301 réponses à ce sujet

[Gate70]

Yep, nice work. Is your other sling of Seeking and is it speed factor that decided against the dwarven thrower.

I intend re-visiting with a cavalier next (is in SoA at present) then a trilogy monk if I can find the time. Can see the Cavalier use a similar approach with the Reflex but would have to see if a tomed-up monk without a hostile Balthezar can get further.

[Alesia_BH]

Shadow_Leech07 wrote...
Great read Alesia! You have a very clean strategy and very helpful as well.

That's kind of you to say. Bear in mind that it takes a lot of patience though. Without the Firestorms, that battle would have lasted at least 3 hours...

Unfortunate that harm doesn't work on Yaga Shura.

To be clear: SCS offers a component which changes Harm so that it does 150HP of magic damage rather than setting current hitpoints to 1. If you have the tweak installed, Yaga's 99% Magic Damage Resistance will cause Harm to have little effect. Withouth the tweak, Harm works splendidly against Yaga.

I too am playing a cleric-ish character but she is nowhere near Ascension at the moment. I'll post some details later if she survives.

Good luck with that!

Gate70 wrote...
Is your other sling of Seeking

Yes.

And is it speed factor that decided against the dwarven thrower.

Sort of, in part. The Thrower actually has a better Speed Factor rating than the Sling of Seeking: The Thrower is a 1 while Seeking is a 4. That said, with all the thrown weapons, there is often a little delay before the weapon leaves the hand. There is also an additional delay before the damage actually registers due to the slow animation which can be an issue if you are trying to disrupt, say, a Heal from Sendai.

Range is an even bigger issue: The Thrower has a range of 20, Seeking 50.

I intend re-visiting with a cavalier next...Can see the Cavalier use a similar approach with the Reflex

That would likely work. But with a Cavalier, you could probably be more aggressive as well.

The Reflex/Sling approach was necessary for Abigail due to her poor APR and middling damage resistances, but a Cavalier running Hardiness and AoF could likely be effective in melee. That could be quicker and more enjoyable.

would have to see if a tomed-up monk without a hostile Balthezar can get further.

I'd like to see that too. The trick will be taking Illasera down quick.

I'll note that SCS may make life easier for non-shield users in a sense since it took away Sendai's sling.

Modifié par Alesia_BH, 25 octobre 2012 - 07:30 .

[DMWW]

Alesia_BH wrote...

Unfortunate that harm doesn't work on Yaga Shura.

To be clear: SCS offers a component which changes Harm so that it does 150HP of magic damage rather than setting current hitpoints to 1. If you have the tweak installed, Yaga's 99% Magic Damage Resistance will cause Harm to have little effect. Withouth the tweak, Harm works splendidly against Yaga.

That was the specific context that inspired that component, in fact.

[Alesia_BH]

Hi all.

I just wanted to take a moment to introduce a character who is on her way to The Throne though far from it: Astrid, Invoker- travelling with her cat familiar, Devo.



I'll have more to say about Astrid and Devo when they reach Amn.


Best,

A.

Modifié par Alesia_BH, 26 octobre 2012 - 03:27 .

[Alesia_B_H]

Oops!

Modifié par Alesia_B_H, 26 octobre 2012 - 03:28 .

[Serg BlackStrider]

@Alesia: looks like your invitation for single class mages/bards to the challenge remains unanswered at the moment... Well, *if you want to do the job well do it yourself...*   I'm looking forward for Astrid's run (as you are not fond of summons, Invoker's restrictions are not big deal for you).
Nice portrait btw! :happy:

[ussnorway]

love the outfit!

[Alesia_BH]

Serg BlackStrider wrote...
Nice portrait btw! :happy:

I like it too. That's how I ended up playing an Invoker actually.

I went through a few thousand portraits and Astrid's was the only one that appealed to me.

When I saw her's, the song Speed Racer by Devo popped into my head. And when I spontaneously came up with a verse to the song for her, the first line started "I'm an Invoker". That's how Astrid was born.

ussnorway wrote...
love the outfit!

 I'm going to try to simulate it in her inventory. 



When she gets Vecna, I'll make sure the color on the cape matches.


Best,

A.

[ussnorway]

A little help here please?

I got a little cocky and started betting my experience against the “Spectral Brand +4” scimitar;

My second card was strength (lost) but that’s not a problem because I still got to keep the sword and then just Summoned my ‘Fallen Deva’ buddy and asked her to remove the curse.

My last card was High Priestess (Silence) which creates a vicious circle;

I can’t start talking to the temple girl upstairs (to pay for a ‘remove curse’ spell) or cast any spells from my own spell book whilst silenced... spells stored in an item still work normally but equipping the AoP does not remove the silence effect... Any one got a bright (& hopefully above-board) idea?

[Gate70]

Would have thought AoP should do the trick, guess this is being treated as a curse rather than a spell which means most of the below may not work?

Go upstairs and see if the antimagic zones work.
Find an enemy who will cast remove magic.
Assume you can't pocket plane recruit Anomen or similar.
Scroll of Protection from Magic - dispels when used.
edit...
Wand of Spell Striking (2nd floor of WK)?

Modifié par Gate70, 27 octobre 2012 - 02:23 .

[Kraitok]

A quick update on Shazrak as I've been busy and haven't played much in the last week.

I managed the Sahaugin city without any incidents. The Illithid city was slightly tougher, and I died once to Ullithids when I was surrounded and int drained. Beholder's were time consuming but ultimately weren't too bad once I put on a ring of freedom to avoid being slowed. Ust Natha wasn't bad either, although I did die once after going in to the tower after the Lich tower.

I opted to kill the Silver Dragon as I wanted the Human Skin armor. She was surprisingly easy. I was around level 35 when I killed her, and just prebuffed with Rage and Hardiness. I started off with a GWW, got wing buffeted about 1/2 way through, then came back and did 2 more GWW to take her from injured to dead.

Firkraag was killed in a similar fashion although he took 2 extra GWW's to finish off.

I then finished the last fight in Watcher's Keep level 1. This went much better than before, as I had enough HP and uses of GWW/Hardiness to deal with all of the summons and the damage the statues are able to pump out.

Next up is WK level 2 and hopefully the next head for FoA. I must say some of these fights are certainly harder than they could be as I don't have much knowledge going in to them, but it does lead to a new experience, which I like.

[ussnorway]

Gate70 wrote...

Assume you can't pocket plane recruit Anomen or similar.

That did the trick... Thanks Gate70!

[Kraitok]

Just finished level 2 of Watcher's. The Chromatic demon was fairly problematic due to a lack of spell damage. I ended up using the Firetooth +4 crossbow with the innate +2 fire damage on it in ice form, and equipped bolts of lightning when it was in it's slime phase. I ended up using all of my GWW during that phase to dump as much damage as possible as I could in to it. Without any proficiency points in crossbow it still took some time, but I think I did alright overall.

[ussnorway]

TUd3:

I used a combination of Fire Elemental form and ‘Energy Blades’ to fight my way to the marching mountains before doubling back to

watchers keep;

   

Level 1, basically just bashed everything in Fire Elemental form... used the doors to separate the statues.

   

Level 2, I had to swap into Spider form in order to kill the Trolls but the Chromatic proved difficult because he would keep swapping forms to counter my spells... I was over thinking it, just bash the sod!

   

Level 3, These are tough fights but being evil really helped, I jammed myself into a corner for the magic-nul room and used six “wand of resurrection” shots until the Pit Fiend finally dropped... Ka’rushur was disappointingly easy to dispatch with a ‘Creeping Doom’/ ‘Fire Storm’ combo (finished him off with ‘Energy Blades’) but being immune to spell interruption for the opening moves gave me an edge over other classes here, say I’d been a Mage and this could have been nasty. The Tieflings/ Demon Knights fell to prebuffed ‘Blade Barrier’ / ‘Aura of Flaming Death’ (pocket plane) and I bet experience to get the “Spectral Brand”.

Edit:: actually the spell I used here is the upgraded version called ‘Globe of Blades’ which is allowed to Druids... Sorry for the confusion, guys.

Deaths 1&2 = the black battle mage i.e. Gromnirs’ peons. 

Modifié par ussnorway, 28 octobre 2012 - 02:27 .

[Gate70]

Enjoying both these, keep it up. Not a good night for the Chromatic Demon (although a pity the avenger nature beauty blindness looks to have been dispelled by a Deva hit).

[Kraitok]

Kangaxx is down! Surprisingly, I did it on my first try. Basically, I ran away from him and would wait for spell protections to go down, then go after him before he recast PFMW. There's basically nothing I can do as a Barb but wait out some protections, so it was a lot of hide and seek in his room. Summons would fall pretty quickly so I didn't have to worry much. The hardest part was making sure I kept a rage up so I didn't get imprisoned by him. At any point when my attacks were getting through (absorbed by a stoneskin), I'd GWW and try to burn through them as fast as possible.

Important to note here, is that I put a single point in 2 handed weapon style, as well as a 2 points in 2 handed swords specifically for situations like this. I think there is a lot of merit in 1 point in 2 handed weapon style as it improves crits to 19/20, instead of just 20. This equates to a fair amount of extra damage simply due to hitting more (10% crit chance vs 5%).

Next on the list is finishing SoA and getting in to ToB.

[Grond0]

Barbarian rage does not protect against imprisonment (unlike berserker), though it's possible that the AI thinks it does and doesn't attempt it. However, I suspect it's more likely that you were saved by SCS2 - the standard installation options for SCS2 mean that imprisonment is not used against the main character.

[ussnorway]

Kraitok wrote...

Kangaxx is down!

Well done... How did you open the front door or have you got a mod that unlocks it?

[Gate70]

I believe Grond0 is correct in what he says, would have thought SCS picked up that barbarian rage isn't immune. Having checked the readme the quote below expands on his explanation;

"Out of mercy, enemy mages won't cast Imprisonment on the main character. If you're masochistic enough to want to change this, enter CLUAConsole:SetGlobal("DMWWImprisonPlayer","GLOBAL",1)."

I assume liches count in this scenario?

edit;
& as for the front door a strength of 24 and protection from level drain will do the job. Barbarian rage helps on both counts.

edit2, just tested the unmodded game (well, unmodded plus fixpack).
He imprisoned my raged barbarian companion. Then he imprisoned my unraged barbarian charname.

Edit3, modded game;
Same result, although charname was raged.

So did you have a protection from magic or protection from undead scroll active?
& just noticed your first post stated high wisdom for saves. That was never implemented, so the manual is wrong and wisdom has no relevance to saving throws in BG1/2.

Modifié par Gate70, 28 octobre 2012 - 08:43 .

[Satyricon331]

Since there was some interest, I hope it's ok to post this guest/non-challenge-entry post about my attempts to solo-sorc the Throne battle.  (Sorry for the length - and for the lack of insight on rage vs. Kangaxx.  At least it worked out!)  I just consoled together a level-maxed character with all the great items, rested, and MoveToArea-ed my way to the Throne (though my Robe of Vecna and AoP have custom nerfs; more detail and my Weidu info here).  It's Core difficulty.

The first round of battle has Irenicus, Bodhi, Imoen as the Slayer, and the real headache known as the Fallen Solar.  Its Mordenkainen's Disjunctions (MDs) are schoolless (so not even SI:Alter + SI:Ench can counter), and since Irenicus' Spellstrike trumps the PfMagic scrolls on my install (per SCS2) and I was keeping to the 2-Planetar limit, the FS almost seemed like an impassible barrier.  The MDs couldn't dispel Shapechange, but with no spell protections for the forms, any of the forms fall pretty quickly to Imo+Bodhi, and on my install Irenicus has a Spell Trigger: 3x Lower Resistance.  On my 7th reload, I finally stumbled onto a (cheesy) workaround by trying to Dimension Door away far enough to cast another summon spell - it turns out that even though it looks like the bridges to the platforms are up, they aren't, and the FS can't follow you.  If you move to the far side, you're out of the FS's range.  The cheesiness would be almost unbearable except the AI does have some ability to respond - Irenicus DimDoored after me, and on this playthrough since I had no protections up and had already taken damage, I switched forms via Shapechange.  To kill the FS, I mimicked the AI's own strategies: I had a PI cast Timestop, DimDoor to the FS's location, and use Sunfires and Incendiary Clouds.

The Demon Battles were easy.  Not knowing what to except, my character summoned 1 Mordy Sword and 2 Planetars, buffed (I've worked out a tedious buffing system I can share if there's interest), cast Simulacrum, Farsighted my own location, touched the pool, and then DimDoored out (together with the Simmy) to a far platform.  There I cast PI and followed the infinite-spell strategy (the Spell Trap-based one), but each time 1-3 demons would find me, so my clones would cast Time Stop, Improved Alacrity, and then whatever was needed.  (I have aTweaks demons, so I'd have been in serious danger if a Glabrezu found me, since they have this unique ability to auto-dispel all illusions every round, including invisibility-type spells, regardless of Spell Immunity: Divination or SI:Abj.  It's so very strong that for awhile I wasn't installing aTweaks' Fiend component at all.  Apparently, it's p&p though.)

Against the Five (I've lost count of my reloads here), what I've been trying is to have my main character "cocoon" with PfMW, Mislead, PfElem+PfEner, and Spell Immunities, while the Simulacrum (whom I leave by the platform, Farsighted), casts Time Stop, then Improved Alacrity.  He then can speedily DimDoor around the battlefield to cause mayhem.  I've tried variations on this basic idea, as well as changing up my spellbook a bit to try different things the Simmy can cast.  The most luck I've had so far was with DimDoor to an enemy --> Imprisonment, which forces Sendai or Abazigal to take time to cast Freedom after the TS expires.  (Sendai keeps up SI:Abj, and Abaz seems immune to Imprisonment).

One thing I haven't tried yet is to have my main self cast PI, have it DimDoor to the Farsighted pool, and then have it mimick the Simmy's behavior.  I might be able to exhaust the Freedoms they have to cast.  I know Mel has some too, but I don't know how many (probably unlimited Freedoms?).  I've also thought about changing my prebuff approach so the Simmy has few level-9 castings but my Chain Contingency is free to cast Incendiary Clouds rather than the buffs I now have it on.

Another idea I haven't tried yet is to "fortify" the two southern platforms with walls of Skull Traps and DBFBs so later in the battle I can have a semi-protected space to DimDoor to, though I think it wouldn't be terribly effective against the Five with all those immunities and resistanes they have.  

Since the last platform I have to cut Mel off from was the NE one, there is RP justification to fortify the NW corner of the inner ring this way too, with the idea being that it still leaves a route for summons to travel down from the NE to the battle's starting location.  But then when Sendai spawns, she'd probably die from the traps, which is a little bit too much of a "happy coincidence" for my tastes, but it may come to that.

One reason I've been a little leery of the fortify-technique is that it uses the infinite-spell strategy to crank out enough STs and DBFBs.  So why not just blanket the entire inner ring with traps?  Another idea would be to trap the location of specific spawn points, though for me that'd require changing my playstyle preferences (I personally just prefer playing the battle as the character would).  What I'd really like is a way to kill the 5 more effectively.  With my clones and the ImpAlac + DimDoor approach, if I had a good attack method that lasted (2 rounds?) it'd be great.  Perhaps BBoD, though I'm going to hold off on that at least until I can think of an ex ante reason to take it rather than, say, Imprisonment (and there's the issue that PIs can't legally use it).  (Two other issues for the BBoD: --I keep the Ring of Free Action on to protect from Stun, so my Simmy can't used the Ring of Vecna's Improved Haste. --I've played with the SCS2 variable that blocks melee during TS, so I've not used melee during TS, although I might since Balthazar ignores restriction.)

(Incidentally, I have a question - why do they use Imprisonment and not Resurrection?  Resurrection is a much lower-level spell! )

Anyway, I hope this was helpful for any arcane soloists! :happy:

[Kraitok]

I was able to rage bash the door to Kangaxx. Honestly, I wasn't even aware it was usually an issue. My guess is that the AI doesn't try for the imprisonment with rage up, and that I got lucky with my encounter. I do know that in level 3 of WK I've had tieflings cast maze on me multiple times, as the animation always goes through, it's simply a matter of if my rage was up when the spell was cast (not when the maze effect "hits").

Side note, just took Shazrak up to the final Irenicus fight in hell. Think I'll stop here for the night and start up again tomorrow.

[Kraitok]

Quick thought, what's the consensus on prebuffed enemies? I'm currently playing with it on, however I'm considering removing that aspect of SCS for ToB simply as a time saver. Having the chance to attack casters at the beginning of a fight seems fair as I have no way of removing magical defenses. That said, I also have the weapon mod in, and if I'm looking at SK right I'll have the opportunity to get a "bad" version of Carsomyr, which may make things too easy (relatively of course).

[ussnorway]

Kraitok wrote...

Quick thought, what's the consensus on prebuffed enemies?

I don’t like/ use it but that’s just me.

Unfortunately I can only get to str 23 as a Druid (fire elemental form) unless ‘Draw upon holly might’ baul power is available.

[Shadow_Leech07]

Kraitok wrote...

Quick thought, what's the consensus on prebuffed enemies? I'm currently playing with it on, however I'm considering removing that aspect of SCS for ToB simply as a time saver. Having the chance to attack casters at the beginning of a fight seems fair as I have no way of removing magical defenses. That said, I also have the weapon mod in, and if I'm looking at SK right I'll have the opportunity to get a "bad" version of Carsomyr, which may make things too easy (relatively of course).

I too hate time consuming enemies. Not all classes have the necessary tools to deal with certain types of enemies so we end up having to wait for the protections to go away. But with that said: Several ascension enemies like Sendai and Irenicus prebuff themselves or "force-cast" buff themselves and it's not a component of SCS so you're going to be facing prebuffed enemies whether you like it or not. My current strategy towards dealing with this is running away...unfortunately. But I'm still a long way from there. We'll see what happens when we get there. It's an exciting battle nevertheless.

Edit:

I'm withdrawing my character(even though I never formally introduced her, yeah I know). The computer I use to play Baldur's Gate died on me. I don't know if it was old age or something, but very strange things occurred. The hard-drive disconnected itself(literally), sound speaker connection quit working on me so I had to connect the speakers to the headset slot. Just a slew of unfortunate events.  I'm guessing some kind of electric overload occurred, and slowly but certainly the poor thing just gave out on me. I'll be investigating this furthur, I don't know if the hard-drive is damaged physically but it is doubtful I will be able to return until I find another computer I can play on because unfortunately I cannot play on this one because it is an old lab that I don't wish to overheat. I'll keep you guys informed if things change.

Modifié par Shadow_Leech07, 28 octobre 2012 - 01:35 .

[Kraitok]

Sad to say, I'm having a lot of trouble with the final Irenicus fight. The beginning of the fight everything is magical weapon immune but Sarevok. Sarevok on the other hand has a thac0 debuff modifier on his attacks which makes it really rough. With a 0 thac0 I was missing on a natural roll of 18, gross. I do have the Throwing Impaler +4 which I'm going to give a shot. Hopefully I can kite a bit and take him out. That said, my estimate from when I fought him in the hell trials is that he has in the neighborhood of 500+ hp, which is a lot to blow through.

Time for a few more attempts