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]

Haven't written for a while. Not that there is too much to write right now, since my current run is almost done. Sendai's enclave wasn't that tough, and now I'm thinking how to beat an EDE (I will certainly post a report on it when I beat it).
I decided to try and start another run so I stumbled on some questions while thinking on party composition, so if nobody minds we could have a little discussion about it here.
1. After my first run it seems to me that the party should have two mage-type characters at least. For my current run I was thinking of taking only 1 sorcerer and, maybe, a Cernd. How exactly effective such a combination would be?
2. I was thinking of exploring the thief class and, more precisely, his backstabbing capabilities. How really useful the backstab is in IA? Is it worth it to take a pure assassin into team? There are even some nice items for him in IA to-forge list.
3. Has anybody used monk in IA? I want to try him also since I like monks in general in D&D, but in IA it doesn't seem to be the best choice. From my point of view, he's too weak before 13-14 levels, he gets +3 and +4 enchantment on his fists too late for IA, he cannot be hasted and, since he's not geting his 4 attacks quite right from the start, he's gonna be stuck with low APR for a while. In summary, that means lack of effectiveness. But that's all theory. Anybody tried monks on practice?

In short words, I wanted to bring a little experiment into party composition, go away from standart (3 fighter types, 1 cleric and two mages) party composition. But I don't want to end up being stuck with the party who just not that effective to make it through IA.

This post has been edited by critto: Mar 12 2009, 05:38 PM