(Nearly) Invincible A-F Journal Options

[leozoroaster]

Back to school after a 2-year visa delay, finally, I have plenty of time to start another IA run and write a journal, which in fact I did a few times before but not in EN. Hope the readers may find it valuable (or fun), despite my poor writing XD. My high-level heuristic for playing IA is ‘prepare for long, fight fast’. To be specific, find the weakness of enemies, make full preparation then finish the fight as quick as possible.

This run is devoted to building a nearly invincible character, a dual class assassin21-fighter (abbreviated as AF) who can use ANY item and fight like any warrior at the same time (K13-T could do a similar job). In particular, this monster will have 90 MR, 85 PR, -24 AC, 10 APR, -20 Thac0 and -6 saving throws ultimately without any temporary buff, stronger than most bosses in IA.

Other members in the party serve to survive the early game, then simply enjoy the performance of A-F as audience in the late game. This journal will omit easy stuffs and focus on ‘big fights’ and tactics, for ease of presentation. Let’s briefly introduce the basic settings first.

Setup:
BG2EE 2.5
IA 6.52
Core difficulty
IAtweaks: Minsc being Berseker
CDtweaks: multiple strongholds, bag of holding, true grandmastery, e.t.c.

Party:
PC: Necro
Custom: RB
Custom: AF
Aerie: C/M
Minsc: Berseker
Valygar: Protector

The road to 500k xp is trivial. Finished thief/cleric quest, suna fight, fallen paladin, circus, mithril quest, xzar quest and some small ones. Suna fight is carried by Minsc, with the help of emotion from PC and haste from Aerie. The elder eye is killed by flame arrow following secret word.

Finished the first stage of Aran’s task, by letting Minsc solo Lassal. Heading to Seven Vales. Summon 5 skeletons, Aerie true seeing/bless/chant/PFEvil, PC haste. Initiate the fight with doom on Amon, PC greater malison. Emotions from both PC and Aerie in the second round, Amon lies down. Take down Mencar, the others, Amon in order.

Cleared weaker enemies in graveyard, with some extra care on mutated spiders. Paina fight is a tough one: PC/Aerie minor invulnerability (doesn’t seem to work), free action on RB/Minsc. PC breaches Paina and Aerie casts emotion, Aerie got stuck by web but PC didn’t, lucky. PC casts another emotion, taking down most spiders while warriors defeat Paina at the same time. Reload several times to save healing potions.

Buy Joril’s Dagger for Minsc, defeat beast master with a single breach followed by magic missiles to interrupt the swarm. The second stage of Aran’s quest is easy by letting skeletons fight the vampire.

Heading out of town. Clear easy fights at Umar/Windspear /Trademeet/Druidcove. Magic missiles*n kills Faldorn. To harm Ihtafeer we need at least +3 weapons, therefore let RB take club+3 though she invested 0 points in its efficiency. Hit Ihtafeer until it reads IA, take down its pets then itself. The party reaches 800k xp.

Now that RB has improved haste, things become easier. Caught skinner, and finished all EE NPC’s tasks but Dorn’s. Time to obtain the improved haste scroll at the slave stockade. We plan to enter from the sewer so cleared the mists first. Web+free action+true sight and we are done.

[leozoroaster]

Planar jail: full buffs on, upon entering the jail, greater malison+emotion takes down the only threat, elite bounty hunter. Enemies along the road to the warden is easy to deal with. PFF on warriors, chaotic command on RB and Valygar, AF destroys the orb to start the fight. 3*RRR+breach strips the warden within 2 rounds then warriors attack.

Shadow dragon: death wards on casters, spell strike+breach begins the fight. PC and Aerie breach for the second the round while warriors hit so hard, Aerie got silenced. PC breaches again then the dragon dies, nobody gets hurt, ez! RB finally has a +3 longsword, great!

Meet Nalia, viper and Glacius fights are easy. Mages appearing without PFMW are all lame, including the greater yuan-ti. No need of emotion or any control spells, simply letting warriors attack wins the battle. Forged the flail of age+3.

So far we haven’t encountered any hardcore fight, Torgal might be the first one, especially for our party which lacks crushing damage in early game. Lure two giant trolls out first, thus we only need to deal with Torgal, a noble troll and a gem golem.

Summon 4 bears and 1 skeleton (hope Torgal would be that stupid to control it), AF and PC along with summons approach from the left, attracting the gem golem, warriors then directly attack Torgal. Torgal died before it could cast rm/vengeance storm. AF lures the golem away, meanwhile warriors kill the noble troll, and PC/Aerie cast LR*4+greater malison+doom+polymorph other*n on the golem. The fight took merely 5 rounds, only Valygar and AF were hurt.

A similar strategy is then used in the dawn ring quest as well. Back to windspear. PC remembering enough fire balls/stone skins exhaust 2 IAs of Ruhk under the protection of immunity abjuration. Then warriors join without any protection buff (to avoid rm).

It’s quite difficult to confront the golem quad directly. By letting PC block the door with PFMW and observing that it’s free to go up/downstairs in combat, we can polymorph the golems one at a time. The vampire squad can’t move at all over a dozen webs. Other enemies except Samia/red dragon/element master are not as hard to deal with. Conster: 10inch invisibility on everyone, Conster will cast true sight first then warriors strike. The party reaches 1.7m xp.