15202 réponses à ce sujet

[Grimwald the Wise]

Congratulations Corey. Hope that you do yourself justice in the chess championships.

[Grond0]

Well done with Russell, Corey - sounds like a pretty comprehensive victory.

corey_russell wrote...
I'm sorry to hear that Grond0. A pro magic scroll could have worked, or potion of magic protection (there are a few to be obtained) I think summons are the answer though. Did you know that fire elemental staff from planar sphere is NOT per day but x20? This means you could have saved that for this fight, cast 5 fire elementals and let them get mazed for ya.

I agree summons could have been helpful (and Frasier had the staff of earth as well as fire), though there's no guarantee that enemies equipped with mazed range won't also target the PC in preference to summons ...

[polytope]

corey_russell wrote...

What's Next:
I seem to have gotten down party play in the vanilla game. I play BG for fun, but don't find SCS fun due the requirement to buff for every fight, even the simplest ones. Moving it to insane is an option, but I will change up with solo play for a while. I expect to take a lot of hard knocks initially - I have a lot ot learn initially at least with most classes except perhaps fighter/thieves. Going to try a fighter/illlusionist.

Well firstly congratulations on a succesful no-reload with no arcane casters... iirc not many people have achieved that. I personally think fighter/illusionist is one of the easiest classes to play, any sort of fighter/mage is really. If you want a challenge with just vanilla game I guess you could try an unconvential solo like a single class druid or cleric - I'm not sure if it's possible to beat Melissan with a solo druid though.

Grond0 wrote...

I had been extremely careful during this chase and the Slayer had never got remotely close to Frasier - the screenshot shows accurately the range from which he cast maze.  The magic resistance check on this occurs at the point the spell is cast, so it was already too late here for Frasier to take any action and regrettably her 20% MR was not enough to save her.

Sorry to hear about that. Just a little quibble, the MR check actually occurs once the projectile hits (before the bars close in), this is useless knowledge for most spells except insect plague/creeping doom because they're simply too fast to gain space and use a potion of magic protection.

Eryx and party continued

Explored the Windspear hills to find Garren's kid, the orc archers had an egregious amount of potions, for weak, minion-type creatures (my party didn't get any). Eryx, Artemisia the archer and Randolph the sorcerer all leveled up in here, our sorc now adding Spirit Armor, Spell Shield and Improved Haste to his repertoire.

I should mention that I'm not using SCS Improved Vampires - or improved WK for that matter - as I've found them (at least in v21 and older) to be buggy and in the former case, very frustratingly so. Instead I'm using Xyx's old vampire scripts with a few edits of my own. Party will probably do WK at the end of chapter three (so it should still be a challenge).

Conster and Samia's party were easy at these levels - they always are for the stage of the game I meet them - no party member even took any damage.

After the rescue we explored the North Forest, tackling a rather tougher evil party. Eryx with minor globe managed to absorb their pet mist mephit's incredibly annoying blindness.



Only Aragrish the barbarian was injured here, their spell casters didn't get off anything threatening. Their mage has a time stop scroll in vanilla, but SCS aparently removes his ability to use it, so in my games I replace it with a random treasure. Their archer wielded the awesome Tuigan bow (I prefer a real fight to get such a powerful weapon). Also destroyed the altar's guardians (both the vampires and genies spawned in succession as it was about dawn), finding scrolls of Spell Trigger, Incendiary Cloud and Imp Mantle.

Then we fought a wyvern... yeah, you guessed it. CTD and I had to do everything again (I fixed the wyvern bug in another install, forgot to do so for this game). This time the Cyricist's party put up a much better fight, the thief managing to backstab both Leksa and Aleks (who was close to dying at one stage), the mage debuffing us and hanging around for longer and even their cleric getting off a few spells. Had to use several potions this time. C'est la vie.

You may have noticed I've completed all the easy Chapter 2 quests, avoiding the really high level mages. Feeling the need for xp I started the gong quest via Limited Wish scroll - interesting fact, LW doesn't break invisibility.

I brought the Weary Cudgel from Marina (an item added by Rogue Rebalancing), when upgraded with a Beljuril and 5000 gp it is a +3 weapon with a chance to fatigue enemies (save vs death) and importantly grants immunity to fatigue, meaning the swash-> cleric Leksa can for instance cast Greater Restoration without becoming tired. I'm generally not a fan of item mods but I also installed the item tweaks from Daulmakan's Item Pack - I'll note these as we go but the main change for now is that the Shield + Greenstone Amulets provide their bonuses just upon equip and the cloak of the stars grants mastery with darts (great for the archer using darts of stunning - borderline imbalanced really, will use sparingly).

Next up, party took on the Yuan-Ti guarding Mekrath's place. This was dicey.



Two remove magics from PC plus Secret Word from Randolph debuff most of the snakes (still, their contingencies kick in instantly...). Then the tables turn, the Yuan-Ti mages hit Eryx with simultaneous secret word (removing my spell immunity) and remove magic, dispelling all my buffs!



This illustrates the importance of Spell Shield in fights with multiple enemy mages, this time I used a potion of invisibility for the PC, but if this happened in a battle with an active Sphere of Chaos or a summoned demon (or worse, a planetar) - who can see the invisible - then there'd be a good chance of dying.

The above screenshot shows another rare bug, notice how Leksa the cleric is casting... nothing. Sometimes when you try to cast a spell the character will just wave their hands with no casting graphics and no result until you order them to do something else. It's rare enough that I usually only see it once per playthrough or so, I don't believe anyone's ever fixed it.

Anyway, Holy Smite spells plus melfs and Artemsia's arrows of ice interrupted most of the snake mage's spells, althoug Artemisia (who has terrible AC) got hurt quite badly by the greater Yuan-Ti. It was messy, but it worked.

What next? Well, after getting Dennis's gong (and dealing with those damn trademeet rakshasas) I guess we'll take on the vampires, then the Guarded Compound or Alhoon and illithids (toss-up for difficulty here really) then we'll find out how bad the Planar Warden with HLA's and a bunch of snake mages can really be...

Recap on the party:

Eryx, blade 15
Aleks, priest of Lathander 11 -> fighter 10
Randolph, sorcerer 13
Leksa, swashbuckler 10 -> cleric 12
Artemisia, archer 12
Aragrish the Cliched, barbarian 13

Still no deaths.

Modifié par polytope, 12 février 2014 - 08:51 .

[Gate70]

Congratulations Corey, commiserations Grond0 (I stash a ton of magic potions with kensais so Irenicus on the tree and in hell are 100% resistances). Good luck with the yuan-ti Polytope.

[corey_russell]

@everyone: Thanks for the congratulations!

Polytope wrote...
Well firstly congratulations on a succesful no-reload with no arcane casters... iirc not many people have achieved that. I personally think fighter/illusionist is one of the easiest classes to play, any sort of fighter/mage is really. If you want a challenge with just vanilla game I guess you could try an unconvential solo like a single class druid or cleric - I'm not sure if it's possible to beat Melissan with a solo druid though.

Theoretically yes. However, my fighter/mages have never been very successful (and I've tried many). As I said, I have more to learn, so giving it a shot once more.

[corey_russell]

@everyone: Until Alesia gets back with us on the possibility of using one thread only for no-reload challenges, in the mean-time does anyone mind if I rename the BG 2 thread to "BG 2 and Throne of Bhaal No-Reload Challenge"? instead of the current "25th No-...". Saying 25th doesn't mean anything since it's just one thread now. It did on the old forums that had to be locked when they got too big.

[Grimwald the Wise]

That's a good idea.

I personally would like to keep them as two threads. In which case the other one could be renamed "BG1 No-Reload Challenge". However it is no big deal whether there is one or two other than it is easier to find information relative to the part you are playing.

Clearly for BGT players there is no point in having two threads, but for Tutu or vanilla players, there is.

Modifié par Grimwald the Wise, 12 février 2014 - 07:55 .

[Matuse]

I don't really agree with the need to separate. Even if you're not playing BGT, most people go from 1 to 2. Of course "most people" is really not a whole lot at this juncture. It's really just 5 or 6 regulars. The EE releases have not seen a big influx of people around here. They are mostly around the Steam and EE-specific forums.

[Alesia_BH]

corey_russell wrote...

@everyone: Until Alesia gets back with us on the possibility of using one thread only for no-reload challenges, in the mean-time does anyone mind if I rename the BG 2 thread to "BG 2 and Throne of Bhaal No-Reload Challenge"? instead of the current "25th No-..."

Hi all. Sorry it took me awhile to respond. 

Updating the names is a good idea. In fact, that's the only change I'd recommend.

Were we to stop using the BG1 thread it would gradually fade away- decreasing the visibility of a substantial portion of our previously posted content. That's a non-trivial disadvantage to the one thread approach and I'm not convinced that it would be much more convenient. As long as we remain here, I'd prefer to keep both threads and streamline the naming. 

Ideally we'd update the names of both threads (perhaps we can access the BG1 thread with moderator assistance). If not, fixing the BG2 thread name alone should make things clear enough.

Best,

A.

Btw. I think the bigger question raised by the recent changes here is whether we should revist the question of moving to forum.baldursgate.com.

Btw II. Congrats on your recent success Corey! Best of luck with your upcoming solo!

Modifié par Alesia_BH, 13 février 2014 - 02:02 .

[polytope]

Update on Eryx and party

Met and rescued Arledrian, who was being attacked by vampires in the crypts (added RR content), he gave Eryx the silverblaze dagger which is +3, +5 vs vamps and casts Negative Plane Protection 3x per day (IMO this is how most level-drain immunity items should've been designed, NPP on equip is really overpowered). Also bought another RR item, a Cowl of Acuity which grants immunity to blindness and +15% find traps for Leksa (I have an option for heavy armor to reduce thieving skills, so the second ability is not useless).

Cleared out Bodhi's lair of vampires with little resistance (except Tanova), since 4 out of 5 party members were protected from level drain (amulet, silverblaze, MoD, enrage and NPP spell) Bodhi and her grimarchers weren't able to do much except clear my mirror images:



Told Aran we need to get some supplies before setting sail, Celestial Fury, dragon scale armor... you, know those sort of everyday items. Eryx hit level 16 (first level 6 slot for a bard).

On the way to the Windspear hills the party stopped to deal with the trademeet Rakshasas. The SCS scripted Raks are willing to waste their annoying AoE spells (Telefield, Web, Sphere of Chaos and clouds of all kinds) on a protected character - which makes a little sense, being AoE these have a good chance to catch other party members... unless of course they're waiting outside (which they were). My blade's casts of Remove Magic get rid of their initial buffs and Randolph's Breaches took care of their recast stoneskin/ProMW.



Then it was a simple matter of letting Artemisia (who ofc has the best THAC0) stand at the edge of their AoE spam and pincushion the Raks, who Eryx was having trouble hitting (they were also missing him except on crits - their THAC0 is awful although they can chop up an incapacitated character quickly). I wasted time buffing Aleks who ended up not contributing at all, bleh.

Time to light up the big Firecracker, he has tripled hp and instant casting but it ended up being pretty anti-climatic. The idea is to tank him either with the sorc or blade (whichever one he doesn't wing buffet away) while we debuff him - in my game stores don't sell arrows of dispelling (or protection from undead scrolls), so the dragon's haste can't be removed, meaning his speed is a bit of a problem.



Firecracker's targeting of remove magic was also poor, wasting it on my blade with Spell Immunity:Abjuration (I think this applies to all AoE's). Aragrish got the kill, although Artemisia did most of the damage (her racial enemy is dragon). Somehow he also managed to recast MST without me noticing, and bounced an acid arrow back at our sorc, it didn't matter, although it's annoying how there are no visual cues for spell protections on a dragon.

Our victory is marred by me forgetting to pick up the red dragon scales, dunno how as I got Carsomyr and even the underwhelming cloak of the shield. Somehow I remember to search random skeleton warriors for scrolls and then forgot these scales... Didn't realize this until I was standing before Cromwell, went back to Windspear but ofc they had vanished by then.

(And yes, I used ctrl +J to get around Windspear on my way back)

Oh well, it was good to take out Firkraag anyway, and my blade will have a use for Carsomyr sooner or later. However, un-dispellable fire resistance is going to be missed, particularly against Balors.

Modifié par polytope, 13 février 2014 - 12:50 .

[corey_russell]

Zemtan the solo Fighter/Illusionist - Update 1
Gnome, Lawful Good
** Axes
** short bow
** two weapon style

Zemtan is entering the BG 2 portion of a trilogy no-reload challenge. He is currently trying to get out of Irenicus Dungeon. Using standard Corey fighter picture. He intends to be solo, though it's not super strict, e.g. may let NPC's join temporarily for quests or what not. But for all chapter events, dealing with Irenicus, he will be solo.

Zemtan's stats:
STR 19 DEX 19 CON 19 INT 20 WIS 16 CHA 3

[corey_russell]

Just so people know, I've edit the Topic post ( item #4 in guidelines section) - this explains what kinds of no-reloads that take place in these threads. It seemed odd to me to have trilgoy no-reloaders hall of heroes, but yet not explain what a trilogy no-reload actually is in the rules for the challenge - this fix rectifies that.

Modifié par corey_russell, 14 février 2014 - 07:12 .

[corey_russell]

Zemtan the fighter/illusionist - Update 2
Zemtan has made it out of Irenicus dungeons with no problem or scares to speak of. The only failure was the vampire escaped - I realized later that if I had used spells rather than melee I may have actually killed it in time...

The next major encounter was Mencar's group - oddly enough, as an arcane this was absurdly easy - web, stinking cloud, cloudkill, greater malison, emotion, fireball x2 and another cloudkill did most of the work. Zemtan's short bow took care of Brennan and Orcslicer. He had to use his battle axes on Mencar though. This was a good haul, the full plate being the most useful loot.

Zemtan had just enough money to buy scroll case and ring of air control (RoAC) so he did that. He talked to Galen Bayle and will make a quick stop by the graveyard to pick up a free magical axe. After that he has really got to get a potion bag.

Oh yeah forgot to mention I consoled in a bag of holding since he is solo.

[Gate70]

The next Carthusian dealt with Sarevok a few days back and was promptly captured by Mae'Var and traded over to Irenicus.

Last session: He escaped the complex without too much concern, cleared the circus and dealt with Suna Seni before adding Renfeld and Xzar to the tally.

Mini update today: Picked up the silver pantaloons, handed in what was left of Neb and spoke to the circus guard to restore reputation. Paid 15k to the thieves and spoke to Aran Linvail. Almost level 12 but a few items (Ilbratha, ioun stone, ring of Gaxx) to aim for next time.

[corey_russell]

Zemtan the solo fighter/illusionist - Update 3

Zemtan's made good progress. He used a pro-undead scroll to clear out the undead in the graveyard, primarily for the Namuraa. He's also rescued "Montaron", getting a charm helmet in the deal. He's weathered a few ambushes so far, but with the RoAC, they haven't been much of a problem. He also freed Hendak.

And oh wise, your idea of buffing then fighting as a fighter has been working pretty well. I've gotten reasonable HP rolls (at 95 right now), so even unbuffed Zemtan is a formidable fighter. Will work on battling the slavers in the moored ship next - well, er, after doing the Lilacor quest. Just remembered about the repeating poison trap - to avoid it, I'll have to enter the ship via the sewers.

[Grond0]

Vail - dwarf swashbuckler (update 1)

After completing his travels on the Sword Coast Vail found escaping from Jon's dungeon mostly uneventful - except that he almost perished against the radiant mephit when I thought Vail was behind a doorway, but he got color sprayed anyway.  The other portals were already destroyed and Vail eventually recovered when one hit away from death - he hurriedly picked up the portal key in order to leave the area (so this time I got away with not using healing potions!).  The potion of firebreath helped kill Ulvaryl.

After doing the circus Vail stole himself some equipment upgrades from around the city, foiling the Suna Seni and Renfeld ambushes in the process.  He picked up the berserker horn and gave the warrior a first outing against Prebek & Sanasha before looting Harper HQ.

[polytope]

Update on Eryx and party

Fought some mindflayers in their hideout in the sewers (party taking a surprising amount of injuries in the first room). Did not fight their boss - the Alhoon - though, he's earned my respect in past runs. Then went to tackle the Slave lords in their guarded compound.

Pre-buffed downstairs, although my efforts were frustrated by the glabrezu dispelling Artemisia and Aragrish's buffs. I couldn't be bothered to rest and rebuff properly, so just cast Imp haste x2 from Randolph, remove fear from Leksa and Mass Invisibility (from scroll) to improve saves and effective AC. The last spell before going upstairs was Artemisia casting Find Traps (always let the archer memorize this, not the priest, because rangers have so few useful spells at 2nd level anyway). Doing so allows instant detection of the traps on the scond level (rather than standing around searching for a few seconds). Then it's a simple beatdown on the enemies, making sure to interrupt the cleric's summmoning spell (he has HLA's). Needless to say Artemisia almost instantly destroyed Sion's simulacrum.



I wasted a few potions of invulnerability after enemy TS dispelled our Mass Invisibility (paranoid of save-or-else spells as archer and barb weren't properly buffed), it turned out to be unnecessary... but on the bright side by defeating their fighters quickly I got two potions of cloud giant strength and one each of magic shielding and magic protection.

I couldn't think of a way to debuff Sion fast enough, so zapped him with the wand of cloudkill for spell interruption (I should ditch this wand as I haven't the willpower to avoid abusing it...). After his party were down, sent Leksa forth sanctuaried to investigate... there's no sign of Sion! 

As it happened he'd run downstairs (out of the cloudkill), which was smart, but he didn't stand much of a chance by himself, he was stunned with Koshi's katana immediately after breaching, having no time to rebuff with a spell trigger or contingency.

After selling most of the slaver's stuff, bought Vhailor's helm from Deidre; the first time I've used it in my games actually. It'll be great for Eryx when he gets UAI becuase a simulacrum from an arcane caster can protect itself from Death Spell with SI:Necromancy (for those who don't know, Death Ward does not stop DS from banishing summons). For the meantime the barbarian wears it.

Now to either explore the planar sphere or return the gem to Raelis. Flipped a coin; planar sphere it is then!

The two groups of cannibal halflings inside were pretty easy (as always at the levels I face them), although this screenshot illustrates a weakness of relying on Leksa's roguish detect illusion skill rather than True Seeing spell: She cannot see sanctuaried enemies:



Detect illusions also doesn't work on thieves hidden in shadow (all enemy thieves start off hidden with SCS, it does work against invisibility potions though) or mind flayers (who also turn improved invisible with SCS).

The elder orb was right by the door to the room with the runes, rather than where he usually is, which gave me a scare as I wandered into his LoS, still, had death ward and some other buffs active and made it out of range in time.

Lavok himself; I wasted a simulacrum scroll here (not really, as party has little use for them) before realizing the sorcs simmy was too low level to have any useful antimagic! It didn't matter, a Secret Word removed his spell turning (he also had a globe and SI:Abj but no Spell Shield), then the Efreeti hit him with a Flamestrike to disrupt his spellcasting (he had a red fireshield but wasn't protected from energy like most high level mages for some reason) sorc added an Incendiary cloud (from scroll) interrupting the rest of his spells and doing most of the damage, he soon comes to his senses.

Demon plane was easy, party took some damage as I couldn't be bothered rebuffing just for this, no real danger here.

Tolgerias was more interesting, I initially teased him into casting Oracle with the archer wearing cloak of non detection, then buffed party with illusions and other short duration stuff... only for his apprentice to reveal us! (got a critical miss trying to interupt her)

I stunned Tolgerias's apprentice with darts of stunning (an accident really, I don't usually attack mages before their buffs fire unless they start casting divination), anyway her stun wore off before the battle progressed (see below).

Tolgerias Chain Contingency fired with Imp Mantle, a simulacrum (once again, falls almost instantly to Artemisia's arrows) and mislead clone, he then cast wish for double length time stop and alacrity!



During this timestop + IA he wreaks havoc... well, not really. A few antimagic spells, dispelling Aleks's buffs and a few enchantment spells (archer has Aegar's hide + barbarian was enraged)Tolgerias then summoned a glabrezu (only one for some reason, he's usually a serious demon spammer) and cast telefield. Meh, that could've been really dangerous if he'd had a better spellbook for this game.



Randolph cast SW to remove his Spell Shield and Eryx followed up with a scroll of Khelben's Warding Whip (Leksa's detect illusions made him targetable). Tolgerias hung around for a while though, rebuffing himself with a spell trigger just as sorc was about to breach him, so used the wand of fire and Holy Smite spells to finish him off (his mage's buffs went down to Eryx RM so she didn't last long).

Oh well. Tolgerias would've been more formidable if he'd had a Spell Trap, as Randolph still hasn't reached lvl 14 for Ruby Ray - probably he will upon returning the planar sphere to Athkatla, which I'm just about to do... 

Modifié par polytope, 16 février 2014 - 05:24 .

[Grond0]

Vail - dwarf swashbuckler (2nd and final update)

I shouldn't have tempted fate by talking about healing potions in the last update. 

In the Temple sewers traps killed Roger's troll and the rakshasa on the way to opening up the Unseeing Eye quest.  However, Vail surprisingly died there after being clawed by an ettercap.  I think he had 55 HPs after being hit and took a potion of power to get 13 more.  I expected that to be sufficient to see off the poison - but it wasn't.

[polytope]

No healing potions is a bit of a tough restriction to place on your solo swashbuckler... Gloves of healing from Ryan Trawl might work (they claim to cure poison, haven't tried it myself).

[corey_russell]

the cleric staff (from the Graveyard) also cures poison, though Grond0 can't use it until he had UAI. Sorry to hear that Grond0...

Modifié par corey_russell, 16 février 2014 - 05:20 .

[Gate70]

Carthusian XII has had a couple of bits of luck this morning.

Firstly he found the Killer Mimic refuses to play when Improved Invisibility is active. Arbane was required to avoid the mimic glue and Carthusian realised he was lucky not to try and time the sword use. His non-proficient attack gave the mimic plenty of time to share some acid out though and Carthusian retreats outside to heal and return with a shadowy DUHM. The tables are turned at this stage and Carthusian has a surreal chase-the-mimic-around-the-cave moment before finally killing it.


Next he heads over to Trademeet and at the last moment decides not to "waste" the protection from petrification scroll as the djinn won't be a problem with Improved Invisibility. The one outside is stunned and killed but the two inside both target Carthusian (oops, save vs spell is 2 while invisible but he saves against both). 3 more stunning blows is enough to gate70crash their stoneskins. I should have known better here  and not relied on the saves.

Still travelling light - could afford the belt of inertial barrier but not the cloak of displacement too.

[corey_russell]

Zemtan the solo fighter/illusionist - update 4

Just a quick note - Zemtan has solved the D'Arnise Keep problems (and become its lord) and also Trademeet problems. Since he dual-wields the Stonefire and Frostweaver, he is very, very good against trolls. Now that he has the shield of harmony, he's ready to try to solve the Umar Hills problems, he's headed there next.

[corey_russell]

Zemtan the solo fighter/illusionist - FINAL Update!

Zemtan defeated the undead enemies at Umar Hills Temple area - it was actually pretty difficult with those greater mummies and lichs...but he made it OK. He then planned to solo Thaxxy using Tasheron's bow and AoP - problem though! Zemtan failed to save vs. the dragon fear, despite spells being at -1. So either there's a penalty to save or maybe it's not spells, breath perhaps? What's sad is I could rested first and up resist fear...back to the old drawing board, as they say.

[Grond0]

Sorry to hear that Thaxy's claimed another victim Corey.

[Matuse]

According to a thing I found, dragonfear is a save vs petrification. There's also a bonus or penalty to the save depending on the age category of the dragon. Is there any way to determine how old Thaxll'ssyllia is?