61 réponses à ce sujet

[The Fred]

Wow, well done Grond! It sounds like wierd buggy behavious in the temple if you ask me - dealing 322 HP to Sarevok really probably should have killed him. Regardless, even getting to Sarevok is an achievement in my eyes.

[The Fred]

We headed to kill Tristen and Isolde, but pop up right on top of them. Luckily, Xan Dire Charmed Tristen, Branwen summoned some undead, and, with the help of a Charmed Hobgoblin, the rest of the battle was easy.

We then took on Bassilus. Branwen took 3 damage in this fight, making it 50% more harmful than the battle with Mulahey had been. Our own undead army rivalled Bassilus', though, and we soon upgraded Branwen's Warhammer.

I decided to bite the bullet and fight Tranzig. The same bug that hit in my last no-reload game remained, and Tranzig refused to talk to me, so we just killed him. He stood there uselessly the whole time, making the fight even easier than usual, but we also only got 200XP, for some reason.

At the FAI, we were attacked by Molkar and his gang. They spawned right on top of us, making things awkward, but various Sleep and Hold Person spells took half their party out of the fight. We eventually managed to Charm one of them, too, but when we came to deal with him, he cleaved through a lot of my undead army before we could take him out. No matter, we rested and were fine again.

Wary that the other assassins would show up any time, I travelled about a bit so I didn't end up fighting them AND the DH assassins on the Coast Way (my next targets) at the same time. These guys were equally straightforward - Sleep put down the two with poison, and Branwen got up some skellies quickly, making things relatively easy to deal with.

I then took out the guys to the south, Charming the Cleric who I then had cast Rigid Thinking and Entangle on the others. These guys are dangerous because they have a lot of high-level spells (Shadow Door, Rigid Thinking, Lightning Bolt etc) but they have very little health, so with a wall of bones in front of us (thanks, again, to Branwen), they didn't pose much challenge. I really wanted to use these guys' scrolls, but I'm sticking to my initial personal restriction not to pick up *anything* from them, even the useless but cool-looking helmet they have.

[Grond0]

The Fred wrote...

Wow, well done Grond! It sounds like wierd buggy behavious in the temple if you ask me - dealing 322 HP to Sarevok really probably should have killed him. Regardless, even getting to Sarevok is an achievement in my eyes.

The bug was in Angelo not appearing.  Under SCS Sarevok is scripted not to die unless you have killed all his acolytes first so I didn't expect the skull traps to kill him, but thought I would give it a go just in case.

I decided to bite the bullet and fight Tranzig. The same bug that hit in my last no-reload game remained, and Tranzig refused to talk to me, so we just killed him. He stood there uselessly the whole time, making the fight even easier than usual, but we also only got 200XP, for some reason.

I think Tranzig is counted as neutral until he talks.  If you kill a neutral, i.e. blue rather than red circled, then you only get 10% of their XP - one reason why I almost never backstab before a dialogue triggers.

[The Fred]

The bandit camp was messy. We advanced with a skeleton squad in front of us, to soak up arrows more than anything, but things started to go wrong when we hit Taugosz. He saved against a Command, quickly one-hit-killing a Charmed Bandit and a skeleton, but fell prey to a Hold Person, taking him out of the fight. However, some Bandits nearly killed Xan, who had to be hurriedly healed. We used Sleep and took them out, whilst Branwen battered at Taugosz' armour. However, the Hold wore off and Branwen was nearly killed before we finally finished up.

Inside the tent, I made a mistake by having Imoen head right to put some space between her and the melee bad guys - the hobgoblin Hakt hit her more than once, taking off most of her health and poisoning her. Twice. I really though she was a gonner (she hit 3hp) but we somehow pulled her back from the brink. Xan Charmed the Gnoll and we Held the other guy, leaving the skeletons free to take on the mage and hobgoblin. In the end, we triumped, Branwen glugging some potions of healing and magic blocking before opening the locked chest. Imoen upgraded her bow, Aithilrin and Branwen upgraded their armour, and the spell scrolls (Horror, Stinking Cloud, etc) were put to good use.

Back at the FAI, we were attacked again (more DH assassins). Luckily, Animate Dead, Stinking Cloud and Hold Person were put to good use again here.

Next stop, the Cloakwood, though I will probably have to pick up a thief (I think Safana) first.

[The Fred]

I headed to the Lighthouse to pick up Safana. Now, I don't actually know whether she leaves the party if you don't get her treasure, but I figured I'd better be on the safe side - besides, this way I get the Manual of Bodily Health whilst it might still be useful. I did use Sword Coast Keeper to adjust her thieving skills and proficiencies (she has a point in spears, which is useless, so I moved it to long sword and her point in missile weapons to bow).

My original plan was to have Xan cast Protection from Evil on Branwen, who could then soak up the Dire Charms. However, I instead opted for the skeleton army again. We killed some Hobgoblins, who provided Safana with a bow and arrows, and then moved on up the coast. We suitably interrupted all the Sirene's Invisibility spells with ranged weapons, and their Dire Charms were wasted on our minions.

Once inside the cave, however, things turned sour. Branwen is my best tank, so I resorted to having Imoen take the golems down with Arrows +1. With hindsight I should have given some to Safana, too. The first golem got in some nasty hits, but the second one seemed confused by the cave layout and ran away from Branwen. Conscious that he'd be coming 'round the long way, I headed quickly to the treasure trove. Unfortunately, after picking up the tome, he popped up again. I had Xan engage, planning to use him (buffed by Mirror Image) as my tank, whilst Imoen downed the golem. Unfortunately, Mirror Image expired right then, and the golem landed a single, 19-damage hit on him, downing him in one.

R.I.P. Xan.

That was sloppily handled. I could have had Imoen solo the golem using the cave's layout, or I could have had Xan memorize Wraith Form (should have protected him) and/or more Mirror Images and made him into a proper tank, but it's done now.

Now, I hadn't planned on using Xan anyway, but he's close to L7 now (which would get us 4th-level spells), and until Imoen and Aithilrin get some scrolls, he's also the only one who can cast even 3rd-level spells (admittedly only Dire Charm and Wraith Form), so I kind of want him back. Unfortunately, I can't afford to pay at a temple (actually I can, I have 2k gp, but only because I couldn't not have it). I could exploit the Shoal quest, but that feels like a cheat (and I kind of want to save it) so I'm wondering whether to set my GP to 0 using SCK and allow myself to use quest rewards to raise him, probably later on.

[Grond0]

The Fred wrote...
Now, I hadn't planned on using Xan anyway, but he's close to L7 now (which would get us 4th-level spells), and until Imoen and Aithilrin get some scrolls, he's also the only one who can cast even 3rd-level spells (admittedly only Dire Charm and Wraith Form), so I kind of want him back. Unfortunately, I can't afford to pay at a temple (actually I can, I have 2k gp, but only because I couldn't not have it). I could exploit the Shoal quest, but that feels like a cheat (and I kind of want to save it) so I'm wondering whether to set my GP to 0 using SCK and allow myself to use quest rewards to raise him, probably later on.

What about using the reward for Bassilus for raising? The fact that you've done a favour for the priest makes it feel right that he would return it.

[The Fred]

That actually makes a lot of sense. I've killed Bassilus, but haven't turned in his symbol yet. The 5k reward would more than cover the 1k cost of Xan, and makes good RP sense. I think as long as there's some challenge preserved (you can't just walk into a temple and pay with cash you've accumulated, since the spirit of the challenge is that you don't actually have that cash) it's OK, and I won't be able to use Bassilus' money for another char since I'll "give it away" straight afterwards.

In the meantime, we headed to the Cloakwood where we began inroads into the spider area. Turns out that SCS' Harder Spiders makes all the Phase Spiders pop up right on top of you right away (I might change that), so I had a scary moment when I arrived, but we were able to put some space between us and summon some skeletons.

We passed the first trap and killed the spiders easily, but I panicked when I saw the DH druids (I though they were more assassins) and set off a Stinking Cloud. It did help me with some ettercaps, but when Safana set off the next Web trap by accident, things got a bit hairy. Luckily, we had enough skeletons to slow down the ettercaps long enough for Safana to save against Cloud and Web and got free or both.

[The Fred]

I decided to do as you suggested and got Xan back, then headed back to the spider area.

I considered trying for Spider's Bane (Spider's Bane + Web combo is great), which I skipped in my last no-reload game. However, after encountering a Sword Spider followed by a large number of Huge Spiders and Ettercaps, I decided it probably wasn't worth the risk, at least not right now, so I headed north.

Unfortunately, this crashed the game. I think it's something to do with Faster Bears and DH, so I uninstalled the former. Unfortunately, this seems to have bodged up my install and removed the DH scripts (something to do with Smarter Deployment for Assassin Parties not uninstalling/reinstalling properly...). I'm reinstalled back to DH and that seems to have fixed everything, but putting Faster Bears on top broke the DH bears again. Uninstalling it again removed them completely. Ugh. I think once I've finished this run-through I'm going to purge this install and start from scratch.

[The Fred]

Somehow, the Hamadryad survives our ranged attacks and skeleton bodyguard to Charm Safana, Entangle Branwen, Imoen and our summoned creatures, and then go on to kill Imoen! I checked this out - she has 14 THAC0, 5 AC and a DAGGER! Yet, somehow, most of our arrows missed (turns out she has -5 AC and -30% damage vs missile), she took no damage from Melf's Acid Arrow or Agannazar's Scorcher, and lasted far longer than she should have with 32 HP.

Well, I'm considering what to do with Imoen, but worse still, her Longbow of Marksmanship and other treasured few items are going to be left to rot in the middle of this acursed forest! Grrr.

[Grond0]

The Fred wrote...

Somehow, the Hamadryad survives our ranged attacks and skeleton bodyguard to Charm Safana, Entangle Branwen, Imoen and our summoned creatures, and then go on to kill Imoen! I checked this out - she has 14 THAC0, 5 AC and a DAGGER! Yet, somehow, most of our arrows missed (turns out she has -5 AC and -30% damage vs missile), she took no damage from Melf's Acid Arrow or Agannazar's Scorcher, and lasted far longer than she should have with 32 HP.

Well, I'm considering what to do with Imoen, but worse still, her Longbow of Marksmanship and other treasured few items are going to be left to rot in the middle of this acursed forest! Grrr.

Tough luck.  The hamadryad has annoyed me on a number of occasions and even been responsible for a death via charming, but I don't think she's ever managed a dagger kill like that.

[The Fred]

Yeah, I was pretty stunned. The charming is annoying as hell, and I especially remember the first time I ran into her, but I've always been able to take her out with ranged weapons, often interrupting a lot of her spells. Maybe it was because this time I had only three ranged characters, non of whom were fighter-types, but she seemed to take a LOT of downing. Probably would have been easiest to have engaged in melee, but Branwen and Imoen had both been Entangled, so there wasn't much scope to manoevre.

[The Fred]

I decided to push on through Cloakwood and worry about poor Imoen later.

We got to the mines without incident, cleared away some of the guards and rested, then headed on in with a few skellies and a charmed guy ahead of us. Problem was, without Imoen, I had no Stinking Clouds and I'd forgotten to memorize Horror (had two Agannazar's Scorchers). Well, Silence took out the mages (and I foolishly Charmed one, which got him killed but didn't earn us any XP, only a few seconds of free meatshield) and a bevy of Hold, Sleep, Command, Charm and Blindness spells proved effective against everyone else. Unfortunately, things turned sour as people started recovering, since I had only Branwen in melee and Aithilrin on the sling to do damage. Safana had run out of arrows but I had her switch to Fire Arrows at the end, because I really needed it. However, with all the DH guys there too, Branwen nearly died, so I fled. Unfortunately, one of them shot down Safana on the way out.

OK so here I am, stranded in the Cloakwood, with 2/5 of my party members biting the dust, and barely any spells memorized. We tried to rest, and were nearly soloed by a giant spider.

In the end, we managed to get some sleep, headed back to the mines and killed everyone, and picked up all the loot. Maybe I'm going soft, but I decided to collect stuff and pay for party resurrections. If it was just Immy, I could probably have gotten through the mines and done the Shoal/Droth thing or whatever, but the whole point of takign Safana was to deal with the mine traps for me.

Anyway, I made sure that I didn't keep any of the things earmarked for sale, and now I'm back at the FAI with a full party, but two of them are completely lacking any form of weapon. On the upside, Branwen and Xan are both now L7 (though in Xan's case, with no 4th-level spells). I want to get Spider's Bane for Immy (Branwen has Free Action now), but I'm a bit scared of having to leave it behind if she dies again.