Yet. Yet another journal., Turbocharging Shaman & maximising exp & skipping difficulty Options

[pekkae]

Journal Part 0. Prologue.

Welcome. Again.

Ahem. Will play super slowly. (edit: have actually pretty much stormed past the initial encounters)

We're trying to skip some of the most difficult things in the game while maximising exp. And also, we'll be turbocharging our Shaman throughout the game. We'll also ben the rules for a little bit to try some uncoventional things.

So yet again we are not aiming to survive, we are aiming to anhilate. Every an all content in the mod. We think we have what it takes. Ahem. Again.

The Rules

- No non-protagonist related forgin
- We rolled a 96 for our PC (I have a screen cap to prove it =))
- 92 pts for the custom character(s) we have
- We have tomes from bg1 to spread among the crew
- Max HP's for NPC's
- Rotating crew in the beginning, one change towards the end
- Insane all the way
- T/M can use Githzerai Blade. I mean, thiefs can use Katana's so ... I don't get why it's not available?
- Ribald's exteneded store sells Amulet of Master Harper

!! Some items are treated as consumables. Like ring of danger sense (it will give permanent bonus to detect traps). Ditto for reaching ring (S/M will get it) & the druid's ring for extra 5th & 7th level spell slot. Will not spend time on swapping rings

We are going to max out our XP throughout the game. That is the key reason we're taking a Thief with as well.


***

The crew:

Vagrant

Late game tanking, great summons. Str 18, Dex 18, Con 19, Int 9, Wis 12, Cha 18.


Jaheira

Early game comprehensively OP character. Summons Clan Spirits, so an additional damage dealing machine.


Neera

Because her personal item is superb. Early access to swords, trolls + 5 improved hastes.


Swashbuckler/Mage

We need a thief. This should be about the best possible version, combining both effective melee with really good casting ability.


Aerie the Shaman

Aerie, but a Shaman. Shall get a personal item. We haven't decided yet, but +2 spells per level seems like an "IA standard" or so. Not sure what else we should do with it. We'll decide later.


The last slot

Custom DD early game, switch to Keldorn the Undead Hunter later on (90% sure this will happen but one never knows)


***

This post has been edited by pekkae: Mar 19 2024, 02:01 PM

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[pekkae]

Journal, Part 1.

**
Skipping Suna-Seni
**

Chapter 0

Skpity skip

Chapter 1

Circus tent (but skip the reputation point)
Join Aerie the Shaman
loot everything

Chapter 2

We are with Vagrant, Jaheira, Aerie the Shaman, Custom DD + Custom thief.
loot everything we can @ slums
docks
loot shadow thieves & mae'var's
loot everything else we can
pick up axes +2 from minotaurs
whack the slaver at pirate bar & pick up full plate
to government district
save viccy
join jan, drop thief
to bridge district
loot faerk estate (we are almost at 30k gold)
once we're here we give a shot to the skinner murders. and what do you know, we solve it on the 1st go. proper buffs, jan flame arrows and shaman dominates as she can both heal & cause serious wounds
donate 7k (or so) to temple, for 4 reputation points. ole!
meet neera on way out and from the temporary meet between areas
go to temple district & loot everything lootable
buy belt from Talos temple
do fallen paladins
go to city gates and turn around
to docks and do entire thief questline
refuse stronghold

***
If Suna Seni blocks our way, go to gates and then to the area we wanted to. Tomes are spread, Vagrant takes str + con + cha, DD takes dex, int + wis (x3) are to be used later.
***

visit waukeens to get a few scrolls (protection from acid, emotion, breach - monies at 42k) and head to slums. Jan learns the latter two.
investigate activities in CC's back room, we summon a nymph, a fire elemental + clan spirit. max prebuffs and make it on the first go. yay.
Sir Sarles, return Neb's head.
seriously at this point Suna Seni is easily doable, but we don't do it, instead
we go to UImar Hills and do all of the basic stuffs
trademeet
jon cernd
druid grove, triple fire elemental + hastes + blesses + defensive harmonies + strength of one. just storm through all of it.
faldorn (charm the bears)
adratha (very easy with proper buffs) & the genies
helping Tiris in trademeet (but skip the reputation point)
graveyerd, meet with bodhi, side with thieves
clear graveyard on the back of buffs + haste and rest

Suna Seni, DD overpowers (we AC maxed so it has about -16AC effective). DD takes everyone's aggro & DD doesn't even get hit in the fight. Everyone else moves back, and then we emotion/spell thrust/insect plague or so. DD takes chaos but it already has ridiculous saves, especially with defensive stance.

kidnappers & tirdir
poisoned man
harpers
cernd's child (let go of Cernd)
free hexxat (DD soloes dragomir)
wellyn
and to Windspear Hills we march!

***
The idea here has been to micro-optimize our xp by playing with 5 members through these parts. So exp gained is shared by 5 members, instead of 6. It should help a little. The only place that required reloads was the druid fight in the grove, as the timing is difficult with a Vagrant and the fight (at least my tactic) relies a lot on timing (interrupting the skins / CD in the beginning). And of course we reloaded in the begining a few times for we had no idea where Suna Seni would be & we won't spend energy in trying to memorize where suna seni was and which route works.
***

Join rasaad and go after his quests (but realize that we can't free wilson before we've met Neera's wild mage friend. This causes some troubles)

Rasaad's quests
Drop Jan, join wilson at Heretic Temple
Neera's hidden refuge & all quests (except Kirik Khan, which doesn't trigger), drop Wilson
Pick up Jan from Slums, pick up hairband
Back to heretic temple to open locks & disarm traps (we didn't have a thief before)
realize we can whack the dark moon heretics left.
whack dark moon heretics, it doesn't trigger Rasaad or Master of Combat
talisman of hearthfire
Neera's quest
pay gaelan bayle an hop to


Chapter 3

**
Neera is 60k of exp away from IH.
**

Ployer
Mook
Guld Contacts (3 vampire brides slain)

***
And Neera gets a level thus we get IH and access to rest of the quests. Yay! (edit: well, actually the difference isn't even that big ...)
***

Cult of the eyeless (pretty easy with mirror images, emotions and some healing from Shaman. Unseeing Eye goes down before it gets ADHW's away. Yay!).
PC almost at 1Mexp. And we haven't even started the actual quests yet.
Mencar Pebblecrusher
Slaver Stockade, goes very smoothly with 2xweb minor sequencer as always

***
Forge paws of the furious cat & Ring of protection +2.
***

back to druid grove to launch last druid stronghold quest
belm and then to trademeet
whack Hayes in the pub
founder of trademeet (no Rhynn, that's a big, big shame...)
since we're here we do chaos / heeding the spirit of the grove pt 2 (Shaman has Call Lightning). Neera gets whacked by insects though. Nymphs are nice here. They can both summon and heal. Haha.
de'arnise keep, mostly just storm through though rest before library/viper/tor'gal. Tor'gal we summon, max prebuffs and storm -> everyone aggro tor'gal and shaman takes gem.
solve the riddle in the sewer, goes very smoothly even though we forgot we had IH.

***
we've used cloak of atonement in almost all of the fights. mostly it just gives us AoF. We got chant once. Cleric stronghold quests are done every now and then.
***

sewer gang (we get SoA from CoA)
rescue haer'dalis but we don't have enough RRoR scrolls. So we go to Windspear hills to get some.
Rescua Garren's Child (milk all Skellys from Conster). RRoR wares up to 6 scrolls now! Neera is 260k or so away from RRoR (or mordenkainen's sword.... hmh). We get a manual of elaboration so we forge the chaos potion. It goes to Jaheira.
Planar Prison. We attack the warden instead of breaking the gem and end up with more than +100k more in exp. So attack warden, whack everything, then break up the gem and whack some hounds. Not sure if we could have milked some planar hounds here from the Warden, as they are super simple with out permanent confusion immunities, thank you Chaos & DD's saving throws.
Paladin stronghold quest #1, rest @ umar hills, Jaheira leaves and we pick up valygar to open the sphere, drop valygar in the sphere
finalize both clerc & paladin strongholds
start jan's quest
take hexxat (console her quests instead of waiting)
black leopard thingy
shroud of the unproven and hexxat leaves to meet Cabrina
finalize jan's quest
pick up custom Swashbuckler/Mage. We're swapping her for Imoen in Spellhold.

**
pc gets about 46k of exp for completing both of the hexxat quests. Jaheira is 160k away from getting level 7 spells and thus SoA, which we'll need vs vampires since we can't rely on Cloak of Atonement.
**

The Crew:

Vagrant 1,68 Mxp, AC -10, 147HP, frostreaver/staff +3/shield of harmony, MPV: Coin Golem
DD 1,66 Mxp, AC -19 , Dwarven Thrower/fortress shield, MPV: Gem Golem
Jaheira 1,66 Mxp, AC -1 , staff +3/Spear +3 (spiritual weapons from shaman), MPV: Tor'Gal
Neera 1,65 Mxp, AC 9, Neera's staff +1, MPV: Yuan-Ti
S/M 1,62 Mxp, AC -2, Dak'kon Zerth blade / Belm, MPV: Conster
Aerie the Shaman 1,67 Mxp, AC -1, staff +2/sling +1, MPV: Chaos

**
pai'na (get all spawns, bala's axe keeps her from casting nasty stuffs + shaman keeps healing pai'na...)
lower tombs
to planar sphere
Engine room - We regen a sword vs golems, they have no chance. For Lae'lyn we just summon an army and whack. S/M re-ups haste a few times. Lavok isn't a problem, as it's spell repertoire is very limited and we can already summon very effectively.
Lavok dodge breaches a little bit, summon army & whack away. Neera takes golems at the start of the fight.

***
We make levels at the time machine room. Neera takes mordenkainen's sword, as S/M can soon cast RRoR. Shaman makes a level and takes regen. With those spells, we are quite OP for this already. We get a scroll of memory boosting which we immediately use to forge Jaheira's amulet, which solves problems with her spell slots. How convenient. We have numerous loose ends to cover, like king & queen, pirates, Bodhi, Samia, King Strohm's quardians, limited wish Quest, de'arnise keep, mage stronghold, Borinali etc. And our roof is 300k more exp for PC. I think Bodhi by herself will cover almost 100k of that. we are trying to make it through without solving shade lord. let's see.
***

pirates, whack coordinator before it uses a single AI scroll. we take the version of the book of infinite with spell turning.
limited wish quest + we take exp & monies from limited wish
king & queen @ graveyeard
bodhi (2 character with perma npp is easily enough)
horrid rakshaha in the sewers
screaming statue, (PC at 2.08Mexp, need about 50-75k more)
borinali
samia (we take Vecna here!)
king sthrom's guardians
finalize mage stronghold + all possible playhouse + de'arnise keep quests. We could wait for the turnish here but we decide to leave it post spellhold.

**
PC is at 2.17Mexp. Time to take Yoshimo along and go for Brynnlaw. Bodhi with 6.6 changes is overly simple. Since we can get 7th level spells we can just Shield of Archons for Jaheira and storm. We have numerous lose ends to cover as in we haven't even visited Temple Ruins, Watcher's keep, Ashideena Guardians nor have we started the Squirreled away questline.
***

Chapter 4

Minor things
Lady Galvena (priotize getting all guards)
Perth with 3 coins (seriously the hardest fight so far, we have just one arcane caster - luckily our bhaal powers are great at interrupting)
Visit spellhold to whack mists, sleep, visit again for noble trolls
Desharik sends us to asylum
We wake up at spellhold maze and PC is at 2.315Mexp. So about 35k below the limit.
We join Imoen the Swashbuckler(9)/Mage, who immediately eats reaching ring for extra spell slots.

Vampires + liches
Ancient Tome (pretty tight this one even with our capabilities, we get all 6 spawns without resorting to cheesy tactics, just pure power (dd tanks obviously)).
Kobolds, the key here is turning off AI !
Spider Ambush
Golem Ambush

***
Golem Ambush is probably one the most difficult fights in the entire game. Or at least for us it. We always have immense difficulties with milking the golems.
***

Mithril golem is man-handled by Shaman supporting tanking DD. This is also the only fight where green dragon potions are useful (ih+fa, then the slow doesn't matter)
whack lonk
irenicus, low ac DD dominates with shaman's regen. pc at 2,77mexp
take saemon's offer, get out, whack desharik, sleep, take horn, whack pirates and prebuff before talking to saemon. then whack pirate lord again, then whack saemon.
sahuagin, just whack. for prince we summon 3 earth elementals, 2 swanmay and cs. and dominate. we try to whack the king but he escapes. whack the rest of the sahuagin. I think this approach is supposed to generate a permanency scroll with the surface party, but we've never gotten it.
to underdark

Chapter 5

1st drow ambush, summon an army, prebuff, DD runs from the right side as it doens't need fa potions or anything to bypass improved web's. the rest move in from the south. Requires a few reloads, as we botch our approach several times, for various reasons (mostly due being ill-prepared. Low ac DD overpowers the fight.
immediately to kua-toan groups near the beholder lair & mindflayer entrances
rest and do demon, then to eastern tunnels, clear everything except Kua'Toa prince & demon knights.
rest and head to beholder lair. the elder orb at the entrance is troublesome, we solve it with a few potions of magic shielding (barely). rest and re-enter, mirror images for cause serious wounds and triggers full of gm+emotion combinations. goes quite smoothly.
Dracolich, DD + Shaman overpowers. Keep up death wards / SI:Necromancies.
2nd drow ambus: DD runs north of the bridge with a troll. the crew + summons whack the rest. Prebuff with summons, Soul Armour (S/M), GS (DD, Vagrant, CS) and SoA (CS + Jaheira)
turn into a drow, buy potions + freedom scroll + GOI scroll from the duergar merchant, monies at 120k.
enter ust'natha, whack everything in the tavern
rescue phaere
return brain
patrol leaders helmet
whack elder tolb
taso kala thing
deirex, st+goi+si:abjuration + buffs for S/M. wait 4 rounds. cast mirror image. when deirex starts TS, whack with buffed dd+vagrant+jaheira
house jael'lat
mage's proposal
kua'toa prince
and Neera reaches 3,4m giving her IA. We take RvE as the first 9th level spell. Ole! (we don't really use RvE for anything though for a ling time, might as well taken CC or Wish).
noble efreeti (7 x CO & 9x AA is easily enough).
buy stuffs from merchants (potions, a few scrolls, darkened glory, spear +4 and Belt of Skillfull Blade!! (<= it goes to S/M). free dola fadoon & slaves
lesser demon (summoning ritual, RROR doesn't work on spell shield here?!?. 2 blackmistst appear and the door doesn't open after whacking the demon)
whack everything in Ust'Natha on the way out
meet dragon, clear the drow near the entrance and head back to underdark.

**
We have the mind flayer estate to do as well as ancient golem & death knights. I'm thinking we'll pick up dragon helm + supreme shelter before Ancient Golem (for elemental resistances). Also Shade Lord is waiting for us as well as the ranger quests. So at least some easy stuff to do before Kruin.
**

Master Brain (with careful positioning it's quite straightforward, DD tanks throughout with ih+refen+defensive stance+entropy shield), get all spawns. One mistake and we're dispelled though.
Death Knights, this is such a fun fight. We summon an army & storm, as usual. I always wanted to use the soul reaver for a character ... but no, not this time.

***
This is where we start to be able to supercharge the shaman. You see, Shaman has a very effective use of all of the spell levels, even the levels 1-4 are tremendously useful in almost all of the fights. We already have 10 level 7 arcane spell slots. So Shaman has 6 spells per level 1-4 + we can recharge via limited wish to a total of 16. For 5th level spells slots the Shaman has 7, and we can wonderous recall 14 more, for a total of 21 (for Shaman has 7 level 6 spell slots as well). Then we could double that with Wish. It should be easily enough and we're just starting.

If your party is made out of casters (even rangers/pallys are considered casters here for they have very useful spells), the limited wish recharging becomes stupendously useful. Especially in fightes where swords are rather useless. So, hello to unlimited skins for example. And the more effective use of those spell slots / levels you have (so Auramasters, arcane casters with ia or a shaman), the more fun the ride.
***

This post has been edited by pekkae: Mar 22 2024, 05:53 PM