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After wading through the funky business of modding for the first time ever, I installed the Tweaks Anthology with the only update being to move NPCs and send them to taverns in BG1. This is because for as much as possible I want to aim for a shorty party - We accept dwarves, gnomes, halflings, and goblins, although this rule might convenient disappear during SoD to give myself a fighting chance. We are playing on core rules. I do an annual playthrough of BG1 & 2 and their associated extra bits and I went with Shao Kahn, who was a chaotic evil human barbarian. Please welcome Ramon Salazar,  After escaping Candlekeep Ramon immediately robbed Imoen of everything she had and she decides to stay here on the road. Maybe she'll be eaten be a wolf. Exciting!  Sorry, Xzar, you are approximately too tall to join this party. Monty can come along, though. I like the cut of his jib.  In much the same manner as Imoen, I rob Khalid and Jaheira blind of their goodies (including some splint mail. Fun fact - the flail I bought at the start of the game broke on the first rat I flung it at, which meant I couldn't afford to buy splint mail at the outset.  ) I forgot to grab a screenie for it but I picked up Kagain and Quayle on the road. The shorties are amassing!  Ending the night at the end of the Melicamp quest. He did not make it, but we have our full team of shorties - Salazar, Kagain, Montaron, Quayle, Tiax, and Alora.
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Dec 22, 2023 21:52
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Tonight, Ramon Salazar and his band of miniature marauders did a little bit of rambling until deciding to tackle the mines of Nashkel. They slew the mad cleric Bassilus by collectively posing as his father!  They slew the detestable Mulahey and his kobold commandos deep within the mines of Nashkel!  They saved Arabelle from a xvartish reckoning!  They left the bandit camp in a bloody mess after fighting their way across the entire map to get to the leader's tent! Who needs the subtlety of blagging our way in? Not pictured: Alora (who is the best girl) failed to pickpocket the leader of Gullykin despite having 100 pickpocket so now he's permanently hostile unless I burn a charm spell on him every visit. And I still can't hand in the quest to him! We bumped into Neera! We helped her, stole her gem back, and then told her to gently caress off. Quayle is allowed to keep his space because he's the only diminutive arcane caster! We killed some red wizards who were loitering around some sort of ruins! Move along, chumps. We had to murder a commoner in her own home to drop my reputation before everyone except Quayle and Alora decided to gently caress off!
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Dec 23, 2023 23:38
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Ramon Salazar continues his adventures - featuring ogre magi! A nymph (or siren? I'm always mixing them up) murdered Kagain with a kiss, so we killed the ogre mage that had enthralled her. She also stayed hostile, so we killed her too just to be safe. Kagain was brought back to life after checking several times and ensuring that this did not, in fact, violate the rules of the Ironman.  This crazy lady outside Firewine bridge let out an ogre mage! They were both slaughtered but I can't stress how much of a loving struggle it was when you don't have remove magic available - Quayle is my only arcane spellcaster and he couldn't cast lv3 arcane spells yet! Skeleton warriors and summoned monsters saved the day.  The fight outside the Cloakwood mines. Well, the aftermath. I play BG once a year and one of my favourite things about it is I learn something new about the game. It took me longer than I would like to admit to discover how broken Sleep is as a spell and not just load up my lv1 arcane magic page with Magic Missile and a couple of Identify spells. Crowd control is king in this game! Prior to this fight I had Alora sneak into range so I could fire off a quick Silence 15' Radius which neutered the spellcasters, and then Blinded the melee fighters. Child's play!  I never knew you could go into the hut next to the guard barracks outside the Cloakwood mine, but it's some sort of store house where the occupant is partaking in a little nose candy. Unfortunately I can't join him so I just bludgeoned him to death. I'm a hero!  The aftermath of the Davaeorn fight. Very strange as I sent two hasted and chant-buffed skeleton warriors after him and every time he popped Dimension Door they just homed in on him. Eventually he ran out of spells and we beat him to death. Quayle accidentally died on the floor above as I took a chance to rest and got woken up by a dozen bandits. With no Sleep spells charged I fled to another room with a door I could close but not before Quayle bit the dirt, so I had to drag his carcass and belongings back to the Friendly Arm Inn for a quick rez before heading back, and everyone knows that Cloakwood has very high waylay chances, especially from wyverns and ettercaps. It's mostly why Cloakwood is my least favourite part of the game, and delayed me going out and getting dinner by a good forty minutes, at which point it was raining  The gold gained from this venture was enough to buy a Dagger of Venom for Alora, and a Robe of the Neutral Archmagi for Quayle. Now Alora can open fights with a poisoned backstab and gently caress up spellcasters all day long, with a cheery smile on her face.  . Remember I said I learn something every year I play this game? Well, this year taught me the following:1) Command is busted and is an amazing clutch interrupt for a level 1 spell. 2) Hide in Shadows dictates your ability to, well, hide in shadows, but it's move silently that keeps you in there. 3) You can swap equipment after you've successfully hid in shadows, so after using the Worn Whispers on Alora I could swap to the Paws of the Cheetah for her to zoom around, backstab a pesky caster with the Dagger of Venom, and then hightail it out of line of sight. This made murdering sirens on the coast an absolute doddle.  Ramon Salazar and his party made it to the city of Baldurs Gate. But not before an Ankheg decided to murder Quayle so I had to march back to the Friendly Arm in and rez him. I think I'm up to 3 Quayle deaths now, but I don't mind - it's funny to hear him go OHHHHHH DEEEEEEAR! And it makes Tiax happy so it's always worth it.
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Dec 24, 2023 23:48
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Ramon Salazar and his party have been busy! They mopped up nearly all the quests in Baldur's Gate (except for returning the child's dead body because I did the Lothander and Marek stuff first and apparently that bugs out and the child who starts the quest chain doesn't spawn? Whatever). Die, ogre mages! Tiax was turned into a pin cushion by a very confused Alora, so off to the temple to raise him... After we were done, the party climbed the Iron Throne tower and smited the party up above. Again, I'm loving how creative the combined challenge of a shorty-only party and ironman rules is making combat. Very fun!  We return to Candlekeep! They let us in if we give them a book. I like to think the book was something like Everybody Poops because I'm very mature.  Oh, no! I'm the child of a dead god of murder! Well, that explains my murderous rampage. I thought it was just a phase or because I'm short.  After being accused of murdering the leaders of the Iron Throne, we escaped the catacombs under Candlekeep, picked up Good poo poo(tm) and murdered some more Iron Throne goons to find a way out, protecting ourselves from the enormous spiders and greater basilisks. Ramon Salazar and co. escaped from Candlekeep and turn our eyes to the city of Baldurs Gate with revenge in our hearts.
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Dec 26, 2023 12:42
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Do people usually try for Ulgoth's Beard/Durlag's Tower/SoD on ironman runs or just go right through to BG2 because I can imagine that there is a very high rate of death in the TotSC and SoD content - oh hey look a mind flayer aaaaaargh
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Dec 27, 2023 11:54
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Well, based on the feedback, Ramon Salazar took a sojourn over to Ulgoth's Beard: Yeeeeeah, Shandalar remembers how I massacred his daughters for some flying ship parts and is none too pleased. He flings us to a frozen island in the middle of nowhere. I open by killing a polar bear which makes me sad because bears are my favourite animals   I- or rather, Alora, lets off some steam by stealthing and backstabbing Andris, Beyn and Marcellus into tiny chunks with her dagger of venom +2  ... And also Tellan. Aaaaand Cuchol for good measure. Good for you, Alora.   Garan and his pet ankhegs prove to be a loving problem as they don't like to be lured around the corner into Cuchol's room to get murdered one by one. They eat Quayle (quelle surprise...) but regurgitate his body so I can rez him when we get off this drat island. I've lost count of how many times he's died now but it's way, way, way more than anyone else.  Alora finishes off her halfling bloodspree with Dezkiel and we get to leave, looting several lovely wolf pets for sale and a scroll of stoneskin for Quayle! He can't quite use lv4 mage spells yet but when he can I imagine he might be a bit more resilient than a greasy paper bag.  Freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom! We trudge our way down to Durlag's Tower and take a guided tour of questionable value which ends with a demon knight murderising everyone with fireballs while we conveniently wait outside of his field of vision. Having left the party bereft of a means to claim a refund, we shall have to delve deeper into the basement layers of Durlag's Tower - after ransacking anything up top and murdering basilisks for more delicious experience points.  We made it to the first sub-floor! Alora and Montaron died to hasted greater doppelgangers because Quayle is a moron who can't win a dispel roll due to being a multiclass. After a quick trip to Beregost temple, the rest of the floor goes surprisingly smoothly - I've set Tiax up to be my trap-disarmer and general "saboteur" in combat with debuffs and animate dead while Alora is able to pick pockets, locks, and hide decently enough to set up most enemies with a lovely dagger between the shoulderblades. In an unthemed game I probably would've taken Khalid or Coran or even Kivan instead of Montaron who mostly sits back with a longbow +2 and pings arrows at things, occasionally reminiscing about the long-since murdered Xzar. The floor is clear and we're ready to descend. Once more, say it with me - animate dead wins. The second sub-floor, again, goes quite well since I'm familiar enough with this part to know where the greater doppelgangers are hiding, so it's a fairly brisk pace to the end. The dwarven doomguards who aggro towards the exit take some time to wear down, but between the slow, doom, hold, skeletons, and Ramon & Kagain tanking, things do work out in the end. Somehow. I didn't get a screenie of the third sub-floor but I remember that horrible hedgemaze so instead I opt for the greater wyvern route. After clearing the four elemental chambers and teleporting to the chess board, I say "gently caress it" to rules, chug 6 potions of absorption, and proceed to flip the board by running around and making a ton of lightning bolts through illegal moves while Tiax holds the enemy king and we bludgeon him to death. Exactly how I remember Kasparov vs Deep Blue going in 1997.  I was getting tired so I stopped on the stairs of the fourth sub-floor where the ghost of Durlag spouted some cryptic nonsense at me before I saved and stopped to make a sandwich. Ramon Salazar and co are currently exploring Durlag's Tower for profit
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Dec 27, 2023 23:38
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Ramon Salazar and associates continue their rampage up and down the Sword Coast. We defeated the Demon Knight! He was... Not hard. Didn't even bother with the mirror. Skeleton warriors, a Doom and backstabs from Alora made it very straightforward.  We claim the Soultaker dagger and promptly gently caress off back to Ulgoth's Beard where we are greeted by... Assassins. I was dreading them being smart enough to target someone like Tiax or Quayle but nope, they have it in for Montaron. Thankfully he doesn't explode so after landing a couple of choice fear and hold spells we mop up the cultists, go back to the Friendly Arm Inn and rez Montaron. Then, we go back, enter the cultist hut, and... Montaron dies to another backstab. This is silly, but we go back to the Friendly Arm Inn, rez Montaron, and come back to Ulgoth's Beard. hope the ritual is going to take a while! We buff up, and head down into the basement for the bullshit fight that is Aec'Letec.  Skeletons, some distracting ogres, and Alora getting stabby on cultists by running to the far corner, stealthing, running back in to backstab clears up the room fast, and Aec'Letec goes down without much of a fight. We saved the sword coast from a Nabassu, huzzah! ... I can't be hosed with werewolf island and their bullshit so on with the story. We head to the Flaming Fist HQ, turn ourselves in, and Angelo murders Kagain because we backtalked him. Neb lets us out, we tell Tamoko to stick her offer, beat up Sarevok's new flame Cythandria at the top of the Iron Throne HQ, Husam from the Shadow Thieves gets us into the Undercellar to kill two assassins as part of the plot for Sarevok to usurp control of Baldur's Gate, yadda yadda yadda, hitting the fast forward button on everything to the final confrontation.  A chaos spell nearly fucks the entire run as Ramon, Tiax and Quayle fail their saves but Kagain manages to finish the job that Alora started before Ramon caved her head in. And with that, deep underneath the city of Baldur's Gate, Sarevok's plans have been undone. Ramon Salazar and co have slain Sarevok and moved onto the SoD content!
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Dec 28, 2023 16:28
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Oooh I forgot to note at the end of my previous post my honours: Ironling, Librarian, Trap Dodger, Honourable Trader. Anyway! On with the Ramon Salazar experience! We find ourselves in some sort of tomb under the city where the last of Sarevok's loyal followers has been chased.  Tiax will have a revelation soon and I get the sinking feeling our time together grows short.  We run afoul of two groups of mercs, both of which go down without much of a fight. I assume this room was some sort of stock room for fresh SoD characters.  Kagain also feels like it's time to go soon. The band's breaking up.  Alora is the best girl and I'm going to miss her chirpiness so much   A mummy wakes up and asks us all to turn down that beatbox music. We agree to support the mummy in its' crusade for a good afterlife's sleep.  Huh. Wonder what the giant skull on the floor is for?  We catch up with Korlasz, beat her to a pulp and then take her in as she surrenders, but before we leave there's a couple of loose ends to tie up. Alora.  Alora.  Okay bye Quayle hope someday you can reimburse me for all those times I dragged your carcass to the temple to raise you.  The mummy rewards us with gold and experience. Also, Tiax being Tiax.  With his reputation restored by accompanying the hero of Baldur's Gate I can only assume Kagain wants to go back to his business. Then the usual exciting stuff happens - Imoen is nearly assassinated, I marvel at Entar Silvershield's awful "French" accent. Corwin attaches herself to me so I can't evade the eyes of the law (bugger), and I join up with Minsc and Dynaheir! Since the list of shorties in SoD is shockingly... Err... Short... I'll need some mooks to accompany myself, Glint and M'Khiin as we go to take down Caelar Argent and her heretical crusade. Only Lord Saddler can offer true deliverance!  Ramon Salazar is bumming around a refugee-choked city looking for pals.
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Dec 30, 2023 15:50
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Sorry I haven't updated in a day or so, I took a break to track down and kill Chaos. Anyway, Ramon Salazar continues his adventures.  Picked up Safana because why not? And by the time the loose ends in the city were all tied up, it was morning, so we agreed with Corwin to go back to the Duchal Palace for a nap. There's a sinister looking dude in a robe who meets me by the bed Imoen's poisoned body had been dumped on. Awkward. She says he claimed to be an old friend which is 100% possible for Ramon Salazar to associate with weirdos in hooded robes. Skie wakes us up to say she's coming along too, and I could not care less and want to go back to sleep.  Except daddy Entar says that everyone is to treat her as a normal bum, except me who is expected to look after her and bring her back safe. Gulp.  This is Audamar, Corwin's dad. He's looking after Corwin's daughter, because she's a working lady who brings home the bacon. He has extreme retired cop vibes so I don't like him too much.  We move out! Some berk decided to sling slanderous accusations at Ramon of being in cahoots with Sareovk. Salazar, being a villain with good publicity, tells the crowd that he's going to go deck The Shining Lady and make everything alright. They seem to rally behind this, and we can only hope that berk got dumped in a barrel of rainwater.  Looks like that Sinister Looking Dude is checking in with Caelar Argent as well. Wonder what he's up to, hmm. As soon as we make camp, we take a nap and have a dream.  I mean, I had hoped? We have a cryptic nonsense dream before waking up, having a hearty breakfast and head off to snoop around the woods!  Seems like an inn was burnt down and ransacked by crusaders, so I agree to help out in order to recruit more followers to Los Illuminados. He doesn't look too hard, it seems, because two of three heirlooms he wants are still in the vicinity of the inn.  A riveting fight pit is broken up by a goblin who can summon ghosts. Salazar likes the cut of this goblins jib so will bring her along.  Getting bored of this particular forest, Ramon naffs off to a similar forest to the west, bumps into Skie, and sends her back to the camp. Thankfully she can somewhat take care of herself. After slaying a vampire and getting a shield that was an heirloom for the innkeeper, we head back and wish him the best of luck with his wife who buggered off with his kids.  Exploring the woods a bit more brings us to a mine where some dwarves are being attacked by zombies! Egads! Lets go put some souls to rest and find some loot.  The dwarves brought along a giant, too. Good for them. He's a nice giant so we send him back to his dwarf friends.   Going in deeper, there's a magic scrying pool. Sticking some rods in the side and dropping some water in lets us spy on some folks! We start with Imoen.  Imoen is learning magic. Boring. Next!  That's a big army Caelar appears to be amassing. I might have my work cut out for me.  Sinister Looking Dude has a chinwag with Caelar's right hand man. There's discussion of demons and something called the Umbral Accord. I adore David Warner's delivery of "lickspittle". Anyway in keeping with avoiding screenshots of key points, turns out there was a dwarf lich. We killed him, tossed his phylactery into the elemental plane of fire, and twisted the dwarves collective arms to help us at Dragonspear Castle. Which means more giant later. Yay giant!  Heading northeast to a bridge we come across a Crusader blockade. They collectively panic as Ramon Salazar and Los Illuminados (please assume everyone here who isn't a shorty has been infected with Las Plagas for continuity reasons) and blow up the bridge. After a short skirmish, Caelar herself deigns to join the battlefield... On the other side of the bridge. She tries to coax Ramon to join her cause but he's having none of it and sends her packing. The next crossing is apparently at Boareskyr Bridge, where daddy Bhaal was slain during the time of troubles. Sure it'll be a fun romp!  Ramon Salazar has made it to Bridgefort and Boareskyr Bridge.
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Jan 1, 2024 14:49
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Again, apologies for the delay in updating - one pain in the arse with an iron man is that if the game locks up or crashes you have to go back and redo stuff, and I didn't feel like redoing stuff. I felt more like this: But it's cool, I did a couple of sessions and I'll just jam them together here for an update on Ramon Salazar, Gnomish Fighter/Cleric. After heading north from base camp in Troll Claw woods, we found, well, take a guess. And murdered them all. I'm starting to miss the game just throwing wands of fire at me and telling me to let fly, Dynaheir has a paltry 4 lv3 spell slots and I need those for haste and slow!  It's Jaheira! And a... Viking who can't seem to decide whether he's Scandinavian or German. Both get sent back to camp, as the party is full and I don't particularly feel like taking anyone with me (although if I did it would probably have been dropping Minsc for Voghlin.  Spiders. I hate spiders.  So I immediately march the party into a spider-infested cave, hoping for loot. There was some!  It's around this time I'm starting to really get fed up with Corwin being such an unlikeable jerk to everyone. I get what Beamdog were trying to go for here - a no-nonsense woman who's surpassed the "straighten up" part and is now fully in "fly right" territory who's married to her job but she's so thoroughly bland and prickly that I'm starting to question why I keep her around in the first place. Oh yeah, because Archers are murder machines.  It's just like FF6, only without the witless child and the stuffy samurai!   Oh boy, another cave! Probably more spiders to squash, nothing to worry about-    We coerced a shade from another plane of existence into slaughtering some bugbears for the party, because fighting bugbears is dull. It's just hobgoblin+. It couldn't even do that successfully so we mop up the stragglers and press further in.  A Temple of   This lady is Madele, an adherent of Bhaal, back when this was a temple to Bhaal and not Cyric. She's absolutely mad at a sack of rats.  A sack of rats. She has apparently been hearing voices but it's likely to be delusions right? ... Right?  After clearing through the cultists, there's some sort of drakonid lady called Ziatar. We kill her and I'm perplexed at how a fighter/cleric is able to wield a two-handed sword. Hm. She drops a couple of keys that we use to free the crusaders and Madele. --- This is where the game initially hung after freeing Madele and I had to force-close the game, that would have taken me back to the start of the post, but I still had autosaves on and there was a save point between the bugbear caves and this ruined temple, so I used to that only lose 20-30 minutes progress as opposed to 1hr 30 minutes progress. Please don't disqualify me for cheating!---  Bags were getting kind of heavy, so picked a fight with the green dragon and decided to head back to camp to sell before delving deeper into the ruined temple. Minsc bought the farm but wasn't chunked, and M'khiin knows a resurrection spell.  We got waylaid, feared a *ton* of goblins (oh for the love of a Death spell right now) and cleaned house before going in that big suspicious pit off to the left. It was full of myconids who confused Corwin and Minsc. Corwin shot Minsc to death and then went to go stand in a corner. After the fight we resurrected Minsc again because nobody else wanted to carry all his crap, went back to town and emptied our bags, then went back to the Temple of Bhaal.  A neolithid! I don't know what these are but it probably won't go down without-  Never mind. We push onwards and slay Akanna for the Bridgefort wardstone. She's the high priestess of Cyric and ostensibly the one in charge but she's also talking about hearing voices.  Having salvaged a scrap of Sarevok's diary from the Korlasz crypt waaaaaay back, there's a simple puzzle on the wall needing you to press the first, third, and fourth holes in the wall in a specific order to open it up. A Shadow Aspect has been lurking inside the secret room and absolutely wrecks out poo poo, killing Corwin in the process, but we do eventually put him down. It's at this point I realise how truly reliant on Remove Magic I am and there hasn't been a single scroll of it in the entire expansion so far.  Egads! A mind flayer and a party of other ne'erdowells! Through suitable cheese involving buffed skeletons, silence spells, LoSing we win the day and the mind flayer threat is over.  Taking our newly claimed wardstone to the magic circle just outside Bridgefort we teleport in but thankfully have time to explain before having our heads removed from our necks. Khalid is here, leading the defense, and at this point I get tired so decide this is a good place to stop. Ramon Salazar and friends have slain a mind flayer, a neolithid, a green dragon, and many cultists of Cyric, and have now managed to arrive inside Bridgefort Keep.
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Jan 4, 2024 17:55
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Sorry it's been a while again - I forgot how plodding SoD can get. In either case, Ramon Salazar and his band continue on their adventures! It's going to be a bumper post of about 3 play sessions in one, so I'll try be succinct.  The crusade flung a magical rock of impotence into Bridgefort after the one mage providing defensive magics had a lapse in concentration, absolutely not caused by me. Nope. We sneak into the Crusader camp outside thanks to a good word from the crusaders I rescued from the abandoned Temple of Bhaal, I'm allowed to pass. I charm the crusader guarding a chest and send him off for a stroll while I grab the scroll to reverse the impotence rock in Bridgefort. For my troubles, I take a chunk of rock and we get:  These will be integral much, much later.  There were casualties when the impotence rock came down, so I agree to help gather up the bodies for the priest and tell the brother of one of the dead that she got squashed by the impotence rock. He asks for a necklace from her as a keepsake, but when I go back to the priest they say there's nothing to be found, but some yutz was sniffing around people's belongings and fled Bridgefort not long ago. I go to investigate, find his headless body, get attacked by ZOMBIES, and return to question the priest. They don't take kindly to my meddling and raise some wights from the dead bodies to attack, but I am far too powerful and just crush all opposition.  We decide to open the gates and fight the crusade head-on. Khalid somehow dies in the push which locks me out of his quest later (but I don't find out about this until later when I can't find him at the coalition camp in the next chapter). I'm really starting to get annoyed by Dynaheir's lack of access to crowd control spells like confusion and chaos at this point, and all she can really do is toss out slow.  Not now, Skie! We have to stop the bridge from being blown up by the crusaders! I think two party members actually died at this bit and I had to drag their carcasses back to the base camp to revive them, so the fire elementals fight on the bridge was quite close, but we did prevail! Then Ramon took a nap on the bridge and when he woke up...  What a funny stencil. Sinister Looking Dude shows up to spout cryptic nonsene and we press on, but not before chucking an axe in a well and angering a water spirit. He drops a +1 quarterstaff. Bleh. On to Chapter 10!  Caelar has a moment atop the castle being angry that her methods of convincing me to join her crusade, such as sending assassins after me, haven't been working.  Arriving at the Coalition Camp I agree to hunt a bear to make some nice new boots for the dwarf guard, who's a superstitious fella.  The wailing death has come for the coalition! I'll be back to fix it with some tree bark later.  We train up the recruits so they're not a complete omnishambles come fight time.  Safana casually drops that there's a spy around. After doing some digging with the priestess of Tempus, the elderly strategist lady, and the quartermaster, all fingers point to Malden Col. We apprehend him, it'll be the gallows for that traitor. We then head out on a mission to plant explosives on a faultline under the castle to disrupt the crusade. I can't see any way this might go wrong, so I stuff the barrel of phwoosh in my bag of holding - if it explodes it'll surely take out the pocket dimension in the bag and not Minsc, who is carrying it?  Skie elects to charge castle dragonspear alone, head-on. Atta girl. We save her butt from some mercenaries outside and send her packing, telling her what a good job she did of finding a potential breachpoint in the camp. We'll come back here later.  Exploring a nearby cave we find slimes and mimics. And some loot. Can't remember what it was, so it can't have been too amazing.  Following this blood trail leads to a pack of displacer beasts, and Mizhena's amulet! She's the priestess of Tempus who asked us to look out for it in Chapter 9. It was a million to one chance but we'll give it back to her next time we're at camp.  We find some ogres in the middle of their general election so decide to tip the balance in favour of Murs, so we can find her beloved husband, Slug. Four more years of Murs!  Freeing some entangled druids, they tell me about a sinister druid right beneath our feet, so I opt to do the right thing and put him six feet... Twelve feet under? Whatever. Druids, am I right?  We run across a group of goblins and they want M'khiin. We tell them "no" with swords and sorcery, and M'khiin thanks me for sticking up for her. No problem, best bud.  Outside the underwater river we find a Rasheman berserker and also a witch. They're currently palling it up with the Crusade but I swear to find evidence that those do-gooders are up to no good!  And the best place for that is the crusader camp! We sniff around doing various chores, like settling an impromptu court trial, running reports on behalf of someone drunk, shackling a troll, oh and uh killing Corwin's old flame. We also nab a fair bit of souvenirs to peddle back at the Coalition Camp for a black market fencer.  Back in the caves, we saunter past the ghost dragon and go to fight her enslaver. Standard necromancy fare, but I nearly cack myself when the dragon is compelled to join the fight, so I make a beeline for the named caster (NOT the one named Dark Magician) and somehow it breaks their hold over the ghost dragon, so they join our side, before joining their family on the other side. Yay. Also found some good poo poo for M'khiin which'll make her a faster, unsilenaceable (that's not a word) caster.  Sinister Looking Dude won't be so quick with the barbed tongue when I get across that river and show him what-for! Other things not screenshotted:
 After returning to the camp, I'm told the leaders have hosed off to neutral ground to have a chinwag with Caelar so I'd better catch up. de Lancie, being the spineless poo poo he is, wants to hand Ramon Salazar over to the crusade in exchange for Caelar's surrender. On the other hand, Calear has been about as forthcoming with her motivations as a group of kids owning up to a broken window so I tell her to do one - it's time for a battle.  Back at camp, we start making logistics for the waves of invaders into the coalition camp that'll be descending on us. But that's for another session. Ramon Salazar has returned from a top-secret mission under Dragonspear Castle and is ready to defend the Coalition Camp from the onslaught of the Shining Lady's Crusade!
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Jan 9, 2024 17:09
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When would anyone say is the cut off point for starting a run? I realise we're still early into January but I'm coming up on some parts of SoD that I'm quite convinced will be the death of lil' Ramon and I have an idea for a new character in mind just in case.Ginette Reno posted:I think I am going to actually try and be completionist with this guy and do all the expansion content. We'll see if I live that long. Shadowdancer has some great defensive tools but if I get caught out of stealth at the wrong time I can still easily die. Best of luck to you. Shadowdancer looks hella fun and I'll think about trying it out myself one day.
DeadButDelicious fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Jan 10, 2024 |
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Jan 10, 2024 11:30
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Ramon Salazar defends the Coalition Camp from Caelar Argent's crusade! Oh golly, time for the big push!  I arrive as my army appears to be at an impasse.  None challenge Ramon Salazar to a duel and live!  ... Or perhaps they do.  Ramon Salazar has been slain in 1-on-1 combat with Ashatiel, thus ending his run But, from the ashes of an old run, begins one anew...  Windows XP, the Lawful Neutral
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Jan 10, 2024 21:41
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WindowsXP has BSOD'd at the hands (Paws? Fangs?) of wolves outside the Nashkel mines. Neera claims another victim as her invisibility wild surges and turns into a fear spell that sends everyone running, including our "hero" into said pack of wolves, where he dies horribly. Based on that, I'm thinking either Shapeshifter or Monk. @Rogue AI Goddess I'm so happy that you got your revenge - I hate that island so much!
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Jan 12, 2024 20:57
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After the untimely but wholly predictable death of WindowsXP, I decide to throw caution to the wind and try and Shapeshifter because werewolves are cool as gently caress. I'll definitely be keeping my updates more succinct. Beasts all over the shop, indeed. And that was actually my roll out the gate, to boot! I felt 88 would be more than enough for the trials ahead.  After much faffing around with basilisks, being a werewolf, and recruiting a party, Father Gascoigne the Shapeshifter has defeated Mulahey and cleared the Nashkel mines.
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Jan 13, 2024 02:05
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Father Gascoigne continues the hunt for beasts! Melicamp lived through his transformation! "Men leave as hunters, and return as beasts... Let there be no doubt"  Arrabelle also survived the xvart's nWo-style beatdown! "It's enough to make a man sick."  The bandit camp was brought to its' knees! "Beasts everywhere..."  Davaeorn has been slain, and the Cloakwood mines flooded. Now the party rests at the Friendly Arm Inn before moving on to the city. "Sick creature... May you rest in peace. Umbasa."
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Jan 13, 2024 20:27
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I was worried about losing a run to a basilisk earlier. I had cleared out Mutamin's garden and was passing through to get towards the bandit camp, when I got waylaid by a single lesser basilisk. Pant-making GBS threads horror moment but managed to get everyone to the edge of the screen and gone before it could fire off a single gaze.
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Jan 13, 2024 22:11
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Apologies, I got sidetracked by Stranger of Paradise. Also, still keeping to my intention of less in-depth updates as this is my third character this iron man and there's only so many ways I can talk about running the nashkel and cloakwood mines, the bandit camp etc. After taking a long time to clear every sidequest I could find in the city, I took the fight to the Iron Throne and they were... Not a challenge. At all. Because my druid has insect plague so just lol if you think any enemy got a spell off.  Home, sweet home! I do sure hope nobody tries to frame me for the murder of several high-ranking merchant company leaders.  Shake my fist and walk off, vowing revenge. I actually alerted the guards by stealing something when a priest of Oghma just wandered into view, but my party is so powerful now that they just ignored their attacks with a quarterstaff, charmed them and made them go stand in the corner.  Escaped the catacombs feeling stronger thanks to some books, and also murdering some more Iron Throne goons. Now we're off to the city to clear our name and point a big accusatory finger at Sarevok! And then before we kill him take a several week sojourn to werewolf islands, Durlag's tower, and stopping a demon cult. Father Gascoigne has cleared out the Iron Throne and fled from his home for a second time.
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Jan 19, 2024 01:46
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Father Gascoigne has defeated his half-brother, Sarevok Anchev, and saved the city of Baldur's Gate! Honours achieved - Ironling, Librarian, Trap Dodger, Honourable Trader.  Onward to Siege of Dragonspear, and this time, I won't be stupid enough to take on Ashatiel one-on-one!
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Jan 20, 2024 17:37
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docbeard posted:drat, and after all that setup. You had some very good runs though (and some very entertaining writeups!) Gargantuan spiders are so, so mean. I'm thinking Gascoigne will be my last stab at the ironman for this year. I'm experiencing a weird bug with my add-ons where after casting chant he moves super slow even when hasted. Must be something to do with IWDification for spells conflicting with the tweak I have to "fix" the werewolf shapeshifters get, which is starting to fall off now and will be utterly useless at the end of SoD but at least I have old favourite insect plague and new favourites smashing wave, static charge and mold touch. Should've rolled a fighter/druid in hindsight.
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Jan 22, 2024 08:04
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Ginette Reno posted:IWDification may be making chant give you a movement speed penalty. That's how chant works in IWD and iirc IWDification may make that change Thank you! I have never played IWD (or PST for that matter) so didn't bother to read how it would change the existing spells but that kind of makes sense considering Recitation feels like Chant+1 and I usually had my shapeshifter cast chant while Branwen cast protection from evil during pre-buff, never cottoned on that IWDification changed the spell and assumed it was a bug. Ta muchly!
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Jan 22, 2024 16:08
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docbeard posted:What tweak are you using for Shapeshifters? I personally found that the SCS 'improved shapeshifter' component remained useful well into BG2 (especially when combined with some of the very good melee buffs/protections higher-level druids get with IWD spells available). I'm using the tweak from Tweaks Anthology: Tweaks Anthology posted:Please note that this is a legacy component from Wes Weimer's Ease-of-Use mod. Wes typically designed for balance under the assumption that people would have the Tactics mod installed, so this is probably overpowered for most normal games. The rest of the description is from the original Ease-of-Use readme:
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Jan 23, 2024 09:48
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