15218 réponses à ce sujet

[corey_russell]

Just how did a Balor get there!?

The Balor is summoned by the mage in that party. I wasn't able to kill the mage before he summoned it. I had forgotten that an opening hold is one of the things those things do. And with Yent II's human saves vs. spells...the little guys of course saved, but that was of no help in this case. I normally have the cleric of the group memorize that spell that removes holds/stuns, but I had forgotten to have Hanna do that, that would have saved me. Buffing with free action (which was available) would have helped too. There were so many ways to NOT die there...I've tried Yent twice now, think I will give a different character concept a go.

[Aasim]

The Balor is summoned by the mage in that party. I wasn't able to kill the mage before he summoned it. I had forgotten that an opening hold is one of the things those things do. And with Yent II's human saves vs. spells...the little guys of course saved, but that was of no help in this case. I normally have the cleric of the group memorize that spell that removes holds/stuns, but I had forgotten to have Hanna do that, that would have saved me. Buffing with free action (which was available) would have helped too. There were so many ways to NOT die there...I've tried Yent twice now, think I will give a different character concept a go.

I haven't fought that party in ages I guess.... I didn't know Balors can get gated that soon in this game, that's crazy. Condolences. 

[polytope]

I vaguely remember that mage summoning a Nabassu in vanilla (with a deadly gaze). Balors and Nabassus look identical unless modded, which kind of sucks (not even a colour/texture difference as with ghouls and ghasts).

 

 I had forgotten that an opening hold is one of the things those things do. And with Yent II's human saves vs. spells...the little guys of course saved, but that was of no help in this case. 

 

I'm not a fan of relying on saving throws in a full party, even with shorties. By the time they're actually negative you would have enough clerical protection spells anyway - and you never have enough rings of protection or potions of invulnerability (to reverse Malison etc.) to go around, although Yaga's elite soldiers dropped like a dozen in my game (Ascension makes a horde of those guys spawn).

 

Then again, you've succeeded at this challenge a few times more than I have...

[corey_russell]

I vaguely remember that mage summoning a Nabassu in vanilla (with a deadly gaze). Balors and Nabassus look identical unless modded, which kind of sucks (not even a colour/texture difference as with ghouls and ghasts).

 

 

I'm not a fan of relying on saving throws in a full party, even with shorties. By the time they're actually negative you would have enough clerical protection spells anyway - and you never have enough rings of protection or potions of invulnerability (to reverse Malison etc.) to go around, although Yaga's elite soldiers dropped like a dozen in my game (Ascension makes a horde of those guys spawn).

 

Then again, you've succeeded at this challenge a few times more than I have...

I may have succeeded more, but that's on vanilla, not SCS. I did try SCS, but being essentially forced to buff every fight or I lose (or take heavy casualties, like 1/2 my party) I did not enjoy at all. When a minor encounter like Bregg and Corhvale beat my butt, unless I buff first, which certainly the Bioware developers never intended for them to be powerful, it made it too much of a slog for me. Right now, when I play vanilla, it feels like I am "playing", but when I play SCS, it feels like "work". The farthest I ever got was getting ambushed by Revianne - could not buff before hand, since it was an ambush, and no time to buff either, since everyone started dying (e.g, had to gulp heal potions). I made an "optimum" party too, with an optimal character. It became clear that SCS just wasn't for me.

 

I do have a lot of trilogies, but a massive number of failures with that. I still die in vanilla, so I still play it.

[Grond0]

Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 45 - (update 3)
Caddy, human paladin (Grond0) & Xzur, human necromancer (Gate70)
 

This duo made some more progress yesterday - pretty untroubled for a change.

 

After opening up access to the Shade Lich by starting the Unseeing Eye quest they used scrolls of undead protection and potions of speed.  Azuredge rapidly accounted for the liches on the way to Kangaxx.  Daystar was used on his demi-lich form - he didn't even have time to try and run, although I think we had him blocked in anyway.  The potions of speed only ran out just after he died, so less than 5 turns was enough for all 4 liches.

 

At vampire HQ Caddy was able to melee the normal vampires and ghouls (using Arbane).  Xzur ran through his repertoire of summons to exhaust Tanova's spells before Caddy finished her off with Azuredge (that didn't seem to be working against her as a ranged weapon, but did so in melee).  Downstairs a sunray killed all the vampires, leaving only a brief mopping up operation.  There were more summons for Bodhi - she killed some of those, but made no progress against Caddy before making a run for it.

 

After upgrading the MoD, the duo moved on to Rayic Gethras.  Xzur used an invisibility ring to get into the room behind Rayic before bringing out summons.  Caddy then added a couple of his own from by the stairs and Rayic had soon had enough - Xzur's nishruu proved particularly effective here as it was able to continue attacking even after Rayic went invisible.  There were then no problems in finishing off Mae'Var's tasks - while Mae'Var himself called in vain for some assistance.

 

Stats (cont. from BG1):

Caddy, paladin 11, 116 HPs (incl. 5 from helm, 10 from bracers), 558 kills
Xzur, necromancer 13, 48 HPs (incl. 4 from ioun stone), 115 kills, 1 death

[Grond0]

Corps - dwarven melee kensai (update 1)

 

Corps successfully made it through BG1 without using ranged weapons at all.  I'm intending to continue with that restriction in BG2, although she'll need to watch out even more carefully than usual for the large number of opponents that can use maze later on ...

 

She had earned the XP for level 9 during the fight with Sarevok and levelled up at the start of the dungeon - getting a nice 13 HPs to finish her main levelling with just above average HPs.  Corps did most things in the dungeon - the main exceptions were leaving the ogre mage and running from the battle mage after killing Ulvaryl.  Progress was generally fairly serene, though there were a couple of nasty moments:

• I forgot that there were two steam mephits in the elemental plane and, after carefully noting that one of them had been scared, Corps was stunned by the other!  However, he recovered quickly and was able to kill that steam mephit (and subsequently all the others) without taking much damage.  


• She failed to scare the second duergar mage and was targeted by a charm person an instant before chunking him - but she had an automatic save against that thanks to this installation including an upgraded Ring of Koveras and the Cloak of Balduran in the dungeon.

She seemed to score with a lot of criticals in the dungeon - for instance 2 took down the Cambion during a kai assault, while the mephit portals were destroyed too quickly for the mephits there to cause much trouble.

 

Going straight on to the circus she only took 2 whacks to dispose of Kalah (level 10).  She has bought a few containers in the Promenade, along with the RoAC and some boots of speed and will be going to report in to Gaelan Bayle shortly.

 

[Grond0]

Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 45 - (4th and final update)
Caddy, human paladin (Grond0) & Xzur, human necromancer (Gate70)
 

Having battled through the difficult early period in BG2 this pairing started to reap the rewards of their progress today.  Everything seemed all too easy as they cleared Trademeet and the Druid Grove - when will we learn the lesson that the easier things seem the more need there is to concentrate .

 

Moving on to Umar Hills the first glitch occurred as Xzur got slightly separated from Caddy as the latter took a sun gem to plunge the area into darkness.  Some shadow reinforcements appeared near him and attacked.  That didn't seem too much of a problem even though their attack immediately saw Xzur encumbered and unable to move as a result of the strength drain.  However, they were able to hit pretty much at will and it was only a matter of seconds before his strength ran out totally and he died.  A use of a rod of resurrection quickly got him going though and the duo moved rapidly on, taking advantage of the absence of liches, before finding themselves in a dragon cave.

 

We agreed to assault Thaxy, thinking that Caddy's immunity to fear and level drain would make it possible for him to occupy the dragon while Xzur made him vulnerable with pierce magics.  Unfortunately, despite seeing Thaxy start to cast, I wasn't thinking clearly and took no action before he sent out a chaos spell.  That confused Caddy and, despite Xzur's efforts to produce summons to distract Thaxy, the dragon rapidly chomped his way through the cavalier.

[corey_russell]

@Grond0, Gate70: Sorry to hear that guys. That chaos is always whey I use Lilacor on my paladins or Minsc in that fight, if they are in the party. One possibility that I have done to take down Thaxxy is have the mages load up on blindness - even if you can't lower the MR, eventually it will stick then just ****** it to death. Last time I tried that took 6 blindness attempts - but if you have pierce magics then you should have lower magic resist spell right? Anyways just some thoughts.

 

EDIT: How odd - the board thinks P r i c k is a bad word, I mean it in the way you whittle something down, am I using the word wrong?

[Serg BlackStrider]

Feel sorry for your loss, guys...

[Grimwald the Wise]

Hard luck. At least you can try again.

 

Corey there are lots of ways that you can use that word which are perfectly acceptable even in the politest of company. When I pierce my sausages I use that word, and even BG uses it to describe a dagger. The problem is that some people do not have good manners and their choice of words is abominable. As I walk along the road near my home I hear kids using the f word as an adjective which doesn't mean anything. If they learnt a few more adjectives they could be far more expressive, but then to some of them it is uncool to have a good vocabulary. Beecause my kids learnt to express themselves they have great jobs.

[Grond0]

@Grond0, Gate70: Sorry to hear that guys. That chaos is always whey I use Lilacor on my paladins or Minsc in that fight, if they are in the party. One possibility that I have done to take down Thaxxy is have the mages load up on blindness - even if you can't lower the MR, eventually it will stick then just ****** it to death. Last time I tried that took 6 blindness attempts - but if you have pierce magics then you should have lower magic resist spell right? Anyways just some thoughts.

Xzur didn't actually know lower resistance.  However, as you indicate we were working on the presumption that we didn't need to get Thaxy's MR down to zero.  Blindness would be a good tactic for some attackers, but is an illusion spell (one of the many useful spells forbidden to necromancers).  Caddy had the Shield of Harmony in his inventory to protect against confusion - as I said in the original post I obviously wasn't thinking very clearly (or perhaps at all) there ...

[Grond0]

Corps - dwarven melee kensai (update 2)

 

Corps found some bad news at the Copper Coronet.  The plan was to use horror to disable the spell-casting guards before finishing them off.  Her first attempt saw one of those guards running and Corps duly finished him off in the corridor.  She had closed the door to the main inn before casting horror, expecting that would prevent anyone else recognising there was a problem.  However, a guard on the other side of the door went hostile - and, despite one-shotting him very quickly, he caused Joluv to go hostile in turn (so no goodies will be available from him).

 

After resting she successfully scared the other caster, only to find that he had gone invisible.  She killed the other guards before the caster recovered and had a go at her with a chromatic orb - he didn't survive long enough to try another.  She had no trouble killing the Beastmaster and Lehtinan and bought Stonefire and the Sleeper from Bernard.

 

She travelled to the Government District and spent her remaining funds on buying a license (so she can use the RoAC freely).  After using that she expected to be able to attack the Suna Seni mage, only to find that he disappeared as she was about to whack him.  She then took significant damage in trying to attack the others.  However, rather than abandoning Arbane, she used a potion of invisibility to provide a breathing space then buffed with a potion of speed and DUHM and used a potion of firebreath (with the aim of catching any invisible thieves as well as the others).  In the event there didn't seem to be any thieves around and the potion left only 3 enemies standing - all of whom went down to single follow-up hits (the last one wasn't badly damaged to start with, but fell anyway to a critical for 52 damage).

 

After resting, Corps started travelling invisibly again.  When coming across the Renfeld ambush he didn't stop to cast kai this time, but just assaulted the mage.  He didn't quite kill him, but the Sleeper rendered him unconscious and his contingency mirrors did not last long enough to allow him to get up.  The thugs in the ambush were using piercing weapons (and struggled to hit Corps through the protection of her belt) and didn't last long after that.  

 

She took Renfeld back to the Docks - interrupting a spell from the mad cleric on the way, which meant she didn't have to dodge into the thieves guild.  After starting the Mae'Var quests she went to the Graveyard in search of a ioun stone.  I had a momentary aberration there and forgot about the SCS spider webs.  Corps was targeted once as a result, but saved.  Inside the spider nest Pai'Na was scared, along with most of the spiders.  The remainder found their venom had no chance of affecting Corps while she was under the influence of the RoAC, but it became apparent almost at once she would be unable to finish Pai'Na off quickly through the ironskins she'd developed as soon as being attacked - a potion of firebreath did the trick though.  She used run and stab tactics on the last few spiders.

 

Travelling back to the Promenade while using RoAC she came across another ambush.  With the ioun stone and Kitthix she was significantly better prepared now and decided to fight.  However, once more the mage disappeared before she could target him and his buffs then defeated a firebreath potion.  Corps was backstabbed down to 50% health and also malisoned - at which point she made a run for it.  She was immediately ambushed again before she could reach the Promenade - and this time there was no question about the need to run straight away.

 

After resting up she had a brief stop to deal severely with Llynis before returning to the Graveyard District.  Kitthix used web on Uncle Lester to save Nevin before Corps used a protection from undead scroll to clear the tombs.  That scroll also allowed her to make a start on the Southern tombs downstairs as well, getting to level 11 there, but she needed to use a second scroll to finish the area off.  She then used the RoAC to get saving throws into safe territory while cleaning up the remaining spiders.

[Grond0]

Corps - dwarven melee kensai (3rd and final update)

 

At the Bridge District Corps exposed the skinner murders.  She tried to drag the Rune Assassins upstairs while she was invisible, but they didn't want to come - as a result she left them for a future time.  She did though kill some kidnappers and collect the ransom they had arranged before taking on the Fallen Paladins.  

 

Horror affected nobody and Anarg shrugged off Kitthix's attempted webs.  I've noticed before in this run that Corps is clearly not getting the proper kensai weapon speed bonus and she was regularly failing to beat the surprisingly quick attacks of the paladins' 2-handed swords while using the Sleeper.  In the end she switched to using Arbane in a run & stab strategy when she was already low on HPs.  That was possible to do safely and she killed several more of them like that.  However, I was getting a bit bored with the micro-management and decided to take the risk of letting her attack the last paladin normally.  He got a couple of decent hits in while Corps managed a critical miss in the middle - and it was her turn to Fall.

[corey_russell]

The fallen paladins can be tough if you aren't abusing spells (webs, stinking clouds etc.). I remember my solo runs taking a lot of damage here. Sorry to hear boredom claimed another one of your characters. Perhaps you should roll a F/T/M so you can have lots of options and thus not get bored? An idea anyways. Regardless, sorry to hear of your kensai's end.

[corey_russell]

Corslinger the halfling fighter entering the BG 2 portion of a trilogy no-reload...

Traveling with: Forrest (berserker), Joshua (kensai), Paja (wizard slayer), Hanna (level 7 fighter > level 9 thief)

 

The party has made it out of Irenicus dungeon a-okay. We did everything here, and thanks to Joshua even killed the vampire. Only odd thing was when facing the mephits in the plane, Joshua got stunned despite enrage being active, but it was short so we still won with no casualty.

 

We also solved the circus issue without much trouble, although the party was getting hit a lot by the werewolves even though we didn't attack them and AI was off. Corslinger did 24% of the kills in BG 2, so things are looking good and of course will be much better once he has the sling of seeking.

 

I will post character sheets later, don't have time this morning for that.

[Matuse73]

EDIT: How odd - the board thinks P r i c k is a bad word, I mean it in the way you whittle something down, am I using the word wrong?

 

That's one way to use the word, but the far more common way, particularly in a web board, is as slang for male anatomy.

[corey_russell]

Corslinger the halfling fighter and his band of fighters - update 2

 

Corslinger's team has made tremendous progress - they were level 8 leaving the dungeon and most fighters are now level 12. Here's the things we got done, plus anything special that may have happened in each encounter:

 

* D'Arnise Keep cleared. For the most part, it was very, very smooth, with one exception. Paja was overwhelmed by the umber hulks, and didn't have a RoR to either save her or bring her back, so the team had to stash a lot of stuff in chests, go to a temple in Athkatla and return to finish off the quest. This made it clear what our next major purchase was, RoR. (Rod of Resurrection)

*

Druid Grove issue solved. We mostly just did straight melee/ranged and of course use a heal potion now and then. Looking at the stats, the kill ratio is pretty balanced with Joshua the most kills and Hanna the least, neither of which is a surprise.

 

* Warehouse enemies in bridge district defeated - this time used the absolutely best ammo on the mage - the mage didn't even survive a round, thus was a smooth victory.

 

* Reijek exposed for his murders - we couldn't catch him. We didn't get a bone golem spawn, which was a good thing, as the Rune Assassins hit very hard, but no died so all good I guess.

 

* Maevar Quest completed. As usual, most challenging part was Rayic Gethras, with the party taking a sunfire - next round everyone had to heal - however Rayic was in big trouble the following round and then dead the next.

 

* Xzar was murdered by the Harpers, with us helping unwittingly. We got some much needed extra healing potions and charm protection helmet, so was worth the trouble nevertheless.

 

* Reputation quests completed (returning circlet to Mayor, Tardis) - this put us at 20 rep, so used it to buy the Balduran armor. We pretty much never get this armor since you can't use a magic ring with it. In Paja's case, she can't use the ring, so that means the Balduran plate is actually better than full plate for her.

 

* Graveyard cleared and quests done except lower crypts. The undead here were soloed by Joshua with an undead protection scroll.

 

* Tarnor's gang was battled. We did summon our genie and berserker of Valhalla to help us out here. This went very well, except for one problem. Despite Paja's 26% magic resistance, she still got power word stunned and killed. A RoR wasn't quick enough to save her from death. So far, I have been extremely unimpressed with the vanilla Wizard Slayer class. Despite Paja being called a "wizard slayer", it seems she actually has the most trouble with enemy casters. This was proved again just a moment later when a kobold shaman held her, with the rest of the party easily resisting the kobold spells.  Enough was enough, I swapped Paja's shield of the lost for shield of harmony - despite her magic resistance, she clearly needs the immunities.

 

* We completed the Unseeing Eye quest, destroying it the long way. For the beholders, we used the shield of balduran on Forrest, and a pro undead scroll on Joshua on the large group of undead near the feeding grounds. We had a very fair battle vs. the blind priests - they gave a good showing, nearly killing Paja (once again), but Corslinger used RoR a couple of times to keep her in the battle. As for Gaal, he was overmatched.

 

* Mencar's team defeated - Risling managed to escape, but that wasn't important for us, we were pretty poor at this moment, just buying the balduran plate for like 20,000 gold. (and that was WITH 20 CHA and 20 rep), so we were just trying to get some loot. We had to gulp a large number of heal potions this fight, even more than against Tarnor's gang. I suspect it was because some of us got confused so were whacking our fellow party members. Once I turned off AI, stopped all action, then focused fire the battle was won quickly.

 

* Slavers defeated both at Copper Coronet and Moored Ship. Was very smooth, no close calls or anything. Lilacor was obtained for Joshua as well.

 

* The two Gaxx body parts were obtained by Joshua with a pro undead scroll that managed to last for both encounters. We selected Hanna to deal with Kangaxx himself using a pro magic scroll and lots of potions. We ran into a bug and was forced to re-load - despite doing the correct choices and having the two body parts, the parts "disappeared" after talking to him and he said when will you get the parts? On reload it worked as it should. As for the battle, it went forever but Hanna was able to get the job done and defeat both Kangaxx the lich and demi-lich. Hanna also did a coup - she picked Kangaxx' pocket a millisec before the battle began - the two Gaxx rings finally put Corslinger's save vs. spells at 0.

 

We sold our stuff and ended our session here. Here's our stats and such as of this point.

 

[Grond0]

* Tarnor's gang was battled. We did summon our genie and berserker of Valhalla to help us out here. This went very well, except for one problem. Despite Paja's 26% magic resistance, she still got power word stunned and killed. A RoR wasn't quick enough to save her from death. So far, I have been extremely unimpressed with the vanilla Wizard Slayer class. Despite Paja being called a "wizard slayer", it seems she actually has the most trouble with enemy casters. This was proved again just a moment later when a kobold shaman held her, with the rest of the party easily resisting the kobold spells.  Enough was enough, I swapped Paja's shield of the lost for shield of harmony - despite her magic resistance, she clearly needs the immunities.

Sounds like you're making good progress Corey.  Don't despair of Paja: I agree the wizard slayer is weaker than a standard fighter for much of the game, but Paja will become much more formidable at higher levels.  Once she's up around 100% MR and attacking casters at 10 APR they won't enjoy it!

[Gate70]

I haven't high levelled a wizard slayer in a run Grond0, how are you expecting Paja to get to 100%. I thought it capped at 40% so are you assuming reliance on stacking items. I see alignment allows the human flesh armour but that then leaves her more vulnerable to melee so a trade-off.

[corey_russell]

I haven't high levelled a wizard slayer in a run Grond0, how are you expecting Paja to get to 100%. I thought it capped at 40% so are you assuming reliance on stacking items. I see alignment allows the human flesh armour but that then leaves her more vulnerable to melee so a trade-off.

That's a good question Gate70 - I don't see how my WS can make it to 100% MR either. I was in fact planning on using the human flesh armor.

[Grond0]

Magic resistance for a vanilla WS is 1% per level up to 19, then alternates between 5% and 1% thereafter - potentially getting up to 84%.  Use of equipment can then get you over 100%.  That becomes even easier in ToB where you can make use of the 10% extra from the Amulet of Seldarine (as a protagonist you can also get extra MR from the Hell trials, but that won't help Paja).

[corey_russell]

Corslinger and his band of fighters - Update 3

 

The team has continued to make rapid progress. We've done everything in chapter two, including twisted rune guarded compound and sewer illithids and planar sphere. The team has defeated Bodhi and her minions, with a few level drains, but nothing to be done about that (we only have 1 character immune to level drains).

 

We even did some dragon hunting. Thaxxy was a very tough fight, we had 3 characters who at one point were level 4, 4, and 2, so they were all nearly chunked. However I had AI off for entire fight and kept the weak people away from Thaxxy, as well as putting up summon distractions when people were vulnerable (such as after a wing buffet). Mazzy brought time for the team by running into the cubby hole, and Corslinger got the kill shot.

 

We also battled in Firkraag's Lair. The only special thing was to use a pro undead scroll on the large group of undead - still frustrating with that vamps running everywhere, was tough to get them even with haste boots...We also battled Firkraag himself - we brought with us 6 protection from fire scrolls, so we were well prepared in that regard. As usual for such fights we used our best ammo, and Paja got the kill shot - which makes a ton of sense, since she used the Dragonslayer Sword for this fight.

 

The party is level 14, with Hanna level 17 thief. She only has has 2 snares, does that seem right for that level? Party is at Brynnlaw.

[Gate70]

Nice bit of double dragon there.

[corey_russell]

Nice bit of double dragon there.

Thanks! The shadow dragon battle in particular was pretty dicey, I was glad I was able to pull through without any chunkings.

[Aasim]

Hanna level 17 thief. She only has has 2 snares, does that seem right for that level? 

No, it doesn't. Iirc, she should have 4 traps now. Nice progress anyway.