15228 replies to this topic

[Blackraven]

Excellent work Corey, congrats and best of luck for ToB!

[corey_russell]

Excellent work Corey, congrats and best of luck for ToB!

Thanks! I'll take the luck. My paladins have always done well in BG 1/BG 2 - if they come unstuck it's almost always ToB, so I'll take the luck.

[Grimwald the Wise]

going to use frabjous reroller to get these stats

 

A mod that I installed, I don't know which, gives potions in BG" which improves stats in much the same way as the tomes in BG1.

 

I did however have a pretty good roll before I started. I've just been trying to find what they were but that was 6 years ago. I may not still have them. I'll look though.

[Gate70]

Quad > Trio no reload (attempt 4 session 19)
Caution: A grisly mangled trail of bodies, more than a few of them ours... I stopped counting after um 5 or 6 but fairly sure we didn't make it into double figures. Almost certain. 7 or 8 I'd say.

The Tears of Bhaal are collected without Strofe becoming a Fallen Stalker. Irenicus demonstrates he too has mastered the Slayer form but will it be enough to save his bacon. Brazil had to pick her gear up mid battle as a Wail of the Banshee briefly removed her from combat - Corheal raising her and pointedly remarking that a discussion moments earlier about Potions of Invulnerability would have saved her.

Corheal saved against a Finger of Death mid battle, Brazil's earlier Wail-fail meant she was fighting in her skivvies which explains the mounting damage facing the Irenislayer.

Spoiler

Corheal and Strofe took a relaxing break as Brazil endured the cutscene of Irenicus' last moments, and the next cutscene of what lay ahead. Illasera as it happens, who proves to be a kitten and is rapidly stomped into submission by Corheal. Brazil grabs her Boots of Speed and the party movement parity is finally restored.

The first Pocket Plane challenge, Retribution, is dispensed without meeting the likes of Irenicus Bodhi Ellisime or any similar person. On to Saradush where life surely can't be that hard, can it. Note how Corheal is looking a bit pasty in the first image. & the fourth. A bit of a rough spot.

Spoiler

At one stage above, Strofe visits the temple and pays an outrageous amount to raise Corheal, 15k+. At that price, Corheal had better start looking after himself.Maybe a timestop-out for reflection. Oh no.

Spoiler

Strofe and Brazil carefully stick Corheal back together and pat him on the back. Melissan has suggested Yaga Shura should be avoided, but them's fighting words and although the Fire Giant himself is some way off the first pair of Fire Giants encountered depart rapidly (one not quite rapidly enough).

Spoiler

Corheal had dealt with vampires under Saradush with eye-popping results, and more of the same takes place in the Forest of Mir where he pops the entire collections of Wraiths leaving only their Master. Corheal and Brazil are both circumspect around the Master Wraith until Strofe reminds them he cast 50% fire and cold resistance on each of them. Ice all round, apart from Strofe of course.

Spoiler

The Marching Mountains are next, Fire Giants outside proving troublesome due to a lack of summons. Eventually the party return to the Pocket Plane and kill the four summons left there which were counting towards the summoning limit ever since the Retribution challenge.
 
Corheal gamely asked what the plan was to deal with the Fire Giant temple and Strofe spilled the beans. The plan, as such, was to equip the Roranch Helm onto an available Halfling Cleric and cover him in fire-retardant materials so he could take a beating in a fiery pit while trying to avoid Gesen Arrows and Crimson Darts. This was bound to work, but Strofe finally shouted over the raging battle that the Elite Fire Giants should be taken down first because Corheal was on the wrong end of a good thrashing. Luckily for him no evidence of the battle could be made public (whoops, apart from the screenshots below).

Spoiler

Not our finest hour, although Strofe is relying on selfless ToB sacrifice from his companions while hanging back. Once or twice he's moved out of combat on sight of a Sphere of Chaos that in hindsight is more likely to be a Storm of Vengeance. He may also need to reconsider his ranged weapons, the Gesen bow being a good disrupter but perhaps a poor choice against Fire Giants and the like.

Gate70: Strofe, Stalker 22. 874 kills (+53). Bodhi.
Using stealth, range, and friends, to try and avoid damage or spells.

Corey Russell: Corheal, Priest of Lathander 27. 459 kills (+38). Unseeing Eye.
Using potions to tank. Best death so far though, just surviving a Wilt only to get a Prismatic Spray in the face.

Grond0: Brazil, Fighter 16 / Druid 14. 558 kills (+32). Firkraag.
Using Ironskins. Caught out in Saradush Castle by lag, or possibly a ranged attack.

Retired;
DogDancing: Wewa, Thief 13. 84 kills (+5). Thaxll'ssillyia.​
Probably best out of it on this evidence!

Only another 780k*6=4.68m xp for Brazil's next druid level (About 1/4 of the way there in this session, can anybody hear a suggestion about going back to Saradush and standing on the wall until next time...)

[corey_russell]

Russell VI the Inquisitor and his band of paladins - Update 14

 

Saradush was pretty straight-forward. We did everything here that we could, including fighting the guys in the barracks (to get the sewer key). It was necessary to use Slayer to bash the barracks door open.

Spoiler

 

Sewers were battled and the paladins did well - I found out the paladins here high enough level they can turn undead (and destroy) shadows - that was pretty handy.

 

Since Gromnir is so close to Russell VI after you talk to Gromnir, Russell did Whirlwind with Russell VI's Warblade on Gromnir (Russell VI also had a fireshield active via elemental staff). The party did well this fight - see spoiler tag for shots of this battle.

Spoiler

A possible worrying moment was this time-stop - but Russell VI made his save and all was well.

 

The forest of Tethir was very easy for the team. For the undead guarding the old Bhaal Temple housing Nylee, the plan was to protection from undead scroll on Russell VI - but somehow he still got level drained. The party is was still a lot stronger (and I guess the summons helped too).

 

Marching Mountains saw the team just gulp mountains of extra healing potions, but still the team did well. We had used a lot of consumables to increase the fire resistance of everyone in the team - we decided to clear the Yaga's entire temple in one go, so that we can do so while protected by fire. This worked well.

 

The battle with Nylee went well, with the entire team protected from charm. It took a while, but the enemy didn't do much damage to us.

 

The party did excellent via Yaga and his army - helps 6 paladins are really an army all their own.

Spoiler

 

For Oasis, party summoned as many summons as they could, one each character, then charged - the enemies were heavily out-classed. The party has arrived in Amkethran and are considering their next move.

 

Party Stats:

Hanna the Undead Hunter, 120 HP, 604 kills, Nizi

Mazzy the Fighter, 134 HP, 66 kills, Bodhi

Joshua the Undead Hunter, 135 HP, 340 kills, Unseeing Eye

Keldorn the Inquisitor, 133 HP, 212 kills, Balor

Forrest the Paladin, 106 HP, 256 kills, Balor

Russell VI the Inquisitor, 127 HP, 293 kills, Berenn

 

It used to be Hanna is leading the kills because she was the only character with haste - now everyone has innate haste, but now she is the only dual-wielder. Mazzy dual-wields sometimes, but currently using Yaga's shield to keep her saves up.

[corey_russell]

Russell VI and his band of paladins, Update 15

 

Russell VI's next stop was Abizigal's lair. Time to rematch vs. the killer of Corthief VIII, Draconis! Our only buff was resist fear - I didn't buff much before, I was pretty sure inquisitor dispel magics would be too much for Draconis mage form - and I was right!

 

As for the dragon form, it moves to much (plus goes invisible), which makes trying to target with dispel magic problematic. So instead we used dispelling arrows, plus GWW/WW attacks - Draconis tries a few wing buffets, but once it stays still, Draconis takes way too much damage and goes down.

 

The interior was pretty easy. We didn't do much buffs for Abazigal either, but we did put protection from cold/snow on each melee (front 4), using green scrolls. We definitely didn't want to do dispel magics, as it would remove our resistances. So instead, we pumped Abazigal with dispelling arrows as well, plus GWWs/WWs. Took a little bit (mainly due to wing buffets), it manages to slay Abazigal's forms!

 

Sendai's lair is our next target...

[Grond0]

Looking good Corey, keep it going.

[corey_russell]

Looking good Corey, keep it going.

Thanks! The key battle as always is Melissan - we'll give it a go. But I like my party so far.

[corey_russell]

Just a brief note about Russell VI and gang - not much time to play tonight (Chess Club and work). But the party is making good progress inside Sendai's stronghold. No deaths, and so far the party out-classes the opposition. We are just about to use the ward stone from the lich to make progress into the rest of the lair.

[corey_russell]

Russell VI the Inquisitor and his band of paladins, Update 17 - The End Nears

 

Sendai's minions were mostly little more than speed bumps for the paladins, although the party did use an endless stream of Devas to defeat Diathyia and her pals while the party stayed safely out of sight.

 

Only a few buffs were used for Sendai, and even then just on Forrest and Russell VI (because the plan was for Russell VI to dispel the Sendai casters with his inquisitor dispel magics, which in turn would dispel all our melees' buffs). The paladins were hitting, REALLY hard - other than a Deva or two, we didn't even have to use HLAs! Not only that, the party was hitting Sendai so hard, the Sendai casters were dying before Russell VI could even get a dispel magic off!! Some screenshots of that encounter below.

Spoiler

 

Next up was Balthazar - not a lot of buffs here either, just free action and protection from evil and resist fear - We opened with GWWs, and then Balthazar died in about 2 rounds.

Spoiler

 

Pocket Plane challenges #2, #3 and #4 were defeated very easily and even with the same set of buffs. The paladins were hitting like trucks.

 

Ravager

I have been using the AI for much of the adventure, but necessary to turn it off here, since the bone blades are endless.  I wanted Forrest to use a range weapon, but his only skill is shortbow and longbow, and no +4 ammo for those (We couldn't forge the Gesen short bow since we couldn't bash the chest with the component with it). So the plan for all paladins to be in melee range. Then Russell VI would dispel magic Ravager, then immediately the paladins would do GWW/WW on Ravager. Then repeat. This worked, but the front-liners took big damage, was necessary to RoR heal a couple of times.

 

Thoughts of this run so far:

I'm proud of myself of what I was able to accomplish with this group. Russell V was a success, but his group had a HUGE crutch - namely his cleric/thief was a massive help for him, with her summons, many spike traps, and trap/lock skill. There quite a number of major encounters decided by the traps that run - this group has made it this far without such help. Mazzy has only been of limited help - she has the worse saves, under-leveled compared to the other party members by quite a bit, and only a few HLAs. Yet this party has succeeded despite that.

 

In any case, Melissan awaits! Wish me luck!

 

EDIT: Party Stats

Hanna the Undead Hunter, 129 HP, 668 kills, Nizi

Mazzy the Fighter, "Paladin of Avoreen", 143 HP, 119 kills, Bodhi

Joshua the Undead Hunter, 144 HP, 406 kills, Ogremoch

Keldorn the Inquisitor, 142 HP, 272 kills, Balor

Forrest the Paladin, 115 HP, 285 kills, Draconis

Russell VI the Inquisitor, 136 HP, 337 kills, Hive Mother (not sure how Russell VI even got this kill - he never even saw the Hive Mother!)

[corey_russell]

Russell VI and his band of paladins - FINAL UPDATE!

 

Russell VI's plan for the Melissan fights was pretty simple. The plan was for Forrest to use dispelling arrows to remove Mel's defenses, while the rest of the party hits Melissan as hard as they can. This worked up to the 3rd Melissan battle. We ran out of dispelling arrows then.

 

As for the pool battles, the paladins had haste potions active on all characters for both pool #1 and pool #3 (and summons) - as a result, the enemies were slain very quickly. I made sure Mazzy was seen by the Fallen Solar, to take its attacks (since Mazzy has the highest AC of the party by far).

 

As for the final battle, the plan was to use dispel magic - but was unnecessary, as I think the party interrupted her PfMW - as a result, she died pretty fast (haste potions were still active from pool #3 fight).

 

Here are screenshots of these encounters:

Spoiler

 

Melissan is defeated, and Russell VI has decided to remain mortal, to keep watch over his children (Hanna and Joshua), they need him, especially since the mother (Paja) was chunked during the quest.

 

 

 

What's Next:

Looks like I have a party of paladins mastered - at least in the vanilla game. We'd probably be murdered with SCS (it took a long time before our saves were anything close to resembling acceptable). I really could use a successful arcane success, I have none so far. I've gotten pretty far with arcane characters who can use armor, like fighter/illusionists, but even they haven't quite got it done. This run shows I can win with a party of heavily armored brutes, but can I succeed with my character a squishy? I need more practice, no doubt so that will be next.

[Grond0]

Well done to the brutes - and best of luck for the squishies to come .

[Serg BlackStrider]

Congratulations, Corey!

[Grimwald the Wise]

Well done Corey.

[corey_russell]

Thanks guys!

[Blackraven]

Great job Corey! Congratulations! 

Looking forward to reading about your squishies run.

[corey_russell]

Perhaps you guys misunderstand - it's A SQUISHY (e.g., my main character) - rest of the party will be NPCs which I hope I won't have to rely on only squishies for them...a lot of chunkings would have to happen for that to occur.

[Jabberwock]

SCS Trilogy Playthrough with Berserker -> Mage / Jaheira / Haerdalis / Viconia / Yoshimo -> Imoen / Edwin

 

Having completed Trademeet and the De'arnise keep, the party returns to Athkatla for some shopping and general cleanup.

 

 

First we deal with Mencar. The usual insect plague + chaos one-two punch makes short work of them.

 

 

Apparently the thief can run away. Minor interaction, but news to me.

 

 

Next up is Captain Dennis, who receives the same treatment. 

 

 

Then the Linvail quests up to Bodhi. I used to hold off on these despite wanting the ring + amulet, because I thought they led to the night-time vampire attacks, which can be very dangerous when the party returns from distant locations and is unbuffed + gets jumped by 3 vampires. However, it seemed like avoiding paying Gaelen wasn't delaying vampire attacks so instead I've just been more careful not to travel / arrive at night (and we have several clarity potions at the ready, should the worst happen).

 

After cleaning up various odds and ends in Athkatla, the party leaves to go deal with the first floor of WK, up until any of the statues.

 

 

In keeping with my apparent pattern of getting Yoshimo killed by well known dangerous traps, I manage to get him petrified by a trap in Watcher's Keep. Fortunately, no long term harm done as his statue is not destroyed.

 

I think this is a reasonable point to comment on Yoshimo in this run, who I have been using in lieu of Jan, who is my normal thief up until replacement with Imoen. Overall I would say I've been quite underwhelmed. Even with backstabs (which are a pain to pull off with his crappy thac0) he's weak in combat, and certainly less useful than Jan. Sometimes I've used him as an archer, which is OK, but still not great. To some extent that's probably because I have an SCS option that removes most of the magic arrows from the game and so he's using crappy arrows, but still. His traps are obviously brutal when they can be used, but in practice they haven't been that useful, and certainly haven't made any hard fights easier.

 

AND as I learned later on, he leaves too early to help generate level 13 Imoen.

 

Anyhow, next stop Umar Hills.

 

 

The first level of the temple went OK, nothing too out of the ordinary. Then as we snuck past Thaxy, he went hostile while he buffed for the shade lord. I'm not sure exactly what the rules for catching his attention, but I thought buffs would be OK. Apparently not. In any case, the party's paranoia had led it to buff by the exit, so we just booked it immediately and started the shade lord fight a bit underbuffed. 

 

 

Viccy was able to silence the shade lord early, which took him down a number of pegs, particularly preventing him from casting black blade of disaster. He then fell to secret words + breach + Jaheira. 

 

Next stop Windspear hills.

 

 

Ruhk Transmuter probably took 15 minutes to kill on account of buffs wearing off and being generally afraid of his magic. I think breach is bugged against Rakshasa's, but in any case his spell immunities + great AC and thac0 + spellcasting ability make him a real pain. Eventually we wore him down with skeletons.

 

 

And then the mega vampire spawn! I have yet to have a really clean win against the vampires in Windspear Hills... their numbers, combined with their massive backstabs, life drain and charms, seem to always cause something to go wrong.

 

 

In this instance, a monster backstab against Jaheira was the start of the trouble. I recall she was at 62 health, which seemed OK but was not enough to survive a 65 damage backstab from an ancient vampire. Ouch. I don't think I was reduced to using a protection from undead scroll, but when the dust cleared Jaheira, Haerdalis and Edwin had all been killed. The real trouble is the ancient vampires, which can run away in bat form, go invisible, and then come back to drop giant backstabs from invisibility.

 

I think better use of invisibilty, true sight and false dawn would have made this better, but it is always difficult on account of the sheer number of high level vampires.

 

 

Samia and party we just cheesed with Yoshimo's traps. I normally avoid metagaming cheese, but Yoshimo had just been so useless thus far that I decided to just go for it. The special bounty hunter traps are extremely strong when they go off in the middle of an enemy party, but this can only really be done by metagaming in my experience.

 

 

Conster failed to resist a remove magic from Edwin, and was shortly thereafter taken out. Firkraag was left for another day.

[corey_russell]

@Jabberwock - Yoshimo's special traps can be thrown - you don't those pretty useful?

[Jabberwock]

@corey I guess I wasn't entirely sure what was kosher with thrown traps. It says they can't be placed during combat. Is the restriction more like hide in shadows? So he could be out of line of site, and then throw traps akin to fireballs?

 

I thought he might be able to do that, but I wasn't sure whether that was the intended mechanic or a border-line exploit so I held off. If an intended mechanic, I would agree with you that's effective and better than what I was doing with him.

[corey_russell]

You can get Yoshimo so he can't see the enemies, then throw traps their direction - this can be done while the party is fighting. The trap is an area effect, so you don't have to target an enemy or anything like that.

[ussnorway]

Gratz on the solid victory Corey.

[Jabberwock]

Hmmm yeah that's better than what I was doing. So he's at least materially better than I thought. I guess I still don't feel excited at the prospect of using him again though. Although not superexcited about Jan either. Maybe I'll try Nalia as a thief.

 

SCS & Ascension Trilogy Playthrough with Berserker -> Mage / Jaheira / Haer'dalis / Viconia / Yoshimo -> Imoen / Edwin

 

Returning from the Umar and Windspear Hills, the party does a bit more clean-up in Athkatla.

 

 

We go potion shopping with Rob the fence and deal with the hidden beholder in the temple sewers. Due to Viconia's not yet full strength skeletons being wimpier than we thought, we wind up with a beholder on the loose. I didn't want to run and rest for RP reasons, so he was actually somewhat troublesome without any more skeletons to take him out (other summons were almost immediately paralyzed, charmed or killed). Eventually, invisible scout + out of LoS glitterdust from Edwin blinded him and then Jaheira sorted him out in short order.

 

 

Then we did the Harper hold fight with Galvarey to get the ring of wizardry. I tend to delay this fight out of paranoia towards the subsequent ambushes, so we are overleveled for the fight and it is easy. 

 

Then we move on to one of my least favorite fights in the entire Saga... Nevaziah, aka the lich guarding the Nether Scroll.

 

 

Last time I fought him, I tried to kill him before he could react using Jaheira with harm and PfUD + Jan with traps. That didn't work and only got him to near death, which then kicked off a horrible fight with a balor and the party desperately running away and spamming summons with the WoMS to delay the balor until he unsummoned. 

 

This time, the plan was to use Yoshi's better traps to actually successfully take out the lich before he could respond. Unfortunately, Yoshi's traps did a lot less damage than I thought (maybe N is resistant somehow?) and left him relatively healthy but most definitely alive, and so once again began the nightmare of dealing with an SCS lich with a level ~12 party.

 

 

Hey it's our old friend the balor, with magic resistance, a ton of hp and ac and stoneskin, and all at-will teleport without error, remove magic (lvl 24), breach, powerword death and powerword stun. And of course vorpal claws. And he can see through invisibility. Great.

 

 

We tried valiantly to fight him, but with little to no success. Neither Jaheira nor Haerdalis had the thac0 to hit him reliably, and Jaheira couldn't protect herself from his high level remove magic so was mostly useless. Charname was too scared to face him in melee, which I think was probably the right idea.

 

In hindsight, it's possible I could have gotten him with better use of Bolt of Glory (maybe) or lower resistance + magic missile spam (maybe). Or maybe the better strategy was to leave the traps for the balor, instead of trying to snipe the lich before he could cast spells. In any case, the balor totally rolled the party and we were reduced to running around and doing our best to hide until he left.

 

 

Here was a dangerous moment when charname somehow got feared, I think by the lich, not the balor who had since unsummoned, and ran off through the rest of the lower tombs alone. In hindsight, it would have been much smarter to clear the lower tombs before facing the lich. We got away with it though due to there not being anything lethal enough down there to kill charname.

 

The lich fell relatively quickly after the balor was gone, as it had been many rounds already and he was short on defenses. Hate that guy.

 

 

The first fight with Bodhi went very smoothly. I was much more careful about not letting vampires drink blood (this screenshot with excepted) and using invisibility to protect mages and other semi-noncombatants. Azureedge + hasted charname was a big help. Charname hit level 13 and dualed to mage, making him approximately useless for the next 500k experience (in particular because my lack of potion stacking has meant I can't rob shops which means we don't have much wand capacity). The actual fight with Bodhi was handled by jogging around until she got bored and left, per usual.

 

 

Here is apparently a bug, where a previously staked Tanova nevertheless spawns to ambush the party at night time as if we had not already killed and staked her during the first assualt on Bodhi. Oh well.

 

Off to Brynlaw next.

 

 

The fight with Perth went quickly. Cloudkill in the enclosed space is tough for him to deal with, although he can be a cheesy opponent as he uses spelltrap and the party does not yet have ruby ray. The book of infinite spells unfortunately rapidly flipped to burning hands, robbing Jaheira of spell turning for the rest of the run. That's disappointing, and my first run where that's happened (50 / 50 probability but we've been lucky previously).

 

Next stop was heading into Spellhold, while taking VERY great care to spawn level 13 Imoen with 1.2mm exp, instead of level 11 Imoen with 400k exp. It kind of blows my mind how hard the game makes it not to totally sabotage your Imoen for the rest of the saga by spawning her weak form. 800k exp is huge, and is the difference between HLAs in chapter 6 of SoA vs. sometime in ToB, and puts her basically one spell level behind for at least the rest of SoA. Ouch ouch ouch.

 

Anyhow, although I had not done any "test saves" thus far in the run, I decided to make an exception here as it was 1) not a combat test and 2) I was so paranoid about spawning Imoen at level 11, given a prior misshap in an earlier run.

 

Needless to say, I'm glad I did, as I learned that I was wrong about her level spawn mechanics. I now believe she is spawned at level 13 if the (rounded down) party level average is 13, with multi and dual class characters counting as the average of their levels, also rounded down (including dual class inactive classes). I thought the same thing previously, but what I also thought which is clearly wrong, is that her level gets set when you first generate her in Spellhold (during the tour / meeting with Jon). This is wrong! It gets set when she spawns in Spellhold dungeon (at least in my install).

 

The upshot of that is, that Yoshimo (level 15 as a single class thief) does NOT contribute to the level average for the purposes of calculating Imoen's starting level, as he will have departed the party by that point. Anyhow, I spent probably 2-3 hours figuring this out and then repeatedly killing the shadows that spawn in the spellhold outdoors map to get Viccy up to level 14 and Haerdalis up to level 16. It wasn't pleasant, as they were each about 40k experience short even factoring in the 40k from entering spellhold via the pirate king and the party learning any additional scrolls it had (minus forgetting spells to relearn them, which seems like an exploit). Also, only Yoshi and Edwin could be temporarily kicked out of the party, as Jaheira would leave permanently.

 

In hindsight, this debacle could have been entirely avoided if we had just done the unseeing eye before leaving for Brynlaw (or if I had been potion stacking and had stolen scrolls earlier in the game, leading to lots more scroll exp as in prior runs). Yikes.

 

Next up, spellhold dungeon.

[corey_russell]

Gratz on the solid victory Corey.

Thanks! I was real focused that run, which always increases my chance of a success.

[ussnorway]

Sar2e-scs30 Start,

 

I’m re-entering the challenge with Sarah again… Sarah is a stock standard Gnome Fighter Illusionist & took the first (adjusted) dice roll.

 

 

Mods: this is the same scs30 bg2ee game files that I used for puks run... I made a basic moonblade item and Jaheria carried it but it was lost in the transfer.