Spike's questions Options

[Spike]

A little question to Captain Haegan.

Cernd used the physical mirror spell and Haegan attacked him with the right group management.
The throwing axes weren't reflected immediately, but after a short time Haegan received the cumulative damage
for several axes and died instantly. I like it, but is it the intended behavior of the spell?

By the way, i cant beat TorGal. Damn. I never get him below badly injured. It takes too long and my buffs fade away. Then the usually stuff happens.
Storm of Vengeance, Hold Spell, Greater Commands and Strength Drain. Hmm, I need different tactics.

This post has been edited by Spike: Dec 5 2007, 08:27 AM

[Sikret]

All enemies who use ranged weapons in IA check to make sure that the target doesn't have physical mirror before throwing their ranged attacks; but it seems that Haegan has skipped my notice in this respect and still fires his ranged weapons to a target protected by physical mirror. Will improve his script for the next release. Thanks for drawing my attention to this issue.

As for TorGal, what are your party members' levels. You may be too low level for him at this stage.

[Spike]

My party consists of:

Vagrant
Anomen
Jaheira
Cernd
Haer'Dalis
Nalia

I did all the quests which are mentioned in the "Suggested Quest Order", dont know my exact XPs yet.
But the Greater Yuan-Ti was very tough for me and i managed to kill the keeper snake/viper thanks to the forged flail.

[Spike]

Just another question.
I did the Merkath quest a bit too early. I defeated the imp and decided to give the mirror back and let Merkath alone.
Did i miss something by skipping the fight with him?

/edit
In the fight for Cernd's baby cheesy methods can be used. I know that the fight with the lich is totally optional, but i could beat him
by leaving the house several times. But now I'm really scared of Sikret's liches . Maybe its some content for the next release.

This post has been edited by Spike: Dec 5 2007, 09:00 AM

[Sikret]

My party consists of:

Vagrant
Anomen
Jaheira
Cernd
Haer'Dalis
Nalia

Hmm, perhaps the problem is that your party doesn't have a powerful warrior except the protagonist. Why do you need so many divine casters? What about dropping Jaheira for a powerful warrior.

Just another question.
I did the Merkath quest a bit too early. I defeated the imp and decided to give the mirror back and let Merkath alone.
Did i miss something by skipping the fight with him?

No, both Mekrath and the Imp are improved. It's enough to fight with one of them.

[Spike]

You are right, but here are my thoughts:

Anomen - Greater Restoration and he is revised in v5
Cernd - Auramaster
Jaheira - Romance and many quests

For now, I plan to let TorGal live for some more time and finish Jaheira's curse quest. I already got the ring of wizardry(?). Then i will substitute her with
Valygar and kick TorGal's ass

(Edited my previous post.)

This post has been edited by Spike: Dec 5 2007, 09:17 AM

[lroumen]

You cannot be very picky early game since not all NPCs are available just yet. I have a similar party setup but I haven't even started the game properly yet.


I think you'll want to aim for the following type of party throughout the game.
a ) 2-3 melee warriors
b ) 1-2 divine healers/protectors
c ) 1-2 mages (who carry anti-spellprotection and anti-combatprotection)
d ) 1 good dispeller

Some NPCs fit more than one of the abovementioned categories.
Anomen can go melee and cast some fast protection spells on himself and the group (low casting time to prevent interruption).
Keldorn will be a good melee warrior but he is also a great dispeller of illusions.
Haer'Dalis can be a good dispeller due to his swift and easy leveling, but he's also a good melee fighter or a spellcaster.
Etcetera...

I think IA v5 is about picking your fights at the right time. Do some simple tasks first and follow up with the tougher ones.

This post has been edited by lroumen: Dec 5 2007, 09:53 AM

[Spike]

Yeah, this is really a big difference to the vanilla game and most of the other mods out there. Normally i pick the npcs, which i like.
But in IA the question what matters is, how to survive? You have to get used to it.

@Iroumen
I think when Valygar joins me instead of Jaheira my party will satisfy your posted requirements.

Melee - Vagrant, Valygar,......,Anomen, Haer'Dalis
Divine healer - Anomen, Cernd
Mages - Nalia,........,Haer'Dalis
Dispeller - Nalia, Cernd

But I will miss Jaheira with her +3 club from the beastmaster and her Ironskin. She was a fairly nice tank/fighter specially in the early game.

This post has been edited by Spike: Dec 5 2007, 10:12 AM

[Sikret]

Anomen ... (low casting time to prevent interruption).

It's Cernd who has casting time bonus.

Having both Cernd and Anomen in party is excellent. Spike's party has this great feature.

[lroumen]

Anomen ... (low casting time to prevent interruption).

It's Cernd who has casting time bonus.

Having both Cernd and Anomen in party is excellent. Spike's party has this great feature.

True, but this is not exactly what I meant.

I meant that for optimisation of Anomens spellcasting, you'll want to use mainly those spells that take little time to cast. Since he's most likely fighting melee opponents they will have ample opportunity to hit him and cancel his spell. If the casting time of the spell is short, then Anomen will have better chance to finish his spell.
Of course you can stack some long-casting spells on him if you use them to precast, but I find it often necessary to renew some protections during battle and for that he can be used quite effectively.

[Stu]

@Spike - I'm not sure if the Torgal fight has changed much for v5, but in 4.2 I found the following strategy to be useful for a fairly low level party (I only just had access to lvl5 spells and chose lower resistance)
1- try to separate the two trolls from the group and take them out without Torgal noticing (a tad cheesy)
2- buff up, get some summons up to distract the Gem gollum.
3- Use invisibility to get as many of your warriors nice and close to him as possible, He'll start casting True Sight - this is intentional as to prevent him from casting more dangerous spells (ie storm of vengance or mountain bears) this 1st round.
4- start spamming him with lower resistant spells with your primary caster (3 or so times - enough to get his MR down to a palatable level). Use your secondary caster to launch magic missiles at Torgal once every round to disrupt spell casting (this is important as you absolutely want to keep the number of spells he gets off to a minimum).
5- When his MR becomes low enough Slow him - this will reduce his rate of movement, number of attacks and most importantly the rate of regeneration.

Note I had a sorcerer, a fighter/mage and used a scroll of project image (not available in v5), so I did have access to a fair number of magic missiles. Obviously improved haste would be a huge addition to the above, and I'd recommend saving it until you slow Torgal in order to make it most effective. Also higher level summons (ie better than spider spawn and wand of monster summoning) would keep the Gem golum and Bears distracted for longer and postpone the need for your mages to take time out from casting to re-summon them. Be prepared to make copious use of healing potions.

[Spike]

@Stu
Thx for the detailed description, but i have managed to kill him last night (unfortunately->today i'm really tired).
As i mentioned in a previous post i picked up Valygar instead of Jaheira, did some minor quests and luckily Nalia got a levelup. She gained access
to 6. level spell (improved haste, pfmw,...). This was a real power boost and TorGal wasn't a problem anymore.

This post has been edited by Spike: Dec 6 2007, 11:52 AM

[Sikret]

1- try to separate the two trolls from the group and take them out without Torgal noticing (a tad cheesy)

This is not possible in v5.

[Spike]

Some cheesy methods:

SPOILER!

Merkath's tower: -killed the Yuan-Ti group (greater, mage and some normal ones) with several cloudkills. Normally, they try to engage you, but with precise
positioning and an invisible vagrant (immunity to poison) right in front of them its easy.
Planar Prison: - casted Doom, Emotion and Greater Commands before the dialogue started and the Elite Bounty Hunter was unconcious right before he could buff
- the flesh mouth(?) could be exploited to win the fight with the Yuan-Ti mage in the lower right corner off the map. I manged to avoid all his powerfull
spells and sequencers
Windspear Hills: - Sometimes it is possible to block Tazok on the bridge and he doesn't switch the targets properly.

This post has been edited by Spike: Dec 7 2007, 03:13 PM

[Sikret]

What's the fun of playing with cheese even if it's sometimes possible? Every enemy in IA has precautionary anti-cheese blocks in his scripts, but if a player is a dedicated fan of playing cheesily, he may sometimes find a workaround against the less improved types of foes.

Once someone in SP forums asked me why I bother to block cheesy methods and exploits in IA. He believed that a player who looks for the ultimate challenge in BG2 and thus installs IA, won't naturally even think of playing cheesily. I replied that blocking the exploits are actually part of the mod's fixpack, not part of its tactical portion (Baldurdash fixpack also have some anti-exploit features thouhg in a much smaller scale compared to IA's fixpack).

See below for the spoilerish part:

SPOILER!

Yuan-Tis are slightly improved by IA; yet, they have anti-cheese scripts against clouds and fogs and won't stand inside the cloud if you cast it from distance . As you mentioned, after casting cloud kill the Yuan-Tis didn't just stand there and tried to engage you; but since you also had your invisible protagonist *inside the cloud* they tried to fight with him. This kind of cheesy methods will not work against more seriously improved enemies of course.

As for planar prison, how did you defeat the warden? I don't think that he will fall to similar cheesy tricks. If you managed to defeat the warden with no cheese, why didn't you use the same excellent skills you have to defeat the Elite Bounty Huntress (who is much weaker than warden) as well? When you can play without cheese why you even consider or think of cheesy solutions?

[Spike]

I'm sorry. I didn't want to praise my cheesy ... . My intention was to report possible exploits in order to give you some sort of feedback. I thought that you are interested in and going to use such reports to make your mod even better.
And i've never said my tactics are good or excellent. My skills in BG gaming are really poor, but i enjoy your mod anyway. It is very hard for me and my party just want to survive. Sadly, the warden ist still alive , but tonight will be his night.

[Sikret]

I know, Spike! I will use your reports to improve the mod and I thank you for sending them. Please continue to send. I just had the impression that after using those exploits (for example, against Yuan-Tis or the Bounty Huntress), you simply continued the game and didn't reload to do the battles again with no cheese. I apologize if my impression was incorrect.

When you find a possible exploit, do report to me, but then reload the game and do the battle once again without using that exploit.

This post has been edited by Sikret: Dec 8 2007, 12:19 AM

[Spike]

Need some advice to beat the warden (dont want to lower the game play difficulty)

SPOILER!

The warden alone isnt the problem, but together with the Yuan-Ti mage its like hell and i cant maneuver very well with all his minions (dogs, greater Yuan-ti, minotaurs and the umber hulks). This is totally different to v4.2.
My best effort was to bring him down to badly injured with a combo out of fire shield blue and red, but then his spell trigger wiped my party out. Is it better to concentrate on him or firstly on his minions?

Thanks

This post has been edited by Spike: Dec 8 2007, 04:10 PM

[Romulas]

What's the fun of playing with cheese even if it's sometimes possible? Every enemy in IA has precautionary anti-cheese blocks in his scripts, but if a player is a dedicated fan of playing cheesily, he may sometimes find a workaround against the less improved types of foes.

Greetings, took some time out but have been playing version 5 for a couple of weeks.

The answer to your question is simple Sikret, some people just want to play the game and are not as gifted as you and the other "super" BG2 players. I simply just want to play the game and play the story line. Its more important to me to experience the story line and all the creativity that went into it.

These are my personal opinions and I in no way disrespect your work, it is awesome what you have done but unfortuneately this mod is geared (and you have stated it in the readme I admit) for the super players. I personally try the battles on core a couple of times then "come up" with other ways of getting through the part that I am stuck on.

I hope that you can understand some of the different points of view that are out there.

Romulas

[Sikret]

@Romulas

I understand. Play the mod and the game the way you enjoy it.

@Spike

SPOILER!

Kill the Yuan-Tis and Minotaurs et al before using the orb. Naturally, you won't even have the orb before killing them. Are you trying to attack warden without using the orb?