The Journal of the Insane Kensai, Playing a Kensai on Insane, spoilers and whatnot. Options

[pekkae]

Welcome. Again.

So we succumbed into "Insane".

We are looking to obliterate, again.

Our last crew with Vagrant spearheaded by Riskbreaker & Kensai was quite OP, except for the most difficult fight(s) as in the demogorgon-fight, which was extremely difficult. In the end H2H rules in almost all fights. However we botched our approach as in we didn't read the rules clear enough, so we managed to inflict quite a lot of pain for ourselves in the early parts of the game most notably in chapters 4-5, but we wanted to "play by the rules". In the end we obliterated though. That was the plan and it worked for some (most) parts at least. But in the end we weren't completely happy with our crew though.

However, we managed to dig a hole for ourselves forcing to re-think strategies and to survive, with very, very sub-optimal setup for good parts of the game. Managing to do this though, we think we have enough not to play on Core anymore - we can do it and do it easily. So we will up the difficulty. However, we think that with increased difficulty comes slightly different challenges. For example we think in we can't really tank with anything else than skinned characters, besides the DD ofc since it has about 50% physical resistance quite early. In that way it's about similar to tanking with a regular fighter on core rules, the result should be about the same. And since we did that already, we think we should be quite Ok tanking with a DD (with quite the increased divine spellcasting power that is)

But everyone else we need to protect we think. And we really need CS's, in the few difficult fights. So how do we construct a crew that has max skins, CS's, extreme spell casting capabilities together with great H2H (APR's & Thac0's)?

We think we have this solved. Ahem. Again.

The Rules

- No non-protagonist related drops & forging, though ...
- We get to forge MotA (as we don't get to forge anything else and it actually isn't even a drop, as we'll get the required items)
- We have 91 pts to distribute with the custom character we have
- We have the tomes from bg1 to spread among the crew
- Protector of the Woods is fixed to be usable by a Druid as well (it also fits the lore and it would be a shame to let it unused, since it's such a great item for a druid)
- Max HP's for NPC's
- We'll bend the rules just a little bit regarding a specific item later on in the game, but we are a bit hesitant to call it "cheating", since we can actually do it within the game's rules & it fits the lore as well. We won't abuse it though.
- A few (2-3) non-IA bonus items, to supplement item classes that don't have a lot of choices (two amulets & a belt).
- Rotating crew of party members in early chapters, as usual

***

Voilá our crew, we'll end up with:

Kensai (PC), the best damage dealer in the game we think. Needs to be protected, as otherwise will be toast immediately. Kensai gets the nod over Riskbreaker because it can use staves, so we can actually protect it in the early chapters, when RB is limited to dual wielding without range thus being subject of constant near-death experiences (due to myself being not that good of a player perhaps). Will get JD for dual wielding purposes later in the game for game breaking damage dishing. Will have skins in the end through JD. Gets the PC slot for early game superpowers. Played as Half-Orc with maxed stats from the beginning: (STR 19, DEX 18, CON 19, INT 9, WIS 18, CHA 9)

Korgan the Dwarven Defender. The only character that can tank in the game throughout all of the chapters, sort of. Is able to get about 40-50% physical resistance quite early in the game though abilities + innate physical resistance. This type of resistance also cannot be dispelled nor breached - a major, major bonus over any other type of (phys. resistance) tank. Combines very low AC with up-to 70% resistance to physical damage, which should keep him quite safe until the very end. That and 250-300 HP's with 100% fire resistance and so on. And ofc some timely healing from Cernd. Would play Korgan, but we don't like him so we take Minsc with Korgan's stats. So essentially we're playing a Korgan, who's nice and who carries a miniature giant space hamster around. We'd love to see that hamster in a fight one of these days.

Jaheira the Avenger. The best early game (H)2H damage disher. Amazing complimentary items and abilities, able to get to 6 APR with staffs / spears in chapter 2/3. Gets to summon the Clan Spirit. Gets Critical Strikes. Plays like a fighter, but with superpowers in the early game. Can tank in almost all fights and the one where she really can't, we have a plan for that fight. Gets the Golem Slayer, for... well, golem slaying purposes.

Imoen the Sorceress. Our archmage for top-notch arcane spellcasting superpowers. Will get MotA. A Necromancer gets +1 spells per level through levels 1-7 somewhere around level 30 or so we are thinking about giving her the same bonus spells. Can be silenced, so that's a big minus. Early access to amazing difficulty breaking spells though. We'll use them fully!

Cernd the Auramaster as the ultimate divine spell caster for prebuffing, debuffing & tanking golems and for summoning greater elementals, anacondas and the Smilodon. Will dominate encounters especially in chapters 4 & 5. An amazing healer & lich-killer. Insane amount spell slots. In later stages it will be Cernd's job to disable enemy casters and keep the crew alive with heals, regenerations & natural restorals. Especially those regen's will be in high demand, we think. Also, by the end he will be arguably the most powerful spellcaster in the realms, on par with a Necromancer, a lot better in a number of encounters, as powerful as a demi-god so a very worthy companion for a realms-roaming bhaalspawn.

Up to this point the crew is quite "conventional", as in nothing special besides the choice for the PC & the double-druid perhaps, though very, very powerful and almost solely NPC's with their original (IA) classes. What we are still lacking is H2H capabilities together with casting capabilities. We think there's only one character that we can use for this. Gets to cast everything besides ADHW, which it wouldn't cast anyway. Gets +1 spells per level. Gets critical strikes. Gets fighter Thac0's. Gets amazing equipment. Doesn't have great hit points but it's offset by being able to tank with skins & pfmw's & mirror images. Can also chain contigency properly & use triggers. We think she'll be great! Doesn't get IA but then again, without minuses in casting time IA is almost useless. Can also breach and tank enemies like a boss and is able to summon powerful allies for help. So a custom made gnomish Fighter/Illusionist, welcome! We think she'll be great! (STR 13, DEX 18, CON 18, INT 17, WIS 12, CHA 13).

So in the end ...

=> 5/6 are able to skin up (6/7 if we count the Clan Spirit).
=> The one that can't skin up has the best physical resistance & about the best AC in the game
=> 4/6 can go about critical striking awee'
=> 2/6 can clense auras with tremendous casting time bonuses (aura clensing without casting time bonuses is well, pointless)
=> We have the best casting ability both arcane & divine in the game
=> Effective use of the most powerful gear in the game

We think we'll break it, even on insane!

****

A few abbreviations we use in this Journal

Spells:

MS Minor Sequencer
SS Spell Sequencer
ST Spell Trigger
MS7 Monster Summoning 7 (7th level spell)
MS8 Monster Summoning 8 (8th level spell, troll)
MS9 Monster Summoning 9 (9 the level spell, greater yaun-ti)
CS Clan Spirit, Jaheira's summon
CC Chain Contigency (9th level arcane spell) / Chaotic Commands (5th level divine spell)
PfMW Protection from Magic Weapons
PfME Protection from Magic Energy
PftE Protection from the Elements
PfE PRotection from Energy
PfF Protection from Fire
PFL Protection from Lightning
PfC Protection from Cold
PfA Protection from Acid
GOi Globe of Invulnerability
ST Spell Truning
PO Polyomorph Other
IH Improved Haste
GM Greater Malision
DUHM Draw Upon Holy Might (Bhaalspawn ability / 2nd level divine spell)
IA Improved Alacrity (the 9th level arcane spell)
RRoR Ruby Ry of Reversal (the level arcane spell)
ADHW Abu Dalzim's Horrid Wilting (8th level arcane spell)
CoC Cone of Cold (5th level arcane spell)
AA Acid Arrow (2nd level arcane spell)
MM Magic Missile (1st level arcne spell)
SoA Shield of Archons


Stuffs & other's

AoP Amulet of Power
CF Crom Fayer
DoE Defender of Easthaven
CotW Circlet of the Woods
CotGF Citclet of the Golden Flowers
MotA Memory of the Apprenti
CS Critical Strike (Warrior HLA (high level ability))
F/M Fighter Mage, our custom made gnomish fighter/Illusionist
F/I our F/M
DD Dwarven Defender
OoR Oil of Resurgenrece

This post has been edited by pekkae: May 19 2022, 08:03 AM

[pekkae]

TOB

Illasera

Debuff. Whack. Milk a little bit. It's quite easy with an unconscious Illasera.


Gromnir

Troubles here, we play this through for a number of times. This is mostly due to us being completely ill-prepared. Anyway, with minor globes from limited wish + proper prebuffs this is solved easily. Krun does a lot of damage on insane with MM's & AA's.

****
We forge Cernd's staff & a ring of protecion +4. We don't have anything else we want to forge. We have a lot of unsold stuff along with unsold equipment.
****


Marching Mountains

Max prebuffs, max summons, PfF's for everyone & prebuffs for summons sa well. Only one elemental golem here with Berenn?

They all in all do not survive long enough to get a single spawn away.


Yaga-Shura

Drop Yaga-Shura's magic resistance with 3xpierce shield (F/M's CC). Whack away. Cernd 12xCall lightning's here. We use one RvE. Skins keep us safe. DD has double regen throughout the fight. Greater elementals are great at tanking Yaga, for they don't get thrown back. We use all of our Critical Strikes (30 or so).


The Oasis

Enter with contigencies skins on sight & cc's with foreknowledge + 2xMS8. Imoen + Cernd AI/Aura clense.

Cernd moves to the front to take the aggro of about half of the first batch of gems (3-5 or so). We can drop his AC to -30 against crushing (barskin + aura of flaming death + SoA). Then he drops his whole spellbook on enemies. Imoen starts wishing, once ia is done - we aim to get PfME's for everyone but we get "double time stop + ia" instead. That's fine. Imoen then IH's, PfME's + PftE's the whole crew.

F/M enters, launches trigger (GOI + PFMW + IH) on herself, then puts up SI:Abjuration and off she goes to whack the battle mages (after PfME ofc.).

Swords work very, very well here. We get wish:hardiness at some point + we RvE:Regen.

Jaheira misses her skins, gets interrupted, then we are about to start running away until she gets hit, with wish:hardiness + golem slayer + helm of clarity + AoF she's at 80% physical resistance ... RvE regen keeps her easily safe enough, we don't need skins. Which we understood only after being hit. How nice.

****
The nicest thing bout the F/M is that she has multiple layers of protection. We can throw her into a fight with PFMW, once that runs out there's great AC + skins up next, sometimes coupled with mirror images (+ fire shields). After those are done, there's Hardiness (though on insane that doesn't amount to much). And additional defensive buffs are cast instantly (with foreknowledge). So she's usually quite safe in any encounter.
****


Sendai's Enclave

Our H2H too great. Our spells too many. Way too many.

Lich causes some problems, luckily there's Cernd at -5 to renew death wards. Once invisibility is out, Cernd drops it with implosions & nature's fists.

We fall once to Sendai for the golem's dispels & the deafness. Turn golems into chickens. We whacked the pet next, leaving Sendai the last. Would have probably been easier if we would have left a regenerating Smilodon battling Sendai's Pet and whacked Sendai herself. Doesn't matter.


Vongoethe

Prebuff with death wards. Start. Cernd IA 2-3xRRoR & 5-6x implosions and Vongoether falls. Then Cernd nature's fists pretty much everything else. They are instant so that's quite fun.


Abazigail

This is such a nice fight

Summons for distractions. Whack the salmanders. Srop the human form. Get blown back & debuffed. Summons go for gollums. Improved alacricity for Imoen & Mental Agility (we get it on the 4th try), then Cernd ura clenses (it has a casting time of 2) & immediate mirror image from Cernd. When Abazigail starts true sight enter line of sight and drop Cernd's & Imoen spellbooks on it starting with 2-3RRoR's, 4-5 LR's, breach and then we dish out the hurt, as in everything we have that's 5 or under in casting time. It's near death after Cernd's implosions (we start with 'em) pretty much, so before about 15x nature's fists, 15 MMS', 30 Flame Arrows and so on. We try to whack it with spells but it just stays "near death" - we must have dropped 300-500 pts of damage to it after it's "near death", so F/M comes in and gives it a whack. Abazigail falls.

Double -5 is overpower.



Balthazar

Cernd drops him with implosions


EDE

No Pasha? We saved him and he was very happy earlier. Well, I guess that's a Necro thing.

We don't finish EDE yet, as the elemental backlashes are a lot on insane. We'll be back for this later on.


****
The End
****

Some thoughts on the crew:

Our crew worked almost as planned. We had quite an easy time for most parts of the game, out counting the demo-fight, which was a handful.

Cernd is our best damage dealer via spells in almost all of the fights. it's also super nice, that almost all of his damage-dealing spells have a casting time of 5, so they are instant. I'm quite confident in stating that Cernd, developed this way, is the most powerful spellcaster in the game and he beats out even a fully developed Necro in number of areas. The only thing that makes a fully developed Necro more powerful is having access to full RvE. But when it comes to damage dishing & summoning, Cernd beats Necro hands down. Our Sorceress is mostly for debuffing enemy spellcasters & protections and buffing our crew. And ofc dish out the hurt in those cases where she was able to.

We really didn't need to tank with DD that much. But in the few cases that we needed to, it was doable with a double-triple regen. That we really could not was probably our biggest miscalculation. I think in this setup the DD can be switched with a Vagrant, for they have almost equal phys resistance towards the end but Vagrant is a better damage dealer + has amazing complimentary abilities. This is so probably even without Flail of Defending & Wounding and the Red Coral Armour. Though if that switch would be made, we're not sure how we can beat Mithril golem (perhaps summons & pfmw's & range would work here?).

Our muticlssed F/M (or F/I) was a great character, combining very powerful abilities with really good H2H capabilities, as we thought. It would be fun to get this type of character an additional bonus item or two. In ToB parts of the game it would be great to be able to upgrade the Asylferund elven chain with adamantite dust to bring back some abilities from the Drow Elven Chain, most notbly the -1 in casting time. That adjustment is mostly convenience adjustment, it really doens't help the character that much (as you can just have active foreknowledge all the time for insant skins & pfmw's). Another nice tweak would be to allow the Wondrous Gloves to be usable by F/M types.

Thanks again for the great mod. I've had much, much fun with this & a great time!

This post has been edited by pekkae: Jun 6 2022, 10:26 AM