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Cap the avenger has defeated Sendai. Cap takes a quick trip to finish levels 1 and 2 of watcher's keep.   Since they could probably be completed before ToB, they are pretty easy. The maze level however, we'll come back for a little later.  This trial in the pocket plane is a little tough. The evil version of the pc is hasted and won't stop trying to kill you. Since Cap can't really take melee hits very well he ends up equipping the boots of speed and running in circles until the rest of the party can finish it.  The oasis is a terrific way to boost your gold supplies before the next city, I guess.  The lich in amnkethran is basically just another lich battle if you have death ward up to stop the banshees. High level turn undead is fun!  Then it's off to Sendai's enclave. The slave tunnels are always a fun place to use all the AoE tools you get during the game.  Yet another lich falls.   Ogremoch can be tough, but he has a weakness in that he can't damage mordenkainen's sword. Diaytha's group gets lured out piecemeal.  Sendai herself isn't too bad. Summons in the doorway to deal with the reinforcements, and a lot of true sight and dispelling for her statues.  This trial is another that is a tough melee opponent glued to the protagonist. It's not the most heroic way, but Cap runs around while hasted while the rest of the party batters it down. Time to return to watcher's keep. I think the maze level has one of the hardest encounters in the game; we'll see if I survive it.
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Feb 8, 2015 20:53
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That southeast zone with the jellies tough rear end bounty hunter fight was not kind to Khalid. I went back after the bh fight to rez Khalid and then went back to finish it and he died again to the jellies. At least nobody else did. I had to burn a scroll of web on the bounty hunters because Khalid died real fast and that fight was about to get out of hand in a hurry. Skald + Kivan is a pretty deadly combination. Kivan already hits almost everything since missile weapons own bg1 and add another +2thac0 and damage on top of that and he's just a deadly sniper. I don't even have the archery bracers yet. He's gonna be a true beast. The song is actually quite handy in general so far. 2 hit/dmg and -2ac is actually quite substantial in bg1. I imagine by bg2 if I get that far that song will start to feel a bit less useful until I get the level 15 version. It will still be handy since those bonuses are always useful but I think lower levels is where it will really shine. Nevertheless by the time the song feels less useful I'll have decent mage spells to fall back on so the Skald should still be a decent member.  Neera just prompted me to go do her Adoy quest which was what caused my shadowdancer to bite the bullet. I think I'm going to visit high hedge first to buy resist fear and some potions to get me through that fight. e:  Was afraid this pick pocket would fail since without reloading there would be no way for me to get the nymph cloak until I reach the city of BG and do that other quest that gives one. Fortunately my Ferret succeeded in his attempt. Ferret familiar owns. and I'm dead...again. Kivan started bitching about doing the bandit camp so I headed that way. Got ambushed by ettercaps in a random encounter and a web trap went off which I was totally unprepared for. Entire party got caught in it and I got quickly killed.  What a bullshit annoying way to die. Why the gently caress did I get ambushed by ettercaps going to Peldvale anyways? Oh well. I guess the Skald is just not meant to be. That's the third death trying that class. I'm getting kinda annoyed now  . I've beaten bg so many times and to die this early this many times in a row is frustrating to say the least. I figured I'd die to Durlags or something but not doing the wilderness zones. I'm better than that
Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Feb 9, 2015 |
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Feb 8, 2015 23:57
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Edit: Aw man, only just now noticed your edit. RIP Tyren. Also I never knew Kivan actually did run off. I guess something about Tutu messes up his timer, he never complained in any of my games. Olderman the Ranger/Cleric has arrived in Athkatla and freed the Circus from the nefarious Kalah! Irenicus's pad was uneventful as usual. By the time the party reached the mock-up of Elliseme's room Olderman had reached level 8 and unlocked his fighter levels again, hooray! This time I followed Suspicious's advice about finding more potions of master thievery before trying to pickpocket ribald. Mae'Var's place had the usual ones, but scouring Bloodscalp's thief hideout turned up an additional one, plus a lot of nice sellable treasure. On the way back to the Promenade to make use of them we got that one recurring urban random encounter, scoring some nice armor and a +1 mace for Olderman.  Lookin' good. Some +1 arrows will help Minsc hurt the shadows from afar, too. Arbane's sword was pocketed away for a rainy day. After some careful deliberation I decided to save the Leader of the Underdogs honor for later and recruited Aerie permanently. She's a perfect fit. I personally love having two clerics, and I definitely want another arcane caster even after Imoen rejoins. Chain-memorizing all the scrolls I collected so far bumped Jaheira up to level 9, giving her the True Vision I wanted to help with the fake Wolfweres on level two.  Nice one, Yoshimo! I really love his crit exclamation, too. He's half smug, half-surprised about his devastating blow.  Anyway, Kalah bit the big one. Now I'm gonna figure out what order I want to tackle the rest of the game in. I guess I'll leave the sixth slot open as a revolving door to tackle all the character-dependent quests until I settle on someone to use. I really like backstabbing, so I might settle on Valygar as the last permanent addition before Throne of Bhaal where Sarevok takes over. Might dual-class him into thief too. Tuxedo Ted fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Feb 9, 2015 |
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Feb 9, 2015 05:53
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Tuxedo Ted posted:Edit: Aw man, only just now noticed your edit. RIP Tyren. Also I never knew Kivan actually did run off. I guess something about Tutu messes up his timer, he never complained in any of my games. Yeah he threatened to leave. I hadn't planned on doing the bandit camp that early. My usual strategy is to do Nashkel mines then clear all west then all east zones before hitting the bandit camp-->cloakwood--->TOTSC content (ice maze/durlag's/werewolves) before finishing the game. Kivan of course had to be a bitch and whine so I had to hustle to the bandit camp earlier than I wanted to. All the same I *should* have been fine. I got ambushed by three or four ettercaps and they hit my party from the rear so I wanted to quickly hustle away from them and re-position my guys to quickly take them out. Problem is I walked right into a web trap. I still should have been fine as I had a potion of freedom in my inventory but I panicked a bit and didn't remember I had it until everyone was already webbed. Such a frustrating way to die. Although even if I did use that potion on my Skald things would have been really dire for me as the rest of the party was webbed and going to die regardless and as it was an ambush zone I wouldn't have been able to retrieve the vast amounts of equipment they all would have dropped. So honestly I was pretty hosed even if I managed to escape. I would have lost +2 longsword, ankheg plate, ring of holiness, belt of piercing, boots of avoidance, countless wands, pots, and scrolls. Gem bag, etc. Not to mention I'd have to rez everybody. It would have sucked so bad I might have just said gently caress it and restarted anyways. As for your party, Valygar is pretty powerful. If you want to hedge your bets Keldorn is always a good add too. That dispel magic trivializes everything. Then by TOB you'll have enough breaching/high enough level casters to use your own dispel to good effect and can replace him with Sarevok. I assume you're replacing Yoshi with Imoen so between her and Aerie you should be fairly solid on mage casting. Anomen could be good too although with your cleric/range and aerie you have plenty of cleric casting already, and there would be some weapon overlap there potentially between you and Anomen. Three Skald deaths pretty well means the death of that class for me, at least for now. Now I have to think of something interesting to try again. There is a slight part of me that wants to try something truly insane like single class kensai or monk, but I dunno that I have the stones for that. I definitely don't want to do something cookie cutter or overpowered. I've done all of those combos to death. I suppose Monk would eventually be rather powerful, but I'd have to get there first, and I'm not re-rolling hps so death would always be close. I'll think about it tomorrow when I should be doing work heh
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Feb 9, 2015 06:27
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A single class kensai isn't insane at all. You can get the shield amulet really early on, which also has the nice side effect of negating the hail of magic missiles dudes like NIMBUL like to throw at you. If you keep the girdle of piercing and use NImbul's boots, you have nothing to fear from missiles, either. The trick is to use a 2-hander (personally vote swords because of spiders bane and lilarcor and its immunities in early bg2). Speed factor doesn't matter for anyone else in the game, seems like, but it matters for a kensai. If you close to melee range against some heavy hitter like an ogre or something, you will get all of your first round strikes in before it even attacks. The belt ogre, silke, karlat, and mulahey all exploded without ever getting to roll dice. ...then I got 1-shot by greywolf, who did more damage on a crit than I thought him capable of. In any event, if I'd gotten 1 more level worth of HP, I'd have had enough to deal with the early game weakness of getting blown up by crits. Will probably try it again as my final attempt.
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Feb 9, 2015 06:40
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Kivan's script is broken in the original game and no one in the BGT/Tutu/general fixpack community ever bothered fixing it. EE fixed it however, so if you're playing that you're better off picking him up on your way to the bandit camp otherwise he'll gently caress off at an inopportune time. In my current game I got ambushed by 2 wyverns on my way back from the bandit camp. Fortunately there are no traps in that encounter, so I just bailed. Still, those 2 ambush maps are pretty bullshit and should only happen in Cloakwood.
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Feb 9, 2015 06:44
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Huh, Kivan's broken even in the original? Never knew; I hardly ever used him back then thanks to the terrible 20 stack limit on arrows. Such a headache to juggle those around, and it was even worse on sling and crossbow users. You never ran into bandits using those weapons for easy refills on ammo.Ginette Reno posted:As for your party, Valygar is pretty powerful. If you want to hedge your bets Keldorn is always a good add too. That dispel magic trivializes everything. Then by TOB you'll have enough breaching/high enough level casters to use your own dispel to good effect and can replace him with Sarevok. I assume you're replacing Yoshi with Imoen so between her and Aerie you should be fairly solid on mage casting. Anomen could be good too although with your cleric/range and aerie you have plenty of cleric casting already, and there would be some weapon overlap there potentially between you and Anomen. It is kind of tempting to just grab Keldorn. Nobody else really needs the bracers of agility. Plus since I'm already committed to keeping Aerie in the party it's not like I'm in any danger of keeping a balanced and low powered party; may as well go whole hog and get half of the BG2 power players in the troop. Plus if I do dual class Sarevok to thief he'll eventually get that great thief ability to use all items; Caromsyr would be back in action. And yeah, Imoen is stepping in for Yoshimo, this is gonna be the "all in the family" playthrough. Imoen, MC, and Sarevok, three oddball bhallspawn all on the same team. Plus Jaheira and Minsc all the way from the first game. I actually did run Anomen with a Fighter/Cleric MC once before. The weapon overlap wasn't too bad to deal with, there are a lot of great cleric weapons. I think I had him as the dedicated undead smiter constantly wielding the upgraded Mace of Disruption while my MC juggled between the flail of ages and the hammer of thunderbolts. It was pretty absurd at high levels though, between the two of them it was basically impossible to run out of cleric spells. Even though he's a great warrior and a favorite of mine, he started to feel awfully redundant.
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Feb 9, 2015 10:09
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Mr. Kipling has killed Aran Linvail and reached Spellhold. This entire questline is comprehensively overhauled by one of Rogue Rebalancing's larger components. It is entirely possible to do the whole thing with only half a dozen or so kills, however I opted to go the opposite way and kill everything. Bodhi's 1st two quests went by with little issue, as did the fight outside the main guildhall. Killing Aran Linvail on the other hand, proved to be far more difficult. Clearing the ground floor of the guildhall was fairly tough and Yoshimo suffered his, and the party's first death during the fight. Eventually, all enemies were killed and both upper floors were looted.  Relieving Gaelan of his key to the inner chambers was simple enough, as was killing his fence. The fence had a very nice dagger that will find use later. The 1st group of thieves were probably the easiest of the lot and were no real threat. Booter and his group were not much tougher. Tizzak was rescued promptly. The path to Dedral's ambush was cleared easily, only a few clay golems, traps and archers guard the way.  8 foes in all, and a difficult fight despite Dedral's reduction in level from 21 to 19. Yoshimo died again to a backstab but he was the only party member to die here.   I needed to conserve spells for Aran, so Haz was killed pre-emptively with a backstab. His 3 golems still did a number on Mr. Kipling, fortunately I survived with an invisibility potion. The fight in Aran's chamber is by far the hardest thing I've faced yet. I pre-buffed with everything I had, including a True Sight to partially counter his Spell Trigger, containing his 1st Mislead. The trigger also contained Improved Haste and PFMW which I had to let expire naturally. He has support in the shape of 3 Assassins, 2 Kensai/Thieves and 1 Cleric/Mage. The 5 rogues were overwhelmed quickly and 3 Fire Elementals helped kill the caster. 3 Skeleton Warriors were also summoned but they died fairly quickly to Aran. At some point during the chaos, Mr. Kipling was reduced to critical HP. I was very fortunate that Aran decided that Aerie, Minsc, Korgan and the summons were better targets. This could have very easily been the end here.  Eventually, after what felt like an absolute age, he finally died to the last remaining elemental. The loot on Aran and in his room was seriously fantastic, about 10k worth of gems, scrolls of Spell Trigger, PFMW and Improved Haste amongst a variety of other useful things. The last thing to do was get on board the boat to Spellhold.  I'm sure Saemon is completely trustworthy and will never, ever betray me to save his own skin.  Boo might be on to something here. Next time, Brynnlaw and Spellhold. Spellhold itself will likely have a random encounter with a Lich. Should be fun. biscuits and crazy fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Feb 9, 2015 |
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Feb 9, 2015 20:56
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FairGame posted:A single class kensai isn't insane at all. You can get the shield amulet really early on, which also has the nice side effect of negating the hail of magic missiles dudes like NIMBUL like to throw at you. If you keep the girdle of piercing and use NImbul's boots, you have nothing to fear from missiles, either. That does sound pretty cool. I am tempted to try it. However...   I wasn't ready to say goodbye to the Skald yet. :/. The face palm portrait seems pretty apropos for my decision to try this class a fourth time, but gently caress it I haven't gotten that far yet in bg1 with it and I want to at least get decently far before I give up on it. This is one way or another my last go with the Skald, though. For one thing I won't beat that roll again. If this one bites it, I'll probably try a Kensai next.
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Feb 10, 2015 02:55
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Resuming Ironman attempts on the stream. https://www.twitch.tv/chompsgaming
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Feb 10, 2015 03:57
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My Great Aunt Petunia the Shadowdancer So after the Helm of Balduran. I don't remember if you can get it without actually freeing these guys, but I do it anyway and nab it. Ajantis has a problem with staying alive on the front lines, so he needs all the help he can get.  The Seven Suns dopplegangers are easily mugged.  I'm apparently bad at being sneaky in the Iron Throne building. No particular matter.  Top floor. I send Petunia alone to get things started and run her back downstairs.  The mage helpfully follows me all the way down to my waiting group and gets thrashed.  And this one...  And this one eats backstabs. Easy peasy.  To Candlekeep. I'd hope you remember your Great Aunt Petunia, Cadderly. Also his voice sounds heavily depressed.  Y'know what, times are trying, I have spare gold. Winthrop, we're all getting tore up. Incidentally it takes a hell of a lot of booze to get Kagain drunk, which is a nice touch.  Sure, you seem a trustworthy fellow.  Nope, I want to stay alive, I'm taking as few fights as possible this Ironman run.  Koveras, you dick.  And onward to the Catacombs. I have a good feeling.
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Feb 10, 2015 07:30
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After a couple of busy weeks put this on the backburner, Garvok the Cleric/Thief is back in action. Today, it's off to the Gnoll Stronghold. But first, let's pick up this Dorn fella. He seems trustworthy.  This annoying xvart village is in the way, so I slaughter it without a scratch on my team. I also acquire a shiny new flail +1 from the cave here.  This encounter with 2 ogres and a bunch of hobgoblin archers should have been dicey by all rights, but thanks to Edwin's sleep spells, and Garvok's command, not one of these enemies died while awake.  Naturally, I was feeling pretty cocky at that point, so of course we decided to bother this ogre having a barbecue. He one-shot Kagain before we could make him take a nap. Oh well, a quick trip back to the Nashkel temple gets him sorted out.  I kill Gnarl and Hairtooth, and give Kagain those nice dexterity bracers, giving him nice respectable AC finally.  Kagain will definitely make a nice tank if I can keep rolling HP like this. Mostly we roll over the gnolls. Any group that looks vaguely threatening gets to take a nap, courtesy of Edwin "The Sandman" Odeisseron. I guess we can't really let sleeping dogs lie, right? Right? Anyway, dogs die, Dynaheir gets chunked by Garvok in one swing, Edwin is happy.  One last thing to do in this area, grab that Charisma tome. I give it to Garvok because he is a greedy shitlord. It brings his Charisma up to a lofty 10. Next stop will be to head north and grab Viconia before the mines. I really need the extra healing in the party, it seems. However, I can't really decide if I want to boot Imoen or Neera. The extra mage support is nice, but I can't help feeling that Neera is a ticking time bomb in an ironman run. There's not much that Imoen can do that Garvok can't besides be a lovely archer, and she's the only Good party member I've got right now.
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Feb 10, 2015 18:03
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DeathChicken posted:Y'know what, times are trying, I have spare gold. Winthrop, we're all getting tore up. Incidentally it takes a hell of a lot of booze to get Kagain drunk, which is a nice touch. How much it takes to get a character drunk depends on their CON score, if I recall reading the manual a decade ago correctly  .
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Feb 10, 2015 21:55
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HULK III's updated smash tally: Wolves, standard Wolves, dread Wolves, dire Wolves, winter Wolf, Grey. Ioin Gallobchar and company Arghain and company Many, many gnolls, including the ones who were holding Dynaheir prisoner Many, many kobolds, in and out of the Nashkel mines Mulahey and company  ...and a third axe. Also a two-handed sword, though technically Minsc smashed that. I'll probably do more screenshots as (if) I get to an area of the game that hasn't killed me already.
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Feb 11, 2015 01:37
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The Ignominious Death of Great Aunt Petunia the Shadowdancer Catacombs. Oh I did not, Fake Phyldia. I'm not sticking around in these catacombs for long, just long enough to snatch the Strength Manual with speedy Petunia and get out.  More Dopplegangers, who aren't difficult at all thanks to Deder and Arkanis helping out.  Well I agree entirely with your first two sentences, Fake Elminster, but you still die here. Again, not very hard with Arkanis and Deder there.  Prat, who I think I could have talked down with the other dialogue option, but fibbing to him didn't work. Oh well.  Arkanis surprisingly enough starts to join in the ensuing fight, which I don't remember ever happening. Unfortunately as soon as I get in the standard backstab on Prat, Petunia is immediately stunned (I didn't even get to see by what. Must have been a trap, the mages couldn't have gone that fast) and killed before Arkanis can even mosey his way on over. Wow. RIP My Great Aunt Petunia the Shadowdancer. Pratfall. DeathChicken fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Feb 11, 2015 |
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Feb 11, 2015 02:36
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A guy in Prat's little gang throws darts of stunning. I almost lost my cavalier to him.
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Feb 11, 2015 02:39
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Cap the avenger has defeated Abazigal, but witnessed a most gruesome end for Minsc and Boo. First I head off to watcher's keep for the maze level. There are a few nasty fights here due to the proceeding rooms being dead magic areas. There's a lot of room for things to go wrong.  Fortunately, Cap's neutral alignment allows him to accept the demon's request before immediately putting up protections and summons. With buffs the fight is nowhere near as bad.    The rest of the level isn't too bad. A wild surge ends up eating most of my gold, but I've purchased pretty much everything of value at this point, and there is plenty of things to sell left anyways.  I have Minsc do all the deck of many things related stuff. He ends up losing experience and being cursed twice before I give up and just gamble for the gem. I forgot that if you win the gamble the group immediately goes hostile. No big deal.  I have a rematch with a demi lich on the next level. This time there are no problems.  I manage to take down Saladrex without him incinerating anyone this time. He didn't manage to hit anyone with remove magic, which helped a lot. The rest of the machine level is completed without incident.  What a disaster. Despite taking precautions (everyone with protection from acid, many other buffs), Draconis gets off a remove magic and permanently kills off Minsc by dissolving him with acid breath. A drat shame, considering I've had Minsc since nearly the beginning of the entire adventure. Welcome aboard, Rasaad!  Abazigal himself I find easier than his son. While Anomen got a little low on health, that is the only real danger anyone was in during the battle. All that's left now is Balthazar, the last levels of watcher's keep, and the throne of bhaal itself.
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Feb 11, 2015 20:58
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Garvok the Cleric/Thief is back in action today, mostly clearing wilderness to get some xp before tackling the mines. I did pick up Viconia (which I forgot to screenshot) and dumped Neera. I did want the extra arcane caster, but I remembered all the times on my most recent playthrough where she was in the party that required a reload due to falling cow or summoned demon. While clearing areas that'd I'd just zipped through before, I noticed this...  I mean, it's been 3 weeks. You'd think animals would have eaten him or something by now.  The belt ogre gets beaten to death in his sleep.  The spiders from that drat house get beaten to death in their sleep.  This vampiric wolf gets beaten to death in it's....actually, I couldnt' put the drat thing to sleep. It paralyzed Kagain, and we spent an embarassing amount of time healing the dwarf while the wolf smacked him and got health back. I probably did 3 times that wolf's HP in damage before it finally had a morale break and we chased it down and killed it. Didn't help that only Dorn and Garvok have magic weapons at this point. Still, it was a really nice chunk of XP that pushed Viconia and Kagain up to level 3.  The Amazing Oopah....gets beaten to death in his sleep. Did you guys know that Sleep and Command are good spells?  Zordral actually got to die awake! He didn't get a spell off, though. Some more boring wilderness wandering later (imagine that anything remotely danger died peacefully in it's sleep), and everyone but Edwin is level 3, or level 2/2 in Garvok's case.  Time to do this thing. Edit: Does anyone else have an issue with EE where battle music just will not stop until you switch maps? It's getting irritating, and I don't remember having this issue on my last playthrough. kaiten80 fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Feb 11, 2015 |
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Feb 11, 2015 22:56
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kaiten80 posted:
Yes; the most recent patch did it.
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Feb 11, 2015 23:13
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Tutu always had the same problem, for me anyway. Going into the Options -> Sound menu stops the music. No need to fiddle with anything in there, just open and close it.
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Feb 11, 2015 23:17
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Goddamn SCS makes the Bandit Camp ridiculous. Which is another way of saying that Hulk III has gone the way of his brothers. He took even more bandits with him this time, though! And I think I'm done iron manning it for a while.
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Feb 12, 2015 03:46
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docbeard posted:Goddamn SCS makes the Bandit Camp ridiculous. Those of you doing tactics or SCS and ironmanning are some crazy fuckers. Default bg isn't especially hard but even on that there's no room for error obviously in an Ironman and it's real easy to slip up or get unlucky. No way I'd try it on SCS where if you don't fight perfect you can easily lose most fights.
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Feb 12, 2015 05:07
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Garvok the Cleric/Thief has conquered the Nashkel mines. The mines aren't too bad when you remember where all the traps are. Nothing worth a screenshot, really. I did have another death here, though, trying to rest up before tackling Mulahey. Kobolds spawned directly behind my group and Edwin quickly ate 2 critical hits in one round. I decided to press on and tackle Mulahey without him. Command is as good as sleep in a pinch, and Mulahey didn't even get a spell off. Got back to town, got Edwin raised and re-equipped, and forgot all about the Nimbul ambush. No big deal, Viconia hit him with Hold Person and then he got beat to death....by Rasaad. Thanks, buddy, I didn't need those XP anyway. Now for a ton of wilderness stuff before tackling the bandit camp.
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Feb 12, 2015 06:37
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I don't wish to sound patronising, kaiten80, but I read it that you kept trying to use Sleep on the vampiric wolf and it wouldn't work. He's considered undead, and sleep never works on any kind of undead, regrettably. If I read that wrong my apologies.
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Feb 13, 2015 00:17
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Rapture of the Father. Brynnlaw and Spellhold part 1. The only thing that can pose any real threat in Brynnlaw is Perth the Adept. He died fairly quickly and didn't cast many spells aside from his pre-buff. According to EE Keeper he's level 20, so HLA's were a real possibility here. Fortunately he died before he managed to cast any. The plot went as it always does, Yoshimo betrayed the group and Imoen rejoined. Spellhold in SCS is a challenge to say the least, since Irenicus steals all your gear during the soul-stealing sequence. (You get some +2 weapons to deal with Bhaal in the dream) Since I knew this was coming, I bought a scroll of Enchanted Weapon and had Aerie learn it. Imoen already has it, so it was easy to get everyone a weapon they could use. Jaheira got the +3 spear in one of the early rooms. The bag of holding also contains some basic armour. This, and whatever items you find in the maze is all you get until after the Irenicus fight when you can get your gear back.  This room was fairly simple, if a little hectic at first. The rakshasa, mephits and wolfwere all died quickly. The pit fiend managed to summon 2 erinyes but was otherwise not a big threat. Korgan has the lowest dexterity, so he got the Doomplate.  The fights here were not too tough. An enraged Korgan is immune to most beholder rays and the kobolds were literally no threat at all.  I didn't have to kill these umber hulks, but they weren't too bad since I fought them 3 at a time. The room before Dace contains a random spawn of undead. I lured the skeleton warriors and 3 greater mummies out into the corridor and killed them. They did a number on Minsc but were eventually all killed. Dace should be no threat to an enraged Korgan, and then I can move on to the 3rd area of the maze.  Oh. Oh dear. Somehow I missed this lich when luring out the other undead. This will be a massive challenge, but if I survive it the rest of the maze should be relatively tame. Next time, hopefully surviving the lich. biscuits and crazy fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Feb 13, 2015 |
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Feb 13, 2015 02:43
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Spellhold Part 2 As it turns out, I massively over-estimated the challenge of the lich. For whatever reason, it was limited to level 5 spells, aside from it's pre-buff. Probably a bug, but using EE Keeper I found a lich limited to level 5 spells, so I can't say for sure.  Korgan had little difficulty with both the lich and Dace.   The 3rd level of the asylum has an unlimited source of healing, clearing it posed little difficulty.  Before long, I had escaped the maze.   A solid hit indeed.  I love Tiax. The fight with Irenicus was surprisingly simple. The clones were dealt with quickly. Irenicus managed to summon a Planetar and his Dragon Breath one-shot Jaheira, but he managed little else and left me to deal with his assassins and the unfortunate Yoshimo.  After finding and re-equipping all my gear, I had Saemon teleport me outside. Next time, the City of Caverns. biscuits and crazy fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Feb 13, 2015 |
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Feb 13, 2015 22:04
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Norm the Skald's adventures: Bolding charging a group of kobold archers with a commando was a bad idea. Jaheira down.  Mulahey got off a lucky rear end hold right as he got up from command and right before he died. The resulting spell incapacitated my entire front line who all got quickly killed by skeletons/kobolds. The only reason those kobolds are asleep at all in that picture is because I got crafty and looted a sleep scroll from the chest. Neera was all out of them so that was a move of pure desperation, as was meleeing those skeletons down with Imoen/Neera. With the bard song going I pulled it off, though.  Of course Imoen also bit it to the grey slimes as I was heading out the mine. Hauling out all of the important gear I could was tough, but I managed...barely. Thank goodness Ankheg plate weighs so little. So after the fiasco at the mines I decided enough was enough with Khalid and Branwen. I replaced Khalid with Minsc, but rezzed Jaheira. I also booted Branwen's corpse out. I am now planning on running: Skald Imoen Minsc Jaheira Dynaheir Neera Still not completely sure about that setup. The trouble is the npcs meleers for good parties just aren't that good in bg1, and strong meleers is probably the best way to make good use of my Skald's song. I'm half tempted to drop Minsc/Dynaheir and grab Kivan/Coran for a snipe everything strategy. For now I think I'll go with Minsc/Dynaheir as I can't grab Coran until Cloakwood. So I'll probably run with those two and then maybe grab Kivan on the way to the bandit camp and then Coran just after. Having those two sitting next to my skald sniping everything would be pretty ridiculous.
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Feb 14, 2015 02:57
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Skalds are best left next to archers, actually. The range of the song isn't that much. I'd actually recommend garrick(16 dex) to use the light Xbow of speed and have him stand next to Coran and kivan and imoen. Yeslick can keep dudes busy up front for the split second your archers need to ruin everything on the map. Easiest run you'll ever have.
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Feb 14, 2015 03:42
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FairGame posted:Skalds are best left next to archers, actually. The range of the song isn't that much. Think I already told Garrick to screw off unfortunately. But yeah this does seem like the best way to go for now. In bg2 I can run with the tanks if I want as I'll have stoneskin/mirror image to stay alive while playing the song. Gonna try to load up on archers and profit e: gently caress that group of three dudes from amn in the cloudpeaks just ruined my poo poo. MY skald survived but literally everyone else died and I didn't manage to grab their gear. I just lost a Tonnnnnnnnnnnn of valuable loot. Ring of wizardry, ankheg plate, ring of holiness among them.... Fml. At least I didn't wipe? They're still there though and I need to find a way to kill them and now I'm going to have to purchase new gear  Grabbed Kivan and he started bitching, so I rushed to the bandit camp with him in tow. Minsc died fighting Taugosz but..  With the wand of fear and a few potions, I succeeded in clearing the rest of the camp. My party is still quite low level, with virtually none of the west or eastern zones finished. I am now going to rush to grab Coran and then clear the wilderness. I suppose I'll have to go kill a wyvern first to make sure Coran doesn't leave. I am not going to go fight Davaeorn yet, though. My party is between level 2 and 4, so that would simply be too difficult. I can handle killing a wyvern, though. ee: Success   Didn't mess around with any of the normal cloakwood stuff. Just got Coran and rushed to wyvern caves and pulled a few out. Bam. Done. Now I can do the rest of the wilderness at my leisure Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Feb 14, 2015 |
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Feb 14, 2015 21:49
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So while I haven't been posting, over the past couple weeks I managed to push Gwyn ap Nudd the Berserker/Cleric through Shadows of Amn (Extended Edition). First off, this is him at the start:  Meeting Yoshimo to escape from Irenicus' Dungeon:  The group makes it out, only to be ambushed by Irenicus and have Imoen taken.  I got really bad for a while about screenshots, so I don't have any for Umbar Hills, the Trademeet quests, or the like, but I do have *SOME* highlights: Chasing the skin dancer - the ambush downstairs was a bit harder than I'd planned for.  We stumbled into and took out the Guarded Compound. As I'm playing on Insane, I cheesed it every way I could, including luring half of them downstairs to fight separately first.  The destruction of Firkraag:  Completely accidentally stumbled into the Twisted Rune at 13-14, but through creative cheese and careful luring (and a lucky nuke from Azuredge taking out the lich early), we managed to take them out:  After taking out Bodhi and upgrading the Mace of Disruption, we went Lich Hunting, eventually culminating in the death of Kangaxx. No scrolls were involved, just a berserk F/C using the Mace of Disruption + 2, backed by Mazzie, who I had throwing Azuredge rather than using her bow. End result:  Afterward, we cleared out the Red Wizards after they finally managed to piss off Neera. Toward the end of the fight, they managed to confuse Gwyn, who did his level best to kill the rest of the party. Those three nearly dead? Yeah, that was my PC. I don't know how I managed to not have someone die.  We eventually went to Spellhold and cleared it...  Before sailing away. I cleared the Sahuagin city, then did a general sweep-and-clear of the Underdark and the three neighboring cities before doing the Ust'Natha quests. I thought I had saved a shot of the betrayal, but apparently I didn't. For one of the achievements:      We stormed Sul'danesselar, taking out the black dragon after buffing to the gills and abusing Neera, time stop, and improved alacrity:  Before doing the same to Irenicus:  And again in Hell:  After dinner, I'll start ToB up. Honors From Baldur's Gate: Ironling, Purist, Double Damage, Librarian, Trap Dodger, Honorable Trader, Battlemaster, Role Player New For Shadows of Amn  Ironman: Complete Baldur's Gate 2 (requires Ironling) Purist: Do not use any mods that add/modify content (except Tutu, Ascension, SCS, or Tactics), do not create extra characters for your party, do not modify existing NPCs (convenience mods like infinite stacks ok). Double Damage: Complete the game on the highest difficulty. Honorable Trader: Do not steal any wares from merchants. Gaxkang's a Wuss: Kill Kangaxx. Legendary Arms: Acquire the Equalizer, Crom Faeyr, The Wave, The Silver Sword, and the Short Bow of Gesen. Roleplayer: Do not have a good aligned character and an evil aligned character in the party at the same time (includes PC, requires purist). Leader of the Underdogs: Complete Baldur's Gate 2 or Throne of Bhaal with a full party of six without using Aerie, Keldorn, Edwin, or Haer'Dalis. {requires purist).
Taliesyn fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Feb 16, 2015 |
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Feb 15, 2015 23:42
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And I just noticed it's been a couple weeks now since Koskinator updated the thread. Did we lose another OP?
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Feb 15, 2015 23:43
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^^ I see your zerker isn't the most charismatic fellow. That must have been somewhat annoying bg1 prior to getting the CHa ring in bg2. One thing I'd recommend is using the gargoyle boots to pop stoneskin on your zerk/cleric before tough fights. It's like bonus hps. Norm the Skald has cleared all of the wilderness zones and cloakwood. Skald + Coran/Kivan is death incarnate.  My standard strategy to this fight rarely changes. Potion of freedom + web spam while everyone else carves away with ranged weapons.   One of the strategies I use on bg1 mages is to stealth Coran/Kivan and equip them with arrows of biting. They pop out of stealth and bombarded this poor mage with poison arrows. Game over. Coran can also backstab and sometimes I pop a potion of str and use him to gib mages that way.  I tried the stealth archer thing on Davaeorn but foolishly forgot to have Coran/Kivan have pots of mage blocking. The resulting lightning bolt took him and Imoen out. I still recovered and won as Jaheira was buffed with anti magic pots.  The brave band enters Baldur's Gate! My Skald is at level 7 and everyone else is 6 or 7ish. I will probably do most of BG city now and then hop on over to mage island/durlag's/werewolves. Jaheira has proven a surprisingly resilient tank with full plate, piercing girdle, and bracers of dex/ring of prot +1. With my bard song going she has -8 ac. One thing that does suck is despite my Skald having a potion of genius quaffed at the time he still managed to fail to scribe stoneskin, and I don't know that another scroll of it drops anywhere in game. Not a huge deal as I don't have level 4 spells yet but I will eventually want it. Durlag's worries me a bit but you can cheese a lot of the tougher undead spots by using scrolls of undead protection. The main fights that worry me in Durlag's are chess board and Demon Knight. Both are very easy to gently caress up. Chess board I will be sure to spam fireballs in and usually that gets that done. The Demon Knight is trickier. You can break the glass on him but I honestly think going toe to toe might be a better idea for my party. My only worry there is his power word stun...and I think he might pw: kill too? I know he also likes to spam fireballs and dispel. What I will do there is have everyone with fire resist pots ready to immediately quaff if he gets a dispel off. Then of course there's also Aec to deal with but I should be able to easily do that by stealth sniping all his guys while everyone else waits upstairs, and then going down and finishing him off. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Feb 16, 2015 |
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Feb 16, 2015 00:48
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I suppose it's cheesy, but I've always just use a protection from magic scroll on my tank (who has boots of speed) and send him/her in to engage the demon knight while everyone else pelts him with +2 ammo. No one takes any damage and the fight last a couple rounds max. I think that works in EE, though I've only completed that version once and well over a year ago so I don't remember for sure.
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Feb 16, 2015 01:52
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Ginette Reno posted:^^ I see your zerker isn't the most charismatic fellow. That must have been somewhat annoying bg1 prior to getting the CHa ring in bg2. One thing I'd recommend is using the gargoyle boots to pop stoneskin on your zerk/cleric before tough fights. It's like bonus hps. Not at all. You get Imoen right off the bat, and she has a 16 Charisma, and I picked up Ajantis and his 17 Charisma as soon as I could, and I borrowed Garrick long enough to pickpocket off of Algernon, so my party leader was running around with 19 CHA most of the time. There are few conversations that HAVE to be with your protagonist and are also charisma-based, and party morale just uses the charisma of the leader. If I recall correctly, I used the gargoyle boots on Anomen until he had the 18 dex gauntlets. They only give 2 skins, and my PC by that point had the lowest AC on the team. Also, my main reason for going zerk was so I can make him immune to Imprisonment at will. (Immunity to confusion was nice early, but is more than covered from about 1/3 of the way in on due to having two clerics capable of casting three Chaotic Commands each.) Improved Haste, Berserk, Righteous Magic, Hammer of Thunderbolts/Crom Faeyr, and 5 points in warhammers make for a pretty impressive wrecking machine.
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Feb 16, 2015 02:54
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Ginette Reno posted:
There are two scrolls. One is at the end of Neeras quest. The other is at the end of shandalars island. Chess board should be easy. Open with fireballs and also give kivan, Imoen, and coran arrows of detonation. Anything that starts to approach you gets nuked. The king will die before you ever see him. Demon knight should be easy too. Just send someone down wearing both rings of fire resist and he'll die before he can do anything after power word stun. Yes, he will stun whoever you send to the middle, but if the skald, kivan, and coran are up above with acid arrows, dude will die in like two rounds. Don't worry about aec. He's easy with this group. DO worry about the fact your skald can't wear a helmet, and if he doesn't have stoneskin he can eat an unlucky 1 hit backstab from the cultists. So either enter that zone with him invisible or with him stoneskinned.
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Feb 16, 2015 04:24
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FairGame posted:There are two scrolls. One is at the end of Neeras quest. The other is at the end of shandalars island. Good call on the cultists. I do have mirror image but no stoneskin because I failed to scribe the scroll that I found and not sure if another drops in bg1. Someone on bgee said a scroll also drops in Shandalar's quest so I'll need to quaff every genius pot I can find to make sure I successfully scribe that one. Although I think you need level 10 for level 4 spells on a bard and not sure you can hit that in bg1..
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Feb 16, 2015 20:29
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One of the 2 cursed potions sold at the Nashkel carnival sets the drinker's intelligence to 25. It only costs 50 gold, too.
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Feb 16, 2015 21:27
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Suspicious posted:One of the 2 cursed potions sold at the Nashkel carnival sets the drinker's intelligence to 25. It only costs 50 gold, too. Yeah, those are great. Always buy the potions there, folks, even if you don't use them you can re-sell them for more than you paid for easily.
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Feb 16, 2015 21:41
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Oh god, Marek the Iron Throne assassin got off a confuse on my guys. I survived but my rep took a hit as Coran started machine gunning down peasants. I went from 20 to 3 in seconds. Well..poo poo. Looks like I'm gonna have to go pay massive amounts at the temple. The good news is I'm now done with bg city and ready to proceed to TOSTC content. Hey even when you're a good child of murder sometimes good dudes die. I guess all those dudes that say Bhaal children cause death whether they want to or not were right. e: Just donated a gently caress ton to get my rep back up to 18. What I can't figure out is how Kivan didn't lose his ranger class. My rep went from 20 to 3. I guess that wasn't enough to do it? Maybe one more peasant death would have caused it. If that's the case, I got really lucky. Either way good thing I have a gently caress load of gold. Sorry Gamesman and 2 peasants that ate it. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time :o Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Feb 17, 2015 |
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Feb 17, 2015 01:43
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Ginette Reno posted:What I can't figure out is how Kivan didn't lose his ranger class. My rep went from 20 to 3. I guess that wasn't enough to do it? PC Rangers and paladins fall if you go below 6 rep. NPC rangers and paladins won't fall; they'll just leave you after a short time instead if your rep gets too low.
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Feb 17, 2015 02:20
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