(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]

Finished some bard/paladin stronghold quests and the limited wish quest. RRR+flesh to stone on shade lich and endless skeletons kill elemental lich. We are going to do several tough battles in a row.

Shade lord: PFLightning on warriors. Full spell protection on PC/Aerie. RRR*2+LR*4+greater malison+feeble mind*3 disables shade lord. Warriors defeat Patrick first then skeleton lords and finally the altar. Death spell clears all shadows. A few superior healing potions were consumed after the first round of feeble mind fails and the shade lord casts rm, removing all haste on party members except Valygar. At last, PFEnergy on Minsc and let him solo the disabled shade lord. Cleared 3 assassins in the squirrel quest afterwards.

Screaming statue: rest after the first wave. PC/Aerie memorize plenty webs along with web sequences, chaostic commands on RB and Valygar, limited wish minor invulnerability and negative plane protection on the whole party. Cast several webs in advance then start the fight. Warriors clear vampiric mists first then vampires while casters keep the number of active webs. The fight ends just when minor invulnerability expires.

Pirate cove: pirate coordinator is dangerous to our low-level party. However, as a mage, sooner or later the pirate coordinator would run out of spells after his protections expire. All we need to do is control the battlefield, keep everyone safe and wait. Full buffs on, clear other pirates in 2 rounds, then RB goes to the upper-left corner, Minsc to the upper-right while others retreat to bottom. RB and Minsc are in charge of absorbing all the arcane damage from the pirate coordinator by taking healing potions and maintain high hp. PC and Aerie keep summoning to absorb physical damage and waste improved mantle scrolls. A moment later, the coordinator exhausts all his threatening dangerous spells, RB and Minsc return and get improved haste/PFLightning buffs, then easily kill the coordinator.

Let’s explore WK a little bit. It’s free to open/close doors on the first floor, so golem/undead fights are quite easy with patience. The fanatic spirit costs the party a few healing potions, couldn’t blame it since our party indeed lacks piecing damage in early game. Ctrl+4 and run quickly to avoid triggering the spider queen. Going up/downstairs to smash the golems on the second floor one at a time.