15226 réponses à ce sujet

[ussnorway]

1. SCS advertises itself as basically fair but you have over-the-top options in effect this means that anything with improved as part of the name is cheese... IMO improved spiders & improved vampires are too buggy for group play and I don’t use them.

2. You could have used ‘Turn’ against the shadows (no weapons required) and Anomen is fine for this if you don’t have or don’t want to risk your own Cleric*.

*Note that evil Clerics get to control them instead but the SCS scripting is buggy and you have to keep an eye on your minions or they will revert to attacking the weaker target like your mages in the same way that a certain berserk NPC whom I won’t name, might... yes even though they are/ remain on your side.

Tanova is one of the worse cases of cheese but I have managed to consistently kill her with traps both before and after her endlessly lasting shield goes up. ‘Skull Traps’ on mass are reliable but my favourite opening is to have Yoshimo toss his Level 11-16 Special Trap because at that level the secondary effect is hold which gives you 5 rounds to kill her without coming under return fire.

Modifié par ussnorway, 02 mai 2012 - 11:34 .

[PPewt]

So, after eating dinner and more testing, I found that with the mace +2 as well as the following buffs



I was able to kill Tanova instantly 4 times in 5 tests. As a result, I decided to go for it, and, if that failed, just keep my party alive until after she ran out of spells (other than domination). Unsuprisignly (just my luck) it failed and I was in a tough spot, and to add to my problems my F/T died nearly instantly, which happened to be my only anti-illusions since all my spell slots were being used for various buffs. I managed to get my two F/Ms out of Tanova's sight and interest, and just ran around in circles with my PC and my C/R (the C/R had a Helm of Charm Protection) until Tanova's invisibility ran out, Breached her protections, watched her use another invisibility, repeat. Eventually she ran out of illusion spells and I tossed every bit of antimagic I had at her, at which point whatever it was that was making her immune to physical damage was dealt with (I think it was a coincidence; she must've stoneskinned vs my Flail of the Ages, thus taking only elemental damage, and then Prot: Magic Weapons against Celestial Fury without me noticing, hence "Weapon Ineffective"). Anyhow, she still hit hard after she was out of spells, but finally she went down to the Mace of Disruption (and was about to go down to physical damage regardless).


A pretty pathetic reward for the toughest fight in the game so far.

After her Bodhi was a pushover, so now it's time to go get the XP from Aran Linvail and then go questing some more (I won't be doing spellhold for a while).

--

Edit: @ussnorway I can't see how advertising as being fair except if you use "improved xxx" makes sense because 99% of what the mod does falls under "improved xxx" headings.

Modifié par PPewt, 03 mai 2012 - 01:12 .

[saros_shadow_follower]

OK, time to re-introduce that no-reload party, as it has been long forgotten by everyone (including me).

First to add that this party has completed almost all challenges available in chapters 2 and 3, including the entire WK lvl 3, except for Tahazaar, but haven't fought the Green Wurm on this level, because in chapters 3 it's scripted not to be available. The other remaining improved enemies in chapter 3 are:

Umar (Ranger Stronghold improved final fight)
City Gates' Grave Lich (Daystar guardian)
The Guarded Compound
The Viper Queen (Lady Vanya's last task in the Extended Paladin Stronghold)
The Ice challenge in the Extended Mage Stronghold - Marvella's tasks (third task)
The last challenge in the druid stronghold - improved Chaos.
Zallanora and the Cowled enforcers.

The party itself:

Astarta, LG Human Necromancer, level 36 (IA xp cap 12 200 000 xp). Knows lots of spells, still lacking only a couple of essential ones - all of the new Monster Summoning spells IV-VII, the Foreknowledge spell and of course, the *Recast Vital Energy spell. Armed with a +3 Cleric's staff and +4 Boneblade. Can memorize 12 spells from each level except 9th - there she can memorize only 11. Special equipment:







As well as two +2 Protection rings, a +1 protection cloak, the Circlet of Netheril, the Belt if Inertial Barrier, 40 PFMW scrolls, a Purple Bag of Holding (capacity 200) and some other containers.

   *Info about that spell - later.

Torham the LG Human Ranger (18)-Cleric(37). Also hit the xp cap. All priest HLAs, including several Alchemy and Scribe scrolls. Has all  available proficiencies. Has many spell slots on each lvl, on lvl 7 - has 10 slots. Has the Ranger HLA Contact with Nature. Special equipment:





Gauntlets of Weapon Skill, Vhailor's helm, Plate of Balduran, two +2 rings, a +2 cloak, +1 protective amulet, Boots of Avoidance.

Saros the LG Human Riskbreaker - lvl 39 (almost 40). Has 1Power Attack, 13 Critical Strikes and 6 Hardinesses. 198 HP. *****Bastard Sword *****Flail *****Short Sword **Two-Weapon. Special equipment:



Flail of Ages +4, short sword +3, a +3 and +2 ring, a +2 cloak, a +1 amulet, Pearly White Ioun Stone, Worn Slippers (25% cold res), Girdle of Bluntness. Has 13 proPoison green scrolls. Also carries a bunch of Alchemy-created Potions of Defense, and a bigger quantity of Superior Healing potions (these may be created via Wish as well).

Bane the LG Human Riskbreaker, lvl 35 (almost 36). Has 1 Power Attack, 10 Critical Strikes, 5 Hardinesses. 186 HP. *****Long Sword, *****War Hammer ***Short Sword **Two-Weapon Style. Special equipment:





Also has Spectral Brand +4 scimitar, a +3 short sword, +3 Hammer of Thunderbolts, Pale Green Ioun Stone, a ring +3, a +2 one, a +2 cloak, Borok's Fist +2, Ras +2, Adjatha the Drinker +2(protection from Domination effects if need be), a bunch of Defense and Superior Healing potions.

Alia the Sorceress - lvl 36. No special equipment. Robe of the Neutral Archmagi, Bracers of AC 3, a +3 ring, a +2 one, a cloak +2, an amulet +1, Mask of King Strohm III, Martial Staff +3, Pixie ****** +3, some scrolls in pack, Iron Horn of Valhalla. Spells:

Lvl 1: MM, LMD, ChrOrb, Armor, Shield
Lvl 2: Acid Arrow, Resist Fear, Invisibility, Blur, Mirror Image
Lvl 3: Haste, Remove Magic, ProFire, Lightning Bolt, Vampiric Touch
Lvl 4: Emotion, Stoneskin, Minor Sequencer, Ice Storm, Ray of Fragmentation
Lvl 5: Lower Res, SI, Sunfire, Breach, Soul Armor
Lvl 6: ProMW, GoI, Improved Haste, Giant Strength, Contingency
Lvl 7: Mass Invisibility, Mordy Sword, ProElements, Spell Sequencer, RRR
Lvl 8: ProEnergy, ADHW, Spell Trigger, Monster Summoning VI, Foreknowledge
Lvl 9: Wish, Chain Contingency, Absolute Immunity, *Recast Vital Energy, Monster Summoning VII

*RVE is an Improved Anvil ninth-level Necromancy spell with casting time of 4. The first effect of the spell is that it dispels all party illusions upon casting. Furthermore, the spell offers a variety of choices much like the Wish spell. Some of those are not so amazing, but some are. Necromancers benefit greatly from this spell, while sorcerers only a bit. More of the choices and their applications will be described in combat situations.

And last but not least, captain Jack sparrow, with level 23(Assassin)-34(Fighter) - capped. Has Grandmastery in Two-Handed sword, Quarterstaff, Halberd, and ** in Two-Handed weapon style. Has the Staff of Rynn +4, Carsomyr +5 and the Harmonium Halberd as weapons of choice for now. Also has several staves (of Curing, of Thunder and Lightning) and Lilalcor in pack. Has protective scrolls in pack too - Absolute Immunity (20), Improved Mantle (10), proEnergy (11), and some created via Alchemy  -a bunch of Ghost Armor and Blur scrolls, as well as Breach scrolls. Since he's a non-arcane or divine caster, enemies with abilities such as Grave Silence won't try to silence him, and he may still breach or RRR them. Other equipment includes:







A +3 and +2 ring, a +2 cloak, Helm of Balduran, Paladin Bracers (poor guy needs all the extra HP he can get from items, and even so he has only 180), Boots of Stealth, Jansen's Adventurewear.

The party also has six of these:



This party has recently completed (with ease - at current levels!) the following fights:


The Guarded Compound:




















This fight is not so easy, as upon entering, as may be seen, all buffs are dispelled. Except undispellable ones, and Alacrity is one of them. Which was the essential part of quickly winning the fight.
Loot: Helm of Charm protection, AI scrolls, Celestial Fury, insignificant items (Party has over 3 million gp)


The Guarded Compound - Greater Elemental Golem:










Loot: Hand of Undoing scroll, Ray of Fragmentation scroll, Aeger's Hide +3, Jhor the Bleeder +2, Holy Scabbard, Ring of Lock Picks.


Tahazaar and his minions - since this fight is almost vanilla - no pictures. Loot: Last of the Scepter Gems.

The Viper Queen:









Loot: Laeral's Tear necklace, 48th Sided Garnet (from the well)


The City Gates Grave Lich - fell so quick that couldn't take any screens here. Loot: Daystar +2, Rod of Terror, mage scrolls.

Marvella's Ice Challenge:















Loot - insignificant items, 30k gold.

Preparing to ship for Spellhold. Maybe will try improved Chaos before that.

Modifié par saros_shadow_follower, 03 mai 2012 - 05:37 .

[ussnorway]

Ud22;

@Gate70, I always stay cloaked for that battle and let my ‘Blade Barrier’ kill them... Well done, that sea zombie lord hits Very hard.

Tidying up;



It’s been a long week of doing minor quests for pittance (at my level of experience), I parked Alyssia because I needed her spot for Jaheira then had words with the so-called harpers of Athkatla before wandering the wilderness maps waiting for her ambush quests to start.

North Forest;

   

 

The harpers finally put in an appearance & Reviane promised to speak on our behalf but I wanted to clear out the hostile faunae before leaving.

1st group = Vampires... Yippee Do’Dad ‘Turn’s them to our side.

2nd group = Snakes so we send in the Vamps against their mage for an easy victory... with the possible exception of Drizzt none of the games monsters take defences against Vamps

The 3rd group are (strong) adventurers = Do’Dad leads the battle... sicking his Vamps onto the mage and ‘Turn’ing the enemy’s Cleric (Un-dead) summons back against them while the rest of us deal with a couple of sneaky backstabbers.

The Vamps finally broke through the impressive defences and dispatched the mage as Do’Dad cleared out a nearby nest of horrors & I was feeling pretty impressed with our marvellousness when the  SCS-Vamps bugged out and splatted poor Jaheira into peat... “Shrugs” in fairness the ability to control Un-dead/ Paladins with evil Clerics was only added by Tob and probably didn’t receive a lot of play testing.


Be it ever so humble etc & so forth;

   

Do’Dad throttled Lavok with ‘Fire Storm’ from outside his LOS (no retaliation) and Ormaline finally hit 18th level, collecting ‘Chain Contingency’ & ‘Summon Planetar’ just in time to dispatch the Tanar’ri with her ‘Improved Haste’d Slayer... the two rep cost was a bargain for the look on their faces.

Modifié par ussnorway, 04 mai 2012 - 01:19 .

[PPewt]

Having gotten used to buffing up absurdly for every fight thanks to SCS, the relatively-vanilla Umar Hills and Trademeet quests went by in around an hour of playtime total, and basically involved attack moving, so I didn't bother with screenshots. I tested against the Shadow Dragon but determined that it wasn't worth the risk since in several tests he killed my characters in one hit with his breath weapon, so I decided to come back at a higher level.

Running out of quests, I decided to see if I could handle Firkraag at my level. Cutting through the Windspear Dungeon went without incident (the vampire fight was the only one changed from vanilla, and they still went down quickly). Conster, being a high level SCS mage, was a pain in the ass but, like SCS mages, didn't really have any damage output which made the fight trivial as he was on his own.

One thing I noticed on the Shadow Dragon and confirmed on Firkraag was that SCS dragons cast Remove Magic, which hits quite hard given how high level they are. However, there were some pretty predictable ways to draw it out, so it didn't end up being a huge issue. At the start of the fight, dragons use "Dragon Fear". If you have Resist Fear, they also use "Remove Magic". As a result, I ran in my fighter/thief with Resist Fear to bait out the first Remove Magic for no loss, and got quite a while before the next one came up. By that point Firkraag was injured and a lot of my buffs were timing out anyways, and since I kept my Fighter/Mages on opposite sides of him only one could get dispelled at a time. Firkraag's Breath Weapon was nasty but was his only way of damaging me (since I kept stoneskins and mirror images up all fight) so I just healed all my characters with Extra Healing potions in between breath attacks. Unfortunately I apparently forgot to take a screenshot at the end of the fight (not that it was particularly interesting), but I got one of my buffs:



Completing the Windspear Hills gave my sorcerer her first Level 7 spell, Ruby Ray of Reversal, which broke the final entry barrier to quests: Liches and high level mages who I couldn't deal with. I went for Daystar and won it after a relatively nasty fight (seeing as my entire party was in AoE spell range), and then killed Kangaxx's guardians without taking a hit (Undead Destroyed before their contingencies fired). Tests against Kangaxx himself showed I stood no chance against him at my current level; I'll probably have to do him right before finishing SoA.

After a lightning-fast run through Mekrath's Lair and the Astral Prison (probably 10-15 minutes of play time total), I decided to run some tests on the Twisted Rune. It turned out to be similar to vanilla, so I went for it. The beholder went down to 6 skull traps, shangalar lost half his health to thief traps, and the fighter went down instantly to my two Fighter/Mages. After some back-and-forth Shangalar went down. I pulled the vampire, who wasn't really any stronger than in vanilla, and took him down as well.

Surprisingly (contrary to vanilla) Layene was by far the strongest member of the Twisted Rune. After running out of Ruby Rays trying to bring down Spell Immunity: Abjuration, I realized I'd have to fight off her summons (she only carries 1x ADHW for damage) until her protections timed out. A nasty grind later, she went down and the Staff of the Magi (albeit slightly nerfed in SCS) was mine.



The planar sphere proved uninteresting as well; Tolgerias put up a fight but by that point SCS mages weren't a surprise to me. Speeding through the Apprenticeship left me with a Wand of the Apprenti and Ring of Wizardry. From there I recruited Jaheira, SKed her quest variables (I didn't feel like walking in circles until they happened), killed Galvarey's group, and was the proud owner of a second Ring of Wizardry.

And with that I've officially completed every Chapter 3-available non-companion quest other than the Limited Wish quest and Kangaxx Himself. I'm surprised at how little time it took (~6 hours of play time so far by my count) Next Stop: Watcher's Keep (without the Cloak or Mirroring being in City-of-Caverns, there is no rush to go to the Underdark).

[Krazy Solo]

I'm currently looking at making some time slot to continue my Inveeme character no-reload. At this time I'm stressed for time doing other things, but I expect as summer rolls around i'll be more incline to play single player games due to the heat issues i seem to suffer when I get all worked up doing competitive mp games.

So expect some updates in the follow weeks.

[ussnorway]

Welcome back Krazy Solo... Looking forward to reading about it.

[saros_shadow_follower]

Current adventures of Astarta&party.

Edit: Actually Saros is wearing the Ring of Gaxx, not a +2 ring of protection.

Looks like the improved Troll Mound hasn't been cleared as well. Oh well, the party will take that challenge first. The fight was not so hard when everyone has at least one +4 weapon (some have even 2). First wave of vanilla trolls were taken out quick by the fighters, with the help of the Sword of Flame +1 for finishing touch (mages had to cast short-time buffs). Because the Troll King and Queen are immune to weapons +3 or less. After they die, appear a lot of Vengeance trolls (permanent Improved Invisible, drain str on successful hit), but these are susceptible to ADHW spells, which is why Astarta and Alia released their *Chain Contingencies, loaded with ADHW *3 spells in that exact moment.


















*IA's Chain Contingency spell can be cast only once per caster every 24 hours. In which period, not even a normal Contingency spell may be cast.

Loot: Monster Summoning VI spell scroll for PC (8th lvl spell, summons Elite Trolls), some other unimportant items, a potion of Barbarian Essence, Bracers of Archery, Spear of the Unicorn, the Gnasher +2 club (which no one except Jack can wield, because IA nerfs it to be useful only by single-class Rangers), Protector of the Second +2, Green Leaves studded leather +3 (wearable by Rangers or with UAI, this suit provides 5% physical resistance bonus). Frankly, this battle was for the scroll of Monster Summoning VI, because now Astarta can gate in 3 Elite Trolls via CC if dire need be.

Chaos - chaos is susceptible to the 7th lvl druidic spell, Creeping Doom. He managed to release Killer Insects (similar spell, but buggy) on Astarta, but she totally negated the effect by drinking an Oil of Resurgence (regenerates 6 HP/round for 10 rounds) - no idea why this negates the effect of the spell. Chaos is also surrounded by a Chaotic Revenge aura, which triggers on every melee hit vs it, and if a save (vs Breath I think) is failed, it dispels all combat and specific protections on target. Chaos also dispels specific protections on successful melee hit. In short, Chaos fell, Bane was confused in the last seconds (he was near the unconscious Loren), but the Spirit of the Grove appeared and proclaimed victory, took Loren (so now Bane couldn't kill him) and that was that. Loot - Golden Lion Figurine (Joloon is slightly improved).






Next the party decided to get rid of the Cowled patrols for good, especially after their unprovoked threat at the Docks District when the party had to cast arcane spells to protect their lives vs Limak the Mastermind. 5 groups of Cowled wizards were slain with ease. The sixth was a bit tougher...no. At these levels, Zallanora and Kollynus Paac are easy targets. What pissed me was the fact that Kollynus managed to read one of her Absolute Immunity scrolls. Zallanora hides under SI:Div and illusions, which would be good for her if the party mages weren't higher-than-hers lvl (she's 31). In which case a single Remove Magic is enough to strip her of protections, and the warriors took her down in an instsant.










Loot: some mage scrolls and other insignificant items. Mages were slain so quickly that they couldn't call for reinforcements (more Cowled Wizards or Coin Golems gate in if Zallanora or Paac are alive). Several AI scrolls were the best loot here.

Okay, time for Spellhold. All hit xp cap,except Bane, who is lvl 36 (11 Criticals, 5 Hardinesses, ****Short Sword).

Spellhold: Killed Perth the Adept (managed to read one AI scroll) - still got 4 of these. Killed Galvena and her mage Vladek (managed to read one AI scroll - I'm getting old or what) - still got 3. Killed a local insane dwarven warrior (IA feature) - who dropped an amulet, cloak and ring +1, as well as the Stonefire battle axe +3.

Spellhold: Met Irenicus. Lost 1 point of wisdom (PC still has 18 though, because of a previously consumed Potion of Superior Mentality, made from Limak's brain). Lost bhaal powers (good riddance). On the first level of the asylum:

Obtained a Dusty rose ioun stone for Saros - improves AC by 1, better than the pearly white one anyway.
Obtained Ring of Regeneration (Riddle statue).
Cast some Wishes, got ADHW on everyone, this made a random Yuanti group move, and several of them, including the mage, went straight into the corridor trap, which killed them instantly. Loss of xp.

The good effect of the spell was the killing of Ruhk and the mephits in the portal chamber. Because in there are the following enemies:

an Ice Golem
an Elemental Golem
2 Gem and 2 Coin golems

With these enemies, I can't afford to have mephits, who may in some way disrupt the party's strategy.

Prepared Chain contingencies, triggers, sequencers all with Rays of Fragmentation. Rested. Big mistake. 3 Whisper Spiders appear after resting. Seems to have forgotten this. Luckily, CC did not trigger. Party fighters eliminated the spiders. Decided to fight the golems. Buffed well. A Wish - IHaste on all party members - brought the enemy Ice Golem running to the door and far ahead of other golems. Good. Positioned summons and party members widely. Astarta opened the door, the Ice Golem saw only her and the summons, released its Purge Magic on her. Other party buffs untouched. Astarta under Alacrity started refreshing protections and showering the golem with anti-golem triggers, sequencers and spells.The golem, seeing that she's protected from melee attacks, went after the Noble spider. Other golems approached, 1 Coin golem got through the blockade (Alia wasn't fast enough). She was under Alacrity as well though and started showering the Ice golem with her sequencers too. Unfortunately, her CC targeted the coin golem instead. Door blocked by Astarta and a Greater Yuanti. Fighters surrounded Ice Golem. Astarta kept casting Rays of Fragmentation (casting time 1) on it. Alia attempted Spell Sequencer to load with 3 Rays of Fragmentation. As soon as she finished casting, the Ice golem died. The rest of the battle was trivial.















IA v6's Ice golem has hilarious resistances and immunities. In IA v5 it was vulnerable to fire (though immune to almost all fire-damaging spells). In v6 it's almost impervious to fire. It wears a helmet, so criticals have no effect. It also has a Purge Magic ability once every 5 rounds, which has an AoE similar to the Remove Magic, but dispels everything except the undispellable buffs(which are very few anyway). And it won't shoot the Purge Magic unless it sees a buffed party member. It also has its other v5 features, like Lower cold resistance, Freezing Wind (slow + enormous cold damage) and cold spells. It also can dispel both specific AND combat (including Hardiness, Stoneskin, etc) protections on successful hit. In short, this guy is bane to fighters. Has enormous quantity of HP (250 or higher most probably), and great resistances. In short, it has to be killed fast, before releasing a second Purge Magic, but that's a very hard thing to do. Still, this time the party managed.

No xp from this golem group though. Got to the portal, got a +3 Doomplate. Wished for Rest, refreshed buiffs, went downstairs, currently battling a random undead group (this one includes a Shade lich, but it has SI:Necromancy running, so it's basically already dead.

Modifié par saros_shadow_follower, 06 mai 2012 - 07:11 .

[saros_shadow_follower]

Double post, sry.

Modifié par saros_shadow_follower, 04 mai 2012 - 01:07 .

[PPewt]

Watcher's Keep remains mostly unchanged in the settings I installed if I recall correctly, so most of it was unremarkable. Level 1 was a breeze, and I solved it in one length of Improved Haste on my fighter/mages. Level 2 was similarly easy, although the Chromatic Demon himself was a bit of the pain in the ass; SCSII makes him 100% immune, not 95% immune, to physical damage, so I had to load up as many casts as possible of Shocking Grasp, Melf's Acid Arrow, Flame Arrow, Glyph of Warding, Flame Strike, and Cone of Cold, as well as bash him with an Improved Hasted Flame Tongue and Flail of the Ages. After a long fight and many Extra Healing potions he went down to a lowly Flame Arrow.



Level 3 was... interesting. SCSII adds a few extra Dead Magic and Wild Magic rooms (that is, it adds Dead Magic and Wild Magic to some rooms which don't have it in vanilla), and makes most of the fights a lot harder thanks to its Improved Fiends, Improved Mages, and Improved Priests. Most of the fights weren't that hard, but I found the Shade Lord too difficult to worth risking, as well as the "real" (as in vanilla) dead magic room impossible, since SCSII fiends have extremely powerful fear and I had no way ot dispelling it. I wagered the way out to Aesgareth for a Scroll of Wish (I didn't need it, but hey, why not), won it, then killed him; the fight would've probably been too hard had I let him attack me, but with some well placed traps I was able to kill the Mage and Priest before their protections went up, thus leaving the rest of the fight fairly straightforward. I had a bit of a scare when my PC got stunned and Aesgareth dispelled her stoneskin, but he went down at around the same time, and I found myself the proud owner of a Robe of the Good Archmagi and a Deck of Many Things.

As soon as I got to level 4 I went on a shopping trip since my inventory was getting awfully full, and then decided I was Ready To Play ™. Catherine the Fighter/Thief draws.


Seriously, this game hates me... Two playthroughs, two Ruins.


A bit of XP, but it's no Throne.


And a very anticlimactic ending, although that was at least the character who needed it most (or who didn't need it least, take your pick).

Watcher's Keep level 4 was a pushover (as expected); the SCS Mind Flayers are nasty but a Fighter/Mage with Chaotic Commands on top of the usual pile of buffs and a giant heap of healing potions cut through them very efficiently. The Githyanki and Rock/Garock went down without any fight of note. I'm not going to even bother trying the Demilich yet since Kangaxx is already too hard, and decided to wait on Saladrex since he's one of the toughest dragons in vanilla. My long-sword wielding fighter swapped out Adjatha for Angurvadal, which is my first +4 weapon for my fighters.

Level 5 was actually a lot easier than I expected it to be. It all started when the Helmite ghost invited me for dinner, but unfortunately I didn't get along very well with his relatives... one thing led to another, Horrid Wiltings were exchanged, and, well, you know.



After taking care of the Green Dragon in the ghost's basement, the Imp who wouldn't leave no matter how much the ghost asked him to, and a medieval computer game of sorts, two keys were mine and the orb machine remained. Most of the fights were trivial, and though the SCS mages were SCS mages SCS mages are not news any more. The liches, however, put up quite a fight.

A wail of the banshee took out one of my Fighter/Mages while the rest of my party taught the Elemental Lich a lesson he wouldn't live to learn.



The wailing lich remained confident, but learned that Chain Contingency is a pretty good spell (or so I'm told) and that liches really don't do well without any spell protections at all.



With breaches and pierce magics shot out of a spell trigger immediately after, the second lich went down and the third key was ours.

During the ordeal one of my F/Ms leveled up in both classes, getting access to level 7 spells as well as the HLAs "Extra Level 6 Spell" and "Extra Level 7 Spell". The other F/M and my F/T were so close to leveling and getting their first HLAs that I decided it was Saladrex time before I bother working out whether I wanted to do spellhold or the Watcher's Keep Guardians first.

In SCS Saladrex really has a right to be arrogant; in addition to being the hardest-hitting dragon accessible in SoA, he can take absurd amounts of damage and casts Stoneskin, Spell Turning, and Protection from Magic Weapons. That said, he's also insecure, and is terrified of insects.



After a lot of back and forth, several devastating Remove Magics, and constant barrages of Chain Contingency: Breach ADHW ADHW whenever he tried to protect himself with Stoneskin or PFMW, Saladrex fell.



My F/T finally leveled up, learning Use Any Carsomyr; maybe she'll be more useful in serious fights now. My F/M is 1600 experience away from leveling up (...) so I guess it's time to travel back to Athkatla and let Sion know what happened to his friends. However, that's for another day.

Modifié par PPewt, 05 mai 2012 - 01:19 .

[saros_shadow_follower]

Edit: Forgot to mention that the party bought a second Girdle of Bluntness from the Umberlee temple. Gonna help a lot in multiple golem encounters.

Astarta & party, next adventures:

The random Undead on the Library level of Spellhold were no match, really. 3 Skeleton Warlords, 3 Lords and a Shade lich fell quickly. Then came Dace, who was slaughtered fast and killed via a stake brought from Athkatla. Dace's master (a Master Vampire) was breached and slain under NPP from Limited Wish. Obtained the blue Bag of Holding (capacity 100).







Wished for Rest, rebuffed (killed a couple of 3*Whisper spiders group which on this level chase the party on random intervals rather than appearing 1 group after each rest). Opened the library door. There were waiting a Cat-o-nine-lives and a Coin Golem. The cat's annoying, because its next lives' animations are real-time and help expiring party buffs faster. In short, when the cat fell, the party had no II, mages had no spell protections, and fighters had no Giant Strength. An Amnestic Librarian appeared after the cat died (he's similar to a Shade Lich), but Astarta dispelled his buffs with a single Remove Magic (he runs SI:Necromancy too), and the party fighters chopped him to pieces.

Loot - Scholastic cloak (+2 protection cloak +10 HP), useable with UAI or by a Necromancer. Would love to give it to Jack, but his Intelligence is only 17, and the cloak requires both Int and Wis to be 18. Also got the Monster Summoning IV scroll. This sixth-level spell summons improved Minotaurs for 15 rounds.

Rested upstairs. Finished the last two encounters on this level. The improved Crystal kobold guards include a mage, who uses SI:Div and illusion buffs - needless to say chopped after a single Remove Magic, also includes 3 Guardian Spirits (lower electrical resistance, use Improved Chain Lightning - but party were under ProElectricity and ProEnergy just in case), and 3 Amber Golems (decrease elec res by 25% on each successful melee hit, no save, but lasts only 2-3 rounds). Those of course were slain last. The Noble Spider was buying quite some time far-far off screen vs 3 Whisper spiders. Greater Yuantis were called by Alia to help vs the Amber golems (those are most vulnerable to Slashing damage).

Loot: 3 Chunks of Amber (party has a total of 5 now, needs 3 more), a ring +1, some other insignificant items.

Last challenge on the level: improved Book. No resting here after first page is turned or the treasure's lost. Gates in: Kobold Commando, Sword Spider, UmberHulk, MindFlayer, Beholder, Neo-Otyugh, Skeleton Lord, Coin Golem, Gem Golem, Ghost spider. All slain very quickly (so quickly that the Ghost Spider couldn't even gate his minions OR shoot improved web for that matter). Loot: Barbarian essence potion, Darksteel Shield +4, some spell scrolls, scroll of Memory Boosting.

Opened the way to the Minotaur level, descended, killed some vanilla enemies, and lightly improved ones (a Yuanti group and some Minotaur groups) while fending off attacks from random Asylum guardian groups (randomly chosen from 3*Whisper Spiders, 3*Skeleton Lords, 2*Asylum Scouts=Gem Golems).

Here the party found a large cluster of Skeleton Warlords via Farsight (counted post factum - 24). Good thing the corridor was narrow. Mages hepled block it with their multiple ProMW spells. Fighters took several lords down in melee, but it would take too long like that. So finally Saros and Bane started using their Risk Decrement abilities simultaneously, inflicting enormous amount of crushing damage to almost all Skeleton Warlords simultaneously, After they did that 2 more times, there wasn't a single Warlord alive.














Gesen's string is guarded by 3 Coin Golems - killed with ease. After their defeat, the party received a Memory boosting scroll and some more Mithril tokens.

In the token machine room was a Mithril golem. Unpleasant enemy, that. Even under critical, he takes 5-6 damage at most. Dispels specific and combat protections on hit, applies Bleeding on target, and slays summons with 1 hit (yeah, even Greater Yuantis). Maybe should've summoned a Noble Spider and a Planetar vs that. Still, the fighters managed, by cowardly running when someone's hit and approaching to fight the golem when he looked the other way. Loot: 10 mithril tokens.

With the collected tokens, managed to produce 1 pair of boots of the North, of Grounding and of Speed. 5 more tokens left. Can't use these.

Drinking potions of Defense like crazy while in Spellhold. Essential for many victories. For example, Skeleton Warlords could hit any of the riskbreaker once out of 5-7 attempts.

The rest up to Jon was uneventful. Lonk was slain quickly via RRR + Remove Magic + melee (he cast ProMW first - a silly move). Bane got a level up - 37. Chose Hardiness.

Jon was taken out so quickly this time that he barely had time to create clones, let alone gate in 6 Asylum scouts. If left unsupervised even for a couple of turns, he gates in not 6, but 12 Asylum scouts, and that's a power to behold, so he can't be allowed to do his thing. A quick remove magic (he uses SI:Div relying on his high level - not high enough, Jon) followed by multiple criticals solved that fight.








Took Saemon's offer. Got to the City-of-Caverns. Bought some scrolls from a priest (6 more Stoneskin scrolls are always good to have). Obtained Sekolah's tooth. Solved Imp's riddle - loot - boots of Etherealness (invaluable, very few things in IA grant immunity to normal weapons), a Cloak +2, a Permanency Scroll.

Fought Prince Villynaty. He has the assistance of 2 improved Sahuagin mages (use SI:Abjuration, Spell Turning and MGoI as protections, and a good repertoire of spells). and his regular guards. The party had to deal with several such sahuagin mages on the way. The prince also summons 4 Sea Vipers frequently. Eliminated his guards (including mages) fast, serpents followed, but the prince was still invulnerable to any weapon! Eliminated a second and third wave of snakes. Still - impervious. When he gated in 4th wave of snakes, killed only 3 of these, left one alive and focused on the prince. He was no longer invulnerable and fell quickly. Maybe he's only vulnerable while there's at least 1 snake alive. Dunno.










Loot: Soul Armor scroll for PC, Impaler spear, Wave blade, Permanency scroll, other items. King gave also the Gauntlets of Crushing and Rod of Lordly Might, plus a golden rope. Descended to Underdark after refreshing scroll/potion supply for the fighters.

Another level-up for Bane. Lvl 38. Has now 12 Critical strikes, 6 Hardinesses. 1 more level needed for Grandmastery in short sword,

Underdark: Bought some scrolls from duergars. Eliminated the first drow ambush. Got some drow armor and weapons. Dressed Torham in a full plate +5. Rescued the victims of imprisonment. Killed some. Freed some. Cured one. Got Albruin +1, bastard sword. Doesn't grant immunity to poison anymore. No Improved Haste scroll either. Travelled to Swirfneblin village. Bought some items. Got a reward AC 4 bracers. That's it for now.

Modifié par saros_shadow_follower, 06 mai 2012 - 07:30 .

[Gate70]

Nawgrim/Gate70 and Peer/Grond0. Session 12 (run time 1h40m. Total 21h10m)

Abandoned temple continued.
Peer starts to clear the hordes of undead. Mazzy Fentan is freed and sent back to Trademeet, then a riddling statue satisfied. A gem allows us to unblock a corridor and walk (prepared) into an ambush. Peer almost meets his match against a greater mummy and bone golem but toughs it out and wins through.

Shadow dragon
Our buffs and summons help against this fearsome enemy. We manage to wear it down, almost killing it but with our summons dead and spells spent the battle becomes harder. Peer uses his cloak to turn into a troll for a few laps of the dragon, then flanks it as Nawgrim shoots arrows from an alcove (when not blinded by the dragon breath).

Our potions and missiles are running low while the dragon is proving hard to hit. It is almost dead, but to our despair it hides and heals. Two can play dirty, thinks Nawgrim. He opens his wolfskin pouch and fishes out a scroll of cloudkill, all six charges of which are required to finish the battle.

That was tough, impressed with Grond0 for staying alive.

Shadow Altar
We rest and buff, with Peer deciding to target the altar then the lord. Nawgrim agrees to take on Patrick, but Peer is a whirling dervish and all three enemies are dead in moments.

Trademeet
After fighting off wild animals the djinn are attacked and defeated.

Druid Grove
Peer uses the FoA +3 to bash trolls asunder. Nawgrim helps with arrows, spells and summons. Lycanthropes get similar treatment while druids get skeletons and disabling magic to distract them from the melee dwarf that is their ultimate doom.

Three rashaka fall to double melee when Nawgrim realises his arrows +1 are ineffective and Lilacor is all too willing to bite into them. A few more trolls are down, then chaotic commands and Lilacor help with spore colonies. Three more druids fall to melee and arrows, then we ask Cernd to join us for a single battle.

Faldorn
Nawgrim helps Cernd choose his spells level 10 and slow druid casting; this is feels a reasonable disadvantage. Sure enough we have to rest so Peer can raise Cernd (Faldorn cast call insects despite call insects and doom on her, then out-meleed human/shifted Cernd with her stoneskins). Have another go Cernd.

He decides the slow casting could work to his advantage, calling two woodland nymphs and grinning when Faldorn is held. Nawgrim tells him to cast stoneskin and call insects but he keeps breaking into melee. Despite this he and the nymphs kill Faldorn and we part company.

Reloads: 0
Near misses: 1 (Planar Sphere Argrim ambush).
Peer Resurrections: 3 (de'Arnise courtyard, Planar Sphere halflings, Planar Sphere Argrim ambush).

Grond0
Peer, dwarf fighter 11 / cleric 11. Tank.
677 kills (+68 this session), Shade Lord.

Gate70
Nawgrim, gnome fighter 11 / illusionist 12. Protaganist.
399 kills (+20 this session), Thaxll'ssillyia.

[PPewt]

Spellhold and the Underdark went completely without incident and aren't even worth mentioning; those areas are really not balanced for Chain Contingency (is anything?). I sided with Adalon and did all the side quests, taking the evil path with the mage to get more high level scrolls and items. Coming out I sold my loot to Ribald for 200,000gp (!) and spent 50,000 of that on the Helm of Brilliance and a bunch of high level scrolls for my F/Ms to use in 2 levels (Black Blade of Disaster, 2x Chain Contingency, Spell Trap, Spellstrike).

After clearing out the Mind Flayer Area and the Shadow Dragon (once again, not balanced for a party of my level) I took a trip to Cromwell and assembled a bunch of nice items.



Improved Bodhi was really underwhelming; she had a permanent Fire Shield: Blue (by the way, what's with it being impossible to find scrolls of Fire Shield: Blue in SCS?), an upgraded Insect Swarm which ignores Fire Shield, and she heals the first time you bring her to low health. She also has some nasty abilities which seem to one-shot party members (I'm not sure exactly how they worked) but it wasn't really an issue. A lot of Horrid Wiltings later, she went down.



I cleared Suldanessalar via more Horrid Wilting abuse, since once again SoA is really not balanced for Chain Contingency. I decided to have some fun with Nizidramanii'yt; I walked in with a bunch of defensive magic and a triple-Pierce Magic contingency, and cast Time Stop while he chewed through my stoneskins. Immediately after Time Stop I cast Improved Alacrity, then unloaded every bit of damaging magic I had on him.



That's 7 Horrid Wiltings, 13 Skull Traps, 9 Magic Missiles, and a Dragon's Breath. I tried to get them set up to hit at about the same time and did a pretty good job of doing it, but unfortunately the sheer amount of effects on the screen caused the graphics to bug out and not let me take screenshots. Oh well, you can imagine what happened by looking at the "before" picture.

After using the 5 Sundanessalar quest items for experience it was time to go back and get ready for Kangaxx (after all, it's now or never). After quickly dropping by Cromwell to forge the Asylferund Elven Chain for my first F/M, it was time to pick up the game's superitems. First, the Robe of Vecna.

Azamantes was actually fairly easy since his entire design in SCS was around delivering a single massive punch with the Robe of Vecna, Improved Alacrity, and Time Stop, and the punch didn't break through my magical defences. However, he took out my Cleric as he went down, which proved nearly game-ending. He died soon after, but the Flaming Skulls lived on.



With my Cleric down, I had no way to control the Incendiary Clouds spammed by the Flaming Skulls, and the rest of my party soon went down. The skulls couldn't do anything to me thanks to my Globe of Invulnerability, but the Fallen Planetar and the Incendiary Clouds meant I spent a fair amount of time running around and using healing potions waiting for the clouds to wear out. When I had some breathing room, I summoned a planetar to clean up.



After resurrecting my entire party via my planetar and my cleric (once she was resurrected), I went for the other seals. The Rilmani seal was vanilla and thus trivial; easy enough that I didn't even need to rebuff for the final seal. The third seal was basically vanilla but with slightly better AI and better resistance to Horrid Wilting, but 7 spike traps and a bunch of hasted fighters quickly cleaned things up while my sorcerer spammed Breach and the like.

I decided to do the Watcher's Keep demilich after Kangaxx in case it was harder; I didn't want to test versus it, determine it wa s too difficult, and not do Kangaxx either as a result if he was in fact easier. My buffed up party took out Kangaxx's first form before he could even say anything, but I could handle liches at level 14 so they certainly aren't an issue at level 24. The demilich form turned out to be as advertised; a nasty caster with a weakened Imprisonment to balance it (you get a save at -4 and if you make it you get drained 4 levels instead of being imprisoned). The imprisonment wasn't a big issue regardless since all three of my mages were wearing SI: Abjuration, but Kangaxx put up a decent fight. Once I finally managed to get a time stop off I tossed an absolutely devastating set of dispels at him (cast in different places so that the Ruby Rays would hit first): ~3 Ruby Rays, 1 Warding Whip, 1 Spellstrike, and a True Sight. Once he became visible I just sat there lobbing breaches at him while the F/Ms hacked away. Finally, after imprisoning my F/T, he went down and the Ring of Gaxx was mine.

After Kangaxx's death and reading a scroll of freedom to get back my F/T, I quickly ran through the Gong quest, then back to Watcher's Keep to finish the areas I left in Level 3 and the Demilich in Level 4. The Dead Magic room was still nasty but doable for a change. The Glabrezu room (which has 3 of each type, rather than 1 of each type, in SCS) was rather chaotic and my sorcerer ended up using all her level 3, 5, and 8 spells, most of her level 9 spells, and all her HLAs except Planetar. The Demon Wraith was incredibly easy (as expected), doubly so since he apparently hadn't rested since I'd rushed by him ages before and thus had no protections except Stoneskin/Protection from Magic Weapons.

As it turns out, the Demilich in the Watcher's Keep was actually quite weak. His contingency didn't bring up Spell Shield so I cast Time Stop, Spellstrike, Breach, Energy Blades, and then whacked him a few times to disrupt his own time stop. His Spell Trigger brought up Spellstrike as well as SI: Divination and Improved Invisibility, but that was taken care of with a few Ruby Rays, a True Sight, and a Breach. After the spell trigger went down my F/Ms beat him to death as he was out of anything scary; unlike Kangaxx, this guy seemed to rely on two Balors from Gates to handle me, but they got shredded instantly by a Chain Contingency: Horrid Wilting x3.

Demogorgon himself proved disappointing. SCSII made him a bit smarter and gave him some more spells, but it didn't fix the fact that I could just unload a bunch of Horrid Wiltings on him and kill him in less than a round.



It also turns out that you can fulfill every path of the quest for maximum experience: read the ritual to seal yourself in, then ask Demogorgon to let you out, then tell the Helmites you killed him, then tell the Helm ghost you intend to kill him, then kill him, then leave the keep and read the Helm Scroll immediately (you have ~2-3 seconds before it disappears). This nets you around 200k experience per party member.

Since Demogorgon was the last SoA fight left to do, I dropped off all my loot at Ribald and then converted my ~350,000 gold into 6,012,000 experience by purchasing 668 scrolls of Freedom (this is the only place where you can do it in SoA and ToB, so I spent everything I had).

Irenicus claims that I am a gnat compared to his power, but I'm afraid he's a gnat compared to Spike Traps' power.



And thus ends this session.

[Grond0]

Congrats PPewt. Good luck in ToB.

[PPewt]

Grond0 wrote...

Congrats PPewt. Good luck in ToB.

Hell is still left, but at this rate I think this playthrough is basically over (ToB included). I haven't found an SCS fight yet which hasn't been solvable via chain contingencied ruby rays and the like, and I've already beaten most of the tough enemies. In addition, to my knowledge ToB is less SCS-ified than SoA.

Maybe I should run a playthrough banning chain contingencies during fights some time. They seem to be the main source of silliness, but then again without them beholders would be kind of dumb. At this point most fights only take longer than one round because of the travel time of the spell projectiles...

Edit: Also, a fun fact for anyone who isn't aware. Spellstrike seems to burn right through SI: Abjuration even though it is listed as "Abjuration, Alteration". In fact, it burns through everything other than Spell Shield (which it trades 1:1 for).

Modifié par PPewt, 06 mai 2012 - 06:18 .

[saros_shadow_follower]

Further adventures of Astarta & party in the Underdark.

The party quickly eliminated the improved Balor whom the Svirfneblin had awakened. They rested safely here, and then set out for the surface. Killed some beholders, but the more frightening enemies here were the improved Kuo-Toans and their Prince, who's not as vulnerable as the party thought:











So the prince basically summons 2 Kuo-Toan dukes (hit quite hard, quite resistant to physical damage), a Kuo-Toan improved Wizard and some other kuo-toans. Despite that the pool was contaminated quickly, the party still had quite bit of trouble here, because they didn't prepare with Giant Strength, and the Riskbreakers' Chain Breaker stances were used up long before that. Still, some Wishes gave stats to 25 and other bonuses. Not a very hard battle, but should've rested before tangling with the Prince. Loot: Permanency scroll, Bracers of Blinding strike, Kuo-toan blood, other insignificant items.

Tangled with some Demonknights on this level as well. They're frightening, come under random buffing sequence...well, this time three were under SI:A and only two under SI:Div. In addition, two were under Hardiness. Party was well buffed (all with ProFire and ProEnergy at least, and the mages with ProElements for better fire protection - Demonknights lower fire res if given time to do so). Still, the mages managed to quickly dispel enemy protections. Bane is wielding The truth longsword, which inflicts double damage vs all kinds of demons. In short, they were slaughtered fast. Pre-combat buffs included Free Action - dunno why, because in v6 Bigby's Clenched fist no longer holds the target for 1 round with no save - just inflicts some crushing damage.









Went downstairs, defeated the second drow ambush (the one on the bridge). Due to bad planning, the sorceress didn't have Foreknowledge activated. Still, PC managed to cast all arcane spells needed and thus disrupt enemy plans. She also managed to protect herself well from any harm with buffs. Alia was a target for enemy Breach, but Astarta helped by disrupting the enemy spellcaster via LMD.



The party defeated some more improved Kuo-Toans and decided to kill some more beholders. Prepared well. CC too. Rested inside Svirfneblin village so that rest isn't interrupted and CC- wasted.

The two mages appeared near the Beholder. Yipe. Had to move fast before CC triggered. They triggered alright, one flew for the wrong target, but one hit true:



The Beholder was turning to greet Alia with an Anti-Magic ray no doubt, but the party fighters quickly eliminated him with Criticals before he could do that. The Elder Orb either doesn't use rays, or simply preferred a Remove Magic spell first. That was his mistake.





Loot: Blade of the Equalizer, Manual of Elaboration, amulet of spell warding, potions of Storm and Cloud giant str, eyestalk.

[PPewt]

saros, after following your playthrough I'm interested to know more about IA but can't really find any good information on it (like most mods, the site is relatively vague). Is it designed to be played at the level cap (like you're doing) or are the fights scaled? I find the endgame content in BG2 interesting and fun but gamebreaking, and it would be interesting to see a mod which was better designed for it.

[corey_russell]

Coremonk the level 8 monk entering the challenge...

Coremonk, Minsc, Jaheira and Yoshimo have made it out of Chateau Irenicus. Coremonk intends to keep these people in the party, and also add Aerie and Nalia.


Coremonk only provided 9% of the kills in BG 1. Things might be turning around for him in BG 2.

Most deadly award this session: Coremonk, 46% of all party kills, 39 enemies destroyed

Setup:
Vanilla BG 2 with official ToB patch
Throne of Bhaal Expansion
core rules at all times including level ups and spell memorizations
"gore" on (party members can be chunked)
No mods.

Note to Alesia_BH: considering my last run failed and am vanilla, I need more practice I think, hence no SCS just yet.

[Gate70]

Nawgrim/Gate70 and Peer/Grond0. Session 13 (run time 1h50m. Total 23h)

Trademeet.
A brief crypt crawl to return a heirloom trinket to the mayor and a final skinflayer encounter are followed with a shopping trip.

We bribe a guard in the promenade (well he let us rest right next to him) to upgrade the horn of Valhalla. He suggests we hunt down the ring of Gaxx. Um, OK. gulps.

Unseeing Eye
Shadows, ettercaps and more shadows are no threat to us. Yet more shadows, spiders and yuan-ti are fine too but gauth don't like cloudkill and attack Nawgrim. Instead they meet a wall of summons oh and Peer who continues on through a final group of shadows.

Nawgrim casts foresight protection from petrificaion so Peer can stomp a trap and reach a forgotten temple. We borrow half a rod then enter the beholder pit.

Buffed summons and Peer are the order of the day, with a side-serving of greater malison, emotion and slow plus evocation spells when needed. Gauth and beholders fall before us until we have cleared the area. It takes three attempts to rest dodgy for Nawgrim who is usually targeted, injured and slowed recover the second half of the rod.

A few more summons and buffs are prepared before the Unseeing Eye is approached. We're expecting haste to mean Peer  or an aerial servant claim the kill, but a skeleton beat them both to the punch. Nawgrim suggests Peer could have used the belt of inertial barrier. Hmm, why didn't we think of that earlier.

Gaal and his group get all emotional before we leave.

Elemental lich
Peer wages a one man battle against the lich while Nawgrim rues his spell and weapon choices. Nawgrim retreats at one point while Peer is mazed. Peer is proving remarkably resilient to the spell barrage but the lich is doing the same against the improved Mace of Disruption. Eventually Peer drops the lich and we call it a night.

Nawgrim is thinking hard, presuming arrows of dispelling are no good against liches. Perhaps Azuredge might be an option?

Reloads: 0
Near misses: 1 (Planar Sphere Argrim ambush).
Peer Resurrections: 3 (de'Arnise courtyard, Planar Sphere halflings, Planar Sphere Argrim ambush).

Grond0
Peer, dwarf fighter 12 / cleric 12. Tank.
745 kills (+68 this session), Shade Lord.
Animate dead / War Hammer.

Gate70
Nawgrim, gnome fighter 12 / illusionist 12. Protaganist.
421 kills (+22 this session), Thaxll'ssillyia.
Magic Missile / Bow & quiver.

[corey_russell]

Gate70: How about send in some summons (Ariel servants, skeletal warriors good choices for liches), wait until his protections expire, then send Peer in? Or can Peer not wait that long? : )

[PPewt]

Gate, Kangaxx is actually doable at level ~10 with a fighter/mage, or at any level if you read from scrolls. Kill his first form via traps and sunray from Daystar (if you need extra damage, get a second sunray from the Helm of Vhailor) and his second form is easily killed with SI: Abjuration + attack (add in Ring of the Ram to make things faster). His ring is definitely worth it.

Hell, at level 12 (with improved haste) I wouldn't even say it's even slightly risky any more.

(Also, I find it strange that your Fighter/Cleric is tanking; I find anyone who can't cast arcane spells to be a terrible tank)

Modifié par PPewt, 07 mai 2012 - 02:48 .

[saros_shadow_follower]

PPewt wrote...

saros, after following your playthrough I'm interested to know more about IA but can't really find any good information on it (like most mods, the site is relatively vague). Is it designed to be played at the level cap (like you're doing) or are the fights scaled? I find the endgame content in BG2 interesting and fun but gamebreaking, and it would be interesting to see a mod which was better designed for it.

There is a thread on the Gibberlings3 forum concerning the mod, and also one on sorcerer's place. However, even there the information is scarce.  IA tweaks/twists the game in so many ways that any (even basic) description would take hours, and I don't claim such great a knowledge of the mod either.

The v6 is also extremely boring.  V5 is somewhat much more interesting, if you prefer powergaming. The mod's designed to be played with multiple reloads and at core difficulty. If one intends to play it as the author designed it to be played, he'd better be prepared to reload a lot. Thankfully, Sikret's knowledge of the game is quite limited and after 2 years of 'fixing' the mod (i.e. trying to remove all vanilla gold/xp exploits and installing various in-game bugs to destroy solo-play) he still missed more than a few xp/gold exploits, which unfortunately in v6 are the ground base for a successful no-reload (of course, you can still win the mod without exploiting if you intend to spend hours on each improved challenge, and those are a lot).

Seriously, if you want challenge, try IA v5. V6 is much crappier.

[Grond0]

corey_russell wrote...
Gate70: How about send in some summons (Ariel servants, skeletal warriors good choices for liches), wait until his protections expire, then send Peer in? Or can Peer not wait that long? : )

He does seem to get impatient pretty quickly - as you would expect of a cleric faced with a lich.  A bit of pierce magic might help things along.

PPewt wrote...
Gate, Kangaxx is actually doable at level ~10 with a fighter/mage, or at any level if you read from scrolls. Kill his first form via traps and sunray from Daystar (if you need extra damage, get a second sunray from the Helm of Vhailor) and his second form is easily killed with SI: Abjuration + attack (add in Ring of the Ram to make things faster). His ring is definitely worth it.

Hell, at level 12 (with improved haste) I wouldn't even say it's even slightly risky any more.

(Also, I find it strange that your Fighter/Cleric is tanking; I find anyone who can't cast arcane spells to be a terrible tank)

We don't have access to traps, although I was thinking that we would get Daystar before going to Kangaxx.

The main reason why Peer is tanking is that this is a no-reload.  He can always be brought back (and has been 3 times in the run so far), but Nawgrim's loss would be fatal.  I agree with you that a fighter/mage will normally be a better tank due to the protections available, although the fighter/cleric does have the advantage of being able to deal more damage.

[PPewt]

I can definitely understand not wanting your player/character tanking, which is why I personally prefer to set it to a class which is generally unlikely to die (sorcerer is by far the safest, a cleric or cleric/ranger is good too). It just seems like a waste to play a fighter/mage, the ultimate frontline combat class, and not actually use it as a fighter/mage.

Also, about traps, yeah, I had a brainfart, confused it with my own playthrough, and for some reason thought you had a fighter/thief along. That said, 2x daystar should still handle it, or if you're paranoid and wait until after spellhold you can do 2x daystar + 2x helm of brilliance if you use the potion swap bug (or are high enough level to cast simulacrum, but you shouldn't need help defeating Kangaxx's lich form at that point).

--

Small update (well, it was a lot of gameplay, but most of the fights were trivial):

Hell was... interesting. I went into the final fight knowing nothing about it, and figured I was so overleveled that I'd make things interesting by not running test runs before I played it out. 7 spike traps killed the Beholder and a Chain Contingency killed the Sword, and I assigned my weapon-using party members to take out Sarevok while I soloed the Dragon with Improved Alacrity.



Irenicus himself was pretty easy, and when he went down... there he was again, and I had no equipment and no party. My approach was relatively simple: I walked over to my equipment, picked it up, and put it on. From there I killed him with lower resistance and horrid wilting.



Irenicus' final incarnation appeared and I had two level 7 spells, two level 8 spells, two level 9 spells, and no level 5 or 6 spells. In addition, my fighter/mages had been level drained down to being able to cast level 4 or less spells. As a result, realizing that Irenicus had an infinite amount of Protection from Magic Weapons was... scary, to say the least. After waiting for him to run out and realizing he wasn't going to, I remember the three Wands of Spell Striking I had been lugging around hoping they'd come in handy. A few Breaches later, a Planetar lopped Jon's head off for the final time.



Well, that was actually a pretty interesting fight, although knowing Jon's abilities in each form it should be pretty trivial to do again in the future: use only magic missile/skull trap/pierce magic on the dragon, don't give anyone improved haste, and kill the other three forms the same way I did this time. Kill the first Irenicus by nibbling at him with crappy removal (Spell Thrust and the like). The second form could be killed the same way (with a bunch of ADHWs/Skull Traps). The final form would be easy with a giant pile of breaches, spellstrikes, warding whips etc.

--

Saradush went without incident, as expected. I did every sidequest and cleared every area but the Sewers. Every fight (including Gromnir) had no enemies with any particular resistance to being bombarded with AoE spells until they ceased to exist.

In fact, the entire leadup to Yaga-Shura was similarly uninteresting. By this point my mages had passed level 18 and could cast so many spells that the buff time for even the largest of fights (for example, the fight near Yaga-Shura's heart, which also includes a dragon in SCS) was much longer than the time it actually took to complete the fight. Off the top of my head, I usually used these buffs on my Fighter/Mages:

Resist Fear
Protection from Evil
Improved Haste
Spirit Armour (only the F/M wearing the Robe of the Good Archmagi, not the F/M wearing the Asylferund Elven Chain)
Stoneskin
Blur
Mirror Image
Fireshield: Red
Fireshield: Blue
Spell Shield
Globe of Invulnerability
Spell Turning
Spell Trap
Black Blade of Disaster
Protection from Energy
Spell Immunity
Spell Sequencer: Fireshield: Red Fireshield: Blue Stoneskin
Contingency: Stoneskin at 50% Health
(I didn't bother with spell triggers or chain contingencies... I'll start doing that if any fights are actually serious, but right now there really isn't any need; the "Purple Ball of Death", as I like to call this buff set, is unstoppable against anything so far with some dispel support from my sorcerer)

The session ended after Yaga-Shura died as soon as he could complete his lines. He would've died before he could flee and get reinforcements were he not invulnerable; my fighter/mages reduced him to "near death" in ~2 seconds.

[saros_shadow_follower]

Party's next adventures:

Visited the Deepdark caverns. It's quite a maze, thankfully I have a navigational chart (sort of). Still had to battle some nasty enemies. Most dangerous group is one of Deep Shadows, who drain Str on hit, but are still susceptible to ADHW spell, so they died from two CC loaded with 3*ADHW each (after malisoning them for better damage).

The lord of the deepdark caverns is a dracolich. It relies on immunity to Breach and Normal Weapons granted by the lich form to survive. However, this doesn't protect it from high-level Remove Magics, shot in adequate sequence to dispel its ProMW spells. Loot: Flame of the North +2, Kundane +2, Azuredge +3, some other items...a good treasure pile btw, here is the third Golden Star Garnet, the third Scroll of Bless, etc. Plus the powdered body of the Dracolich can be used to make either the improved Human Flesh or the Hesperus +5 longsword.

















Killed Vithal for the last few items. In IA v6 he no longer has a Time Stop scroll. Of course, reputation dropped by 2. No matter.


Decided to leave the Illithid and their Master Brain for chapter 6 (well, as far as I know, unlike the Dracolich, there is no scripted death if one visits their cave in chapter 6). Visited the Drow city. Bought everything needed from the Drow merchants. In all the time in drow form didn't remember to visit the Duergar merchants and buy some items from them. Oh well. 3 potions of Magic Protection and one of Storm Giant Strength wasted. No biggie.

Accepted Solaufein's first task. On the road was intercepted by an adventure group (N'ashtar, Nalmissra, Boz, etc). Killed them with ease. Loot: some ProMW scrolls (again), the Dragon Breath +4 halberd, some other insignificant items.







Volunteered to help Amariel find her brother (IA subquest in chapter 5). Her brother is in Deirex's tower. PC remebered to ask about the boy's name (very important). Fulfilled the drow's vanilla tasks. Obtained the Blade of Searing +3 bastard sword from the tavern fights. Finally Saros has a good slashing weapon against amber golems! Completed all drow tasks up to meeting the Matron mother. Talked to Jaraxle, killed Deirex and his 5 skeleton lords, looted the tower, found an Efreeti bottle on the 2nd floor (fixed IA item), battled a Noble Efreeti for it. Freed Ammar from the tower for some scrolls (one Permanency), some xp and a rep +1. Destroyed house Jae'lat afterwards - nothing special in there but gold or sellable items.

Re-visited the Matron Mother with just the Eyestalk of the elder orb (left the Kuo-toan blood on ground). In IA, each of these is sellable, and worth about 2k gold, so it's not wise to give all blood samples to the Matron Mother else one loses money. So the main plot was followed, Matron Mother and Phaere perished, but decided not to kill any drow on the way out. Reason - Bane hit lvl 39 quite a while back, and he really isn't in a rush for the 40th. He now has grandmastery in short sword, which was the important thing. Otherwise, for a non-exploit party, I'd say kill everyone you can in the city, because of the almost free xp and because of the items, which may still be sold for gold to the Svirfneblin.

Went to Adalon's cave, returned her eggs. got the quest xp, was transported to the exit. Didn't kill the drow guards beforehand for a reason. While Adalon was eliminating those, she was quite vulnerable and was breached and chopped to pieces via critical strikes. I don't like dragons. Pure profit-wise, it's the best course. She yields quite some xp, has 3k gold, even if one plans not to forge the Human Flesh (and frankly it's kinda obsolete). Killed the other drow blocking the way to the exit, killed also the war elves, returned, sold all adamantite armor + weaponry to the svirfneblin, left only one full plate and one elven chain + the piwafi cloak in a stockpile, plus some arrows. Carried out some 1*drow bolts, which turned into 11 piles of adamantite dust.



Talked to the elves. Traveled to Athkatla. Intercepted by Drizzt&co. Killed them. Traveled to WK, sold almost all of their stuff, except the scimitar Icingdeath. May prove to be very handy, especially in the last battle, EDE.

Traveled to the graveyard. Greeted by Bodhi. Killed her 4 vampires by ADHW contingencies. Entered her tomb. Nothing that scary here, used Limited wish for NPP, and an occasional Greater Restoration if someone actually got lvl drained. Entered the lower catacombs, faced Bodhi. In v6, she has the assistance of a Master Vampire and a bunch of Skeleton Grandlords, which come in pairs. Had to kill six Grandlords, which was a bit unexpected, but not that scary. What that group lacks is some sort of arcane or even divine magic support. Loot: some spell scrolls (including Spell Immunity), and the Cutthroat +4, plus a piece of sandalwood (IA feature- extended mage stronghold needed item).

[/img]http://www.picbg.net/u/29969/51260/641706.jpg[/img]

Rested outside. Buffed. Traveled to the Brigde. Met with Kruin and his gang. He has a couple of fighters, 2 Gish, he himself hides under SI:Div and Hardiness, and is nearly unkillable under it, not to mention his 5 ProMW scrolls. Remove Magic, Breach, Criticals - Kruin dead. Gates in 2 elemental golems. His lackeys were eliminated via ADHW contingency and the remaining alive - by Melf's arrows under Alacrity. The two Elemental golems were killed with criticals, relatively fast - they're quite damage resistant after all. Gated in just one Gem Golem.












Loot: a +3 two-handed sword, 5 ProMW scrolls, other items. Frankly, the silver blade or its upgraded IA version are not worth it, but the +3 two-handed sword is an important component of the upgraded Warblade. Just one more +3 sword needed for that, unfortunately the only location I can remember of is the Twisted Rune.

Went to Cromwell. Forged tons of items. Will post pictures of the items and the fights later. One new +3 ring forged for PC, a suit of +5 full plate for the R-C (which should grant immunity to missiles, but as can be seen from the subsequent fight - it doesn't), a suit of improved Ankheg plate (a good armor, grants 25 % elemental resistances, AC -2, but why the hell doesn't it have any AC modifiers, as any plate/full plate should???), a +4 cloak for captain Sparrow (but it disabled Hide in Shadows and Thieving button permanently), CF (finally a good crushing weapon for Bane), improved Cutthroat +5, Ring of Greater Djinni Summoning, Adamantite Horn of Valhalla. Wave Halberd, Silver Sword, Indigo Ioun Stone and probably a couple more, forgot all.

Traveled back to the Bridge. Buffed well. Went to Pitre&Valeria's home. Broke the wards via Adamantite dust. Entered. Pitre is under cheat immunity aura which doesn't break until he casts his Greater Restoration. What's worse, actually no enemy can die before he does that. Of course, Pitre didn't start with that. He started with Storm of Vengeance. Still, Dracandra fell fast, and the rest of the battle was trivial. Had to use Risk Decrements a couple of times though, because forgot to cast ProEnergy on fighters beforehand. Oh well.



Loot: Some more ProMW scrolls, +3 halberd, other not so great items, but a bunch of +1 rings. Found the 'secret documents' in the container with Laeral's tear necklace. Reported back for the success, was rewarded with the Crimson Ioun Stone (AC bonus of 2, but most importantly - a headgear for Riskbreakers/mages, which are short at the time due to forging the Indigo Ioun stone, which requires the Pearly White, Dusty Rose and Pale Green ioun stones to be sacrificed) and some scrolls.

Went back to the stupid squirrel at the bridge, talked to it via the ranger's 2nd lvl IA spell, and the dumb animal remembered NOW to tell me about a secret stone which it gave to me. Apparently, this is the wardstone needed to break the ward of the Kuo-Toan pool in Underdark and obtain the Ruby of the Gods.

Pictures when I get home. Yawn.

Modifié par saros_shadow_follower, 09 mai 2012 - 06:47 .