up in Beregost. After saving Neera's gem pouch (also saving Neera) from spellcasting bandits, we start on our way north. Tarnish isn't a particular problem...  Though we do have to wait for Imoen to sleep it off afterwards.  I don't think I showed this off last time so, while we're in the Inn, we chat with this gnome who wants us to retrieve a historically-significant spellbook from the Ulcaster Ruins. We tell Auntie Jaheira and Uncle Khalid thanks but no thanks, get a fumigation contract in Beregost, pick up some pantaloons, and head south. Our next stop is Nashkel.  Oh yeah, Drake is also Amnish. Which goes over super well with the Flaming Fist Goon Squad on the road.  Speaking of things going super well...  We hit up the circus after that debacle to pick up the fourth member of our company.  It's hard to tell, but this is the aftermath of the Greywolf fight (and also the place where we'll pick up Companion #5, about whom more in a sec). SCS Greywolf comes equipped with an oil of speed, and Quayle managed to hit him with Spook just as he used it, so he ran screaming into an army of kobolds. Even better, while we were finishing off the kobolds, Prism wandered down to give us his death monologue and then wandered back up to die.  But finally kobolds are sorted, Greywolf is sorted, and we are able to do what we actually came here to do: recruit Isra. She's a Sunite paladin, a cavalier to be specific, and probably my favorite mod NPC in Baldur's Gate 1. Finally, we head over to Basilisk Park, though we are in no position to hunt basilisks yet. Instead, we're picking up:  Good ol' friendly and reasonable Shar-Teel. Now, having gathered our party, we venture forth.
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Jan 6, 2019 04:59
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Rayvek the Kensai has solved the iron crisis! Well, the Nashkel-adjacent portion of it anyway. Our first order of business is to get Isra a magic weapon, because the last thing we need is an Iron Crisis Moment happening at the worst possible, er, moment. (Rayvek already has a magic quarterstaff, purchased since we haven't dealt with Silke yet. Drake's got the Stupefier, and Shar-Teel has Varscona. Imoen and Quayle have, well, a really bad time in store if they're forced into melee anyway.) Fortunately, this fellow is happy to part with his magic sword.  Well, that's one interpretation. Normally I wouldn't keep two clerics around at this stage in the game, but with Quayle in the mix, I have a pretty solid debuff machine, between Command and Sleep spells, and I'm sure he'll make a long and valuable contribution to-  Welp. Since I'm kind of making a half-assed attempt at the Iron Party honor this time, that's all she wrote for good ol' Uncle Quayle. Now, I have a lot of other mage possibilities. Neera's just an apology away, Xzar is in the Belching Dragon Tavern cooling his heels, there's Dynaheir once I rescue her, or Edwin if I feel like going into contract murder. There's even Xan if I need someone to cheer us all up. But wait. There is another. But it involves going somewhere...bad.  I wouldn't normally go anywhere near Firewine this early, but thanks to my heavily-modded game, I happen to know there's someone there in need of a rescue.  This is Indira, an elven fighter/mage. I'm hoping she'll be slightly sturdier than an ordinary mage, between the fighter levels and the (not very good) caster-friendly armor she comes with. Her voice acting, as with many mod-added NPCs is, um, not spectacular.  Don't you sass me, dialogue options! Anyway, she'll be wanting a magic longsword too, which reminds me, let's see if the anti-werewolfinator potion works this time?  Nope! I'm beginning to think that Thalantyr may not actually be all that good at snapping people out of magical transformations. Fortunately this probably won't come up ever again.  Yeah, we'll see. We embark on some of the standard lowish-level adventuring, including:  A high-risk/high-reward bit of dumpster diving,  Killing two birds (and one necromancer) with one stone, as the Bassilus bounty is the pretext given for Drake joining up with us. (Here pictured is Drake showing off his liturgical chops.) (Incidentally, thanks to SCS, this fight is unexpectedly tough, as Bassilus has an Aerial Servant that I didn't realize was there til it had drat near killed Imoen. It's hard to tell from the screenshot but half my party's in the single digits of HP at the end of the fight, and it's all thanks to that little bastard.)  Sorting out Silke (not that we'd ever side with her but Drake sort of forces the issue here)  Chatting with Aerie...hey wait a minute! Yup, mod again. She won't join your party yet, but if you deal with the hostage situation at the circus she becomes a temple merchant with some magic weapons for sale.  Yeah, about Uncle Quayle...  We'll, uh, get right on that. Back to adventuring.  Yeah I'm just gonna bring you everywhere with me forever, Shar-Teel.  We rescue Dynaheir and send her on her way (literally, not in the, uh, Edwin sense), and also pick up our first tome.  And that's the Nashkel Mines sorted. Should be smooth sailing from here for a while, provided that Nimbul isn't a problem.  (He's not.) docbeard fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Jan 7, 2019 |
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Jan 7, 2019 05:03
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Rayvek Closes In On The Bandits...But At What Cost? Chalk one up for the Melicamp dies column. Thalantyr continues to bat a big ol' goose egg when it comes to non-fatally reversing transformative curses. Rayvek and company return to Beregost to sort out the usual post-Nashkel business, meeting up with the Flaming Fist, Elminster turning up to be unhelpful and vague, etc.  But there's also this, the quest hook for the biggest quest in Ascalon's Quest Pack, the Serpents of Abbathor. (Well, technically the first quest hook was a note we found in Mulahey's lair telling us this dude would be waiting here at night.) The Serpents, a duergar cult of some description, sent an emissary to meet with Mulahey to get in on that sweet sweet Iron Throne action. Their offer was rejected with some prejudice, and Tarash here decides to shoot the messenger. Meaning us. This can be a pretty tough fight but fortunately Drake nails him with a Hold Person and that's all she wrote. Among his belongings, we find...  A clue! That someone called (sigh) Bashrik Sparklehammer is going to be targeted for an ambush on the road north of Beregost. The next time we go to this area, there's a cutscene. There's nothing to be done about the ambush except find poor old Sparklehammer's diary, and his, er, sparklehammer. (Which Drake is now wielding, it being a slightly better warhammer than Bassilus had.) That's it for this sidequest til we hit Baldur's Gate proper.  Moving on. There are too many T- names in this goddamn game. Tranzor Z or whatever goes down like a punk, while we wait a year for Indira to sleep it off. We then head north to bear witness to the aforementioned assassination, kill some more ankhegs, beat up a little girl for some fishermen (the part where we threaten some fishermen for the little girl is still pending), but mostly we're on a shopping trip to Ulgoth's Beard.  Rayvek now has the second best weapon she will use for a very long time. We also pick up the Greenstone Amulet while we're in the neighborhood and Imoen helps herself to a five-finger discount Ring of Freedom. We start to explore Peldvale and Larswood in preparation for taking down the Bandit Camp. We run into some Black Talon Elites, as usual, and as usual they're a massive pain in the rear end, but nothing we can't handl-  Well, poo poo.  Fortunately, there's another mage we can recruit not far away. Oh, goodie. (Actually, he turns out to be a godsend when we head back for town to lick our wounds and...)  Normally these assassins are in Gullykin, just like the Amazons are in the Valley of the Tombs. But thanks to the miracle of SCS, they can show up as ambushes pretty much anywhere. Usually at the worst time possible. Like now. I apparently didn't get a shot of the aftermath but suffice it to say that, while we all lived, it was pretty drat close. And it wouldn't have been even remotely close if we hadn't had Baeloth and his full complement of spells on hand. Nothing too exciting to report otherwise, we rested up, sorted out some equipment issues, and cleared out the rest of Peldvale and Larswood and are now poised to take on the Bandit Camp.
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Jan 8, 2019 04:13
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Short update this morning since I had some time to kill before work. And speaking of killing... Rayvek Has Murdered (Most Of) The Bandit Camp Before we actually hit up the bandits though, we decided to take a detour to the Valley of the Tombs for the monster summoning wand. On the way we run into the other assassin ambush.  Fitting I suppose since we'd run into these ladies in the Valley in an unmodded game anyway. Aside from Baeloth eating two backstabs early on, this fight goes pretty well for us. As, indeed, do most of the Valley fights.  With few exceptions. (Goddamned Ogre Berserkers.) We send Drake, who was apparently just one week away from retirement, off to the Tyrran Precinct in the sky, pick up Branwen, and go to fight some bandits. Well, I say some. Because the way SCS mods the bandit camp is that they sound the alarm when they catch whiff of your party. So instead of a lot of small skirmishes culminating in a boss fight in Tazok's tent, you, uh, get to fight pretty much everyone at once. In some ways this is an obvious challenge, but in others it's honestly easier because you can make good use of crowd control. Which basically means Baeloth is the MVP here between webs, fireballs, summons, and the odd dire charm, though a holy smite from Branwen doesn't go amiss either.  There's still a bit of mopping up to do, and we still have to loot the place, but I'd say that went pretty well. And Imoen's ready to dual-class to mage. (NPC "Retirement" Count: 3.)
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Jan 8, 2019 12:34
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Congratulations to you folks hitting endgame! Rayvek...is making progress. Before we go muck about in the Cloakwood, we decide to fight some basilisks for fun and profit.  Branwen is not what you would call stoked to return to Petrification Central.  Shar-Teel on the other hand, seems perfectly at home. A backstab with the Dagger of Venom does for Mutamin; it doesn't kill him outright but the poison keeps him from casting anything til it finishes him off. Shar-Teel does admittedly spend a bit of time in a rather statuesque pose; I thought she'd have time to run off while the basilisks focused on the protected-from-petrification Isra. I was mistaken. (I'm choosing not to think of this as a character death, so one stone to flesh scroll later and she's back with the gang.) Some number of dead basilisks (and some mouthy adventurers) later, and we're off to the Cloakwood.  Another Ascalon-added sidequest, this one pretty straightforward. She'd like us to find her son, Perwell, who's been kidnapped by bandits.  If you have Jaheira in the party (and the BG1 NPC Project installed) there's a peaceful solution available to this confrontation between Huntly McGee and the Druid Vengeance Squad, but we don't have Jaheira in the party. Also Rayvek is like three levels from going druid. Also gently caress this guy. We pass through the rest of the Cloakwood areas without much incident, see the sights, murder the Shadow Archdruid (hey, Rayvek ain't a druid yet), kill some wyverns, the usual.  These four are more a speedbump than a challenge at this point, what with my new tactic of throwing wave after wave of summoned critters at anything that can cast spells and then locking down the entire area with webs and such. Rayvek now has some shiny new boots.  Perwell is in the cells on the second floor of the mines. I think if we're eeeeeeevil, we can ransom back to his mum ourselves, but we're not, so we tell him to wait for us outside.  The fight with Hareishan and a million billion guards is made slightly more challenging by SCS but it's not a big deal in the end. (This screenshot is a bit after the fact, as you can tell from the high-larious guard dialogue.) We did open with the old summons-and-web trick and dealt with stragglers as they appeared. The biggest issue was a confused Shar-Teel doing her damnedest to kill Baeloth. (At least we think she was confused.)  I love this dialogue. So. On to Davaeorn. SCS enhances this encounter too, mostly by making the Battle Horrors show up whether you trigger the traps or not and having some reinforcements pile into the basement at an opportune moment. For some reason Davaeorn doesn't throw quite as many spells around though he does still teleport around like an rear end in a top hat.  In any event, Isra nails him with a crit. He dies. We flood the mines and meet up with Perwell outside. He agrees to follow us back to the Friendly Arms Inn, which should be a straight shot...  A straight shot through...  gently caress you, Cloakwood. We get there in the end, though. And now Rayvek and Company Are Off To Baldur's Gate.
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Jan 10, 2019 03:08
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Looks like Softface and I are in about the same stage of the game! Rayvek has also been clearing up wilderness areas. Among other things. We do start with a shopping trip to Baldur's Gate to pick up some equipment, spells...  and the Dexterity tome.  Stuff like this is why I ultimately can't hate the BG1 NPC project. (The gift she gives you is basically a reskinned Amulet of Protection +1.)  We then take a side trip to Iceland, courtesy of ShandalAir. We deal with most of the mage battles with the one-two punch of Shar-Teel backstabbing them and Baeloth throwing wave after wave of summoned cannon fodder at them.  It's a bit hard to tell since it all happens offscreen, but if you check the combat log here, you can basically piece together what happened: Cuchol cast a Skull Trap point blank at a skeleton warrior that Branwen had summoned earlier and killed himself. We don't get any XP for this death but I was laughing too hard to care.  poo poo. I forgot to disable this. So, one of the things that the Unfinished Business mod can "restore" is a completely unnecessary second level for the Ice Island caverns. It's mostly empty aside from a few traps and some winter wolves, no treasure to speak of, an absolute waste of time. But it's not a big deal, and it does make the final fight against Dezkiel a little more interesting, with his pair of snow golems. They, and he, aren't much of a threat though, and I pick up the Stoneskin scroll for Imoen.  gently caress you, old man. I'd feel worse about being ripped off if I weren't gonna rob him blind later.  One of the big reasons I like Isra is her writing just after the Cloakwood mines, where this kid who's had a romantic idea of fighting monsters and righting wrongs her whole life comes face to face with a more institutional form of brutality, and it really shakes her. The writing here does a good job of taking everything seriously without just turning maudlin or grim.  Not every mod is as well-written though, as we'll see as we get further into the Stone of Askavar quest, which this little encounter kicks off. The stone golem here is the only real threat.  We pick up this clue, which sends us to Nashkel. We'll get there soon enough.  Baeloth apparently loves the smell of spell components in the morning.  Here's Cearwin, the main questgiver for the Stone of Askavar. The story is simple. There's this Stone. Of, one presumes, Askavar. It's some sort of powerful magical artifact that Banite cultists are searching for. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to track down five missing talismans which will in turn allow you to find the Stone, ideally before the forces of evil get their hands on it. It's possible that this will also restore the world's missing commas. After this, we get on with the aforementioned deck-clearing in the western wilderness areas. At this point in the game, nothing much in these areas is a real threat to us, though sirines are annoying and the SCS-enhanced ogre berserkers (who get the actual berserk ability) pack a mean punch. I didn't bother screenshotting most of this...  ...though Branwen's reaction to meeting the Doomsayer was, I thought, worthy of documentation.  We end this update as we began it, with a tome.
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Jan 11, 2019 11:27
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Angry Lobster posted:It's really unfortunate, I've never seen this guy do a vorpal effect nor I've seen it documented. Still I have fight Cheesetriangle will be able to go the distance. Even with the way it ended, getting into ToB with a solo barbarian is no mean feat.
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Jan 12, 2019 11:20
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Meanwhile... Rayvek has finished up her wilderness gallivanting and, er, retired another companion. (Spoilers: It's Branwen.) Having mopped up the eastern Sword Coast we still had a few areas in the west to deal with. Starting with the ruins of Ulcaster.  That's a lot of kobolds-  Great, now everything's going to smell like charred kobold for a week, thanks Baeloth  SCS makes this otherwise unremarkable fight a bit more of a challenge, giving him a bit of rejuvenation when he's about to die. It also 'advances time' after the fight is over, though I'm not sure what the point of it is.  You may recall a gnome in the Friendly Arms Inn who wanted us to track down a lost spellbook. It's here, just past the ranting revenant.  The vampiric wolf at the end of Ulcaster gets buffed quite a bit, getting a lot more hit points and a few spells, including a fear-inducing howl (fortunately Isra can cast Remove Fear a thousand times a day at this point) and the ability to summon a bunch of undead. Not a big deal at our level though. (Pretty much everyone's at, er, if there were a level cap we'd be at it.) On to Firewine, and what may be the single scariest encounter in the game...  If you don't have an arrow of slaying. (Though you need to be careful; I'm not sure if this is one of SCS's new 'features' but Kahrk is sometimes immune to the arrow. I think this is down to one of the thirty-eight trillion buffs he gets to precast, and it seems to be Protection from Magic Weapons that does it. We threw wand fodder at him til that wore off, and only then fired the arrow, and that seemed to do work just fine.)  Then it's down into the Firewine Dungeon, or as I like to call it, A Lot Of Free Fire Arrows. As an aside, imagine if you will, the Firewine Dungeon with its respawning bullshit, except instead of kobolds you get a bunch of drow and high-level orc spellcasters. Who, again, respawn. There's a reason I don't have Dark Side of the Sword Coast installed.  We don't have another arrow of slaying for this ogre mage, but Shar-Teel makes do. Now, you might be asking, why didn't you just pop in from the Gullykin secret passage, kill the ogre mage and the other wizard, and call it a day? Yeah, about that...  gently caress you, SCS. Normally there'd just be the Spider Woods (and Durlag's Tower) to sort out yet, but the Stone of Askavar mod adds a couple of overland areas, one of which we're going to visit next. This is probably the most dangerous part of the mod aside from the final battle, for a couple of reasons.  First, it's full of the mod's signature enemies: Teldorn Fighters (who are basically just mid-level fighters, not a big deal), Teldorn Archers (who are essentially Black Talon Elites, but still pretty manageable since it usually only throws one or two of them at you at a time), and Stone Golems (who will murder the poo poo out of you). Second, see those pillars? They throw lightning bolts around, so you need to stay on your toes. Third, there are a few other random monsters here, including:  Fortunately, just the two. Thankfully most of the enemies are scattered enough that giving Shar-Teel the boots of speed and having her run around like a backstabbing fiend proves a viable strategy.  This tower at the center of the map is the reason we're here. Inside we find...  A fight! Shar-Teel suckerpunches the wizard while the rest of us deal with the stone golems.  And we recover our first talisman. The talismans are ring slot items, so if you were looking for an extra ring of protection or elemental resistance, you're in luck! The treasure in this mod in general is decent, about what you'd expect at this point in the game anyway. (It does like to hand out Robes of the Evil Archmagi like candy though.) The second talisman is in another new wilderness area at the south end of the map. It's a basically empty forest, a few spiders (and web traps), but nothing much to speak of except for this encounter:  These guys are adventurers in the level 6 or 7 range I reckon, so not exactly pushovers but also not exactly a big deal at this point.  Talisman #2  The third talisman is in a previously unavailable cave in the area just north of Nashkel. Inside, it's mostly high level spiders (phase, wraith, and sword), and a lone wizard:  He ain't all that.  Talisman #3. For the last two talismans, we go to Beregost.  One is obtained without any fighting at all by talking to a beggar near the Jovial Juggler, answering his riddle, and then trading him an expensive ruby (available at Feldepost).  This one's actually very nice. To get the last one, in one of the houses in Beregost, we find out that a young lady's sister has been kidnapped and taken just past the Temple of Lathander, right in that little cul-de-sac where the petrified adventurer is.  As usual, the stone golems are the only real threat here.  And a Now that we have all five, we go back to the Nashkel Carnival, talk to Cearwin, and he points us in the direction of the final battle. This battle is a bit of a challenge, and I mean just to find.  It's here, in the Bandit Camp. There are some well-hidden stairs down in the ruins.  Three wizards, two well-equipped fighters, two archers, and a stone golem. We come in buffed, but it's still not an easy fight. But we prevail...  ...and Branwen gets a warrior's death. We recover the goddamn Stone of Askavar. Hopefully we get paid in emergency backup clerics.
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Jan 12, 2019 16:04
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Rayvek the Kensai has completed (most of) her business in Baldur's Gate. So, with Branwen sent to whatever the Forgotten Realms equivalent of Valhalla is, we welcome Yeslick to the party, and tell him not to worry just how much blood is on the standard waiver of liability that we make him sign. He's a bit lower-level than the rest of the party (5/5 Fighter/Cleric while everyone else is somewhere between 7 and 9) but we can work with that. Before we go to Baldur's Gate, there's one last piece of business to attend to. We return the Great Karlini's spellbook to the gnome who hired us, and he asks us to join him back at the stone circles for a demonstration of the "great formula". This doesn't seem like the wisest idea, but for science, we're willing to try, and it might even give us some insight into what happened to Karlini in the first place.  We, uh, think we know what happened to Karlini. We can either let the Balor that our idiot patron just summoned have him (naah), fight the Balor (lol), or offer him our soul instead, in the name of science. This is not as idiotically suicidal as it sounds, as the Balor has been putting up with Karlini rambling on about science for centuries now and he's sick of it. So, after a couple of trivia questions to assure that you're telling the truth about your scientific mindset, he fucks off, and we even get a shiny new shield as a reward.  See? Shiny. We head into Baldur's Gate and blow through the usual sidequests.  Shar-Teel fails to understand the fundamental premise behind picking someone's pocket. But maybe she'll get it right next time.  Nope.  We also make some progress on the Serpents of Abbathor sidequest. If you'll recall, the Serpents came to our attention when we found a dead messenger among Mulahey's belongings, with an offer to join forces. We then killed their agent, witnessed an assassination, and collected a diary indicating a meeting at the Temple of Helm in Baldur's Gate. This one. We're directed to the sewers, where some dwarves who are hunting the Abbathor cult are, er, hunting the Abbathor cult.  But before we can get to that, there's plenty to do topside, including fighting alongside Gorpel Hind's band of Blithering Idiots.  Oh no, a basilisk! Why if only some dashing young dwarf had a reflective shield, perhaps one wrested from a devil's clutches.  Shar-Teel: I HAVE PICKED HIS POCKET FOR HIS BOOK OF CURSES. It was necessary to make him explode first. She's getting better, I think.   We pick up the usual tomes in the usual ways, get ourselves poisoned, get ourselves unpoisoned, murder some doppelgangers, and head down into the sewers and also the Undercellar.  Isra is not really a fan of the Undercellar.  These are the dwarves we've come all this way to meet. They send us to kill their opposite number (and the quest-giver for the evil path of the Serpents quest, I think). I don't know if it's actually possible to kill him at this stage, but it certainly isn't if Shar-Teel critical fumbles her, uh, pickpocketing attempt. We deliver the bad news and are told that the Serpents are here to get hold of an artifact called the Gundmagtor, and if you're not really following this plot thread, me either. They send us to a hotel...  Only to find we've been beaten to the punch. Once we dispatch these cultists, we find a note pointing us to their headquarters, one of the warehouses in the southern part of the city.  Not pictured, the five or so more cultists at the opposite end of the building. This ends up being a tough fight, but we prevail, and finally get a clear picture of their actual plans...  Eh, sort of. Next time: Werewolf Isle, Durlag's Tower, and a return to the Nashkel Mines.
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Jan 13, 2019 04:52
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Rayvek has defeated the Serpents of Abbathor, the Werewolfweres of Wolfwerewolf Island, Durlag's Tower, the game-crashing Cultists Of Whosits, and , oh yeah, Whosits. I thought I'd gotten some screenshots of the beginning of the visit to the new Nashkel Mines area but apparently not. But basically the entire area has been reset, and the area outside the mine is covered in traps. We meet up with a fallen Wostek (our good quest-giver) on the way in, and he asks for a warrior's death. We oblige. He also tells us that the Serpents have used the Gungathingie to summon a bunch of dwarven shadows, which sure does bode well for our future. Emerson and the surviving miners have holed up in the side cabin (where you normally can fight some war dogs early on), and he fills you in a little more on what's going on, to the extent that it ever becomes clear what's going on. (This mod is translated from German, but even if it weren't, I think this questline would still be needlessly opaque.) Into the mines themselves. The first level has some more of the same cultists we fought back at the warehouse. Not pushovers, but we usually encounter them in groups of two or three so not really a big deal either. The second level...  Has this bullshit. Those skeletons all have bows with fire arrows, and they'll rapid-fire target someone in your party the instant you spawn in. No one died this time, but I almost needed to dig into the Cleric Reserve List, if you know what I mean. There are a couple more groups of these archers, but this is the largest, and most dangerous one, and after they're cleared out it's pretty smooth sailing.  Once we hit level 3, we meet up with the shadows they were talking about. Fortunately these aren't the undead strength-draining variety of shadow. I think they may be illusions of some kind (though nothing much seemed to dispel them). They're decent melee fighters, but honestly, after all the buildup they got, they're not really much of a threat at all.  There's also some sleeping umber hulks. We elect to allow them to remain sleeping. On to the last level and the little alcove where you normally fight Mulahey, but instead you fight the Big Boss himself, Lugosch. A name I'm not sure we've heard before.  Buddy, if we went into all the things about this that we don't understand... A certain amount of necessary violence later, and...  The quest is solved! The Serpents of Abbathor, Part 1, ladies and gentlemen. (As far as I know, there was never a Part 2.) Moving on. We're in search of a little R&R, and Mendas's proposal for a salvage cruise is, eh, close enough.  Negotiations break down with the Merchant's League. (I can never remember the right option to walk in peacefully.) But we get the seacharts, and soon we're off and...wait, why does this boat have "SHANDALAR CRUISE LINES" written on the side?  Goddammit. So, blah blah blah, we're the peaceful islanders, go kill the bad beasts for us, we're probably not werewolves, etc. We deal with some transparent ruses, I forget to get a screenshot of the Karoug fight but we've all seen this before. We win, lick our wounds, return to town, and...  THIS IS A LOCAL ISLAND, FOR LOCAL WEREWOLVES! THERE'S NOTHING FOR YOU HERE!  We escape, try to talk Kashias down, and end up standing on a pile of bodies insisting that there should have been a better way.  This, right here, gets to the heart of why I don't really like this questline. Like, sure, there's no getting around that it feels very half-assed and thrown together at the last minute, but I hate poo poo like this where the entire conflict could have been avoided with a five minute conversation. Had Mendas shared the plan with us, even keeping the werewolf thing close to the chest, there would have been a reasonable justification to go along with it when we found out the truth. There actually should have been a better way, in other words. Anyway, we murder him. Off to Durlag's Tower next. This is my favorite dungeon in the game, and a strong contender for my favorite RPG dungeon ever, mostly because everything feels like it's placed there with a narrative purpose, and not just "gently caress you, you get respawning kobolds and traps for an hour". We go in, loot the top levels  Including this all-important Wisdom tome that makes Rayvek eligible to dual-class to druid (about which more later), and then head downstairs. The fight with the Prides is easier than I expect, although I get dangerously close to a Game Over when Rayvek gets down to about 12 hp fighting (the power of) Love.  Still, we prevail. The next level's not that tough, though the battle against the five(?) doppelgangers in the bridge room's a bit touch and go. We pick up the insanely good heal item, which both Shar-Teel (who has the anti-fear helmet) and Isra (who has the Cavalier kit and is thus immune to fear anyway) can (and do) use. Next level.  I love this guy. We send the statue warriors up against the wyverns, while the rest of the party (save Isra) hangs back. We send Isra in ahead because she's immune to poison, and also because she can't use ranged weapons. I skip the other two paths down here, because there's nothing I really want from them and gently caress dealing with those backstabbing critters in the hedge maze. Somewhere along the way, Rayvek hits level 9. I was originally planning on dualing her then, but this feels like a really bad part of the game for my strongest melee fighter to become useless for a while, and so I think I'm gonna stick it out til level 13 (knock on wood). I clear out the elemental tunnels and-  HOLY SHITBALLS THEY FIXED THE SCS BUG THAT KEEPS THE TELEPORT FROM WORKING  We're pretty sure this is how chess works.  We hit the last level, and Yeslick really lightens the mood. Monsters are fought, and traps are disarmed. And...  Hello, beautiful.  The Demon Knight goes down like a punk. I've been forewarned about the ways that SCS buffs the cultist fights back in Ulgoth's Beard, so I send everyone in invisible, and kite the assholes around town for the first ambush, and then hit them with something like five fireballs in immediate succession (2 wands, 2 necklaces of missiles, and an arrow of detonation) in the upstairs fight. Along the way I run into some kind of crazy bug where the cultists spam Minor Spell Turning over and over and over in some infinite loop until the game seizes up and crashes. This happens twice. I despair of finishing.  I finish. (Comedy moment: Aec falls, and I start to think it's over, which is good since like half the party is in single-digit HP at this point. Then I see a cultist I missed hanging out in the corner all "'sup?" Fortunately I can mob him with summons til the healing potions kick in.) Next: Endgame, one way or another.
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Jan 14, 2019 02:59
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Rayvek the Kensai has defeated Sarevok and the Iron Throne and completed Baldur's Gate Mostly no mod stuff til the very end. Upon our return to Baldur's Gate from lands far, wide, and annoying, we decide it's high time we infiltrated the Iron Throne, doing a bit of subtle detective work to quietly discover the truth behind their machinations.  Or, you know, murder our way to the top floor. One of those. (This is actually the only time we're seriously challenged on our way upstairs. The funny thing is that Emissary Tar shows up mid-battle to ask for directions. We're...somehow not surprised the doppelgangers got the better of her.)  I mean, we did just kill a demon and then that demon's big brother, but yeah, I'm sure you're the real danger here.  I think SCS adds an extra warm body or two to this fight, but at our level, it's really not a problem. We find out that the Iron Throne head honchos are off to Candlekeep, and Rieltar's son, Sarevok, has apparently told dear old dad that he's already killed us. We return to give Duke Eltan the good news, he teleports us to Candlekeep, all according to the usual-  So, you know how there's an Ogre Mage ambush in one of the houses in Baldur's Gate normally? And you know how SCS likes to move the assassin encounters around? Yeah. We later realize that we didn't actually kill all of them before heading into Candlekeep proper. I think I got a screenshot of the lone invisible ogre mage's buffs all wearing off while he cools his jets outside.  Heh, yep. Poor poor ogre mage. Anyway, moving on.  ...come on, man, have some respect, if not for me then for yourself.  The horrifying truth that daddy was a snakelike alien living inside someone and pretending to be a god is revealed. Or am I mixing my franchises up?  I normally don't bother killing Rieltar and Co. because I tend to just want to get on with things at this point, but I figure Yeslick deserves some payback. We get arrested, but I'm sure that with an even remotely impartial judge it will become clear that we had no choice.  Welp.  Imoen with the keen insights.  Wisdom Tome  Strength Tome, and that's the set.  "Hey, nice work taking out that doppelganger, Shar-Teel." "He was a doppelganger?" (Fun fact, if you kill them before they change, they drop whatever equipment their 'human' form was wearing instead of doppelganger treasure. Not that treasure really matters at this point of the game.)  I love that the doppelgangers just sort of quit trying after a certain point. We make our way outside and head back to Baldur's Gate.  Isra with a bit of editorializing. (She's still not thrilled with the idea that evil can be messy and political and not romantic in the slightest.)  We get arrested by the Flaming Fist, only to find that Rayvek isn't the only person hereabouts with a monster for a dad. Angelo cuts us loose, and we get on with things.  First we kill some mercenaries and rescue Duke Eltan   Then we hunt down Sarevok's remaining allies  And then we crash a party. I can picture it now, this group of armed-to-the-teeth adventurers, whose faces are probably on every wanted poster in the city, show up with an invitation that is probably at this point drenched in blood. "So can we go in or what?"  If you say so, bro.  We wander through the Thieves Maze, because what's one more pointless speedbump. (Incidentally, you can apparently backstab green slimes. Not other jellies though.)  Baeloth lightens the mood.  After Shar-Teel does a bit of invisible stalking, we deal with these fools with the tried-and true technique of fireproof Isra + about 8 fireballs. And then...it's time. We buff up and head on in. I'm not sure of all the details of what SCS does here, but from Sarevok's dialogue it sounds like he's more or less invulnerable til his allies are dead.  Guess not, buddy.  Sarevok Falls! And...scene. ...and...scene? We get a message to go back to the Ducal Palace, because there's a mod I forgot I had installed. It adds a bit of a transition between BG1 and Siege of Dragonspear, and also makes Tamoko a joinable NPC. Basically you get to loot the Sword of Chaos and hang onto it for all of five minutes before you're ambushed via cutscene and robbed, which gives you a hook to go after Korlasz, which prompts the Dukes to send you back underground without Imoen, which conveniently frees up space in your party. I decline to recruit Tamoko, mostly because she's a level 14 cleric (and even my overleveled party is mostly level 10 or thereabouts) and that's a bit much cheese even for me. Also her voice acting is annoying. And so we head back down, and a cutscene or two later, and Rayvek is off to start the Siege of Dragonspear. Honors: Ironling, Strategist, Librarian, Trap Dodger, Honorable Trader, Iron Party.
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Jan 15, 2019 03:02
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Mountaineer posted:Berserker->Druid dual-class is pretty painless too since you're going to get your fighter levels back relatively quickly. The biggest pain point for any sort of fighter->druid dual class is the godawful stat requirements. It's otherwise a very nice combination. Speaking of, Rayvek is getting the band back together. Well, a band. So after a brief interlude where we hunt down the last of Sarevok's lackeys (who surrenders to us almost immediately after we put up anything like a real fight)...  They all lived happily ever after. The end. Sure. Right. Everyone goes their separate ways, as Rayvek and Imoen chill at the Ducal Palace for a while.  Oh, well if the Ducal Treasurer says my money's safe, it's probably fine.  It's probably rats.  Very artistic rats.  And by 'called upon to defend the city' you mean 'falsely* accused of murder and left to fend for myself against a murderous nightmare man? Eh, that probably won't happen to me twice. (*ish)  So remember how Korlasz totally surrendered? I guess it didn't take. Rayvek beats her to death with sticks all on her lonesome.  Oh well, I guess I'll just have to make do with my small fortune in gems and hoarded magic items from the last game. Rayvek sets off into an abbreviated version of the city to recruit some allies and get some stuff and do some sidequests, you know, hero stuff.  DRAKE! Buddy! You're here! And, y'know, alive! (That's not feigned surprise, I honestly didn't realize he had any Siege content.) We also pick up Minsc and Dynaheir.  And Boo, yes.  Verr'sza is here too, and apparently the mod didn't plan for the idea that I wouldn't have recruited or even encountered him at all. Because who would install an NPC mod and then completely ignore it? (He's in the Elfsong. We tell him thanks but no thanks, this time around.)  I love how none of at least this original slate of trusted boon companions in Siege are people that Rayvek has had more than a passing acquaintance with. I don't think she even met Safana. As for the actual roll call from my BG1 party, Baeloth will be available later, Isra, Yeslick and Imoen won't, and Shar-Teel wouldn't except I have a mod installed (of course) that enables her. I think something with it might be broken, or I didn't go through the recruitment sequence the right way, or something, so we'll see if I can actually have her in the party. I'd much rather have her than Safana, though.  Here's another NPC mod, though at least this one has the courtesy to assume that I might never have met the character in BG1. Sirene is a tiefling paladin of Ilmater (with a unique kit to go along with her, though I have her as an Undead Hunter here). I never recruited her because I had Isra in BG1, but she might be an option here.  Mr. Warner, it's such a pleasure to meet you, I am such a fan!  I mean, as long as you aren't an elf who got kicked out of elfland and is now after my soul in order to, um, do something elfy, we cool.  Oh yeah, Skie Silvershield joined the Flaming Fist. I'm sure that won't come back to haunt me or anything.  HE'S A DOPPELGANGER! GET HIM! And we're on our way to Dragonspear Castle.
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Jan 16, 2019 03:16
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bike tory posted:Alternatively recruit her because she's a good mage and can end your ironman run in a single unlucky wild magic roll~ I'm still hoping for a run someday where Sarevok is defeated by the pit fiend she accidentally summons.
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Jan 16, 2019 19:46
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Rayvek's journey to Dragonspear has properly begun. Ah, sweet slumber, courtesy of David Warner. I do a bit of waffling on party composition, and decide to cut Minsc, Dynaheir and Sirene loose in favor of Corwin, Edwin and M'Khiin. Mostly I wanted Corwin and M'Khiin, and I don't particularly feel like trading Drake and Safana in for Glint (though I may end up changing my mind, and in fact Drake's...well, we'll get to that.) And I've never used Edwin in Siege before.  Speaking of Baeloth, dude's fallen on hard times since last we met.  M'Khiin, a goblin he hired to fight for him takes some exception to her work conditions. She's my favorite Beamdog NPC ever by a considerable margin and shaman spells are actually pretty nice at this level.  Corwin is a bit skeptical/racist here. I run into a nasty bug with Drake, where he just sort of stops walking. A lot. To the point of complete unplayability. Some googling suggests this is down to a broken dialogue trigger, but the only actual examples I've found were for other NPCs and I don't feel like digging in and fixing it. So Viconia's with us for now. Gauntlets of ogre power go a long way toward at least letting her equip decent weapons and armor.  Safana finds out the real reason we're keeping her around.  Oh hey, ghost bard.  We surprise some crusaders, who blow up the bridge. Their advance troops try to mop us up. It doesn't go well (for them).  Honestly, I kind of love this idea and want to join up.  But instead we're stuck dealing with this.  Man, between Prism, Mutamin, and this lady, I feel like the general mental stability of scuplters is being impugned.  Guess who has two thumbs and none of my money?  Skie's stint in the Flaming Fist is going well so far.  We get between a vampire hunter and a vampire. We, uh, do not side with the vampire.  Oh, hey, it's Rasaad...eh, who cares? Our last stop before pressing on, on a more convoluted route because the Crusaders blew up what is apparently literally the only bridge in the region, is this cave.  I see you guys are busy, we can come back later.  Once we help him mop up the undead, the dwarven leader asks us to find his buddy Coldhearth, who we're sure isn't a lich or anything.  Welp. We excuse ourselves for now.  It's kind of hard to tell, but (a) there used to be a lot more undead of the nastier variety in that room and (b) there's a wall between us that lets spells and ranged attacks through. There are some skeleton archers stationed on our side of the wall (well, there were) who are meant to provide covering fire when we go into one of the rooms on either side. We...circumvented that strategy. We also find a scrying pool that lets us...  Look in on Imoen having a magic lesson (despite having been quite a powerful wizard who'd gotten her thief levels back at the end of BG1, apparently the 'canon' is that she's in dual class hell right now and that's why you don't get to take her with you).  We also see televised coverage of one of Caelar's rallies.  And Caelar's wizard buddy chatting it up with David Warner. Hmmmmm. And he sure doesn't seem to be referring to Caelar when he talks about his master. HMMMMMM.  We return to spill the bad news about Coldhearth. He, uh, takes it well.  But he eventually is convinced, and gives us this lich-killing rock.  Being a lich, Coldhearth will respawn til we nuke his phylactery, which is in this room. And the rock (which nukes his defenses and weakens him) has three charges, and we really only want to use two, for reasons. So on this, his second spawn, we just run like hell and leave some summons behind to distract him.  We are, thankfully, halfway across the map when he breaks out the ol' Time Stop (!)  There's a convenient rift to the Plane of Fire that we can toss his phylactery in.  He shows up one last time, we nuke him from orbit, and go on our merry. Rayvek is off to the Troll Claw woods. I wonder what lives there?
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Jan 18, 2019 03:33
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Grats! I'll do a proper update later but Rayvek is in Bridgeport and we're about to throw down with the Crusader camp.
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Jan 19, 2019 11:10
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 I don't know, man, if you've gotta go... Rayvek, with Flaming Fist entourage and full chorus of ne'er-do-wells behind her, set up camp in Troll Claw Woods. I wonder why it's called...  Right. Safana's got a returning acid dart and we have about a trillion fire arrows at this point so trolls aren't exactly an issue.  We run into Jaheira and some idiot with an annoying voice. Khalid's not here, though.  The Crusade are camped out here, and you can get in good with them for some worry-free scouting if you rescue their lost patrol.  This'll get us into the creatively-named Bridgefort, but only if we have a wardstone.  Thanks for the warning, lady, but we can handle some spi-  Those are not spiders THOSE ARE NOT SPIDERS  Best time, imo.  I don't know if it's SCS or what, but the old girl here seems a bit more fireproof since the last time we fought her. Thankfully we had a bunch of Poison Protection scrolls burning a hole in our pocket, and between that and the usual 'distract with summons til we're ready' trick, she falls to a couple whacks of the Staff of Striking.  The bugbears one cave over are really not a challenge by comparison.  We find our way into a former Temple of Bhaal, now inhabited by Cyricists...or something else. We also find the missing Crusade patrol and a crazy Bhaal priestess who survived the Cyricist attack.  This half-dragon lady has the keys to their cells. My poison protection scrolls have all worn off by now but I've still got that anti-poison talisman from before, so this shouldn't be a prob-  It turns out not to block poison damage. Good to know. Aside from this, the biggest issue with this battle is waiting out her back-to-back Sanctuary casts where she heals herself back to full health. Moving on...  Oh what the poo poo.  I remember the first time I played through here and I got a sinking feeling I knew what had actually moved in at this point...  Yup. We web 'em in place and murder them with fireballs. M'khiin gets herself stunned but that's as bad as it gets. I was tempted to ignore the Shadow Aspect because it can be a royal pain to fight, but eh, what's life without a little danger in the service of a weapon I don't really have a good use for?  Thanks to some lucky crits, it dies before Edwin can even get his glitterdust off. Though M'khiin once again eats the bad status effect, this time from the trap I forgot was there. We head to Bridgefort where Khalid's taken charge. We offer to chat with his people about the fort's defenses, and in so doing are present for an attack that leaves us all energy-drained. Edwin recognizes the handiwork so we're off to the camp to find the wizard behind it all, and to get a scroll from him by any means necessary.  That was almost disappointingly anticlimactic. Still, Edwin wants him dead, and I figure we either kill him now or later, so Safana stabs him in the face. Then it's back to the fort to sort out a few more things and finally break the siege. Not the Siege, just a little siege.  Khalid gets to chill in a Resilient Sphere because he's a level nothing fighter still. (Even though I did that on purpose I like to think it's a solution that Edwin came up with on his own. It's very...him.)  A certain amount of violence and fire later, and the bridge is ours.  Neera, for some reason, didn't appear properly in Bridgefort so I had to console her in. I don't plan on recruiting her (unless Edwin buys it) but there's her quest to do.  On the way out of here, Rayvek collapses, has a vision of dear old dad's death, and does a bit of impromptu magical redecorating. David Warner shows up to be all mysterious, as one does. Rayvek's Next Stop: Dragonspear Castle. Well, after a few more stops.
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Jan 19, 2019 14:58
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Rayvek and the Flaming Fist have met up with the rest of the Coalition forces, and we can now consult with the finest strategic minds of the Sword Coast.   ...the finest strategic minds. We are in fact tasked with doing some scouting and engaging in a bit of pre-siege sabotage, involving some poison and the aforementioned Barrel of BWOOSH.  But first, antimagic ambush! This would be somewhat more dangerous if the antimagic affected potions or wands.  Caelar's seal lets us talk our way into most Crusade locations without a fight.  Not technically false! There's a lot of sidequesting to be done, both here and in the Coalition Camp. Also a fair bit of loot and potion ammo free for the taking. I didn't really bother with screenshots for most of that, but we exposed a spy among the Coalition (thanks to Safana's compulsive pickpocketing), rescued Skie again, ferreted out a Thieves Guild operation and got them onside, stole a bunch of stuff from the Crusade for a Coalition merchant, played Junior Detective for the Crusade, all the usual Important Hero stuff. Moving on...  Safana gets put in time-out after a vampire makes googly eyes at her.  She then gets put into, uh, a more permanent time-out, having gotten on the wrong end of some undead that shouldn't have been a problem for us.  We do a bit of party reconfiguration. (Viconia's fine, I just decided to swap in Jaheira for a bit more melee power.)  For once we find some druids who don't give us a ten-hour lecture and then try to murder us for walking in the woods.  We talk our way into the underground portion of the Underground River. We decide to explore a bit more before heading down, though.  M'Khiin runs into some kinsmen. They get a bit pushy, we get a bit pushy back.  We help some ogres with a leadership dispute. Turns out her mate, their former leader, is being held prisoner by the Crusade. We head underground. There's a sidequest that involves moving sacks of grain around. We...decline this particular honor.  David Warner pops by to be his usual mysterious and insulting self.  We find a ghost dragon. She's been bound to guard the passage down to Kanaglym, but her heart isn't really in it and her efforts to prevent us passing are limited to saying "no, wait, stop" in a deadpan voice.  Dear Penthouse... This ends up being a big fight against a bunch of dark magicians and a bunch of undead. And Kherrum, the person who did the less-than-perfect binding of the ghost dragon above. She's the most important person in this fight because if you do enough damage, the thing she's using to control the ghost dragon breaks. This is important because...  Ghost Dragon turns up partway into the fight. And if the thingamajigger is broken, then she's on our side, heh heh heh.  Afterwards, we chat a bit and she goes on to a better place. We, too, are soon off to a better place. But first:  There's a lich we can free and then murder. (Note that I had to buff Rayvek's intelligence to get the dialogue option that lets us fight him, otherwise he just teleports away.) This would be a tricky fight if not for the anti-lich rock we still have.  And this would be a tricky fight if we hadn't killed the lich.  We make our way into the Castle Dragonspear basement...and the seal trick doesn't work this time. (Jaheira still admonishes us for going straight for the murder option, because she's Jaheira.) We waste no time getting the food poisoned, going invisible in the process so that we can delay the inevitable a bit.  We find the spirit of Daeros Dragonspear, who (a) gives us some idea of what Hephernaan is actually up to and (b) points out some nice magic armor that's hidden here.  Hephernaan shows up along with like half the crusade. We have to fight our way out, and it's not easy, though it gets easier once we do enough damage to Hephernaan that he teleports away.  We get the hell out of dodge. Fortunately we manage to outrun word of what happened back there and make it back to the camp. Where we're immediately informed that Caelar wants to parley.  Rayvek actually offers herself up for this deal, but is overruled. There doesn't, unfortunately, seem to be much chance to lay out what we know about Hephernaan's actual agenda here. So I guess we're doing this the hard way. Next: Rayvek Does This The Hard Way.
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Jan 20, 2019 18:57
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Rayvek Beat Up The Devil, And All She Got Was This Lousy Murder Rap We go back to camp and find out that we're already under attack. The attacks come in convenient waves, and we get extra troops to deploy against each one.  We face down the trolls with fire-arrow armed archers. This is the only wave I got a screenshot of, alas. The others are wizards (against whom I deploy wizard slayers), some footsoldiers (I send in the rogues), and then a band of adventurers. One of the footsoldiers gets past our lines and everyone screams about retreating but nothing comes of it. After this, we bring the fight to Dragonspear. Now, I've played through Siege of Dragonspear before...up to this point. My last time through, during last year's Iron Man run, my longest-living character died during the siege. Let's see if history repeats itself?  It does not. Caelar isn't interested in surrender, and neither are we, so we chase her inside.  Hephernaan reveals his true colors.  We go to hell.  We answer a fiend's riddle and get this nice upgraded quarterstaff, which we'll get to use for all of one fight. And I won't even use it for that fight because I'll be using the Staff of Striking instead.  We ride an elevator for like a year.  And here we go. It's been years since I've played through Baldur's Gate but I haven't forgotten you, buddy. (Huh. According to IMDB they actually got David Ogden Stiers back for Behlifet. Cool.)  Behlifet's a tough fight, but he falls before repeated blows from the Staff of Striking.  Yeah, it's all you, buddy. We pass from regular Hell to Cutscene Hell. David Warner frames us for murder, we get exiled from Baldur's Gate, Imoen and the classic gang join up, we get ambushed by the Shadow Thieves, and that's all she wrote. Next: Baldur's Gate 2! Dragonsiege Honors: Siege Breaker, Honorable Trader, Iron Party. Strategist, technically though SCS doesn't do much here beyond the standard AI components.
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Jan 20, 2019 21:14
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Rayvek is in Amn The less said about Chateau d'Irenicus the better. It's been a few years since I've properly played BG2, but I still have the entire drat thing all but memorized. I've two mod-related observations: First, the SCS component called "slightly improved starter dungeon" upgrades the random goblin encounters to random duergar encounters, oh and you're not allowed to rest more than once. I do not consider either of these to be improvements, slight or otherwise. Second, the mod Check The Bodies about which I know very little aside from "it adds stuff", apparently believing that this dungeon wasn't tedious enough, put in an extended reminiscence that is one part extended clip show for the first game and one part "let's make the player navigate babby Bhaalspawn through doing a bunch of chores in Candlekeep." Fortunately an option was included to skip the chores, which I did.  Anyway, welcome to Athkatla, Rayvek and assorted bereaved party members oh and Yoshimo the conveniently-available substitute thief. We do what any self-respecting adventuring party would do when dumped unceremoniously in the middle of a big city...we hit up the nearest pub.  Where we find an old friend. We can't recruit Isra just yet, we have to go to the Government District for that.  Man, after everything I went through to get a single Stoneskin scroll in BG1 and now they're just dropped in the middle of the street.  We head off to the circus to rescue Aerie. She's not my favorite writing-wise but at least there's no chance of romance, and she's one of the best casters in the game, so we'll be keeping her around for a while. (Hey, did anyone hear any kind of ominous music?)  Kind of our reaction too, Uncle Quayle.  I think this is Unfinished Business that gives us an extra hook for Kalah's deal.  We head up to the slums to start the next chapter and deal with this bit of, uh, inspired voice acting, before we divert to the Government District.  Goddammit, Viconia, I turn my back on you for five minutes... We rescue her, but do not at this time recruit her.  This woman, being accosted by thugs, happens to be Isra's sister, and the reason she's here in Athkatla. (Isra is from somewhere else in Amn, Crimmor, I think.) We recruit her and start looking into who's trying to put the squeeze on Sister Ghadir-Jysstev and her husband.  We also recruit Jan who, even if he weren't the broken combo that is illusionist/thief, is one of my favorite NPCs in the game. He'll be staying for the long haul. (Man, there's that ominous music again.)  We also get recruited for Valygar's quest, which we'll get to, time and weather permitting.  Finally we make our way to the Copper Coronet, give Anomen a firm handshake and a firmer "no" (at least for now), recruit Nalia (probably only temporarily), and start digging into the sinister slaver dealings here. I somehow managed not to take a single screenshot of the slaver HQ but, uh, we scoured the place clean with relatively little harm done to our heroes. (Okay, now some dude is saying something about overconfidence being a slow and insidious killer. Is no one else hearing this?)  We take the injured Renfield back to the Harpers' complex, which Xzar promptly asks us to infiltrate. Yeah, buddy, we'll get right on that. But first we're off to: Trolltown!  I don't really get why the Yuan-Ti were working with trolls, but then I don't really get why they do anything they do.  We de-charmify Nalia's dad's bodyguard  Forge the best weapon in the game (which no one can presently use), and it's all smooth sailing til the SCS-beefed-up fight with Tor'gal...  Tor'gal hits like a truck but it's really the two Yuan-Ti mages and their summons on top of every drat troll in the hemisphere that cause trouble. Rayvek Is No Longer Pursuing The Iron Party Honor.
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Jan 23, 2019 01:49
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Wizard Styles posted:The Candlekeep chores were the only part of Check the Bodies I got to see when I installed it a long time ago. I still remember that for some reason you're not just spending several days walking around Candlekeep, baby Charname also has a reduced walking speed. Haha, yeah, I was wondering if I was imagining the slower walkspeed. (I only put up with it long enough to trigger the "yeah, I'm not doing any chores" option.) It also gave me a bunch of extra 1/day powers that I'm not touching because even my tolerance for cheese has its limits and giving a Kensai Offensive Spin for no drat reason is a bit on the edge of that (though Improved Haste isn't exactly unavailable to me right now). I haven't really done any of its other sidequests yet; I'm trying to avoid too much mod content til I level my characters up some, since I think most of them expect your character to be a bit higher than the 9-11 range most of my party is in.
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Jan 23, 2019 12:10
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Rayvek Has Gone Back To Her Roots Roots? Get it? Because she duals to a druid in this update...enh. So somehow at the end of the Tor'gal fight, I managed not to save my game before quitting. I distinctly remember hitting Q but maybe there was an ongoing spell or something and I didn't notice that it didn't let me save. So I had to redo it, and that time I came through with no casualties. But of course this is an Iron Man run so the original party deaths stand. So we'll just sort of assume that I raised Aerie and Jan somewhere along the way and that my Iron Party honor is gone gone gone. We return to the city and stop to cool our heels in the Crooked Crane, where we come across this bit of local gossip.  Everyone tells us not to get involved. So we don't.  Upstairs, we find the dude who sold Kalah the lamp, who turns out to be a rakshasha. No relation to Verr'sza as far as I know. We buy the command word for one final wish from him, and I'm sure this won't blow up in our faces or anything.  We also get a hook for a mod-added escort quest which, as I mentioned above, I'm trying to steer clear of for now. Though there is one mod-added quest I can't really ignore; the matter of Isra's sister, who's husband is being targeted by someone. All we have to go on is a set of initials and something pointing in the general direction of the Cowled Wizards...  Who are as helpful as you might expect. But once we go outside...  We'll find out later that this seems to be standard Cowled Wizard practice, officially deny anything and then hit you up when it can be a less official conversation. Anyway, she offers to send us to the perpetrator's house...  Where negotiations break down. We're still not really sure what this is about, but the threat seems to be gone for now, and Isra decides to travel with us for the time being. We head back to the Crooked Crane for one more bit of unfinished business...  You can't tell from the screenshot but Rayvek's rocking a Protection From Magic scroll. (My alternate title for this update was "Rayvek Abandons Honor(s)". Even with the scroll, this fight goes on forever because he has a ton of Protection From Magic Weapons and Stoneskins and at one point he somehow manages to Fear Rayvek in spite of the PFM, so I have to send Isra in (sans scroll, but by this point it doesn't matter much) to do damage control. Good thing too, since I think it's Azuredge, which she's wielding, that actually kills him.  Still, any fight you can walk away from, huh?  We head over to the Bridge District to meet someone in the Five Flagons and get dragged into the Skinner Murder Tour.  We also meet up with a Lathandrite who wants a bit of off-the-books wetwork done in exchange for providing us an alternate route to Spellhold. We don't commit to anything yet.  Welp, nothing suspicious here, we're convinced. (We are not convinced.)  On my way out, after sorting out the murder house, I run into Neera. Well, eventually. I first run into a cutscene where she is supposed to appear and absolutely refuses to, grinding everything to a halt and making the game unplayable. I end up having to dig into it with NearInfinity (the use of which I am absolutely not an expert in) to determine that somehow a global variable got hosed up. No idea what caused it, though I guess that's how we have to roll in modtown.  Raelis sends Aerie a note, so I suspect there's a Planar Prison somewhere in our near future. But not yet.  Instead, we infiltrate the Harpers on Xzar's behalf. We have the opportunity, this time, to agree to work with them to assassinate him rather than just be duped into it, which I happily take, because gently caress that creepazoid. It all plays out more or less as usual except we get handed the Montaron Bird outright instead of finding him.  We could also betray them to him, but obviously I'm not doing that.  Speaking of betrayal, we also infiltrate the Shadow Thieves Guild because, I don't know, we were in the neighborhood. (Isra isn't thrilled about any of this.) On our way to rob the Temple of Talos for Mae'Var, we stop in for a rest. Wait, wasn't this the inn where that rear end in a top hat who curses Jaheira is holed up?  Yup. So now we've got that to deal with. (We deal with it.)  Just in time for Jaheira to run off.  While we wait for her to come back, we get the Unseeing Eye quest, and steal the Talos Priestess's necklace.  Jaheira comes back and drags us back to Harpertown, where Galvarey has decided we're his meal ticket. Jaheira has some objections to this, and frankly so do I.  Dude, we literally went to hell together like a week ago.  A few sidequests later, and Mae'var gets his. Just before this fight, Rayvek hits level 13, and dual-classes to druid.  Yup, it's Raelis Shae time, I guess. Next: Rayvek the
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Jan 25, 2019 02:05
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JustJeff88 posted:You're a brave man, docbeard... Rayvek is going to be nearly bloody useless for a long time. I'm too much of a coward to dual-class; I've never done it in pen and paper 2nd edition nor in any video game. Eh, at least the early levels go by fast especially for a druid, but yeah, it'll be a while until she's anything but an underleveled caster. The Gold Box games let you dual-class too but they weren't even 2nd Edition, I think. And of course multiclassing was completely different afterwards.
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Jan 25, 2019 02:32
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docbeard posted:Eh, at least the early levels go by fast especially for a druid, but yeah, it'll be a while until she's anything but an underleveled caster. Heh, I forgot to account for how BG2 hands out XP like candy. One major quest later and she's back to level 11 and I didn't even abuse scroll scribing (much). Of course, given the way Druid XP works, those last 3 levels are going to take significantly longer to make.
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Jan 25, 2019 17:15
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Keldulas posted:Why'd you choose level 13 anyways to do it at? My original plan was to dual at 9 but that would have had her as a low-level druid going through Durlag's Tower, the fight against the Demon Knight, Aec, the endgame BG1 stuff, etc. which felt like a bad idea for an Iron Man run. Waiting til 13 got me an extra +1 bonus to the Kensai attack/damage bonus (for a total of +4 attack/damage) and an extra half-attack and whatever those 4 fighter levels give me in terms of THACO and such. It probably wasn't worth it but whatevs.
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Jan 25, 2019 21:09
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Rayvek Has Sent A False God To Hell, Sent A Real God To Heaven, And Sent A Prison Warden To...Hell Again, Probably The prison warden was the worst of the lot. By a considerable margin. For those following Project Dual Class, I can't recall exactly what level Rayvek was at the end of the last update, something like 7 or 8, just off the strength of wrapping up the Mae'var questline. Which sounds about right, 60K XP, 3/4ths of which was that last bout of quest experience. My broad agenda, which I pretty much stuck to, was to do the Unseeing Eye and the Planar Prison quests this update.  Though first I decided to check out an unfamiliar underground area in the Slums, and found this delightful fellow. He's got a quest for us to gather fungus from the fungus monsters on the next level. Watch how fast I go. (Hint: not fast. Or at all, at least not yet.)  We abandon these sewers for some other ones, where we find these fine fellows and murder the poo poo out of them.  You'll see here a teleport field (annoying as gently caress), a hidden door we can't open, and a mostly healthy party. If I'd gotten that screenshot like three seconds before, you'd not have seen a mostly healthy party, but thanks to AI scripting everyone who can cast a healing spell runs around like little healbot maniacs after every combat. It's kind of fun to watch.  We meet up with Keldorn, and I make a decision that Jaheira, having recently sided with me against a top secret intelligence network, needs to go into Witness Protection.  She does not take it well. (I wasn't actually expecting her to leave forever, and while I had no plans to pick her up again, since I don't really need two fighter/druids, I'm still feeling a little conflicted. Oh well!) We come up for air, and to check in with Raelis Shae for Aerie's sake (and get the quest to rescue Haer'Dalis).  This reminds me of the time I was playing Oblivion and I'd just gotten back from one of those Daedric towers only to be accosted by an idiot highwayman. DO YOU NOT SEE THAT I AM ON FIRE AND CARRYING THE HEAD OF A DEMON, SON?  This encounter with some vampire thieves proves a bit more of a hassle, and necessitates a visit to a temple to get back some of Aerie's and Keldorn's missing blood and experience.  Raelis tells us a sob story about her missing actor friend and the planar gem he definitely didn't steal.  Back to the sewers, where we find this potion scientist. (He wants us to bring him a bunch of potions. Watch how fast we etc.)  I was not expecting beholders up here. But fortunately I came prepared. (Of note: I did not install the SCS components that 'improve' beholders or their areas. And I sure as gently caress did not install the component that removes the admittedly overpowered Shield of Balduran from the game. Because, and I cannot stress this enough, gently caress beholders.)  We make our way further downstairs, deal with shadows and traps and gas chambers and meet up with Gaal, who sends us even further down to recover an artifact for his, um, god.  Hey, sleeping beauty in the sarcophagus. We'll be back for you later.  We meet monsters, and a talking bridge.  I actually really like this story hook; eternal guardians of a temple so old that the god they worship is forgotten by everyone, even the god itself, and no one, including them, gives a poo poo any more.  We use the power of love on the manifestation of hate, chat up the forgotten god, and get his forgotten rod.  A bit of intrigue and an exchange of code phrases later and we're hip deep in mummies. Azuredge proves to be worth every penny, as do Isra's 20 casts a day of Remove Fear. We head to Beholderville, Aerie cheeses a bunch of beholders with the Shield of gently caress You Beholders...  And we've got the full godrod.  Even with it, the Unseeing Eye manages to get a Horrid Wilting off before its untimely death, causing Nalia's untimely (if temporary) death. Once we sort that out and loot the rest of Beholdertown, we mop up what's left of the cultists and head back to the Temple of Helm to collect our reward, and our next quest.  But first we return the artifact to the forgotten god and his whiny guardians to be destroyed, and thus restore hope and freedom and the name of the ancient god of the sun. It's very cool.  Our next stop is  We recruit Haer'dalis and send Nalia off to the Copper Coronet. She, at least, doesn't storm off forever.  While we're on our way back to the Five Flagons, we stop off in the Government District to meet up with an artist about a contract, and Keldorn insists we meet the fam.  ...it could have gone better.  I feel like you might be overreacting a bit, buddy.  Uh...yeah. Definitely overreacting.  Yeah, sure, buddy. Watch how fast we go.  We take a shortcut through the Graveyard and, oh yeah, she wants to make us an offer. (The paladins in the party really are not on board, for obvious reasons.) We, uh, tell her to watch how fast we go.  We also find someone who got himself buried a bit before his time.  Some doppelgangers hit us in a random encounter. We destroy them with, well, rather than overkill I prefer to think of it as justenoughkill.  We return to the playhouse, the company prepares to return home, and I totally space on the fact that Haer'Dalis is gonna get yanked out of the party with the rest of his troupe. Oh well!  I do not like the Planar Prison. The encounters are both tough and fiddly, but we persevere, and it mostly works out.  We kill the Master of Thralls without too much problem, and the general plan is to let the freed Thralls soften up the Warden a bit til his pre-cast buffs wear off and we can go in and mop up. ...it does not go according to plan at all. Keldorn ate an Imprisonment and Jan and Aerie are killed. At one point I'm sure it's gonna be a Game Over, since it's just Isra and Rayvek against a Warden who hasn't even been hurt yet and a bunch of summoned monsters, none of which are ours. Then, somehow, we turn it around.  I Rod of Resurrection Jan back, he manages to partially debuff the Warden and nails some of the summons with a Hold Monster, and while it takes a while and a bunch of healing potions, at last the Warden falls. (Thankfully, I thought to buy a Freedom scroll a while back. Also thankfully, Freedom scrolls are a thing already thanks to an SCS module that, presumably is meant to compensate for stuff in this chapter casting Imprisonment.)  Isra decides that this is the perfect time to talk about the good ol' days.  Keldorn's a bit disoriented by his trip to Imprisonment Land.  YOU GOT THAT RIGHT, LADY On the bright side, Rayvek is now Level 12. Only...1.2 million XP to go. Next Time: Um...I Dunno, Maybe A Dragon.
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Jan 26, 2019 04:16
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Alas, the only dragon in this update is the way that Rayvek Is Being Dragged In Every Direction At Once. (I am so so sorry.) After Keldorn got a taste of Imprisonment while in, fittingly enough, the Planar Prison, I realized that, wow, he really is just a week away from retirement, and decided to attend to his family problems, namely the dude his wife's been stepping out with while he was away on Radiant Heart business.  He is cheerfully unapologetic and does his best to talk some sense into Keldorn. I send Keldorn off to be with his family, and I'd like to think that Rayvek discreetly placed some literature for a good anger management counselor in his belongings before he went.  Speaking of anger management... We hire him on to do his quest as a diversion before we head off to the Umar Hills.  I...what...you weren't even in the party when we agreed to do that! It begins.  We knock over a pirate hideout behind the Sea's Bounty. Way to hide in plain sight, guys.  We also engage in some epic heroism.  Epic. Heroism.  I have enough mods that add miscellanous quests that I have no idea where this one comes from. This one's pretty straightforward, though; find his wife and reunite them so they can say goodbye.  The sorts of undead this place throws at us aren't a significant threat now, though we still have to keep on our toes for the level-draining and stat-draining critters. Mummies are the most dangerous things here, though, and having a Cavalier in the party more or less neuters them. Well, and the traps obviously, but Jan's more or less on top of those.  Of course.  Of course.  On our way back to sort out Korgan's pals, we find the dude who's been having people buried alive. We also do not REPEAT DO NOT go anywhere near that trapped door right now.  Okay. Now that that's sorted out, we can go off to the Umar-  Or we can do this instead. I don't think I showed off the start of this quest, but it's part of the (it turns out) aptly-named Dungeon Crawl mod. Some adventurers (who aren't us) have been hired to find a lost treasure chest. They outsource some of the legwork to some other adventurers (who are us). Unfortunately, we're not the only ones hunting for this info; we come across the guy who's supposed to have the info being accosted by this lovely group, known as the Shadow Pack (who come across as basically the D&D equivalent of Team Rocket). They kill him but drop a hint of where to go next before teleporting away.  This guy's one of the adventurers we're working with. We're here (well, they are, we're just sort of coming with) to meet up with a captain whose ship they're chartering to go after the treasure chest. We can, if we're total heels, side with Team Shadow at this point. We don't, and they teleport away, never to be seen again.  I hadn't necessarily planned on going with them quite yet, and yet here we are.  And of course it all turns out to be a trap. We're now in the dungeon crawl portion of the Dungeon Crawl mod. The other adventuring group decides we should split up and meet at the top of the dungeon. I'm not even sure what the point of them is at this point; I think we're probably just looking at people from the mod creator's D&D campaign. We make our way up through the dungeon, which is the usual trap-filled monster-filled sort of thing. Monsters are undead, and golems, oh and a lich and a beholder. The lich eats an early death thanks to Azuredge before it can even get a single spell off, and the beholder falls victim to the Shield Of gently caress You Beholders. They actually start off non-hostile so there might have been an alternative path here, but gently caress it.  We meet the dungeon's big boss. An evil rabbit.  He ain't all that. He runs off to, presumably, fight (someone else, one hopes) another day.  The other adventurers show up while we're in cutscene hell to teleport us back to Athkatla. (Why they couldn't do that before...though I guess they didn't have the treasure chest then. Which I guess we now have. I guess.) So all that remains is to go inside, and turn the treasure off to the guy who hired them, and find out just what's inside.  Ahem. Moving on.  Speaking of pants... Funny story here. So normally the way to get these is to collect the ransom on a noblewoman that the Graveyard kidnappers were holding. You can kind of get around this by pickpocketing the guy who shows up to deliver the ransom and then going back to set her free. Which is what I do. Except that when I went back and set her free, the guy showed up to give us a reward. In the form of some silver pantaloons. So now I have two of them. Okay, so now that that's dealt with, we can head off to the U-  Yeah okay. Turns out that there's more to the story of Isra's sister's husband (one Quentin Jysstev) and the wizard who was harrassing them; Quentin's been arrested for smuggling, and Isra's other sister thinks he's innocent. Isra is now Rayvek's girlfriend so I guess we should help her out. (I'm...wary of mod-added romances but this one's pretty innocuous so far, and Isra is generally pretty well-written. The biggest annoyance is that Isra demands a kiss or something literally every five minutes or so, but it's still so far never been either inappropriate or creepy, which puts it ahead of most mod romances and frankly ahead of the stock Bioware romances.)  This sidequest is not super convoluted but it does involve a lot of running around.  I can't remember why we were back in the graveyard district; I think it was to turn in the teddy bear quest. But we meet another ghost with unfinished business. He tells us he'll turn up at midnight and give us the details then. I'm not sure why he can't just do it now but, eh, ghosts.  This is the prisoner whose testimony got Isra's brother-in-law arrested. He won't talk to us unless we bring him his favorite drink from the Sea's Bounty. But we get some info on him (namely that he had it bad for a married woman...hmm...) that negates the need to talk to him. This, and Isra's examinations of some financial records, leads us to...  It turns out that the actual smuggler is Isra's sister, who let her husband take the fall for it. (There's a lot of texture here about how Isra never got along with the Jysstevs, and how she and her older sister used to be close but now are not, and so forth that I'm not really doing justice to.)  Isra goes to turn her sister in. We agree to meet up later at the Den of the Seven Vales, where she is understandably a bit bummed about the whole thing. Fortunately, we have a trip to the Umar Hills planned that should be a suitable distra-  Sigh.  Jan's ex-girlfriend's daughter is sick, which leads us to hunt down some githyanki at the behest of a mind flayer. I don't really get the Amnish health care system  But all's well that ends well. So now can we...no. No we cannot. Because, and I didn't get a screenshot of the start, but we agreed to find some special wine for someone, and we've got ten days to do it. And there's no actual indication of this in the game but some googling tells me that this is part of the White Queen mod.  So we're off to deal with that next. Our journey takes us to a swamp that's actually, conveniently, right next to the Umar Hills. There's nothing particularly dangerous, but there is a pain-in-the-rear end fight with a hamadryad who dimension doors around Davaeorn style, and has a dagger that Mazes (thankfully it's just Maze) Rayvek. This turns out to be a bit buggy because, when Rayvek returns from Mazeland, the "hey you've been mazed" visual effect keeps firing. And keeps firing. And keeps firing. I had to remove it with EEKeeper because the duration on it had been set to "permanent" for some reason. Anyway, a little farther into the swamp, we find what's left of a village.  And this dude. He gives us the basic gist of things; a necromancer came to town a while back and did something to their countess, who has now declared herself the White Queen and murdered basically the entire village. He, it turns out, is the only one left, and he needs our help to kill her.  He is NOT JOKING about this barrier, but fortunately the artifact he gives us negates it.  We find the wine. This had better be worth it.  This ends up being a fairly straightforward dungeon crawl, with us mostly fighting "White Servants", who are mostly monks and spellcasters. The production values are pretty high here, good music, areas that aren't, at least, obvious reskins of existing locations (or at least not ones I recognize), but the writing's a bit odd in places, and the plot feels a bit railroady, especially since it turns out that the White Queen, of course, wasn't so much a sinner as sinned against (or at least both in equal measure, she did still murder a bunch of innocents), but there's absolutely no chance to side with her, because that wouldn't be tragic enough I guess.  These loving White Golems can spam Cone of Cold. This becomes relevant later.  ...yeah. Definitely some things that could have been worded better.  So we finally meet the White Queen, who fills us in on her side of things, which is that a family in town died, the village blamed her, the druid outside stole her baby and gave it to a swamp hag, and things kind of escalated from there. Her brother was the necromancer that turned up, and...did something...but now she wants to die. We oblige.  We feel like she could have made it easier on us though. Korgan got chunked by one of those aforementioned White Golems, and I'm drat lucky that Aerie and Jan didn't meet the same fate. Fortunately I'd been planning to swap Korgan out for Valygar, oh, for ages now. We go outside, the old druid shows up to gloat, and we tell him to go gently caress himself because all this death was as much his fault as hers.  He takes this about as well as you'd expect. He's mostly dangerous because of his summons, and a Greater Command and a Hold Monster from the newly-raised Aerie and Jan deal with most of them. He's otherwise just a big ol' bag of HP, and he dies.  Finally, the swamp hag he gave the White Queen's kid to turns up to deliver the moral of the story, a bit of "what fools these mortals be" themed poetry. There's no fight to be had here. We leave.  Fuckin' finally. The kicker is that we're actually just here to recruit Valygar and deal with the planar sphere before we come back and sort out this region's troubles. But that's for next time. e. Oh, and after all that, Rayvek is still a level 12 druid, because the leveling curve is at this point more of a wall. docbeard fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Jan 27, 2019 |
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Jan 27, 2019 14:51
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Well, this update, unlike my last few, will be short and, well, short. So here I am, going through the Planar Sphere, and we come upon the possessed Lavok, which is not a fight I ever remember being that difficult before (but of course that was pre-SCS). And like two chain contingencied instakill spells, a horrid wilting, and a failed save later...  RIP Rayvek Like, seriously, look at his opener. (From a reload, which you can tell because of the scroll of protection from magic that Rayvek is sporting)  I probably am gonna keep playing Rayvek outside the Iron Man paradigm, since it's genuinely been a while since I've played all through BG2. Might do another Iron Man run of some kind too, dunno yet.
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Jan 27, 2019 23:35
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Olive Branch posted:Updated the OP to here! I realized I missed out a few heroes and short posts so I caught up on those. Sucks to hear about Rayvek falling to Lavok, though. Like Angry Lobster said, screw SCS's love for super-buffing mages. I'll never play with it because it really makes the combat encounters sort of a tedious spell-stripping game that never changes. Yeah, BG2 in particular is a bit tedious that way, though I think SCS improves more than it doesn't. The newest (still in beta) version of SCS is a lot more granular in its settings. As I've played on I dialed back the mage prebuffing and it's definitely made a difference (though I don't think that would have helped here as that atrocity on Lavok was a chain contingency). I wonder in retrospect if it thought my party was much higher level than it was because I had Haer'Dalis and he was something like level 18 (to everyone else's level 12 or 13) because bard XP. Ah well, c'est la vie (which as I understand it is French for "maybe I'll reroll a solo fighter/mage/thief")
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Jan 30, 2019 15:31
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Once more unto the breach. Well, several times more unto the breach, this is attempt number, uh, three I think since Rayvek (speaking of whom, in non-Iron land...SCS Kangaxx is, um, something), and the first one that's actually gotten anywhere. Meet Doctor Herbert West,  (I obviously did a little fiddling with EEKeeper to make this work.) He's a solo character, for Science needs no bedfellows! Well, except for his boon companion, bodyguard, familiar, and low-level cheese factory, Snidge the Imp. (Imps can cast Polymorph Self once per day, you see. Heh heh heh.)  Or, as seen here, Snidge the Mustard Jelly, dealing with an inconvenient assassin. We tool around Beregost, though robbing the place blind is a bit of a challenge. Or at least until I figure out that Snidge the Ogre is a genius at breaking down doors. (I still don't have the patience to really rob the place blind since polymorph only lasts so long.) Then I head up to the Friendly Arm Inn, as per usual. I snag the Ring of Wizardry and deal with Tarnesh...  ..who falls to a combo of a Command spell and Snidge the Spider's poison. I then head north. I'm not really up for fighting Ankhegs yet...  But fortunately I don't have to. One of the regrettable downsides of being a necromancer is no Invisibility, but Sanctuary will do. I load up on goodies, including one particularly fun new toy, and reflect that I could really use a gem bag. I wonder where I might find one of those?  Oh right.  My new toy is pretty good. I also deal with Silke with the new toy, though that's a bit more touch and go since she saves against my Command spell. She melts fast though.  Don't even need the new toy here, Sleep did for all the spiders. Doctor Herbert West is well on his way to being as much of a pain in the rear end as any SCS Mage. docbeard fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Feb 2, 2019 |
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Feb 2, 2019 04:55
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Doctor Herbert West, Solo Cleric/Necromancer, Has Reanimated the Nashkel Iron Trade and, uh, Deanimated the Bandit Threat Familiars, even familiars with Polymorph Self access, fundamentally only have a few hit points and that will never get any better. It's really too dangerous to risk them in combat beyond the first level or two. Which isn't to say they don't have their uses.  Like kicking assassins while they're down. (Doctor West unluckily ate a Hold Person here, but fortunately there's not a whole lot Neira can do to a Mustard Jelly, especially with poison preventing her from doing much of anything at all.) (Also, not pictured, but none of the Nashkel Mine traps can do a drat thing to a Mustard Jelly.)  Flamethrower wand continues to be worth its weight in gold. (Fortunate, that, since it costs substantially more than its weight in gold to keep it charged. Not that money's much of a problem once all that magic equipment I can't use starts dropping.) I grind out a few quests and scribe a few scrolls, enough so that Doctor West gets access to level 3 cleric spells, or, as I like to think of it, a Skellington Apocalypse. Then I go basilisk hunting.  The vampiric wolf is courtesy of an item from, um, some mod or another, I think the Aurora's Boot Merchants one. I had to murder a lot of goblins to get it. It's well worth it. Mutamin turns out to be barely a threat at all.  Nor are these jokers.  I decide to do a bit of caving.  Mulahey fails his Hold Person save early on so it ends up being a question of whose skellington army is better, mine or his. Turns out to be mine, by a hair. There may have also been some fire involved.  I consider picking a fight as usual here but, eh, that Revenant is scary and what the gently caress am I gonna do with a dagger?  Nimbul meets his usual fate and Doctor West endures a lecture with considerable restraint. (I may have accidentally set Rasaad on fire but he doesn't give a poo poo.)  Oh, Hold Person, is there anything you can't do? (Yes. Yes there is.)  Wandering Assassin Group #1  Wandering Assassin Group #2  And then we take on the bandits. Pictured here is my new favorite spell, Cloud of Pestilence, which I think is an IWDIfication add. Even with it, some webs and horrors, and my skellington army, this fight is very touch and go, with Doctor West falling to 1 HP at one point. I go through a lot of healing potions and all but one charge on my summon monsters wand after the skellington army falls...  ...but in the end, we prevail.  So. Heh. I had a cunning plan to deal with the trap on this chest. I threw on a Fire Resistance robe, the Fire Resistance ring, and cast Protection From Fire. ...pity I'd completely misremembered and the chest was trapped with a Lightning Bolt. Thank goodness said lightning bolt somehow managed to miss Herbert entirely. But now we have a problem. Doctor West is becoming way too beloved for a Reanimator of his stature. (Not that high rep is really a problem as a solo character, unless one wants evil Bhaalspawn powers. Which I do.) Now, if only there were a stupidly railroady fight you can pick with a Flaming Fist officer that will cost you a poo poo-ton of reputation but otherwise has no consequences...  Oh Christmas!
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Feb 4, 2019 11:53
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