@ Sapphire: Thanks, and congrats on beating SoA! I've found everyone's runs very entertaining, which is why I decided to start my own. And it's outrageous a thief guild can have a home turf! Where's Athkatla's law enforcement? Oh, that's right, there standing there twiddling their thumbs telling me to stand away. I suspect they sense my hostility
@ Belgarath: Thanks! If they had had true sight, Ael would have had to have fled. I simply don't know how to solo these early battles without invisibility, especially with my no-metagaming-battles rule. And sorry about the way your Melissan battle is going! The first time I played through, I became so frustrated reloading over and over I found a walkthrough to take me through it step by step.
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Prebek and his peer Sanasha did have monsters inside, but were unwilling to converse. Aeleuthrien went invisible and Prebek cast confusion at the wrong places (he casted it on himself, twice), letting Ael's guerilla tactics win easily.
Inside the Harper compound, Ael decided not to steal anything as they may notice, and provoking them more than would a simple, defensible rescue would likely prove unwise. He did snoop around though, and found a Harper amulet like the others were wearing, but it made him suspicious. The Harpers are fond of elaborate plans; what if this situation is a ruse to entice him into donning a cursed amulet for some reason? Instead what he decided to do is to go to the 2nd floor while invisible, despite the warnings it was too dangerous for a non-Harper. To my own surprise, the Spectral Harpists saw right through his invisibility and into his inventory pack, where they saw the amulet and mistook him for a Harper. Why wear clothing? So, he rescued the bird he thought was most likely Monteran.
He leveled up to lvl11, taking Blur, Haste, Minor Globe of Invulnerability (which in SCS2, I prefer to Teleport Field), and Spell Shield. He delivered the bird, which was a Harper agent, and decided in addition to being an evil organization that fights the good, the Harpers were also an extremely inefficient organization that either took silly, needless risks or had so many backup plans its inefficiency at a simple killing made Athkatla's law enforcement seem a pillar of cost-effective action. And that's assuming that killing Xzar and shutting his operation down was really their main goal, which he had no particular reason to believe given the Harpers' duplicitousness.
Anyway, he left for the Slums, where he encountered Bregg and Cohrvale. They decided to attack even though he tried to get out of their way, so he drank another invisibility potion and went into the COpper Coronet while he assessed his options. He first went to the Government District to try to report them, but had no success. Can his respect for Athkatlan governance deteriorate any further? He then decided to head to the Shadow Thief guildhall (he doesn't know it's safe to cast in the Copper Coronet yet), where he suspected he could cast safely since thieves likely use magic at least sometimes (the ones in Baldur's Gate had a mage). The thieves confirm it, so he buffed, and went back and killed Bregg. I couldn't find Cohrvale though, so I gave up after the P:S wore off.
After some shopping in the Promenade, he went back ot the Docks where some thugs attacked. He went to the thief guildhall to buff and came back out, but like Cohrvale they had disappeared. So, he rested, and came out at night where he hoped his elven infravision would help him against any shem assailants. However, he ra into a vampire who's attacking some thieves. He decided to intervene even though it meant casting. He hoped if a CW appeared, s/he would help, but instead the CW just gave Ael a warning and left. Unbelievable.
I then had a lot of tediousness running in and out of the thief guildhall where I could rebuff, cast haste and MMMs and come back out. Eventually, however, the vampire disappeared (is there a timer?), so Ael rested again. All his enemies are fleeing in terror, perhaps?
In the morning, Ael concluded the CWs are a violent extortion racket, but still wouldn't kill Rayic Gethras (it took me a long time to decide which was more in-character). He wandered a bit and used guerilla tactics against another bandit group, but it didn't go very well. They had 2 invisibility purges and an oracle, which ate his level 2 castings as Ael wanted to save his invisibility potions for true emergencies. At first, it seemed to go really well (even Cone of Cold), but since I only had two mirror images, I went through my stoneskins too quickly since I underestimated the numbers they had (at first, some of these SCS2 guys were invisible). If I had realized, I would have cast Haste so I could have avoided some attacks.
They buffed, and there were only 5 at first...
...I killed the ones I knew about, especially using my MGoI+Skull Trap tactic...
...but they had some cloaking strategies of their own and in the end there were too many. He had to flee 
I hate fleeing from those bandit groups, but kudos to them (and DanW of SCS2) for using invisibility from the get- go. I hadn't encountered that behavior before. Incidentally, the one who took an Oil of Speed managed a backstab on me after going invisible again himself, and if I had been at a higher difficulty I would have died since he took out most of my hitpoints.
I'm not particularly tired (yay insomnia), so I might continue in a bit. Sorry for the book-length posting.
Modifié par Satyricon331, 21 juillet 2011 - 07:15 .
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