Necro Run - thoughts Options

[conqueror]

Had a lot of fun doing this mod with a necromancer PC (much easier than my first run through with a vagrant).

My party was heavily warrior oriented:

Necromancer
Riskbreaker
Riskbreaker
Assassin/Fighter dual
Kensai/Mage dual
Ranger/Cleric multi

Riskbreakers are definitely better in two's, and I suspect even three would have worked well.

The Assassin was dualed once getting the Use Any Item high level ability. (Interestingly, it appears Fighter/Thief multiclasses don't get it in this mod?!). He was my most interesting character by far. Most IA items don't work with UAI, but Cernd's Cloak and the Scarlet Ioun Stone are two exceptions that I enjoyed. UAI follows your dualed fighter, so you are definitely a useful character well before you get your thief levels back. In fact, getting your thief levels back gets you basically nothing (poison weapon, yay) and maybe the +1 to hit and damage from being an assassin. I tried to focus on Physical Resistance items on this character, theorizing that I could get up to 95% once I hit HLAs on the fighter half and could choose Hardiness. But this involved some bad items (Warblade, Master of Disciplines un-upgraded). I much preferred to use the Royal Elemental Staff, which allowed for Tenser's Transformation to give me another 100+ HPs, with no loss in functionality - you can still use scrolls and such while transformed. I was bummed to see how poorly Backstab works in this mod, especially since the marquee thief dagger grants it as an ability. You can basically backstab spiders and vanilla creatures only. The hard foes - all golems, rakshasas, dragons, etc., looked to be immune.

Kensay was dualed at level 15, figuring that the +5 to hit would give it the same Thac0 as a level 20 warrior. The down time was rough, but it largely overlapped with my Assassin being dualed to a fighter, so I was basically a 5-person party up until around 7M experience.

Ranger/Cleric seems to classically be dualed here, and if I remembered that Holy Power spell which would give you fighter Thac0, I might have gone that route. I really just wanted this character to be a competent fighter the whole time, but more than half the time she was out of combat casting healing spells anyways.

Overall, the Necromancer is much easier than the Vagrant PC, with a much better storyline and side quests (in my opinion). Being un-silenceable against some big dragons is hugely important, and many castings of Recast Vital Energy help warriors stay in fights and dish out damage fast.

One thing I was surprised about was how journal posters somewhat gloss over the end part of the final battle. I have a very hard time with the Prince. In particular, I was off to a bad start when the Ultra Golem engaged with Pasha caught sight of me and gated in an Amber Golem. Via Farsight, I saw Pasha switch to fighting the Amber, and his health fell fairly fast. Still, my fighters did very well against the Supreme Golem and his Elemental, and right when they fell the NW Ultra finished off some summons so I could immediately engage him. My Necro was level 34 so I could easily Remove Magic the protections of the Nobles and Horrids, and drop them fast. Pasha unfortunately fell (was scared to check on him and heal with my R/C for fear of making things worse with another Amber gating in), so it was up to me to do most of the damage the third Ultra as well.

Finally got to focus on the prince, I think he used one AI, and then gated his last Noble, and then it was just me vs. him. And frankly, with 5 characters of Thac0 -12 to -16, I had a real tough time damaging him. I think I put way too many HLAs in Hardiness, versus Critical Strike... my ratio was like 12 to 6 or so. In hindsight, should have been more like 5 Hardiness, 13 Critical. His regen rate is insane. I have no idea how other parties (i.e. the journal with 2 Riskbreakers and 4 mages) could deal damage fast enough to get him to use his AIs. He casts Greater Malaison frequently... I rain out of yellow potions of magic shielding quite quickly... and so basically every hit I was getting repulsed away. Only thing I could think of in hindsight was Spell Immunity: Invocation. I assume that would block the effect of his field, so my Kensai/Mage could cast it and my Assassin/Fighter could cast it via scroll. As it was, with that many fighters, I still had to wish rest at least twice, just in this final portion of the battle. Maybe I should have used some level 9 spots for Monster Summoning? I just have no idea; unless they're immune to the field of repulse, I don't see how they'd help. I also assume they'd only be hitting on 19's and 20's. Or maybe missing Pasha was critical there. He's a great fighter and has great resistances, so wouldn't take much babysitting if he got involved.

Anyways, enjoyed it a ton, the last battle was indeed the hardest (for me at least) and I enjoyed the story line of the necro protag quests.

This post has been edited by conqueror: Jun 10 2014, 03:15 PM

[conqueror]

One fight I'd suggest some changes to is the Twisted Rune fight. Depending on your tactics, the fight is either brutally hard, or pretty easy. The problem is, it's not the enemy AI that make certain tactics unsuccessful, but rather the gross lengths to which the enemy/area scripting cheats in order to get you to approach the battle a certain way.

The way the Greater Twisted Golems spawn (every, 18 seconds, I think), as long as you are not in view of Layene, is just silly. They're grossly overpowered for that portion of the game, which I guess is the point, because their entire purpose is to get you to reload and stay within view of Layene on your next attempt.

Then Layene herself... when I played as a Vagrant, she used her wish for the double-length time stop and improved alacrity, then fired an obscene amount of magic at my PC. That was actually pretty awesome to see, and actually got my heart racing as she left the time stop and I had to figure out how on earth to survive it. But with my Necro PC, she was unkillable until she cast the Wish (lame, again with the cheating), and then just used it for an insta-rest (super lame, not because of cheating but because it was a complete waste and she died a half of a round later).

Even the way the plain Twisted Golems spawn (based on when each char in your party comes into sight of Layene) is pretty counterintuitive and doesn't really make any sense with the way BG generally works. But at least it was a fair enemy that you could approach based on your own tactics and party composition. Nothing was *forced* on you, like those Greater Twisted Golems.