A v6 run on Insane before v7, Yes let's do it! Options

[HTRT]

Bored with faster than light mind flayer rampages under time stop and stimulated with Black Wyrm Lair's renewal, I decided to start a whole new IA v6 experience and share its exciting moments here.
I want it to be as exciting as possible for me and (perhaps) a training ground for V7 ! The title was right, the game will be played on insane.

I know IA v6 is hard enough but with 6 or 7 completed walkthroughs I couldn't control the excitement and decided to try it on insane.
(At the time of this first writing, my party is in spellhold right before the lich and skeleton lords guarding the library and Dace. I took lots of notes during the playthrough and it is very recent,
so informations will be accurate.)

THE RULES :

BG2 clean fresh install with TOB then TOB official patch, the Baldurdash TOB fixpack 1.12(non-weidu), the recommanded ease of use
components as prescribed in the Installation document of the mod's documentation, IA v6, dungeon be gone (the compatible version). That's it.

Way of playing the game : As intended with improved anvil v6. Fighting fair and heroicly, no pathetic headless chicken retreats,
no exploits and debug mode simply deactivated. A 6 members party at everytime (except the very beginning if I pick NPCs).
No baldur's gate 1, no TOSC, so everyone 89k XP (a TOSC imported necromancer would have many level 5 picks, whereas a 89k one will struggle to fill his level 5 spell slots early
on). This also means no stats tome whatsoever.

About resurection/raise dead : If a character is chunked I will reload. Usually I won't raise a dead party member during the fight except if said fight is really really hard,
intense and well played at the moment and the party member coming back will actually be a key to winning the fight. I won't raise dead during battle because I was just
blatantly careless.

(In most cases anyway, I will either win the fight with no casualty or suffer catastrophic casualties and be forced to reload. Until now there's been only one case of raising
a dead party member from the dead and continuing the battle, but that attempt eventually failed and was forced to reload and then won with no casualties (this happened in samia's
party first try)...I'm just saying that the door will always be opened to that, but in practice rarely used because in Improved Anvil usually a casualty rarely comes alone )

About retreating a character focused in melee : Will only do it in obvious cases, not to purposefully abuse the AI as much as possible. A concrete exemple could be :
risk breaker gets hit by gem golem for 98 damage, game is paused for badly injured. That riskbreaker on core would have suffered 49 damage and could quaff a potion to stay
as long as possible in melee (in IA in general, fighting instead of fleeing is almost always extremly superior as a tactical choice). But with 98 damage and anotherlets say
92-102 coming in really soon, potion is not going to change anything, plus my party is not bound to spartan law.

No tower of deception : a very great mod, arguably well improved by improved anvil, but I think the first segment of the mod
(tower) is way too much rewarding and not hard enough as a prespellhold quest. Furthermore, it can act as a substitute to achieve
crucial levels early on when the choices of quests to do disminishes. So in other terms it's like a free ticket for example to
get ruby ray of reversal before some hard fight whereas without TOD you would have had to face a much more crude reality, because
XP is strongly limited in IA.

TWO HOUSE RULES :

RULE 1)

Maximum HP on hit dices.

EXCEPTION TO RULE 1 : NPCS added to party. They will stay as they are and their proficiencies won't be tweaked either, although
they will get maximum dices as they level up with the party, like any other character in the party.

Justification :

1) Insane

2) There's something I dislike with playing a game's difficulty level with a dice in a context of tactical challenge mod.
As a matter of fact I wouldn't mind at all playing a handicapped 61 hp level 13 fighter IF I KNEW that a greater bone golem, for
example, could be handicapped in such a way sometimes (with random dices). But that is not the case. Monsters always have their fixed amount of hit
points. One could argue that this fixed amount of hit points represents an average of hit dices and I couldn't really tell him
wrong, but somehow I have trouble buying that story.

RULE 2)

100% success with arcane scrolls scribing.

Justification :

1) I'm NOT failing to scribe the new Necromancer spell. I'll save myself the shame of reloading for scribing spells.

WAY OF IMPLEMENTING HOUSE RULES :

No mod. Only temporary set difficulty slider to the lowest level only to scribe spell and/or level up, then immendiatly set it
back to hardest. Never play with the slider during battles.


***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS***
***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS***

Now that I have your ***SPOILERS*** ATTENTION ***SPOILERS***, I will talk briefly about spoilers. As of this moment in this
thread, basically everything that follows constitute major spoilers of Improved Anvil v6 and (especially) if you are new to the
mod you should NOT read any of it and keep the pleasure of discoveries for yourself. I will be talking of my party composition,
reasons, quest orders, optimized tactics, lots of spoilers on loot ennemy weaknesses, behaviours, etc. Since the tactics worked
very well on insane and in most cases with no reloading at all, it might really spoil the fun of playing encounters for new IA
players (although they require a lot of concentration and focus to successfully execute, as expected from insane difficulty).

So in other terms :


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DON'T READ FURTHER IF YOU ARE DISCOVERING THE MOD


DON'T READ FURTHER IF YOU ARE DISCOVERING THE MOD


DON'T READ FURTHER IF YOU ARE DISCOVERING THE MOD


DON'T READ FURTHER IF YOU ARE DISCOVERING THE MOD


DON'T READ FURTHER IF YOU ARE DISCOVERING THE MOD


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Now that being said, let's talk buisness !



THE PARTY

I thought about it for a loooooooooong long long time, confronting all the experience I have with the mod with the perspective
of double damage from everything. I will save you all the reasonning, as I will simply tell what the party will be, with general
hints about composition, development and proficiencies, what I do not want, what I want, etc.

1) Protagonist : Human Necromancer. (an IA v6 walktrough worthy of that name is either played as necromancer or vagrant in my humble
opinion) With approximately as many runs played with either vagrant or necromancer, I can tell personally that playing with
the vagrant is generally a much harder playthrough. Since I'm a beginner with IA v6 on insane, I will obviously go with what I
consider to be the easiest path. Aside from that, the necromancer will of course provide excellent arcane firepower, buffing
and debuffing.
Potential of 25% physical resistance(65% with wish hardiness)

2) Custom made : Human Ranger level 7 dual cleric. Full plate/shield AC tank with clerical spells, including iron skin. AC is really
important even more in insane, but I will have opportunity to talk about that later.
Potential of 10% phyisical resistance, but iron skin at will eventually.

3) NPC : Valygar (protector) Decent AC, excellent later on. Good resistances due to his specific items, clerical spells including
armor of faith. So 50% physical resistance eventually, good armor class, mental equilibrium.

4) Custom made : Half orc barbarian. Not terrible AC, barbarian rage for flexibility, lots of hit points, physical resistance, no backstab.
Potential of 70% physical resistance(warblade10%).

5) Custom made : Human Riskbreaker. Good damage output even in the beginning with proper positionning. Only one character dependant
on ioun stones (aside necromancer). Amazing later on, he will turn the tide of some late game battles that can get pretty physical.
Potential of 60% physical resistance.

6) NPC : Cernd (auramaster) Great tanking, spellcasting, buffs, abilities. He will add controlling the tide of battles.
He will be one of the early game stars of this party alongside ranger/cleric and barbarian.
Potential physical resistance : 30% (110% with wish hardness and aura of invulnerability(fitting name for that ability!))

General idea : Why all those clerical spells ? Isn't that bad ? Won't it suck late game ? The reasonning behind this party
is that I am fully aware that success on insane will depend on heavy, heavy minute control on battles. As tempting as a bunch
of riskbreakers chunking and getting chunked may sound, reality is that a gem golem will hit for more than a hundred hit points
sometimes in one single punch. In order to pull this off, I need a party with a lot of flexibility and multiple powers. All of
this will become clearer as the walkthrough progresses, but in my head it was clear that I needed greater restoration "at will",
mental equilbrium, skins(stoneskin/ironskin), immunity to level drain, summons (I will be using nymphs a lot early on with skeletons.
In most of pre spellhold adventures I will be relying on a group of 5 clerical fire elementals as my summoned army. This is one
example of how ranger cleric and cernd were a great asset in this success). Necro will assume arcane casting alone, which according
to all my previous walkthroughs doesn't badly need to be augmented early on. Later on he will of course dominate a lot. This means
only one source of "arcane pressure" for ennemy mages but I don't mind paying that price. I am well aware that a kensai would be a lot better
late game than a barbarian in terms of damage output, but in this context I'd much rather invest in defense/control/stability over damage.
Riskbreaker is my main argument for late game and I'm pretty sure he will relish the challenge.

Quick review of why not other classes ? :

Berseker single class warrior : Love that guy, but taking 30 damage after rage instead of 15 feels so retarded that I couldn't bring one if only for that reason alone.
Kensai : Two weapons wielding you should go for riskbreaker instead, for two handed weapons specialist I prefered the barbarian
Vagrant(non protagonist) : Tempting, but not optimized enough in terms of gear timings/usefullness. I have very decent summoning potential already.
Archer : I will be using missile weapons often early on, and even in a few late game fights missile weapons have their place, but this guy is way too specialized compared to
missile weapon effectivness.
Cavalier : Not on the level
Inquisitor : True seeing is good, but I have it. I can't see his dispel magic being that crucial. Other than that, I don't want to play with fire (turning from ennemy clerics) and in general he just wouldn't fit and be too weak.
Swashbuckler : Decent, but definitely not on the level for this particular run.
Skald or blade : No clown allowed in this party
Monk : I know his fists are really hardened but I doubt his skin will resist when punching a golem made of diamonds.
Wild mage (or specialist or sorcerer) : I believe necro will handle it. Wild mage not on the level.
Berseker dualled to mage : A very decent character for vagrant runs, doesn't fit here.
No Anomen ? : He's fighter, not ranger.
No Nalia ? : When I pondered wether to take her or not it just came to her vs cernd because everyone else really had to stay, and in my book cernd wins (by no small margin)
No multiclass ? : Not on the level of this run...to be honnest even in vanilla or SCS I really fail to see how
No shorties ? : Human required for most of party spots classes...only legit was barbarian but with +1 to saves instead of +5 I'll go with half orc anyday.


So what's the plan with developping those characters ? Approximately, here is the way proficiencies will be spent and weapons used (roughly) throughout the game.
It is in my humble opinion one of the best ways to make out the most out of weapons during the entire game (as well as having weapon types arguments most of times against most of ennemies).

Necro : *staff *sling *dart *dagger Weakest quarterstaff +1 sling into staff+3/staff of air sling+2 into late game staff (elemental/golem rod) and/or staff of the magi with sling +5. Nothing complicated here.

Ranger/cleric : **club **mace **flail (*sling *two weapon style (in cleric without ranger)) *sling *two weapon style ** warhammer *two weapon style **quarterstaff **two handed weapon style **sword and shield style **single weapon style club +3 best sling available with best shield available into flail of ages into late game phosphorus with fortress shield (25 str with holy symbol)

Valygar : (**katana **club *long bow ***two weapon style) **axe **warhammer **short sword (...)family blade MH nature club OH into frostreaver/club +3 MH stonefire OH into late game family blade+5/short sword of mask+5 MH hammer of thor+5 OH (25 str)

Barbarian : **two handed sword **two handed weapon style **quarter staff **spear **halberd (...) sword of chaos+2 quarterstaff+1 into lilarcor+3/martial staff+3(or rynn+4 who knows...)/spear of kuldahar +3 into late game soulreaver+4/warblade+5(10%physicalresist)/staff of the ram+6/poseidon +5/dragon lord+5 ($$$$$$$$$$$$$) (he is of evil alignment) (23 str belt of cloud giant, 25 barb rage)

Riskbreaker : **long sword **short sword **two weapon style *****flail ***long sword ***short sword (highly doubt level 39, but that's the idea) enchanted long sword +3 short sword of backstabbing +3 arbane sword +2 namarra +2 etc into phosphorus MH belm OH into late game thetruth +5/flail of eternity+5/cuthroat +5 MH angurvadal +5 OH(with girdle of lordly might = 25 str)

Cernd : (*quarterstaff *scimitar *dagger *sling) *two handed weapon style *spear (...) staff of the high forest/sling into staff of arundel +3/staff of fire +2 quickslot (fireshield can come in handy) into late game oak of the high forest/ixil's spike +6/spectral brand+5 with belm offhand


WOW THAT'S A LOT OF $$$

As I said this is a roughly briefing of the plan... there's no rocket science in that and I don't expect to get everything forged, although I don't buy consumables unless absolutely necessary and I pick up almost everything when I loot (including even mundane items to sell).
Yes I will be buying stuff (like staff of arundel, jewelry, spear of kuldahar) under 24 charisme (18 + 6 from friends spell) and 20 reputation.





Now, about the run itself. I kept a save file before most battles, so it would be possible in theory to re-play them in an authentic way or even maybe record them. In fact,
I will only provide the summary of my notes in this writing, but if enthusiasm is raised about one particular fight, maybe more details can be added later on.

I will be using a (VERY) conservative quest order. I want this to go as smoothly as possible, so no I won't tackle conster at level 10 with irenicus dungeon wands and dressed
with tabitha furs. I will play it really safe and do the quests in an (in my humble opinion) easy order.

I hope the English will be of decent quality as well.

Reloading : I'm not playing this with the intention of never reloading. But with good IA experience I won't be fooling around either. I love baldurs gate and sometimes
I play it without focusing and being careless, but for this run I will have to concentrate. So most of the strategies used won't be offical "no-reload strategies", they will
much rather be "no-reload-unless-you-got-careless strategies". Many fights up to now took several minutes to plan and prepare, carefully casting the prebuffs etc(sometimes as
long as 30 minutes of planification, just to ensure the fight will be won and that if hes lost at least I will have a very well prepared set up to reload with and try again.

I will not be taking any fight for granted....so yes I will rest before almost anything and prepare throughoufully. On core rules I usually love to "endure" fights and complete
a lot of stuff without resting...but in this particular run we will temporary ignore our adventuring insomnia problems and rest a lot.

By the way, upon reading this walkthrough you may think something like : hey how did you know that ? why did you know monster X was vulnerable to effect Y ?...
As I said after 6-7 legitimate runs and a lot of curiosity, the amount of mysteries has dropped dramatically. This is even more a reason for some people to refrain from
reading this because the spoilers will be huge.

So for the last time, be cautious not to ruin any gaming experience of yours while reading this.



One last note before starting, sometimes I will refer to positionning, proper positionning, etc, or you might just wonder how come a certain character of mine is not being crushed
by a golem.

In Baldur's Gate, the north south east west coordinates of the screen rotated with a 45 degree offset offer excellent positions for fighters using one hand weapons. In such a position,
the fighting range is maximized. (By the way, spears have very limited weapon range, but not nearly as pathetic as daggers).

To make it clearer, think about the watcher's keep level 3 maze first floor when you enter it. We clearly see those N S E W directions. If you attack from lets say south-east,
your risk breaker will hug the golem. Said golem will then feel a urge to punch that helmless face and you don't want that to happen on insane (and to be honnest you are playing with fire if you
let that happen early on on core difficulty as well, but more errors are allowed in that case).


(Speaking of errors, just as a useful information, 3x chain lightning triggers will actually chunk you on insane, so that's one more source of chuking to know about)


Oh I forgot...Predictions... To be honnest I can foresee some fights being not really harder on insane than core, an obvious example coming to mind would be kangaxx.
I know my party is not that rude on the physical damage output field and it may have the consequence of making some fights last longer.
I can see purged fights being hard (house in suldnasselar, greater elemental golems in general, master brain from illithid city) and I can see mithril golem being really hard.


One (real) last thing...Pre-spellhold missions. I plan on doing all the standard stuff (main quests etc).
About "hard but doable" prespellhold fights :

Kangaxx : I will do it (although luck on randomization and forging decisions will make it the hardest fight in the whole lot up to now, precisions will come later)

Samia party : I will do it (very spectacular fight)

Umar witch : I won't do it (not rewarding enough for the risks and efforts)

Troll mound : I won't do it (see umar witch AND one of the reasons why kangaxx was hard)

Teshal undead town : I won't do it (see Troll mound)

Wind master : I won't do it (I didn't even bother considering it seriously...protection from lightning dispelled, I remember damage being pretty huge on core, so x2 is no thanks)

Firkraag : I won't do it (fighting him on core before spellhold is doable but really really hard fighting legitimately...I decided to skip it on insane because I'm playing
Baldur's Gate, not starcraft broodwar final in World Cyber Games)

Now enough with theorycrafting, let's move into action !



=============================================================== IT BEGINS =============================================================================


Awaken in dungeon, Irenicus is kind enough to resist the urge of power word killing protagonist on sight.

Say bye to imoen, pick some mundane equipment from the nearby chest, talk to tom bombadil and get out.

Loot shadow thieve corpses in plain sight of waukeen's promenade people.

Go slums, gaelan, avoid 2 thugs near inn, enter inn, nalia's quest, firkraag's quest

Run to government district, talk to delon, run to gate district, trademeet's quest.

Leave athkathla in such a haste that the guards ask us if a pit fiend is running after us. We know just how much back alleys of Athkathla can be dangerous...

Umar hills. Do nothing except spare rangers pick valygar.

Trademeet. Kill animals, pick cernd, kill other animals.

Travel to druid grove to avoid Cernd's annoyance at not going there. Kill the troll near the spot where you arrive.

Back to umar hills do all minor buisness, pack stuff and go to winspear hills. Do all exterior job.

Travel back to waukeen's promenade. Do circus.

Go slums kill the 2 thugs, pit duel in copper coronet.

Attack the slavers.

Beastmaster : skeletons nymphs and dogs haste chant bless etc. minor spell sequencer 2x magic missile. Fight : Necro greater malison, Valygar doom on beastmaster, Cernd flame arrow on beastmaster (interrupt spell), rangercleric silence. Tabitha on cernd (mirror image iron skin), emotion beast master falls, I think valygar charmed the grizzly, minotaur and tabitha just didn't know what to hit and fell. This fight is not really different on insane because honestly if tabitha attacks an unprotected character on core that character will probably die pretty fast anyway.

Sell stuff pay 15k to shadow thieves (less than 100 gold left)

Head to docks, clear prebek's house

Mook's quest cleric ranger and barbarian stand on front, preventing vampire from hitting unprotected guys

Start maevar

Suna Sei : Riskbreaker uses ilbratha mirror image and heads to the left (north west) in order to take the chaos spell from mage. Necro magic missile on cleric interrupts greater command. Cernd casts emotion, rangercleric doom on eldarin, valygar doom on assassin, barbarian goes rage. Riskbreaker confused. Necro casts haste Cernd casts insects. True sight to reveal unconscious assassin.
Fight took long, stinking clouds and nymphs were used eventually. Everything hits hard, but our summons do not take double damage. (Thats bad news for mister Pasha Mamoud, he better have his hardiness ready!)

Talos temple

Wounded man

rayric gethras' tower (spare him for now)

Druid grove

Faldorn : My party was pretty exhausted when I reached faldorn...decided to try the duel for fun. Used domination as first spell and it worked. Used her to summon animal III, she summoned 2 winter wolfs =), necro and wolves then killed her easily. Was fun, unexpected and a good variation to the usual nuking fest.

rest + first druid grove quest

rakshashas

elite troll and trolls : death spell on trolls and melf's minute meteors, magic on noble troll and physical attacks with enchanted long sword +3, nature club, club +3

cernd's quest

help viconia

Murder rayric gethras in cold blood, he casts a remove magic, true sight, greater malison, disintegrate on a mountain bear, he gets charged and dies.

find out what happened to montaron

maevar

(Party :

necro : lvl 11 77hp AC 2 quarterstaff +1 sling +1 proficiencies : *quarterstaff *sling
stats : most powerful vainquished : stone golem total kills : 12 %

ranger/cleric : lvl 7/9 133hp AC -9 club +3 sling +1 medium shield +1 proficiencies : **club **mace **sling **flail **warhammer **two weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Hareishan total kills : 18 %

valygar : lvl 9 99 hp AC -6 family blade +2 mainhand flail+1 offhand proficiencies : **katana **club *longbow *axe ***two weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Beastmaster total kills : 18 %

barbarian : lvl 10 hp 168 AC -3 sword of chaos +2 quarterstaff +2 staff spear +2 composite bow proficiencies : **twohandedsword **quarterstaff **two handed weapon style *spear
stats : most powerful vainquished : Ihtafeer total kills : 22 %

riskbreaker : lvl 10 hp 121 AC 2 short sword of backstabbing +3 mainhand arbane's sword+2 offhand proficiencies : **long sword **short sword **two weapon style *flail
stats : most powerful vainquished : Noble troll total kills : 16 %

cernd : lvl 11 hp 64 AC 5 staff of high forest +2 sling proficiencies : *quarterstaff *scimitar *dagger *sling
stats : most powerful vainquished : Minotaur total kills : 12 %
)

buy reput to 14

get shield of the lost

wellyn

horn of valhalla

tirdir

expose tanner (careful with rune assassin, ranger cleric charges him and blocks him with his iron skin as he drinks his invis potion to backstab somoene frail)

upgrade horn of valhalla

fallen paladins

Clear estate of saerk farahd estate of its loot and lifeforms in a very lawful good way

graveyard minor encounters but no crypt king and no underground (as I said I'm currently in spellhold before library guardians and I still haven't met the orphan and Kamir)

sir charles

tiris trademeet

crypt king : Good positionning, iron skin mirror image bears minor air elementals

spider ambushes : buffs emotion melee + tanking cure poison flame arrow

orcus' room

paina : haste free action death spell larloch's minor drain. Was close, a lot of mass cures/heals were used.

shadow thieves contact : chaotic commands positionning remove magic flame arrows

roger the fence troll

sewer rakshasha : bears minor air elementals haste buffs emotion on kobolts...had to reload here, first time ranger cleric took the abidalzim for 250+ damage (that dreaded spell will most likely remain a big threat for the whole game). Next time valygar took it and saved vs spell.

mekrath's imp : put it down with malison emotion greater command

minotaur/yuanti mage/greater yuanti/umberhulk folks : very close, necro confused right away by umber hulk (was quite naive with SI:enchantment thinking yuanti mage wasnt going to put necro down), valygar hit and knocked away by minotaur (almost killed by that)

haerdalis gem/raelis summoning

lower reaches

gauths : cloud kill malison web emotion greater command, tank skeletons and missile weapons

unseeing eye : secret word breach malison doom flame strike flame arrow death ward

reputation now 20

buy mauler arm, staff of araundel, jewelry and containers

chaos : easy with this party and earth elementals from necro, necro gets killer insects hurt a LOT, polymorphed into troll, NOT HASTED, potions, namarra, multiple sources of heal

mencar and party : malison emotion command everyone on mencar + 5 fire elementals

buy spear of kuldahar

lilarcor

carrion crawler : free action, buffs, weapons +3, earth/fire elementals

rats : emotion/greater command

shadow lover : he hits really hard...risk breaker short sword of backstabbing +3, barbarian spear of kuldahar, necro staff-spear +2, doom malison and conjure insects (level 3 version)

ashedeena : free action buffs chaotic command, sword spiders summons, globe of blades + malison...1 or 2 reloads to get it straight...party can die pretty fast with specific protections removed, positionning had to be carefully planned out and globe of blades maximized

(party :

necro : lvl 12 78hp AC 0 quarterstaff +2 sling +1 staff-spear +2 proficiencies : *quarterstaff *sling *dart
stats : most powerful vainquished : Unseeing Eye total kills : 8 %

ranger/cleric : lvl 7/11 137hp AC -11 club +3 sling +1 barok's fist +2 shield of harmony +2 proficiencies : **club **mace **sling **flail **warhammer **two weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Chaos total kills : 19 %

valygar : lvl 11 105 hp AC -8 family blade +2 mainhand nature club+1 offhand proficiencies : **katana **club *longbow *axe ***two weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Mencar Pebblecrusher total kills : 14 %

barbarian : lvl 11 hp 171 AC -5 lilarcor+3 quarterstaff +2 spear of kuldahar+3 composite bow proficiencies : **twohandedsword **quarterstaff **two handed weapon style *spear
stats : most powerful vainquished : Pai'na total kills : 22 %

riskbreaker : lvl 11 hp 136 AC 0 short sword of backstabbing +3 mainhand namarra+2 offhand arbane's sword+2 ilbratha+1 proficiencies : **long sword **short sword **two weapon style *flail
stats : most powerful vainquished : Ghost Spider total kills : 22 %

cernd : lvl 12 hp 66 AC 5 staff of araundel+3 sling proficiencies : *quarterstaff *scimitar *dagger *sling *two handed weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Minotaur total kills : 11 %

)

bodhi's hideout

tanova : endure her, summons and buffs, then killed her with ranger/cleric (fought with exhausted party, so was not a walk in the park)

Slavers or De'arnise ? I need a staff +3 for dearnise...Decided to go with :

slavers : ranger cleric globe of blades and evil smite charges cleric and the mass of soldiers nearby, necro breaches cleric and fireballs on his ranger cleric ally (protected from fire), cernd flame arrow on captain, fighters on captain + doom and valhalla warrior/kittix, malison on mage + emotion, multiple instances of true seeing to counter assassins (was really tough for riskbreaker, had to move a lot and let those assassins get revealed, cause backstab way too dangerous on insane)

buy martial staff +3 for barbarian (could have been a little mistake...it was for gem golem and all the blunt weapons opponents prespellhold, but I could have found rynn on trademeet's crypt guardian later on before spellhold, which didn't happen)

kangaxx's minotaurs : web doom and missile weapons

dearnise keep

yuan ti : haste true sight protection from electricity secret word lower resistance malison emotion command breach (chaotic commands on everyone) skeletons as summons

library : improved haste true sight chaotic commands and summons from items (joloon kythix berseker) doom (dit it after yuan ti without resting)

glaicas : tackle him with haste breach and dual fire shield tanking(remove magic for his magic shield potion) and 5 fire elementals

keep viper : improved haste doom good tanking 5 fire elementals and conjure insects

torgal : OUCH...enchanted mace +3 everyone has crushing +3 except necro plan was to breach torgal attack with improved haste and 5 fire elementals with usual buffs chaotic command etc necro and cernd go near gem golem for tanking, valygar and ranger cleric doom on giant trolls, focus torgal then giant trolls then gem golem...there was a huge problem and it costed many reloads (more than 4) because I was stubborn.
I remember from core rules that sometimes, torgal will cast his spells and be impossible to interrupt...dunno if this was terrible luck or has anything to do with insane, or maybe damage divided by 2 helped me, but anyway torgal just kept forcing his spells like 80% of the time...I kept fighting getting hit by dispel magic, storm of vengeance...but I just couldn't win, storm of vengeance is way too much pressure on insane.
winning strat : so I decided to change order of kills...instead of the usual torgal-giant trolls-gem golem it was gem golem-giant troll-torgal and I made sure to get torgal's spells with only 1 character always...cause no matter how hard an amount of punishment he received, including larloch's minor drain, his spells would land without interruption. Even conjure insects' chance of miscast didn't help much, so I really had to retreat the character targetted by his spell.
Was won first try with that new style.
funny thing is torgal had always been so easy in every walkthrough I had done in the past lol

shadow jailer : I love to go in ruined temple at this stage of the game because I prefer to fight 2 ambushes of skeleton lords/greater mummies/bone golem without a lich. ( It wasn't our of fear, it's just that
I have the opportunity to fight 3 similar liches with kangaxx's quest so it's pretty much the same thing everytime (fight against kangaxx will detail how liches should be dealt with prespellhold))
Anyway back to shadow jailor, used enchanted mace +3 chaotic commands and dual fire shield tanking with skins, mirror images, good positionning and 5 fire elementals

forge : ring +2, 2x cloak +2, morning star +3

rest of shadow temple : good preparation and position (free actions in spellbook to use during battle if need be, no need to overbuff really)

borinall/amber golem : protection from lightning on everyone (even the 5 fire elementals), true sight, enchanted long sword + 3, proper tanking lower resistance doom malison and minor sequencer 2x glitterdust, mass cure and improved haste (focus borinall, rune assassins, amber golem)
made sure golem would only attack skins and made sure not to allow my lightning resistances to go too low (risk breaker can get pretty enthusiast in fights vs golems with crit combos and kill himself fast on such an amber monster, remember 2x damage)

belm : improved haste globe of blades malison emotion greater command chaotic commands free action, no trouble here, party was quite stronger than vs ashedeena

firkraag dungeon entrance (used greater command on hobgoblins...chieftain diddag fell to it lol, he didn't show up afterwards alongside tazok which is fine (otherwise 2x the loot)...made the fight vs tazok easier but let's be honest it is by no means a hard fight anyway..so I didn't reload after that incident)

mist swarms : ranger cleric and barbarian attack with skeletons, improved haste and buffs with malison + globe of blades combo, no trouble

rakshasha conjurer : quite tricky and long real life to play...didn't reload but really felt like I could have reloaded several times..used protection from fire (duh), fire elementals and lots of other summons (he's a formidable physical fighter and id rather have him slice open a sword spider than hit one of my frail party members(especially frail with insane))
he casts fast and the scenario of remove magic as you charge him and kobolt kamikazees deciding to appear at that specific moment is hard to predict (would have been cataclysmic)
he fell to a desperate charge (all in) because my ressources were depleting really fast...he hit really hard a few party members, was close

dungeon

golem ambushes : fire elementals good tanking/positionning(by good I mean flawless of course...can't afford to get hit) improved haste

vampires : ranger cleric and barbarian improved haste globe of blades malison

tazok : charge kill profit

leave maze and conster alone

forge : cloak +2

pirate hideout : 2 reloads to get it right (buffing sequence wasn't changed...it was just a little hard to execute because I didn't use iron skin and you can't pre-summon your summons)

so as I said don't use iron skin on ranger/cleric neither with cernd
go full buffs with protec lightning/fire, dont use protection from magical energy (3 instances in spell book) yet..they are to be used during fight and for the final stage (murdering the mage)
focus pirates dispel magic from cernd malison from necro...had spell immunity abjuration and a death ward in reserve (I prefer to cast it as a live counter to the coordinator's choice because cernd can cast it quite fast)
one instance of true sight for the end
one breach spell for the pirate captain(a few scrolls if need be) one breach for coordinator, 3 spell immunity
summons = skeletons during battle, items, contengency protec fire, doom on pirates/leader, focus the pirate leader and breach at the right timing to maximize damage output and get rid of him ASAP,
keep spirit armor OR chaotic commands active on valygar at all times to make sure he can use mental equilibrium (he has to stay clean...otherwise youre kind of counter productive with a protector)
one instance of death spell
some healing spells
what actually happened : had to focus minor pirates first and emotion them, then pirate captain then coordinator, we make sure coordinator casts death spell first (on kithix), joloon gets summoned fast and charges the coordinator right away to pressure him in melee and have him cast a melee protection spell (I constantly kept the menace of a physical rush active on him to make sure he uses lots of spells other than abi dalzim(abi dalzim = good game we're done))
coordinator died in a funny way...sometimes a character (player or ennemy) casts a spell impossible to interrupt (like torgal, but this really rarely happens, like one time out of 20 or even more)...pirate coordinator cast a finger of death impossible to interrupt on malison'ed necromancer without death ward and aura not cleansed on cernd...only way to interrupt such a spell is with death itself, and barbarian scored a might blow on the coordinator right before finger of death was finished casting
we used some missile weapons from afar to help a little with critical hits (darts) to soften some skins (we only had one character with protectio from magical energy left...the 2 other instances had been dispelled, but now coordinator had no remove magic)

forge : cernd's cloak

Now what to do ?Planar sphere, warden, conster or shade lord ? can do sewer party and firkraag's maze guardians/tomb mist founderoftrademeet for xp...only conster and warden give ruby rays (have 3 from mencar and 1 from spot near mazzy), so logically my usual core difficulty order is to go warden then conster then planar sphere then shade lord...warden gives ruby rays and allow me to forge phosphorus right away, but im truly affraid of insane warden...

I go for founder of trademeet : contengency haste, contengency stoneskin, chaotic commands, iron skin, mental equilibrium, blunt weapons and joloon, needed good positionning and waited this long to fight him because of his globe of blades...I needed decent saves to avoid bazillions of slashing damage points so it was a good timing to kill him
Unfortunately, no staff of rynn... I really wished I had found it, cause I don't want to forge staff of strenght pre spellhold, I much prefer to use those 2 last permanency scrolls for the necro amulet and a pair of boots of speed...so I will have to think about all of that later

Now firkraag maze guardians : immunity to fire, proper tanking and improved haste attack with fire elementals, rince and repeat 6 times

tomb mist : chaotic commands improved haste, healing, instances of true sight (multiple), oracle, mental equilibrium and go hunting ! track him down

warriors just got level 13 (very good level)

(party :

necro : lvl 13 79hp AC 0 quarterstaff +2 sling +2 proficiencies : *quarterstaff *sling *dart
stats : most powerful vainquished : Unseeing Eye total kills : 8 %

ranger/cleric : lvl 7/13 141hp AC -15 morning star + 3 sling + 3(arla) barok's fist +2 shield of harmony +2 proficiencies : **club **mace **sling **flail **warhammer ***two weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Chaos total kills : 24 %

valygar : lvl 12 108 hp AC -10 frostreaver +3 mainhand club +3 offhand mana bow + 3/tansheron bow +3 proficiencies : **katana **club *longbow **axe ***two weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Gem golem total kills : 15 %

barbarian : lvl 13 hp 177 AC -9 lilarcor+3 martial staff + 3 spear of kuldahar+3 heart seeker + 3 proficiencies : **twohandedsword **quarterstaff **two handed weapon style **spear
stats : most powerful vainquished : Amber Golem total kills : 22 %

riskbreaker : lvl 13 hp 143 AC -2 flail of ages +3 mainhand belm + 2 offhand arbane's sword+2 ilbratha+1 proficiencies : **long sword **short sword **two weapon style **flail
stats : most powerful vainquished : Torgal total kills : 20 %

cernd : lvl 13 hp 68 AC -1 staff of araundel+3 proficiencies : *quarterstaff *scimitar *dagger *sling *two handed weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Gem golem total kills : 8 %

)

sewer party : (gaius has no chain contengency) we go with typical buffs and fire elementals. We used dispel magic from cernd and ranger cleric, ruby ray on gaius from necro (scroll, but worth it in order to kill gaius faster and loot more scrolls of improved mantle), malison, silence from ranger cleric, emotion, then secret word + emotion + greater command + doom from valygar on gaius
Even tarnor fell to emotion

elite bounty hunter : need to endure her cause only 3 ruby rays(really much needed for warden) we didnt use summons (wanted her death spell scrolls), we used skins and good AC
from ranger cleric, breach her as soon as her spell immunity is off

rest of prison : the 2 yuanti mages with greater yuantis and minotaur and some thralls must not be understimated...especially on insane. I used crowd control tactics with missile weapons : cloud kill, acid fog, emotion, greater command, smite evil, chain lightning, slow, web, glitterdust, etc and lets not forget globe of blades ! I wanted an easy time here and that's what I got.

warden : OUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCH....

I of course made sure to face the entire party...warden AND 2 yuan ti mages and 2 greater yuantis and minotaur. (it is possible not to get next to warden from the right side, hence preventing yuantis from spawning, but I wanted to fight like intended)

Fact is I just didn't have the brute strenght required to face those guys...I didnt use iron skin on ranger cleric or cernd. I went full buffs with death ward active on necro (chain contengecy 3x finger of death), chaotic commands on valygar, full arsenal on ranger cleric with freection as well and even protection from acid.
Ranger cleric was chosen to charge warden in melee and remain stuck with her to prevent the armada of dogs. In order to actually tackle that lot of powerful opponents, we used
a lot of crowd control including many instances of entangle from valygar ranger cleric and cernd(by the way the save is supposed to be made at +3, but party members and even ennemies failed it a lot even without malison, so maybe there is something weird with that spell currently)
used cloud kills and acid fogs, had an emergency zone of sweet air to charge warden at the right moment. Only ranger cleric with buffing arsenal was in that chaotic mess of clouds, plants, web, etc. I didn't use stoneskin on necro either (reason is that stone skin or iron skin is just a reason for ennemy mages to use breach...but breach dispels protections from fire/lightning etc, which is bad news).
However, I kept an emergency stone skin/iron skin in everyone's spell book in order to force a breach (instead of a very nasty spell) or simply as a survival emergency to

It actually took only one reload to win this fight, but I meant my OUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCH.

First time ranger cleric wasnt close enough to warden, she used lasso, good bye.

Second time : warden was killed in a very heroic way in a pretty desperate situation. I don't recall everything from this situation, but its the kind of situation extremly crucial in which opponents could kill a lot of your guys in many different ways.
For example, necro was casting breach despite having 19 hp and no death ward (say hi to power word kill). But I really really had to take her down...Even worse, warden had cast
remove magic on ranger cleric...had to dispel those clouds asap thanks to cernd's fast casting speed, otherwise ranger cleric would have died to acid and poison damage (x2)
A breach and good blows finished warden...then I was faced with obvious truth, there was absolutely no way I was gonna be able to face the rest (including 2-3 surviving dogs(warden summoned very limited amount of dogs, which was my plan))
so even if I dislike that, I was forced to execute a martial retreat. Not a panic mode lets all get out whoever survives survives. I planned the retreat carefully because I still had to make the most out of my buffs and some control spells that were still going on in the area.
If I had retreated in a chicken way, my powerful buffs would not have lasted enough to kill everything. It's important to keep in mind that in insane I just can't let a greater yuanti hitting somoene without skins, thats way too much damage.
So we retreaded while making the most out of our powers, many potions were chugued, when the last yuanti mage fell, 2 casters had zero spell in their spellbooks and necro had only identify left. That was really quite a fight ! Good memories forever with that one haha.
Special thanks to mental equilibrium as well. I'm really happy with the party I chose. In spellhold I still cannot think of a party that would have been better overall since the beginning.

forge : morning star +3, phosphorus

conster : 5 fire elementals, buffs, rangercleric and cernd position themselves not to get breached (they do use iron skin here), 18/100 str for valygar (strenght spell), improved haste,
no protection from magical energy here...the plan is to kill him really fast and furious style under insects effect. I had one raise dead spell memorized just in case things got desperate(being forced to eat the triple abidalzims for exemple)
free action on necro and cernd (power word stun no thx) no spell immunity on necro (greedy for ruby ray scrolls )
fight goes : greater malison on conster, summon insects from cernd and ranger/cleric...unfortunately it was hard to land an insect spell...usually he saves approximately 50% of times but this time
he decided to save 4 in a row, necro was debuffing him with ruby ray. (A little problem here, possibly needing to get fixed : I've encountered that in every v6 run. The first legal breach that lands on conster (by legal I mean no SI:abjuration) does NOT remove his stoneskin...but it does remove everything else it should remove.)
so eventually we breach but have to peel through his stoneskin, meanwhile first and second waves had been killed by rest of party and elementals, but when that breach landed we had to focus on conster. He cast another melee immunity spell, another breach, we really had to kill him, third wave spawned and started hacking and slashing their way to party, but I wanted conster dead. Eventually he fell (under insects he had no other behaviour than refreshing melee immunity, I suspect it hindered his abi dalzims from firing because he remained badly injured and worse for quite some time (at least enough to fire it with little delay).
conster dead, third wave was pretty hard because party's initial momentum + summons weren't quite the same they used to be at the beginning. Eventually party members positionned themselves, ranger cleric had 2 more ironskins, so victory was easy.
Still have to be extremly careful with the 3 other fights, even the great barbarian can go down extremly fast when attacked by skeleton lords.

I now have 8 ruby rays of reversal and 2 absolute immunity scrolls

forge : ring +2

planar sphere

halfing party : fire elementals buffs go with malison emotion insects (invisibility potion saved valygar from that furious halfing archer, with only 3 arrows valygar was forced to quaff that potion he could not even retreat fast enough under haste)

cleric level 14 !

rest of the level

valygar level 13 !

lavok : buffs except protection from magical energy, globe of invulnerability + si:abjuration, ruby rays on lavok (needed 5) rest take care of golem + lords, we had 5 fire elementals.
We sent one fire elemental right away on lavok to make sure he uses a melee immunity spell (and would keep getting threatened of a quick throat slit) gem golem hits riskbreaker for 100 damage (that wasn't a critical hit, anyway I have ioun stone)
riskbreaker took care of breached lavok with protection from magical energy and his risk breaker improved haste, assisted with fire elemetnals

anecdote : against shadow jailor risk breaker didnt have ioun stone yet...he got hit by one skeleton lord, other skeleton lord simulteanously scored a critical hit on him and he got chunked violently. It's important to be as focused as possible during those fights, very few mistakes allowed.

demon plane : at this stage I know my party proved in many fights that it could take this fight easily (well still with a lot of focus, but easily in relative terms) so I decided to try something new with that battle. I sent necro alone with si:abjuration, haste, stonesking, dual fireshield, free action and used protection from magical weapons. The demon uses normal attacks so he pierces through the skin which has to be renewed. Eventually he casts silence, but by then lords are either badly injured or injured, so rest of party comes in lightly buffed and kill everything easily

necro level 14, fighters level 14 !

tolgerias : won't go for the kamikaze normal weapons rush attack...anyway I have level 14 necromancer. buffs, death ward on necro ( 3x fingers), ranger cleric uses creeping doom, 5 fire elementals, tolgerias magic resistance on creeping doom, other mage is affected though
no real difficulty here

fire and cold rooms : efreeti down to malison + emotion (he's not hard but if you understimate him too much he can become a nuisance and I decided to take no fight for granted)

engine room : took the secure way...one golem party at a time, improved haste on fighters, free action/remove fear on everyone, perfect positionning, hit those golems, repeat, repeat, loot and finish quest

forge : ring + 2

(party :

necro : lvl 14 85hp AC -1 quarterstaff +2 sling +2 proficiencies : *quarterstaff *sling *dart
stats : most powerful vainquished : Unseeing Eye total kills : 7 %

ranger/cleric : lvl 7/14 143hp AC -15 flail of ages + 3 sling + 3(arla) barok's fist +2 shield of harmony +2 proficiencies : **club **mace **sling **flail **warhammer ***two weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Chaos total kills : 24 %

valygar : lvl 13 111 hp AC -12 frostreaver +3 mainhand club +3 offhand mana bow + 3/tansheron bow +3 proficiencies : **katana **club *longbow **axe ***two weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Gem golem total kills : 14 %

barbarian : lvl 14 hp 180 AC -9 lilarcor+3 martial staff + 3 spear of kuldahar+3 heart seeker + 3 air elemental staff +2 proficiencies : **twohandedsword **quarterstaff **two handed weapon style **spear
stats : most powerful vainquished : Amber Golem total kills : 23 %

riskbreaker : lvl 14 hp 146 AC -2 phosphorus +4/short sword of backstabing/adjatha the drinker+2/ilbratha +1 mainhand belm + 2 offhand proficiencies : **long sword **short sword **two weapon style **flail
stats : most powerful vainquished : Torgal total kills : 23 %

cernd : lvl 13 hp 68 AC -1 staff of araundel+3 staff of fire +2 proficiencies : *quarterstaff *scimitar *dagger *sling *two handed weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Gem golem total kills : 7 %

)

party 1,83 million XP (still haven't touched any stronghold)

shade lord : pondered wether to go melee or spells...this guy has relatively weak followers (conster for example has more melee power siding with him) but he himself is a good fighter and his aura inflicts magic damage (double in this case) plus 3x abi dalzims...no pre-casted summons...
decided to go with spells (that worked wonderfully)
we summon stuff as we enter, necro begins ruby rays of reversal, secret word, lower resistance, breach etc, we make sure shade lord is kept pressured in melee, we get rid of
all the followers and eventually split valygar cernd necro and ranger cleric from afar, using call lightning after call lightning, necro sequencer 3x lightning bolt
shade lord died really fast(call lightning hits him so hard under greater malison) and clean, no abi dalzims fired, he was busy fighting summons, riskbreaker and barbarian had just retreated before the badly injured status
That was a particulary stormy night in the umar hills.

hard nut to crack : maximum melee buffing +5 fire elementals, get the cowled wizards warning here

ranger/cleric now 7/15 !

slaughter two kangaxx pieces liches (details of vs lich will be found in incoming kangaxx fight)

screaming statue : first wave : 5 skeleton warriors with haste, ranger cleric no haste
second wave : 5 skeletons warriors with haste, ranger cleric and barbarian with haste
heal skeleton warriors and barbarian
improved haste on all fighters, although riskbreaker and valygay dont join the fray, they are only to act out of despair, globes of blades righteous might and SUNRAY!, sequencer malison confusion slow, barb uses aim from heartseeker and focuses master vampire with ranger cleric, skeleton warriors fight mists
no real trouble here (I know this fight can be done much sooner...but I really see no reason not to wait for skeleton warriors, the xp reward is not huge and the permanency scroll doesn't hasten forging phosphorus at all

shadow dragon : no stoneskin on necro (need death ward and stoneskin = pretext to breach), protection from acid on everyone, cernd mirror image stoneskin negative plane protection tanking, lots of zones of sweet air, restoration, greater restoration, cure blindness, for mandatory rushes after a breath, didn't use spellstrike because of silence on necro anyway, so didnt memorize breaches either (only 1 instance, rest was protection from acid...cernd uses 5th level spots for other stuff)
was pretty challenging and cool..that wing buffet hits for like 34 damage instead of 17, which is a lot on the frail valygar
shadow dragon used heal twice, he eventually fell to an heroic killing blow from barbarian(just like against the pirate coordinator) as the party really wasn't in good shape anymore to tackle the improved hasted wyrm

Now should I forge staff of strenght or necro amulet + boots of speed ? Staff of strenght means another +4 weapon (since no rynn), making kangaxx manageable (barbarian rage, pouding with the staff, no stress here) and making other fights like troll mound or teshal possible as well
problem is if I dont forge the amulet I might have some trouble against firkraag post spellhold, because I definitely want to kill him before kruin (I want to gather all the xp I can before taking on kruin, which I predict will be very hard to kill)
I decided that troll mound and teshal werent worth the trouble anyway. Without forging anything I went for paladin stronghold.

mage in umar inn : Must be taken entirely seriously. Didn't pull a Firebead Elvenhair on that mage (you can still exit the building during the fight, which wasn't blocked most likely because this fight is not intended at all to be important).
Still had to play my best just to make sure everything went well...really can't afford chain lightnings, abi dalzims...let's not even mention dragonbreath/comet.

Some stronhold stuff to get more xp (could have been done much before but I'm never quite sure how much xp ill have at that point, so I use that to adjust)

fighters level 15 (very good level)

forge : amulet of hades, boots of speed

no more gold for now, so be it !

kangaxx : That was awful...really awful...and it had nothing to do with insane difficulty. I'm refering to the demi lich part.
Let's first take a look on how to deal with non grave liches in general prespellhold. We use buffs but no protection from magical energy yet, we distract her with illusions,
melee pressure, SI:abjuration, death ward, summons and since they have many protections from magical weapons spells, cernd always have a few chain lightnings in order to interrupt
abi dalzim spells or a weird alteration spell that doesnt seem to be ruby ray (time stop most likely, no thanks) be careful to remove the lich's illusion before interrupting with
chain lightning, cause illusion might stop it

Ok now the demi lich part...oh my god. For kangaxx, had to use ring of the ram to propel him northwards. That took more than 10 reloads and the very sad thing is that every
reload took at least 45 minutes to play. That was so stupid of me lol. But many would die for the One Ring. Problem was only riskbreaker and ranger cleric had affinity
with flails...but that demi lich is pretty well scripted and really hostile to such fighters. She uses remove magic every 3 rounds(sometimes more, but minimum 3 rounds) so I had
to retreat out of her sight everytime she was casting her third spell...throwing phosphorus at another character to try damaging her..barbarian despite having no flail proficiencies
could hit her a little sometimes...that was really a huge micro management lots of movements
In the winning attempt of this nightmare, cernd and valygar were imprisonned (bioware npcs are not a hassle to get back into the party), necro heroicly (luckily) survives an abi dalzim with 20% magic damage resistance from amulet of hades and a succesfful save vs spells
Finally riskbreaker scores the death blow as demi lich is almost done casting remove magic on him (at that point in the fight had no other option than continue hitting her hoping for the best).
I had of course tons of death wards with wondrous recall and 2 divine casters...but the problem was the improved haste spells, which were limited, and demi lich's regeneration etc, plus her other spells are not exactly what we could call friendly (having -50 fire resistance on insane does not feel comfortable)
Boots of speed helped quite a lot here and will be a wonder to have in spellhold as usual. Ranger-cleric puts the One Ring on his finger with a dark look in his eyes.

samia's party : the last battle before spellhold, and truly a fantastic one. I really wanted to do that fight because it's just too awesome prespellhold and a little too easy
after spellhold. Fought at the intended spot (near the 2 dragon items, not where you initially encounter samia by telling her you changed your mind). So basically in that spot
your party is trapped like a bunch of rats, with 3 warlords spawning from behind and samia's party occupying the only exit room. As in many battles of improved anvil, even on
insane difficulty, it is in your interest to stand your ground and fight well instead of panicking and fleeing in a very grotesque (if not pathetic) way throughout samia's party, trying to find sanctuary in other rooms, but doing that only give samia's party free rounds to cast stuff, your buffs will expire, and skeleton warlords do not care at all. It will actually be a lot worse, because you will be fighting warlods on the front with samia's party behind hurling spells at you.
So no, the only way is to hold your ground and fight properly.

Preparation : buffs, 5 skeleton warriors in your back, no improved haste, necro's level 6 picks are protection from magic energy, globe of invulnerabilty and protection from
magical weapons

strategy : necro stands in the doorway, followed in a straight line (all with line of sight in the samia room) by ranger cleric, cerd, valygar. risk breaker and barbarian will
fight the 3 warlods with meticulous positionning and the 5 skeleton warriors, joined pretty quickly by valygar (meticulous positionning as well) and ranger-cleric (he tries to absorb hits and was superb in the whole fight thanks to armor class...more details on this after this battle's report)
necro activates PFMW before looting the dragon items, so 1 round of PFMW is wasted when samia appears, but that was necessary, time is crucial here (he is under dual fireshield as well). THen they spawn, necro uses remove magic, cernd uses dispel magic, ranger cleric uses creeping doom, valygar uses doom on chak, barbarian barbarian rage, risk breaker improved haste.
Second round : necro uses sequencer greater malison + confusion + emotion, cernd uses emotion, ranger cleric uses doom on either samia or fenric, same for valygar, then both join in the fray with warlords.
Third round necro casts sequencer in order to cast 3 other spells in 2 rounds (level 7 spell slots serve no other purpose here). He will unleash another greater malison + confusion + emotion. Cernd another emotion, fighters battle the warlords well. Necro blocks the doorway but is advanced too, so kaol is pressured in melee as well. This is important because otherwise you won't have all that time to cast.

now what actually happened...

first try : That was really well played although I failed my second sequencer (casting it on a nearby ennemy fighter which was somehow trapped in the zone's geography...the 3 spells only hit that guy, not his friends.)
I used entangle which was only a nuisance to me, not the ennemies. All opponents died except kaol, legdoril and one skeleton warrior (not warlord), we had everyone alive (we had to raise riskbreaker during the battle and have him heal securely near the treasure spot because he got one-shot-K.O by fenric ironblade backstab from invisible potion (156 damage !, not a critical hit)
Unfortunately, an armageddon comet landed on windspear hills and the forgotten realms would suffer from nuclear winter for the years to come... (in other words, kaol cast comet on ranger/cleric and valygar, valygar 127 fire resist, ranger cleric 25 from dragon shield. Only viable options were potion of icedust, but valygar andranger cleric aura not cleansed, same for nearby characters except necro which was in the samia party room...tried to run and use it through the doorway, but the geography of the zone blocked the potion and ranger cleric got violently chunked despite being at full hp with 25% resistance)

second try : this time, no waste of time with entangle or other non sense. Chak down to emotion and insects, akae kills himself on dual fire shield necro (he is a very enthusiastic fighter) when necro's PFMW runs out after firing his second sequencer, he lets fenric ironblade in our room, then take position on the door again to prevent samia from joining him (she doesnt have enough attacks per round to be a threat to stoneskin in a round)
fenric ironblade says It's a trap ! quaffs invisibility potion and hits the pious valygar for 110 damage (valygar had 114 hp, we can say thanks to armor of faith for saving him). Valygar backs instantly quaffs a superior healing potion and backs off, fenric gets murdered, necro keeps SI active despite kaol's attempts, necro lets samia in then goes out side to fire melf's minute meteors on unconscious chak (his iron skin had been destroyed by the creeping doom), then necro
gets in our room again and something unexpected happens..despite all his buffs a very simple and lucky hold person from legdoril paralyzes necro ! under si:abjuration its impossible to use mental equilibrium, this means trouble...

and now...something really funny happened (and to be fair I think I deserved it) kaol decided to step in on the doorway and block the door just like my necro did...he stood there until the very end of the fight. That was funny irony...he really took his revenge there. Fortunately barbarian and risk breaker were on the other side (samia party room) killing legdoril.
The fight became extremly dangerous at that point...we were stuck in the treasure room with samia in pretty good health and kaol had debuffed paralyzed necro, then used breach...as soon as he used breach valygar used mental equilibrium to remove paralzysis
then necro casts protection from fire on himself, we try to leave the room like chickens but kaol reminds us that this is a fight to the death...he just blocked that doorway perfectly and was determined not to move a simple inch.
Kaol casts remove magic on valygar, valygar rangercleric necro and cernd all get dispelled...ouch ! (samia is fighting the skeleton warriors which were all still alive)
we get protection from lightning back from the 2 divine casters and protection from fire from valygar and necro (valygar resist fire/cold)
then kaol remove magic again...we know he doesn't care about his own life and is ready to collapse the entire dungeon with a comet and bury us all
new lightning/fire protec, ranger cleric vulnerable to fire, but necro had kept his aura cleansed (no protec fire on him anymore anyway) and used potion of icedust...
comet propels the 4 party members on samia which was force moved (was pretty funny...its like we actually collided with her) we used that opportunity and samia surround to
kill her(her hardiness was no more active) new buffs still (lightning/fire) ranger cleric uses iron skin, which kaol breaches (fieeew) samia dies !
risk breaker in the other room (oh by the way mountain bears were pressuring kaol, but he really didnt care about them, his eyes were injected with pyromaniac intents)
so as I was saying risk breaker in the other room used ilbratha for mirror image...kaol uses true seeing, he attacks kaol, kaol removes magic on riskbreaker (the 4 stuck party
members kept casting/drinking to get resists against dreaded fire/lightning). Riskbreaker retreats barbarian takes over drinking an oil of speed...kaol breaches on cernd
ranger cleric uses woundrous recall for 2x protection from lightning (remember, 3x chain lightning would chunk us permanently), he buffs himself and valygar, necro uses protection from magical energy on ranger cleric, ranger cleric makes sure
to crawl on the wall (no line of sight with kaol, which was like at the door's level, not the wall. ranger cleric boots of speed, draw upon holy might, preparing for glory.
kaol greater malison on barbarian, slow on barbarian (we are waiting for his last absolute immunity to end...
kaol being abi dalzim on barbarian (oh my god) necro runs quickly and casts larloch's minor drain (amulet of hades) on kaol, spell casting failed ! yay ! (although I still had that raise dead spell to get barbarian back, but it was time to charge, not to cast a raise dead during a whole round)
ranger cleric charges kaol with flail of ages, kaol casts chaos on ranger cleric (kaol still had stoneskin, but necro was casting breach), chaos is saved (had another mental equilibrium in case), kaol uses power word silence on ranger cleric...it seems he is out of options !
kaol goes down, no casualties, fantastic !

On the loot : VECNA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was pretty sad when I found out trademeet crypt had no rynn...but this vecna is going to be awesome. In fact, the only decisive advantage it will provide me over finding it in the illithid sewer lair is against kruin. That will help a lot. Now I'm happy too because it means I will have memory of the apprenti for twisted rune (not wanting to face groups of twisted golems...)

by the way...I realized afterwards that I had ring of the ram...so when kaol blocked the door maybe I could have knocked him away (although the ring usually doesn't work against humanoid mages...dunno why, for example it didnt work on perl the adept)

went to castle dearnise take gold in library and tell Lord Roenall to bring it on.

clear inventory, sell maximum stuff

won't forge cernd's improved circlet because I found vecna and want the fastest memory, and I won't forge his potion either because I have ranger cleric for creeping doom

forge : ring + 2, ring +2, ring + 2

12562 gold left

2084789 xp on necro

(party :

necro : lvl 14 95hp AC -5 martial staff +3 sling +2 proficiencies : *quarterstaff *sling *dart
stats : most powerful vainquished : Unseeing Eye total kills : 7 %

ranger/cleric : lvl 7/15 145hp AC -17 flail of ages + 3 sling + 3(arla) barok's fist +2 shield of harmony +2 or saving grace +3 proficiencies : **club **mace **sling **flail **warhammer ***two weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Chaos total kills : 24 %

valygar : lvl 14 114 hp AC -12 frostreaver +3 mainhand club +3 offhand mana bow + 3/tansheron bow +3 familyblade+2 nature club proficiencies : **katana **club *longbow **axe ***two weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Prime assassinator total kills : 14 %

barbarian : lvl 15 hp 183 AC -11 lilarcor+3 martial staff + 3 spear of kuldahar+3 heart seeker + 3 air elemental staff +2 proficiencies : **twohandedsword **quarterstaff **two handed weapon style **spear *halberd
stats : most powerful vainquished : Shadow dragon total kills : 22 %

riskbreaker : lvl 15 hp 149 AC -4 phosphorus +4/short sword of backstabing+3/adjatha the drinker+2/ilbratha +1/sword of dragon+2 mainhand belm + 2 offhand proficiencies : **long sword **short sword **two weapon style ***flail
stats : most powerful vainquished : kangaxx the demilich total kills : 24 %

cernd : lvl 13 hp 68 AC 0 staff of araundel+3 staff of fire +2 proficiencies : *quarterstaff *scimitar *dagger *sling *two handed weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Gem golem total kills : 6 %

)

SET SAIL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

vampires in brynlaw

insane dwarf : haste good positioning, no damage taken, he got overwhelemd

ginia tale

perl the adept : ruby ray, buffs, ring of ram didnt work but at least interrupted spellcasting, creeping doom (which he resists), he died in a rush attack without triggering his 3x abi dalzim

galvena festhall : same scenario than perl the adept, except 5 skeleton warriors, and being extra careful with the zone's physical layout

clear outside of asylum

get admitted with high charisma

a bad dream

level 1 of spellhold

golem/rukh ambush : prepare to the max, zone of sweet air, tank with skins and attack from proper angles, everyone was placed meticulously and it went very well

book on second level : no details here...at this stage with such an advanced party it's easy

soft spawns of level 2

Now my saved game is before entering the room in front of the library. I must say I am extremly glad to have made it that far without much trouble. (kangaxx was just dumb...next time I will just skip it or forge staff of strenght if no rynn, or have a berseker or barbarian with phosphorus, cause killing him that way was just too dumb)
The big heroes of this party as of now have been notably ranger/cleric and cernd, as predicted. Those 5 fire elementals were a tremendous asset in many important battles early on.

I feel pretty confident for the future of this run, and it for sure is an exciting one ! I can see amber golems/kobolts being relatively easy thanks notably to creeping doom.
Just have to play it cool...amber golems don't reproduce, so no need to hurry that much in killing them. We have skins after all.

I would conclude this first draft with little thoughts on armor class....I used to think (pretty much all of us thought that at some point in baldur's gate) that armor class
gets pretty much irrelevant later on in the game (and pretty early in improved anvil against certain opponents). But that is really false. I know it can be hard to believe this when you get into the fight with -26 armor class and first thing that happens is skeleton warlord hits 18 : hit 58 damage
but you have to view this by a statistical perspective... if opponent has such a tach0 that he will hit you on 11-20, in that fight vs that particular opponent while tanking him on several hits/time your ac acts pretty much like a 50% physical resistance. This gets a little less satisfying with ridiculous amounts of damage per hit, but yet the idea still stands.
But not only that...high armor class can be paired with other means of defense...such as iron skin for example. Now if your opponents hits 1 time out of two, it means your iron skin lasts twice longer. This makes a huge difference. In my battle vs samia's party, ranger cleric had -24 armor class vs warlords (-21, -3 with golden girdle)...that actually means something, especially with protection from evil and defensive harmony, which mean -27 AC. Combine that with iron skin and those dangerous warlords will actually struggle.

Just my 2 cens on AC and improved anvil.

I don't know how fast this run will continue, but I guess that's enough to read for a while.

Thanks for reading and have fun with baldur's gate !

[HTRT]

UPDATE






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REMINDER : As for the first journal entry, pretty much everything said in this report is filled with big spoilers, so you should reconsider reading if you are new to the mod


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Let's continue the adventure !

So we were standing in front of that door leading to lich and skeleton lords in spellhold.

lich/lords : nothing really original/new there, as the conster fight is similar but harder (we came pretty late to spellhold, mainly because of dracolich masterbrain AND especially kruin)...to make it brief we killed the lords with buffs and using their low tach0 to their disadvantage, and we added ruby rays as a way to have him waste time (delaying his using of nasty spells because he will refresh spell immunity). Necro tried to disrupt undead for fun, but failed to disrupt casting.
By the way when I mentionned cernd using chain lightnings on liches to disrupt spellcasting, I forgot to tell that unleash energy will work too and will damage the lich as well, but it has 1 more casting speed and the lich will regenerate it anyway, so chain lightning at this stage is better.

dace and his master or cat ? I'll leave dace alone for now, because in earlier playthroughs I remember dace's apparition being an annoyance during librarian fight (although that was probably only because I had forgotten to bring a vampire stake and amber golems weren't defeated yet, so no stake)

cat + coin + librarian : We engaged the fight with a simple haste and protection from evil. We crushed the coin golem first of course, then we positionned carefully with the 5 skeleton warriors to make sure the cat would always focus the ranger cleric during the whole process of killing it, so in its later stages when he can dispel some of your buffs at least it will only occur on ranger/cleric (and rarely due to high ac)
The trick was to buff during the fight against cat, in order to get into librarian fight pretty well prepared.
Then it was only a matter of pulling a similar lich/lords fight as we are used to by now

dace

vampire lord : we used 5 skeleton warriors, necro fire shield stoneskin and breach(amulet of hades), ranger/cleric on shield of the archons and barbarian on rage, both with improved haste, no trouble. I remember fighting him with whole party using limited wish to get negative plane protections and using cernd to recast it as well, but I saved myself the trouble this time. (maybe he could spawn eminent vampires in dace's crypt that would attack party from behind )

amber golems/kobolts : we used 5 skeleton warriors, protection from electricity (yes, really), improved haste, sequencer 3x fragmentation rays, mass stoneskins/ironskins lots of healing spells and protection from cold on fighters
Don't bother trying to limitate the effects of improved chain lightnings...it will lower your electrical resistance but you won't be fighting the amber golems yet and they will die before casting another
But important : do save the life of your summons, so let them patient in the top room before joining the battle
Only chain lightning dodger was ranger/cleric who positionned himself directly next to the kobolt shaman so that no improved CL would hit him and he used creeping doom
Fighters dispatched kobolts as soon as possible, necro and cernd made sure one amber golem would target them. Other amber golem (top one) was to face incoming skeleton warriors. Kobolt falls to creeping doom (I think he has 0 magic resistance otherwise really low), when kobolts are dead fighters kill the kobolt before he can retaliate, being biten to death by egyptian curse
Necro and cernd do not bother attacking the amber golem targetting them, they want their electricity protection. Then against the three golems, we proceded with a lot of method and calm.
Necro and cernd kept tanking their respective golem, ranger cleric attacked the third one, other fighters positioned (remember first journal entry) to make sure golem would only attack ranger/cleric.
Ranger/cleric hits the golem, but not too much. He needs to remain stable. Fighters pound the golem, but cease when their protections are low (50% resistance was the time to stop). Cernd used mass cures.
Then the same for the 2 other golems, with the advantage of having a free caster for the second one, and 2 casters for the third one.
Played it safe and it worked very well.

clear level 3 of spellhold

riskbreaker approaches a door in a room with a table but necro and cernd give him a stern look...their 18 wisdom gave them a very bad premonition

so we prepare carefully and then...

mithril golem : Didn't reload here but it could have gone really wrong, we had improved haste and free action and we made sure
that risk breaker and barbarian would not get hit so that they could make the most out of their superior damage output
stoneskin gets removed by that golem's punches, but the bleeding effect won't trigget although it will show on the portrait.
we used strenght of one and strenght on necro and cernd, cause everyone was to participate in that fight. We open with 5 skeleton
warriors and summoned lots of fodder during the fight. Barbarian used aim from heartseeker. Necro had a contengency stoneskin on hit.
Important : We charged him directly, as we wanted to make the most out of our improved haste/free action effects. It was more effective than leading him into the previous room to surround it with more easy because he lasts quite long so improved haste will not be eternal here.
Even on insane he does not one-shot fighters, so this gives a margin of manoeuver.

Tired of running barefeet since Irenicus' prison we grabbed several pairs of boots from the machine

asylum tests

rangercleric 7/17, cernd lvl 14 ! very good shape for irenicus now

convinced lonk the sane to release the mages (don't want to fight a mage legitimately before irenicus battle, especially since he can release 3x abi dalzims, dispel us, waste our time etc)

Jon Irenicus, asylum : contengency summon skeleton, level 6 spell slots are globe of invulnerability and 2x protection from magical energy (not used yet as usual)
We go full buffs, 5 creeping dooms (spellslots of both ranger/cleric and cernd)
As we arrive we summon stuff from items and we position skinless characters to fight golems properly
Necro uses a sequencer of greater malison, emotino and slow on the clones, ranger/cleric and cernd use creeping doom, hoping to
get irenicus in trouble (he has approximately 1/2 chance of getting affected). We have no improved haste except risk breaker, but our positionning was very good against golems. Irenicus suffered from creeping doom, wasting his time (Careful there, irenicus gets damaged really fast by creeping doom and he tends like most mages to use his chain contengency 3x dalzims before the badly injured status, often on injured I found out, only when under creeping doom effect. So we made sure not to pressure him that much, cause we don't want to break our position against golems in a chicken panic retreat, so irenicus casts a few spells but nothing important, he wasted 3 rounds)
In theory you can have inmates tanking golems, but this would have required wasting attacking time(backing behind inmates when they spawn, then coming back instead of attacking right away) so it would have been a bad strategy I think (and coward)
Irenicus alone quickly loses his SI:divination and didn't manage to do anything really nasty (we hit him with another creeping doom at some point when the melee battle was still raging but almost over)
We made sure to finish him off with improved hasted protected from magical energy risk breaker, then we killed the murderers
Profit !

necro level 16 !

get horn kill pirates

set sail !!!

sahuagin challenge : take it seriously, prepare as you should. I didn't prepare that fight for long (in real life time) compared to other fights
asked r/c for his boots of speed, used contengency skeleton, spell trigger of globe of invulnerability, minotaur, minotaur, then spell immunity enchantment, then sequencer stoneskin fireshield:red haste, then etc.
By no means an optimal/100% safe strategy, but it was enough. Used a ring of protection instead of the ring of acuity just to add a little comfort in that.

sahuagin city : creeping doom puts the mages at rest 100% sure, so no trouble

fighters level 17 !

about sahuagin city : I think some minor encounters including vanilla sahuagin mages seem to have a weird behaviour and (I didn't test that throughoufully at all, only pointing out a maybe potential exploit) they seem to be capable of summoning aguilarins(something like that) and some lacedons in a number that does not seem finite.

prince villinaty : ranger cleric with defensive harmony, protection from evil, shield of the archons and girdle of piercing was impervious to vipers and prince (prince himself could not hit him on a natural 19 roll).
We used creeping doom on the 2 mages and made sure to kill them with valygar as insects assaulted them. Necro used malisons on vipers (ranger cleric had a globe of blades), riskbreaker and barbarian were positionned carefully to help killing a few vipers to avoid having too many of them to fight at once and losing control over the battle.

scribe mordenkainen sword, impaler +3 for barbarian (yay!) (that's the main reason barbarian went for spears before halberds and bought spear of kuldahar (not so pricey) as opposed to harmonium halberd (10k more) before spellhold. Now impaler +3 will serve him throughout underdark and pre-kruin chapter 6. He will have his ** in halberds by that time, so at the poseidon's wrath forging he will be capable of switching to halberd.)

say farewell to our newly made sahuagin king friend

r/c level 7/18, valygar 16 !

underdark

murder the mind flayers near entrance

kill elementals

kuo-tua party (this will be valid for the kuo-tua parties in the kuo-tua lair as well) : I used rains of fire to fry them, with protection from fire on my party. I made sure to cast a fast creeping doom with cernd to avoid unwanted breaches.

elder orb : With girdle of piercing and other buffs, elder orb would miss ranger/cleric on a natural 19. Since necro was targetted by anti magic ray, I played this fight with endurance. So no improved haste, used protections from magical energy. necro didnt bother facing the elder orb, he just went to the stairs and be a summon/buff machine.
Highlights : anacondas were good, mental equilibrium saved the life of riskbreaker and greater restoration saved the life of valygar. I still lost barbarian to the 3x abi dalzims unfortunately, but this is not chunking so why not.

clear rest of lair...party has more than enough ressources to deal with common beholders, but we still have to be careful for simultaneous focus fire from eyes on insane
skeleton warriors help a lot during this clearing

barbarian's damage output with impaler and rage is very satisfying and ranger cleric equips a drow full plate + 5 as well as the newly found sling of avoreen +4
by the way cat figurine is on ranger/cleric's quickslot since he is most likely to be at the heat of powerful physical blows

first drow ambush : we used very complete careful pre-buffing and 5 skeleton warriors. I will rather talk about the general strategy and way to tackle the fight.
r/c, valygar, barbarian and riskbreaker attacked from bottom and cernd, necro and 5 skeleton warriors attacked from the right (skeleton warriors do not go melee, they serve as backup caster protection for now)
we made sure the attention of spiders would be drawn on the fighters, especialy the ranger/cleric with girdle of piercing. r/c and cernd used rains of fire on the casters (and it would hit a few spiders as well, but not over my 4 fighters). Rain of fire bypasses magical resistance of opponents. Necro had a 3x sunfire trigger but didn't use it during the battle, he instead used ruby ray on one mage, then a breach, then breach on another mage because cernd used ruby ray on the other after his initial rain of fire
those breached mages will die from those rains alone (their mirror images will be dispelled by a pre-buffed true sight)
I paused the game often. My fighters (I think though only r/c was targetted by spiders capable of dispelling) were ready to quickly quaff a potion of freedom and keep fighting
Those whisper spiders seem to adore scoring a 20 on their first hit in that fight, and yet again it happened this time, but r/c drank a potion and spiders died without further dispelling (risk breaker on improved haste and phosphorus is a stranger to arachnophobia)
Was completed with success. Skeleton warriors served against a rebel spirit spider that decided to attack the casters, but nothing else because of the rains of fire and the presence of the evil cleric. Anyway that was their purpose.

imprisonment machine : just take the drow mage and the lich seriously, sleep prepare kill, no risk needed

scribe spell turning

get ripped off for freedom scroll (I think underdark should be done all in one go, coming back to do vithal with the scroll from teshal would feel lame...should have brought kangaxx's scroll but it was required to save valygar and cernd from the center of a blackhole and I just couldn't afford reloading that fight again

free vithal, get his spellbook, do the quest, then ask for more treasure in a very lawful good way, betray him and scribe horrid wilting

balor : breach, protection from fire, improved haste, 5 anacondas, healing spells, necro with spell turning and si:abjuration and death ward, nothing really dangerous here if well prepared. Again r/c tanked him.

Forgot to present my party...it's been quite a well..perhaps the fights were too interesting.

(party :

necro : lvl 16 107hp AC -6 martial staff +3 sling +3(arla) proficiencies : *quarterstaff *sling *dart
stats : most powerful vainquished : Unseeing Eye total kills : 5 %

ranger/cleric : lvl 7/18 151hp AC -21 flail of ages + 3 sling + 4(avoreen) barok's fist +2 darksteel + 4 proficiencies : **club **mace **sling **flail **warhammer ***two weapon style *quarterstaff
stats : most powerful vainquished : Chaos total kills : 23 %

valygar : lvl 16 120 hp AC -12 frostreaver +3/club +3 mainhand stonefire +3 offhand mana bow + 3/tansheron bow +3 nature club proficiencies : **katana **club *longbow **axe ***two weapon style *warhammer
stats : most powerful vainquished : Prime assassinator total kills : 15 %

barbarian : lvl 18 hp 192 AC -12 impaler + 3 lilarcor+3 martial staff + 3 heart seeker + 3 air elemental staff +2 proficiencies : **twohandedsword **quarterstaff **two handed weapon style **spear **halberd
stats : most powerful vainquished : Shadow dragon total kills : 21 %

riskbreaker : lvl 18 hp 159 AC -7 phosphorus +4/short sword of backstabing+3/adjatha the drinker+2/ilbratha +1/sword of dragon+2 mainhand belm + 2 offhand proficiencies : **long sword **short sword **two weapon style ****flail
stats : most powerful vainquished : kangaxx the demilich total kills : 27 %

cernd : lvl 14 hp 70 AC -3 staff of araundel+3 staff of fire +2 proficiencies : *quarterstaff *scimitar *dagger *sling *two handed weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Gem golem total kills : 5 %

)

second drow ambush : pondered wether to do it power gamer way or face everything at the same spot with free action potions..
The strategy of triggering everything with boots of speed protagonist, then quaff some potion and rely on a contengency, then run back to party followed by the whole lot always felt quite lame to do (not only that, there is also a risk of getting physically surrounded by the opponents during the cutscene)
Fighting it everyone on the spot with the web is too hazardous, so I decided to try something new (new to me at least).
Necro had contengency spirit armor on helpless (I didn't want it to trigger too fast on ennemy sight before the dispel), sequencer of stoneskin haste minor globe of invulnerability and a spell trigger of protection from magical weapons, fire shield red and fire shield blue.
We had 5 anacondas at our disposal. I positionned necromancer somewhere left to the party, let's say 1 screen and a quarter or less distance. Rest of party and the 5 anacondas went on the bridge to trigger the encounter.
global purge magic
cernd : mirror image then true sight
riskbreaker : improved haste then attack a drow fighter + priestess
barbarian : rage + same as riskbreaker (they were next to each other)
valygar : was with ranger/cleric on the other side of the bridge with 2 drow warriors, he helps r/c in fight and uses armor of faith
r/c : tanks and fights the 2 drow fighters
necro : spell trigger
after approximately 2 rounds (maybe a little more) risk breaker runs to necromancer, spiders target him because necro still has protection from magical weapons active. He uses risk decrement to propel the spiders on some wall (not towards the web, but towards a wall) and then attacks ghost with his chain breaker stance. Killer and lesser spider had killed themselves of the fireshields, when necro is not held he uses his sequencer on himself then joins the battle against drows. Meanwhile against drows cernd and barbarian deal with the mage, using protection from lightning. 4 anacondas were lost to death spell (was quite careless playing right there). A little bit after riskbreaker went to help necromancer, valygar as well went to support riskbreaker against the ghost, whisper and spirit spiders. I didn't want a hold person or confusion effect on the risk breaker. On his departure from ranger cleric's side, ranger cleric begins a chaotic command on valygar (first round was ironskin, second one chaotic command) All of this worked very well and it was a satisfying way to deal with this encounter with 3 different mini fights in a 3/4 * screen width circle radius

necro and cernd level up !

Meet adalon, rest before entering drow city (preparation for underdark party because the first quest timing is a little tight)

drow city

underdark party : buffs, protection from magical energy on 4 fighters (pre-buffed), had 2 instances of true seeing running on the 2 divine casters
cernd under aura of camouflage rushes to the mage and casts creeping doom, necro uses ruby ray on mage. Fighters destroy their melee opponents. Then necro ruby ray again, cernd ruby ray. Then breach + warrior kill mage. We didn't use summons in this fight, because it is quite easy at this stage...problem with spellhold is that many fights are relatively easy when you get there at maximum xp, but unfortunately that xp is very much needed in my opinion to deal for example with mithril golem, dracolich, master brain and kruin)

drow city mundane quests

deirex + skeletons : kill all at once, 4 fighters on lords, 2 casters on lich. Nothing new or dangerous here, but fight played with care of course

finish ammar's quest, scribe limited wish scroll

house jaelat : party strong enough to spare details

noble effreeti : buffs + skeleton warriors, SI:evocation, fireshield blue, stoneskin and stoneskin contengency on 50% hp.
cernd uses ruby ray, necro uses lower resistance
cernd and ranger cleric use creeping doom, necro uses lower resistance
valygar uses doom, necro uses greater malison, cernd and ranger cleric use creeping doom
noble effreeti death spell on skeleton warriors (he did not much quite telling before that except hitting on the fireshield:blue a few times)
necro spell trigger 3x cone of cold
noble effreeti dead (that was quite overkill there, funny enough I think he is immune to cold chunking, because the text window displayed 36, 24, 31, 35 and 32 damage with no save vs spell, then efreeti dead..there should have been a 6th number since no save made with success, so he should have been cold chunked I think. Well it's good to know that it won't happen, because cones of cold as a spell trigger inflict much more damage than chain lightnings in this encounter)

go in kuo tua lair and kill a few monsters to get a level up

sell a LOT of stuff to drow merchant (careful, pick a non-robbish one (I went for the one that sells scrolls) because otherwise you might get ripped off

finish drow city and murder everything alive except a slave in a very lawful good way

give eggs to adalon

come back to lair kill adalon with protection from cold. Sorry adalon, but we are here to crush golems, not to defend endangered dragon species (barbarian plans on using improved human flesh armor)

kill drows on the way to surface

kuo tua prince : just hack and slash with buffs and creeping doom on mage, valygar goes on priest and he pressures then kills the mage biten by insects.
Used planetar and 2 anacondas

mind flayer city

everyone just leveled up except valygar and ranger/cleric

(party :

necro : lvl 18 109hp AC -6 martial staff +3 sling +3(arla) proficiencies : *quarterstaff *sling *dart *dagger
stats : most powerful vainquished : Unseeing Eye total kills : 5 %
HLAS order : planetar

ranger/cleric : lvl 7/20 155hp AC -21 flail of ages + 3 sling + 4(avoreen) barok's fist +2 darksteel + 4 proficiencies : **club **mace **sling **flail **warhammer ***two weapon style **quarterstaff
stats : most powerful vainquished : Chaos total kills : 22 %
HLAS order :

valygar : lvl 18 126 hp AC -13 frostreaver +3/club +3 mainhand stonefire +3 offhand mana bow + 3/tansheron bow +3 nature club proficiencies : **katana **club *longbow **axe ***two weapon style **warhammer(he's all anxious about getting crom fayer)
stats : most powerful vainquished : Insane dwarf warrior total kills : 15 %
HLAS order : contact with nature

barbarian : lvl 20 hp 198 AC -12 impaler + 3(awesome) lilarcor+3 martial staff + 3 heart seeker + 3 air elemental staff +2 proficiencies : **twohandedsword **quarterstaff **two handed weapon style **spear **halberd
stats : most powerful vainquished : Shadow dragon total kills : 21 %
HLAS order : hardiness

riskbreaker : lvl 20 hp 166 AC -7 phosphorus +4/short sword of backstabing+3/adjatha the drinker+2/ilbratha +1/sword of dragon+2 mainhand belm + 2 offhand proficiencies : **long sword **short sword **two weapon style ****flail
stats : most powerful vainquished : kangaxx the demilich total kills : 29 %
HLAS order : hardiness

cernd : lvl 17 hp 76 AC -3 staff of araundel+3 staff of fire +2 proficiencies : *quarterstaff *scimitar *dagger *sling *two handed weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Gem golem total kills : 4 %
HLAS order : smilodon

)

master brain and elemental golem : ranger cleric with undispellable shield of the archons and (dispellable)defensive harmony had -31 effective ac vs crushing with girdle of bluntness, so even the elemental golem wasn't that effective at hitting him
The idea is to keep hardiness for later, because it is susceptible to the purge of master brain. After all if you are to use it for so little time, use it when there are many golems running around. (I am of course assuming you have it )
I used my best summons to maximize damage : 3 anacondas 1 planetar 1 smilodon. Since v6 I assumed that the teleportation and door closing were implemented to prevent chicken panicked retreats from the brain and his elemental guardian, so I order my summons to walk in the room before the cutscene
I had a spell trigger 2x minotaur 1x improved haste, a sequencer stoneskin haste summon spider
Managed planetar like a party member, didn't want to lose him for no reason
Because of the initial mind flayers/umber hulks locations, it is a good idea to split in order to take all of them down as soon as possible. When elemental golems spawns, I think it is a bad decision to charge him with everyone. Since the battle already made you split, why not continue fighting in those spots the brain golems that appear ? This will have the added advantage of making it harder for the master brain to purge magic effectively
Barbarian riskbreaker and ranger cleric were on top with elemental golem and some summons whereas valygar and the two casters were in another fight against brain golems.
The brain purged the latter trio, so encouraged by this I activated many good buffs on the three fighters pouding elemental golem.
In the end, neither hardiness nor greater restoration were needed in the fight. It was a good way to handle it because it seems the brain really prefered to dispel the hasted/skinned casters with valygar. He did land a purge on the other fighters, but the fight was pretty much already won (elemental golem being near death, my summons all still alive etc)
kundane and sword of the north on elemental golem corpse. r/c levels up and picks foreknowledge

now nobody is close to levelling, so might as well just do the demon knights now to use some of their loot in dracolich quest

demon knights : I decided to play it without leaving the room, as intended. I think the original teleportation layout that occurs on the party in the cutscene is a good incentive to fight in that room in an effective way, without wasting time with chicken moves.
For preparation, don't rest there...kuo-tua parties for no xp are just way too annoying (they hit really hard on core, let alone insane)
we use iron skin because i'd rather get breached than remove magic'ed, plus I want highest hp possible at all times
we go with full buffing including 4x magical energy protection (so no improved haste except for riskbreaker) and protection from cold on fighters. We used 2 anacondas 1 smilodon 1 planetar, a skeleton warrior as sacrifice
We use minor globes of invulnerability on the whole party via limited wish (as pre-buff too). Everyone uses everything in advance, because this fight is brief and furious, so we pre-activate abilities such as contact with nature, chain breaker stance, hardiness, etc.
Important : For clerical buffs, I used ranger/cleric because he was of much higher level than cernd. Cernd used perfect camouflage.
Fight begins.
Cernd and valygar are spawned bottom, so they go fight the two bottom demon knights with one anaconda. Valygar attacks, cernd uses creeping doom (they have very good magic resistance but not 100, there is a non abysmall chance to land it and it can help a lot. Unfortunately they both resisted)
Necro spawned on left, he charges the far away left demon knight and uses limited wish for rabbits. Riskbreaker on the right charges the right demon knight, r/c and barbarian on top attack the top demon knight. Riskbreaker has the assistance of the planetar, smilodon and one anaconda. Last anaconda helps r/c and barbarian.
I realized at that point that I forgot to memorize zones of sweet air lol
I had forgotten that spell triggers or sequencers containing let's say protection from lightning do not work on other targets even when close to them (although I will test being the closest possible to them). Anyway what I mean is that necro failed patheticly his trigger of protetion from magical energy, protection from lightning and improved haste on ranger/cleric that got breached.
On the right 3x abi dalzims on risk breaker, no harm done cause still immune to magical damage, planetar dies
On the south a knight casts remove magic on valygar and cernd. Fortunately, he was unlucky enough to fail at dispelling them.
Cernd down to 3x abi dalzims despite mirror image, 50 magic resistance and 75% magical damage resistance.
Necro casts a new planetar
Remove magic on ranger/cleric and barbarian, works well on barbarian but fails to remove protection from fire and lightning from the high level cleric. Things are looking pretty good right now even though r/c and barbarian are no longer protected from magical energy.
2nd knight to die breached necro before dieing (one of the two bottom knights, not the one on far left (he was the last to die)), necro goes SI:evocation hoping to avoid a chinese new year, ranger cleric and barb keep pounding third knight to die because he is near death, even though he still has not released his chain contengency. It is released, ranger-cleric near death uses cat figurine, third knight dies. Fourth knight to die was the other bottom knight, risk breaker had joined valygar with smilodon and anaconda after killing the first knight. There are a few clouds and a thin layer with no clouds, barb and r/c decide not to partake into charging the last demon standing on the left, because he has not fired his chain contengency and they have no more magical damage resistance (although immune to fire and lightning). Riskbreaker, valygar and remaining summons kill him while immune to everything. Necro decides to follow barb and r/c near the right central wall with caution. Fifth demon knight dies.
Yay !
It was very well done, but I think I got pretty lucky with 2 remove magics that did not remove everything. I think cleric was level 21, I don' think they are level 36 mages at all, but they are certainly in the 20s in my opinion.
Cernd got somewhat unlucky I guess, but I always had a few reservations about simultaneous spells in general...sometimes it seems like a sequencer with 3 emotions for example will only work as one emotion, sometimes 2, and sometimes a chain contengency of 3 fingers of death will only output one save in the text window...sometimes 3x abi dalzims seem to either all go through magic resistance or the 3 of them are fended off with only 1 magic resistance output in text window
Maybe somoene else has some more relevant input about what appears to me as a minor issue.

belt of frost giant strenght goes to barbarian, now 25 str on rage ! he grabs soul reaver too, although his default weapon will remain impaler because it's awesome

the underdark maze : no real trouble (good map on this website). Use slashing weapons and magic damage like abi dalzim on the shades + creeping doom.

dracolich : I think the important stakes of this fight do not really consist of damage points...rather instant death and level drain, so I didn't expect it to be much harder and it happened as expected.
I advise not to prepare the rest in the previous room, because neo-otylugh can be annoying.
r/c with protection from evil, shield of the arcons, defensive harmony and girdle of PIERCING (his claws are piercing, well according to hit dices output) had -35 effective AC. Dracolich failed to hit on a 19, but that particular buff sequenced only happened for a short time during the fight, although he was still quite sturdy even without protection from evil and defensive harmony.
We needed zones of sweet air, negative plane protection, restorations, skins, mirror images.
It is better to be brave rather than cowardous in this fight if you want it to end as soon as possible, because dracolich has a lot of (undeath) stamina. You want to be meleeing him pretty much anytime to make sure he uses protection from magical weapon.
Had contengency globe of invulnerability on necro, spell trigger improved haste protection from cold and giant strenght(lvl 6 version) but repeated the mistake against demon knights by failing its casting. he had sequencer with haste protection from cold and spirit armor (and repeated yet again the same mistake).
We used high level summons, managed the planetar like a party member, tons of death wards and wondrous recalls, one aura cleansing for cernd in order to cast a few things as fast as possible.
Careful if you use death ward and SI:abjuration : if death ward is cast before, make sure your SI:abjuration is eventually ruby rayed, because if you don't death ward will dispel before SI:abjuration so you won't be able to cast SI:necromancy and we know how quickly those wails happen sometime
Used mental equilibrium on the malison
Ranger cleric faces reality and accepts his greater silence as fast as possible (at some point later on he will be unsilenced and playable, I think dracolich used two greater silences, if not two never more than 3)
We entered with arcon shield on r/c and tenser's partial transformation on necro. Cernd had instances of arcon shield in his spell book but didn't use it yet.
First round : necro haste, cerd aura cleansing, risk breaker IH (initially you have to pound dracolich to force him to start his PFMW castings), barbarian kithix, ranger/cleric draw upon holy might
The best way to know if you can attack dracolich physically is to always have at least one character meleeing him. In my case either r/c or cernd was constantly attacking him, making sure he would cast PFMW as soon as possible and as a way to control the fight in general, cause skins + protection from cold + protection from level drain on cernd (either by his level 4 spell or limited wish version) was a secure way to handle dracolich and the ranger cleric even breached had a very huge armor class to tank, with planetar/cernd/valygar healing.
Fight was tedious, necro was forced to drink a potion of stone form in the later stages at one time because of wail of the dracolich (he had no death ward no SI:necromancy). His save vs death was 0, but I wanted to improve it to -3 just to make sure he doesn't die (I'm pretty sure wail of the dracolich incurs a decent save penalty for its death effect).
At the very end everyone had death ward, dracolich was out of answers, fighters had improved haste (I used those with parcimony... early on only risk breaker on improved haste was enough, others hasted) and protection from cold on almost all 4 fighters
Riskbreaker tried to kill steal dracolich using risk decrement when dracolich was near death, but barbarian managed to steal the kill (by the way, everyone used crushing weapons, because our hit modifiers with slashing weapons tend to be pretty bad)

loot azureedge, periapt of protection from poison (cool ! rune assassins)

kill gnomes and duergars in underdark because they are evil underdark dwellers and we are very lawful good people not greedy at all for experience

speak with elhan

go castle dearnise allow lovers to marry each other

small teeth pass

north forest (careful with the swarm of vampire mists !) (careful too to get there by night time otherwise two vampires will turn into bats and go away)

forest of tethyr : I suspect this zone to have weird spawning behaviours...it is a little hard to figure out what is intended and what is vanilla, but I know that 4 or 6 trolls spawned in what seemed like a random spawn on an already visited part of that map, and they gave experience...so maybe somoene else has something else to say about this.

deal with money lenders in keep

minor undeads before umar witch : ranger cleric used turn undead, yay !

umar : full buffs, only one instance of protection from magical energy in spell book not used in pre-buffing, contengency globe of invulnerability, spell trigger improved haste + minotaur + minotaur, sequencer haste + protection from fire + stoneskin, cernd perfect camouflage
Both cernd and necro ruby ray the imp. We only summoned planetar and smilodon here because the area is really tight. We made sure to enter the small circular room with umar, because otherwise the ennemy summons may prevent some characters from moving/entering the room.
A lot of arcane pressure on umar while killing wisp, then we sniped her with risk breaker under protection from magical energy. Had to kill summons here and then to avoid being overwhelmed, so there was a small amount of time while preparing the murdering of umar in which other fighters killed summons, because we didn't want to trigger her 3x abi dalzims obviously.

scribe protection from elements and protection from energy

valygar level 19 and racial combat !

fighters level up after talking with mailyn, grand mastery in flails for risk breaker !

use limited wish for xp, gems, full plate and adventure scroll

the flood of dearnise keep : paid nothing, assassin found in keep LOL

wind master : protection from lightning, improved haste, necro and cernd alacrity, trigger 3x lower resistance, 1 more lower resistance, then flame arrows/melf's acid arrows/chromatic orbs, cernd rain of flame arrows, went overkill here

firkraag : even at this stage it could prove fatal on insane if taken too lightly (and on core too actually). I prepared to make it quick, full buff, 4 anacondas 1 smilodon, valygar prepared for skeletons, spellstrike + debuff, trigger 3x lower resistance and lots of spells, made sure to finish him right after he summoned his third wave, but before casting a healing spell
warlords were easily put down (still needed to position properly, as usual). Natural restoral saved valygar from a mistake at a very high speed. That's the kind of emergency measures I was looking for with this party composition.


troll mound : full buffs, necro and cernd under alacrity killed troll queen very fast (cernd used creeping doom and directed death spell on all the minor trolls. By the way, if death spell kills a troll, it will give xp and then play its lying down animation. A second death spell will kill him and give xp again. It happened for a few trolls but I did not reload because the amount of xp was pretty small anyway. Cernd used flame arrows on giant trolls impervious to death spell)
ranger/cleric duelled troll king during the whole fight, using his typical overkill AC set up (with no more drow plate +5, needed to use foreknowledge as well). The king's attacks are crushing.
The three other fighters attacked the noble trolls, then the vengeance trolls. After that we finished king by surrounding him carefully, a mental equilibrium was used to counter the stun effect from king's smite fighter ability. Necro used one scroll of breach to make sure troll king wouldn't start drinking massive healing potions on near death.
We used no summon here, except a smilodon later on. We wanted to make the most out of our buffs and like most other "hard but doable prespellhold fights", doing it at this stage it relatively straight forward

Scribe monster summoning, loot green leaves armor, bracers of archery, ring of human influence, spear of halycon and sling of everard, which necro claims his !

(party :

necro : lvl 19 110hp AC -7 martial staff 3 sling of everard +5 proficiencies : *quarterstaff *sling *dart *dagger
stats : most powerful vainquished : Troll Queen total kills : 5 %
HLAS order : planetar, improved alacrity,

ranger/cleric : lvl 7/22 159hp AC -19 flail of ages + 3 sling + 4(avoreen) barok's fist +2 darksteel + 4 proficiencies : **club **mace **sling **flail **warhammer ***two weapon style **quarterstaff
stats : most powerful vainquished : Firkraag total kills : 21 %
HLAS order : foreknowledge, globe of blades,

valygar : lvl 19 129 hp AC -13 frostreaver +3/club +3 mainhand stonefire +3 offhand tansheron bow +3 nature club proficiencies : **katana **club *longbow **axe ***two weapon style **warhammer
stats : most powerful vainquished : Elemental golem total kills : 15 %
HLAS order : contact with nature, hardiness

barbarian : lvl 21 hp 201 AC -11 impaler + 3(awesome) lilarcor+3 martial staff + 3 soulreaver + 4 heart seeker + 3 air elemental staff +2 proficiencies : **twohandedsword **quarterstaff **two handed weapon style **spear **halberd *bastard sword
stats : most powerful vainquished : Dracolich total kills : 21 %
HLAS order : hardiness, hardiness

riskbreaker : lvl 21 hp 169 AC -7 phosphorus +4/short sword of backstabing+3/adjatha the drinker+2/ilbratha +1/sword of dragon+2 mainhand belm + 2 offhand proficiencies : **long sword **short sword **two weapon style *****flail
stats : most powerful vainquished : kangaxx the demilich total kills : 28 %
HLAS order : hardiness, hardiness

cernd : lvl 18 hp 78 AC -3 staff of araundel+3 staff of fire +2 proficiencies : *quarterstaff *scimitar *dagger *sling *two handed weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Gem golem total kills : 7 %
HLAS order : smilodon, natural restoral

)

Confident with valygar's racial combat, fighters 2 hlas each, necro alacrity, cernd alacrity and natural restoration, ranger/cleric having 3 level 7 spell slots,
I decide to confront kruin in bottom right of forest of tethyr (no particular topography advantage, but no cowled wizards)
we are pretty far from levelling anyway, and our purse feels really heavy...need to see cromwell

And that's it for now !

This post has been edited by HTRT: May 27 2013, 11:05 PM