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[corey_russell]

Malvae, faithful Cleric/Ranger. Update No. 2 and finale.

 

Malvae got  killed by a trap under the Copper Coronet despite running several protections and wearing the Shield of Harmony. In my last playthrough I foiled that trap with a Jelly, but in this one I had no such opportunity and not knowing what the trap actually does I got my pretty cleric killed. 

 

I definetely feel more comfortable with rogue type or arcane caster. The limitations brought by cleric class are harsh and make the solo run indeed painful.

That's a petrification trap. It's also avoidable, if you are careful, you can walk on the thin planks next to the laid-down door to avoid it. I've had to avoid it many times, especially on my all paladin runs.

 

EDIT: Of course, Grond0 beat me to the punch on this one! That trap ended one of my runs as well, think fighter/mage.

[Aasim]

Ilydan the Cavalier

 

A horrible session overall.

We left the final statues in WK for later and traveled to Windspear Hills. Had severe trouble against Rukh Transmuter there; we have virtually no anti-magic or any way to dispel his protection. Jan died, but got ressurected. Kivan lacks +2 arrows to actually hit him. Both Ilydan and Minsc are too slow to hit him on a regular basis. Used up 10+ potions of healing just to stay alive.

I'm really starting too feel the weight of slow leveling here, we were just level 10, and with very few "easy" exp to be gained any more.

I have to rest fairly often, Aerie has but one level 5 priest slot, and there are many useful spells here (most used Raise Dead and Chaotic Commands). 

 

Samia's party was rather easy (Malison+Chaos did nearly all the work, Xan feebleminded the cleric), as was Tazok. Kivan took his heart. 

Fire Guardian was also killed.

 

Killed the golems for the Heartseeker bow. Item Revisions buffs this bow a lot, it has a 10% chance to kill the target instantly on a failed save (vorpal). I nerfed this effect down to allow a save at +4. Regardless, it's a powerful weapon and Kivan now gets a large boost in power.

Had a brief conversation with Firkraag, even Minsc suggested we skip this battle for now. Conster is unavoidable, and it's time for a disaster.

 

He started by summoning a Hakaeshar. SR buffs summons considerably, and it takes a while to bring this beast down. Conster is fully buffed, has PFMW (I don't use normal weapons against PFMW.  ) and is invurnerable to everything we have apart Chaos, which he saves against. Apperantly, he's a Conjurer - he resumed his casting unmolested, and summoned 2 Cornugons and an additional Nishru for good measure.Cornugons are a pain even at later levels, but fighting these at level 10 is suicide.

 

Ilydan and Minsc drink very big healing potions from WK after Conster released his 3x Flame Arrow sequencer and Cornugons blasted us with Lightning bolts, Kivan dies instantly.

We kill one of them succesfully, so not all is bad.

 

Conster next casts Confusion (saved, Minsc is immune via Lirarcor), summons a Wyvern and a lesser Earth Elemental. His next Confusion spells disables Ilydan.

 

Blasted wizard continues his rampage by closing in on my barely protected casters. Minsc gets stunned by Cornugon and is bleeding.

Things get better all the time...

 

Aerie to the rescue! She instantly eats a Minor sequencer of 2x Acid Arrow, Cornugon teleports to her and she starts to take bleeding damage. She's under Stoneskin, so is safe for a few seconds. Manages to succesfully cast Remove Paralysis.

 

Cornugon releases another Lightning Bolt (SR makes this a single-target spell so SCS uses it fairly often. It's one of the most damaging single-target spells in the game) and Minsc bites the dust.

 

 

Aerie tries to run, but Cornugon teleports and another lightning bolt is too much for her to handle.

 

Jan stood no chance. At least he dispelled Conster's illusion buffs early on (he went in under the cover of imp.invisibility so was safe, but once Conster summoned Cornugons he left the scene with great haste. Apperantly, he should have ran further).

Xan summons a Genie via scroll. I usually save scrolls untill the bitter end, but I fear the time is not on my side anymore.

 

Cornugon is out.....finally. Ilydan regains his composure. "Look, they're all dead apart my gloomy Enchanter."

 

Few more rounds of chasing (Conster actually ran out of spells   ), he eventually dies.

 

I pick up the loot from my dead party, stash it in a container, go to Trademeet, raise them all for a hefty price, return to Windspear Hill, re-equip everyone, and report my success to Winspear. I have been granted paladin stronghold, and I decide it will be a long time before I ever pay Windspear Hills another visit. Not all is that bad - Ilydan now has Delver's Plate (+50% resistance to magic damage), Kivan has Heartseeker, we gain level 11, and are quite rich in gold.

 

 

More bad stuff is coming soon I reckon....

[Epsil0]

Good job surviving the battle, though it seemed... somewhat sketchy, to say the least. A trick I've used and abused to save money is to just resurrect my cleric and then spend the next day spamming raise dead: you can somewhat justify it roleplaying-wise by saying that you need the money for Imoen.

 

By the way, you picked a heck of a hard team to work with... Two multi-class mages, another pure mage, one front liner that prefers two-handed weapons, an archer, and your main PC as a tank. The fact that you haven't lost or lost anyone yet is kind of an achievement all to itself. One suggestion though: find a way to justify carrying around non-magical weapons, if only because between your three mages, ONE of them should know about the spell and the way to counter it. Force a weapon switch to take a person's aura somehow or something if it bothers you, but this isn't like weapon-switching to ignore an incoming spell which IS sort of cheesy, it's Mage Killing 101. A warrior that  doesn't have a non-magical weapon sheathed somewhere within reach is just murdered by any decent spell caster in that world.  

[Grond0]

Good job surviving the battle, though it seemed... somewhat sketchy, to say the least. A trick I've used and abused to save money is to just resurrect my cleric and then spend the next day spamming raise dead: you can somewhat justify it roleplaying-wise by saying that you need the money for Imoen.

 

By the way, you picked a heck of a hard team to work with... Two multi-class mages, another pure mage, one front liner that prefers two-handed weapons, an archer, and your main PC as a tank. The fact that you haven't lost or lost anyone yet is kind of an achievement all to itself. One suggestion though: find a way to justify carrying around non-magical weapons, if only because between your three mages, ONE of them should know about the spell and the way to counter it. Force a weapon switch to take a person's aura somehow or something if it bothers you, but this isn't like weapon-switching to ignore an incoming spell which IS sort of cheesy, it's Mage Killing 101. A warrior that  doesn't have a non-magical weapon sheathed somewhere within reach is just murdered by any decent spell caster in that world.

Seconded - both for beating off the demons and needing normal weapons.  My reaction on reading was also that surely characters would have wanted the comfort of carrying around that staff that they were taught their first lessons with ...

[Aasim]

@ Epsil0 and Grond0

 

Thank you both. I could maybe make each weapon "pause" somebody when he equips it, but I'm fairly ok with the way I play...

PFMW vs normal weapons - what I like in a game is "fair play". Enemies don't switch for me (they don't have to since we can't cast pfmw   ) so I don't either. Pfmw is a spell which hugely favours the player over AI, so I don't like to abuse it. I see the point, however, and have no objections - normal weapons vs pfmw is a valid tactic as old as the game itself.

 

I guess I just need 3 spells - Secret Word, Breach, and later on, Ruby Ray of Reversal, eventually Spellstrike (maybe). Xan and Aerie both failed to learn SW, which is very bad. I'll need to find a few scrolls soon, or buy them.

Another problem is that mages normally level up quite fast up to a certain level (11), then they slow up. Here I have to play a mage who has a constant level progression as a Paladin. Minsc is quite ok when faced with low level-up, but mages depend almost exclusively on their levels, not equipment.

For extra pain, SR removes Protection from Fire spell from level 3 and makes it a level 5 spell!

I've finished a relatively big part of the game, and still don't have a single level 6 spell.

Aerie is indeed bit of a mistake imo. Her HP means she's a constant target, and priests with paladin's tables lack what is imo the most important spell level - 5. I would have gladly taken Viconia, but she's evil and would leave. Cernd would probably be better, but SR makes druids loose on Chaotic Commands, so I'd still need a devoted cleric. Anomen is beyond my patience.

Jan is ok. Detect illusions is an imbalanced skill since it screws SI:Divination utterly, and saves me the trouble of memorizing Oracle and similar. 

Xan's main issue is that he lacks any AoE damage apart low-level Skull trap, but that would hurt my tanks as well.

All 3 casters (and Kivan) have HP pools of a rat and would die to a single Horrid Wilting (SR reduces the damage output of this spell, but save is against Death and is made at -6), so any high-level mage is beyond my chances now, I can only partially  protect them with potions prior to protection from magic energy, and those are rare and expensive.

Mages be damned!

 

P.S. 

I usually "spam" Raise dead as well. But I can't spam it now since Aerie has only one level 5 slot

[Grond0]

Rifft - dwarven swashbuckler (update 3 - knotting the ropes)

 

Some more good progress this morning for Rifft, though he did have the first moment of slight concern in his run when fighting Samia.

 

He whipped through the de'Arnise Hold with no problems.  Defeating Torgal took him to level 18.  

Deciding to continue the trollish theme he moved on to Trademeet.  He was careful there to avoid combat with multiple enemies at once (given his relatively low HPs) and made decent progress.  The shadow druids were mainly killed with Firetooth stealth shots; the rakshasas were left alone for now, while Faldorn was prey for Cernd.

 

After reporting back to the High Merchant Rifft saw a statue erected in his honour and, more importantly, got some more XP to get to level 19.  Before leaving he emptied a tomb and then found Jenia coming to talk to him.  I hadn't expected to see her as Rifft hadn't cleared out the skinner HQ in the Bridge District.  However, it appears that just exposing Rejiek is enough to send him to Trademeet - he should have chosen somewhere else to go.

 

In the slaver ship Captain Haegan was brushed aside and a troll was one-shotted.

The wizards failed to get a spell off (one scared, the other one-shotted).  The Fallen Paladins failed to get up (level 20).  Rifft hid from Sansuki on the way to call on Neb - with detect illusions now up to 100% he wouldn't have lasted long whatever happened, but Kitthix webbed him anyway.  Rifft dodged Parisa on the way back to the tannery, where the enemies all picked the wrong target.  

To finish off his tour of the Bridge District Rifft killed some kidnappers and collected their intended ransom.

 

On to Windspear Hills where Rifft (with his bag of holding) had the luxury of not having to travel back to Athkatla to get some forgotten acorns.  He got level 21 fighting some golems near the entrance to the dungeon before moving on to a group of vampires.  A couple of those died in an initial sunray (timed to go off just before they were able to attack and drain Rifft), but the remainder had to be tracked down using summons (using one rest to refresh those).  More golems and greater werewolves got him to level 22 before he took a couple of potions of fire resistance to combat the genies.

 

The fight with Samia was the least controlled of Rifft's run so far.  I didn't set any traps initially, neither of Kitthix's web tangles worked and only one of Rifft's hasted bolts of biting struck home - that meant all the enemies were still alive when his summons died / vanished.  I was then caught out by the thief's detect illusion ability, which resulted in Rifft being not that far away from being trapped in a room (which could easily have been fatal).  However, he was able to make a run for it across the dungeon (chased by hasted enemies) before going invisible again.  Once haste had worn off and enemies were split up into ones and twos it was no problem to finish them off - Kaol being the last to go.  Learning from his mistake, Rifft left some traps for Conster.  His traps changed from having added fire damage to added poison damage at level 21, which meant that it was now safe to attack Firkraag as well (level 23).

 

Back in Athkatla Rifft sought out Mencar & co.  Kitthix ensured that Brennan couldn't run away and the group were neatly finished off.  

Next was Mencar's big brother, Tarnor.  First Rifft triggered Gaius's true sights and waited them out.  Then he sneaked in and laid some traps next to Gaius (hidden from Tarnor by a pillar).  After putting up a stinking cloud Rifft attacked Gaius - who immediately died from the traps.  The rest of the fight was easy with Rifft just retreating at the end in order to use up a couple of back-up traps on Tarnor.

 

Getting close to HLAs Rifft moved down the corridor to Mekrath's lair.  The mage died in traps (forgot to give him his mirror back first).  A couple of Bhaal horrors persuaded two of the yuan-ti mages to run into traps as well, while the third couldn't quite finish off summons before dying to Firetooth.  Still just short of his next level, Rifft progressed far enough down the Unseeing Eye quest to encounter another yuan-ti mage - the XP from that providing his 24th level and the ability to use any item.

[Aasim]

Ilydan the Cavalier

 

By Tymora's Luck, he's still alive. Another bad session.

First I wanted to do paladin stronghold quests. First one ended with both Aerie and Jan dying....again.

 

2nd quest, Jan was the sole victim. Kivan had to run away to survive. Kivan also managed to survive the dreaded Disintgrate (save is at -5) which was incredible. I've also noticed that is SCS wizard detects magic damage resistance at 50% which is what Ilydan has now, he refuses casting magic missiles at that character. In effect, Minsc or Kivan eat them on a constant basis now. I'll rethink about the armor I use.

 

3rd quest I was dead afraid of. Protecting that brat is hard business. Several thieves had gone invisible instantly, so Jan used his spectacles to reveal them. One headed upstairs. We ran after him. I tought Kivan had enough stopping power in his bow, but I was apperantly wrong. Brat dies, I can't get Pride of the Order anymore (this armor would have provided me with confusion immunity and additional protection vs Chaotic creatures, hence Ilydan would enjoy wearing  it). I also loose access to my stronghold, but it proved to be more trouble than it's worth.

 

I use the gold to upgrade (Crom can upgrade WK items on my install) Paladin's bracers (+2 THAC0, +1 saves, +10 HP, Righteous Fury 1x day, Ressurection 1x day) and Quiver of Arrows (allows for +3 arrows now with IR).

Having spended a lot of money on upgrades, down we go to the sewers. Enemies there were immidately shot by 3 Chaos castings, only Gaius made all saves.

 

He died while his contingencied stoneskin was triggering. The rest of them mostly wandered about aimlessly confused, and were easy pcikings.

 

Rakshasa was also killed, did Roger's Sea Troll quest as well. One big quest to go - De'Arnise keep. I disban Jan for good, and pick up Nalia otherwise she pays me only 650 GP. Battle against yuan-ti mage upstairs lasted for an eternity, he confused Kivan 3 times.

 

Torgal

 A very simple tactic is to draw the sucker out with an invisible character. But we're heroes, and march in under heavy buffs. Kivan uses his Disarm maneuver (applies THAC0 penalty and possibly renders the target unable to attack) on Torgal. Casters launch their Chaos spells.

 

One yuan-ti mage remains operational, as does Torgal. Kivan gets confused...bad news.

 

Xan summons a Flesh Golem via book. Aerie chooses to dispel confusion from Kivan, but the confused archer turns his attention to her and kills her, scoring a vorpal as well. Body can't be recovered.

 

Minsc succumbs to sleep, and Torgal kills Kivan. Apperantly Torgal is a barbarian, so has cleave feat.

 

Few rounds later, Ilydan and Minsc manage to destroy the remains of the enemy. Flesh golem was very helpful.

 

As a substitute for Aerie, I adopt Keldorn, the inquisitor paladin. IR removes free action from his armor, it now gives magic damage resistance instead. His sword can silence the target, and his kit is changed considerably with KR.

Most importantly, his Dispel is a single-target ability. 

Finished the Skinner quest in Trademeet. Ilydan gained level 12, now he can cast Divine Retaliation - sorta fireshield with magic damage which triggers when he gets attacked, not when he gets hit. A lovely spell.

We go to Brynlaw from here.

[Grond0]

Rifft - dwarven swashbuckler (update 3 - burning the ropes)

 

The family were a bit slow out of bed this morning, so there was time to make a bit more progress with Rifft.

 

Surprisingly, there were no beholders just over the bridge on the way to Amaunator's temple, so he went to get half of the rod before leaving.

 

Now he can wear the AoP he paid Gaelan Bayle and collected his goodies from Aran Linvail - no more need to pussyfoot around vampires now  .  Also bought Vhailor's Helm and the Shield of Balduran.

 

Rifft whisked through the remainder of the Unseeing Eye quest.  I could feel the urge to take risks, but managed to control it (his save vs death is only 2 so he's vulnerable to undead if not played carefully).  He did get taken down to about 30 HPs when 2 greater mummies hit almost simultaneously, but immediately broke contact (in close combat I'm typically pausing every half second or so) to go and regenerate a bit before returning to finish them off (level 25 - WW).  The SoB was then used on the beholders while the blind priests tasted a couple of cloudkills.  Killing the Eye itself got Rifft to level 26 - time trap.  

Despite its name I thought it would be better to return the Rifft Device and then went to settle accounts with Gaal with the help of a couple of cloudkills.

 

The final target in the sewers was the illithid lair.  That was no problem - they really don't like traps being laid just outside the doors to their rooms (level 27 - WW) 

and Rifft's brains stayed totally intact as he finished things off.

 

He completed the Sir Sarles quest and then retrieved a ring for the Lathander temple (level 28 - WW).  Then quickly ran through Aran Linvail's tasks and went to sort out the vampire HQ.  The vampires there were no problem, but the greater ghouls were stealth attacked for safety.  I intended to use a series of summons to wear down Tanova, but Kitthix was successful with an opening web tangle so Rifft used a WW to beat Tanova unconscious with his fists

allowing Kitthix to finish the job (oddly, the berserker's attack is counted as magical even though it's using a normal axe).

 

The vampires downstairs brought up level 29 - spike trap - and Bodhi was soon walking into a trap (or 6).

 

Rifft has just reported to Aran Linvail and told him to keep the ship in port just a little longer.

[Gate70]

Great progress Grond0. Any dangers you're concerned about?

 

Aasim, that paladin quest is tricky in the standard game so if SCS improves it (can't remember the assassin going invisible for instance) that must be a real pain. It's probably easy to metagame (traps laid upstairs or 5 summons downstairs to block the stairs) but not the sort of thing a paladin should have to resort to...

[Grond0]

Great progress Grond0. Any dangers you're concerned about?

Only doing something stupid!  I'm going to take precautions this time against dragons that don't take damage during timestops (which ended one run with a swashie that I thought was promising) and off-hand I can't think of anything else that should prove a danger.

[Aasim]

Ilydan the Cavalier, final update

 

Perth the Adept proved fatal. His prebuffs were too many, and he had Time Stop + Alacrity memorized. We lost Kivan, but he could be easilly ressurected. Standing in Sphere of Chaos, Ilydan chose (bravely and stupidly) himself as the closest target for Perth's spells. One of those was Prismatic Ray, ending Ilydan's life permanently. 

Apperantly he got hit by a green ray, save vs death or die, since his HP bar was full.

 

Back to BG1.

[Grond0]

Sorry to hear that Aasim, but you did well to get that far using that play-style .

[Alaestr]

Sorry for your loss, Aasim. Your playstyle far differs from mine and still I want to see you beat the game the way you like it. Better luck next time!

[Aasim]

Thnx both! I'll probably start either a berserker or a stalker next.....At least with stalkers I have no objections on using invisibility

[Matuse73]

For the record, Secret Word can be purchased from these vendors:

 

Ribald in the Adventurer's Mart. (3 copies)

The Caravan Merchant in the tent south of the Genie Tent in Trademeet (3 copies), once the Genies are gone AND the Druids are dealt with.

The Cutpurse outside the abandoned home where Neb lives in the Bridge district. He only shows up at night. (3 copies)

 

There are others, but they don't show up until Chapter 5 or later.

[Aasim]

Item Revisions revises stores. I could have bought it none the less.

[Grond0]

Rifft - dwarven swashbuckler (update 4 - weaving the ropes)

 

After making the iMoD and red dragon armour Rifft set out for Umar Hills.  He did the initial tasks there (level 30 - spike trap) and moved on to the temple.  He stealthed past the shadows to get straight in and moved rapidly on through.  As before, he struggled in a straight-up fight against greater mummies, but everything else proved pretty easy with both liches being destroyed by their first taste of the iMoD (the second one in a time trap).  

The bone golem guarding the sun gem got Rifft to level 31 - time trap.

 

Thaxy was surrounded by 6 traps that would have killed him.  However, they never got the chance as a time trap triggered first and a WW got the credit for the death.

 

For the Shade Lord Rifft used a potion of speed to quickly approach.  His WW though proved wasted effort as the Shade Lord became another enemy to crumble at the first touch of the iMoD.  Before leaving the area Rifft picked up Valygar's body (that he'd carelessly left in the path of a WW).

 

Back in Athkatla Rifft tracked down Haer'Dalis (level 32 - WW).  He took a potion of speed and followed him into the Planar Prison - getting out of range of the Bounty Hunter's true sight to summon some support.  The summons expired getting past the first lot of thralls, so Rifft remained safe by just using cloudkills on the yuan-ti / thralls.  The Master of Thralls was immune to that so copped a Firetooth WW.  The Warden survived a couple of spike traps, but also triggered a time trap.  That allowed Rifft to get close, detect illusion to dispel his mirrors and then Firetooth WW to finish him off.

 

Cloudkills did most of the work on the remaining yuan-ti before Rifft travelled back home (level 33 - spike trap).  I wanted Haer'Dalis's Chaos sword, but don't allow recruitment of NPCs in my solo runs - so he became another trap victim (expiring too rapidly for anyone else in the inn to go hostile).

 

The last major area to be tackled was the Planar Sphere.  With a number of dangerous casters around Rifft mainly used stealth shots or summons to encourage them into traps or cloudkill.  Doing that to the Tanar'ri got Rifft to level 35 - WW.

 

At the Guarded Compound Rifft invited enemies downstairs to play in traps / cloudkills.  I was slightly careless there, not realising that Ketta had come down invisible at the same time as others and she got a backstab attempt in (but missed).

 

The final target in Athkatla was the Twisted Rune.  To play safe there Rifft used a scroll of protection from undead when Shangalar started to appear.  After shooting him he lured Revanek forward to die (level 36 - spike trap), then used the Shield of Balduran on Vaxall.  He was dispelled in the process though, so had to fight Shyressa.  Layene sensibly didn't stay in a cloudkill to die, so Rifft fed her a flesh golem and ran away.  Layene did well to kill her own summoned pit fiend with the help of an efreeti.  Rifft used a time trap / WW to kill that, then threw in another cloudkill - this time Layene was clearly worried about the time trap waiting and didn't bother moving out of the cloudkill!

[polytope]

 

By the way, you picked a heck of a hard team to work with... Two multi-class mages, another pure mage, one front liner that prefers two-handed weapons, an archer, and your main PC as a tank. The fact that you haven't lost or lost anyone yet is kind of an achievement all to itself. One suggestion though: find a way to justify carrying around non-magical weapons, if only because between your three mages, ONE of them should know about the spell and the way to counter it. Force a weapon switch to take a person's aura somehow or something if it bothers you, but this isn't like weapon-switching to ignore an incoming spell which IS sort of cheesy, it's Mage Killing 101. A warrior that  doesn't have a non-magical weapon sheathed somewhere within reach is just murdered by any decent spell caster in that world. 

 

It's pretty tough hitting smarter mages with heavy non-magical weapons like bastard swords and zweihanders if you don't have grandmastery (as neither paladin nor barb does), their speed factor is so slow that the mage has wandered out of range by the time the attack is made.

 

Aerie chooses to dispel confusion from Kivan, but the confused archer turns his attention to her and kills her, scoring a vorpal as well. Body can't be recovered.

 

Ouch. I'm surprised that Heartseeker bow's Proc gibs people, you'd expect an arrow through the heart to leave the body relatively intact (my archer always wears Aeger's hide, since confusion is especially bad for characters of this class, don't know if that's available early with IR).

 

Ilydan the Cavalier, final update

 

Perth the Adept proved fatal. His prebuffs were too many, and he had Time Stop + Alacrity memorized. We lost Kivan, but he could be easilly ressurected. Standing in Sphere of Chaos, Ilydan chose (bravely and stupidly) himself as the closest target for Perth's spells. One of those was Prismatic Ray, ending Ilydan's life permanently. 

Apperantly he got hit by a green ray, save vs death or die, since his HP bar was full.

 

Back to BG1.

 

Stroke of bad luck there, Prismatic Spray and Sphere of Chaos both give me problems in the mid game because they bypass spell protections and II and have a good chance to cause permanent death, although with Spell Revision's save penalties + every PC leveling like a paladin I imagine it would be worse.

 

Btw. Congratulations Grond on beating this challenge at last.

[Grond0]

Thanks Polytope - Rifft's making good progress towards making it a double (my view is success is a bit like buses - you wait for ages then 2 come along at once).

 

Rifft - dwarven swashbuckler (update 5 - unravelling the ropes)

 

Rifft took ship for Brynnlaw.  On arrival he WW'd some vampires before heading straight for Perth.  One trap would have been enough, but the mage was willing to let more be set under his feet.  

His book offered spell turning and Rifft accepted that, though I don't suppose he'll ever use it.

 

Inside Spellhold Rifft had a dream and used a fake talk on the demon to avoid having to give up any of his hard-earned stats.  Killing some umber hulks in a trap room got Rifft to level 37 - WW.  On the next level a room full of minotaurs got him to level 38 - WW and he had no trouble this time in proceeding to judgement (level 39 - WW). As you can see levels for thieves come thick and fast here, but his final one will take a bit longer - that requires 1.62m XP (by far the most required for any level by any character type in BG2).

 

Lonk died in a single cloudkill and Rifft moved on to the battle with Irenicus.  A Firetooth WW effectively killed him though as usual it took him a few moments to realise that.  

Rifft ran away before the Murderers could arrive and took ship with Saemon.

 

At the City of Caverns Rifft was careful to disable the traps near the Spectator (I've been caught by maze there before now) before persuading it to let him look in the chest.  WW the priestess for her cloak, but didn't do any other fighting on the way to the Prince.  I forgot to unequip Kundane when attacking the King (nerfing WW), so Rifft took far more damage than he should have done in that fight.

 

However, he quickly recovered and sent the Prince to join his father (for a bit of fun used the Impaler on him - even non-proficient Rifft has THAC0 of -2 with that).`  In the Underdark Rifft stealth-shot / trapped some drow before releasing prisoners from a giant soul gem (trapping the 2 that might want to imprison him).  A balor was trapped in the svirfneblin village before Rifft helped a mage raid some elemental treasure (before trapping him on his return).

 

Inside the kuo-toa stronghold traps killed 3 of the demon knights outright with traps - a single WW finishing the last 2 off.  The Prince's guards were killed before he was lured in range of some damaging traps - however, they didn't have time to reach him.

 

More kuo-toa on the bridge meant Rifft collected over 400 stunning darts before moving into the beholder area.  He quickly got out of true sight range of the elder orb then, after cleaning up some drow, tested his new darts on the elder orb.

He then just picked up the Greenstone Amulet and sneaked away.

 

The illithid city also proved easy.  I didn't want to rest there, which meant that Rifft was down to a single time trap and half-a-dozen WWs by the time he got to the Master Brain.  However, that was plenty. 

 

He did rest after completing the area, so Simyaz and some drow offered no obstacle to getting to Adalon.  Rifft has just arrived in the drow city and done a bit of shopping.

 

Edit: on the way to rescue Phaere Rifft indulged in overkill with the ambush - traps, stealth shots and a cloudkill making a nasty mess of the enemies.  A time trap laid for Phaere's ambushers didn't work, but other traps killed a couple of them and a single WW disposed of the remainder.

 

It only took a few minutes to run through Phaere's tasks and watch her be crisped by the demon.  As Rifft is evil I thought I should give the demon the dragon eggs.  That got Rifft his final level.  

Of course, Rifft now had nothing to offer Adalon - still she only objected very briefly to that.

[corey_russell]

CoreTalos the Priest of Talos and his random party entering BG 2 portion of trilogy no-reload challenge...

Traveling with Paja, Misty, Hanna

 

CoreTalos and his random party made it out of Irenicus' Dungeon. Going to pick up a magical weapon on a table then deal with circus issues. Here are our stats from BG 1:

 

CoreTalos, Half-Orc Priest of Talos

STR 16 DEX 11 CON 18 INT 11 WIS 14 CHA 13

 

Paja: Half-Orc Berserker, 58 HP

STR 16 DEX 11 CON 16 INT 6 WIS 14 CHA 13

 

Misty: Halfling Kensai, 74 HP

STR 10 DEX 17 CON 17 INT 10 WIS 9 CHA 14

 

Hanna: Elven Sorcerer, 27 HP

STR 15 DEX 14 CON 9 INT 9 WIS 15 CHA 13

[Aasim]

It's pretty tough hitting smarter mages with heavy non-magical weapons like bastard swords and zweihanders if you don't have grandmastery (as neither paladin nor barb does), their speed factor is so slow that the mage has wandered out of range by the time the attack is made.

Actually, it's even worse. Item Revisions heavy armor apply a further penalty to
speed factor, weapon enchantement doesn't speed up the weapon, and Revised
Grandmastery adds +2 to weapon speed only for Grandmastery level. In effect,
mages in BG1 who use Protection from Missiles are essentaly invulnerable to
fighters unless somehow disabled. Since I only found one scroll of Spell Thrust (and failed to learn it) battles against mages usually lasted a long time.
W/o Spell Revisions I'd use Emotion to bypass Minor Globes, but within SR Emotion
is an anti-fighter spell.
 
 
 

Ouch. I'm surprised that Heartseeker bow's Proc gibs people, you'd expect an arrow through the heart to leave the body relatively intact (my archer always wears Aeger's hide, since confusion is especially bad for characters of this class, don't know if that's available early with IR).

IR makes Heartseeker similar to PnP incarnation, where it kills on a roll of 20 anything that has a beating heart. This is impossible within BG2 engine.
The reason for chunking (I believe) wasn't vorpal hit per se, it doesn't chunkusually, it was massive damage Kivan inflicts (IR bows add extra damage to arrows). Aerie's HP pool was brought to around -15 with the last arrow.
Aeger's Hide is a neat item in vanilla, I agree that it's almost custom made for
many characters with it's precious immunity to confusion. Within IR, it's
available early as well, but it doesn't give immunity to confusion, hence I
didn't use it.
 
 

Stroke of bad luck there, Prismatic Spray and Sphere of Chaos both give me problems in the mid game because they bypass spell protections and II and have a good chance to cause permanent death, although with Spell Revision's save penalties + every PC leveling like a paladin I imagine it would be worse.

Paladins have a rather fine save vs death, chances for such an effect of
Prismatic Spray were indeed minimal (both to fail a save at no penalty and to get hit by a ray that insta gibs you). Worst of all, I could avoid Perth alltogether and go into Asylum anyway.

[Gate70]

Condolences Polytope.

 

Grond0, keep the good work up - hope your no-reload efforts are like waiting for a bus and now you'll get a load of them turn up.

[Grond0]

Rifft - dwarven swashbuckler (update 6 - tieing up the ropes)

 

With Gate70 suffering connection problems to the internet I took the opportunity to finish off SoA this morning.

 

There's a bug in my setup that means the game tends to hang after telling Kruin you'll fight him.  Since I wouldn't use the Silver Sword anyway I just gave Kruin what he wanted.  After getting items forged (including Human Flesh Armour) Rifft invaded the vampire guild.  Even though Rifft was fatigued the vampires there were essentially helpless (there were no ghouls in support of them this time) and a couple of spike traps prepared Bodhi to meet her Maker.

 

Returning to Elhan Rifft found himself in Suldanesselar.  Rifft avoided fighting most things here.  The main exception was Nizi where he protected against acid and then led the dragon into a time trap.  Nizi ignored the fact of being shot about 15 times during that, but that wasn't unexpected and Rifft had already laid 4 spike traps as back-up - only 2 of them were required.

 

Inside the palace I tried a few times to open up access to the Tree of Life.  After eventually realising Rifft hadn't picked up the stone horn I sent him to do that and moved down to confront Irenicus.  I was short of HLAs by that time so just sent in the normal summons to drain his dangerous spells.  An air elemental was mazed twice, but the third time it attacked Rifft joined in with a Firetooth WW.  I thought Jon had been saved by his mislead contingency, but as I was switching to attack that he died (from a bolt already launched before the mislead).

 

In hell Rifft picked up:

- immunity to normal / +1 weapons

- +10% magic resistance (I normally don't choose this and the loss of dexterity seems painful.  However, it makes it easy for a thief to get 100%)

- +15 HPs (and Blackrazor - used Carsomyr for the first time against the genie)

- +20% elemental resistance

- +2 strength

 

For the final battle in hell Rifft had pre-set some traps.  A time-trap allowed him to WW the balors and other traps finished off the remaining demons.  Some new traps were set for the slayer, but not required - while it was occupied with the golem & efreeti Firetooth WWs sent Jon to inspect his new home.

 

Rifft's final HLAs are 10 WWs, 2 time traps and 4 spike traps.  If timestop was reliable I wouldn't bother with the spike traps, but they provide a useful alternative for things like dragons.

[corey_russell]

Congratulations, Grond0! Best of luck in ToB...

[Serg BlackStrider]

Nice job there, Grond0! Keep rocking!