76 réponses à ce sujet

[Jeff W]

Squidmaster wrote...

Ok, sewers enemy party encounter... I'm level 8, their wizard is at least level 15, probably higher. How is it possible for me to hope to kill him?

Cheese. Skull traps, web+cloudkill, farsight+summons, etc. lol

There's tons of ways to cheese those guys, but they're ludicrously tough in a fair fight if you're underlevelled. They will bomb you back to the stone age, especially with scs2 installed.

Modifié par Jeff W, 18 mars 2011 - 09:49 .

[Squidmaster]

Hehe, what I wound up doing was webbing the other guys and running the mage to the other side of the sewers. I then left and returned a number of times, having my main character stealth near him so he would gratuitously cast spells. After doing that a while and waiting on the surface in between I was able to run him out of spells and get him. Lame.

How do you deal with rakshasas, by the way? Wait till I'm not level 8? I can't seem to hit the sewer one (I understand they are immune to any spells I would currently have).

One other thing - Is the rogue ability "set snare" worth it?  I have it at 100 on my main and at least half the time guys walk right over the traps and they don't go off. 

Modifié par Squidmaster, 18 mars 2011 - 10:55 .

[Enuhal]

You will need at least some magical weapons to hurt Rakshasa (depending on the type of Rakshasa, they have to be at least +1 or +2 - I think for the sewer one, +1 is enough), and yes, direct spells won't do anything at your level (they are immune to spell lvls 1-7) - but summoned creatures or mmm's can, for example.

Very easy way for this Rakshasa specifically is summoning a fire elemental, because he only has a normal weapon and doesn't use spells.

Traps are actually extremely powerful and often considered gamebreaking by many people if used in combination with metagaming (especially the advanced traps). That people walk "right over the traps" seems really strange, because they are actually very relieable - of course, you can't plant them during combat, but if you prepare a few traps in advance, it will make a lot of the games encounters rather easy.

[Squidmaster]

Maybe I am doing the wrong areas for my level or something. I'm not really that close to being able to cast elemental summoning spells. I tried using other summons but they got used and did nothing but buy me a few seconds. I was able to get the win by setting about 6 traps. 3 of them worked and properly buffed warriory folk were able to actually hit the guy to get him from "almost dead" to "dead".

Basically I did everything that I could (currently) find in the slums, which led me on the quest for Korgan, which was fairly challenging given that level drain could 2 shot me. Now I've dropped him and am doing the one for Keldorn, who I intend to keep around. There seem to be strange combinations of super hard guys and super easy guys so far. It's weird posterizing a bunch of goblins, then running into a level 15 or 17 mage, for example. I can't really prepare for that one.

[mad cat from hell]

Sewers party is very difficult in the beginning but good for money and equip. Two dwarves have incredible saving throws plus they drink potions of magic protection which need dispelling. The mage should be left for the very end: run away and separate their party thats the only way because that mage will be able to horid wilting you/finger of death/ gate in demons plus fireballs lightnings etc : all of which means dead party. When you get rid of dwarves, feed a mage with summons: he will spend his spellbook fighting skeletons.

Modifié par mad cat from hell, 19 mars 2011 - 03:39 .

[Jeff W]

Enuhal wrote...

Traps are actually extremely powerful and often considered gamebreaking by many people if used in combination with metagaming (especially the advanced traps).

Yeah, might as well just use debug mode ctrl+y. I watched some of a lets play bg2 on youtube once and the guy couldn't win any tough fight without traps. Bosses like fiirkrag and the chromatic demon in watcher's keep would just die instantly to traps(not even hla traps). 

[Biotic_Warlock]

I manage yo beat the sewer party easy if you use the right spells.
Though it took a couple of reloads to fix mistakes in the plan.
If you have keldorn, use his very powerful dispel magic ability to remove any defences and buffers, then you can use webs and stuff to disable them while you could send a hasted strengh heavy warror or invoker/sorceror with stoneskin and free action - or used minor globe of invunerability if there is stinking cloud active.
You could use cloudkills too to damage em while they are stuck.
The mage i think you shouild kill fastest since i think he has death spells.

[Squidmaster]

This seems like a good time to ask what the sequence is for taking down enemy high-level wizard's protections. If I was high enough level to have these spells, how would I line them up most efficiently? I have to blow one just to get rid of that one spell that blocks the first defense-stripping spell cast, right? It seems fairly technical at the moment.

It seems like the fight of lameness du jour now for me is the Unseeing Eye.  I use the rod, he summons 2 death tyrants and is immune to everything from then on.  Oh, and I can't outrun this one because he instant kills at least 2 people at the start.

Is this what I have to expect from SCS2?  If so I will uninstall it, because I want a challenge, not some crazy beat down on a level 8 party when everything indicates I am at the right levels for each area I am exploring.  I don't even have access to any of the spells that would remove these protections, and likely won't for another 6+ levels in a lot of cases.

Modifié par Squidmaster, 19 mars 2011 - 09:30 .

[Biotic_Warlock]

breach and thrust magic is useful at lower levels.
thrust is 3rd level mage spell and removes all from a select of magic defences - breach at level 5 removes a larger selection - including many higher level protections.

[Squidmaster]

I have Spell Thrust (not breach yet because of level), but so far no caster enemies have used anything lower than level 6. After 2 hours of reloading I finally killed the beholder. If this is typical I am gonna remove this mod, because making things work better tactically is great, but just jacking them up to be 3x your level or whatever is no fun and extremely frustrating. There are no tactics I could use other than exploits to beat this fight at my level with my cash and spell options.

If this is indeed typical, can I reinstall SCS2 and just pick other options or am I stuck with my game as is from this point on?  Does it require a reinstall of the game or what exactly?

Modifié par Squidmaster, 19 mars 2011 - 11:46 .

[polytope]

Squidmaster wrote...

This seems like a good time to ask what the sequence is for taking down enemy high-level wizard's protections. If I was high enough level to have these spells, how would I line them up most efficiently? I have to blow one just to get rid of that one spell that blocks the first defense-stripping spell cast, right? It seems fairly technical at the moment.

Other people have said spell thrust, I'll just add Ruby Ray to remove spell trap (necessary for breaching a high level mage, as SCS changes the breach spell so that it doesn't bypass spell protections) and Pierce Magic to remove globes of invulnerability.

Also, you don't need to remove enemy mages spell protections in many cases - i.e. area spells like Chaos, Cloudkill etc. bypass globe of invulnerability and are a good bet against mid level mages.

In the early game most enemy mages use prot from magic weapons, for a low level party switching to normal weapons might be the easiest way to deal with this (just be careful of their fireshields) - a couple of hasted fighters should remove their stoneskins in a round or so. Since mages try to run away from you in between casting spells, a weapon with low speed factor is good for removing their stoneskins (such as a wakizashi, or - if they are not protected from magic weapons - the short sword of backstabbing).

Squidmaster wrote...
It seems like the fight of lameness du jour now for me is the Unseeing Eye.  I use the rod, he summons 2 death tyrants and is immune to everything from then on.  Oh, and I can't outrun this one because he instant kills at least 2 people at the start.

It's possible to trick beholders into wasting their anti magic ray on a decoy (leaving the fighters, whose job it is to kill the beholder, protected), Viconia is ideal for this purpose as she can drink a potion of Magic Protection after the AMR hits to get 100+ magic resistance and immunity to follow up rays.

Squidmaster wrote...
Is this what I have to expect from SCS2?  If so I will uninstall it, because I want a challenge, not some crazy beat down on a level 8 party when everything indicates I am at the right levels for each area I am exploring.  I don't even have access to any of the spells that would remove these protections, and likely won't for another 6+ levels in a lot of cases.

You would probably find things easier if you used a smaller party, with faster level ups - for the ealy game anyway. At least, I usually do the first few levels after Irenicus dungeon solo, so I don't recruit the minimum level versions of all the NPCs.

[Flamedance]

Squidmaster wrote...

I have Spell Thrust (not breach yet because of level), but so far no caster enemies have used anything lower than level 6. After 2 hours of reloading I finally killed the beholder. If this is typical I am gonna remove this mod, because making things work better tactically is great, but just jacking them up to be 3x your level or whatever is no fun and extremely frustrating. There are no tactics I could use other than exploits to beat this fight at my level with my cash and spell options.

If this is indeed typical, can I reinstall SCS2 and just pick other options or am I stuck with my game as is from this point on?  Does it require a reinstall of the game or what exactly?

You can uninstall SCS without having to reinstall the game.

I would like to say that SCS is pretty fair to the player, compared to other difficulty enhancing mods like Tactics or Improved Anvil. Unlike  IA and Tactics, there's very little blatant cheating going on in SCS.
As in all mods like this, you have to know when to take on which enemies, which requires a fair bit of metagaming. Otherwise it gets very frustrating very fast.

[Squidmaster]

Hmm, maybe what I should do is undo some of the mod changes, because I have no idea what is coming and I don't want to have to look it up to pick my spells or when to engage. Will that work if I run the SCS executable again in the BG2 folder and just pick other settings?

The Unseeing Eye was completely invulnerable to my party with any weapons due to having the layers of high level protections covering over protection from magic weapons. I was ultimately able to win by resting, setting about 8 traps, and luring out the Death Tyrants into them and reloading if they insta killed people, since I have no way of restoring those things yet. Naturally, the Unseeing Eye regenerated all of his health and magical protections on rest, but I was able to cheese it like the other guy and run away till they ran out, ultimately killing him with reloads and magic missiles. The Unseeing Eye naturally was able to cast True Seeing at will to go with his chain contingencies to unspeakable things to me, so I couldn't sneak in, and even if I could have, no weapons would have hit him anyway. It took 2 hours of absolutely no fun and no real strategy other than trying to find ways to metagame out of it so I could complete 1 quest. What a waste of an afternoon.

The real (and probably only) problem I am having with SCS2 is that the levels of the enemies are so unbelievably high at the start of the game.  I had the same problem in BG1 with Silke, but she seemed to be the only offender in that game.  From that point on it was pretty fun having mages not be stupid, because they were the same level range as me and I could handle it.  If I was fighting even level 10 mages with my current party I would have a reasonable shot because I could actually remove their defenses.

Modifié par Squidmaster, 20 mars 2011 - 01:11 .

[Flamedance]

Silke is a lvl 10 bard in vanilla Baldur's Gate. SCS doesn't change her level, it just gives her the spells appropriate for a lvl 10 bard. I admit it was pretty silly of Bioware to place a character of such a high level in what was de facto the starting town. I'm not sure if SCS actually raises the level of the Unseeing Eye.

You should be able to uninstall SCS, then reinstall it with the options you like. If it's the prebuffing mages do in SCS that causes most of the problems, simply don't install it. There's no shame at all in that.

[Squidmaster]

I didn't tell it to prebuff but it seems like they are doing it, because I get a lot of "previously casted" messages early on. I will play a little longer with SCS but the next crazy thing I encounter will probably lead to the redo.

You were probably the one who told me about Silke before. I imagine Bioware put in certain level characters to compensate for script weaknesses and the like. Removing those weaknesses makes things crazy without lots of experience.

[Squidmaster]

Yeah, I had picked the "only prebuff if teleporting in" type option, but I think it applied a lot more than it was supposed to. I have since changed it and some other stuff so I can play for fun and not for a huge skill challenge on my first playthrough.

[Grond0]

Squidmaster wrote...

Yeah, I had picked the "only prebuff if teleporting in" type option, but I think it applied a lot more than it was supposed to. I have since changed it and some other stuff so I can play for fun and not for a huge skill challenge on my first playthrough.

It may not be pre-buffing at all which is causing your problems - just use of spell sequencers, contingencies etc means that spell casters rapidly become invulnerable to you.  I tend to wait them out by exposing only 1 or 2 characters at a time - protection from magic weapons only lasts 4 rounds - rather than try and take the magic defences out directly.  There are also plenty of options you might consider cheesy (or just sensible depending on your point of view) e.g. using an invisible scout to guide in area effect spells such as fireball - most mages only have 1 or 2 detect invisibility spells.

[ussnorway]

Inquisitor dispel will solve a lot of your problems. Small/ large traps will make short work of any mage.

Have you considered that maybe the eye would be better saved for later... not all the quests are the same. Try the druid grove (very easy) or the shadows.

[mad cat from hell]

Do 1st circus in promenade, slavers quest in slums, then proceed to nalia's keep and aquiring flail of ages, kill the parties in sewers, i n taverns in promenade and bridge district, then plunder guarded compound, then make trademeet quest, then whatever, maybe eye quest or umar hills.

[Squidmaster]

The reason I did the Unseeing Eye was that I wanted to pick up Keldorn as a regular party member. All of the lead-in to that final area seemed level appropriate and then *wham*! Thanks for listening to my gripes and continuing to provide tips. I will check out the quest areas mentioned here. I didn't get the slaver quest oddly, even though I checked out the entire slums area and was attacked by a band of slavers between zones. Do I need to show up again at night perhaps or is there a random element?

I have a non spellcaster question. I have read a few things here and there about building or using tanks. How do you really use a tank character, especially with SCS running. My impression is that enemies will always pick what they perceive to be the weakest target AC-wise within a certain small radius. Are there tips or tricks to getting them to hammer the "right" guy?

What are the best ways to handle stealthing rogues also? They can pack a mean punch!

[Enuhal]

To get the slavers quests, go to Copper Coronet and talk Lethian into giving you access to the rooms in the back. Explore those, and you'll eventually meet Hendak who will give you the quests.

A tanking character should usually still work in SCS2 (just have everyone else far away from combat). Most effective tanking classes will eventually be arcane spellcasters, for example Blades, Sorcerers or various mages, but Cleric/Rangers or Fighter/Druids with Ironskin can be pretty good as well. Of course, depending on the difficulty level you play on, even regular fighter-type characters might make excellent tanks. Since your level is rather low for the areas you move in, I suggest not trying to engage in too much direct melee combat and, instead, relying on spells, hit and run, summons or quick focused attacks.

For rogues, the True Sight spell is a good option to prevent them from stealthing up to you if you know they're there.

[Grond0]

Squidmaster wrote...

What are the best ways to handle stealthing rogues also? They can pack a mean punch!

Also make sure that your spellcasters are protected - stoneskin is an obvious choice, but if you don't have that then keep a mirror image handy to slam up as soon as you notice an ambush (it is highly likely there will be some invisible ambushers ready to jump on your 'weaker' characters).

Modifié par Grond0, 20 mars 2011 - 09:38 .

[Grond0]

Double post

Modifié par Grond0, 20 mars 2011 - 09:39 .

[ussnorway]

Enuhal wrote...
For rogues, the True Sight spell is a good option to prevent them from stealthing up to you if you know they're there.

A thief with detect illusion is also a good option.

[Squidmaster]

What does detect illusion dispel? I know it can handle mirror image from BG1 but my characters in 2 don't have points there as of yet.

<edit> I tried true seeing on some rogues recently, and it revealed them, but didn't stop them from restealthing to backstab again.  Maybe it doesn't "tick" often enough to stop it.  I had much better success with glitterdust after I could see where to target from the true seeing.

Modifié par Squidmaster, 21 mars 2011 - 01:03 .