Ivy, level 9 Chaotic Neutral Elven Wild Mage, adventuring with Imoen, Faldorn and CoranReading the first post closely, I realized I had to be a bit harder on my main character. I like the idea that I can only play on if it is likely that the rest of my party would have been able to win the fight and take Ivy to a temple (or raise her with scroll or spell). I should simulate that this happened.
So I donated money to the poet in Belching Dragon and to Naskel temple (so the rep adjustments evened out and enough gold for two resurrections was used). Per my house rules, I also adjusted Ivy's Constitution two steps downwards. I used my stored Tome to get it back up one unit. Why do that when CON 6 is just as bad as CON 5? Well, that's because I would have used it asap after the first death (to avoid the HP penalty). As it is now, Ivy has CON 6 which means she has a -1 HP penalty per level. So her max HP went from 29 to 20.
Ulcaster
I picked up Garrick (don't remember the Silke fight - it must have been very easy) went to the Carnival, then to Ulcaster to do his quest. Coran happened to wake up a pack of skeletons, and a second pack heard the commotion. There were more of them that was comfortable. All of us took damage. Ivy
burned her last lightning wand charge in an attempt to turn the battle. Not too bothersome from here.
The Myr'Cutio battle was interesting as usual. He really is a cool opponent with a good AI and an unusual assortment of spells, even though
not all of his decisions were perfect. Way to fry your buddies, pal.
Garrick was stripped from the good stuff and sent to an inn.
Now, I did not really remember improved Icharyd's powers exactly, just that I he is nasty and can call down lightning during the fight. I sent in Faldorn and Coran, both protected from lightning (spell for Coran, Absorption potion for Faldorn). Ivy also received a spell (in case the lightning is aimed at the protagonist - my last protagonist in this fight was the one doing the tanking so I didn't know...). My duo quickly forced Icharyd to do his battle "restart". Coran and Faldorn got whisked down to Ivy and Imoen below the plateu and all magical effects on my party were gone (I later understood that Icharyd had messed with time itself so that several hours had passed). I burned two more Absorption potions (Faldorn and Ivy) and my duo re-entered battle. Darn, Faldorn should have saved her Iron Skins for this second round...).
Faldorn tanked while Coran did a repeated routine of backstab - move away and hide - move in and backstab. Some skeletons joined the fight but I ignored them (they were melee-only with hammers and such and could only hit Faldorn on criticals due to her current massive AC vs. blunt). Faldorn needed several potions (including two Extra Healing) but
my duo prevailed. Ulcaster dungeon
Main part of Ulcaster dungeon was easy for my experienced party. However, my mod setup adds two boss encounters in the treasure room (which thankfully can be taken on one at a time): Wolf of Ulcaster and a Greater Skeleton Mage. The Wolf is a buffed-up Vampiric Wolf with some special powers. It causes fear, can summon many dread wolves (2 at a time) and a 4-pack of Ghouls. The fear is easy to counter in advance and Coran managed to lure the Wolf into a side corridor where he could backstab it repeatedly. The wolves that were summoned nearly all ran to the treasure room. One of the Ghouls found Coran in the room he used for hiding. I freaked and had Coran use a protection from undead scroll. In hindsight, that was a waste. He should have just equipped Spider's Bane and whacked that stupid ghoul (2 hits would have been enough). Faldorn lured the other three ghouls to my three other characters. Some nervous rounds there before my three girls could kill them. My mages are quite weak against the undead (many of their sweet disabling spells don't work on the undead, and this was not a situation for Skull Trap either...). Imoen's Boomerang Dagger +2 did most of the work.
After Coran had
slain the wolf (on the 5th backstab, I think), he peeked into the treasure room and there was 15 or so dread wolves (summoned by Wolf of Ulcaster earlier). They could all be killed with stealth arrows! These wolves return to the room
immediately when they can't see an enemy, so it was usually enough for Coran to take two steps to the side and he could hide again. Only occasionally did he need to round a corner to hide.
I used the 'summoning storm' tactics to weaken the mage. It got its Spell Trigger going (Prot. from Magical Weapons, Prot. from Normal Missiles and Shield) and wasted a few high-damage spells (Sunfire, Lightning Bolt).
Here he is, looks mighty, eh? I waited out the buffing spells (well, except for Stoneskin).
After the mage was down to low-level damage spells on my summons (MM, Melf's Acid Arrow), I thought I had him. Coran dished out damage with fire arrows. Then the mage had 'Contingency - Call of the Vampire'. Two Vampiric Wolves. Yikes!
Coran could lure the wolves away from their master and my party killed them in a combined effort. But getting far away from the mage apparently restored all his spells. When I saw his initial Spell Trigger trigger again, followed by another Call of the Vampire contingency, I just ran...
We rested by the exit (we had to kill 4 dread wolves before we were allowed to rest). OK, now I knew I had to work on the mage's high-level spells again. Sigh. Another initial Spell Trigger, two more Vampiric Wolves. So there are four in total now. No, three, because the mage was trigger happy with a Fireball against my summoned animals...
Next spell the mage cast: Invisible Stalker. Crikey, those guys are nasty! I managed to lure it back to the slime rooms part of the dungeon. My plan was to have Coran backstab it repeatedly. But now the mage had found its way all the way here! OK, I do not have enough resourses to make all of us invisble (the mage can undo invisbilty anyway, on everyone except Coran...). We are in a dead end, this will be a fight to the death! At least the mage has wasted many damage spells already.
Looking OK this far. Coran is tanking the two Vampiric Wolves (he has plate mail on, so he's doing quite well (just drank a healing potion, though)). The third circle near Coran is the Invisible Stalker. The Stalker is not a problem because it has just been Feelbleminded by Ivy (yay!). But that Feeblemind spell surged in a crazy way that Held Imoen. Faldorn is almost done conjuring up some bears in the mage's face.
Mage then cast Symbol: Fear on Coran and he failed the save. One of the wolves chased after Ivy who had to run into the next room.
Pretty chaotic now, eh? The one good thing is that mage has stopped casting spells and just fights the bears. For a mage, he has a damn good THAC0, I must say. The bears can't damage him since he's immune to normal weapons (can they even gnaw at his Stoneskins? I dunno.) Number one priority is to not let that wolf bite Ivy!
Imoen snapped out of her Hold effect and was soon attacked by a wolf. So now we have two mages running from wolves. Panicked Coran passed by and was actually useful beacuse
he distracted a wolf. He's still holding Spider's Bane so he's doing OK
physically...
At first, I didn't want to risk Faldorn getting held so I had her throw +1 Darts while my mages ran from wolves. But as the bears were dying, I realized I had to try to kill the wolves quicker (one was down to Near Death). Faldorn intercepted a wolf and was immediately Held!
SCS is fair in the way that the enemy party is not doing their utmost to quickly slay helpless characters - instead going for the other characters and trying to win the whole fight rather than kill as many as possible, This worked to Faldorn's advantage here. But I realized that if both my mages would be around the corner and Faldorn was the only enemy they would see, she'd be dead soon. Ivy cast Invisibilty on Faldorn. Both wolves and the skeleton mage now went after Ivy, who thought she could pass between Faldorn and the wall. That didn't work. Ivy got hit but thankfully saved against the hold effect.
She took 12 damage, which was hardly visible on her portait. Say what? That should be over half her life. She has
59/71 hit points? Ah, that Vampiric Touch she used on a Vampiric Wolf earlier worked partly (no damage was dealt but a huge (buggily huge?) HP boost was given). Ah, so a couple of sword hits are quite harmless for Ivy at the moment. The vampiric bites are not, though. Ivy managed to cast an Invisibilty to save herself. That also got her out of the trap she was in, because the two remaining enemies went after Imoen instead (Half a round after the screenie, Imoen had killed that wolf with another dagger throw).
Ivy drank an Oil of Speed so she could kite around the enemies more safely. She pulled both enemies into the next room. Faldorn got un-Held and summoned her dread wolf. Ivy cast Hold Monster. Wolf got held but the mage saved. Coran had finally calmed down. He was 1.5 screen away.
"Come here buddy, and put some fire arrows to use." I was almost out of +1 Darts now. I gave the last ones to Faldorn who used them up for tearing down Stoneskins on the mage. She went melee now, alongside her dread wolf. Ivy had no spells left that were useful, and nothing to throw at the mage.
Might as well make herself useful in some way... (it's a +1 dagger she's using there)
Greater Skeleton Mage defeated (he left a Stinking Cloud as parting gift...). Wow, what a battle! One of the best I've ever had in this game.
Danger wasn't quite over yet, because all the enemies outside had respawned. Two kobold packs, a ghoul pack and a big skeleton pack. But we had spells left that weren't useful in the big fight earlier but great now:
Double Sleep and some
bony firepower. Coran also did a good job, as you can see.
Red Wizards of ThayTotal success here, I must say. Coran set two traps on the ground just outside Denak's view. He had only 45% in the skill, but managed to set both traps. Imoen had just gained mage level 7 and I had rested after we killed all the spiders and ettercaps on the map. I timed it so that Imoen cast Greater Malison just before Ivy threw a Skull Trap at the three mages standing close together. Imoen's spell was useless, though. I forgot that GM only works on red circle creatures...
Faldorn had conjured up some animals. As Lasala stepped down from the stairs,
Coran's trap was too much for her. Meanwhile, Ivy had nailed Brendan with Emotion and was about to kill both him and Diana with another Skull Trap.
Whoops. Guess the random gods decided that Ivy needed some magic protection. She had one more Skull Trap and that took out the two mages.
Denak's fate was sealed shortly afterwards with a Nymph spell. The loot here netted a Teleport Field scroll, some mage robes and Boots of Speed.
We went to the Firewine map again, in order to kill Kahrk. Big mistake by me not making my mages invisble before trying to rest.
10 skeletons with Composite Long Bows! I thought the skeletons would be stupid enough to all fire at Faldorn who were closest to them. That was not the case. Ivy's Skull Trap was interrupted. She fled for her life
but a 4th arrow hit was too much for her. There is little margin for error when you have 20 HP and no Stoneskin as of yet...
Remove more resurrection gold, take CON down to 5 and hopefully
I learned something...Nice turn of event here. That meant Kahrk could only punch the bears unconscious and had to use spells to deal the killing blows. Coran has been hit by a Chaos spell but he's safe because he is far away from everyone else, and in shadows.
When Coran came to his senses, Kahrk was nearly out of spells (just some Magic Missiles that Coran could negotiate by moving away, hiding and eating some enhanced Goodberries (they heal 5hp each ever since Faldorn reached level 9)). Kahrk is pretty formidale even without his spells and sword. It was hard for Coran to tank. He did that to give Ivy a chance to cast AoE spells near him. Imoen had nailed Kahrk with a Malison earlier, and he
failed his save vs. Ivy's second Emotion.
Mulahey's LairI needed a bit more money for some big shopping so I decided to move on to Ch 3 so I could sell lots of gunk to Officer Vai. I thought I could clear out some kobold elite first but that got Mulahey to the entrance and he spawned a lot of enemies. I didn't like the situation and ran out the exit. Nobody followed. Hmm.
Coran hid in shadows, Ivy cast Invisibility on Faldorn and Imoen and Improved Inviso on herself. I made sure that Coran wasn't the character closest to the exit to preserve his stealth in the next area.
We arrived and I tried to move the whole party to where Xan is standing. Coran got there but the rest of the party couldn't pass through the mass of enemies. Imoen could be moved up into the big room there, which was empty. Faldorn and Ivy could move down into Mulahey's chest area. OK, Ivy's invisibility isn't going to last forever so I have to clear out some foes. Coran threw a Potion of Explosions into the thick of enemies and immeditely backed off and re-stealthed. That moved most foes in his direction. Ivy could now throw a Skull Trap to take out pretty much everyone else except Mulahey. Faldorn (still invisble) went over to Coran. Coran shot a Biting arrow from the shadows. That was it - Mulahey never got a spell off.
Nimbul was backstabbed to death before he even had a chance to talk.
We could now sell bandit scalps, wyvern heads, Kirinhale's hair, winter wolf pelts and an Idol of Kozah to Vai and cash in a small fortune. With Rep.19 and a Friends spell for Imoen, it was time for some
major shopping. The Shadow Armor is quite appealing for Coran but that will have to wait.
Hehe, sometimes those
wild surges are so bizarre.Other than getting Faldorn (or Coran when he borrows it) a kickass weapon for her tanking situations, I had a specific reason for getting the poisonous dagger. One of my mods takes away (or moves?) the two great robes for sale at High Hedge. In the vanilla game, there are actually
three neutral archmagi robes. One for sale at High Hedge, one is on Shandalar (who shouldn't be attacked in a no-reloads game unless you have at least two Paralyzation wands with plenty of charges, and he certainly shouldn't be attacked before you've been on Ice Island) and the third is...
...on this gentleman. There are few things in the game that can hurt him, but this poison can. His AC is tremendous - critcal hits are required. The dagger damage itself does not work on him but it does force a 'save or get poisoened' roll, and his save score isn't spectacular. 7 poisonings or so are required to kill him. You get only 175 exp and you suffer a heavy loss of reputation, but yay,
it was still there!
Modifié par Jianson, 20 septembre 2012 - 06:26 .
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