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docbeard posted:
Yeah, thats SCS. I think thats the only real change for that encounter though, aside from the general AI stuff. As for Isabelle, I finished SoD over a month ago, but I've just been really lazy with updates. I'll be sure to make an update for SoD tomorrow.
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Feb 22, 2020 18:29
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Did SCS nerf potions of magic shielding? Automatic saves mean Aec can't silence, paralyze or gaze anyone.
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Feb 23, 2020 05:42
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Suspicious posted:Did SCS nerf potions of magic shielding? Automatic saves mean Aec can't silence, paralyze or gaze anyone. No, though of course wizard slayers can't use those either (also I forgot I had some).
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Feb 23, 2020 06:32
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Crick Watson the Wizard Slayer has defeated Sarevok, and cleared up a few loose ends as well. (Honors: Ironling, Strategist, Librarian, Trap Dodger, Honorable Trader. No Purist, so no Overcoming Adversity, though I feel like I still earned it.)  Gotta love any villain group with a roll call.  Time to go home.  SCS plays around with some of the bounty hunter encounters, making two of them into random encounters and moving the ogre mage encounter in Baldur's Gate to, well, here. More annoying than troublesome at this point. (Come to think of it, I don't think I ever did see one of the other random encounter groups.) We head into Candlekeep and after reconnecting with a few people head inside the library proper.  Where we meet Koveras, son of Laahb, a completely innocent scholar.  You know, I feel like doppelgangers are hindered by their tendency to lose their poo poo three seconds into any given conversation.   Both Drake and Isra are quite supportive in the wake of my discovery of the Horrible Truth.  Don't worry, this is just a misunderstanding and I'm sure any reasonable legal process not run by a wizard who's been out to get me since the day I was born will clear this up right away.  Welp.  These are the insights I keep you around for, Imoen. Tethoril springs us and we head into the catacombs and kill a million billion doppelgangers.   We also pick up the last couple tomes.  A more fitting name there never was. We deal with him and his crew.  We also deal with some inconvenient basilisks (by which I mean Isra and her mirror shield deal with them). Then we head back to Baldur's Gate and get locked up.  Drake is not impressed with the new guard at the Flaming Fist. After a brief hunt for evidence and murder, we turn up at the ducal palace.  See? Here's our invitation. Ignore the blood and the fact that we just crossed out "WANTED" and wrote in "INVITATION".  One of the surprise benefits of SCS is that Liia Jannath benefits from some of the pre-buff mage scripting and so is actually pretty safe. We throw up a Resilient Sphere around Belt for insurance, though.  gently caress the Thieves' Maze Not pictured: the last mercenary group firing detonation arrows at Isra (who, if you'll recall, is fireproof) at point-blank range.  And here we go. One of the big things SCS does to this fight is make Sarevok invulnerable while his lieutenants are still alive. It also apparently summons skeleton warriors in their place when they die. This makes things hairy to say the least, though a few disabling spells go a long way.  RIP We jump straight into Siege, clearing out a dungeon where a few of Sarevok's followers have holed up.  That's Safana and SHE HAS ALWAYS BEEN HERE. I didn't really get many screenshots of this minidungeon but it's pretty straightforward; carve our way through lots of undead, do a few sidequests along the way, and kill Korlasz, the last of Sarevok's allies. We can accept her surrender but we'd just have to kill her later, and and that would be just Crick on his lonesome, so no thank you. Up Next: On To The Next Crisis.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:00
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I think Liia Jannath having a pre-buff is new to SCS v.32, it didn't happen in any of my previous runs on older versions of the mod. She did nothing else other than that, but its better than literally nothing. Although given shes level 16, its probably good that she doesn't get involved beyond a pre-buff really. Anyway, as promised, an update for Isabelle, Priest of Helm, who has completed Siege of Dragonspear. Apologies in advance for the length.   The journey through the Korlasz family tomb was simple enough, despite the large monster spawns on Insane. I have more than enough AoE fire damage for that, anyway. SCS doesn't actually do anything to SoD at all yet, theres a little bit of the pre-buffing AI here and there, but thats there regardless of whether you have the mod installed or not.  After the dungeon was done with, David Warner breaks in to Isabelle's room to be weird and cryptic.  To replace Imoen, I took Corwin. She proved to be very effective throughout the game, as Archers tend to be at lower levels. Eventually, this led to Isabelle romancing her, which was unexpected, but I'm certainly not complaining.  The lich killing gem had to be used twice, but it made short work of Coldhearth both times anyway. Getting to him was more difficult to be honest.  This fight was very easy, there were no Crusader survivors.   At Bridgefort, I added Dorn to the party and cleared the Bhaal temple without too much trouble. A stun from Stupifier took care of the mind flayer, and the head priestess gave me the teleport stone without a fight.  With that done, the party entered Bridgefort and recruited Neera again, adding a bit of extra firepower, mainly thanks to her ability to use wands. Now with a full party, I returned to the Bhaal temple and killed the green dragon. Certainly could have gone worse.  Tons of AoE dealt with Bridgefort easily enough, although Khalid died almost immediately because he was level 1, lol. For the final fight, Corwin murdered the mage very quickly thanks to an arrow of dispelling, and that was that.  After that, the party finally reached the coalition camp. Torsin de Lancie's pragmatism on full display here. Fair enough, whats the worst that could happen?  Dead magic ambush vs 6 fireballs. I win, easily.   Another dispelling arrow made short work of the lead mage here, and the ghost dragon did the rest. Zhadroth here fell to the final charge of the lich killing gem. Neera definitely appreciated a free spell sequencer, its a very nice reward.  Massive amounts of AoE dealt with the Crusaders in Dragonspear Castle easily enough, although it took a while. There's a lot of them on Insane.    Seeking Sword really is quite good, you know. Viconia being a walking spite elemental is always appreciated, too.  Hephernaan makes his move, onto Avernus.  Caelar died almost immediately in the fight against Belhifet, but he wasn't much of a threat to the party. Behind the front line of Isabelle and Dorn, a hasted Corwin was dealing an incredible amount of damage with her +3 void arrows, and eventually got the kill.  After literally going to Hell and back, Isabelle and Corwin found the time to have a well earned shag. Nice to have a happy ending, I suppose.   Well, it would have been, but David Warner decided to frame Isabelle for the murder of Skie Silvershield. Such is the life of a Bhaalspawn.  I'm looking forward to it already. For the most part anyway, ToB is pretty poo poo. Honours earned: - Siege Breaker, Strategist, Double Damage, Honourable Trader, Iron Party. Next up, the start of Baldurs Gate 2. biscuits and crazy fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Feb 24, 2020 |
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Feb 24, 2020 00:05
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biscuits and crazy posted:I think Liia Jannath having a pre-buff is new to SCS v.32, it didn't happen in any of my previous runs on older versions of the mod. She did nothing else other than that, but its better than literally nothing. Although given shes level 16, its probably good that she doesn't get involved beyond a pre-buff really. Yeah, that sounds right; it wasn't even in the pre-release version of v.32 I was using for a while, I don't think.
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Feb 24, 2020 01:25
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 Meanwhile in the Nashkel Mines, I manage to nab Joseph's ring before he despawns from the game. Yay.  Poison, sneak, assassinate. Doesn't quite kill Mulahey, but it sends him into an endless cycle of running away and yelling for me to go open the trap chest.  Dynaheir does the rest. I was humoring replacing her with Xan, but nah.  ...and on the way out, these three guys are parked at the gate and won't let me through, no matter how much I talk to them. Well. How did I get to the command console again, I guess I need to jump past them. Or kill them all... Sully the Half Orc Assassin has assassinated Mulahey
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Feb 25, 2020 01:37
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Crick Watson has Failed to Cross A Bridge. Also completed the first bit of Siege of Dragonspear. So after sorting out Korlasz, the non-Imoen party members go their separate ways. (Indira, as an imperfectly-coded NPC mod, needs a bit of encouragement to go her separate way.) And Imoen's canonically in Dual Class Hell for this adventure, so for now Crick is flying solo.  Some assassins turn up and drat near kill Imoen. Crick responds...predictably, if you are the sort of person to predict a lot of darts being thrown about. (He gets 4 1/2 attacks per round now with darts.)  These assassins were kind enough to leave their mistress's calling card, so I guess we're off to fight the Crusade. Well, I say "we".  Crick has literally never laid eyes on this person before. I don't think I even went inside Silvershield Manor this time.  And here's Ophyllis, Ducal Treasurer, here to inform me that he's lost all my money, and I'll have to make do with a dragon's hoard worth of gems and a bag of holding full of unused magic equipment. Alas.  Oh hey, it's Safana! AND SHE HAS ALWAYS BEEN HERE. This section is basically a few set pieces in Baldur's Gate where you can, escorted by Captain Corwin of the Flaming Fist, potentially recruit (a few) of your old party members, and have others tell you that there's no way in hell they're coming with you. You can recruit Safana, Minsc & Dynaheir (a package deal as in BG1), and you'll meet Garrick, Coran, and Tiax, who won't join you, and Rasaad, who will join you but not yet). Others will show up later in the adventure.  It turns out Drake also has Siege content. I pick him up for now but I won't be keeping him, I have a slightly different party composition in mind. No Isra, but there is Sirene, another modded NPC paladin who I didn't recruit in BG1 and won't recruit here either.  Oh and David Warner's here too. Anyway, after a night of running around, we head off toward Dragonspear Castle, sent off by cheering crowds and the occasional heckler. We make camp for a bit and my party is off to scout around. I toss Safana and Drake to the curb and recruit Glint, a gnome cleric/thief. (Corwin's available for hire too, but I don't this time.)  Baeloth's set up shop here, and, um, it's not terribly impressive. (Note: It turns out that Baeloth, uniquely of all the NPCs in the game, won't turn up here if he died in BG1. This is unacceptable to me, so I made some...changes. Okay I just adjusted a global variable.) I'm not really here to recruit Baeloth, though...  It's her. She's a goblin shaman and my favorite Beamdog NPC. There's one more party member I want but he won't show up til the next section so I'm rolling with 5 for now. We explore the area, solving a few sidequests, when we come to the bridge separating us from the Crusade.  Negotiations go poorly. Caelar's forces panic and blow up the bridge, meaning we have to take the long way around. But before we go, there's a bit of a situation with some dwarves and a bunch of undead.  We agree to go find his buddy Coldhearth, who probably hasn't sneakily led them all here in order to become a lich or anything.  Along the way I find some bona fide Wizard Slayer gear. 15% magic resistance is nothing to sneeze at, either.  Welp, I may have some bad news about Deepvein's good buddy Coldhearth.  Grabbed this to show off Wall of Moonlight, which really earns its keep in this dungeon. I think it's one of the druid spells imported from Icewind Dale, and it's nice when you're dealing with a bunch of undead because it does a shitload of damage to them.  Deepvein is a mite skeptical about our news, but Coldhearth's journal convinces him, and he gives us  This. It has three charges, and we'll need two of them to deal with Coldhearth, once to get his phylactery, and once after we've destroyed said phylactery. We'll hang onto that last charge for later.  And we've got an ally against the Crusade! (Next: More Siege and we fill out the party)
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Feb 27, 2020 02:15
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Crick Watson, Wizard Slayer, has successfully crossed a bridge. (More Siege of Dragonspear progress.) Since our last bridge came down with a bad case of the Got Blowed Ups, we've had to reroute here, to Boareskyr Bridge. Which is notable for two reasons; it's where a temporarily-mortal Bhaal got himself permanently killed, and it's currently held by the Crusade, in a standoff with Bridgefort. So that's a problem. We're still down one party member so we need a drunken lout to fill out the ranks.  That'll do. (I've never used Voghiln before. But he's a skald with pretty good stats so I figure, at worst, another fireball thrower can't hurt.)  He's also traveling with Jaheira, who fills us in on the lay of the land. Specifically, that there's a secret way into Bridgefort but that we'll need a wardstone to get it, and it looks like it might be in the hands of Cyricists at the moment. She'll join if we want, but we're good for now so I send her to the camp.  As long as we're not stupid enough to openly identify ourselves to the Crusader encampment, they'll be wary, but non-hostile toward us, and will, if we ask how we can prove ourselves, tell us about a patrol (including the nephew of one of the higher-ups at the camp) that's gone missing.  This magic circle will teleport us into Bridgefort. But not yet, we still need the wardstone.  In an area transition, we come across a couple of giants beating up on a baby dragon. M'Khiin takes exception to this, so we murder the giants. The dragon is (sort of) grateful and tells us about some hidden loot.  Spiders. Okay, got it.  I feel like we should have a conversation about just what a "spider" is.  Okay, fine, we believe you about the spiders. (Minsc is armed with Spider's Bane, which earns its name this day.) There's also a Rhino Beetle that turns up later in this cave, and M'Khiin has the idea of kiting it around with spider eggs but it's not a big deal, really.  Thanks, Glint.  "Okay, people, there's a green dragon asleep here, so what we do is we sneak acro-" "DRINK DRINK DRINK, TIL WE'RE DRUNK DRUNK DRUNK" "...thanks, Voghiln." As dragon fights go, this one isn't so bad, though Voghiln gets himself one-shotted by poison breath. (Minsc had a Protection from Poison scroll going, and everyone else was far enough back to avoid the AOE, thankfully.) M'Khiin raises him and we go on our way. The bugbear cavern is a speedbump by comparison, and we eventually find ourselves in an old Temple of Bhaal, which has been appropriated by Cyric worshippers, who themselves appear to have fallen on hard times.  In addition to the missing crusade patrol (not pictured), we find an imprisoned Bhaal priestess. She'll tell us a bit about the day some Harpers 'stole' some Bhaal children who were destined to be sacrificed. (Maybe Crick was among them? Who knows?)  This half-dragon priestess can be a pain in the rear end to fight, but it's not a problem for us this time. She also tells us that the high priestess has been hearing voices. We fight through some nasty critters until we find out what's actually going on.  Well, even Cyricists don't deserve mind flayers, so we smash him(?) and the associated dominated cultists into paste.  There's a secret room here, containing a Shadow Aspect. It can be a right bastard to fight, because it can turn invisible at will and I think it backstabs, but between True Sight from Glint and a well-timed Glitterdust, it's pretty much toast. Our reward is a nice short sword...that none of us can really use right now. Cool cool.  I usually have to fight the high priestess here, but this time she hands over the wardstone out of gratitude. I'm guessing because we killed the mind flayer first, and there may be a charisma check involved...honestly, who cares? We leave her to it, free the crusaders on the way out (and also admonish the ex-Bhaal priestess to change her evil ways), and get out of dodge.  With the patrol rescued, we now have free access to the Crusader camp. This will come in handy later. We can also, if we're extremely stupid and suicidal, hand over the wardstone to them. (I, er, don't do this.)  We instead make use of the wardstone ourselves, and find Khalid here in the besieged Bridgefort. He's been put in charge, which doesn't seem like a happy place to be. He asks us to ask around to get up to speed on the defensive situation, because he wants a second opinion on how to get out of this.  There's a few things to do in Bridgefort. Jegg, the local blacksmith, will make things for us. (I opt for some Rhino Beetle armor, basically upgraded Ankheg Armor, and a green dragonscale shield, both for Crick.) Glint's uncle is here, and they can catch up on old times. (He'll also maybe make some boots of speed for you, but we're good on that front.)  There's also Neera, who's hearing voices. Specifically the voice of Adoy, her old mentor(?). She'll join up if we want and will send us out for potion ingredients either way.  Finally there's Wynan Hess, who's managing the magical defenses. Except, oh dear...  Well this isn't great. (If you can't see the icons, we're all energy-drained.)  Dynaheir fills us in on the scoop. Fortunately, since we're on good terms with the Crusaders at the moment, it's just a matter of turning up in camp and asking nicely for the scroll. We come back, fight a wraith, and that's that. The remnants of the bad stone can be turned into a weapon if we so desire. There are a few odds and ends to clean up here, but ultimately we have a choice; surrender the fort or fight. We choose to fight.  Khalid, since we never really recruited him, is still a level nothing fighter, and would last about two seconds in this battle. So he gets to go in the bubble for a while. What ensues is a big fight, but not a particularly difficult one. You have to worry a bit about friendly fire so I can't just throw fireballs around with abandon, but for the most part we all really get to cut loose. Slow and Emotion: Hopelessness, and the odd Insect Plague from M'Khiin, really earn their keep here, and of course Crick keeps the three or so major spellcasters here in check reasonably well. Finally, we fight our way through the main force...  Oh god, it's happening again.  No, no it's not. A certain amount of looting and resting later, and we head on our way. But, oh yeah, remember how I mentioned that Bhaal met his end on this bridge? Well, we get to see that in person, and when we wake up...  Well at least it didn't get blown up.  David Warner turns up to vomit exposition at us, which, to be fair, is probably the best possible way to have exposition vomited at you. And then we're off. Up Next: The (Actual) Siege of Dragonspear.
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Feb 29, 2020 17:17
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Crick Watson Has Successfully Ridden An Elevator. Also, the crusade is no more, Belihfet is defeated, and Skie Silvershield is dead. That last part wasn't our fault. (Add Siege-Breaker to the Honors list.) So we finally made it to Dragonspear Castle, or rather this campsite where the combined anti-Crusade forces have established a base of operations nearby. There's quite a lot to do here and I'm not documenting most of it.  How prescient of you, M'Khiin. We're given the task of stacking the deck in our favor when it comes time to attack, by planting explosives (or because gently caress you we are doing cutesy names, a Barrel of BWOOSH) under the castle, and by poisoning their food and water. After a bunch of sidequesting, we make our way to an entrance to the caves beneath the castle.  We fight our way in, which nets us, among other things,  An official Junior Crusader's Secret Decoder Ring, which we can use to talk our way past patrols and, more importantly, loot the Crusader Camp before the big fight. Not that loot really matters any more. I'm mostly just picking things up out of habit now.  Among other encounters down below, we meet up with this ghost dragon, who's been bound to the service of one of Hephernaan's buddies. She's not stoked about it and her attempts to prevent us from passing into the deeper cave system below amount to a bunch of "No don't go, please, welp I tried."  We interrupt a ritual, led by one Kherriun, the mage who bound the dragon. We target her first because after she takes a certain amount of damage, the ghost vial she's used to bind the dragon breaks. Which means, when the dragon does show up, she's on our side.  We find the place to plant the explosives.  As we make our way into the castle basement proper, Glint proves he's got a solid grasp of our situation.  This ends up being a big, nasty fight no matter how things shake out, but Hephernaan will teleport away after taking a bit of damage, promising to return with reinforcements. This used to mean we were hosed if we wanted to do everything in this section, because we'd be quickly overwhelmed, but this apparently got scaled back in a fairly recent patch. We do still have to fight our way out, though, and it's not pretty, but we make it.  We make it back to camp to find out that Caelar suddenly wants to parley.  Turns out they want to borrow my blood in order to open the portal to the hells. Caelar's idea is to march an army in to liberate the damned souls, which, I won't lie, sounds loving awesome. Hephernaan, it turns out, has...different ideas. It doesn't really matter what you say or do here, the generals won't agree to it even if you do, so it's battlin' time. When we return to camp, we find that the Crusade forces are on the way. They'll come at us in waves, and we can deploy troops to back us up to fight each wave off. In between we can heal up or get a priest to refresh our spells, a limited number of times.  One of the waves. We send a contingent of wizard slayers after them. (Our other options are archers, battlemages, and a few that are contingent on some of the quests we've done, like the dwarves we helped out earlier.) Once we fight back five or so waves, it's time for (dun dun dun) THE SIEGE OF DRAGONSPEAR    This all culminates in one of Caelar's generals challenging you to single combat.  I'm assuming she was counting more on my running at her with a sword rather than filling her with darts of stunning before she could so much as get a spell off. Anyway, we mop up the rest of the forces, and find that Caelar's holed herself up inside. So we go in after her.  Just in time for Hephernaan to show his true colors, steal some of my blood, and open a portal to hell. Caelar leads some of her soldiers in after.  And so do we. A few short but annoying fights later, and we're at the entrance to the final fight of Siege of Dragonspear.  After a really long and annoying and tedious elevator ride. Because of course.  And here we go. Belihfet, the big bad from Icewind Dale, is trying to get sprung from hell again, and Hephernaan's been his agent on the other side of the dirt. Caelar, meanwhile, it turns out has done all of this in order to get her uncle free from hell, after her uncle sacrificed himself to free *her* as a child. It's a whole thing. We offer Caelar the chance to fight on the side of righteousness and lots of darts, and she accepts, so it's us v. Belihfet. This is a tricky fight, partly because Behlifet can't be hurt by anything less than +3 weapons, which are not exactly in great supply.  We still win, though. Caelar stays behind to seal the gateway, and we return, triumphant, and ready for a well-deserved party.  Which David Warner ruins by setting things up so it looks like we've irrevocably murdered Skie Silvershield.  The Dukes can't really just set us free, even though the evidence is shady at best, because if I stick around it's probably gonna be civil war. So they sneak me out the back.  Imoen meets me with some friends  And well, you know the rest. IS THIS THE END OF CRICK WATSON? (No, but it is the end of Siege of Dragonspear. Next: Baldur's Gate 2:
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Mar 2, 2020 00:12
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 The less said about this place, the better. So what's an exiled wizard-slaying Bhaalspawn to do when we've just escaped from David Warner's torture den? Go drinking, obviously!  And meet up with old friends, though she's a bit distracted at the moment and doesn't really even notice us.  We also take in some of the local entertainment.  Kind of a weird audience participation component to this show, not really our thing.  This hook is added by Unfinished Business, I think. Anyway, after a brief stop in the Slums to (a) advance the plot and (b) pick up Anomen and Substitute Imoen, we head off to the Government District, where Isra's sister lives.  Please be Baeloth, please be Baeloth  Eh. We rescue her and send her off to hang out in the graveyard.  I'm not sure what my party composition is gonna look like in the long term but I love Jan so I'll keep him around for a while.  On our way to the Jysstev Estate, we get attacked by some disposable goons, who've apparently been threatening Isra's brother-in-law. She joins up while we investigate the matter.  Which takes us back to the Den of the Seven Vales, and points us in the direction of the Cowled Wizards.  You know, this may not technically even be a lie!  We free some slaves.  Nalia, we literally just walked twenty feet across the tavern. Are you sure you're cut out for this?  The Cowled Wizards are about as much help as you'd expect (even though we agreed to do a bit of bounty hunting for them).  But of course this is how things work in Cowled Wizard land. Deny assistance officially and then have someone "just happen to have overheard us" right outside.  This is the dude who's been threatening Isra's sister and brother-in-law. He is not terribly forthcoming as to why, and neither is his corpse. Still, that's all resolved for now.  On our way to help Nalia out with troll fumigation, we stop to sort out a murder, as one does.  We get inside Nalia's home.  Her family is extremely grateful for the rescue.  Ah, trolls. Turns out someone hired them to do this, but of course those details will come out later (or they won't, I honestly can't remember).  We put Tor'gal and his buddies in the ground.  And pick up the best weapon in the game. And then on our way out...  Oh god. It begins. Crick Watson has started his adventures in Amn.
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Mar 7, 2020 11:27
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Sadly, the Iron Man portion of Crick Watson's adventures has come to an end. In an unrelated note, SCS improved vampires are bullshit.
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Mar 8, 2020 02:43
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Yeah, they really are. Was it the group of ancients and elders in Firkraag's Lair? That will always be the worst encounter in the game with SCS. I'd rather face both liches in the Umar Temple Ruins at once than that.
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Mar 8, 2020 12:18
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biscuits and crazy posted:Yeah, they really are. Was it the group of ancients and elders in Firkraag's Lair? That's the one. I'd forgotten completely about it until suddenly I was knee deep in vampires and rats and death.
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Mar 8, 2020 16:17
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