Serena the solo Monk (L40):
Having vanquished the Illithid, Serena went towards the Underdark exit.
She encountered some
Demon Knights, using Lunar Stance for protection from Level Drain. She was
victorious against the first two knights, but had taken
quite a lot of damage, even with -18 AC. Fortunately, they didn't seem too coordinated, and she was able to
dispatch them easily enough. She
used Fire Tooth to kill the final Demon Knight. Due to the low duration of Lunar Stance, Serena did get level drained a few times here, but she'd brought plenty of Scrolls of Restoration, so that wasn't a problem.
Serena then left the Underdark without much ceremony -- she just stealthed past all the fighting drow/elves and went straight to Elhan. Traveling back to Athkatla, she convinced Drizzt to help fight Bodhi. Before going up against Bodhi, Serena forged a few items:
- Stormlord's Heels (Boots of Grouding + Boots of Speed combo)
- Blizzard Boots (Boots of the North + Boots of Speed combo)
- Amulet of Ilmater (+1 AC, +3 Saves, Immune to Poison, Heal (once/day))
- Ring of Elemental Mastery (combo of the three elemental "control" rings: +1 AC, 50% fire res, 50% elec res, Charm Elemental (3x/day, no save), Summon Elementals (1 each, once/day, friendly), Improved Invisibility (once/day))
- The Equalizer. This was forged simply for its equippable confusion immunity -- not sure if there's any confusion attacks that can get past MR, but better safe than sorry.
Since there was no real reason to stick around in Athkatla any longer, Serena went to kill Bodhi. (Well, the Ring of the Ram would perhaps have been useful, but...)
In Bodhi's lair, the vampires did their
annoy CHARNAME as much as possible thing, but
with the help of Drizzt & co. they
weren't much bother. One the lower level, everything proceeded according to plan,
except that Bodhi refused to show herself. After some time she did show and
died soon thereafter.
Serena returned the Lanthorn and went into Suldanesselar. She sometimes used
terrain to her advantage to kill golems without taking any damage herself, but mostly it was just straight-up melee. There were also some Rakshasa types, but they weren't able to cast anything with Serena was under Shadow Stance.
They died. On the way to see the dragon, Serena encountered
a few more golems,
a Nabassu and an mage called Raamilat. Serena used her Dragon Fist, so
the mage didn't last long.
Trying to be clever, Serena dropped all her items and talked to the dragon... but she must have said something wrong, so a fight ensued. Luckily Serena was able to re-equip all her items, but unfortunately
was stuck in the corner. She was buffeted several times and had to retreat back to the city several times to heal up (including chugging three potions of regeneration), but
finally beat the beast. She spent something like 15 healing potions here.
Serena went back to the Temple of Rillfane and quickly placed the items in the altar. This let her avoid a non-trivial fight and opened the passage to the Tree of Life. Serena defeated the stragglers on the way to the Tree of Life, and entered. She
killed the parasites and prepared for the final fight.
As it turned out, Irenicus couldn't do much against 108% MR (with the Sword of Balduran). Once he'd spent his Maze casts, Serena started
pelting him with Fire Tooth. Amazingly, its fire damage ignores PfMW! In between getting interrupted constantly and Serena's 98% MR, there
was little he could do.
Death.
The hell trials were completed thusly:
- +2 STR
- +2 all saving throws
- +10% MR (yay, can finally dump the Sword of Balduran)
- Immunity to +1 (and less) weapons. Serena used the Dragonslayer sword for immunity to fear when getting the tear.
- +20% elemental resistances.
It was time for the final showdown with Irenicus.
Serena buffed with Shadow Stance, Lunar Stance and triggered the final fight... and was instantly killed by a Baalor. It turns out aTweaks mods these suckers to have a Vorpal hit (apparently with no save). Her Lunar Stance does confer immunity to the Slay effect, but apparently not to vorpal hits.
It seems the only way to have defeated the Baalor without requiring luck (as she seemingly did during the fight with the Baalor in the Underdark), would be to avoid getting into melee range, but it would definitely have been tricky to use Fire Tooth for killing it. See, these demons also have Teleport without Error every single round, it seems.
Oh well -- it was a fun run. I was pretty impressed with how powerful monks do get (eventually!) once their MR gets going. I'm not sure I really exploited the Oversight HLAs to their fullest. I certainly missed GWW at many points, but Shadow Stance is undoubtedly very powerful defensively.
(Meta: aTweaks fiends are definitely gone from my future installs. I only play no-reload and such unavoidable risks are just intolerable -- AFAICT the only truly reliable way to defeat these guys would be PfMW or something crazy like the BH endless maze... and I really want to avoid being forced to play arcane spellcasters.)
Modifié par AnonymousHero, 20 septembre 2011 - 06:51 .