Critto's v5 journal Options

[critto]

Okay. Really, the mod is totally fun and pleasure, but in the name of all that sacred, next version should ease up on spiders a little bit.
I thought 2 drow ambushes were hard to beat with those annoying spiders being everywhere. Apparantly, I was mistaken.
Deeper underdark. Cave with an instant supply of whisper spiders (where they just keeping coming from nowhere). Really, how can I beat this thing? They dispel everything, they somehow draw characters from place to themselves, and sometimes they just kill chars instantly. Why is that? Why no info about the damage being done or save-throw being made (dwarf-kensai, instantly dead. huh?). And, finally, there are just TOO DAMN much of them, my characters can't handle them, even though I have a fighter-heavy party (vagrant, kensai, blade, berserker-cleric, sorc, thief/mage). I am doing buffs, of course, but they are being dispelled very soon and there is no point and time in refreshing them. Summons doesn't help much too (tried 5 hasted mordy swords). Tried magic (adwh, chain lightnings), but they are magic resistant, as it seems.
I am no great tactician, but how am I supposed to win that battle? :) Just keep reloading and hope for better save-throws and no instant-kills? I would be really glad to have some advices on that battle. This is the first one in the game which makes me feel annoyed, instead of being interested, having fun and searching for better tactics.

[critto]

All of the Offensive Spin's bugs (including the other bug which could radically decrease your total number of attacks under certain conditions) are addressed to and solved in v6 (see the progress report for IA v6: Fixes applied to the vanilla game).

That's bad. Well, Blade still quite a winner under IH

It's not a bug in the accurate sense of the word, but it's not the optimal way this weapon was supposed to work either. As mentioned before in this post, the problem is resolved by replacing the sunray with a much better ability in v6.

That's good to hear. Looking forward to it, because Hespherus seems to be a good pair with FoDaW for Vagrant. Currently my Vagrant does not wield it always, only on occasional battles with the undead.

Some more notes from my current run, since I'm encountering the most fun and challenging battles now.
After the Supreme Leader fight I continued to explore the WK. Saladrex wasn't that hard, but demi-lich battle took some time to win:
SPOILER!

Cleric was a reall winner with his death ward. Also, I forgot that Vagrant's Contact with Nature HLA protects him from Imprisonment. If I were to use it, the battle would've been simplier.

On the fifth level I did everything except Ancient Dragon (tried him a couple of times, but decided to leave him for ToB):
SPOILER!

The most tough battle, after the grave liches, was the 3rd Golem encounter in the Globe. Those Ice Golems really spice things up with their ice storms. Everything else wasn't that tough, since I've got used to dealing with the spiders
The Orc Horde was fun too. I lost the battle for a couple of times because I tried to think offensively rather than defensively. After that I changed my tactic and won.

Twisted Rune battle, well... let's just say it was so long that I don't even remember the exact order of things that took place there
SPOILER!

This battle, in short sentence, is a bunch of the most toughies from different types of enemies. Personally, I was more annoyed with Shangalar, than with the beholder. He was running around and casting, and just didn't want to die!
And of course, when you think it is already fun enough, a bunch of golems arrives! Fortunately, I was done with the most of the twisted party, only Shangalar was running like a madman and Layene casting her stuff being invisible. The most funny story about it, when I finished every one off, except the Layne, and she seemed to run out of spells, but didn't want to come out of her invisibility and I had no True Sight memorized! I even thought I'm gonna need to re-do the whole battle because of one spell. But fortunately, we managed to get her break off her invisibility via casting defensive spells which she started to dispell. In that window Blade casted his Breach and fighters were kicking her. Fortunately, we prevailed before sorc ran out of spells
I know, Sikret is going to improve this battle even more, and I'm a little afraid to think about what's going to wait us, humble tacticians, in the next version

Everything was done in SoA, so I have gone for Irenicus. The battle in Hell was interesting! Though it is not as hard as an Orcus battle, for example, there are still a lot of things to consider because you cannot let your characters die (their items will get lost during the transportation to ToB). So I had to be sure my fighters protected with Hardiness or magical buffs, and mages should stay quite away from battlefield (and look out for those nasty 3x Finger of Death triggers).
Now I am in ToB. Another funny moment was when I was trying to fight both Nyalie and the horde of skeleton lords. I was thinking that they won't stop until she's dead Add my beloved spiders on top of that chaos and you can imagine the picture of the battle. But then I figured that the battles aren't connected so I finished them one by one without any serious difficulties.
Right now I'm thinking on the Yaga-Shura battle. The main problem here is that my laptop really slows down to the point when the game is like a slide show because of the number of the enemies around. But I'll figure something out.