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Ginette Reno posted:Calamain The Blade Congrats! Your writeup on Serevok was a good read I will have to keep in mind for if (when, think positive!) I get there.
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Jan 21, 2022 15:30
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Man with Hat posted:Congrats! Your writeup on Serevok was a good read I will have to keep in mind for if (when, think positive!) I get there. Thanks! I think the Semaj part of it did seem pretty foolproof, and that was the most important bit to me since he casts chaos and other nasty stuff. So being able to isolate him and kill him before the rest of Sarevok's flunkies showed up was pretty huge for me. Pulling Tazok with a summon also worked pretty well. What I wanna test is whether you even need to pull Angelo. I'd just as soon leave him up there by himself and deal with Sarevok directly after killing Semaj/Tazok if possible. It used to be that you could easily pull Sarevok by himself but I don't know if Bgee changed anything in that regard. Angelo didn't rush south for me in my attempt even though I aggroed him but I don't know if I just got lucky there or if that's normal behavior. Make sure to have party ai turned off for this fight if you're gonna try the stealth pull tactic or your puller may decide to leave stealth and shoot at Sarevok etc. If Sarevok sees you he will chase south and you don't want to fight him + Tazok + Semaj at the same time. Or maybe you do if you're badass enough but I didn't wanna risk it  .
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Jan 21, 2022 15:51
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Ginette Reno posted:Make sure to have party ai turned off for this fight if you're gonna try the stealth pull tactic or your puller may decide to leave stealth and shoot at Sarevok etc. This seems like a good segue into my next update actually Blend, knife throwing Kensai (although at this point she is using her Scimitar quite a bit) Man with Hat posted:Next stop Baldur's Gate where I'm gonna be lost as all hell. I did not expect to make it this far. Mostly just did every sidequest I could find in the city so here are the highlights: Sleep rod is still somehow one of the best items. Fun fact: blink dogs keep teleporting in their sleep  We killed some people on a boat and punched some other people so we could rob containers without loosing reputation. Somehow assault is better than theft in that regard.   I gave the book to Imoen since she's a *mage* and clearly need all the int in the world but honestly I don't know if it changed anything? Ogre mages still scare me so here's a picture of a bunch of dead ones as a reminder that I have a powerful team of heroes who can handle this!  The Iron Throne fight could have gone a lot better but nobody died at least. Kivan was down to 4 HP at one point. Turns out Flame Strike hurts like a motherfucker when cast by enemy mages too, not just when I do it from my wands. Monster summons and web ended up saving the day. They aggro'd from a lot further away than I thought they would which threw me off but it worked out in the end so whatever.  This screenshot is just another tribute to Web. I hosed up the planning here too and web saved my rear end. I love web  I also found a paladin at some point and decided to get an extra meatshield. He's good with broadswords which will help against shapeshifters IIRC. There's a lot of those in endgame BG1, I remember that much. He's also underleveled and poorly equipped. Whoops  Brought him back in the temple next door and did the other floors more carefully. loving SCRIPED PIECE OF poo poo AI  Five seconds later Kivan has the nerve to say out loud he disagree's with the party's recent actions! It was you, you dick! We also got poisoned and unpoisoned I guess.  And did a much better fight against doom guards and stuff so that was some nice redemption  Also of course did some shopping and reequipped Ajantis and Jaheira to make him the main tank with an AC of -6. The brawlers now have -6, -4 and -4 which feels pretty good. Dex gloves are the best. Next up warewolf island? Or start a bit in Durlag, I don't remember what's in the less scary parts of that, if there's anything I want for the warewolves? Giving myself a bit of an internal fistbump for breaking the OG BG1 XP cap. That's as good of a milestone as any 
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Jan 21, 2022 17:47
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Man with Hat posted:This seems like a good segue into my next update actually Int is only good for scribing scrolls, lore bonus, and you need a certain minimum int to be able to cast higher level spells. It's also good for making sure you don't die to Mindflayers if you get that far. Werewolf Island is probably easier than Durlags. I usually do Durlags first, but that's a habit thing for me as much as anything. For Werewolf island you fight a Greater Wolfwere (only one, it's the boss fight Karoug). The Greater Wolfwere can only be hurt by magic or silver weapons. These are the silver weapons in bg1: Albruin (Enhanced Edition only) The Burning Earth, Kondar, Sword of Balduran, Werebane. Of note, these weapons are all Long Swords, Bastard Swords, or Daggers, so you would want a party member or members with proficiency in those items to hurt Karoug. Ideally at least one of your party members has profs in those weapons. If not, you might have a hard time unless you have enough magical attacks. He does have some resistance to magic but you can get some spells through. I usually have one of my party members take profs in one of those weapons as I play bg just so I can handle Karoug.
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Jan 21, 2022 18:08
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I see all of you posting about how great Web is and I've literally never understood how to use it. How do you not get webbed yourself?
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Jan 21, 2022 18:21
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FairGame posted:I see all of you posting about how great Web is and I've literally never understood how to use it. The easiest way (in bg1 at least) is to have a melee character using Spidersbane and/or the ring of free action. Or a potion/spell. Let the melee character go in and cause some trouble, cast web, enjoy. If you aren't doing that, you need to be more careful and probably cast the web and then have your melee characters hang back and use ranged weapons during it. Even without Spiderbane there are quite a few potions of freedom in the game and you can save those for when you want to win a tough encounter with web. Free action is a level 4 priest spell so in bg2 you probably have enough slots to just hard cast that on melee characters before you intend to web. You won't be able to haste those characters for the duration but do you really care about that if everything is cced? Web is an absolute fight winner and I love it. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Jan 21, 2022 |
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Jan 21, 2022 18:47
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It's definitely tricky until you get a feel for leading whoever you're trying to snare and keep your own party out of the AOE. Also turn AI off so they don't go buck wild and run into the AOE themselves.
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Jan 21, 2022 19:33
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FairGame posted:I see all of you posting about how great Web is and I've literally never understood how to use it. My panic webs in that update webbed a lot of my friends too but I'd rather have three webbed team mates, five webbed death robot enemies and one person with a ring waltzing around freely beating up the enememis than the alternative. But yeah, the real good use is to stand outside of it with ranged weapons. You can see the perimiter pretty clearly too so you can place melee fighters on the edge and your oponents will stand in it with you outside of it if they break free long enough to attack. This way they'll probably get webbed again as you're clubbing them in the head.
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Jan 21, 2022 19:41
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You should be able to keep your ranged weapon party members out of the web if you target it correctly. The notable exception is that if you have a dart user they generally will struggle to not get caught in the web. Probably the same would be true for characters using throwing axes/daggers. Slings/bows should have enough range to stay out of it.
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Jan 21, 2022 20:28
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Ginette Reno posted:You should be able to keep your ranged weapon party members out of the web if you target it correctly. The notable exception is that if you have a dart user they generally will struggle to not get caught in the web. Probably the same would be true for characters using throwing axes/daggers. Slings/bows should have enough range to stay out of it. My throwing knives hadn't had more problems than my long bows actually. But yeah, you need to circle around sometimes to hit everything with your ranged.
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Jan 22, 2022 01:26
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Decided to make an Avenger so I could try out Web (level 2 druid is a wasteland). Haven't hit level 3 yet but Garrick found a scroll of ghoul touch that worked wonders vs. Greywolf--usually a terrifying encounter at level 2 or below. Didn't realize you got a thac0 bonus and that it wasn't a one shot. Useful spell!
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Jan 22, 2022 22:41
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FairGame posted:Decided to make an Avenger so I could try out Web (level 2 druid is a wasteland). Haven't hit level 3 yet but Garrick found a scroll of ghoul touch that worked wonders vs. Greywolf--usually a terrifying encounter at level 2 or below. I enjoyed my Avenger Ironman attempt. They level really fast so you can have a nice hit point total before long. The extra spells they get rule. Chromatic Orb and Web own. Lightning Bolt I didn't use much because it is kinda unwieldy but if you're careful you can probably get good use out of it. Improved Invis is really nice, and Chaos rules too, though by level 5 spells you'll probably be too busy using Ironskins or Insect Plague to much bother with it. I started Sod on Calamain The Blade. I'm trying to go really slowly but I still fully expect to wipe. My early impressions with it are that man they do up the ante a bit in terms of difficulty. I didn't struggle really in Korlasz' dungeon but it wasn't a total walk in the park either. They throw a lot of enemies at you.  The first real enemies you fight here is a big pack of undead. Right from the start I realized that Sod is gonna throw a lot more at me in terms of enemy volume than Bg1 did. Could be because I have it on Insane (albeit without the damage increase). I'm not sure what the spawns look like here on core rules. Nothing here hit too hard but was still dangerous with this many enemies. I used wands of fire here to thin these packs out.  Traipsed through the rest of the tomb. Nothing too notable. I was careful with the traps and made sure to buff for any larger groups of enemies. Korlasz was fairly easy. Her minions are easily dispatched. She casts confusion and stuff like that but if you focus her you can take her down fairly quickly.  Having finished the dungeon, I ended up in the rest of the prologue. I spared Korlasz when I killed her before which apparently means you have to fight her again when she tries to escape prison in the palace. That was a little concerning since I only had my Blade. I buffed and used monster summons to keep her busy. She went down easily enough.  I picked up Minsc and Dynaheir, and also Safana.  Coran wanted no part of joining me again unfortunately. But Corwin once we get her should be able to replace him. No idea what my final party should be. If I want a Mage I need to either keep Dynaheir/Minsc or else use Baeloth. My rep is 20 and I'm not sure how/if you can even easily lower rep in Sod so I'm not sure if evil characters are an option? I know rep lowers by 2 if you recruit Viconia or Baeloth but I imagine there are other quests which raise it too which might make keeping them difficult unless I find a way to tank rep a bit. Soo Minsc/Dynaheir it is probably, and then I'll have to think about who else to take. e: I guess Neera is an option too but Wild Mages seem like a no no in Ironman I think whether I wipe or not I am going to finish this expansion just to get a feel for it for future attempts. Hopefully I don't wipe at all though. I'm reading guides before attempting each area and doing my best to be ready. Unfortunately a lot of the guides don't go super indepth on combat encounters. They'll say poo poo like "lots of undead here" but not so much about what they do or how hard it is. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Jan 23, 2022 |
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Jan 23, 2022 02:44
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In a place with "lots of undead here" you will come across a Bronze Sentry. Do not engage normally, it is a destroyer of worlds. It's very vulnerable to the wand of frost, though.
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Jan 23, 2022 03:00
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Suspicious posted:In a place with "lots of undead here" you will come across a Bronze Sentry. Do not engage normally, it is a destroyer of worlds. It's very vulnerable to the wand of frost, though. Thanks for the heads up. I know there's also a Green Dragon which ended a run recently so I guess I need to keep my eyes out for that. And I'm well aware that Belhifet needs +3 weapons to hit so gonna try to have those ready too. Hopefully nothing else unexpected fucks me up but I guess we'll see
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Jan 23, 2022 03:10
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Congrats on your victory, Ginette Reno! And good luck with Siege! Silas the Half-Orc Cleric/Thief has cleared the Nashkel Mines in a roundabout way.  Silke fight was a bit touch and go because she managed to get a Confusion off just before we killed her. On the other hand she was carrying  so it was worth it.  We start with Tarnesh as we mean to go on, with judgement meted out by the Stick of Righteousness. (Right now it's a +1 Club version of the Stick of Righteousness but it'll get better soon). Cleric/Thieves can, of course, only backstab with clubs and quarterstaves. Our party is Imoen, Breagar, Jaheira, Khalid (who is, in this timeline, a fighter/mage), and (for now) Neera.  For now. (There are various reasons why we do need to have her raised and keep her in the party for a little longer, so, bye bye Iron Party.)  This is one of those reasons. This bullshit. Right here. Before we deal with that, we head north a bit.  Jaheira is always full of helpful tips. We grind our way through some Ankhegs and then make our way to Ulgoth's Beard for the +3 Buck-And-A-Quarter Quarterstaff, which will be the second best weapon Silas will use until Baldur's Gate 2, probably. We also, uh, requisition a Ring of Freedom which Breagar is wearing for the moment.  Welp, here we are. Neera's bullshit quest. We have to walk past some goblins and kill their king before we chat with Adoy, who (a) tells us that there's not much he can do to help Neera and (b) fucks off while we deal with the bullshit part of this bullshit quest, namely a Red Wizard Assault Team. Two wizards, an ogre berserker, and two unstoppable raging barbarians who immediately home in on Neera if she's even remotely visible. This fight is a loving nightmare if you do it too early, and we're doing it too early. Still, a web and a horror disable the mages well enough and we're able to kite around the others til they die.  Neera is suitably grateful for our help.  That's okay, we got what we came for.  A bit later, in Bear River, we meet Littleun Plunkett, a halfling raised by elves, another of the NPCs from Glam's NPC Pack, and bid Neera a fond farewell. (For now.) Honestly I'm a little torn but wild magic's a bit of a risk right now and Neera's shining personality doesn't help. Besides, Littleun is an Archer, albeit one specialized in crossbows (and she comes with a +1 repeating crossbow) so it's not exactly trading down.  Oh, Randomizer, you mock me, you do. (This is on the giants at the Gnoll Fortress entrance instead of the dex gloves.)  Littleun was hoping to rescue more than one person from the Gnolls. Poor kid.  On to the mines, where Imoen eats an unlucky crit from a kobold in the last battle.  We make up for it by introducing Nimbul to the Way of the Stick.
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Jan 23, 2022 14:47
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docbeard posted:Congrats on your victory, Ginette Reno! And good luck with Siege! Thanks! Good luck with the Cleric/Thief. That's a fun combination. Brave of you to take Neera Calamain The Blade continues his Siege of Dragonspear adventures  The gang is trying to pursue Caelar Argent and her crusade. Along the way, we entered a cave and fought hordes of undead. We also picked up Glint and Corwin.  And I do mean hordes. Sod likes to throw giant trash mob packs at you. I got a lot of mileage out of fireball wands here. Dealing with these hordes conventionally is rather tough, or it was for me with just Minsc really as a tank. My Blade is meleeing now too, but carefully. As you can see from the SS Minsc died here. Wasn't the first time. I had to run out of that god damned cave and rez him like 3 times lol.  Thanks to Suspicious' warning I didn't try to melee the Bronze Sentry and used summons + frost wands to take it down. Unfortunately I killed it with the frost wand which I think cost me its loot. I checked the wiki and I guess it drops some magical weapon, but not one I really needed so whatever.  Web and fireballs rule the day in early Sod. Great for managing these giant packs of mobs.  One particular room here had an even more giant pack of undead than normal. Things came close to disaster because Minsc died and I was surrounded. I realized even before he died that things were going south though and I left him to heroically die a noble death while the rest of my party booked it out of there to regroup. Safana went in there invis and picked up Minsc's gear, we went out and rezzed him, and then we came at the fight again refreshed and finished off the remaining undead.  With that business out of the way, we had to deal with a Lich. The Dwarves in the dungeon give a gem that helps you do just that. With its on use ability that strips the Lichs' defenses he goes down almost instantly. We destroyed his phylactery and got a nice xp bonus out of it.  I took this screenshot mostly because it looks cool. Caelar's goons destroyed a bridge to slow us down, but she still decided to parlay with my Blade. She has her cool flaming sword but I have one too. I'm the yin to her yang. Or something. Still alive for now. Probably inevitable that I will die to something but I'm trying to be as careful as I can. I want to pick up Jaheira and replace Safana with her and then I think that will probably be my final planned party. Sorry Rasaad. I'd like to take you again but I don't know Sod well enough not to have a sturdier front line. Minsc is dying too much holding it down by himself so I'd like more beef there. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jan 23, 2022 |
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Jan 23, 2022 21:57
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If you have a ring of freedom to put on Minsc, you can get a LOT of mileage out of Web with these large groups of monsters, too. Cloudkill is a good spell choice for the (living) large groups of monstrous humanoids you'll run into too.
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Jan 23, 2022 22:17
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I'm currently playing non-iron man SOD (scratch that 1 year infinity engine itch you know). It's brutal compared to BG1, that bronze sentry does not mess about. They definitely took a more Icewind Dale sort of approach to encounters, using a lot of the IWD sprites boosts that feeling too. I'm not sure how much I would be willing to put in a Kickstarter for a new, non Bhaal Spawn, Infinity Engine game. I shudder to think. Something set in Thay? Cormyr? Oh what could be.
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Jan 23, 2022 22:45
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docbeard posted:If you have a ring of freedom to put on Minsc, you can get a LOT of mileage out of Web with these large groups of monsters, too. Cloudkill is a good spell choice for the (living) large groups of monstrous humanoids you'll run into too. I'll have to check my bags but I don't think I do any more. I don't think I have Spidersbane either. Wish I'd kept both. I think the way Sod works with your inventory is that stuff in your inventory goes into the chest after the first dungeon, but stuff that was on npcs stays with them and you just lose it unless that npc comes back. Glint can cast freedom though so I can kinda get by doing that when I wanna web.
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Jan 23, 2022 23:13
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Ginette Reno posted:I think the way Sod works with your inventory is that stuff in your inventory goes into the chest after the first dungeon, but stuff that was on npcs stays with them and you just lose it unless that npc comes back. Glint can cast freedom though so I can kinda get by doing that when I wanna web. More accurately, you lose it even if the NPC comes back (unless they changed that recently).
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Jan 23, 2022 23:34
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docbeard posted:More accurately, you lose it even if the NPC comes back (unless they changed that recently). Hmm not sure. None of the npcs I had in Bg1 return in Sod except for Rasaad and I'm not planning on using him so I guess I can't test that theory. It seems like what you would want to do is put anything you really want to keep in your inventory but the problem with that is you probably want your best gear on people for Korlasz's dungeon. I did have the foresight to store the greatsword +3, short sword +3, and kiel's morningstar +3 all into my backpack just so I'd have some options for Belhifet later. I wish I'd planned a little better with some of the other items though.
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Jan 24, 2022 00:06
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Yeah it's a bit strange how it's handled. Minsc and Dynaheir returned fully equipped. As Kagain, Yeslick and Coran don't I effectively lost all their gear. It is one of the more jarring and badly implemented parts of SoD I think. I think allowing you to carry over pretty much all the NPCs would have worked, Im not entirely sure why Safana, made the cut (voice actor?!).
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Jan 24, 2022 00:16
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mitochondritom posted:Yeah it's a bit strange how it's handled. Minsc and Dynaheir returned fully equipped. As Kagain, Yeslick and Coran don't I effectively lost all their gear. It is one of the more jarring and badly implemented parts of SoD I think. I think allowing you to carry over pretty much all the NPCs would have worked, Im not entirely sure why Safana, made the cut (voice actor?!). Safana is in purely to give you a Thief because Imoen is taken away from your party. Not sure why they went with her instead of Coran but I guess she's the most neutral option as an evil party might not want Coran.
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Jan 24, 2022 00:20
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SoD mob sizes really change up the feel of combat - the IWD comparison is pretty good. So much so that it doesn't feel like BG on those lines alone. The first dungeon felt like a slog to me - partly from SCS hardcore effects, partly from not being able to sleep till much later in the dungeon, but also because the sheer volume of the mobs didn't really leave much space for tactics or at least tactics of the sort in BG1/2 which are more small party tactics.
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Jan 24, 2022 00:59
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mitochondritom posted:Yeah it's a bit strange how it's handled. Minsc and Dynaheir returned fully equipped. As Kagain, Yeslick and Coran don't I effectively lost all their gear. It is one of the more jarring and badly implemented parts of SoD I think. I think allowing you to carry over pretty much all the NPCs would have worked, Im not entirely sure why Safana, made the cut (voice actor?!). It used to be that anything they were carrying when you leave Korlasz's dungeon is gone forever regardless of whether they come back later in Siege, but maybe that's been fixed. (Either way, anything I care about gets unequipped just before I leave the dungeon because I do not trust this game)
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Jan 24, 2022 01:16
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docbeard posted:It used to be that anything they were carrying when you leave Korlasz's dungeon is gone forever regardless of whether they come back later in Siege, but maybe that's been fixed. I think you do keep that stuff. When I went to the chest in the Duchal Palace I had a bunch of arrows and other random poo poo in there and it was more than one character could carry. Also my Blade doesn't use any of that stuff so I'm pretty sure it put Coran's inventory in there (but not what he was wearing/using). Also I just recruited Rasaad temporarily in my run until I get Jaheira and Rasaad was still wearing what I had on him at the end of bg1. That was nice because I'm gonna take his Ogre Gauntlets and Ring of Free action .e: Lol I found what I can only assume is a bug, or maybe I missed something? I went to the area where Jaheira and Voghilhn are supposed to be, only to find them both dead? I guess Jaheira isn't joining this run. Rasaad it is? I have no idea how they died or what killed them, but two corpses were in the spot where they normally should be, and one of them had Vogilhn's helmet lol  Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 09:30 on Jan 24, 2022 |
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Jan 24, 2022 03:08
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Well, I finally died. Made it to the Temple of Bhaal and even killed the Green Dragon. I was following the Game Banshee guide and it said "Inside the room you'll get attacked by a Shadow Aspect" while neglecting to mention that the Shadow Aspect is no joke and backstabs for lots of damage, drops a (unavoidable?) blind on the party, casts confuse, mislead etc. Honestly it's whatever. If not there I may well have wiped on the next fight which featured a Mind Flayer and lots of enemies. I feel like I did well to get this far for first Ironman attempt on Sod. Not sure if I have the stamina in me for another attempt right now, excepting perhaps the multiplayer run we were trying, but we haven't played that in a bit. Might get it going again though
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Jan 24, 2022 09:30
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Man with Hat posted:Blend Short update While robbing some wizard I accidentially killed some guards which made half of my party leave which really really sucked.  Ajantis had all my best tank stuff so I lost my best armor, my best AC ring and my gloves of dexterity. Lucky for me bags were transferred when they left so I got to keep my scroll case at least. Anyway, this loving blew and I wouldn't recommend it. I picked up Dynaheir, Minsc and Safana as replacements and spent all my money buying them equipment. Did the upper floors in Durlag's for some XP to help the new kids catch up a little. Moved on to Ulgoth's Beard and the thief guild quest once again hosed me over and sent me to an ice field.  Where I was woefully unprepared for the first batch of mages.   And that's where her story ends. drat shame, I really liked her. My own fault, though, I sould've known better
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Jan 24, 2022 14:19
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drat, this year's a real meatgrinder. (And in the game) Silas is still going strong, no update yet except to add one to the Melicamp Lives calendar. Oh and thanks to the Randomizer I have yet to lay eyes on a single tome. That Shadow Aspect is a real nightmare. I've found Glitterdust to be useful against it in the past. (There's also a confuse trap in its chamber to add injury to more injury.)
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Jan 24, 2022 14:37
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Man with Hat posted:And that's where her story ends. drat shame, I really liked her. My own fault, though, I sould've known better Ice Island is definitely not a pushover. That first Mage fight is especially annoying because it's hard to prevent them getting a chaos or confuse off on you and that can wipe the party easily. docbeard posted:drat, this year's a real meatgrinder. (And in the game) Yeah I reloaded and had buffs up for it and managed it. I just wasn't ready for a tough fight when I wandered into it. I was actually gonna rest after killing it because I assumed the Mindflayer fight was gonna be the real tough spot of that dungeon. Oops. You'd think a guide would point out what would be easily a top 5 toughest fight in that expansion but nope. Things were going so well and I was riding high after easily killing that dragon too. If I do squeeze another run in, dunno what I'll end up doing. Probably either a frontliner or a mage. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Jan 24, 2022 |
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Jan 24, 2022 15:37
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The Shadow Aspect is pretty brutal on Insane, I think I've only beaten it once in all the runs of Siege I've done. Normally it's a fight I just skip. The Legacy of Bhaal Party has cleared the Nashkel Mines and the Bandit Camp.  A simple way to deal with monsters in small rooms like this is to enter the room with Aoenid alone and summon a Spirit Animal. (She gets 2 casts per rest, I personally prefer the Spirit Lion) This doesn't break invisibility so if the monsters are hostile, they all aggro onto a very tanky summon instead of my frontliners. If they're not, I just have to be visible to trigger their attacks.   The rest of the Valley of the Tombs were cleared by my usual 4 Skeleton Warriors. Once I got Cato out of danger this fight with Narcillicus and his Mustard Jellies wasn't too bad. Fun fact, the 4 skeletons easily thrashed Lamalha and her party, even without any micro-management. Legacy of Bhaal summons are amazing.   I grabbed the 1st 2 tomes while exploring. The Flesh Golems were ignored, but the Sirines stood no chance against what might be the hardest possible counter to their abilities.    Did anyone know that Shoal the Nereid's kiss has a saving throw to completely avoid it? I certainly didn't. I knew it doesn't kill the PC in the EE, and leaves them at 1HP. Droth was killed easily, he's just a bog-standard Ogre Mage.   Iron Throne assassins vs. LoB summons round 2 went no better for Molkar as it did for Lamalha. At least they managed to kill one of the skeletons, I suppose.  This amount of summons to deal with Icharyd may seem like overkill, but it turns out he's a bit of a beast. He's got a huge amount of HP (Well over 400 according to Ctrl-Q), and a near ToB level THAC0 and AC with the LoB buffs. He's got no Magic Resistance though, so Slow is a fine option to neuter him a bit. I can only imagine what it takes to kill the full SCS version.  Sneaking into the Firewine Ruins through the back door allowed me to assassinate the Ogre Mage and Lendarn while avoiding most of the Kobolds and traps. It took 2 Spirit Lions, but it went well enough.  The usual summons to take out the Red Wizards. I threw in a Malison/Insect Plague combo just out of curiosity, it proved quite effective at shutting them down, although I could do without the panic effect.   Due to a full install of SCS turning Kahrk into a virtual superboss (Smarter General AI and Smarter Mages both buffing a 12/12 Fighter/Mage makes him extremely dangerous), the latest version of the mod has a small component that allows you to approach Carsa without automatically triggering the fight. It also allows you to kill Kahrk while also saving Carsa's life. I'm not playing with full SCS, so he wasn't too threatening here. He's just a beefy mage in vanilla.  He did drop this nice +2 Katana though. Another addition from the above component, the author of SCS decided a reward for killing SCS Kahrk was warranted. (Although you can get it from vanilla Kahrk as I did here) I agree to be honest, it really cannot be overstated how strong he is with the SCS buffs.   Having explored the wilderness entirely, I finally got around to the Nashkel Mines. I didn't bother summoning anything here, so took quite a bit of damage.  Nimbul killed Rasaad easily, then got held and died easily. You win some, you lose some.    The Bandit Camp was quite simple, Taurgosz is the only threat in the entire camp to be honest. It was surprisingly empty to be honest, I'm used to the excellent SCS version. Next up is the Cloakwood.
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Jan 25, 2022 15:07
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biscuits and crazy posted:The Shadow Aspect is pretty brutal on Insane, I think I've only beaten it once in all the runs of Siege I've done. Normally it's a fight I just skip. The SCS version is definitely nastier from what I remember since the entire camp swarms you. I reinstalled SCS on a different install of BG to mess around with it and it's actually not as ridiculous as I remember. I dunno if they tweaked the mod compared to what I remember (I haven't tried it since like...2016 or something probably) but I tested a few caster fights on Hardcore settings and they weren't precasting a ton of buffs. I seem to recall last time I played that like Silke would have a globe of invuln, stoneskin, and mirror images up when you fought her which was just comically overtuned for when you'd want to fight her level-wise. This time around when I tested her with a save, she didn't do any of that. She did have a sequencer with charm but that was about it. Maybe the highest tier on it (insane?) ramps her up a bit more. I also tried a few other fights out and none of them were precasting as many spells as I remember. Maybe things get a bit nastier on the highest tier of scs difficulty but it actually seemed a lot more reasonable than I remember.
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Jan 25, 2022 16:23
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Ginette Reno posted:The SCS version is definitely nastier from what I remember since the entire camp swarms you. There's definitely been some fine-tuning in SCS of the caster fights in BG1, yeah. You still start seeing Stoneskin and higher-level stuff in the mid-late game but the prebuffs seem to be slightly saner. (Even if Silke and the red wizard who ambushes Neera in Beregost are throwing out 3rd and 4th level spells and don't even get me started on Bassilus and his 6th level nonsense). I just did the SCS version of the bandit camp fight (update forthcoming, spoilers, we survived) and I actually really enjoy the entire camp mobbing you. It's fun to be able to cut loose with big area effect stuff and you don't get that many opportunities in BG to do that where it's meaningful.
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Jan 25, 2022 16:44
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docbeard posted:There's definitely been some fine-tuning in SCS of the caster fights in BG1, yeah. You still start seeing Stoneskin and higher-level stuff in the mid-late game but the prebuffs seem to be slightly saner. (Even if Silke and the red wizard who ambushes Neera in Beregost are throwing out 3rd and 4th level spells and don't even get me started on Bassilus and his 6th level nonsense). Part of me is tempted to try a scs Ironman attempt to spice things up but I'd probably die pretty quick.
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Jan 25, 2022 17:58
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I think SCS rolls the specializations for each mage in the game at start, along with some randomization of their spell selections. I've seen Silke with different protections across 3 different starts.
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Jan 25, 2022 20:26
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Ginette Reno posted:Part of me is tempted to try a scs Ironman attempt to spice things up but I'd probably die pretty quick. SCS in the first game tends not to get too wild, (though there are always...exceptions). I'd probably not make my first try at it an Ironman run though. SCS in BG2 can a bit more out of hand and if I ever make it that far I'm probably gonna tune down some of its bullshit. (Fortunately it can be fine-tuned pretty well.) I already disabled its, uh, "improved" versions of Beholders, Mind Flayers, and I think Vampires.
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Jan 25, 2022 21:20
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Thinking of going full caster supremacy and trying a cleric wizard solo run. Is there a trick I'm missing to traps other than facetanking with summons?
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Jan 25, 2022 22:44
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Look up where they are, and avoid all the ones that aren't on the way to where you need to go. For those that are, walk over them with Shield (Use the amulet from the Carnival), Protection from Petrification (The level 1 Mage spell) and Invisibility active, as a minimum. That solves Magic Missile and Petrification and the Invisibility prevents enemies from taking advantage of CC effects like Hold Person before you get to level 4 Priest spells where you get Free Action and Death Ward. (Much more important in BG2, but it lasts forever so may as well have it on at all times.) Add those, and you can use Mirror Image and eventually Stoneskin to block the physical damage arrow traps. The Greenstone Amulet can deal with Charm and Confusion traps. The elemental damage ones can be mitigated somewhat, if not entirely nullified, with equipment. In summary, use your buffs. Especially the long lasting ones. For BG2, adding Chaotic Commands (Lasts forever, is essentially a spell version of the Greenstone Amulet) to that list will make you basically immune to every trap in the game.
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Jan 25, 2022 23:20
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docbeard posted:SCS in the first game tends not to get too wild, (though there are always...exceptions). I'd probably not make my first try at it an Ironman run though. Yeah I think I may just do a separate non Ironman run where I try out SCS. I will still try another vanilla Ironman soon I think but I'm not sure what I want to do yet. I think I might try a Dragon Disciple for that if I do. Capfalcon posted:Thinking of going full caster supremacy and trying a cleric wizard solo run. Is there a trick I'm missing to traps other than facetanking with summons? The only thing I can think of is that some traps repeat even if you've already triggered them. I forget which traps are like that. I know there is notably one lightning bolt trap like that in the Candlekeep Catacombs because on the multiplayer run we had both Dorn and Safana die to it lol.
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Jan 25, 2022 23:23
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Well I started over. Here's Kalam the Elven Bounty Hunter. Started strong with being saved by lvl 1 mechanics against wolves and belt ogres  Decided to risk the whole run on a potential trap suicide but it worked out.  Ran around doing general early game stuff and realized I  loving  Love  Love  Love  Traps  (not pictured: several of the worst of these assholes also getting slowed from traps. Also several other enemies that are dangerous early on being silly, like Silke and that mage harassing whatsherface in Beregost and spider house) Did most of this so far. Not the actual mines, just went there to stop timers (I think this stops some timer?) and to get some cash  It's kind of nice, I feel like I'm starting to learn more and more about this game and I don't have to read up on everything beforehand this time around. I was expecting to burn out on this early stuff since it's been a few times so far but it's really just fun to approach it again with new knowlege and a new class with a new super fun ability. Man with Hat fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Jan 26, 2022 |
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Jan 26, 2022 01:25
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