The fight with pirates Options

[Aro]

Hi all.

I want some help with these guys in the tavern at the Docks. They are very tough. My party is:

Vagrant PC with proficiency in clubs and uses the +3 acid one from Trademeet
Valygar
Anomen
Jan Jansen
Edwin

Jan and Edwin can cast only 5 lvl spells and less.

That mage casts Remove Magic and emotion and abi-dalzim, and my characters die very quickly. The captain I cannot kill, he's scary. Help! My fighters deal very small damage to him.

I want another party member, but all NPCs are so weak. Any recommendation?

And where to find a permanency scroll or manual of elaboration or scroll of memory? I want a scroll for the club +4. It costs 50 000, is it worth it?

What weapons to buy?

[critto]

I don't know about another warrior in this party. Other characters will level up slower. And those pure classes do not have stoneskin and mirror image. Maybe the cleric-illusionist will help with thac0? I was thinking about chant and bless spells in minor sequencer. And my party leader has two strength increase special abilities.

Your characters will level up just fine. One of the good things about IA is it balanced when it comes to gaining XP for a 5-6 level party. With 4 members or lower you will get experience more quickly, and in some cases the game will present to you a tougher versions of different encounters. Even though your party seems to be more experienced in terms of XP, it still might be not up to the challenge. For example, if you will play through all the quests in "Suggested quest order" topic before sailing to Spellhold with 4 characters party , you will surely encounter a tougher version of the dungeon, and by tougher I mean tougher a LOT. So that is why having a 5-6 level party is recommended, but not necessary, of course.

As for increasing your party stats with buffs, it is certainly a good thing and you should definitely do that, but remember that sometimes you fight mages who has competent warriors at their side. This mages can strip you party members of their buffs and they will be facing these tough warriors "naked". If such thing happens, you might have a problem unless you have a competent warrior with good AC, THAC0 and hitpoints who can hold off the enemy while your mages or fighter/mages refresh the buffs.

Will I need hardiness for these characters? I decided to go with spells for protection. And the greater whirlwind looks nice, but how about just improved haste?

Hardiness is definitely needed. Later in game you will encounter the fights that last for quite a long time. You might just have not enough protection spells to last through the encounter, while the strategic use of Hardiness could be a key to victory. Unless, your sorcerer is particularly lucky with Wish spell, of course. Improved Haste is super-useful, but sometimes you need to deal a lot of damage in a few rounds, that's where GWW and Critical Strike come in handy.

Also, I wanted say that these recommendations to equip the party with different types of characters (warriors, fighter/mage-type tanks, pure clerics and mages) come from the fact, that IA have different sorts of encounters that may or may not require a different skill set from your party members. Having all angles covered will give more choices in these battles, so that you can devise an interesting and successful tactic, implement it and receive a satisfaction of winning a battle. Later, when you are more experienced with IA and have an understanding of what awaits you in the game, you can try and play with more narrowly specialized parties, like mage-heavy party or divine-heavy party.

I want to have Laloch minor drain, Skull trap, spirit armor, vampiric touch, hand of undoing and abi-dalzim in sorcerer spell picks.

These all are good choices except for skull trap. Don't count on it much. You can definitely take it, but I would recommend doing that after you have picked a Vampiric Touch, Remove Magic and Flame Arrow. As for Hand of Undoing, it's a very useful spell in IA, but on the seventh level you also have a one of the most important spells in IA: Ruby Ray of Reversal. Make sure you have this one as soon as possible. When you are battling in ch2-3 you have a very short supply of that spell available via scrolls, so sometimes you have to decide whether to use them or save for tougher encounters. Later in game the amount of mages who use SI:Abjuration (which can be taken down only by RRR) growths, as growths their power. So you will need the spell to deal with their spell protections.

This post has been edited by critto: Aug 1 2009, 04:13 PM