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As soon as you move out there's a cleric with the camp.
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Jan 9, 2022 00:44
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Kinda undecided if I want to Ironman SOD or not (if I ever get that far). I don't think I know it well enough to comfortably do it. I do still wanna play it though since I only beat it once years ago Would it be against the spirit of the thread to pause my Ironman for Sod and resume it in bg2/tob? I guess I could just try it anyways and see how comically fast I die
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Jan 9, 2022 02:33
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You can just directly import to BG2 if you want.
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Jan 9, 2022 02:49
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That's true. Hmm well I'll make that decision when and if I get that far I guess
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Jan 9, 2022 02:53
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Alis died at the hands of a ravamped sword spider in siege of dragonspear. Not very noble. Gonna make 1 more new character--a cavalier.
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Jan 9, 2022 07:14
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I'm not dead and neither is Goose. I've always been fascinated by Hareishan here and the vampire by the same name in BG2. Are they the same person? Is it a coincidence? I kill them all the same, it's just interesting.  We do, of course, murder Davaeorn, with the help of a skeleton army.  Seems like something that doesn't require a bridge, but okay.  I decided to cleanse the xvart village using only two skeleton warriors just for fun.  For those who can't read Russian, they ended up "lightly wounded" and "heavily wounded." These are the exact same skeletons, no help from the party, no other summons.  Are you sure you don't want to teach me about how to operate a party?  If you're running from the cops, he auto-kills you! Very important to reach him before a Watcher gets to you  I don't recall whether Yeslick lets you say no to this, but I always kill them anyway. If you're going to do the time, you might as well do the crime.  We skip ahead to Sarevok getting paralyzed, which is of course a death sentence.  The translation is inconsistent.  Anyway, here's Goose at the start of SoD outside of Baldur's Gate However, he has murdered Sarevok, and got the following honors: Ironling, Purist, Librarian, Honorable Trader, Iron Party (I've been after this one for years) And the following dishonors: NONE
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Jan 9, 2022 08:07
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 Sakai got further than my Dwarven Defender, but he perished in Durlag's Tower. I got ambushed by a Greater Doppleganger while resting. This was just after barely surviving the Skeleton Warrior + Stinking cloud ambush in that room near the Battle Horrors. I forgot that was a thing. I was pretty low health after fighting that. I should have been patient and quaffed a bunch of heal pots to full before resting, but it's hard to be on my game 100% of the time. Also, I didn't expect that resting would get me ambushed by a Greater Doppleganger of all things. Anyways, it turned into Durlag, and hit me for 36 damage. That seems like a crazy high amount of damage for core rules, but oh well. Not sure where I go from here. Might take a break for a bit except for the multiplayer run because I'm kinda tilted at having to clear that entire wilderness map yet again The multiplayer run is still active. Maybe they will fare better. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 10:46 on Jan 9, 2022 |
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Jan 9, 2022 10:39
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It looks like he got a critical hit, and 18 damage isn't that ridiculous since, according to the wiki, the doppel-Durlag has a natural STR score of 20, drat  I haven't had the BG urge lately, I suppose I will end my (suicide) run next week! 
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Jan 9, 2022 11:04
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This might be the silliest thing I've ever attempted in this game, but I decided to attempt a Legacy of Bhaal Ironman run, just for the hell of it. It's a multiplayer party of six, with a few tweak mods. Nothing major, and none of the AI enhancements or tactical challenges from SCS this time, I'm mainly using SCS for the IWD spells. The difficulty screen is a bit vague about what Legacy of Bhaal actually does, but after playing around with Ctrl+Q, I managed to piece together what it does. Everything except your party gets buffed as follows: -11 Armour Class -5 THAC0 -5 All Saving Throws +1 Attack per Round +12 to caster level (For lack of another way of putting it. Everything gets +12 here, but only casters benefit offensively, it does mean everything is immune to sleep though) x3 HP +80 It seems impossible at first glance, but everything except your party includes your own summons, which get all the above bonuses, but a smaller boost to HP (x2 +20, which is still quite substantial) The party I chose for this run is entirely made up of spellcasters, 3 arcane and 3 divine because I'm going to be heavily reliant on summons and wands, especially in BG1, so having every member be capable of using both seems like a good idea. Its very early going, but I've made a little progress and made it to the Friendly Arm Inn, so lets meet the team.  Lysimachus is basically my secondary tank, after whatever I've summoned takes the bulk of the aggro. He's entirely melee for now, but his skeletons will be useful later.  Euphrati is entirely support in the early parts of BG1 (She'll become a powerful fighter in her own right eventually, much like Celeste from one of my previous Ironman runs) and provides useful combat buffs in the form of her Skald song.  Garviel will eventually become my primary divine caster, but for now he's mainly a healer and support caster, and having the always useful True Sight for free is a huge bonus.  Aoenid is the only one capable of summoning anything at the moment, and while spirit animals aren't the most powerful summon, they have a long duration, get more powerful as I get levels (Up to maximum power at level 10) and are massively buffed so I've got access to a very good tank.  Cato is eventually going to be my primary arcane caster, and she'll probably have a odd looking spellbook compared to the "optimal" one, but her main job at the moment is casting Blindness a lot.  Yored is my secondary arcane caster, and also casts Blindness a lot. There's not much else he or Cato can do right now, but its very effective when it sticks. I've not done a great deal yet, but the party has killed Tarnesh (He wasted all 3 of his Magic Missile spells on my spirit lion) and is currently resting at the Friendly Arm Inn. biscuits and crazy fucked around with this message at 12:17 on Jan 10, 2022 |
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Jan 10, 2022 03:18
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Shaw the Half-Elf Shapeshifter has (nearly) finished up in Baldur's Gate I was going to run this all the way through to the trip to Candlekeep but I'm tired so I'm stopping for an update now just before we start the main quest path in Baldur's Gate (the Seven Suns investigation/doppelmassacre). In the meantime, we've mopped up almost every sidequest (mod-added or otherwise) between us and the end of the game (not including ToTSC content, with one exception). We've also hit the level cap (you know, if there were such a thing as a level cap here in ModTown lmao) and I think we've gotten all but two tomes (including the extra Dex tome added by Breagar) at this point. We started by taking a quick trip up to the big city to do a bit of shopping, and then clearing out the remaining wilderness areas we hadn't already hit (Ulcaster, Firewine, Basilisks, Spider Forest, etc.) We also took a quick trip way up north.  Breagar is pretty insistent that we not fly ShandalAir any more.  We eventually make our way back to Baldur's Gate where we run into an old friend (more of an ex, really) of Drake's, an ex-Shadow Thief turned Amnian government agent called Stoneheart who has come to the Gate tracking rumors of Shadow Thief activity.  Drake is not thrilled to see the guy but agrees that this is worth working with him for. (We haven't done that yet). Not really a lot of excitement to be had that everyone hasn't seen before, I mostly just did all the sidequests here in town. I've also picked up the Dexterity, Constitution, and second Wisdom tomes. Just the Durlag's Tower Wisdom tome and the Strength tome to go.
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Jan 10, 2022 04:22
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Hans the Avenger and his sidekick Blue Margaret  Some Ogre Mages wanted the price on Hans' head. They were not collecting, not this day.  Hans and company also slew some Dopplegangers and got a nice haul in gold from Scar for the favor  They also looted just about every house in Baldur's Gate. This one lead to a Mage fight where we picked up our second ring of Wizardry. That was a useful power boost for Edwin.  We looted everything. Everything. Here's me looting a fountain.  Here's the group paying a visit to Scar for more work. Hey, he pays well.  Dagrodels house was a bit of a brawl. It's actually a bit tough for a mostly caster party to deal with given the tight spaces and the inability for Dorn to easily corral all the enemies. A combination of malison + slow + summons won the day here.  We prebuffed for the adventurers in the inn and beat the hell out of them  Killed Marek and company too for that antidote  Here's Dagrodel part two. Same tactics as the first time. We did his quest and after giving him the helm he summons more poo poo to gently caress with you. You can block the door and kill him before he gets away though, thus getting the helm and more xp for killing more of his minions.  We also cleared out the sewer. The group has finished Baldur's Gate and is now preparing to move into Tales of the Swordcoast. Hans is level 9 and has access to Ironskins now. Druids are low key not a bad choice for Bg1 Ironmans given that. With Ironskins plus ring of fire protection/helm of defense I'm reasonably well protected against a variety of attacks. Avengers don't have the greatest AC so I can't stay in melee range for long, but the Ironskins (plus my health, up to 90 hp now) should provide enough of a buffer to get away from danger usually , so long as I don't get surrounded. Plus, I use a Sling and never go near melee if I can help it. Still, we're gonna be careful in the expansion and do our best to not meet the fate of my previous two singleplayer attempts.
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Jan 11, 2022 07:34
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Bartolamea, Elf Wild Mage quickly ate it from a bandit's arrow on the way to the Friendly Arm. Up next, Cassiopea Dwarf Fighter/Thief.
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Jan 12, 2022 03:14
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I'm trying a Blade again for my single player run. Looking forward to seeing how quickly I die to some random thing. I'm going to use darts for most of bg1 I think. I won't bother with melee until I get higher level and have stoneskin and such things and a much higher hp pool.
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Jan 12, 2022 04:06
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Cassiopea had a promising start, cut short by Karlat getting a couple lucky shots in.  These are some of my most...inauspicious starts.
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Jan 12, 2022 04:20
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Shaw, the Half-Elf Shapeshifter has escaped from the treachery of Candlekeep and is on her way to sort this mess out once and for all. After a well-deserved vacation (by which I mean TOTSC content oh and finishing up one mod quest). We pick things back up in Baldur's Gate, where Shaw is investigating the Seven Suns Trade Cartel And Fresshhh Meat Emporium, Fleshlingssss.  I'm not a shapeshifter...well I am but not that ki...look do you want out or not? We head down to the sewers where, in addition to the usual sewer people, spiders, kobolds, and Ogre Magi with pretty much That One Ogre Mage Scheme That They All Have,  we meet Wosok Hammerhead, the contact mentioned in Bashrik Sparklehammer's journal. (We got pointed this direction when we checked in at the Temple of Helm). He sends us off to kill Draglon, who appears to be a high ranking link in the Serpents of Abbathor chain. Draglon is just hanging out in the Undercellar, but we'll get there in a bit. Because we've also just found  Stoneheart, or 'Vance' as Drake calls him. He leads us to the Shadow Thief agents he's been tracking  Only for us to discover (post-mortem for them, alas) that they weren't here to join the Iron Throne, they were here to investigate the Iron Throne. Vance needs to report in to his superiors (and as far as I know, that's all she wrote for good ol' Stoneheart, at least until/unless the BG2 Drake mod is ever released).  He does return a family heirloom to Drake first. (We do in time get the full story from Drake; they were friends, both in the Amnian military in some capacity, and one night they both got extremely drunk and hooked up, after which Vance confessed his Shadow Thief past. Drake takes this...poorly...and the two part ways. (I'm not doing the story justice, it's pretty well-written and tragic and is about half of why Drake is the drunken cynical mess of a Tyr Priest he is today.)  Yes, yes, you're very clever. Anyway, after we're done with the main quest stuff, we seek out Draglon. I don't think it's actually possible to kill him here. One hit and he says this  and vanishes. The quest continues at the Temple of Helm, where we're sent to a tavern to retrieve an artifact, get ambushed, and get a lead on the Serpents' headquarters in Baldur's Gate, one of the warehouses in the Southwest District.  We sneak in and find a bunch of cultists.  And someone called Lugosch teleports away before we can do anything.  Oh yeah, Draglon's here too. He gets his for robbing us of the Iron Party honor, we raise Dynaheir, and  Discover that the Serpents have done something at the Nashkel Mines. So we'll be headed back there. (Eventually.) Meanwhile, we're off to deal with the Iron Throne  Goddammit, Dynaheir, I can't take you anywhere lately We raise her AGAIN and make our way to Candlekeep.  This Ogre Mage Reception Committee comes to us courtesy of SCS. (They're the group that we'd normally fight in that house in Baldur's Gate. They're not much trouble at this point.)  lmao okay "Koveras" I don't always bother killing Rieltar and company but Breagar wants the "defilers of iron" dead and I can't really argue with his reasoning.  Good thing too, because Rieltar was carrying the Tome of Strength. We get arrested just as Shaw gets the bad news about Dear Old Dad.  Drake is surprisingly understanding and compassionate about the whole thing.  Breagar is a little more skeptical, but is ultimately willing to give us the benefit of the doubt. (I'd guess he turns on us at this point if the PC is evil, or if we have a low rep, or something.)  I like to think that these later doppelgangers are the ones who replaced the tutorial NPCs. "Click on me to DIE FLESHLINGSSSSSSS"  Vynd doesn't have much of anything to say about the Bhaal thing (presumably as long as it doesn't turn out I'm related to Lolth we're cool) but he's not thrilled about having this much attention on him from the law. He is, however, ultimately kind of cool with doing something as significant as taking down Sarevok. Which we'll (hopefully) do in time.
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Jan 12, 2022 06:43
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Dura, Half-Orc Fighter/Cleric was pulped by an ogre with a belt fetish Ano Pridehunter, Human Shapeshifter, has arrived in Nashkel (and survived an assassination attempt) Some highlights! Jahiera comes in with a clutch gibbing of the belt ogre  Silke fries Garrick, Xzar, Montaron, and two of her patsies before the party takes her down. Somehow, Imoen eats two lightning bolt bounces and survives.  Kharlat tried his luck but didn't bet on dealing with a werewolf.  With half the party held by Neira and things looking grim, Imoen feathers the bounty hunter between the eyes and saves the day 
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Jan 13, 2022 03:50
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Hans the Avenger and Blue Margaret the Sorcerer I forgot to SS us fighting the mages in the little ice maze, but here's the aftermath of that: success. I had Dorn pop potions of magic immunity in there just to avoid the confuse/chaos from the first fight. That made sure disaster wouldn't hit if he got confused. Anyone else getting confused is a caster or a thief in this party so not as bad to deal with. Onto Durlags.  On the way we got ambushed by a Basilisk. I nearly poo poo myself. But I had the poise to pop a potion of Mirrored Eyes on my guy. Luckily enough it chose to just melee the party anyways, so nobody got petrified either way. I keep a mirrored eyes pot on me for just this occasion.  Onto Durlags. The Death Knight welcomed us.  We killed a spirit, one of Durlag's old pals  We talked to a spooked adventurer and assured him that nah, we got this. Clearly I haven't wiped twice already in this dungeon on single player runs   Woke Durlags pride up  We also did Durlags riddles  And buffed like hell and beat the warders. We are alive and still kicking. Gonna try to finish up Durlags next time. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Jan 13, 2022 |
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Jan 13, 2022 04:48
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The Legacy party is having success exploring the Sword Coast First things first, I want to show an incredible power-levelling cheese I found that can get you massive amounts of exp very quickly. If you use Algernon's Cloak to charm a basilisk (I charmed a lesser basilisk here) you can petrify a greater basilisk, cure it with a Stone to Flesh scroll and then petrify it again, you get the experience every time the petrify effect works. You can repeat this as many times as you have scrolls. Not including the ones in Candlekeep, there are 72 available at the various temples (FAI, Song of the Morning east of Beregost, Nashkel and Gullykin) outside Baldur's Gate. As a result of this, and lots of random spawns giving me the maximum amount of respawning monsters, (Seriously, its almost like a run on EasyTuTu) I'm already at the experience cap way before clearing the Nashkel Mines.  Might as well kill these fools while I'm in the area. Challenging a party of adventurers with a small army of assorted minions is not a good idea, Kirian. They were dealt with very easily.  I killed Drizz't with by swarming him with summons. Drizz't is actually not affected too much by the LoB buffs, he gets them of course but he hits on a roll of 2, and you need critical hits to damage him regardless. As a result, he wasn't difficult, it just took a while.  Bassilus wasn't much trouble, he got thrashed with the help of some summoned beetles.  Melicamp lives thankfully, I needed the reputation point after murdering Drizz't.  The party crossed Greywolf and lived.  The Doomsayer was killed with some summoned skeleton warriors. They're seriously strong with the LoB buffs, and I've only got the 5HD version at the moment. (The 2nd weakest one you get, from level 7-10) The party is at 20 rep now, and will remain there for the rest of the game for that lovely 20 rep/20 charisma discount.  Borda died easily, he's immune to magic but the beetles made short work of him. I'll do the rest of the wilderness next, might as well. biscuits and crazy fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Jan 14, 2022 |
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Jan 14, 2022 01:58
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Hans the Avenger and Blue Margaret The Sorcerer Tonight's run was eventful to say the least.  Things started off well enough. We fought the 3 Greater Doppleganger ambush on the Dopplerganger floor and managed it without much incident. A zone of sweet air helped stop the cloudkill/stinking cloud combo they love to use.  Imoen gamely took care of the huge amounts of traps in the next room  However, the gang got ambushed by two Greater Dopplegangers in humanoid form. I knew this ambush was coming, but I thought we'd be able to interrupt the casters before they caused any big problems. I was wrong. One of the Greater Dopplegangers was in caster form and fired off a Lightning bolt that did 70+ damage to Viconia and permanently killed her. Blue Margaret also died, but thankfully not permanently. Luckily it did not ricochet or my Druid might well have taken a huge hit too. I decided as a result of this to put Protection from Lightning in my spellbook and have it on me at all times as we wandered this floor.  Reeling from our wounds and needing to replace Viconia, the group decided to recruit Baeloth. Unfortunately, Baeloth started at only level 6. It appears there's an XP cap that NPCs that join the party start with. None of the ones we recruited to test out had more than 32k xp to start with.  We made our way back into the tower, and this time ran into the Skeleton Warrior + stinking cloud trap. I was prepared this time (my singleplayer Monk nearly died here and then did die after resting + getting ambushed) but having only one melee character in the party made dealing with 3 skeleton warriors at once a daunting task. Dorn actually died here (not permanently thank god) and I thought our run might end. But we spammed monster summoning wands and used all the consumables we could to slowly grind these skeletons down and survive. What I should have done probably was have Dorn use a protection form undead scroll. I always forget about those scrolls but they're very OP.  At this point, we retreated from Durlags again (storing some gear in containers in there so it would not disappear). We also decided that maybe such a spellcaster heavy approach might not be the best idea given the preponderance of magic resistant enemies upcoming. We also felt a little light on the frontline. That hasn't been a problem so far, but in Durlags Dorn has had a little more trouble holding it down by himself. So, we recruited Shar-Teel. We then laboriously tracked down all the items we previously sold that we didn't need (magic Longswords and plate +3) and got her equipped. We'd just finished doing that when in Sorcerous Sundies she decided to challenge Dorn to a duel. At this point I felt like things were just not going our way tonight, but fortunately Dorn beat her in the duel and without permanently killing her. I don't know if this will happen again or with other npcs in the party but if it does I won't hesitate to kill her. In any case, we're hoping that she will be able to stay alive long enough to see us through the rest of BG1.  We finished this floor off, including the Battle Horrors and the other 3 Doppleganger ambush. I'm not avoiding content because I'm stubborn that way  .We have one more floor to go before the Demon Knight. Durlags has proven to be every bit the menace it always is. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Jan 14, 2022 |
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Jan 14, 2022 05:13
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Hans the Avenger and Blue Margaret The Sorcerer We took this level very carefully. Imoen often scouted ahead to disable traps while invisible, and once those were cleared the rest of the party moved forward to clear out the monsters. A few times things got scary when resting due to Greater Ghouls, but nobody ever got too close to dying here. Spiderbane came in handy big time for the Ghouls. For the Wyverns, we were careful to pull those one by one and back Dorn out of melee range if he took too much damage. They hit hard. We also cleared the backstab enemy room and the central skeleton platform room. For the backstabbing enemies I first had Imoen clear all the traps and then made sure Dorn was the first to aggro the assassins. They hit him hard, but not hard enough to kill him, and could quickly be focused down once out of stealth. For the four elemental challenges, the only one I was a little concerned about was fire, but I buffed everyone with protection from fire spells prior to going in, and made sure Dorn/Shar-Teel were the only ones in melee range. Air/Frost were beaten straight up by melee + normal arcane routines (greater malison + slow + haste + magic missile/flame arrow as some of the choice favorites). Slime was eradicated by fireball wands.  That brought us to the chessboard. My normal strategy here is to cast web plus have everyone throw fireballs/fire pots to the east while staying in their starting squares. It worked as well as it always does which is to say everything got nuked to oblivion.  The fourth floor went mostly without incident until fighting the named Ghoul. Unfortunately I accidentally walked closer than I intended to, and things got super scary. Imoen got held, and so did Edwin. My Druid almost got into trouble here. I popped a potion of freedom due to my blunder with positioning. That ensured that I wouldn't get held and swarmed. I think I might have survived even with that, but I didn't want to take any chances. However, Imoen did die here. We had to go back out to rez her. In general with this zone Dorn's Spiderbane again came in handy. Not having to worry about the main tank getting held is very nice. Shar-Teel also drank some potions of freedom to assist. Both of them being free actioned meant that we didn't really have to worry too much, but me accidentally screwing up positioning did cause us a little grief with Imoen dying.  Here is Imoen looting her gear which I stored in a slime chest while we went to rez her . Sorry little sis. That gear probably smells real bad now. After speaking with more riddling golems and defeating a few scattered monsters, we finally gained Durlag's trust and respect, and he unlocked the way to the Demon Knight.  The Demon Knight had some trash to talk, but we weren't having it.  Here is how we approached this fight. First, we buffed to the gills. Haste, strength potions, Mirror Image/Stoneskin/Ironskins, potions of invulnerability. Second, I had Imoen serve as bait for the Demon Knight's dispel. She had the boots of speed on and aggroed the Demon Knight by herself and then ate the dispel and ran to the west. Once that was done, the party moved in and began wailing on the Demon Knight. With two fully buffed fighters and everyone having haste and the best ammo they could muster, he didn't last too long. Durlags is defeated and the group will be taking Soul Taker to Ulgoth's Beard! I hope nothing bad awaits them there  -------------------------- Calamain The Blade This is probably my last single player attempt for a while. Hopefully it goes well. I've been playing it for a little while but haven't made any updates yet so I suppose I should do that.  Solid roll to get things started. I went with darts and longsword for profs. Darts may seem like an odd choice but they benefit from Offensive Spin's bonuses just the same as melee might. A Blade with ospin active gets 4 attacks per round and the darts do max damage. That makes a spinning Blade a pretty nasty ranged combatant (especially for interrupts) when needed.  Picked up Kivan and Viconia before dealing with Tarnesh. Doing so was a little risky (you can get ambushed on the way to either map) but they're just so useful early that I felt it worth the risk.  Here's a commanded Ogre with some belts he owes me  Silke was no match for command plus a hail of darts and other projectiles  We skip ahead a little bit to post Nashkel mines. The mines themselves + Greywolf were uneventful. I relied on Viconia's command to beat Greywolf and Mulahey. The mines themselves were a little more annoying since I had no sleep just yet, but Khalid and Jaheira proved a capable enough frontline to prevail despite that. You may notice my party changed a bit here from what it was earlier. I know that Rasaad kinda sucks in bg1 (though his quest gives nice loot. 19 str belt!) but I like Monks as you may know from my previous attempts and I also wanted to switch up my party and use npcs I normally don't, so I also chose to make Xan my mage and reluctantly replaced Viconia with him after completing the mines. A risk to no longer have command, but I wanted to switch things up from my normal routines. The Bounty Hunters just outside the Nashkel mines fell to a combination of sleep (Xan gets a bonus to this which is nice) and timely interrupts. Rasaad's sun soulray ability is actually very nice for interrupts. It casts instantly.  I also had the party pop what consumables I had to this point (potions of power and oils of speed from mines etc) to clear out Narcillus Neen and his two mustard jellies, as well as the rest of this map (Revenant included).  With that, I proceeded to my usual path of trying to clear out the Western map. I did all of the Southwest including the Lighthouse. Here's a fight with some jerks from Amn. Xan charmed both Archers which was hilarious. Xan kinda rules.  I stole the idol because I like fighting this Battle Horror. It hosed Khalid up a bit but I prevailed. Bards can use wands of course so my Blade has not been shy about using that Wand of Frost from Mines when needed. I hope you'll forgive me if this update for the Blade is a little screenshot light. This post is already long and you've seen me clear these areas on a few attempts now so I figure you know the jist of how I approach them . My Blade is in a good place now at level 5 and counting and should be well positioned to clear out the west/eastern map before tackling the Bandit camp soon. I think I might eventually swap Khalid/Jaheira for Yeslick and...not sure who else. I want to try out npcs I normally don't use in this run, though I'll keep Imoen probably.I have to admit, I've had a pretty good time with these Ironman runs. If these current two end that's probably it for me for a while, but I've enjoyed doing them and posting these updates and I hope you guys have enjoyed reading them. It's definitely been fun following other people's runs and I'm a little jealous at how far some of you have gotten. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 11:17 on Jan 15, 2022 |
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Jan 15, 2022 11:06
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McIbsen the Illusionist/thief has entered the Nashkel mines Alright, take 2  McIbsen, gnome Illusionist/thief "I'll let my familiar fight, that way it can interupt his spell casts - it's a great idea!"  oops Thankfully, I'd opted for 18 CON for the extra saving throws, so max HP is unchanged. Talked down Marl and cleared out some spiders to reach level 2:  Still have a hard time hitting anything that isn't sleeping, so I go looking for more easy XP  Melicamp dies, so much for that.  A few basilisk kills (by Korax) get me to level 3, at which point I can cast invisbility. Invisibility and a few sleep casts allow me to loot the Ankheg nest:  The body's staying, though. Taking on Silke:  The trap wan't quite enough, but I have a wand now:  And with that, I'm level 4/5 and feeling confident enough to take on the mines: 
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Jan 15, 2022 13:00
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Shaw the Half-Elf Shapeshifter Has Defeated The End Boss Of Baldur's Gate 1 Oh and also Sarevok After leaving Candlekeep behind, probably for the last time with everyone thinking we murdered the leaders of the Iron Throne (which we technically did), we first head to the Nashkel mines to see what the gently caress the Serpents of Abbathor are up to.  Looks like a bunch of murders. They've also layered the area in traps.  We come across a wounded Wostok who asks us for a warrior's death. Alas poor...dwarf we kind of knew a little.  We also find Emerson holed up with a few surviving miners in the dog shed. He tells us there are hostages in the mines, and that his mine operation notes got lost in the confusion, and that he spotted some pacified(?) umber hulks being led into the depths. First level of the upgraded mines is mostly cultists. Not pushovers but not hard. The last group of them before heading to level 2 has Emerson's notes.  When we hit level 2, we're greeted by this welcoming committee, skeleton archers with fire arrows, a nasty surprise if you're not prepared. (We were.) There are other smaller groups of them scattered throughout the level.  We also run into this evil dwarf cleric who's holding some hostages. He's got some summoned high level skeleton warriors but is not otherwise much trouble.  Level 3 has these 'shadows' who thankfully don't share the strength-draining qualities of their more traditional undead brethren and in fact are not that tough at all. The lynchpin of the Serpents' plan appears to have been summoning these losers for, uh, some reason.  We catch up with these Umber Hulks and dispatch them on the way, and finally deal with  Our hated enemy Lugosch, who we very nearly met once before. (I rate Ascalon's quest pack quite highly, it's a fun mod but the storytelling is a bit on the opaque side on this one, and it's not just down to the the translation from German.) We defeat him, his cronies, and his shadows, and that's it for The Serpents of Abbathor, Part 1. (There is no Part 2 as far as I know.) And from here on out it's just good old high-quality Official Content.  Er, yes.  The less said about the stupid Werewolf Isle storyline the better.  Drake gets himself got, but we manage to take down the head werewolf. (I know BG2 kits weren't a thing when this was written but I still wish there'd been some acknowledgement that Shaw was kinda sorta a werewolf already, somehow. One of many, many things I wish about this goddamned idiotic storyline.) Anyway, it's time to move on  To Durlag's Tower! (Breagar is not super impressed by the tour guide but he is absolutely impressed by the tower itself.) As much of a menace as the place is, Durlag's is probably my favorite dungeon in the entire game, just for the atmosphere and the narrative. We deal with the top floors without much incident, the ghost and Kirinhale (and the basilisks if you forget they're there) are the only real challenges up here, and SCS does indeed make them into challenges, but we deal with them all right.  First floor, including the four warders down.  I both love and hate the second floor. The door puzzles are irritating but I absolutely dig the mad little notes all over the place. Atmosphere!  Third floor's kind of silly and disorganized by comparison. I pretty much always go the Wyvern route, it's much less risky than the other two. I think SCS does some shenanigans with the chessboard fight because we get mobbed by half the 'pieces' before we can get a web spell off, but it works out all right in the end.  Fourth and final floor. Love the riddles, hate the acid maze. And finally we're off to face the demon knight  Well that certainly could have gone better. Still, any battle that just about half the party manages to limp away from. We head back to Ulgoth's Beard and deal with the ambush by going in invisible.  Breagar's feeling a little contemplative. We fight our way through a couple of waves of cultists and go in to deal with Aec, everyone protected from gaze attacks and buffed to the kills.  Vynd starts things off right.  This is probably the toughest fight in the entire game, especially if you don't know all of Aec'Letec's tricks. We get it done. Back to Baldur's Gate, rescue Eltan, deal with Slythe and Kristen, shove a blood-covered invitation in the Ducal Palace guard's face, and fight this particularly hairy battle.  One of the less-expected facets of SCS is that Liia Janath starts out prebuffed to the loving gills and it's quite hard for her to die in this fight. Belt's still kind of a liability but it all works out.  In the horrible pointless Thieves Maze, Vynd offers to just assassinate Sarevok and be done with it instead of doing the final climactic battle. I don't think it's actually possible to take him up on it though.  We deal with the pain-in-the-rear end mercenaries and finally find Varscona. (I guess it makes sense that it would be in the hands of a pain-in-the-rear end mercenary.)  And then it's go time. SCS does some fun (well "fun") things to this fight too, most notably making Sarevok completely invulnerable til his flunkies are dead, and summoning skeleton warriors in their place when they *do* die.  Even so, as summons from both sides duke it out, Sarevok, the would-be new Lord of Murder, falls to Drake's hammer. Honors: Ironling, Strategist, Librarian, Trap Dodger, Honorable Trader. I'm not claiming Overcoming Adversity since the SCS improvements to the Shapeshifter kit are quite good (though I maintain not unbalanced, or at least no more unbalanced than a fighter/mage protagonist).
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Jan 15, 2022 20:03
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Ginette Reno posted:I have to admit, I've had a pretty good time with these Ironman runs. If these current two end that's probably it for me for a while, but I've enjoyed doing them and posting these updates and I hope you guys have enjoyed reading them. It's definitely been fun following other people's runs and I'm a little jealous at how far some of you have gotten. I've been reading and enjoying all of y'all's posts. Seeing the different approaches taken is cool too. docbeard posted:In the horrible pointless Thieves Maze Having done this once, think I'll Control+J my way to that corner door in the future.
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Jan 15, 2022 20:21
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quote:So close to successfully Ironmanning bg1 with the multiplayer party that I can taste it. I hope we don't stumble near the finish line Update: We did in fact wipe on Sarevok. Semaj somehow got a chaos off and hit enough people with that to cause us to lose. I dunno how we didn't interrupt it, because we definitely tried to. Pretty depressed right now. Hans the Avenger and Blue Maragaret are..dead. If I could run that fight back I think what I would try to do is hoard more potions of magic immunity for that fight in particular. We ran out of them by the end of the game, so surviving save-or-gently caress you effects became a problem in this particular instance. I did have chaotic commands but only on Dorn. Other than that, I dunno. I wish I could review the combat log to see where we went wrong. I think if we try again we might go for a more Fighter heavy approach. Perhaps two PC fighters and then be a bit less caster heavy. I don't feel like caster heavy is really that great in bg1. Not by late bg1 when there's so many annoying enemies with magic resistance. Skeleton Warriors, Aecletec, Demon Knight, Sarevok. Having a magic heavy party sucks vs all of those. Our lack of a good frontliner other than Dorn became a real problem in Tales + endgame. e: I reloaded just to see and I did see a much easier approach to the fight than I took. Dammit. I hate being rusty at bg. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 10:26 on Jan 16, 2022 |
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Jan 16, 2022 01:47
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Man with Hat posted:Blend I finally got some time to sit down with this again.  Went and got a book on How to Make Friends and had my main read it. Being able to plan makes this game so much fun. Potion of clarity to take care of sirens and potion of absorbtion to beat meat golems is super satisfying. Then we went on an Ogre Mage Killing Spree   Judeau, I have avenged you! Man with Hat posted:But all good things must come to an end and mine came at the hands of Kahrk. I did not at all realize what I was heading into with this one, holy poo poo. Having learned from that previous mistake and being horrified of this guy I went in with Jaheira, triggered the bastard, chugged a potion of invisibility and hid until the stupid buffs were gone. Proceeded to the Cloakwoods where Ettercaps repeatedly almost killed Brenwen  Got into a food fight with some wizard and her buddies and played very poorly but it worked out thanks to the wand of summoning.  Davaeorn was pretty simple when have a potion making you immune to level 5 spells or lower actually.  Traded all the loot down here for something I should've gotten Imoen way sooner  And this is where we're at right now  Next stop Baldur's Gate where I'm gonna be lost as all hell. I did not expect to make it this far.
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Jan 16, 2022 23:29
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My brother wanted to have another go of it with multiplayer BG Ironman. I'm surprised at the willingness after we wiped so tragically on Sarevok, but here we go. Kip The Conundrum, Fighter/Illusionist, and Dallas The Malice, Fighter/Cleric. Kip is the protagonist.  We start off with some pretty good rolls. Somehow I rolled a 94 in under 20 rolls. Our rationale for going with F/M and F/C was to have some more muscle in bg1 this time around as we felt our frontline was a little light last run. Also multiclasses are a nice change from the single player meta I've been on.  Imoen died early to a Gibberling ambush. An inauspicious start.  Tarnesh died to a hail of arrows and command. Kip is hitting pretty hard and fast with the bow early. Fighter/x with a bow = pretty damned good in Bg1, as you all know.`  Picked up Khalid and Jaheira  Dallas The Malice got told by Unshey that he smells worse than Orc. Given his 1 Charisma score, he probably does  Spiders down to sleep/command + a hail of arrows  Silke/Karlat, likewise  Neira down too  Edwin recruited. Khalid left in a house since we no longer need him. Kept Jaheira though  Dorn recruited  Greywolf slain due to command + all the damage we could muster.  Mulahey also died and we cleared mines but I guess I forgot to SS it. We took out the bounty hunters outside of Nashkel Mines but left the rest of the zone for later. Didn't want to mess with mustard jellies ghasts etc until a few more levels.  We gambled and lost 100s of gold at the tent because we're degenerates that way  And now we begin the task of clearing the west. Had a few deaths so far with Imoen to a Gibberling at one point and Edwin ate poo poo from the arrows of those jerks from Amn in Cloudpeaks. But other than that, mostly plowing forward. -------------- Calamain The Blade  My Blade meanwhile took out Bassilus with a hail of darts and some timely interrupts from Rasaad. Rasaad kinda sucks in bg1 but Sun Soulray is a good interrupt in bg1. Does solid damage too.  Melicamp died  Droth ate some darts of wounding from my Blade. The poison was quick to do its work and helped the rest of the party take him out  With the Western zones done, I pivoted to the east as I wanted to rush the Bandit camp this time. Why? Because I intend to use Coran/Yeslick in this run to switch things up, and so I want to pick up both of them soon as I'm near 32k xp and that's the max xp any npc will join the party with.  The bandit camp wasn't too much more challenging than normal. I usually wait to clear out both west/east maps before doing it, so I'm a little less strong doing it than normal, but that was fine. Sleep does work here, and none of the monsters are too scary other than Taugosz and the big tent. Taugosz I had to focus down pretty well and Jaheira did take some big hits in the battle. No deaths though  In the tent itself, I used ospin + darts plus everyone else focusing down the Mage. After that, it was easy cleanup.  And now I'm into the Cloakwood. You may notice Khalid and Jaheira are gone. I picked up Ajantis for now but my goal is to grab Coran and then later Yeslick (to replace Ajantis). That should be my final party barring any changes. Hopefully I'm not too light on the frontline with that party as Coran is more of an archer. I'm a little less concerned about a lighter frontline with this singleplayer party than I am with the multiplayer one as the faster pause in singleplayer makes it much easier to position characters. I dunno how many of you have played multiplayer bg runs before but there's a slight delay with pausing that makes things a lot harder in terms of fine tuning your tactical deployments. That's one of the biggest challenges tbh because sometimes it makes doing interrupts and positioning harder with multiplayer than with single. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 09:13 on Jan 17, 2022 |
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Jan 17, 2022 09:11
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Ginette Reno, that Sarevok wipe was heartbreaking (it's definitely happened to me before) but I'm glad to see you and your brother are back in the saddle! Also rooting for your Blade run. Shaw the Half-Elf Shapeshifter is on her way to besiege Dragonspear. So, immediately after fighting Sarevok we get a brief cutscene and are dumped immediately into this mini-dungeon, hunting down Korlasz, one of Sarevok's acolytes who didn't show up for the final fight. Imoen's left the party so it's the five of us and...  ...who the gently caress is 'Safana'?!? (She gets dropped in as insurance to make sure we have a way of dealing with locks and traps, but it's funny because I don't think my party ever so much as spoke to her in BG1. I make her into a Shadowdancer because why not? It suits her.)  This may be the one time in the entire series where a mage conducting an experiment didn't result in horrible death or torture or something. She's just trying to restore some old texts. We help her out, and because Shaw's a druid we don't even have to go on a fetch quest to do it. (Normally she wants some cobalt moss which is elsewhere in the dungeon.) This dungeon in general is nothing too exciting, lots of undead, lots of traps. The undead are a bit of a wake-up call if you're used to steamrolling through encounters from late-game BG1 though, which I suspect is kind of the point. Still, throwing out a web and having someone equipped with a ring of freedom mow them down works pretty well in most cases. There are a couple sidequests, including the above, but it all culminates in the final confrontation with Korlasz.  She actually will offer surrender (once she comes close to death)  eh, normally. (Accepting her surrender just means you have to fight her on your own later, so it's not really worth the bother.)  Imoen is canonically in Dual Class Hell (regardless of her disposition in the previous game) which is why she doesn't come with you here and one of the reasons she isn't available in Siege. Before we leave this dungeon, we unequip everyone because not doing so is a recipe for losing their gear forever, even among the ones we'll see again. (Thank god for mods that add Bags of Holding is all I'll say!) Then we're sent back to the Ducal Palace all alone (except for Vynd who isn't removed from the party for some reason. I'm tempted to keep him around, but decide not to take advantage of this particular bug, mostly because modded Baldur's Gate is a rickety house of cards at the best of times and I don't want to encourage it). There's an assassination attempt where Imoen is seriously hurt that serves as our hook into joining the fight against the Crusade of Caelar Argent. We run around town a bit recruiting (a small fraction) of our old allies; Minsc, Dynaheir and Safana are available. Coran, Garrick, Tiax and Rasaad tell us "thanks, but no thanks", no one else is anywhere to be found. Except in my case for Breagar and Drake (who actually do have Siege content). We also lose all our money through a comedy of errors involving the ducal treasurer, which would be a problem if we weren't also carrying a small fortune in gems in a gem bag. Anyway, we begin the long march north and make camp here.  Siege is a lot more linear than Baldur's Gate one, taking us through a couple of small setpiece areas, each with a fair bit of things to do before we move on. We also have a few additional NPC recruiting possibilities right from the start; Viconia, Glint (a gnome cleric/thief) and Shael Corwin (a captain in the Flaming FIst and an Archer). There's also Belegarm, a merchant, Mizhena, who provides temple services and...some dude whose name escapes me who provides a safe place to rest.  For like the first time ever playing Siege, I remember these web traps are here before blundering into one.  We come across this burned-out inn, because the Crusade have this tendency to lay waste to entire villages in their wake. Drake reminisces about his childhood where the same thing happened to the small Amnian town where he was living with his uncle. There are a few other things of note here but before I get to that, we come across a bridge with Crusade forces on the other side. They, uh, panic.  A fight and a cutscened conversation with Caelar Argent later, and we're left with a quandry. We need to find another way north because those idiots blew up the only bridge in the region. But first we keep exploring.  Oh god... Baeloth is putting on a show for everyone, and most people are not suitably impressed. He's a potential recruit here, as is the goblin shaman M'Khiin. I actually do swap them in for Minsc and Dynaheir because I fancy a change (and because M'Khiin is my favorite of Beamdog's new NPCs by a considerable margin). Baeloth isn't happy with our high reputation and complains a lot but I think we have things rigged so he won't actually leave. (I might switch him back for Dynaheir anyway, if I can do it without bringing Minsc along, and I think I can. Siege is a little less consistent in making sure its couples are joined at the hip.) It's also possible to recruit Edwin at this point. If, you know, you want to. We continue our explanations and...oh right.  Skie Silvershield, daughter of one of the Grand Dukes and potential BG1 NPC, has snuck off to join the Flaming Fist, and we've been given the unofficial task of babysitting. She's actually halfway competent but is extremely bad about things like following orders or telling anyone what she's up to. I'm sure it'll all work out fine, though.  Hey, it's Rasaad! ...eh, who cares? There are a few other interesting encounters in these two linked areas, including a fight with a vampire, a troll cave, a quest involving some menhirs and a ghostly bard, and even a face-off with some goblin spirits (if you have M'Khiin around) but of greatest note is a Dwarven Excavation Gone Wrong.  They dug and broke into an ancient library/laboratory full of the undead and lost one of their own, Gurn Coldhearth.  Except it turns out it was all a ruse. Coldhearth led them all here with the secret plan to turn himself into a lich.  Deepvein is originally skeptical but comes around when we show him Coldhearth's journal, even going so far as to give us The Secret Revealed, a magic item that can ruin any lich's day. It has three charges.  We come across Coldhearth just as his ritual completes. At this point he's been a lich for about thirty seconds. We can actually side with him if we're evil, but in spite of letting Baeloth chill with us, we aren't.  The Secret Revealed wrecks his defenses, hits him with Miscast Magic, and generally makes him pretty easy to kill. Except of course he's a lich so it's not that easy. We need to destroy his phylactery and he'll keep coming back until we do. We find his phylactery in an adjoining room and then run like hell as he chases us (at one point casting Time Stop, though we'd distracted him with summoned monsters so he mostly just goes to town on them) to a convenient portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire.  We destroy the phylactery, kill the lich for the second and final time, and that's all she wrote for Gurn Coldhearth, and for this update.
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Jan 17, 2022 15:18
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docbeard posted:Ginette Reno, that Sarevok wipe was heartbreaking (it's definitely happened to me before) but I'm glad to see you and your brother are back in the saddle! Also rooting for your Blade run. Yeah we were pretty sad about it lol. I expected us to wipe in Siege since I have only beaten that once but losing in bg1 at the very end was definitely a heartbreaker. I have gotten an Ironman run to Throne of Bhaal before (but failed there) so at least I have done it before but I'd really like to get there again. I should have done more research on it or ideally had a separate singleplayer run handy with a save to test out my intended strategy. I've beaten BG more times than I can count but it has been years since I have. Now that we have the failed Ironman run there I will probably load that save and screw around a bit with it if our new mp run/ my Blade run ever gets that far and just make sure I have a strategy ready. My two main concerns there are stopping that confuse and preventing the dispel. I think Semaj might do one/both via some sort of Spell Sequencer? So maybe not interruptable. My thought was having the party huddle in a corner except for the puller and then have the puller have boots of speed + prot from magic scroll on and pull from the right side. That should bring just Sarevok/Semaj down to the entrance and from there once the initial confuse/dispel are avoided it should be a simple matter of killing Semaj and then summon tanking/kiting Sarevok like normal. I'll definitely be reading your Siege updates closely as that's an expansion I am not that up to date on. If I do end up doing it, I'll need to take it really slowly and look up what is in each zone as I've only beaten it once and that years ago so I don't remember it at all.
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Jan 17, 2022 15:57
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Ginette Reno posted:Yeah we were pretty sad about it lol. I expected us to wipe in Siege since I have only beaten that once but losing in bg1 at the very end was definitely a heartbreaker. I have gotten an Ironman run to Throne of Bhaal before (but failed there) so at least I have done it before but I'd really like to get there again. I should have done more research on it or ideally had a separate singleplayer run handy with a save to test out my intended strategy. I've beaten BG more times than I can count but it has been years since I have. Now that we have the failed Ironman run there I will probably load that save and screw around a bit with it if our new mp run/ my Blade run ever gets that far and just make sure I have a strategy ready. My two main concerns there are stopping that confuse and preventing the dispel. I think Semaj might do one/both via some sort of Spell Sequencer? So maybe not interruptable. My thought was having the party huddle in a corner except for the puller and then have the puller have boots of speed + prot from magic scroll on and pull from the right side. That should bring just Sarevok/Semaj down to the entrance and from there once the initial confuse/dispel are avoided it should be a simple matter of killing Semaj and then summon tanking/kiting Sarevok like normal. Siege is honestly not too bad, but it definitely has a few surprises. THe tactic I used in that fight (which was a bit altered by SCS but the essential idea would be the same I'm sure) was to send everyone in invisible and use summons to draw some of their initial fire. The invisibility obviously didn't last long but it bought me a little time at the beginning, and those first few seconds are critical. I also opened with an Insect Swarm from my druid so neither Semaj nor Angelo were casting much of anything, though I'm not sure that would stop a sequencer either. (That spell is positively broken, and I think SCS even weakens it a bit.) Casting a Chaos of your own is also a good opening move.
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Jan 17, 2022 17:01
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docbeard posted:Siege is honestly not too bad, but it definitely has a few surprises. Honestly the only thing I remember about Siege was the final boss being a bit of a pain in the rear end but I was playing on Insane last time I did it and I seem to recall the biggest issue being that you need + 3 weapons to hit him and I didn't have a lot of those. This time around that is something I would plan for if I got that far. Insect Swarm rules. That won a lot of fights for us in the multiplayer run once I unlocked it on my Avenger. Gonna miss having it this time around (I don't think Jaheira gets high enough to cast it in bg1). I imagine on SCS it's impossible to cheese the positioning on that fight because Sarevok's whole posse will come at you no matter what. I believe on non SCS you can separate the pull so hopefully I can do that correctly next time. Having to fight Sarevok's whole crew must have been pretty nasty for you, especially on SCS where they will target more intelligently.
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Jan 17, 2022 17:32
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I like the lighting and look of this dungeon. It's got way more color than BG1 - in general, SoD has a more saturated palette it feels like though I haven't gotten too far into it yet. quote:Imoen is canonically in Dual Class Hell (regardless of her disposition in the previous game) which is why she doesn't come with you here and one of the reasons she isn't available in Siege. I've made up a new "house rule" for preventing dual hell: continue at your dual level as the first class until you have enough xp for your second class to have enough levels to activate the first class again. Then dual and give your character that xp in EEKeeper or NI so they can immediately activate all those levels. In practice this seems to be the same as waiting a level in your first class since xp reqs generally double each level, so it's not a hindrance at all. But that's the point, annoyance isn't a good game mechanic. quote:Before we leave this dungeon, we unequip everyone because not doing so is a recipe for losing their gear forever, even among the ones we'll see again. (Thank god for mods that add Bags of Holding is all I'll say!) This was an unpleasant surprise. Interesting thing I learned about the various Bags of Holding types: the Ammo Belt and Scroll Bag are not preserved in your inventory if you do an Export Character and then create the same char using Import, though everything else on that char was. So I put them on my MC before doing that trick with Imoen. v1ld fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Jan 17, 2022 |
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Jan 17, 2022 17:59
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Capfalcon posted:Gimil Stoneheart, the Fighter/Cleric Gimil Stoneheart, the Fighter/Cleric has beefed it to Sarevok due to a fearful dwarf tripping too many traps when running in terror. Still, blitzing through Baldurs gate as a baddie was fun. Dorn is a murder machine and Kagain basically can't be killed if he has the dex gloves. It does feel like most of the evil options are half-hearted thoughts, but bringing the dryad back to jerk-er wizard, then deciding to double cross him AND kill the dryad for spell component parts was real nasty without being just... dumb. Also, after the death, I reloaded beforehand and double-checked the buff situation. Apparently, Kagain was standing too far to get the anti-fear buff. Hell of a way to end the run, but something something overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.
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Jan 17, 2022 17:59
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I just bait Semaj's initial dispel away from the party with Jaheira wearing the boots of speed. Once it hits her, I have her start drinking buffing potions while the rest of the party feathers Semaj. Then it's a group fight when Angelo jumps in with Sarevok not very far behind. Sarevok can be slowed and stunned. Dunno about confuse/chaos. Last time I fought him I got him to fail a save vs darts of stunning after doom/greater malison. He died very quickly. As for the SoD boss, if you know ahead of time about the +3 thing and buff on your way up the elevator, he's a huge pushover. You don't even need to beat him up with a full party. Last time I only had Khalid with a +3 longsword and Jaheira with a +3 staff with everyone else taking care of the adds and buffing/debuffing and the battle was a joke. I just had a thought. Those potions that makes you immune to spell levels 1-5 for a few rounds, do they protect your buffs from being dispelled?
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Jan 17, 2022 18:09
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Capfalcon posted:Gimil Stoneheart, the Fighter/Cleric has beefed it to Sarevok due to a fearful dwarf tripping too many traps when running in terror. Aw man. What's up wiped on Sarevok buddy  . My condolences.Suspicious posted:I just had a thought. Those potions that makes you immune to spell levels 1-5 for a few rounds, do they protect your buffs from being dispelled? I wondered about this as well and want to test it. To be honest the only thing I fear about Sarevok is the dispel/confuse combination. Had we avoided that, there's no way we would have wiped. I'm going to playtest that fight on the save I have from the failed Ironman so that I'm ready for it on my actual Ironmans. And hopefully I can make it that far again. Not sure if we had any potions of magic immunity left by that point though. We were pretty liberal with them the rest of the game on any annoying caster fights Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Jan 17, 2022 |
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Jan 17, 2022 18:09
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Yeah, reloaded and properly buffed and mopped the floor with him. I'll restart a new run, but I think I got the baddies out of my system. Reputation is much easier to manage for goodies. I probably wanna try a new class. Maybe a blade? Wizard slayer dwarf?
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Jan 17, 2022 18:18
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Calamain the Blade Cleared a few zones during my lunch break  Picked up Coran and cleared out the wyverns for his quest. That part wasn't too bad. The most dangerous part was actually getting ambushed on the way back by Ettercaps and wyverns. They're not so bad when I can get my party in position to tank them but when you get surrounded it's a little scary. My Blade has mirror image but even so I dont' want to mess around with melee too much. Not til stoneskin.  Drasus and company fell readily enough to web and missiles. I forgot what an absolute sniper Coran is. He has a 5 thaco I think right now with the Bandit camp Longbow. He just obliterates poo poo with his 5 attacks/2 rounds.  Coran can also backstab poo poo. I had a grand old time backstabbing all the Mages in the Cloakwood mines. His strength isn't that high so his backstabs aren't spectacular but they get the job done. And if you want more oomph you can pop a strength pot with him. I'll probably eventually give him the Ogre gauntlets.  Said goodbye to Ajantis here. He got me through the rest of Cloakwood so I salute him for that. He's actually pretty solid and I may use him in a future run. He's not as offensively adept as say Dorn is but he's a little tankier thanks to his higher con. His dex sucks but dex gloves fix that.  Here is Coran having a little more fun backstabbing another Cloakwood mage.  And here's the top dog himself, deader than dead. I interrupted his early cast with a magic missile from my Blade and then a volley of missiles took him out after that. Calamain is now level 7 and has his full intended party together and will be off soon to clear out the rest of the sword coast. I have the eastern map still left to do before I head to Baldur's Gate as I rushed Cloakwood this time to get Yeslick/Coran before they fall behind too far xp-wise. As a side note I kinda wish the party members you recruited just leveled up closer to what your xp is when you pick them up. Capping joinable members at 32k makes it a lot harder to use anyone that isn't on the early maps unless you rush to get them. I guess the flipside of that is Yeslick and Coran are both very powerful npcs so even though they might start a little bit behind xp-wise when you get them, you might not even mind it because of how strong they are. It also sucks if you have a party member permanently die in an Ironman run. That happened twice in our multiplayer run and having to replace characters when you're like level 8/9 and having them join at level 6 kinda sucks. I imagine there's a mod that addresses this but with an Ironman I'll usually play unmodded
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Jan 17, 2022 20:29
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I thought I could deal with the green dragon in Siege of Dragonspear with just standard buffs rather than using my Protection from Poison scrolls. I...was wrong. RIP Shaw. At least it was a good death? I've probably got one more Ironman try in me, just not sure what yet.
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Jan 18, 2022 11:01
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Meet Silas, Half-Orc Priest of Helm/Thief I added the Helm kit using EEKeeper. Yes it's cheesy (and a bit odd conceptually) but (a) I can kind of make it work in my head if I envision him as more a Holy Secret Agent than a thief and (b) I don't care. I'm probably going to put most of his points into stealth and setting traps (though I did start with some lock stuff so he can, ah, requisition some supplies from upstairs).
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Jan 19, 2022 13:54
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Calamain The Blade Here is me finishing Rasaad's quest. Of particular note is that the party picked up a 19 strength belt. With that and the dex gloves equipped, Yeslick becomes a formidable tank. Rasaad is wearing the strength gloves for now which also give him a nice dps boost. I did also finish the rest of the eastern zones. My party was overleveled for it so I didn't take many screenshots. The party went off to Baldur's Gate to get much business done there.  Coran pilfers some Halruaan ship components for the Thieves guild  The party also saves itself from Marek's poisons  Coran is a deadbeat dad just like Cernd, except unlike Cernd he's at least a really good party member in combat  The party fights some battle horrors in Dagordel's mansion. He's an rear end in a top hat but we're gonna do his quest to get the extra 5000 gold. We're greedy for cash for arrows and darts. We did do his quest and killed him after turning it in. He summons a second wave of servants when you do that too, but we were ready for it and buffed beforehand.  We also saved some little girls from dirty old man Gervisse  Gorpel Hind and his Merry Fools helped me against the jerks in the inn here, but unfortunately Gorpel Hind himself perished. I felt bad. He's a cool dude.  I posted this one just because it's funny. I looted Entar's estate and was getting guards summoned left and right. I was looting these chests as fast as I could so I could get out. Killing these guards loses rep I think. But also they are vulnerable to sleep and aren't too dangerous so even if I couldn't get out fast enough I wasn't too worried.  I finished Baldur's Gate city and its quests and moved on to TOTSC. Nothing eventful really happened in BG. I don't think I ever had anyone die there or come close. For the Ogre Mages fight and those two jerks in the Low Lantern I made sure to focus fire targets that were casting nasty spells down quickly. Hasted Coran helps a ton there, as does my Blade with darts of wounding or stunning. At any rate here's me doing Ice Island. Unfortunately Coran got confused by one of the mages in the first fight and Imoen fell to his arrows. I had Yeslick running over the traps in the dungeon while my party held back as with his saves he was unlikely to die. And he didn't. I need to stop having my Thief die in inopportune times during these runs though. Still, better than having my Blade die! I actually had my Blade use the Greenstone amulet here to avoid confusion but in retrospect it might make more sense to use it on Coran since he's the most dangerous party member when confused. Yeslick's saving throws are good enough that he'll almost never fail a save there.  Onto Durlag's Tower. The top floors were easily cleared. The traps and monster spawns are fresh in my memory from the failed multiplayer run (as well as some of my own failed runs ).  This Dryad/Nymph thing on the top floor always scares me a little because she goes invis and likes to charm people. Turns out, if you unload damage on her quickly enough, she can't do that. A hail of missiles weapons gave her no chance to cause any mischief.  Defeated the Warders. Yeslick's zone of sweet air got interrupted which was irritating but I still focus fired them down 1 by 1 easily enough. Malison + Slow helped.  This room sucks because you get trapped in there and they drop a stinking cloud/cloudkill onto you. As with the previous level Yeslick's zone of sweet air got interrupted by damage. Annoying. Still, took them all out. Party was heavily buffed just in case.  Not gonna lie, I had Yeslick pop a protection from undead scroll to clear this room by himself. Cheesy? Perhaps. But this is an Ironman run and this god damned room caused me no end of trouble on other runs. 3 Skeleton Warriors is just a lot to deal with for any tank, even a good one. But easy enough when they cant hit back.  Dwarven Battle Horrors are another story. These guys kinda suck, they hit hard and have solid ac and the cramped room you fight them in sucks too. However, they are susceptible to malison + slow +blind. That makes them significantly easier to handle.  Xan ate poo poo here. I remembered that one of these Greater Dopplegangers starts in caster form and likes to drop lightning bolts. I interrupted it. But one of the other ones shifted into caster form and also dropped a lightning bolt. I did have protection from Lightning up on my Blade for just this possibility. But I didn't have it on everyone due to lack of slots. Xan died from it. No big deal. Stored his gear in a chest, went out, rezzed him, moved on. Calamain The Blade is now preparing to clear the final few floors of Durlags. Getting ever so closer to Stoneskin (one more level) and then I should feel reasonably safe. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Jan 20, 2022 |
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Jan 20, 2022 07:48
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Calamain The Blade Long post inc as I have a lot of updates to post. Good ones though, I hope.  Calamain resumes his adventures and faces off with a set of Greater Wyverns. I tried to fight these one at time and use kiting/summons where needed. They hit hard. Yeslick nearly died once despite his -8 AC or whatever it was at the time.  I took out the elemental challenges one by one. They aren't so hard if you know what to prepare for. The only scary one is the Phoenix/Fire Guard challenge but for that you just need to focus them quickly and make sure they target your (protected by fire resistance) tank. Before doing those, I did also complete the Skeleton/Assassin portions of this level as well. For the former, I had Imoen invis in and disarm all the traps before taking out the skeletons with fireballs and skull traps. For the latter, I similarly had Imoen disable all the traps while invis before bringing my party in. To handle the enemies there, I made sure Yeslick aggroed the assassins. With his low ac, they rarely even hit him with backstab, and even if they'd managed to (I don't think they even did iirc) he could take a hit.  Chessboard was defeated by web + each character using fireball items (necklace, potions, wands). It's the easiest way to do it without loving around with moving forward and dealing with lightning bolts etc.  Onto the last level of Durlags before the Demon Knight. Here I had Yeslick and Rasaad quaff potions of freedom. The Ghouls/Carrion Crawlers do not hit hard, so as long as you're immune to their nasty holds it's easy enough to clear this area, so long as the rest of the party stays back.  Answered all of Durlags riddles and disarmed the last of his traps.  Here I had Imoen use boots of speed to bait out his dispel. From there, the buffed to the gills party waded in. The Demon Knight actually fell incredibly fast. I was surprised how quickly he fell. I suppose having a buffed Coran doesn't hurt.  After restocking at Sorcerous Sundries, the party went to Ulogths. With the assassins nearby, I made sure to quickly get Xan and my Blade up with mirror images. From there it was easy enough to mop up the rest of the enemies here. They aren't' so tough if you survive the early backstab attempts.  For Aec'Letec, I had everyone except for Xan pop potions of magic shielding (I had only 5). Xan used a potion of mirrored gaze. I then tried to get monsters up quickly and used them plus Yeslick when needed to keep Aec busy while the rest of the party slaughtered his allies. Once they were down, everyone focused him down. It didn't take too long to kill him, buffed as we were. My Blade hit an important milestone here. Level 10 aka Stoneskin! Massive survivability boost vs melee/ranged.  Onto Werewolf Isle. This Mendas fellow seems trustworthy enough. We don't need the gold or the xp but this party is not one to leave content unfinished.  Karoug was pretty tough as Yeslick lacked weapons to hurt him. Luckily I had Coran put some profs on level up into Bastard Sword in anticipation of this fight. The blade with +3 vs Shapeshifters was used to shred Karoug while the rest of the party used what magic they could to also hurt him. The regen was annoying but we overcame it. On the way back, Selaad was much easier. Loup Garous don't seem as tough as the Greater Wolfwere, so they fell more easily. My Blade actually Petrified one with Chromatic Orb. Level 10 chromatic orb= petrify, which rules.  Onto the Iron Throne tower, our last bit of business in Baldur's Gate. With our levels and gear, the Iron Throne 6 weren't much trouble. I landed a petrify on Zalimar Cloudwulfe to punctuate my domination of these bums. I actually remember this fight being really hard when I was a kid, but I didn't have the bg knowledge then that I do now. And they are much tougher when you don't have kits/bg2 abilities as well as Tales of the Sword Coast levels/gear  Didn't take many screenshots of the Candlekeep Catacombs. Last time around I hosed up and had my Thief die in there and it was nearly disastrous for the multiplayer run, so I was trying to focus and make sure I hit all the traps. I navigated through them and the monsters. Prat is the only real fight of note here, and for that I used malison + chaos and focus fire to take them all down. With that out of the way, the party returned to Baldur's Gate to stock up one last time and get ready for the coronation of Sarevok. I'm gonna take you to the coronation Sarevok. The blood coronation. This didn't go as smoothly as I wanted. One of the Dopplegangers interrupted Xan's slow, and it was a scramble from there to kill them all and kite the ones that got onto Xan. Monster summoning and focus fire won the day, as it often does in Bg1. At least they were mostly on me rather than Belt/Lia. You can actually lose the game if those two die, and I'm always terrified of that happening in my Ironmans.  I cheesed this fight by web + fireball spam from out of fog of war. One of those archers has arrows of detonation and I just wanted to wash my hands of this and get onto the last fight   Finally, the big bad....again. I did some studying up on this fight. Here is the strategy I landed on. I had Coran stealth in to start with. I had him get in range of Sarevok which started the battle, but he didn't chase south because Coran was stealthed. Semaj however will always teleport down to the party and try to gently caress with them once the battle starts. Coran rushed back and hit him with an arrow of dispelling. Semaj died quickly thereafter. With Semaj out of the way, my next task was to lure Tazok down. This can be done using a summon without aggroing Sarevok. I had the summon lure Tazok down where he was focused down. Two down. Finally, there's Angelo. I wanted to lure him down without Sarevok, and I tried to use Yeslick to do so, but I hosed up and got only Sarevok. Angelo aggroed too but I think he stayed up there and cast a remove magic instead of chasing my party down. That proved fortuitous because only Sarevok chased. I didn't have my wall of monster summons up just yet because I wanted Angelo dead first. Nearly a bad mistake, but I had time to correct it. I quickly got a wall of summons up on Sarevok. Yeslick fled to pop Durlag's goblet to heal to full as Sarevok hit him a few times before I got summons up. This also proved nearly to be a fatal mistake because in my rush to correct things I didn't cast remove fear first. So now Yeslick was running everywhere from the fear the goblet causes. Oh dear. He triggered a few traps while the rest of the party used summons and missiles to whittle down Sarevok. Hilariously enough some of the traps Yeslick triggered actually hit Sarevok as well. Angelo never made it south as I think he was chasing around Yeslick. Angelo actually didn't die before Sarevok did. At some point I'm gonna test this again to see if I even need to pull Angelo. But either way, the day is mine.  Calamain the Blade has defeated Baldur's Gate and is on to Siege of Dragonspear! For Siege, I think I'm going to take a break for a bit and watch some playthroughs on youtube/do some reading up on it. It's just not fresh in my memory at all, and I don't want to rush in and wipe. But I still wanna do it. Coran and Yeslick were both great. Yeslick's saves were through the roof, and Coran was a deadly sniper. I forgot how overpowered it is having an archer type character in bg1. The Blade did pretty well. He mostly used darts. I think I may hold off on doing much melee combat until bg2 (if I get there). Not sure it's even worth it until I get a good weapon plus belm, and he's been good enough with the darts/magic/wands so far. Haven't played the multiplayer party in a bit, but still planning on doing that as well soon. I'm hoping with all this content fresh in my mind that we can manage to succeed with it too. Honors: Ironling, Purist, Librarian, Trap Dodger, Honorable Trader Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Jan 21, 2022 |
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Jan 21, 2022 07:58
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