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biscuits and crazy posted:A real shame about Jackie Robinson, I was really enjoying the run. The mod content was an interesting read. And some good progress with Haley and Telgrim. I've never done a Fighter/Druid (Jaheira is really good, so its obviously powerful), but Assassin is a really good class in BG1. Its a tough solo in BG2 though, especially the early game. You really miss all the gear from late BG1 at the start. Yeah, that one hurt, I won't lie. The only thing I don't like about fighter/druid is the xp wall you eventually hit as a druid is twice as high, but that's really a minor consideration as you're quite powerful by the time you get there. I've never tried an assassin as the PC (had one as a BG1-only NPC mod and he was of course a lot of fun) so I'm really curious to see how GR's run ends up. I am definitely enjoying doing backstabs of my own this time around; I forget how much fun it is to have them available on a regular basis when I don't play someone built for them.
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Jan 24, 2023 18:14
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I wouldn't be surprised to die to something stupid since I don't have a ton of hp. RR adding crit helms for rogues helps, but only so much. With my mediocre saves I have to be really careful about confusion and such as well. Backstab is a lot of fun though. F/D is a lot of fun. It's practically invulnerable (even on insane) if you're playing with SCS when you eventually get the Earth Elemental token. That adds 50% physical resist, and then Hardiness and Armor of Faith stack with that so you can get completely immune to physical damage by TOB (albeit, temporarily). Stack a bunch of elemental resist from gear and entropy shield and not much can threaten you. hard to get there though and takes a lot of xp to unlock to that point. you get stuck with just two level 6 spells for a loooong time in soa. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Jan 24, 2023 |
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Jan 24, 2023 19:16
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Haley is still alive but not gonna lie; I'm losing interest. I think I'll play something that's not such a ridiculous powerhouse. Maybe a shaman or a shadowdancer; I've never really played with the EE content.
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Jan 25, 2023 02:52
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My enchanter's still fine, just a bit hesitant to play through SoD for some reason. Dwarf lich is dead.
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Jan 25, 2023 02:55
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Suspicious posted:My enchanter's still fine, just a bit hesitant to play through SoD for some reason. Dwarf lich is dead. Sod feels like a bit of a slog sometimes. I don't hate it but I like bg2 much better
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Jan 25, 2023 04:14
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I rolled a Diviner. Makes sense; grew up around books in Candlekeep. Reluctant hero and all that. ...they don't get Find Familiar lmao. I got brought down to 1HP just vs. the 2 assassins in Candlekeep. But still alive!
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Jan 25, 2023 04:17
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Silas the Cleric/Thief has outfitted his party. We're on our way to the Nashkel Mines and while some might call Silas an unhinged and uncouth pyromaniac, he is actually a refined and cultured pyromaniac, and would never dream of turning up any less than properly dressed and kitted out.  As we limp away from the Ulcaster Ruins, Recorder contemplates what should be done with Sir Mark's magic bastard sword. It's a +2 sword with a luck bonus, so really very nice for Khalid, or it would be if I hadn't adjusted his proficiencies a bit. I've given him flail proficiency instead. Why? Why not! (It's possible that a cunning plan is involved.) We agree to look in on his family and return the sword to them if we're ever in Baldur's Gate.  We also chat with her a bit, and offer her a bit of reassurance that she did the right thing in running like hell when the animated corpses started showing up. (Since we did pretty much the same thing, I feel this answer is in character.) Recorder has some kind of 'approval' mechanism (of the sort you might see in later RPGs), so when you treat her kindly and do stuff she likes, you'll get a little message. I'm not sure what approval gets you, but I suspect it's all about friendship and romance options. I have different ideas for the latter, but will happily make friends, since she will, Dice Christ willing, be with us through the whole trilogy. Back in Beregost, we get on with the usual business of collecting quests and completing them. I picked up a Sleep scroll for Imoen earlier, so Spider House holds no real danger for us.  As before, we can chat a bit more with Bjornin. I'll be honest, I was not expecting much out of Romantic Encounters, but the options I chose at least have been more sweet than creepy, and this is no exception, and I like the extra texture beyond "GO FIGHT OGRES ME GIVE SHIELD". Now, I have a couple of equipment goals here, namely that I want everyone to have magic melee weapons. We're actually pretty close to that goal; Silas has a +1 quarterstaff, Isra is using Varscona, and Khalid has a +1 dagger because his nonmagical flail broke in the Ulcaster Ruins. We're going to head north to pick up a few choice items, but we swing by to deal with Bassilus for the reward first (and also the +2 short sword held by the ugly knobgoblins elsewhere in the region). I didn't get any screenshots of that fight. It can get a bit nasty in SCS, but between Silas's backstab and his sunfire, he falls pretty fast.  We're informed by the Encyclopedia Jaherica that we're in ankheg country, but we're just passing through. We stop on our way to finish Tenya's quest in the most efficient way possible (by pickpocketing the bowl off Sonner and just handing it over straight away). We also encounter Zee the mercantile kobold who I mentioned before, and sort out the zombies at the farm.  I don't remember if I showed this before but this is the reward we get for killing the end boss at the zombie farm that Shades adds. I like cursed items like this, where there's actually a case to be made for their utility. I don't think I want any of my casters super-vulnerable to fire even for that extra power but I can definitely see circumstances where I might. I've gone a little light on the screenshots for this update, but we made it to Ulgoth's Beard, where Imoen lifted the Ring of Free Action for Isra, and I bought the +3 buck-and-a-quarterstaff for Silas. Isra is ultimately going to rock Spider's Bane for most of the game but she needs some way to not get murdered by ghouls and ghasts early on. Then we headed back down to clear out the Ankheg den. Recorder takes a few too many acid breaths to the face at the end of the den and we have to cut our visit to the region short until we can have her raised. During our side trip we stop in at Thunderhammer Smithy to commission some Ankheg Armor for Isra, as Jaheira is already wearing the set we found in a ditch in Nashkel. I'm not sure which mod it is, but something is enforcing the non-metallic armor restrictions for fighter/druids here, so Jaheira's not going to do much better for armor until at least SoD, and We then proceed to clear out Bentley's basement.  The baddie here gets off an Unholy Blight that kills Imoen again. She must seriously be thinking of sneaking back into Candlekeep but we reassure her that these early days will soon be behind her and nothing bad will ever happen to her in this series again. He drops a magical flail which we give to Khalid. We're generally heading south toward the mines, but we take a detour to pick up something nice for Jaheira.  Specifically, a fight with a dumbass of a Shadow Druid. He can cast Insect Plague if we let him. We don't.  "Unnatural creatures" covers a lot of ground and this is probably going to be the best weapon Jaheira will get for quite some time, since Silas is going to hoard all the good quarterstaves. After this, we make our way back to Nashkel without incident and mop up a few quests in the area. We're headed to the mines next after a short shopping trip at the circus.
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Jan 25, 2023 05:05
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Telgrim the Assassin has finished the city of Baldur's Gate and is now preparing to complete Durlag's Tower but....some bad stuff happened. I opted to piss off the mages in Sorcerous Sundries. The 4 of them together is actually a rather annoying fight and they love to use wands. I took some deaths here, but we prevailed, and luckily nobody was permaed. I was a little sloppy and didn't prebuff as much as I should.  We picked up the Gauntlets of Ogre Strength next. These aren't super useful to this party since Kagain needs to wear bracers of dex instead of these, and my Half-Orc has 19 str already. Alora can't use them either. We gave them to Vicky. It will up her damage somewhat, even though she has only one attack per round.  We did the poison quest but instead of giving the Priestesses the Book of Wisdom, we kept it and gave it to Vicky. They weren't pleased about this, and we killed them. Imo, gently caress them, they killed a kid. No guilt here with murdering that whole temple.  We finished the poison quest and slew the guy who poisoned us  We took a break from the city to recruit Rasaad (temporarily removed Edwin). We want to do his quest for the 19 str belt.  That we did, and here's our prize. Alora can use this and will hit very hard with her backstabs.  Back to BG, we did the Helm of Balduran quest, then killed the mage after. Picked up Balduran's Cloak too.  Also scaled Razamith's tower and slew him.  Got a ring of Wizardry. Baeloth and Edwin both have them now.  Finished some other various quests as well as the sewers. SCS brings back the halfling from Firewine ruins here (the one who let the kobolds in). You can kill him in Gullykin but if you fail to do it quickly enough he escapes and comes here. I think that's kinda neat. The problem is he starts stealth and can backstab very hard. Since I know he's there, I had Baeloth detect invis and get him before he gibbed anybody.  Took another break from bg city to finish Ulcaster. I always delay this because it's much improved on SCS (a bit overtuned imo). Easy enough at this level though.  I decided to tackle the Iron Throne building before finishing TOTSC. There's a minor sequencer scroll here I want for Edwin. I backstabbed and nearly finished one of the thieves here. Alora shortly after finished her off.  Kagain ate their dispel magic while Baeloth tanked up north and Edwin went into the middle and spammed remove magic. My Assassin ate an enemy chaos and Vicky had to go chase him south to cast exaltation on him. I had Baeloth periodically casting detect invis to flush out the thieves as well but...while I was distracted and trying to dispel chaos on my PC, I missed one! Alora got backstabbed and permanently killed. Nooooo. Probably what happened here was after being flushed out by detect invis one of the thieves slugged another invis pot and I didn't notice. At least they didnt kill my pc.  I recovered my composure and completed the fight. My Assassin was constantly ducking into the back rooms to restealth and come back out and backstab and Baeloth was spamming detect invis to let me finish the other thieves off. The enemy casters fell one by one while the melee were mostly cced with slows and blinds. Fully buffed Edwin/Baeloth were easily capable of tanking up there along with Kagain. So now we need to go recruit another Thief before we finish Durlags. Unfortunately said Thief is going to join the party at 32k xp and therefore be way behind the party. They should be able to get enough points to detect traps and open locks but they'll be a bit weak otherwise. Not sure who I will get yet....probably Coran, but we shall see. Telgrim is alive and trying to wrap up bg1, but with one less friend Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Jan 26, 2023 |
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Jan 26, 2023 04:32
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Ginette Reno posted:Telgrim is alive and trying to wrap up bg1, but with one less friend Ugh, that's a shame. I just had something similar happen, but down to the weirdest damned bug I've ever seen in a mod rather than in-game bad fortune. Isra's in-party dialogue got set to the generic multiplayer character dialogue (but all her scripts were the same) and no form of editing I tried could get it to switch back. The result of which is she started saying HELLO THERE every two seconds. It looks like the 2da file that controls what dialogues are assigned to her in-game didn't get properly updated when the mod installed and apparently it's too late now. So the part of Party LG Tank will be played by Breagar going forward. Like your new recruit he'll be a bit behind in XP but it'll be fine. I'll just have to actually prep remove fear spells after all. IT'S FINE. I may swap to Isra again in BG2 since that's a different mod and it at least looks to have installed okay, or I may stick with Breagar. I like his BG2 storyline a lot. I'll decide if/when I get that far. It's a shame, though. I really like Isra. Just not enough to restart, much less reinstall. I swear, I've never had this much trouble with mods bugging out. Maybe this is a sign that I should run with fewer... Naah.
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Jan 26, 2023 05:45
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Yeah having to get a new party member in kinda sucks but that said, if one of my party members was going to get permaed, losing a Thief isn't the worst thing. For one thing there's a lot of them to choose from to replace Alora. Having to replace Edwin, Baeloth, or Vicky would suck very much because whichever spellcaster replaced them would be way behind in spell levels. I haven't had too many voice set issues with my mods but I don't use quite as many as you do.
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Jan 26, 2023 06:13
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Telgrim is working on Tales of the Sword Coast Had to be careful against these riddling Dwarves. Avarice can backstab very hard and one shot any one in my party on insane except for Kagain. I pulled carefully, used summons, and cast detect invis to take him out first. I also nearly killed myself with arrows because I forgot that one of the Dwarves puts up a Physical Mirror on scs lol. I recognized the mistake when I got to half health and called my archers off.  Pride was last. He hits hard. I hit him with a remove magic to dispel some of his nasty buffs.  Zone of sweet air helped me with this Greater Doppleganger ambush  I used summons, slows, and blinds to tackle these nasty Dwarven Doomguards  These Greater Wyverns can be backstabbed which is nice because they hit hard as gently caress. The goal is to dps them down ASAP.  I went even harder than normal on chessboard and used arrows of detonation. Things exploded  I fought the Demon Knight straight up. Viconia ate the dispel and then quickly quaffed a potion of magic protection in case he tried to cast anything else on her. The rest of my buffed party engaged him with summons. He is, it turns out, able to be backstabbed, but he does see through invis I think so I had to be careful with the timing.  Coran landed the killing blow. Nothing else too crazy happened. Edwin got power word stunned but that's it.  I used invis to get ready for the cultists. Buffed up, they aren't a problem.  The ones indoors are a problem. I buffed up and went in. Baeloth cast detect invis to get the thieves out of stealth. I tried to have Edwin cast cloudkill to interrupt the mages but he got interrupted somehow...or maybe his aura hadn't refreshed yet from buffing outside. This was a problem because the mages got some spells off. Edwin got dispelled. Baeloth and Kagain avoided dispels so they tanked a lot in this fight. Baeloth threw out slows where possible. Edwin had to kite around without his buffs and eventually got killed trying to dodge enemies. One of the enemy mages hit a chaos which unfortunately affected both Coran and Vicky. During that confusion, both got killed. I don't recall how Vicky died (probably melee) but Coran ate a Vitriolic Sphere (IWD acid orb spell) for hefty damage. During all of this my Assassin was contributing where he could but had to quaff lots of invis potions to stay safe. Baeloth tanked and landed some slows which helped. Kagain never got dispelled so he was able to stay fairly safe. He did have to quaff one or two drinks from Durlag's Goblet. Between those two and a few timely arrows of dispel from my PC, we eventually prevailed. This is the aftermath: half the party dead, but luckily not my PC, and no permas. Didn't get as many mid combat screenshots because this was my most hectic fight yet and I was doing a lot of kiting and had to concentrate to not gently caress up  I hate this fight. It's one of the toughest in the game, mostly due to no room to maneuver. I almost want to consider kiting these guys outside on future plays simply because being dispelled is such a disaster here, as is getting hit by chaos. After the fight, we stored our dead party members gear in the shelves, went to the temple and rezzed, and came back. Pro tip: you can do this strategy with most containers in the game. Your equipment will disappear if left on the ground and you rest/leave the zone, but containers will keep the gear there. It's easier to do this to store the gear if you have to go rez people than it is to try to haul everything back to town.  Aec by comparison was pretty simple. I used arrows of dispel on the mage to prevent her dispelling my buffs, used summons to distract Aec, and went through the enemies one by one  I tried to backstab him. I'm not sure if you can. He definitely sees through invis because he turned when I tried. I did still hit him for a good chunk but he then whacked me back and I had to get my pc out of there.  In the end, we won, and Coran landed the killing blow. Telgrim is at max level now but all this extra content is still useful to keep xp flowing for Coran. I'll finish Tales next and then get ready for the end game.
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Jan 26, 2023 20:15
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Another update. Played way too much gate today. Telgrim is finishing up end game bg1  Went to Werewolf Isle and caused some havoc there. The Werewolves hit pretty hard on insane but go down quickly despite that. The Greater Wolfweres/Werewolves are a tougher bunch, especially since none of my party is proficient in weapons that hurt them except for Coran, and Coran doesn't really want to go into melee here. Nevertheless, a buffed up Kagain had enough thaco to hit with the bastard sword enough to eventually take these things down. Coran weaved a few melee attacks in with Longsword of Flame but had to be extra careful since he can't last long at all in melee against these.  We returned successful and took out Mendas...or should I say Selaad.  The Ogre Mage ambush in front of Candlekeep proved a little trickier than intended. This is because when Duke Eltan gave me the book for entry my inventory was full which caused me to lose an entire stack of Arrows of Dispelling. That happened to be my only stack too as I'd spent a lot of gold stockpiling these. I tried to go back after to Eltan's room and pick them back up but they were gone. Worse still, I'd emptied the shops of them so no more to be had. This will make the end game tougher. Huge rip. I was quite tilted over it and still am.  But playing angry sharpened my focus and many enemies took some vicious backstabs. This was actually a little reckless by me. I hurt Prat but as I was running back out I took some arrows to the rear end and they got me surprisingly low on HP. Recovered and took them out though.  Yada yada yada, did the Tamoko subquests in bg, then fought Slythe. Slythe is a nasty backstabber so gotta be careful there, but the more annoying of the two is Kristin. Without arrows of dispelling she's rather tough. I'm not sure what her mage level is but I could not dispel her with Edwin or Baeloth. I tried like six times. I ended up having to keep her distracted with summons and mostly wait her buffs out. This is because she casted fire shields so it was way too dangerous to have Kagain melee her. Eventually we took her out.  Rogue Rebalancing changes the Short Sword of Backstabbing to be similar to it's actual 2nd edition status. This actually makes it pretty damned strong. Don't know if you can tell from the SS but essentially it gets +2 more thaco compared to the base version but more importantly it gives a bonus backstab multiplier. With that and the changes to the Assassin kit I have x6 backstabs in bg1 which is a big hearty lol. If that seems OP to you I'll remind you that I'm on insane with SCS maxed and can easily die to just about anything if I'm not careful. The offense is nice though.  Fought the Dopplegangers at the coronation.  Nothing too nuts there. Belt died because after all the Dopplegangers died he decided to 1v1 Sarevok but Lia with all her mage protections survived.  I didn't gently caress around with the Undercity bounty hunter fight. I equipped me and Coran with arrows of detonation, threw a few webs out, and obliterated them in seconds. Arrows of detonation are hilarious. I don't use them often enough but they're lethal.  Tamoko survived my backstab and she does come prebuffed with some powerful priest spells including entropy shield. Despite it, we did manage to do the extra bit of damage needed to kill her.  I decided to fight Sarevok near the throne this time. My summons kept him busy up there. This actually worked far better than my usual pull strategy because Semaj and Diarmid stayed over there. This left me to take out Tazok/Angelo on the right side. We worked through Sarevok's cronies one by one. Without arrows of dispel this was much harder as they are difficult to dispel otherwise due to their high levels, so we ended up just plowing through their mirror images and stoneskins with relentless attacks. They tried to get in some offense of their own but Baeloth resisted the malison they threw at him thanks to his 100% buffed magic resistance. I don't think they got off too much other offense other than a few minor spells.  As the fight progressed, I had to deal with the skeleton warriors that spawn when each Sarevok crony dies. I lead most of these south of the room and let Kagain tank them there.  Semaj was the last one to fall I think. He got off a Sunfire at one point but luckily only Kagain ate the brunt of that, and even on Insane he can easily survive that with his saving throws and massive con.  Sarevok ate a huge backstab from me like it was nothing. I then sprinted way the hell out before he gibbed me.  Kagain finished Sarevok off with a well launched throwing axe +2 Honors: Ironling: Complete Baldur's Gate 1. Strategist: Complete Baldur's Gate 1 with the Sword Coast Stratagems mod. Double Damage: Complete the game on Insane difficulty. Librarian: Find every stat tome in Baldur's Gate 1. Trap Dodger: Complete Durlag's Tower. Pretty happy with completing BG1/SCS on double damage and basically doing everything. On my next attempts I might not go completionist on bg1 just for the sake of actually seeing more bg2/sod content before I inevitably wipe again. But it was satisfying to do it. SOD up next I guess. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Jan 27, 2023 |
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Jan 27, 2023 07:37
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Kronar the Sorcerer is done messing around in the wilderness. Went basilisk hunting. Being a sorcerer with no accompanying mage makes this somewhat inconvenient, since I don't want to use one of my spell slots on Protection from Petrification. I bought some potions of mirrored eyes, but they run out before I can clear the map. Eventually I end up buying the two scrolls Thalantyr sells and hoping for the best.  I kinda regret not picking Resist fear as my first 2nd-level spell.    Fortunately I brought a few extra scrolls of stone-to-flesh in case this happened. After a few bounty hunter groups, I feel more at peace with picking Web over Resist Fear.   I clear out as much of Firewine as I'm willing to deal with:   Clearing out the last wilderness maps, I slip up a little:  I take a brief detour to ressurrect Khalid, an return to have the most underwhelming mage fight ever:  Silence is a wonderful spell.  Cleaned up the bandit camp with no issues.  Kronar the Sorcerer has entered Cloakwood. Perhaps I won't get killed by Web traps this year.
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Jan 28, 2023 22:20
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Telgrim met his end in SOD in Coldhearth's dungeon. I was trying to babysit Glint who was getting bumrushed by enemies and I thought my PC was in a safe spot shooting his bow and it turned out he wasn't. SOD ai is kinda frustrating in that way where enemies just ignore your tank and rush your backline all the time. SCS does not typically do a lot of that but in SOD they'll drop everything to rush your backline all the time and ignore your tank. Still, for all that, SOD isn't terribly hard and it was my bad for getting distracted. I think on my next runs I'm going to just hit xp cap in bg1 and then finish it and go to SOD rather than doing every last bit of content in BG1. I want to get some bg2 Ironmanning in and it's tough to do that getting bogged down in bg1 every time I die.
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Jan 28, 2023 22:31
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Ginette Reno posted:Telgrim met his end in SOD in Coldhearth's dungeon. Ugh, sorry to hear that. I know SCS does some 'target your most vulnerable character' stuff (at least I assume that's why Imoen has died more than everyone else combined, well that and I'm bad at remembering to cast defensive buffs). But yeah, SoD, and honestly I think it's at the worst early on, has this way of just sending wave after wave of monsters to overwhelm you. If you have a druid or shaman available (and you may well not that early in SoD) and you have Wall of Moonlight available (I think it's one of the ones SCS imports from Icewind Dale) it's really good in Coldhearth's dungeon.
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Jan 29, 2023 04:29
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Silas the Cleric/Thief has preached the word of stick and flame up and down the Sword Coast, and ministered to the bandits. Before we move on to the mines, we pop into the Cloakwood (made available early by Tweaks Anthology) to grab the Cloak of Non-Detection for Silas. Kind of an unnecessary precaution as it turns out, but SCS loves to have its casters 'just happen' to cast divination spells whenever stealthed or invisible people are around and I enjoy being able to give them the stealthy middle finger.  Recorder strikes up a bit of conversation while we're exploring the area around the mines. I've never used this mod before (though I've used others by its creator, Helga, for example). So far I am enjoying her well enough. Nothing much unusual happens in the mines themselves, and we waste no time heading back to Nashkel.  Not today, kill-stealing Rasaad. Not today.  It's shortly after this that Isra  Breagar's mod uses its own script for equalling out NPC XP, but he was also in the party briefly earlier (mostly because I wanted him out of the smithy so he wouldn't snitch when we acquired Taerom's +1 bastard sword). So he's still a bit behind the rest of us, but it's not that big a deal. (His 'natural' constitution is 19, what we're seeing his his reduced score on account of losing his arm.)  While we're in the area we sort out Tranzig. I'd planned on sending Silas in to give him the ol' Nimbul treatment but I forgot that he spots the party the instant you head up the stairs if they're visible. Oh well, it worked out in the end.  Back at the carnival, a search for a missing man leads us to this extremely scary encounter, scary in part because it does that 'grab control of your party to move them into position before starting the fight' thing that EE encounters love so much, and also allows the mimic to open with a Grease spell. It's also protected from normal weapons and shielded from magic missiles, because why wouldn't it be? We get it in the end but seriously gently caress this fight.  This item is worth it though, curse or no curse. The thaco penalty isn't a big deal on a mage compared to the casting speed bonus. We give it to Recorder. Even with the penalty she's hell on wheels with the crossbow of speed.  Arabelle lives! (Didn't we actually track this one year?)  Silas immediately avenges Imoen with a backstab on Dribben  While we're camping, Breagar opens up a bit about his past. Basically, he fell for the daughter of the clan's master-smith, who was more or less betrothed to the smith's apprentice, Reggik. Breagar's family, crucially, are not smiths, they're bakers and they're not the sort of clan where you break from the family trade without it being a Thing. So Breagar's attempt at forging a ring of Elemental Control was basically an attempt to prove he had what it takes to be a smith, and to prove that he was a better smith than the dude who'd been training in smithing all his life. And it didn't go so well. He's not happy about the missing arm but he's really unhappy about seeing his entire life, past, present and future, go up in smoke.  We decide we'd rather not fight mustard jellies, thank you very much.  Wandering Assassin Fight #1. This one can get scary in SCS because you're dealing with two backstabbers who immediately go invisible at the start of the fight and will make a beeline for, well, Imoen probably. Silas opens with Invisibility Purge which makes life a bit easier.  Even so, we walk (limp) away and they don't.  This ends up being a bit scary. Silas is both webbed and poisoned, and, er, he's carrying all the potions. Jaheira manages to counter the poison damage with a regen spell but that could have gone badly.  One of the banter chains in Breagar's mod involves him (reluctantly) teaching Imoen to speak the Dwarven language. They form a friendship that ends up being rather sweet that persists into Baldur's Gate 2 at least. We're just clearing up all the usual wilderness areas at the moment.  We pick up the Charisma tome.  Wandering assassin group two.  I've honestly lost track of Imoen's deaths at this point.  Just committing war crimes.  The BG1 NPC Project writing team seems to think that druids are best known for their extended monologues about literally everything. It's not just Jaheira, as we'll see later.  I thought Shoal wasn't supposed to kill her victim outright any more but apparently that's only sometimes true. She brings him back and we beat the poo poo out of Droth.  We clear out the rest of the region and the constitution tome goes to Breagar.  Recorder finds some parallels between Chesterton Nib's expedition and her own doomed foray into the Ulcaster Ruins.  Whereas Breagar's down on the whole archaeological pursuit in general.  ...he may have had a point. Quite often I have a mod installed that makes use of the idol or the vampiric sword so that fighting the doomsayer is necessary. This time I don't (at least none relevant to this playthrough), but we still fight it. I don't think Silas would want the idol of an ancient murdergod just lying around for anyone to find. Also gently caress that guy.  I think I missed this Shades encounter last time around. There's not much to it, we can agree not to kill Shandraha the werebadger and she'll agree to watch over us if we rest. Moving on to Peldvale.  I am honestly not sure which mod adds these Lake Poets, but if you talk to all three of them and go all the way through the poems they recite, they'll give you a random magical instrument.  Also there's a deactivated golem. We can restore its brain.  We probably shouldn't have done that.  It can only be damaged by +3 weapons, which makes this the Silas and Jaheira show. I keep the others in the fight as a distraction, though this turns out not to be the best idea thanks to its poison cloud. There's no actual good reason to fight this fight, though the 13,000 experience is nice.  And then it's the bandit camp. The SCS version of this fight is honestly one of my favorites in BG1 because it's an opportunity for everyone to just cut loose. We get through mostly unscathed and spend an inordinate amount of time looting the place. Up next: Cloakwood. docbeard fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Jan 29, 2023 |
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Jan 29, 2023 05:23
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docbeard posted:Ugh, sorry to hear that. I know SCS does some 'target your most vulnerable character' stuff (at least I assume that's why Imoen has died more than everyone else combined, well that and I'm bad at remembering to cast defensive buffs). But yeah, SoD, and honestly I think it's at the worst early on, has this way of just sending wave after wave of monsters to overwhelm you. Yeah I mean SOD isn't hard per se. You can just spam web on most encounters and I typically do. I just got a little sloppy. It is annoying how enemies beeline your backline in SOD. SCS largely doesn't do that unless you're careless about positioning. So I was busy babysitting Glint and took my eye off my Assassin and that was that. Usually web prevents the bumrush but I didn't target that one well enough to avoid it. The other annoying thing about early sod is you can't pickup a good tank (Jaheira) for a little bit. So you kinda have to mage tank early as regular tanks don't cut it so much against those big mobs of enemies on insane. Or even on core rules tbh. Anyways, I'm going to try a Fighter/Mage/Thief next. Not solo, will have a party. I'm having a lot of fun with the one I rolled. Got a huge roll too:  I probably won't be as completionist with bg1 with this one and will try to just hit xp cap and move into SOD. Chomping at the bit to do some more bg2 so don't want to waste too much time in bg1 on this run. Hopefully I don't waste this roll. Just hit 32k xp with it so a promising start. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Jan 29, 2023 |
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Jan 29, 2023 05:29
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Shakira the elven sorceress is still alive and well in Amn after I took a 2-3 week break from playing due to burnout. I eek out what I can from scribing scrolls.  Doing Korgan's quest to secure our party. We wrap that up then kick out Anomen.  We do the summoned to the Harper Hold thing so I can get a Ring of Wizardry. Then we do the old kick out Jaheria and don't talk to her and leave trick. She perma leaves your party if you kick her out now and I might need her someday.  We go and handle the trolls in the keep and it was all pretty boring.  I think Trademeet went without issues from what I remember.  Planar Prison was kind of dicey for a moment as Anomen was nearly dead during the fight at the end. The Warden actually went down really easily and it was the Yuan-Ti Mages that proved a problem. Not like a run ending potential but I wanted to keep my no deaths streak.  I did the Planar Sphere next, but looking back I realized this was my only screenshot of it. I took a capture of the scroll of Mordenkainen's Sword dropping and I guess that's all I got for this part of the game. I actually ended up finding another scroll in a chest later on all the mages in the party can use it. Jan is too low currently but he will be able to use it soon.  We start the Beholder quest.  But we immediately detour to take on liches.  Kangaxx I have Jan lay some traps at his spawn point and buff to the gills everyone. Death Ward is a must and I give everyone Protection from Magical Energy and Chaotic Commands too. Anomen and Viconia stay a bit further back and hit the lich form with 2x Sunray to insta pop him. Korgan get's the Ring of Energy and Ring of the Ram and pops the Simulacrum helmet to hit him with double the rings once the demilich form spawns. Ends pretty quick.  We clear out the guarded compound while we are doing random things.  We take on the Twisted Rune and do the old 5x Skulltraps where the beholder spawns and 2x Sunray for the lich. The beholder ended up surviving the Skulltraps possible due to bad placement or just bad luck. Edwin had 3x Skulltraps in a Spell Sequencer and I have him immediately set it off at the beholder. It gowns down about the same time the lich did and from there it is mostly cleanup.  At this point something happened I didn't know could happen. I did all of Anomens quests involving his family right and picked all the right options. Turns out if your reputation is too low he fails his knighthood test anyway. I had my reputation at 8 because it was previously getting too high so I did a murder. 8 is too low so I guess he just doesn't get to be a knight. Sorry buddy.  I have my apprentices make a scroll of Horrid Wilting for Edwin and then another Ring of Wizardry also for Edwin. Most of them die, but that's a price I'm willing to pay.  We wipe out the beholder cult.  We finish up the mage stronghold questline which I always thought was pretty short / thin. Not a lot to it. You get some good items maybe though.  We march through the Ruined Temple and use Sunrays to blast the liches and undead pretty quickly. I blind the dragon and it dies real easy. Horrid Wilting to the stuff outside ends the fight quick.  We have done almost all of Act 2 / 3 at this point with a few notable exceptions like Windspear Hills and various companion / EE content. I went around and did a few random things I missed like the murdered child and his stuffed bear and things like that. Up next is probably recruting Hexxat for the Bag of Holding. She will not be in the party long term.
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Jan 29, 2023 11:07
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Good to see you back Cheestriangles. That's a good run you got going. Kalatos the F/M/T is going. Probably going to be a bit more minimalist with bg1 screenshots for this guy unless something interesting happens.  I got an insanely good roll that it's gonna be tragic to lose when I die to something dumb  I leveled up on Basilisks. I also learned that Basilisks can poison when I tried to melee one. I legit never knew that? Not sure if that is something default bg has or SCS. Luckily, their poison apparently wears off. If it hadn't, my run would have ended here. Nevertheless, I stopped meleeing them after that  Here's me stabbing Tarnesh  I assembled a crew and beat Mulahey as well as most of the western zones. I went with a slightly different party this time as I don't want to run the exact same group every time I play. Xan is cool because enchanters get a bonus to their enchantment spells and many many enemies in BG1 are susceptible to sleeps, charms, and chaos. Xzar is cool because horror is a useful low level spell and he gets a bonus to it, and skull trap is always powerful and he gets a bonus for that as well. They are both extremely fragile. Xan at least can cast mirror image. Xzar cannot. I have to be extremely careful with Xzar until he gets stoneskin because of that. On double damage he can go down so easily to archers. It's refreshing to try a somewhat different party than I have been running. I haven't used Montaron and Xzar in a long time, but they're actually pretty decent. I'm having a blast with this f/m/t so far. I'd actually go so far as to say it's the most enjoyable pc I've run yet in bg1 of the ones I've tried in this year's Ironman. The versatility rules. Being able to backstab, sleep stuff, tank a little with mirror images...it's a fun combo of things even in a party. I am going to go for xp cap and then go into SOD. I most likely will not finish all the bg1 TOSTC content as I'd like to play some more SOD/bg2 and spend less time in bg1 since I've run through it a few times already this year on my other failed runs. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Jan 29, 2023 |
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Jan 29, 2023 19:58
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99% sure vanilla and enhanced basilisks can't poison.
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Jan 30, 2023 01:01
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I'd assumed it was an SCS change too, but I just looked it up and according to the Baldur's Gate wiki, Greater Basilisks do have a poison attack. I'd guess it's rare that it comes up because it's got a +4 bonus to save against it, and because vanilla basilisk AI is probably not going to gravitate toward biting at all (to the point where I was mildly surprised at one point to find out that they could) while SCS's Improved Basilisk AI is probably more likely to if it detects that the only things in range are immune to petrification (which is the only sensible way to fight SCS, or any, basilisks).
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Jan 30, 2023 02:30
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Shakira is ready to set sail for Spellhold. I grabbed Hexxat and did her quest for the Bag of Holding and promptly kicked her out. Forgot to get any screenshots of it.  Went and Watchers Keep Level 1 next. We nearly had our first death when Korgan was taking some serious damage from the statues. Chain casting of Horrid Wilting by Edwin and Shakira managed to thin their numbers and we recovered nicely.  I looked up the Game Banshee guide after my last run ended in failure with the lightning bolt trap since someone mentioned it list all the traps. It also help me find content I had no idea existed. Like a human employing some Ogres as dock workers in the Bridge district? You save him and get 6500 XP. No idea this existed until now.  We return to the scene of the crime where my last sorceress died. I did not set off the trap this time, but earlier a hobgoblin shaman (I think) cast a lightning bolt that bounced hard off Anomen repeatedly. He managed to not die and it never came near Shakira, but it did really give me a moment of panic as I said to myself not again.  This is just here because I'm mad at Beamdog for making some really kind of arbitrary changes. Why remove his old model? Sometimes they change things and it makes no sense to me. No one asked you to rebalance the game 20 years later and poo poo like this.  Here I go for my usual strategy of blinding the dragon and find out he is not quite helpless as it appeared in previous encounters. Firkraag put up a decent fight although he was still badly nerfed compared to normal. No fire breath attack made him a lot easier, but still gave me a moment of panic as I found out he wasn't dying easily. I had Korgan and Anomen tank in melee as I sent Edwin and Shakira to hit him with a lower resistance followed up with some Horrid Wiltings.  After Firkraag I'm like 60k XP away from HLA's on Shakira and I want them real bad. Decide to go take out the Mindflayers in the sewers since with Mordenkainens swords they are hardly a challenge. Much to my surprised when I send the swords and a wizard eye for vision to fight the first batch, that I found Anomen in the fight too. I misclicked and accidentally had him selected when I sent the swords and was real glad when he didn't get killed.  After all that I was like 10k away from HLA's and I decided to see what scrolls I had stockpiled for Jan and Edwin. I wasn't going to waste any by doing delete / relearn tricks but it got me really close so I dropped Anomen for a minute to get Aerie in the party to get me over the finish line. First pick is Planetar (what else?) and Wish.  We go and kill a bunch of vampires and with our current level, gear and spells, is a walk in the park. I rely on Shakira casting limited wish for negative plane protection. With Planetar's, Wish to renew our spells we walk over them.  Next up before we turn in this quest it's time to do some housekeeping. I had stockpiled all my items in Copper Coronet and started going through everything now. What items did I want to bring to Spellhold? What items did I need to remove from my inventory? I had a ton of gems and such stocked up and went through it all and kept what I needed and cleared out some stuff I did not like random scrolls that were only for quests that are long done and the like. Sorted through my ammunition and consumables and made surge all my wands were charged. I also upgraded the horn which I never normally do but figured why not. Saw Cromwell and got the 2 dragon armors made and upgraded the mace.  One of our last pieces of business before we leave is this quest. I had forgotten the Golden Pantaloons in a barrel in Beregost when I went to fight Sarevok so I just do the good ending. Next up is going to buy any final provisions we need. I want to get some more potions of Genius and Mind Focusing and some scrolls of Restoration to top me off before I go to Spellhold but Act 2 / 3 is basically finished with no real content left in them other than EE content and a couple companion quests I don't plan on doing. I'm not doing any more EE content unless things somehow become really dire and ever other companion dies.
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Jan 30, 2023 04:32
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Silas the Cleric/Thief has set the Cloakwood ablaze and cleansed the mine with cleansing...well a certain amount of fire was involved along the way, all right?  Before we head on our way we make a side trip to Iceland and murder their king. The stoneskin scroll goes to Imoen, for obvious reasons, and some less obvious ones. We won't have access to Neera's quest, but there is one other scroll (unless it was random and I just got lucky last time) in the caves below Basilisk Hell. We do also clear up the Gorgon's Eye missions but I showed those off in Jackie Daytona II's run (RIP) and there's really no variation here. So we'll skip ahead to the Cloakwood itself.  As I mentioned before, BG1 NPC Project adds a peaceful solution to the conflict between Aldeth Sashenstar and the Druids on the first map, if Jaheira's in the party. Basically Seniyad and Jaheira go way back and it takes a bit of doing, but he can be talked down.  Besides, he's got bigger things on his mind. The Shadow Druids have gone beyond the Baldur's Gate equivalent of shitposting and moved onto taking hostages.  And it turns out that one of the druids who's disappeared is Beador, who Jaheira seems to know. Khalid advises us not to press her on this point. This mostly plays out in the 3rd and 4th maps. Spider Hell we pass through in the usual way. (Imoen goes invisible and disarms the traps and then we murder all the spiders.)  And here we goooooooooo  Every single loving encounter with these assholes is a ten minute monologue. I think they might be literally trying to talk us to death.  For example here, there may not be any negotiation but there is plenty of talking. But talking isn't the only trick they've got. Amarande's a high-level Avenger which means instant shapeshifting and sixth level spells. He corners Imoen with a fire elemental but nothing much comes of it and we eventually kill him.  I ain't reading all that. But I'm happy for your nat 20. Or sorry that nat 1 happened.  We move on to the next map and decide not to take the risk that the hamadryad might make a speech. I actually really really wanted to be careful here, because nearby there's a group of six enemy druids and it's possible to aggro both them and the hamadryad at once. This is what we in the business refer to as 'bad'.  We find the aforementioned six druids surrounding Beador and, I guess, kicking him to death. We fight. Recorder gets charmed and it's all I can do to keep her from being murdered by the skeletons that Silas summoned until the charm wears off (since multiple attempts to dispel it failed).  In case you missed the subtle subtext here, it's pretty clear that Beador is Jaheira's ex. Khalid is actually very chill about the whole thing, beyond a few admonitions to please, PLEASE not get Jaheira started. Anyway, we're sent back to the grove to rescue Maretha who's at the treehouse. I mean, she wasn't there before but she is now. Along with the Shadow Archdruid.  No, the other Shadow Archdruid. He's also a high level Avenger, and unlike Amarande, he comes loaded for bear (figuratively and literally). This is a tough fight with Andarthe throwing around sixth level spells like they're candy (including fun things like Entropy Shield) and Silas came drat close to dying.  When we get his health down he surrenders, and apparently killing him is 'evil' or something but seriously gently caress this guy. It costs four reputation points and it's worth every one of them. Neither Jaheira nor Seniyad give a poo poo. We free Maretha and Jaheira asks us to go all the way back to Seniyad right now.  He gives us 'safe passage through the forest' (which he can in no way deliver) and a magic club. Which seems right up Silas's alley except only druids can use it. We move on and clear out the wyvern cave and hit the mines.  This one is especially (and grimly) funny because this time it was Silas (dire-charmed) who killed Imoen.  Hareishan's not much trouble.  Natasha, on the other hand, apparently has the sort of Detect Invisibility that works even on Silas's nondetection cloak. (This feels like a bug to me. I wonder if Spell Revisions uses a different effect for the Nondetection spell than it does for the item, it wouldn't be the first time that happened. I'll do some testing. NBD either way.) We make our way through to fight Davaeorn, and nothing much out of the ordinary happens there. He teleports around like an rear end in a top hat but we put him in the ground. Specifically, Breagar does, and now I wish I'd screenshotted their exchange where Davaeorn scoffs at the idea of Breagar's axe against his magic. And that's all she wrote. We flood the mines, take a moment to chat with a dwarf angel for Breagar's quest, and then head out on our merry.  Cloakwood has some parting gifts for us. (Honestly we did better with random encounters in the Cloakwood than I usually do, just this and some spiders.)
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Jan 30, 2023 04:39
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I wasted my 96 roll by dying to Narcillus Neen. He got off an emotion: hopelessness on me and I was stuck near the slimes with no way out. Emotion: Hope counters it but unfortunately my mages weren't quite high enough level yet to have that. Going to try one more F/M/T and if this one dies I think I'm gonna take a few week break from bg to regroup lol. Still having fun but somewhat tilted by the last two deaths I've had.
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Jan 30, 2023 05:03
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Shakira has left Amn for places a tad darker.  We arrive in Spellhold and get surprised betrayed.  Just make sure to go maximum overkill in any major fight. I planned on getting thrown into Spellhold as a prisoner by the pirate lord but turns out you need 15 (i think?) charisma to pass the speech check so he refuses to imprison me. This costs me like 40k XP a person.  Any major fight I'm buffing to the gills and this is no exception.  We take the ship instead of the portal of course.  Arrive in the Underdark.  I immediately start casting Time Stop as soon as battle begins and even with Robe of Vecna and Amulet of Power it doesn't finish casting until the guy is already dead.  I'm still kind of undecided on making the hammer.  One of my previous characters this year had Edwin get perma killed while zoning into the Beholder tunnel. I buff to absurd degrees and have all 3 mages with Spell Turning (Spell Trap for Shakira) and Spell Shield and have Edwin Shakira and Anomen cast Energy Blades before we zone in. I immediately have Edwin and Shakira start casting Time Stop while everyone else works to burn down the elder orb and beholder. The second Time Stop was unneeded and both are dead before it finishes casting. That is where I left off because I was tired and just wanted to get that one break fight done to get over my inner doubt.
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Jan 30, 2023 13:03
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Updated the OP to here. Some more good progress, and some unfortunate endings. I like the idea of tracking Arabelle like we do Melicamp. Its a bit of fun, and it gives people a reason to enter that map, its the most pointless area in the game otherwise. Not quite as bad as the Small Teeth Pass in BG2, but its not far off.
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Jan 30, 2023 21:32
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I am a constant source of unfortunate endings. Every new character I roll though I go this is the one. This is the one that gets a deep bg2 run and then dies to an Iron Golem crit.
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Jan 30, 2023 21:51
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I've got a bastard sword kensai who's doing just fine in BG1, though I pissed off Edwin and he seems to be gone forever, along with the wand of sleep. Unfortunate. Saved Arabelle. About to enter Cloakwood but I want Neera's stupid Adoy quest to trigger before I enter so I can ditch her sorry rear end. i'll post screenshots and stuff if I get past BG1. The biggest challenge for me is getting bored. I love kensais. Something fun about a class that is just completely single-minded. Incredible at the one thing that it does, but without support from mages and clerics, it doesn't get to excel in that job.
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Jan 30, 2023 22:02
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Sharkia has escaped the Underdark and returned to Amn. We wiped out the beholders thanks to the Shield of Balduran and Planetars.  The minder flayers die to a lot of Mordenkainen's Swords. Like a few dozen over the course of the dungeon.  We get attacked by the Gith after we leave and make short work of them. After we do all that we go and inside the drow city.  This party was not prepared for us. We blitz through the main quest at this point ignoring all the side content in the drow city, one because I'm eager to see this game end, and two because I don't really remember the back half of this game all that well and didn't want to take any big risks.  We screw over the drow and move on.  Sorry Adalon I need that honor for killing all the dragons in SoA.  We escape.  The Gith harass us for the last time. Jan got chaos'd here and I was worried he would attack a guard and tank my rep even further but he manages to avoid it.  We go see Cromwell and get some items made. I decide against having Crom Faeyr made for now but might change my mind later.  Then we see someone else about getting an item made.
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Jan 31, 2023 06:46
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Silas the Cleric/Priest has defeated one of the final bosses of Baldur's Gate! Kahrk So, as before, the second we step out of the Cloakwood Mines, Breagar gets a quest from a divine messenger of Berronar (the Dwarven goddess of, among other things, love) to kill a giant and retrieve some holy artifacts. He'd like us to get on with it immediately, but a shopping trip to the big city calls to us.  Tome of Dexterity goes to Silas. Most of the tomes are going to him this time, though Breagar benefitted from that extra point of Constitution more than he would have, and I suspect either Imoen or Recorder is gonna get the Intelligence tome. I haven't decided yet. (One point of int won't make Silas any less a tasty snack for any passing mind flayers.)  We beat up the giant and Breagar gets his robot arm, his magic axe, and (shortly thereafter) his rescue mission to Lichtown.  And, er...moving on.  This gets a bit hairy, Silas gets very low on HP while under the effects of both an acid arrow and a vitriolic sphere, but between potions and a regen spell from Jaheira we avoid having to decide on a new character. As before, there's a second tome of dexterity here. I'd also forgotten that one of the rewards Taerom offers is a returning throwing axe that's perfect for Breagar. I don't forget this time.  I don't think I showed this off before, but one of the things Shades adds is a series of four mysterious shards, hidden in various treasure troves. Once we have them they combine to form a usable item.  Using it turns out to be a REALLY GREAT IDEA (Despite his Death Knight appearance, this dude isn't that tough at this point in the game, thankfully.) He drops a couple of very nice, very evil, very cursed items that none of the party can use (per the 'evil' part). Moving on.  Actually, I think Icharyd fits in with the decor here perfectly. We still kill him, of course. He's still annoying, of course.  We're baaaaaaack This time we take the fight to the Wolf of Ulcaster, and we're much better prepared for it. Skipping ahead a bit, we clear out the Spider Forest and the rest of Basilisk Hell, and then it's Firewine Time.  Pictured here, Silas finds out that innate abilities can be affected by wild surges. Being entangled in the midst of a bunch of enemies isn't great but they're kobolds, so whatever. It works out fine. Most magic items are safe to use, including protection scrolls, but that's pretty much it.  This isn't quite as good as the ogre mage cow-murdering himself but I'll take it. The ogre mage himself falls to an arrow of slaying, since it would be wasted on Kahrk.  Truer words, brother. (Silas gets a Globe of Invulnerability when trying to heal himself, but it sadly doesn't last long enough to be useful.)  We employ a similar strategy to last time. Imoen and Breagar are immune to poison thanks to items, and Breagar's got a Protection from Magic scroll going. And we've got the cloudkill wand from a Shades quest. (Silas is hidden just outside of Cloudkill range waiting for the opportunity to backstab once Kahrk's stoneskin is down.)  Things, uh, do not go entirely according to plan. All is not lost though, as you can see. I risk an invisibility cast on Recorder (successfully, there's a wild surge but it's one of the no-real-effect ones and the spell goes off) and send her in to grab the cloudkill wand. She gets the kill just as Kahrk charms her, but there's no one in range for her to do anything to so we just wait out the charm. (The other cloud there is a Stinking Cloud that Kahrk wild-surged his way into while trying to do something else.) ...that's enough Firewine for now.
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Jan 31, 2023 11:57
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Shakira has killed Irenicus and reclaimed her divine soul. I spend like an hour and a half real time sorting through my inventory. It sucked.  Anomen nearly dies again. He has nearly died more than everyone else combined. He was down to like 4 levels total when Bodhi died and we kept him safe.  Imoen if she was in our party would be real happy.  I ended up crafting it just before leaving. I thought about not doing it but decided I would. It went to Anomen.   The beginning of the end.  Another dead dragon.  We all say how happy we are to go kill Irenicus.  He gets wasted instantly by spike traps.  I didn't want to give up Edwin so I take a bunch of penalties.  Last dragon dead.  Irenicus takes a mortal wound immediately to spike traps, again.   My final stats. Honors: Ironwoman, Purist, Iron Party, Dragon Slayer, The End of Suffering, Gaxkang's A Wuss, Legendary Arms Dishonors: None Feel really good about reaching this point when I haven't made it to the end of SoA in ironman threads in a few years now. Went through a bunch of characters to get here and had some heartbreaking deaths. Made some mistakes with Shakira along the way, but in the end they didn't matter enough to really derail me. I think in the future I will be a lot more careful about reading ahead on quests and know what I need rep / charisma wise to get good outcomes. I'm still a bit bitter about the Anomen failing his test due to rep and not being imprisoned by the pirate lord in Spellhold. Overall I just took things really slowly and made use of the excellent Game Banshee guide to BG2 on Shakira which I did not do on my other characters. Never went into any kind of major battle without being fully decked out in buffs. Death Ward, Chaotic Commands, Protection from Energy were up basically all the time. Later on Spell Trap(Shakira), Spell Turning (Jan, Edwin), Spell Shield on the casters. I also learned that the HLA Energy Blades is an insanely good spell. Having 4 people throwing those things just puts out an absurd amount of damage quickly. My last 2 dragon kills relied heavily on them. Used them a ton since about mid Underdark and they just do insane amounts of damage. The last time I finished SoA in Ironman was a run of another Sorceress who died on the last boss of ToB. This was like 4-5 years ago now. I'm feeling a lot more confident about this run. I'm hoping this is the year.
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Jan 31, 2023 13:13
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Kaltor the F/M/T is doing some adventuring Not as good a roll as I got before but it will do  Kaltor is frowning in his portrait because he already knows he's gonna die gruesomely  Did my usual basilisk killing to get ready to recruit my party. Pretty easy a f/m/t since I can buff myself instead of having to recruit a mage to do it  I got my party together and slew Mulahey. As with my previous attempt I want to mix it up a bit so I'm taking Xan and Xzar. They're more fragile than Edwin/Baeloth but they have amusing gimmicks. Xan is a great Enchanter and enchantment spells are very powerful in bg1. Xzar gets a bonus to useful spells like skull trap and horror. He can't use illusion spells which does make him very fragile until he gets stoneskin.  Nimbul got a spicy backstab  I always do some gambling in the tents at the circus because I'm a degenerate like that. I actually won some gold here.  Monty got a nice backstab on Sendai and her cronies in the Cloudpeaks  During one of the Bounty Hunter ambushes I landed a nice silence. I also have been using Dire Charm with Xan. Mostly for fun, as it's not that good even with the save penalty. But when it lands, it's pretty hilarious.  Killed a whole pile of Gnolls and got myself the charisma book and Kagain his dex bracers  Fought yet another bounty hunter ambush. Horror came in handy here  I blinded Bassilus and slew his undead with skull traps.  Melicamp died  Took out Droth for the Helm of Defense  Returned to the Baslisk zone and killed that enemy adventuring party.  High on my successes, I opted to fight the Red Wizards in that eastern zone. Big mistake. The screenshot here doesn't do it justice but they killed my entire party except for my PC. I was in control when I took this SS but I believe shortly after this he got some summons off and used melf's meteors to rapid fire kill Monty and Xzar. Luckily nobody got permaed, but it was bad. I tried to web them (only the lead mage puts up minor globe on SCS - the others don't) but I got bad luck with them rolling their saves and then the fight spiraled out of my control as I don't have spell thrust or remove magic yet. I had planned to get some backstabs in to start it but Monty got revealed too early. It was honestly stupid to fight them without spell removal. I ought to have used a scroll of protection from magic and just let Kagain handle them. Or just waited until I got spell thrust. I picked up what equipment I could carry and left to the temple. I was despairing at all the loot I had to leave behind. However, for some reason, when I came back, the loot was still there. I have zero idea why. Loot left on the ground almost always disappears. Loot in containers stays. This time, I got very lucky and didn't lose anything. Maybe there was so much loot on the ground that bg had some sort of code to not delete it. I have no idea. I wasn't complaining. Had I lost that gear it would have cost me thousands of gold and some items that I couldn't even replace.  I next finished up the other zones next to the Bandit Camp. I took no chances with the Druids and unloaded on them (they can I think cast Insect Plague on SCS if not interrupted)  Also took out some Black Talons random ambushes in Peldvale. These guys hit way too hard on Insane, so had to be careful and use webs. I believe on SCS they are too high level to sleep so web is kinda key here.  I finished up with doing a few floors of Durlags for some xp and loot. I've now completed all of the west sans Drizzt's zone and all of the east except for Ulcaster/bandit camp/firewine. I need to stop taking foolish risks in my runs. I even told myself fighting those Red Wizards was a bad idea but it was late and I was tired. Was very lucky I didn't wipe. Luckier still that my loot didn't disappear. If it had, I would have seriously considered rerolling out of frustration. Nevertheless, Kaltor is surviving and now has access to level 3 spells. If I can make it into SOD I'll get stoneskin before too long and it will be reasonably hard to kill me even on my settings. F/M/T is a lot of fun though, even in a party. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Jan 31, 2023 |
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Jan 31, 2023 20:12
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1.) congrats, cheesetriangles! 2.) I won't deal with any difficult encounters (i.e., any opposing adventuring party) until I've got at least 3 ways to drop a fireball on them to start the fight. That's typically "sell Evermemory and use the proceeds to get 3 potions of explosions, the wand of sleep, protection from acid, the necklace of missiles from the Nashkel Carnival. Then use that stuff to clear out the Ankheg Lair and get the wand of fireballs." Just not worth loving with any opposing party when Hold Person is so devastating and difficult to counter. At least "any random bard" can deal with horror, and resist fear is a low-level spell. You get held and you're toast. I can't imagine trying to fight the amazons and their hold person + darts of stunning legitimately. See a bad guy, drop a few fireballs on them. Works great on the chessboard too. Really, the only fights it doesn't work on are the party right outside Sarevok's team, and Sarevok's team.
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Jan 31, 2023 21:25
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Yeah I'm normally good about avoiding taking on fights at the wrong time but after a few times successfully getting through bg1 I get cocky and welp
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Jan 31, 2023 21:27
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FairGame posted:Works great on the chessboard too. Really, the only fights it doesn't work on are the party right outside Sarevok's team, and Sarevok's team. It kind of works on the party right outside of Sarevok's team too, if you go for the variant of 'send in someone with 100% fire resistance, a wand/necklace/potion of fireball, and a big ol' FIRE THOSE ARROWS OF DETONATION AT ME PLZ sign. Even in SCS they have traditionally not been smart enough not to do that. (I will probably eat my words if/when Silas gets there though) Ginette Reno posted:Yeah I'm normally good about avoiding taking on fights at the wrong time but after a few times successfully getting through bg1 I get cocky and welp I have definitely fallen prey to "oh this'll be EASY wait what the f-" before, yeah.
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Jan 31, 2023 21:35
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docbeard posted:It kind of works on the party right outside of Sarevok's team too, if you go for the variant of 'send in someone with 100% fire resistance, a wand/necklace/potion of fireball, and a big ol' FIRE THOSE ARROWS OF DETONATION AT ME PLZ sign. Even in SCS they have traditionally not been smart enough not to do that. (I will probably eat my words if/when Silas gets there though) I might try that this time around. Historically, there are 4 fights I absolutely dread in BG1, and 3 of them are obvious: 1.) Sarevok and Co 2.) Duchal Palace 3.) Cultists upon returning to Ulgoth's Beard (Aec himself? Pretty easy since he's got 1 nasty trick and you can prep for it w/o too much trouble.) 4.) That damned adventuring party with their arrows of detonation. I'm not willing to backtrack through the damnable thieves' maze, so whatever they do to me I just live with when I go and fight Sarevok. I've definitely had a couple playthroughs where I came up short vs. Sarevok because I was just like "gently caress it; let's get on with it" after losing a unit or two vs. this party. ...I think #3 is actually the worst of it by far.
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Jan 31, 2023 22:24
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I just invis my entire party in the thieves maze and turn off all their auto attacks while sending a thief ahead to disable the traps. Then walk past the party and ignore them. I'm already maxed on XP by that point anyway. If you are playing solo as a class that can't invis / remove traps: potion of absorption and shield amulet and potion of invis.
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Jan 31, 2023 22:53
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FairGame posted:I might try that this time around. Historically, there are 4 fights I absolutely dread in BG1, and 3 of them are obvious: Invisibility the spell lasts 24 in game hours. Go to a zone that is less than 24 hours away from Ulgoths by travel and then cast invis on everyone. Then zone into Ulgoths. Run south and buff, then run north and start the encounter. You should have a much easier time fully buffed. For #4, web and arrows of det/aoe spells works just fine there, even on SCS, but especially on vanilla.
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Jan 31, 2023 23:41
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You can walk around the adventuring party outside Sarevok's temple, there's no need to ever fight them unless you want to. All you have to do instead is fight some groups of undead, all of which can be wiped out with a single fireball.
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Feb 1, 2023 00:54
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I think I've fought that Undercity party once in the last 15 years. Its a complete waste of time and resources, not to mention a completely uneccessary risk so close to finishing BG1, so I just walk right past while invisible. OP updated to here. I also added a counter for Arabelle the cow, just for fun. Melicamp's having a truly shocking year so far, so a positive ratio for our lonely cow might make up for it.
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Feb 1, 2023 01:27
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