15228 replies to this topic

[ussnorway]

Sorry about Alesia, Alesia_BH.
I agree the problem is likely to be faulty scripting, "Tactics Improved"... At this point I think the bottom line is re-install is needed.

[corey_russell]

@Alesia_BH: If what you saying is true, then it's a bug and you are allowed to reload then per the rules. We certainly don't want a trilogy no-reload run to end because of a bug. I believe you have established it as such.

[Alesia_BH]

There we go!


I transferred the save over to the other install. Everything is working fine in that one.

I'll give Alesia another shot at Sendai.

Best,

A.

[Saint of Sinners]

@Alesia

Congratulations! Most probably some junk left from the Tactics installation, even though that seems to be quite a stretch of a junk.

[Saint of Sinners]

Monty the Mad Blade Update: From Heroes to Villains

We left Monty at Trademeet last time contemplating on his eventual path. Naturally, he's going to try something stupid. And he did. He tried to pickpocket the merchant here for the sake of the BoIB. Of course, he got caught. A new and revised thieving mechanic kics in and we get away with it.



So, to cool off, Monty heads out to the next item on the list: doing Windspear's mercenary work. We get tricked, we take up the host's gratitude, and proceeded to give Firkraag a piece of our minds. Indignant snort, bah.



We scare the stuffings out of his Ruhk Transmuter with a well-timed Weapons Display and finish him off with FoA.




We clean up the dungeon one group at a time. First up, the golems...



Then the troll and the hobgoblins...



And then the orcs...



And the shadows. No vampires, unfortunately. While that would have been difficult, I think I'll reserve them for when I return.



We foil Samia's plan...



And we twirl our weapons to scare their socks off and kill them one by one...



Seriously, Burning Hands? For an orb that's supposed to be all head and no hands, you use Burning Hands?



Defensive Spin and FoA kills golems, no problem. MGoI stops their Slows, so Haste was fully utilized.



Some more golems. Seriously, DS owns them.



We level up to lvl16.



Some wolfweres. At 5APR, they fall to Belm.



We met Tazok...



Killed him and the Chief...



Then we meet Firkraag and demand for the release of the child. Had this been a sorcerer run, grumble, grumble, stupid red wyrm... Anyway, Conster is a headache of protections, but we came prepared with 3 Remove Magics and 3 Breaches.



First, remove Invisibility with Remove Magic, which forces him to cast Mantle...



We breach him, which kills Spell Trap...



A second Breach destroys his last few protections, and we kill him with a DUHM-augmented OS!



Rescuing the kid and reporting back nets us 3 rep points, putting us back in the average reputation range.

And that's it for now with Windspear Hills. With new weapons, items, spells, and junk to sell (as well as nearly 40,000 in gold), we are now waiting at Garrick's cabin for the next move.

Cheers and good luck to everyone!

[corey_russell]

Candar the dwarven berserker: Final Chapters

Candar's party headed to Balthsazar's fortress. He had a lot of monks outside. Fortunately we were able to get 5 summons out first, so they weren't too bad, though it was necessary for Imoen to fire off 2 horrid wiltings during the fight. One of the dead monks by the gate has a gate key (how convenient!) You can actually avoid fighting a monk party if you DON'T take Elminister's advice and get Saemon's help. So use the key and just walk inside, unopposed!

Before entering Balthsazar's throne room (or whatever he calls it) we did some EXTREMELY important buffs (as I have learned the hard way as you might imagine).  See screenshot below:


The only buffs I did of any consequence was Free action x6, Chaotic Commands x6 and Remove Fear. The hardest thing to deal with is Balthsazar's holds/stuns and this just negated it all. Oh yeah and had both Anomen and Keldorn run True Seeing so that Balthsazar couldn't run and heal.

This strategy was working REALLY well, as you can see here:


And little bit later we won with no deaths and lots of level-ups! (woot!):

We got taken to the Solar moment Balthsazar died.

4th Pocket Plane Challenge Prep:
Sarevok laid some basic traps. Imoen and Keldorn had true sight/seeing up, haste, 5 good summons, Candar had mirror image (via Ilbratha sword), and away we went. Anomen got beat up a little but that's all! The enemies never so much as engaged Candar! Very smooth execution this time (much better than my, er, not smooth execution against draconis)


Ravager Prep/Strategy:
I had Sarevok lay some traps, rest, and lay some more till it said he couldn't lay anymore. These are only BASIC snares, but every little bit helps. See below for placement:


Next, I had everyone except Imoen use a haste potion, Candar used strength item ability (believe from Yaga's improved warhammer), Jaheira iron skinned, Imoen mirror imaged and stone skinned, remove fear. Next were the summons. By the way, 4th challenge leveled up Imoen (woot! she can cast ONE planetar) and Jaheira. I noticed as a druid she could get something called "Greater Elemental Summoning". I said what the heck get that never used it before. I found out something NEW! (to me anyways). You can have BOTH a Planetar and a Greater Elemental Prince at the same time! Never knew druids were so useful in ToB. We got a mordy sword, fire elemental and a ariel servant as well.

WEAPONS:
Keldorn: Holy Avenger +6 two hand sword
Candar: Yaga Shura's warhammer +5 and Foe Bane +6
Jaheira: Sling using +4 bullets
Sarevok: Firetooth Crossbow fires +4 bolts
Anomen: Sling using +4 bullets
Imoen: Gesen's short bow

BATTLE STRATEGY:
Have the summons fight who-ever they want
Turn off AI
Entire party wallop Ravager
Candar or Keldorn tank (ended up being Candar tanking whole fight)
Use Jaheira and Anomen to heal via Rod of Resurrections, Candar to use his many HLAs

Initial Battle Results:
Start of the fight was very promising, as you can see here:


Ravager clearly losing the fight:


Ravager defeated, just have to clean up small fry:


Next up: Melissan.  Hope Candar's team can do it!

[corey_russell]

Candar the dwarven berserker - Head-to-Head with Melissan

Physically, was very tense in these battles.

1st Battle with Melissan:
Not sure what happened, but she put up very weak defense against us, don't even think we had to breach her.


1st Power Source Battle:
I wanted to use some area effects, but didn't get the chance - I didn't have the cloak of non-detection (think it was lost in SoA when Haer'Dalis got chunked), So Sarevok ran back to the party and we laid into the enemies. We did get level drained (including Imoen, the only mage), but won pretty cleanly. Fortunately made sure Anomen had lots of level restorations, I vaguely remember needing that last time i was here.

2nd Melissan Battle:
This battle lasted quite a bit longer, but spell-wise just used true sight and breaches, lots of heals via potion and resurrection wands. We prevailed:


2nd Power Source Battle:
Some weak summons I used (i save the best for the Melissan fights), and the party won this pretty cleanly, lots of heals via resurrection wands again.

3rd Melissan Battle:
This raged for a LONG time. It's real annnoying how when she runs to the far side fo the platform you can't even see her thanks to that silly column of power in the center (of the few times the bird's eye view of the game fails). I have to pause and slowly move the mouse and press TAB when I find something to target her. Eventually some well timed breach by Imoen let Candar and Keldorn take her down. She summoned LOTS of reinforcements, just ignored them totally. Healed when necessary, then re-targeted Melissan with everyone. My summons battled her summons so this worked OK. Success! No screenshot, as she didn't say anything. Wasn't much to see anyways with that column of power.

3rd Power Source Battle:
Without a doubt, this ended up being the hardest battle BY FAR. We beat the fallen planetar without much trouble, but the Mereliths were giving Keldorn hell. I must have used like 10 charges of my resurrection wands (all wands got to about 3-4 charges left). Fortunately several of my pre-planning paid off big this fight:
1) EVERYONE had antidote potions - melees equipped, casters in their inventory for quick access. Without these party members WOULD have died.
2) Keldorn took so much damage his MORALE BROKE! This mean he couldn't true seeing or dispel the Mereliths protections. However I had actually planned for this eventuality of Keldorn being disabled during a fight. We took down 1 Merelith but one was still alive and giving pain. Imoen backed away and cast a dispel magic at it. This removed its protections, and Candar killed it easily then
Massive use of potions/resurrection wands this fight, but no one died. This battle was so hard decided it deserved a final screenshot:


Melissan FINAL Battle:
I was feeling pretty good at this point, lots of resources left, except for summons (though could summon a deva and mordy sword and Ariel Servant), had HLAs, breaches, true sights. Didn't see how I could fail and I was right!

Another dialog confirming her defeat:


Candar, having no significant other in his life (no girl in Faerun likes dwarves), chose to become a god.

Candar FINAL stats:


Some thoughts about this run:
********************************
This is my first TRILOGY NO-RELOAD run I have ever done. I am glad after all these attempts I have finally done it. This is only my 3rd time beating Melissan ever in any format, and yet again the PC is a melee. With the massive magic resistance in so many of the enemies in the final battle, really think it favors melee heavy group anyways.

* Candar had the most kills, but Keldorn's true seeing/dispel magic and Holy Avenger were a HUGE contributor in this run. I was very careful to not let him get chunked (looking at you fire giants who did chunk him in a different run).
* Even though I dualed Sarevok to a thief the moment I got him, he never did regain his fighter abilities. However, it didn't matter, as he became a good thief and the fighter levels DID give him huge HP. He the most HP of anyone until the very end when Candar passed him. Also, by having Imoen sit out for a while to make room for Sarevok, she did not get chunked at the batlte of Sendai's Enclave (surface) - she could have easily chunked too as Nalia died to an AoE. This made her available when I lost both of my high level mages (Aerie, Nalia).
* Lot of attention spent buffing weaker party members when doing large battles to minimize chunked characters. This was mostly successful.
* Doing the 1st level of Watcher's Keep was very helpful, many items obtained that I used until the end (including weapons) plus the experience helped as well.

NEXT UP: I found my old fighter/druid solo run I was doing, who I last left him in Yaga-Shura's Temple. Thinking about resuming him (he is not no-reload so not posting him here, though might post in another thread if it's interesting).

[Saint of Sinners]

@corey_russell

Lots of congratulations are in order for you! Nice tactics all around, especially the beatdown on the Ravager and the take on the Throne of Bhaal. Good job!

... Now, I really do have to get around with my run. Everyone I started with is at ToB already, while I'm running with my fifth character still at SoA. Bummer. :/

[corey_russell]

Thank you, Saint of Sinners.

Don't give up. Remember I have been trying for YEARS before I succeeded. If you count all my starts in BG 1 (I was doing a Trilogy no-reload), I probably have something like 40-50 total attempts. I only made it through BG 1 33% of the time! I had a few characters in BG 2 die VERY EARLY, and several in Underdark. This is actually the only 3rd time ever any of my no-reloads even made it to ToB.

[Grond0]

Alesia_BH wrote...
The breakage must have occured sometime after I tried to uninstall the Tactics Improved Irenicus fight. The alternate copy of my install was made just prior to that attempt. In all likelihood, it happened in the actual attempt.

I've found on a number of occasions that bugs occur when trying to change installations.  I think changes under Weidu are supposed to happen by the programme uninstalling everything in your installation back to the point of change and then automatically reinstalling everything after the change has been made.  Unfortunately my experience is that this process rarely works - and other posters seem to have had similar difficulties.  Now  I either do a complete fresh installation or uninstall mods manually working back from the most recent and then reinstall manually after the change you want has been made.  Admittedly this is a bit of a pain, but at least then I'm not waiting for the next bug to manifest.

Looking forward to seeing Alesia resume her all-conquering progress..

[AnonymousHero]

Congratulations, corey_russel!

[Saint of Sinners]

I wonder how long it will take me, then. Heh.

No Reloads are new to me. It's so easy back then to just run into the fray and discover all the enemies' behavior and then reload to utilize said metagame knowledge. It makes me feel bad that I don't have any BG1 because, perhaps, it would have made the struggle all the sweeter. But, meh, I'll treat my 4cd collection and the map to respective cleaning specialists if I do finish this. They deserve it.

I just realized that we are pretty much exact opposites. I could never ever play the game without myself being a hardcore magic-user. That's partly the reason why I gave up the mage-thief (he ended up being more mage than thief or both) multi-class, the archer, and the assassin all because my sorcerer got chunked with a stupid Skull Trap mistake. Now I'm playing a bard, but I find it kind of overpowered just because all the FoA hitting while DS is active is just plain... well, powerful. Even my kensai back in the day dualled into a mage not because it was powerful but because I love seeing a Planetar beside him, shredding enemies to ribbon.

I do hope I get around to playing with a pure warrior class, but I'm thinking even then I'll make a massive compromise. Like, perhaps, a berserker like yours or a barbarian. Not that I'm saying they make it easy... But my weapon is my bane, and much as I love magic-users, when they're pitted against me, I myself cower. I do know the power of a triple ADHW for example, and getting one pitted against me without an instant retort because I have to close the distance makes me feeling kind of one-upped, therefore I go for the path of least effort. Heh. Oh well. I'll get over it in time, though.

By the way, based on the Melissan fight, I would assume that you have no Ascension installed? Just basic mods?

[AnonymousHero]

Saint of Sinners wrote...
It makes me feel bad that I don't have any BG1 because, perhaps, it would have made the struggle all the sweeter. But, meh, I'll treat my 4cd collection and the map to respective cleaning specialists if I do finish this. They deserve it.

... or you could just get BG1 on GoG for 10 bucks.

Anyways, good luck to all the remaining challengers. I'll have a post on my "reboot" of Arya as a F/M soon -- she's made it to F15/M15 and is (hopefully!) about to kill the Planar Prison Warden with Skeleton Warriors. I think I'll complete all of Ch3 before posting, but with a F/M with Skeleton Warriors it shouldn't take long .

[corey_russell]

@Saint of Sinners

Nothing wrong with a mage/arcane class. If you prefer that by all means do so! Did I ever tell you my other 2 no reloads that made it to ToB were both fighter/illusionists? So yeah being arcane yourself can help to keep you alive.

As for mods: No mods whatsoever. Straight vanilla with official patches. So far, (for me anyways) my attitude toward Baldur's Gate Series is like my attitude toward chess - no need to change a great game!

Edited by corey_russell, 28 June 2011 - 05:49 AM.

[Enuhal]

Congratulations, corey! Keep up the good work!

Arinja is using Deva/Prince in all the major battles (sadly, the prince doesn't last very long). I propably won't be able to post updates for the next days since I don't have a lot of time right now.

[Shadow_Leech07]

Congrats corey_russell!

[Saint of Sinners]

Monty the Made Blade Update: The Thieves' Stronghold and Everything in Between

Last time, we finished Windspear for much needed experience, gold, and stuff. To facilitate the necessary resources to make later quests easier, Monty had to return to Athkatla's docks and make some connection with a much needed fence. However, we have nearly 40k to spend right now so we go to the one place where we can get a nice weapon really early (and because I have a fondness for short swords): Watcher's Keep. We buy the Short Sword of Mask +4. This will be immensely useful with Belm during the times that I don't need to use Dragonslayer for fear immunity or Arbane for hold immunity.



At the docks, we meet a Priest of Cyric, who me execute summarily.



We continue with the Montaron quest, so we go and assault Prebek's abode...



... which went rather nasty for both of us.



Vengeance while you're asleep!



Attacked the guardians instead of wearing the fake amulet.



Levelled up due to a Spell Shield scroll.



Got Xzar killed.



Bought a Tri-Souled Sapphire. This will take care of all our other thieving needs.



Some random encounter falls to a death fog.



We steal from Talos' priestess without much fanfare.



Gethras' mephits fall a double death fog that damaged us very dangerously (36/102 hit points left). Really careless.



Lured the golem downstairs one by one, which didn't work. Still, DS and Belm+Mask owned them.



Gethras fell for a well-timed trick. After convincing him we're leaving, we count to 2 and activated Weapons Display (casting time: 6 or one round). Right after he turned hostile he fell to WD's Morale Failure effect and he wasn't able to set up ANY defenses at all.



Consequently, he fell without a fight (but he was all flight).



We kill Marcus just because it seems awesome to Monty.



We level up yet again.



We refuse to kill a fellow Rogue, so we take Embarl's dagger.



A fully buffed Monty takes on Mae'Var. Death Fog on the far area was a nice gamble. Fireshield prevented anyone from damaging Monty too much. PfNW is still a wonderful placeholder for melee battles.



Mae'Var blinking in and out of existence more times than the Dragonslayer and Tri-Souled Sapphire can purge him out of it. When he appeared, Monty let loose a Minor Sequencer of Magic Missles. Mae'Var dies.



We reject Renal's offer as the headache of managing the guild far outweighs its benefits (the Bard stronghold is a much better investment, anyway).



Done for now. Cheers and good luck to everyone else.

And, oh, I don't think I can really buy any game right now. I'm not even from the States or any Western country nor do I have a credit card or PayPal (it's not just the thing here where I come from). My best bet is that the local crappy gamestore that sells onyl console games get a compilation box from Atari of BGII. So far, no luck though.

[ussnorway]

corey_russell wrote...
As for mods: No mods whatsoever. Straight vanilla with official patches. So far, (for me anyways) my attitude toward Baldur's Gate Series is like my attitude toward chess - no need to change a great game!

Congrats corey_russell!
Whilst I agree with you I have also found that life after no-reload Tob requires SCS.

[corey_russell]

Thanks everyone for your congratulations.

@USSNorway: Considering it's taken me 40-50 attempts to do a trilogy no-reload, I don't think I have it down consistently yet. And to be more specific, I do not know I am able to do it without an Inquisitor in my party.

But don't worry - if it becomes boring, I will certainly consider SCS, though just moving the level up to insane would probably be enough challenge.

[Saint of Sinners]

Is it allowed in a No Reload game to use custom spells? I've been able to make a custom spell that allows me to warp from city to city. I plan on ultimately incorporating most major locations in the game with it but for now it's only for stronghold quest purposes. Since I've more or less gone through all the necessary 'random' encounters for chapter two, I want to use it for the time being...

Though I must admit that it will eliminate the possibility of getting attacked, which is a circumvention of the basic rules of a No Reload (evading an encounter means one less instance of being able to prove that one can survive said encounter).

If anyone objects, I won't use it on an NR game.

[corey_russell]

Many people use mods, some of which make it harder others easier. The rule is you just need to announce any mod that affects the challenge (easier/harder) of the no-reload you are attempting. But yes you can use any mod for a no-reload.

[Alesia_BH]

Congratulations Corey Russell! Well done.

And good luck with your Fighter/Druid solo.

Best,

A.

[corey_russell]

Thanks Alesia_BH. Feels good to finally get a successful one under my belt. Trying to do ToB solo with a fighter/druid will be a fun, even if I fail. Might learn a thing or too too. Who knows may learn something I can use in my no-reloads, heh.

[Alesia_BH]

Quick Note on Alesia's Game:

It looks like Alesia is going to have to do the Sendai battle again. This time, she was a bit too aggressive and killed Sendai before she activated the Statues. This broke her script and led to a dead end- no way to advance the plot.


Hopefully, her next attempt will be the last- one way or another.

Best,

A.

[corey_russell]

Doh! Wishing you luck, Alesia. What did you do anyways, kill her while she was blue?