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

















!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Attention ! This is the last segment. As usual, make sure to avoid reading anything here if you want to experience this mod to the max. Moreover, this segment contains spoilers against the biggest surprise of improved anvil near the end of the game, so leave this page, start baldur's gate and kill some monsters instead

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!





























So, as I said this will be the last segment. I must say the Tob part of improved anvil is really the one I prefer for all its wonderful battles. You've been craving all game long for those items, now you have them and use them in awesome battles. My second prefered part is the very beginning and slowly making our way to level 14. Then come the latest stages of chapter 7 (twisted rune orcus end of improved strongholds irenicus etc). Then spellhold, and finally the part I get the most bored is early chapter 6...I think it is because in this part we usually do a few battles that *could* have been done before spellhold, but you still have to prepare for them, so it gets a little tedious for me I guess.

Anyway, let's begin.

ilasera the quick : We are careful to wait for the global purge to affect us before starting alacrity, because it may interrupt our spellcasting. Prior to that we used a few undispellable buffs such as foreknowledge, racial combat vs skeltons, etc. I used a contengecy PFMW on sight.
The plan was the following :
valygar and riskbreaker : they go to the east to duel the granlords spawning. they have the responsability of holding their ground by themselves there.
necro and cernd : under alacrity they rain debuffs and nuking spells, priorizing the ennemy mage. Once his spellbook is depleted cernd uses a few call lightnings.
barbarian and ranger/cleric : they fight whatever survives our offensive spells, giving priority to one of those opponents who seems to be more resistant to elements/magic damage (I think it is the one using two weapons, but I'm not sure I remember well)
We had no big trouble here since ilasera was unable to backstab us for 250+ damage per hit, as barbarian is immune to backstab and r/c, necro and cernd are under skins.
Dual fire shield was good against ilasera, as she decided to focus necro after his PFMW was expired.

first pocket plane challenge

say hi to cespenar

saradush raise father (it always feel really nice to do so ), missing spellbook, betrayal at the gates, deal with racism, barracks, sewers (careful with those mages and beware for devil shades !), vapire lair, rest of castle

We made sure to be always high hp when travelling in saradush because those catapults missiles do a lot of damage on insane

attention : There seems to be a potential xp exploit with saradush militia if you attack them, didn't test throughoufully though

buy a scroll of incendiary cloud and scribe it, buy bag of holding

attention : upon resting in the basement of gromnir's castle (the level with the orogs and foebane's scabard), I encountered orogs who gave like 5 gold each, so this could be a potential gold exploit (that would require a loooot of patience and devotion lol)

gromnir : We used all buffs and summons at our disposal. We killed the ancestor with our fighters and the other soldiers with our casters. We killed the no name mage pretty fast as well after a quick debuff, then we killed gromnir. We finally killed karun the black after his SI expired. It was quite hard to control things in this fight as a lot of stuff can happen quickly due to karun casting under alacrity. I made sure to pause often and keep track of what was happening, because I remember too well how a simple abi dalzim on very low or non existent magic damage resistance can wreak havoc in my ranks.
Our skeleton lord from lord of the underworld was a very good pressure on karun the black since he uses fireshield:blue and struggles against such a powerful opponent

loot, then sell a lot of stuff

road to yaga shura

forge : cuthroat + 5, oak of the high forest + 4, enchanced oak of the high forest + 5, warlord's blade + 5 (10% physical resistance)

clear groove speak with yaga's mother (careful with gorion's wraith...his little dialogue tricks inflict damage, and here it is doubled)

skeleton party destroyed by r/c's turn undead (yay!)

marching mountain and first floor of temple : I deal with elite fire giants using multiple spells after a remove magic. I want to take no chance as they can go too wild for my liking in melee against fighters.

second floor battle (berenn) : full buffs and summons, cernd rains chain lightnings, mass cures and natural restoral, necro rains elite fire giant murdering and a breach on berenn.
Fighters kill berenn then the golem. We used free action from golden cat figurine to avoid being affected by hold(implosion)/stun effects.
elemental only gated one coin golem
suggestion : Maybe swapping the elemental golem with a greater elemental golem (the temple district guarded compound version with fast spawnins) could spice things up a little in this fun battle that is otherwise a little easy at this stage.

finish second floor

skeleton horde + nyalee : we cast alacrity as we arrive there and buff up, then we attack nyalee at the same time of the horde encounter (feels more realistic and cool as the skeletons climb into the temple to kill you instead of being spawn killed). No real danger at this stage though even on insane.

yaga shura battle : my favorite battle of this mod ! really love it
We arrive on the battlefield, go alacrity, buff up fast then waste no time in hitting yaga shura.
Necro has contengecy PFMW on 50% hp, chain contengency 3x ruby rays on hit on last hit by (it failed horribly as an assassin hit me before I got ruby rayed by the bodyguard, whatever =) ), minor sequencer 2x acid arrows, sequencer 3x lightning bolts and spell trigger 3x cones of cold
Here we almost failed at the first elite fire giant who spawns before the 3 waves (so in total 4 elite fire giants, 3 of each lieutenant type). I almost failed because I don't want to unleash a lot of magic on this giant as he is alone for a little span of time and I want to be under alacrity at the right moment for everyone of the 3 waves. So basically this elite fire giant was still alive (badly injured) when yaga shura and his first wave arrived.
We had chaotic commands on everyone as well as free action from cat figurine. Here we used to same approach for every wave, and we had enough time to do the same thing at every spawning despite the ennemy positions varying in a very hard to predict manner.
So for every wave : Necro and cernd freshly on alacrity.
Fighters charge the cleric even if he is far away...we really don't want an ininterruptable storm of vengeace on our casters, so we always make sure to kill this guy. Meanwhile Necro and cernd ruby ray the elite bodyguard, then necro removes magic on the elite fire giant and cernd uses implosion on the elite bodyguard (really awesome spell in this fight, as it holds the elite bodyguard preparing a perfect melee kill without PFMW). Then necro breaches the elite body guard, then fighters go and kill the elite bodyguard, as necro rains some spells on the elite fire giant. For the first wave there were 2 of them (the first one was badly injured) and necro managed to remove magic both of them at once and use his spell trigger effectively on both of them, scoring a lot of damage. Unfortunately, cernd got hit by at least one cone and almost died right there lol. So cleric, elite bodyguard and elite fire giant down. Fighters then switch to the assassin. Cernd, ranger/cleric and valygar make sure to have a few instances of call lightning raging over the fight, as this spell is tremendously powerful in this fight (near the end at some point there were 6 lightning effects on the screen at the same time). One time an elite body guard got reduced to badly injured in a single lightning shot (from a previous cast instance of call lighting).
We used the same sequence for the three waves, we eventually wished for rest although it wasn't mandatory for our success.
Then when yaga shura was killable, cernd used implosion on him aswell (it succesfully applies the hold effect on yaga shura, which was a little overkill here I think because there was nothing he could do to prevent this at this point).
I was very confident not to reload with this strategy and it went perfectly well.

loot corpses (nice hammer) and choose between githyankis or oasis...will go for githyankis !

supreme leader : We decided not to isolate supreme leader, so we fought everything at the same time. We used complete buffing and rushed to the golem makers, wasting no time to cast except activating 0 casting time abilities, in order to make sure we can all physically make our way there at once.
We make sure to kill both golem makers simulteanously using two fighters per maker because we don't want anti inquisitors to be an annoyance as we finish the other maker and we want to make the most out of our damaging lightning spells.
We made sure to activate free action from the cat figurine because the golem slow is very hard to save against and could prove fatal here. We then have valygar kill stone/clay golems with crom fayer and we focus the inquisitors.
Before this happens though necro and cernd used a few spells agaisnt the mass of githyankis (a rain of fire and a few cones of cold).
Then when the anti inquisitors are there necro uses a remove magic spell then him and cernd use many chain lightnings spells on the anti inquisitors, inflicting decent damage. We made sure to use greater malison and a few dooms beforehand to maximize our damage.
With the help of fighters pretty much everything was cleaned including the inquisitors by the time supreme leader was ready to cast potentially dangerous spells such as remove magic etc.
We managed the leader carefully and eventually killed him relatively quickly, although he managed to kill r/c with a comet (no chunk). I got careless as I thought my 80% fire resistance would protect me but it still wasn't enough (he was lightly injured as well).

forge : girdle of cloud giant strenght

demi lich : everyone protected from imprisonment, necro under many layers of arcane protection, we are ready to use cernd's quick casting speed to refresh death wards. It wasn't necessary though as the demilich's remove magic wasn't powerful enough to dispel r/c's death wards lol
The rest was only a matter of beating a skull pretty hard with baseball bats.

saladrex : we use maximum prebuffing as usual. Here is another good place for cernd to show off in tob. His spellbook was filled with creeping dooms and he pretty much killed saladrex all by himself (he got the kill as well).

defender of easthaven, staff of the ram !

Finish WK level 4 (smite is very good against those NPC minotaurs), use machine

Enter WK level 5, answer imp's riddles then leave the level

sell a lot of stuff

attention : I am pretty positive that a regeneration potion crafted via the wish spell was sellable for 150 gold, but once again I didn't repeat the exploit to proove it properly.

forge : ring of protection + 3 (goes on riskbreaker), staff of the ram + 6, boots of speed

oasis : Here we of course do not use the pocket plane teleportation to pre-buff.
suggestion : In order to avoid this exploit, maybe changing the pocket plane teleportation ability's casting time to an entire round would ensure nobody can teleport in time.
Here we reloaded twice... I didn't really know what I was doing. I used to rely on killing the general instantly at the beginning to win this fight on core, but here it seemed to be a really big failure. He always switched targets with his smite and forcing a golden cat free action on everyone at the beginning of this fight is pretty bad.
So we decided to think a little and do a real strategy to win this. It is a very difficult fight on insane if you don't prebuff using the teleportation exploit.
We had a massive amount of wishes on necro and a massive amount of implosions on cernd. What we did was the following :
We arrive.
Necro and cernd start alacrity. Necro has contengency PFMW on sight, chain contengency foreknowledge protection from energy and elite troll on sight.
Valygar, barbarian and riskbreaker use hardiness.
Ranger/cleric spawns the noble djini in front of general jamis, orienting the djini to make sure the general's smite ability would propel him in a diagonal line to the bottom left corner of the area.
Our fighters split in two orientations, each one at like 45 degrees from the djini's trajectory, and both groups charged the golems without wasting a second. The top group was riskbreaker and barbarian, because most of the golems gathered there with the priests and mages. R/c and valygar went bottom and had only 4 or 5 golems to battle and a few guards. When done with djini, the general was to attack my bottom group next.
I drank barbarian essence potions on my 3 main fighters, then another barbarian essence potion on valygar and a potion of invulnerability on riskbreaker.
Necro and cernd made sure to wish and send very quick natural restorals in time to deal with the early golem pressure without our fighters being fully prepared. Most of their time was used to quickly cast implosion on an ennemy cleric on top (they have free action so only damage, but often spell disrupted..then barbarian and riskbreaker focused them quickly despite being attacked by gem golems). The mage guards were killed in a similar way than the yaga shura mage guards, i.e implosion. Only difference here was that our fighters were way too busy to deal with that, so necro and cernd murdered the 2 mages and one cleric under alacrity. Quick spellcasting ensured no chain contengencies were fired by those mages because they died extremly fast.
Eventually jamis finished djini pretty quickly and then jumped on ranger/cleric with smite still active. Ranger/cleric got propelled to the very far east of the area, followed by a furious general. For the remaining of the most crucial moments of this fight, r/c was on his own against general and a few pikemen (he was surrounded). At one point cernd had to run and cast a natural restoral to save his life.
Barbarian and riskbreaker were very heroic against all those golems and elite captains, especially riskbreaker who used all of his risk decrement abilities, helped with natural restoral, greater restorations from ranger/cleric and greater restoration from necro's wishes. All of that was needed to keep risk breaker and barbarian alive. Then eventually valygar was done with the bottom golems (ranger/cleric had helped him quite a bit in destroying them) and he joined my 3 other fighters on top. Then ranger/cleric eventually free'ed himself and rejoined the party followed by the general. We finished the remaining golems/captains then killed ultimately killed the general.
very tough and great fight once again.

loot and go to amkethran

attention : I forgot to mention it, it is probably already known, but there is a way to skip the oasis. If you travel on foot from watcher's keep, you get the possibility of going directly to amkethran without visiting the oasis. We didn't use that opportunity.

amkethran quests

vongothe and malla's soul : pre-buff just in case and realize that ranger/cleric's turn undead is capable of intimidating the lich (not destroying it), effectivly negating most of his scripted actions. So the fight was trivial.
attention : potential xp exploit with the lich summoning skeletons (the amount does not seem finite)

sell some loot

forge : noble staff of air + 4, heartwood ring

(party :
necro : lvl 27 146hp AC -15 noble staff of air + 4 sling of everard +5 proficiencies : *quarterstaff *sling *dart *dagger
stats : most powerful vainquished : Green Wyrm total kills : 8 %
HLAS order : planetar, improved alacrity, comet, dragon breath, energy blades, extra lvl 6 spell, extra lvl 7 spell, extra lvl 8 spell, alchemy, ...

ranger/cleric : lvl 7/33 196hp AC -22 flail of ages + 4 sling + 2(seeking) runehammer + 4 fortress shield + 6 proficiencies : **club **mace **sling **flail **warhammer ***two weapon style **quarterstaff **two handed weapon style *sword and shield style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Firkraag total kills : 18 %
HLAS order : foreknowledge, globe of blades, aura of flaming death, implosion, storm of vengeance, energy blades, summon deva, alchemy x3, ...

valygar : lvl 28 170 hp AC -19 family blade +5/celestial fury + 3/short sword of mask + 4 mainhand crom fayer + 5 offhand proficiencies : **katana **club *longbow **axe ***two weapon style **warhammer **short sword *flail
stats : most powerful vainquished : Greater Elemental golem total kills : 15 %
HLAS order : contact with nature, hardiness, hardiness, power attack, critical strike, smite, hardiness, critical strike, ...

barbarian : lvl 32 hp 234 AC -9 impaler + 3 staff of the ram + 6 soulreaver + 4 heart seeker + 3 poseidon's wrath + 5 warblade + 5(10%physicalresist) proficiencies : **twohandedsword **quarterstaff **two handed weapon style **spear **halberd **bastard sword **flail
stats : most powerful vainquished : Dracolich total kills : 21 %
HLAS order : hardiness, hardiness, power attack, critical strike, smite, hardiness, critical strike, hardiness, critical strike, ...

riskbreaker : lvl 32 hp 205 AC -13 the truth + 5/cuthroat + 5/ilbratha +1 mainhand phosphorus +4 offhand proficiencies : *****long sword **short sword **two weapon style *****flail
stats : most powerful vainquished : Limak the mastermind total kills : 29 %
HLAS order : hardiness, hardiness, power attack, critical strike, smite, hardiness, critical strike, hardiness, critical strike, ...

cernd : lvl 31 hp 119 AC 0 enchanced oak of the high forest + 5 staff of fire +2 proficiencies : *quarterstaff *scimitar *dagger *sling *two handed weapon style *two weapon style *club *dagger *single weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Saladrex total kills : 6 %
HLAS order : smilodon, natural restoral, natural restoral, natural restoral,
)

outside of sendai's lair
attention : emotion still appears as a portrait icone on a barbarian under rage if he fails his save

forge : runehammer + 5

draconis :
human form : We buff during battle with improved haste and protection from magical energy on fighters while draconis fights a few summons. Cernd casts ruby rays on draconis meanwhile. Then we breach him and kill him with fighters.
dragon form : necro and cernd waste him under alacrity with spellstrike 3x lower resistance breach malison doom, flame arrows magic missiles dragon breaths and implosions

abazigal lair except abazigal
attention : potential xp exploit with lycanth the mad. His summoning of eyes does not seem finite.

return to WK level 5

undead ambush : fighters on skeletons, cernd/necro on liches, cernd dispels shade lich, necro 3x dragon breath on shade lich. As cernd cast dispel magic on shade lich necro ruby rays the grave lich. Then both of them kill grave lich using disrupt undead, implosions and fists of nature

golem ambush : We prepare to the max, necro participates with his spellbook (larloch minor drains, vampiric touches, fragmentation rays, larloch interrupters, hands of undoing) and cernd rains mass cures on everyone + our 5 summons, so nothing dies before a long time (and the fight was pretty much over by then).
I took no risk because I remembered how dangerous the fight against 3 ele + 2 greater bones had been.

globe machine

ghost spiders : golden cat figurine with a few fireworks and a few critical strikes

master vampires :
attention : like I said in some post recently, the number of vampire brides spawned by vampire masters does not seem finite at first glance
Here necro killed them all unleashing his spell book under 2 mental agilities from recast vital energy. Vampiric touches were great against master vampires and everything died with no additional bride spawned.

grave liches : We used complete prebuffing. Cernd and necro only used ruby rays and remove/dispel magic, then fighters used critical strikes to destroy those liches. I kept ranger cleric faraway to use greater restoration in case, but did not need him.

ice golems : We focus ice golems one at a time as fast as possible. Cernd rains cures, necro unleashes spellbook and refreshes improved hastes all under alacrity.

ultra and greater elemental golem : great fight here and pretty hard. We used very minimal buffing because both these guys can purge magic so you better accept the fact that you will fight often purged (except if you have them move around to negate most purge effects, but we didn't use those tactics and charged them directly wasting no second)
We used our 5 best summons and made sure to position really well. Amber golems were tanked by my casters as they arrived. We focused the greater elemental golem in priority of course, then the ultra golem, then we finished off the amber golems with extreme care because their lightning shield is really dangerous on insane.

activate rilmani guardians

forge : hammer of thor + 5, noble staff of fire + 4

sell some loot

forge : royal elemental staff + 5

2nd hell challenge

abazigal : we buff lightly (hardiness/protection from energy/improved haste) for his human form which ranger/cleric and cernd successfully dispel.
Then for his dragon form necro and cernd kill him using a similar combo that was used to murder his son draconis

scribe spell shield

3rd hell challenge

forge : flail of ages + 5

ancient dragon : We buffed completely, used spell trigger 1x secret word and 2x lower resistance on efreeti, 2x lower resistance on salamander, then wasted them using acid/lightning spells. Then necro used breaches on ancient dragon and we pound him agressivly. Cernd rains fists of nature on the wyrm and it was a very close competition as to who was gonna claim his scalp... Ultimately valygar landed the last hit !

scribe timestop

virtual fighter role playing game

sell some stuff

forge : dragon lord + 5

azamanthes :
attention : potential gold/xp exploit with azamanthes' summons who do not seem finite at first glance
Here we quickly debuffed the lich using our casters and made sure to use fighters to kill the skulls, thus dodging the lich's fear effect which dispels many buffs. Then fighters murdered the lich with no golem/granlord spawned at all.

the horde : I used my usual barbecue strat here.
We enter the room with a few buffs including protection from fire. We run to the top right section of the cave. We positionned our 3 fighters near the lake and ranger/cleric in front of them guarding the thin entrance. On their left necro was there in front of cernd, both were easily targetable by melee although necro was always chosen despite running PFMW. Anyway, we used physical mirror on both cernd and ranger/cleric as well as ironskins. Necro used stoneskin and PFMW. The three of them had their spellbooks filled with incendiary clouds, firestorms and remove/dispel magics and wishes.
Fighters quaffed many regeneration potions (crafted via alchemy) and had hardiness and defensive abilities activated all the time. Barbarian still took a very hard beating despite having 70% phyiscal resistance.
2 close calls on necro as well...I almost messed up terribly at the end with necro at 65 hit points left activating PFMW.
I was very relieved when the ghost appeared because we had wished for rest twice and had been warned not to wish for that again (really couldn't afford new ennemies + dispelled buffs).
Other than that it went pretty smoothly, with orcs dying in the constantly feeded furnace, with a dispel/remove magic sometimes on a pack of orc mages.

unleash the final guardians (this could be a really really cool improved anvil battle right there)

demogorgon, finish WK say goodbye to helmites

sell some loot

forge : great wyrm armor, hindo's doom

sendai's lair

the barracks : we buffed (including physical mirror), focused the ghost spider. Casters rained spells on the ennemies and fighters fought well.

rampage the tunnels, no big danger here even on insane (except slave spirits inflicted a lot of damage..but our party has a lot of healing)

advanced drow parties with spiders : took no chance here, full preparation with summons, then we send necro alone to soften them up using chaotic commands, free action and arcane defenses with PFMW. Necro unleashes sunfires etc then the rest of party charges in. We used that tactic because otherwise the sheer number of opponents can make the fight quite chaotic...and when fights get chaotic we all know whisper spiders love to score a 20 as soon as they can land a hit on anyone.

odamaron : full buffs, good summons, we killed him when he was overconfident...he didn't refresh his PFMW despite being in melee with us, so critical strikes and everyone attacking him including our casters managed to kill him, so no additionnal granlords summoned
attention : probably well known, but here again the number of granlords/golems/devils summoned does not seem finite

rampage the rest on our way to sendai

duel with captain was prepared beforehand, therefore easy

forge : angurvadal + 5

sendai : Ok it was really hard. We won the fight twice in our 2 first attempts...but valygar got chunked so we reloaded twice. On the third attempt we decided to drink barbarian essence potions, because this fight is really hard on insane (and my party's physical damage output was way too low).
We made sure to buff properly during the statues and we got our best summons. Necro made sure to activate alacrity when the real sendai arrived to destroy the ghost spider in a very quick succession of spells including a trigger of 3x lower resistance. We really don't want her gay web in the room...oh that and we make sure to critical strike the whisper spider with every fighter before she lands a 20 on her first hit as usual.
So the plan was the following...
With ghost and whisper spiders down, the 3 fighters still have their critical strike running, switch to piercing weapons and attack sendai's pet. Ranger/cleric finishes the spiders. Cernd is located bottom left and leads the battle of all of our summons against the bottom left web golem.
Necro makes sure to attract top left's web golem's attention. With protection from normal weapons aquired at the end of SOA, necro could succesffuly tank a web golem on his own with simple stoneskins. It was very important that this web golem remains occupied on necro.
Valygar drank 2 barbarian essence potions and RB and barbarian drank 1. I forgot to say...ranger cleric was done pretty fast with spiders, then he tackled sendai and tanked her for basically the whole fight. I find the fortress shield being really helpful with dragon helm and great wyrm armor because it makes the ranger/cleric pretty much impervious to an ennemy spell caster even if breached. With sendai's pet down, the fighters then attack the bottom left web golem who had already murdered many summons despite cernd and necro summoning new ones.
We used cernd as a reliable bait for the web golem, the three fighters positionned at north east and south paths and killed him from afar. Then we attacked the other web golem, and finally we killed sendai. Barbarian essence potions helped quite a lot...after all this was the last important battle before EDE and we had not drunk many potions in our run, so why not.

say hi to elminster

4th hell challenge

back to amkethran get saemon's help
attention : xp/gold exploit with mercenaries spawning after the monk said kill him, we killed 4 of them then ignored the rest and joined saemon havarian

balthazar (in order to be a challenge he would have to ascend super sayan I guess)

final inventory management

forge : ring of protection + 3, ring of protection + 4, improved ring of gaxx, ring of protection + 2
I was quite surprised when I realized I could forge boots of the ranger lord as well. I pondered wether to forge them or not because I like the idea of having 6 permanently hasted party members.
Unfortunately in this run I had only 5 boots including the green pair...so with boots of the ranger lords forged it meant 2 characters without boots instead of 1 (in all my previous runs I always had enough boots of speed to have boots of the ranger lord and everyone else hasted, one character being forced to use grandmaster armor for haste effect).
Anyway I decided to forge it anway, so we forged boots of the ranger lord, then improved boots of the ranger lord.

We had like 1600 gold left, which we all lost during EDE from a wish spell scroll who lead to 5 negative outcomes despite necro having 18 wisdom (I strongly suspect that the scroll version of the spell uses some fixed amount of wisdom which is not 18, because not only did it lead to 5 negative outcomes out of 5, but it never lead to the rest option as well).

5th hell challenge
attention : xp exploit with the blades

prepare for EDE

we have left : 7 permanency scrolls, 4 manuels of elaboration and 2 scrolls of memory boosting

Let's take a more closer look than usual at our party :

necro : lvl 31 150hp AC -15 proficiencies : *quarterstaff *sling *dart *dagger
stats : most powerful vainquished : Green Wyrm total kills : 10 %
HLAS : everything
equipment : royal elemental staff + 5, sling of everard + 5, 200 mundane bullets, 125 +4 bullets, Memory of the apprenti, bracers of blinding strike, carmine ioun stone, lord of the underworld, ring of protection +2, ring of protection + 2, cloak of arcane immortality, boots of the north, girdle of stone giant strenght
quickslots : 47 superior healing potions, 108 invisibility potions, 5 haste potions crafted with alchemy
inventory : a dead familiar (no way he could have survived that long in the backpack), a scroll of improved haste, 3 scrolls of wish, 5 oils of resurgence, 1 barbarian essence potion, 4 potions of acid resistance, 19 elixirs of health crafted by alchemy, a bag of holding containing our old normal weapons (sentimental value obviously)

ranger/cleric : lvl 7/39 188hp AC -21 proficiencies : **club **mace **sling **flail **warhammer ***two weapon style **quarterstaff **two handed weapon style **sword and shield style two weapon style ***
stats : most powerful vainquished : Firkraag total kills : 16 %
HLAS : everything
equipment : phosphorus + 4, defender of easthaven + 3, fortress shield + 6 on offhand, 200 mundane bullets, 153 +4 bullets, great wyrm armor + 5, gauntlets of weapon skill, improved dragon helm, talisman of greater protection, ring of protection + 2, holy symbol of lathander, cloak of protection + 2, boots of speed, belt of inertial barrier
quickslots : 50 superior healing potions, 5 oils of resurgence, moon dog figurine
inventory : ring of free action, ring of fire resistance, ring of fire control, girdle of bluntness, 6 oils of resurgence, 2 barbarian essence potions, 1 potion of magic protection, 5 potions of magic shielding, ring of greater djinni summoning, runehammer + 5, sling of seeking + 2, 2 potions of icedust, 9 potions of fire resistance, 19 potions of vitality crafted from alchemy,

valygar : lvl 33 185 hp AC -21 proficiencies : **katana **club **longbow **axe ***two weapon style **warhammer **short sword **flail
stats : most powerful vainquished : Ancient dragon total kills : 15 %
HLAS : contact with nature 1x, hardiness 7x, power attack 1x, critical strike 6x, smite 1x
equipment : corthala family true blade + 5, short sword of mask + 4, hindo's doom + 4, hammer of thor + 5 on offhand, improved corthala family armor, gauntlets of extraordinary specialization, helm of balduran, amulet of protection + 1, ring of protection + 2, ring of protection + 2, cloak of protection + 2, improved boots of the ranger lord, girdle of bluntness
quickslots : 50 superior healing potions, 5 oils of resurgence, golden lion figurine
inventory : axe of the unyielding + 5, 2 scrolls of protection from level drain, 3 scrolls of raise dead, 1 potion of magic protection, 7 barbarian essence potions, 10 oils of resurgence, 5 potions of magic shielding, 1 potion of free action, 6 potions of clarity, shield of harmony + 2, 1 potion of insulation

barbarian : lvl 37 hp 249 AC -9 proficiencies : **twohandedsword **quarterstaff **two handed weapon style **spear **halberd **bastard sword **flail **two weapon style
stats : most powerful vainquished : Dracolich total kills : 21 %
HLAS : hardiness 8x, power attack 1x, critical strike 8x, smite 1x
equipment : dragon lord + 5, staff of the ram + 6, poseidon's wrath + 5, warblade + 5, improved human flesh, gauntlets of weapon expertise, helm of the rock, amulet of protection + 1, ring of protection + 2, ring of protection + 2, cloak of protection + 2, boots of speed, girdle of cloud giant strenght
quickslots : 50 superior healing potions, 5 oils of resurgence, golden spider figurine
inventory : foebane + 5, impaler + 3, heartseeker + 3, soulreaver + 4, 5 potions of magic shielding, 10 oils of resurgence, 7 barbarian essence potions, 1 potion of insulation, 1 potion of free action, 5 potions of invulnerability, ring of anti venom, 10 potions of storm giant strenght

riskbreaker : lvl 37 hp 242 AC -20 proficiencies : *****long sword ****short sword **two weapon style *****flail
stats : most powerful vainquished : Limak the mastermind total kills : 28 %
HLAS : hardiness 8x, power attack 1x, critical strike 8x, smite 1x
equipment : flail of ages + 5, the truth + 5, cuthroat + 5, ilbratha + 1, angurvadal + 5 on offhand, indigo ioun stone, amulet of protection + 1, ring of protection + 2, improved ring of gaxx + 5, cloak of protection + 2, boots of speed, girdle of lordly might
quickslots : 50 superior healing potions, 5 oils of resurgence, adamantite horn of valhalla
inventory : 20 potions of invulnerability, 10 potions of defense crafted from alchemy, 3 potions of fortitude, 10 oils of resurgence, 7 barbarian essence potions, 1 potion of magic protection, 6 potions of magic shielding, 2 potions of freedom

cernd : lvl 37 hp 131 AC -2 proficiencies : *quarterstaff *scimitar *dagger *sling *two handed weapon style *two weapon style *club *dagger *single weapon style *sword and shield style *dart
stats : most powerful vainquished : Saladrex total kills : 6 %
HLAS : everything except energy blades and storm of vengeance, fist of nature 12x
equipment : enchanced oak of the high forest + 5, spectral brand + 5, bracers of defense AC 4, circlet of golden flowers, amulet of seldarine, ring of protection + 2, heartwood ring, master of the high forest, boots of grounding, girdle of fire giant strenght
quickslots : 47 superior healing potions, improved cat figurine, 5 haste potions crafted with alchemy
inventory : shakti figurine, ring of ram, belm + 2, spear of the unicorn + 2, ixil's spike + 6, amulet of cheetah speed, 4 scrolls of raise dead, book of infinite spells (invisible stalker), 1 barbarian essence potion, 5 oils of resurgence, amulet of protection + 1

Let's take a look at our spellbooks :

necro :

minor spell sequencer : 2x larloch drain

spell sequencer : 3x ray of fragmentation

spell trigger : 3x ray of fragmentation

contengency : PFMW on 50% hp

chain contengency : foreknowledge, PFMW and protection from energy on enemy sighted

1: 12x minor larloch drain
2: 3x resist fear, 10x luck
3: 12x remove magic, 1x protection from fire
4: 6x stoneskin, 3x rays of fragmentation
5: 12x larloch's interrupter
6: 12x improved haste, 1x PFMW
7: 15x hand of undoing
8: 1x foreknowledge, 6x protection from energy, 5x monster summoning VI
9: 2x improved alacrity, 1x planetar, 4x wish, 4s monster summoning VII

Here we used strong level 9 summons instead of mass wishes...because I did not want to "hope" for a wish as rested. Effectivly, in the fight to come, none of my wishes made us rest and refresh our abilities.

valygar :

1: 6x armor of faith
2: 6x resist fire/cold
3: 5x protection from fire, 1x dispel magic

ranger/cleric :

1: 10x armor of faith, 1x remove fear, 2x bless
2: 6x resist fire/cold 5x draw upon holy might 2x chant
3: 6x protection from fire, 3x dispel magic, 3x animate dead
4: 2x protection from evil 10' radius, 6x protection from electricity, 3x free action, 1x defensive harmony
5: 11x ironskin
6: 8x heal, 4x wondrous recall
7: 11x greater restoration

cernd :

1: 12x armor of faith, 2x bless
2: 6x mirror image, 9x resist fire/cold
3: 7x dispel magic, 6x protection from fire
4: 6x protection from lightning, 6x free action, 2x defensive harmony
5: 9x mass cure, 3x ironskin
6: 9x heal, 5x wondrous recall
7: 9x animal summoning IV, 3x summon elemental prince, 2x aura cleansing

preparation : our 3 main fighters drink 2 barbarian essence potions (more will be drunk during the fight)
our ranger cleric drinks 3 potions (and will drink 3 more during the fight...he has a very heroic mission)

summons : noble djini, noble spider, skeleton lord, planetar, sunnis

buffs : improved haste on fighters and cernd but not on ranger/cleric, divine fire/lightning protection with resist fire/cold on top of that. Protection from magical energy on everyone.

missions :

necro : making sure everyone relevant is improved hasted. Will be quaffing potions of haste for the crucial moments. Will have the responsability of killing the elemental golem spawned by the supreme with his arsenal of spells (assisted by meleeing cernd). Will be also responsible for debuffing rakshasha absolute immunities and will be wishing.

ranger/cleric : His mission is to tank the rakshasha prince. I made sure in this battle to tank him as much as possible, because running around with a character to negate the rakshasha prince always felt pretty lame. Ranger cleric used his shield and defender of easthaven. Most importantly, he used the ring of free action and refreshed ironskins often. His physical damage resistance was well over 100 and his elemental resistances were very high even without buffs. He will try to cast a greater restoration sometimes during the fight.
He did have to move sometimes unfortunately...because this battle is pretty crazy especially on insane. With negative fire resistance r/c had no choice but to run for his life, negating several physical attacks from the prince this way. But well...

valygar : He fights

barbarian : He fights

riskbreaker : He fights

cernd : he will be tanking the supreme golem and will be attacking the elemental golem with spectral brand, belm and improved haste meanwhile. Eventually he will go back to his staff for more regeneration. His responsability is to make sure everyone is healed, he will be using haste potions as well for crucial moments. He has the responsability of taking down one of the 2 first noble rakshashas that will spawn, all by himself. He will have the responsability of refreshing summons alone as well. Finally, he will be held responsible conjointly with necro (and both shot in a summary execution in case of failure) for the death of the elemental golem (they did fail but elemental golem was near death and died to one hit from every fighter so )

So we try to visit the throne of bhaal. Pasha appears.

Pasha : Hi

Necro : Hi Pasha...it's been a while, you look great ! Have you been lifting ?

Pasha : Yes, a lot.

Necro : And there's a sweet smelling fragrance emanating from you...have you tried a new perfume ?

Pasha : Yes, I call it "barbarian essence". I'm glad you like it.

Then we get to the point concerning the incoming god and make a deal with pasha. If he helps us with that fight and thus to achieve godhood, necro will send many beautiful virgins to his castle for the years to come.
Pashaa nods in agreement and rakshasha prince attacks.

It took one reload, but it was one hell of a fight. First try ended patheticly in about 2 minutes of real time...I tried a very stupid plan of splitting fighters focus on the three golems. It failed horribly.

Now on the successful attempt, which took 2 hours and a half to pull...and countless countless readings of character sheets and pausings.

Here's the plan we followed :

our 5 summons will engage the top left ultra golem alone and we leave pasha mamoud in his epic duel alone as well (for now he can make it, we will be really cautious to support him properly during the entire battle...the worse status he got was injured in the whole encounter)
ranger/cleric will engage the prince and move just a little north in order to watch the battle of ultra golem vs summons and tank the prince in such a way that prince won't throw a remove magic on the rest of the party. His tanking abilities with the ring of free action were really awesome here.
Our 5 other party members will gank on the supreme golem. The 3 fighters will position in north east south paths, cernd will hug the golem from the north west and then attack the gated elemental golem from afar on the west (the west from elemental golem's perspective). Necro will initially go near the ultra golem to make sure pasha engages the fight with him, then activates alacrity just in time to start unleashing spellbook on the elemental golem.
Fighters use critical strikes to finish that golem fast. We then go help pasha and we refresh summons for the other ultra golem. Ranger/cleric is under a lot of pressure from that psycho prince.
Two noble rakshashas and their horrid cohorts spawn near party, ultra, amber and pasha.
Cernd kills one of them, fighters kill rest supported with necro's remove magic (they all quickly attack a different target to have him cast absolute immunity. This way, the remove magic canceled 4 AI (the 4th one was pasha's target, as he decided to target an horrid rakshasha).
We then focus the ultra golem. The other ultra golem is really getting the best out of our summons and there's only one anaconda left despite our multiple re-summonings. He his helped by amber golems by now. We finish pasha's ultra golem, then we profit from our high lightning resistances (ultra was focusing pasha) to activate critical strikes and inflict tremendous damage to the amber golems. Necro used 2 hands of undoing to great effect here. Cernd kept summoning to keep the other ultra golem busy.
We then kill the other ultra golem with pasha's assistance. Finally we can focus the prince. We take no break and charge the prince as fast as possible...we know he has multiple instances of absolute immunity and we know our party is pretty weak on the physical damage department, so we make sure to always assist pasha in charging the prince.
Now at this point one noble rakshasha spawned...I think twice over the course of rounds...not sure if twice or thrice anyway we dispatched them properly.
So about finishing the fight, the following sequence was used for every absolute immunity. We make sure to be prepared for an assault, then we attack the prince with pasha, choosing the right angles of course. Pasha often fails his save against the prince's aura, but he still inflicts a very decent (and most needed) amount of physical damage on the prince. Then when prince activates absolute immunity ranger/cleric takes the relay and tanks the prince, fighters retreat. We eat a purge, re-prepare. As soon as prince is ready to be hit again we charge again, rince and repeat. Necro or cernd made sure to check on pasha often when he got knocked back...just to be sure that he would regain the fight as soon as possible.
This whole sequence took a lot of time because the prince has remove magic as well as universal purge magic..and he loves to reduce our resistances so we really had to be careful even if pasha himself was soaking the prince's attacks. Our 2 remaining potions of icedusts were used on very close calls against dragon breath. Dragon lord was a winner here. We were extremly careful in our planning of consuming our precious magic shielding potions...we made sure to drink one for every assault, but never more than one. There were a few close calls but risk decrement, natural restoral and greater restoration helped a lot. Ranger cleric was not in melee with prince during those assaults, so he was always ready to use a greater restoration.
Eventually the prince was near death with no more immunities...then a fraction of a second before a greater restoration was cast, and like 1.5-2 seconds after a last vicious universal purge magic, valygar died to field of repulsion (no chunk). We wanted him to witness the final dialogue of victory, so cernd immediatly reads a scroll of raise dead to raise valygar...unfortunately prince is done for a fraction of a second before the raise dead spell raises valygar

Prince says he has to give his daughter a ride for school and exits pocket plane. Pasha calls bullshit. We then say farewell to pasha, remembering very well our part of the bargain.

Melissan killed like a gibberling, godhood achieved, pasha happy.




So it is over. I must say it was a very exciting run, although tedious to play as constant focus was required. I still enjoyed it a lot and would probably be ready to play on insane again eventually (though not now of course). I would like to thank blackwyrm lair and baronius for making this run possible, and sikret for this fabulous mod. I hope you guys enjoyed reading it. I will adress some final thoughts about the run and my party.

Moments I am not proud of :

1) Fight against warden...When warden fell and the big party of yuantis was just too much to handle for my exhausted party, the fighting/retreat desperate struggle was a little too cheesy for my liking, but playing on insane I knew beforehand that it was not how the mod was intended to be played, so something like this was bound to happen

2) Fight against samia party...here blocking the door wasn't cute at all. I should have waited post spellhold to fight this, because without blocking the door it would have been simply impossible I think. The hostile forces in presence are just way too much to handle on insane at this stage. I was still happy to have made it despite using this strategy, and the loot was wonderful.

3) EDE : I tanked the prince a lot more than I used to do on core, but this battle is pretty crazy...+ insane...so there were moments where ranger cleric had to run for dear life. Was still a very good performance in my humble opinion compared to my previous runs.

The party :

My party did fine. It was pretty good for the whole game, but the lack of physical damage output was felt at the oasis battle and valygar being way too squeashy was made obvious in the sendai battle, as well as numerous moments of EDE in which he got almost murdered from what seemed like minor injuries to other characters.

I now realize after the experience of one complete walkthrough on insane that my party and development plans could have been way better.

If I were to play v6 again on insane with necro, I would make the following changes to my party :

Swap the ranger 7/cleric for a multiclass ranger/cleric. I realized that with cernd I didn't need greater restoration that badly...and when I needed it I didn't need 45 instances of it. Even in EDE, I think ranger cleric still had 5 more greater restorations to use, all without resting from wish.
A multiclass ranger/cleric gives up a little HP compared to the ranger 7/cleric and gives up fast access to level 7 divine spells and the presence of a very high level dispel magic at some point. I found out that when my ranger 7/cleric was able to cast level 7 spells, in no single battle that spell slot was necessary at all. Then cernd aquired level 7 slots (3 at once !). The use of skeleton warriors was a good asset in the screaming statue battle, but definitely not mandatory.
By multiclassing you get better fighter throughout the game, and in the later stages of the game you get a definitely stronger guy with a better tach0, more than enough spell slots at pretty much every stage of the game, the same potential for high AC.
You give up foreknowledge but you gain access to contact with nature, hardiness, critical strikes, smite, etc. It is in my opinion a much better way to use a ranger/cleric in my party set up and that additional melee power and capability even breached would prove overall better.
By the time you can dispel stuff with high level cleric, cernd is pretty high level too so in any fight in which it could have mattered, cernd was able to do it anyway.

Swap valygar for a second riskbreaker. Valygar was too squeashy...he still had a decent 50% physical damage reduction with contact with nature, but 10% of that 50% comes from armor of faith, which has a casting time of 1 instead of 0...so not really reliable every time. Being a bioware npc he of course suffered from having non optimized HP, but I think what made the difference was mostly his 40% physical resistance. Another problem was his low natural strenght (18 but the /100 portion is very very low) and no grand mastery with weaponry, whereas a riskbreaker comes with grandmastery, powerful fighting abilities and for the later harder stages of the game (my early game is definitely easy thanks to cernd and ranger/cleric) the risk breaker will dominate with chain breaker stance for 60% physical resistance and 3 uses of a very powerful risk decrement ability which gives that extra kick you often need in advanced battles on insane, because even cernd and ranger/cleric together might be unable to save him in time sometimes.

Swap barbarian for a berseker 9/mage. One more skinned character, so an even easier early game. But not only that, for the later stages, the berseker 9/mage will actually be better than the barbarian in terms of physical damage output, thanks to grandmastery, giant strenght and tenser's transformation. And that's one less character to worry for in many cases thx to skins. Moreover, that's one more guy with arcane pressure/defense and more key arcane buffs at critical moments throughout the game. He has bersek ability for when a barbarian would shine with his raging ability. This guy would also add the illusion dimension to my game, for example granting ranger/cleric improved invisibility for even more tanking, better saves against spiders, SI:divination combo on necromancer later on, etc. Finally, the presence of this guy would disminish the "silence pressure" excerced by dragons on ranger/cleric. Two guys to get silences, so less silence time overall.

As for the development...I realized going for a fast grandmastery would have been a much better way to go than making sure to make out the most out of multiple damage type weapons throughout the game. It is much better to have specialist grandmasters early on for many situations where you need many physical attacks to land. Moreover, with the careful positionning and multiple skin users of my party, early on encounters against golems would still be solved successfully even if slightly slower to kill for lack of multiple correct weapon damage types because the skins were just too much for them to handle.

Necro : same development...maybe forge the rod of anti golems (no valygar = more cash)

Cernd : same development

berseker 9/mage : halberds grandmastery, then quarterstaff (making sure not to "waste" a proficiency point on the mage part) late game : royal elemental staff, staff of the ram, dragon lord, poseidon's wrath etc

ranger/cleric multi : same development (he gets the boots of ranger lord)

riskbreaker 1 : same development but priority to grandmastery, so grandmastery in flails first late game : flail of ages, the truth, cuthroat with angurvadal offhand

riskbreaker 2 : goes for grandmastery in bastard swords (I think forging a +3 bastard sword might be decent...at least to help for the amber golem battle in spellhold and maybe to craft death of a thousand cuts...although I think the spellhold amber golem battle was way too easy to actually require the right damage type on the amber golems. And then in underdark he will get the blade of searing + 3.) Then grandmastery in war hammer, then in short sword. late game : foebane, short sword of mask with hammer of thor offhand

Of course, if I were to play this again on insane I would go for a vagrant. Considering my new party for a necromancer, my vagrant party would incidentally consist of the following :

vagrant with grandmastery in axes, late game judgement day and flail of defending and wounding

berseker 9/mage : same as necro party

riskbreaker : same as riskbreaker 2 in necro party except this time he goes for warhammer first...so I think I'd forge the warhammer + 3 (I have the required permanency scroll, 15k gold is not that much and there are more than enough permanency scrolls anyway..problem is I prefer to use foebane with hammer of thor instead of foebane and phosphorus...just to get 25 str instead of 24 ) then bastard sword then short sword

ranger/cleric multi : same as the necro one. He gets the boots of ranger lord as well cause vagrant has judgement day.

cernd : same as necro party

sorcerer : evil alignment, takes the role of necro (attempts to anyway)

Both parties are similar if you look carefully, because both have 2 dedicated fighters. Vagrant has a slightly inferior damage output than riskbreaker...but he compensates with his excellent resistances, excellent swanmays and very elite late game with his powerful items
Both have b9/mage, ranger/cleric multi and both have cernd. So basically we swap a riskbreaker for the vagrant and necro for the sorcerer.

I know I seem to be giving cernd too much love according to pretty much everyone I came to meet concerning improved anvil...but I just can't foresee a run without him. He really gives that extra dynamic punch for me that allowed a very small amount of reloads even on insane difficulty. People usually dislike auramasters..but I can't go without cernd it's hard to explain but he helps tremendously in the entire game. Everyone has a different style I guess. I would not even know how to swap him anyway...for what...another riskbreaker ? a kensai ? kensais are not viable on insane (well according to my own first experience).. But enough already, I think I'm done here.

Cheers !

This post has been edited by HTRT: Jun 6 2013, 03:44 AM