16405 réponses à ce sujet

[Grond0]

Gate70 wrote...

Good luck Grond0. I've been pushing Dinus in a minimal reload and am slightly behind you (plus four deaths). Just have Durlags Tower to do now, but that could be very painful.

Indeed it can be painful.  Spirae cleared the first 3 levels down, but just got killed on the chessboard.  I had used up lots of potions and scrolls and was trying to avoid resting to conserve the green scrolls, but that was a mistake.  I had planned for Spirae to use potions of explosions to thin out the opposition - from previous experience with a party fireballs are very effective here and his initial throw indeed did a lot of damage.  However, with a party the opposition don't have a chance to strike back - when the rook does 28 damage with a single arrow you really need stoneskins up to provide a breathing space while you chuck your own fireballs!  Admittedly I suspect half of that was actually magic damage, which should have been reduced by my potion of magic shielding (bug associated with TobEx). 

I had the chance to take one potion, so could have gone invisible, but thought the opposition would probably be able to either still see me or cast remove magic, true sight etc.  Instead chose to try healing - didn't get a second chance.

[Grond0]

Having another go to clear BG1, including TotSC, with a gnome fighter / illusionist.  If successful the aim is for this character to play right through BG2 (reloading as necessary) so that I know what the pitfalls later in the game are.  Here are his current stats:


For the first few levels he acted pretty much as just a fighter (with a knack for identifying things), but the mage spells are starting to be used now - blur, MMM, minor spell deflection and of course sleep all playing their part in his trip through the Nashkel mines.  Tenar went straight on to Tranzig and then the bandit camp (taking out an ambush by Lamalha and the amazons at the Friendly Arm on the way).  At the camp he ignored the exterior and went directly to the main tent (invisible and buffed with protection from evil, minor spell deflection and blur).  An initial casting of MMM got rid of Venkt and there was no need to retreat before a second lot of MMM finished the job with Raemon.

As with my other recent games Tenar is limited to using equipment from vanilla BG1 and also won't be making any use of Algernon's cloak.

Modifié par Grond0, 15 août 2011 - 06:24 .

[corey_russell]

Good luck Grond0. Fighter/Illusionist a very solid class. For a long time, my only 2 characters that made it through both BG 1 and ToB were fighter/illusionists...Properly buffed they can be really strong fighters in BG 2 and beyond. I had one named Leekal and he was just killing everything once he got to BG 2. He was in a party, but he was in the front lines too and it was no-reload.

Modifié par corey_russell, 15 août 2011 - 06:43 .

[Gate70]

Yep, good luck. Invisible, potion of absorbtion and run for the exit is what I'd try on the chessboard.

Based on my minimal reload experience think long and hard about the demonknight (stuns despite greenstone amulet at least in vanilla, possibly use scroll of protection from magic) and Aec'letec (I forgot an oil of speed and your PC has the option of cloudkill and summons).

Also the traps are a real pain, I've done the tower lots so avoided them by skirting the walls. There are at least 3 that are very painful (50+ damage, instant death or repeated damage until dead).

Modifié par Gate70, 15 août 2011 - 08:56 .

[Grond0]

Gate70 wrote...

Yep, good luck. Invisible, potion of absorbtion and run for the exit is what I'd try on the chessboard.

Based on my minimal reload experience think long and hard about the demonknight (stuns despite greenstone amulet at least in vanilla, possibly use scroll of protection from magic) and Aec'letec (I forgot an oil of speed and your PC has the option of cloudkill and summons).

Also the traps are a real pain, I've done the tower lots so avoided them by skirting the walls. There are at least 3 that are very painful (50+ damage, instant death or repeated damage until dead).

Thanks for the tips:
- I don't think I've ever tried running for it on the chessboard as that's an easy fight with a party when you know what's coming, but I agree running sounds like a good solo strategy for many characters (although a fighter / illusionist should really be able to handle it if buffed up).
- Spirae had saved up a number of magic protection scrolls and certainly had one in mind for Aec'letec.  The demonknight stun would be protected against by free action in my installation, so not such a problem.
- I agree about the traps.  Spirae was protected against fire and lightning all the time, but nearly got killed by a repeating damage trap that did something like 90 damage in a pretty short time (potion of extra-healing in the middle just saved her).

@corey_russell.  I agree that they should be a strong class - I specifically chose it to make the process of reloading while exploring BG2 a bit less frequent!

Tenar is safely through the Cloakwood and mine.  As it's a while since I had a character that could use them most of the work was done with fire and frost wands.  The only dodgy moment was when Tenar was trying to rest for about the 6th time (while invisible) prior to confronting Daveorn.  Exasperated by all the previous interruptions I didn't pick a good spot to attempt this and got surrounded by at least a dozen guards that appeared - got quite badly wounded in fighting to get a way out.  There was also one slight glitch when I realised I'd forgotten to talk to Rill prior to flooding the mine.  The dialogue option still came up to say I had talked to him and I thought perhaps I'd got away with it and didn't bother going back - my reputation duly took a hit on leaving!

Modifié par Grond0, 15 août 2011 - 10:10 .

[corey_russell]

Reputation pretty easy to fix if <18 - I've had some disasters (such as confused party members taking out civilians), and a stop at the temple and giving 500 gold per point would get me up to 18 rep. I don't think it's 500 at a really low rep, but I can't remember the chart and 500 works for me. : )

[Grond0]

Tenar did his initial work in the city collecting tomes and sneaked past the Iron Throne party to talk to Faldorn. Back in Candlekeep he used magic protection scroll to loot the tombs and take on the dopplegangers (green amulet to protect against confusion touch of greater doppleganger). Also remembered he needed to use mirror potion rather than protection from petrification spell against the dopplegangers (spells don't work while magic protection scroll is active). On his return to Baldur's Gate he took on Cythandria (potions of defense and absorption to protect against golems). Just finished with Slythe & Kristin (stoneskin protected against backstabs just long enough to finish Slythe) and will be off to the palace after a rest.

[corey_russell]

Grond0 wrote...

Tenar did his initial work in the city collecting tomes and sneaked past the Iron Throne party to talk to Faldorn. Back in Candlekeep he used magic protection scroll to loot the tombs and take on the dopplegangers (green amulet to protect against confusion touch of greater doppleganger). Also remembered he needed to use mirror potion rather than protection from petrification spell against the dopplegangers (spells don't work while magic protection scroll is active). On his return to Baldur's Gate he took on Cythandria (potions of defense and absorption to protect against golems). Just finished with Slythe & Kristin (stoneskin protected against backstabs just long enough to finish Slythe) and will be off to the palace after a rest.

Er not to knock your post Grond0, I suspect you actually talked to Thaldorn not Faldorn. Faldorn is the shadow druid you meet in the Cloakwood. Thaldorn is one of the leaders of the Iron Throne in the City of Baldur's Gate.

Good to hear you got this far. I hope you can join me in Amn soon.

[Belloc]

This is my first time on the forum. I've at least dabbled with pretty much every great PC game ever made, of any genre, that were made before A.D. 2000. It's come to the time in my life to quit this hobby altogether, but before I do that, I want to attempt one last great effort. The games I still love best are Nethack, Master of Orion, and the Baldur's Gate Trilogy. For flavor and character, nothing beats Baldur's Gate, besides which it was the first RPG I ever played. So here I am to try a no-reload run of the trilogy. If I don't succeed in the next few months, I'll probably give up, but for now I'll keep creating new characters to see how far I can get. I'm very familiar with BG1, moderately familiar with BG2, and have hardly touched ToB, so the chance of unexpected disaster is high.

I haven't figured out how to link screenshots yet, and google chrome isnt' letting me paste into this text box, so it'll be just text for now.

My first character is Lilith, the elven Sorceress



First spell picks: MM and Shield. First weapon proficiency: Blunt Weapons [I have chosen to keep Baldur's Gate 1 weapon proficiencies, since there are too few magic weapons lying around to justify splitting them up a la BG2.]

Mods:

Quite a few. Most significant being:
BG1 Tutu
BG1 Unfinished Business
BG1 NPC Project
BG2 Tweak Pack
SCS (without pre-buffing enemy magic users, without improved spiders, but mostly everything else)
Several quest mods

Here goes nothing.

Modifié par Belloc, 16 août 2011 - 06:53 .

[corey_russell]

@Belloc: Good luck. Some free advice: Don't give up, and always be sure to learn from any premature death, to know what you could have done differently/should have done, to have this knowledge for your next attempt. Such as running when you are outclassed in an ambush, invisibility or mirror eyes potions on your PC when in Basilisk country OR going to areas which can spawn a basilisk waylay, being prepared for an enemy's most dangerous tactic (such as being prepared for the Amazons hold persons, etc.). You get the idea.

[Grond0]

corey_russell wrote...

Er not to knock your post Grond0, I suspect you actually talked to Thaldorn not Faldorn. Faldorn is the shadow druid you meet in the Cloakwood. Thaldorn is one of the leaders of the Iron Throne in the City of Baldur's Gate.

Good spot!  I realised when I was writing that I wasn't sure of the name, but Faldorn seemed familiar (for obvious reasons in hindsight).

[corey_russell]

Grond0 wrote...

corey_russell wrote...

Er not to knock your post Grond0, I suspect you actually talked to Thaldorn not Faldorn. Faldorn is the shadow druid you meet in the Cloakwood. Thaldorn is one of the leaders of the Iron Throne in the City of Baldur's Gate.

Good spot!  I realised when I was writing that I wasn't sure of the name, but Faldorn seemed familiar (for obvious reasons in hindsight).

Well to be honest, I wasn't sure of Thaldorn's name either! I just remembered Faldorn was the shadow druid ( I used her once).  Fortunately "google" jogged my memory...

[Grond0]

Belloc wrote...
 It's come to the time in my life to quit this hobby altogether...

I haven't figured out how to link screenshots yet, and google chrome isnt' letting me paste into this text box, so it'll be just text for now.

Just what is the time of life to quit?  I'm sure my wife would like to know (but please don't tell her).

Information about pasting screenshots has been posted a few times in this thread, e.g.
http://social.biowar...ndex/3124065/39
There's also a lot of information about how to deal with both general and specific threats buried in there if you're interested (and you've got an hour or two to skim through).

Best of luck.

[Serg BlackStrider]

Welcome to the crew and best of luck, Belloc!

[Belloc]

Thanks Grondo. I've edited my original post. The image is now appearing in my live posting box, but when I submit it, the post puts the text "* image removed * " where the image should be. Perhaps you can see this above. Does anyone know how to fix it?

Update:

Lilith recruited Imoen, Montaron, and Xzar. We were attacked by 9 or 10 diseased gibberlings after talking with the old man. I didn't remember how many creatures SCS throws at you. The 'better calls for help' makes these encounters dangerous, especially since none of my spellcasters have sleep. Imoen successfully hid in shadows to avoid wolves and found the +1 ring of protection in an old oak north of the skirmish. The wizard Tarnesh looked dangerous but was no match for the party after Lilith protected herself from his magic missiles with the shield spell. Wearing the newly acquired ring of wizardry, she hit him with three magic missiles before succumbing to horror, and the guards did the rest. Actually, after the initial encounter when Lilith confronted him alone, I foolishly let my other party members closer for some extra attacks. Imoen was disabled with a sleep spell, and he began to target Xzar with a magic missile, which would have been the end of him, but quite luckily Xzar's Larloch's Minor Drain picked the real wizard out of 2 mirror images, and Tarnesh failed to cast it.

[Grond0]

Belloc wrote...
My first character is Lilith, the elven Sorceress

As you can see the link works OK when I quote your post.  I'm afraid I don't know why it didn't work correctly the first time.  I remember someone a while ago posting about a similar issue that you had to paste links into your internet browser to get them to work, but that was associated with a different site (not Photobucket).  You could perhaps experiment with the file type to see if it's a problem associated with using .gif?

Modifié par Grond0, 16 août 2011 - 07:55 .

[Belloc]

 Update:
Picked up Jaheira and Khalid, who with a mod is now a multi class fighter/mage. Lilith needs all the extra bodies, attacks, and HP she can get to protect herself. The rest of the session was an exercise in flexing her level 1 muscle, seeing what the party was capable of. With Lilith casting MM and throwing darts (each initiative casts spell THEN attacks normally, hence getting in multiple hits per round),  Imoen with arrows, Khalid with arrows/sword, Jaheira with sling, most threats so far don't manage to close to melee distance. Dropped Montaron and Xzar once we reached Beregost, and picked up Kagain. Khalid is acting as front-line tank by casting shield and then equipping a shield, bringing his AC to 0. I thought the bandits at the overturned wagon might prove dangerous, so had Khalid gulp a potion of speed to close distance with them. Wasn't necessary. They were a pushover. Also, weirdly, despite being equipped with bows, they walked to melee distance before taking aim. Maybe the SCS AI was overreacting to the shield spell? Only problem was the ogre with the two belts. Jaheira screwed up the entanglement casting, and the ogre's first swipe at Khalid brought him to 3/19 hp. The party quickly ran away and took it down from afar.



All this careful planning for each encounter makes playing the game very slow, but vastly entertaining. Just what I wanted. Levels feel well-earned.

Modifié par Belloc, 16 août 2011 - 09:23 .

[Grond0]

Tenar breezed through the palace fight.  He opened up with a dispel magic, which automatically gets rid of the greater dopplegangers mirror images as well as possibly their other buffs.  That made them much more vulnerable and both Liia and Belt survived the fight.

On to the Ice Island.  Tenar used up a protection from magic scroll here given the number of spellcasters facing him.  Most of his damage was done with wands - the frost wand being handy because it takes effect through the normal minor globe that SCS casters have up.  The scroll ran out before getting to Dezkiel , but Tenar put up plenty of buffs and quickly finished him off.

Next up was the werewolves.  My last character used Algernon's Cloak here, which made it easy, but Tenar's not using that for his run.  Instead he essentially acted as a fighter.  To start with he advanced and then retreated to a previous level to try and draw some of the opposition with him to be defeated in detail.  For the final combat he put on all his buffs and took them on hand to hand.  At the escape ship the werewolf leader was determined to fight - Tenar finished her off just in time to escape before the werewolf reinforcements could join the battle.  Selaad and his crony also went down pretty easily to cure Tenar's lycanthropy.

More of a challenge is Durlag's Tower.  Thus far Tenar has:
- cleared the top levels
- completed the first basement level.  For the final battle all 4 of the opposition stuck around.  Love died quickly, but Pride soaked up a lot of damage and Avarice got a nasty backstab in during this.  As a result Tenar took them for a walk through the nearby minefield a few times (which healed him and killed them).
- virtually completed the second level, though I'm not sure if there's a couple of greater dopplegangers left.  Again traps were used regularly to heal Tenar and kill the opposition.  For more resistant creatures - like skeleton warriors running and shooting round the bridges worked well.
Even using >100% resistance to heal, dealing with the traps is a bit tedious.  Like my previous character Tenar also just came quite close to death from a repeating damage trap and I'm taking a rest at that point to avoid the temptation to do anything stupid (like continue exploring before fully healing).

[The Fred]

Got chance to resume my adventures with Erthallin II.

I decided that the next place to go would be the Lighthouse area, where an army of skeletons can yield a lot of XP from Sirenes, in much the same way as we cleared the Bassilisk area.

En route, I was waylaid twice by Ogre Magi and Cave Bears (once on the way, then again on the way after returning to buy more darts). I was somewhat worried, because Ogre Magi have killed a lot of my lower-level characters, and I hadn't tackled one before with this team. However, Animate Dead and Dispel Magic made short work of them. Both managed to hit Viconia with a Melf's Acid Arrow, but her Magic Resistance prevented the need for healing.

In the Sirene area, I suffered something of a surprise. I'd forgotten that one of my very own mods, an SCS-style Sirene/Dryad-toughening mod, improves the Sirene AI so that they target PCs. This made my skeleton wall somewhat ineffective, and I had to deal with a number of Charms. I'm pleased to say that the combat was a little more challenging and interesting than I'd thought it would be, though, even if waiting for Charms to wear off was a little tedious. On the upside, the Sirenes weren't able to pose any actual significant threat to me so whilst they made themselves an incredible nusiance, I managed to clear up to Sil and the cave, and Viconia got a level.

I have no magical weapons, so I won't be able to tackle the Flesh Golems in the cave. However, I'm thinking of occupying them with some skellies while I run 'round and grab the loot, or the Tome won't be much use to me.

The team:
Erthallin II
Neutral Good Human Male Fighter 3 -> Druid 6
Darts or Throwing Daggers, Dagger

Imoen
Neutral Good Human Female Druid 6 (almost 7, yay!)
Darts, Dagger

Viconia
Neutral Evil Human Female Cleric 5/Ranger 5
Sling, Mace

[The Fred]

Black Alric's Cave features something of an idiosyncrosy in its layout. The Flesh Golems are very reluctant to traverse the narrow bridges on the left side. Possibly they look too ricketty for them, but I fancy it's actually to do with the pathfinding. As a result, I was able to reach the treasure by letting the Flesh Golem near it see me and then dodging back a little so it started to pathfind around the long way, whilst the Flesh Golem in the lower room was occupied with skeletons. There was a close moment when I got trapped between two, but by dodging back and forth I managed to lose them. One also wandered by and struck Imoen, who was waiting by the door, but she simply fled out.

So, the treasure was easily acquired with no combat (though I had to drop a Potion of Infravision due to encumbrance). The squad then headed off to find Bassilus. On the way we dispatched Tengyan, Jemby and the ugly guy, bandits plaguing the region around Beregost. Skeletons kept them busy while Imoen cast Miscast Magic on Jemby, making her pretty useless, and Viconia followed up with a Hold Person. We struck lucky and it caught both of the other two, making it a pretty simple clean-up operation. Imoen reached L7 as a result.

Viconia then pitted her own skeleton army against Bassilus'. His had better gear, but we had Chant and Defensive Harmony. Erthallin and Imoen also buffed with Barkskin. Miscast Magic was once again used to good effect here, though it probably wasn't necessary.

Though I don't use MM or Dispel Magic often, they do give us a lot of firepower against enemy spellcasters making them worthwhile uses of my 3rd-level slots. I miss my arcane magic, but Druids have plenty of tricks up their sleeves when it comes to a showdown between the two.

Next stop is probably the hated Nashkel Mines. I'll just have to take the trap damage and heal up, but other than that they ought to be an absolute pushover for three L6-7s; the only reasons I've been putting them off are that a) I dislike them and I'm a tad worried about the assassins who come afterwards. I suppose there's also c) everybody in Nashkel hates me and wants to kill me.

[Belloc]

 Update:

After killing the ogre and bandits, Lilith summoned her spirit guardians to seek advice on her true following. She decided to recruit Coran, Edwin, Viconia, and Shar-Teel. Coran will have to wait until later. The party is unsure of taking on the gnoll fortress, let alone simply journeying into the far south-west, so Edwin will have to wait too. We walked east, skirting the nothern edge of the temple area to avoid the nasty wolves, to find Shar-Teel, who brashly challenged Khalid to a fight. To be safe he swigged a potion of speed and ran circles around her firing arrows until she gave in (I have the Shar-Teel-can't-die-initially mod installed). Then Lilith doubled back to the Friendly Arm Inn then across to Peldvale, still avoiding dangerous encounters as much as possible, to slaughter the evil Flaming Fist judge-jury-executioner, where she picked up Viconia and waved goodbye to Khalid and Jaheira. At that point we crossed to the Cloakwood, of which the first section was open. We killed the Tasloi in the south-east for Gurke's cloak, but Kagain barely held onto his life with 1 hp, and Lilith was briefly surrounded and had to survive a single attempted hit against her AC 2. Then around the northern border, and Imoen hid-in-shadows past the nasty spiders all the way to Coran, before Lilith fell into a swoon and her puppet master realized, after a bit of research, that taking Coran on without killing the wyvern would force him to leave the party after 16 days. So instead of talking to Coran, the party traveled south to Naskel, and is now deciding what to do next. Lilith still only has 6 HP, which continues to worry her friends during combat, and she still needs 600 XP until level 2.

A side note: my install of Baldur's Gate is unstable. Occasionally it crashes to desktop without warning. In these cases I have no choice but to 'reload'. This has happened twice so far. I quick-save frequently, and when it happens I try to recreate as much as possible the steps I took up to that point, and not to let any just-gained knowledge influence my rechoices.

Modifié par Belloc, 18 août 2011 - 08:25 .

[corey_russell]

It's okay to reload for bugs/crashes. I get strange 64-bit bug (at least I think it is, since I also encountered this in Vista, but never in windows 98) where I can't talk to anyone. But if I save the game right there, immediately reload I can talk just fine. I also can sometimes crash to the desktop, though usually only after several hours of play.

[The Fred]

I sometimes get the talking thing, but going out of a building and back in seems to fix it.

[Grond0]

Tenar has completed BG1, though had one perilous moment on the way.

He was last left on the second level down of Durlag's Tower.  A bit more exploration showed he had in fact killed all opposition there already, so headed down the stairs.  The fire trap at the bottom was used extensively as a weapon, e.g. against the greater ghouls and ashirikuru.  Although the greater wyverns are too big to get through the door, they could get close enough to be roasted.  The other fire trap near the elemental rooms was similarly used, e.g. to kill the air and cold elemental creatures.

After buffing up Tenar finished off the elemental rooms and was teleported to the chessboard.  Rather than run away he took on the opposition using fireballs.  He managed to kill the king with only minimal damage taken, though he had to kill 7 queens first (couldn't kill the pawns quick enough to stop their rush)!

There were no convenient repeating fireball or lightning traps to lead creatures to on the next level so Tenar went back to the old favourite of running and shooting.  This did the job very nicely.  It wasn't really required, but it was amusing to get crypt crawlers stuck in doorways to be shot up (notice in this picture as well that Grael had rather stupidly stopped to rest in a pool of acid).

Moving on to confront the Demonknight Tenar initially put lots of buffs on and tried to melee him to death quickly.  Unfortunately the Demonknight shrugged off 2 damaging hits and got rid of all the buffs with remove magic.  Tenar then started running round with the first priority to re-establish basic protections.  This almost led to his downfall - I was ready for the Power Word: Stun, but not Power Word: Kill (minor spell deflection only protects up to 7th level spells) and that took Tenar down to 1 HP.  However, the Demonknight used no other spells that could affect Tenar and was safely killed with his throwing axe.  Coming out of the Demonknight's area Tenar saw some unexpected opponents.  He quickly retreated, rested and re-buffed before returning.  Fire, frost and monster summoning wands did most of the work to clear this party.

Off to Ulgoth's Beard and yet another ambush.  It was necessary here to keep moving rapidly to avoid back-stabs from the assassins.  By keeping an eye on when the text showed they were trying to attack Tenar was able to hit them quite a few times with the wand of frost (targeted on a handily placed dead body).  After resting Tenar buffed up again and invaded the cult HQ.  His buffs here included wraith form - interestingly the cult guards only used normal weapons so were unable to hit him.  Downstairs Tenar managed to get Aec'Letec to follow some summons into a corner, leaving him free to deal with the guards.  Then he buffed up again and tried to melee Aec'Letec to death (using 3 mirror potions to protect against death gaze).  Didn't quite finish it off before he started taking damage so went back to the throwing axe for the coup de grace.

On the way to Sarevok took out the Undercity party mainly with arrows of detonation, before persuading Tamoko to leave peacefully.  In the temple drew Sarevok into a corner before dumping him with an invisibility potion.  Then used minimal buffs (decided not to use scroll of magic protection during this run) and arrows of dispelling / detonation to deal with Sarevok's cronies.  One interesting tactic was using a teleportation field to open up enough space from a hasted Angelo in order to take a missile shot at him.  Then buffed up fully with potions and spells (achieved AC -16) and took on Sarevok hand to hand.  This was a total mis-match and Sarevok died very quickly.

Modifié par Grond0, 18 août 2011 - 01:40 .

[corey_russell]

All right Grond0, grats on taking down BG 1. Now do the same in BG 2 (hint: don't die in BG 2)...