Wow busy week! Sorry to see Aphril go Alesia, was a great run to read.
On my party's end, we did decide to continue post bug death, based both on the confidence that the death was due to a bug, as well as the following post showing what appears to be the same bug affecting two other players' EE games and causing charname death: https://forums.beamd...byrinth-level-3.
I also decided to continue posting the run here, as it seemed like everyone was OK with that. If anyone has an issue, let me know and I'm happy to stop. For disclosure's sake I will simply describe this is a "Probably No-Reload Run". I unfortunately wasn't for a while expecting to post the remainder of the run so I won't have any screenshots until further play this weekend.
K/M, Jaheira, Haer'dalis, Viconia, Jan (-> Imoen) and Edwin Continue their Probably No-Reload Run through SoA
After finishing off Pooky and Co in Waukeen's Promenade, the party had completed most of the Athkatla content outside of the liches, rune, mindflayers, etc. and the Harper's Hold. We leave the harper's for later as it has some reasonably dangerous fights and we try to order easier fights first whenever possible so that gets left for right before we leave for Brynlaw. The party next sets its sights to the locations outside of Athkatla.
Dearnise Keep was straightforward; the only new things for me at least was doing it with Nalia (subbing out Jan). The party gets some extra gold this way (10k), as well as some comments from Nalia, and considerably less rudeness when we turn down the Fighter Stronghold quest at the end.
Trademeet next, because it is relatively easy as well as such an enormous upgrade for Jaheira (blackblood club + belm, which she will use for the remainder of SoA). Fael did not spawn; I don't know if this is a bug, but it's a little disapointing as one thing we had hoped to do differently this time was to finally get his armor. Oh well. We subbed out Jan for Cernd to try to steal from Adratha, only to find out she can't be stolen from. Oh well again. We bought some potions anyway and then slew her and her friends. A low thac0 fighter (i.e. kensai) plus zone of clean air (i.e. Viconia) make this fight much easier. Everything else was straightforward but Edwin started nagging the party over getting the Nether Scroll...
Because I still don't know whether he ever leaves in retaliation for ignoring his quest (Haer'dalis notably does not if the party ignores his request to return the portal gem), we went to deal with the lich guarding the Nether scroll. This fight has always been a source of stress, but never in practice difficult - up until this run. Despite trying to cheese the lich with an opening harm + Jan traps, he survived at near death. Worse, he gated in a balor. Worse, that balor immediately dropped a remove magic that left the party approximately naked. Having no idea how to deal with these threats, we booked it and spammed summon monster from a wand to try to keep the balor + lich busy. For whatever reasons, the balor did not give chase to the party, while the lich eventually did. He got Haerdalis with a horrid wilting (clouded aura prevented drinking a potion in time) but had lost PfMW and fell to a PfUD + Azure Edge wielding Kensai. Balor dealt with himself after he ran out of rounds and unsummoned.
Not satisifed with one overly risky fight, the party successfully generated another by resting outside and spawning Tanova + 2 vampires while nobody had any buffs up. Great. Fortunately, we've learned our lesson when it comes to vampires and charm and so everyone immediately quaffed potions of clarity. Everyone that is, except charname, who had SCS autocasted cure light wounds on someone and so couldn't drink immediately. Second charm got through and now charname is charmed. Fortunately Jan had recently changed up his spellbook to include domination and recharmed charname back to the correct team. Failing that, the situation would have been dicier, but probably salvagable because the vampires won't attack charmed charname and anyway we have a bunch of PfUD scrolls still.
Party then did Rasaad's quest long enough to get the mirror image ring (new EE item, gives 3x mirror image per day and is usable by anyone). The rest of Rasaad's quest is so poorly written that I refuse to complete it. Neera's is much, much better, so we battle some red wizards and come away with a wand of spell-striking.
Shade lord was treated delicately but ultimately proved much easier as delaying him until post Trademeet meant Edwin was level 12 and the party had improved haste. For good measure we kept him out of melee range of charname and Jaheira and Haerdalis took him out. His death causes the party to rest and the Jaheira romance hostage fight played out with our party unbuffed, but went OK. What disappoints me about that fight is that charname has the option of saying to the thieves something like "No don't take our stuff then I'll have nothing left and be destitute!". I interpreted the line to be sarcastic in a prior game but nobody else does and Jaheira calls you a wimp and ends the romance. Oops. Saved the shadow dragon for later as there is no near-term reward to the fight, although charname will be using Crom Faeyr later.
Nothing interesting happened in the Windspear hills; Firkraag himself was saved for later.
The party is now finishing up loose ends in Athkatla prior to facing Bodhi. Kensai has been dualed to mage, and so is a level 9 mage and will not have Kensai levels back until we are through the underdark. I continue to think F/M is materially better than K->M, particularly for no-reload runs, but the additional challenge of dealing with the downtime period is fun to me so I did a K->M again.
In terms of the pain of that downtime, one thing I've learned is that it isn't as bad as it first seems, at least assuming the party has at least some fighter power to fall back on in the interim. In addition to having Jaheira and Haer'dalis at pretty effective levels to cover the gap, charname as a mage quickly hits level 9 which is not totally useless spell-wise. At least as importantly, he can spam wands, which are pretty darn useful particularly with the EE provided wand of spell-striking. AND he gets slayer form in spellhold, so in any fight that really matters his fighter power isn't reduced at all (at least for a few rounds). The only really awkward fight is against Bodhi in chapter 3, where she can be hard to kill vs. with a F/M. Running around in circles until she has seen enough seems to be effective (at least, it worked for us last time).
Retour en haut
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