Vagrant's journal, Building as OP crew as possible Options

[pekkae]

It’s curious that you can kill Saemon when you did. I’ll be interested to hear whether he self resurrects in TOB.

Probably. We'll then have our backstabbing superpowers back, so the plan is to backstab him again.

[pekkae]

Master Brain
This was NOT fun. Shiish. We suffer, yet again, voluntarily though.

So this took 6 hours. Exactly the thing we're not supposed to do. But, dominating is a little bit harder than we thought. All of the time & realoads because we were looking to max out our exp. (well, 6 hours for 2 victories but still)

In the end we even don't get all of the 6 spawns, we just get 4 (or 5 as we accidentally pick up the loot at some point & we lose track). It's insanely difficult to get this done with just one hardiness and constant micromanaging of the crew when a small sidestep can cause the whole operation to collapse (as in someone runs to the sight of the master brain and it dispels us). We do have RvE, but if we're lucky we get regen 50% of the time. Anyway. Not much problems, well, besides the obvious. I'm not sure if the extra exp os worth it. But as we've done this "max exp's" thing consistently throughout the game we should be able to achieve something in the end. By something I mean awesome gamebreaking superpowers, where we will be like she-hulk meets superman meets wonderwoman meets he-man meets captain planet meets popeye the sailor-man with spinach injected directly in to the veins.

T/M isn't completely useless anymore. She was scouting and cast PfF, PfC & PfA in the fight on Vagrant. That's... something.

Jaheira took natural restoral as her first hla, should have taken the smilodon. It's uber in this fight.



Dracolich
Well, our master plan of using Barad Ding's collar bell doesn't work. Even though it makes characters deaf, they can apparently still somehow hear the wails. (I think it would have been an extraordinary turn of events, had it worked, but sadly no. So. Bummer. ). We make a mental note of it and our plan is to bribe Cromwell to upgrading it to "improved Barad Ding's Collar Bell", so it would make us completely deaf. Being deaf is also the sole condition that the rest of the crew will allow Anomen to join us again.

One of my least favorite fights. Takes a number of reloads because our preparations are always off. T/M get wailed. We use 2 RvE regens (which is ok for 4 level 9 spells) because we though it had four PfMW's and it actually has seven or eight or so. We use all of the "spider spawn" scrolls we've gatheded up to this point.

Start: whack skins as fast as possible, nullify "death fog's", send in summons to be whacked. Wait out level drains when hit with shadow dragon breath and try to dodge the breath with casters (as you'll lose spells if you are hit)

We use maybe 14 scrolls of spider spawn, 5 potions magic protection / shieding and towards the end we are quaffing oils of resurgerence like it's the only good mojito day in an all-inclusive resort in Mexico during the only annual getaway week from the prosaically joyless profanity that is our daily routine we will never, ever, ever, ever, ever-ever get .... why is our life miserable?


**

We are not really looking forward to suffering as in "let's milk ancient golem with our completely ill-suited crew for it", so we skip ancient golem for now. (Thanks again to Critto for pointing out there isn't anything chapter specific about that fight). Luckily, we do know of a few fights where milking can be best achieved with our strengths. Then we will have to give a shot to Firkraag & Green Wyrm before we decide to do Kruin. I think the most plausible scenario with Kruin fight is that we'll take out one elemental golem straight away, then we'll milk all 6 spawns out of the 2nd one. We have to wait out Kruin in any case, since we can't dispel him. We'll see how the next fights go, but there's even a small chance to be back with ancient golem before Kruin. We'll see.

An elemental is worth 60k. An elemental with 6 spawns is worth (on average) 216k + 12k in gp. There's a big difference. And as alleviated up above, we think this will make a difference in the end (and would like our T/M to level up as fast as possible in any case. That extra exp is really valuable).

**

This post has been edited by pekkae: Jan 19 2022, 09:04 AM

[pekkae]

The small areas
Mists; chaotic commands, ih's & summons and whack. And an occasional chain lightning.
Troll groups: death spell. it's quite fun.
Vampires: IH + AoP on PC
Other than that we use the 3xCoC trigger in a fight, it's very effective

WK level 1
At the fireplace room we prebuff to the maximum and summon to the maximum. Then we prebuff our summons to the maximum. So greater swanmay, swanmays, smilodon, clan spirit, anaconda + swords/trolls. Use all IH's we have. Potions of defense / invulnerability for Kensai & RB. Haste for the rest. Activate HLA's + everything else we have. Then we open the door and have ourself a traditional all-out pub brawl! Like everyone against everyone! It's a absurdly hilarious & complete blast!

Neera gets stunned but we break the stun with Methilda's harp. At some point Valygar gets hit in the head and loses a tooth. By the end he's grinning like a madman. We go to the character info page to make sure if he in addition to the tooth lost a few points of intelligence. Luckily no, so we are quite relieved as we dodged that bullet & no reload is necessary.

Spider queen
Pretty much same approach as up above. Dodge improved web's as much as one can. Maximum OP strength in the beginning. It's a great fight for us since swords are so good at tanking the queen. We always reserve a few mass cures to the end where spider queen is surrounded by swords and then we can easily heal them. We are running low on resources towards the end so we're not 100% sure if we got all os the spawns, but we think so.

Wk level 2
We blow through this. We turn the chromatic demon into a chicken & milk all 6 spawns out of the elemental. EFG takes remove magic + PfF on crew.

Then we wonder into Windspear Hills, where a certain quite the obnoxious and vindictive wyrm is loitering around.

Windmaster
Meh. It just gets the hurricane thingy off, then immediately when it's worn out gets whacked by Imoen. 24 APR's from RB & Kensai & Jaheira with Criitcal Strike's is OP in this fight. Our plan was to win it in a single round. Probably could have, but Valygar forgot to chain breaker stance so he couldn't critical strike immediately.

Firkraag
PC equips dragon scale shield + has dragon helm in inventory. With those two items, we can buff his fire resistance to 95%. Summon the greater swanmay, clan spirit, trolls, anaconda (or so). Ih's on everyone incl. clan spirit. We face the dragon and get taunted. TAUNTED!!

We taunt the Dragon back: "You! You look like time has done you far worse than we ever could! You should have been preparing for facing us, instead of preposterously loitering and making up silly plans you roaring mistake of evolution, a perfect insult to the colour red, you apparent outcome from an unhappy union between a crocodile and an absurdly large ostrich - uttering your name makes us gassy while our toenails grow astray. We shall remove your horns and use our comprehensively mediocre skills to sculpt tiny decorative figures out of them which we will then sell at the market for a really, really, really cheap price!!!"

Firkraag goes berserk and attacks!!1!

Then we whack away. T/M moves in, casts secret word & takes the greater silence alone (the 1st one). Neera then moves in and her CC with 2xRRoR & Breach is launched, then she wtihdraws and just happily summons away. Jaheira takes the 2nd somewhere mid-fight (it also unfortunately hits PC as well, so he can't summon swanmays any more).

Our h2h is too great for the skeleton warlords. Imoen is in trouble at some point so clan spirit casts regeneration on her. In the end firkraag is taken down with ordinary weapons by Valygar & Imoen (both CS'ing) & PC & Jaheira We also mirror image & SI:Abjuration T/M so Firkaraag will cast both true sight & RRoR on her. No troubles here, besides the initial test of how greater silences are cast.

We apologize for the profanities up above. Jaheira is 800 exp pts. away from level 20 and "perform ritual".


Troll mound
Haha. Our h2h too great, our summons too many. Imoen blows through vengeance trolls like they were butter with CS (even though she's only at 7APR & 21STR). We try to Wish for PfME's since we forgot to cast it, but it doesn't work (4 wishes) so we just dodge the 3xADHW while PC takes the full force of the trigger. He goes down -50% in HP's, clan spirit then comes and casts regen on him. Clan Spirit and greater swaynmay survive through the fight. Swords work wonders against the Vengeance trolls. No RvE regen's and not a single heal spell cast (we did use the cat figurine though & healed Valygar with CBS & cast one regen on him at some point from Jaheira)


**

So next up, it's either Kruin, Ancient Golem or Green Wyrm. We're not really looking forward to any of those fights. We'll probably do Kruin, for then we can do some other stuff as well, before going on milking. Oh, we forgot Bodhi. 4 team members at 130k from next level. Could we get that from Bodhi? It's one extra Hardiness / CS. Hmh.

**

This post has been edited by pekkae: Jan 20 2022, 03:33 PM

[kilorew]

So far, has this party been stronger compared to your previous playthroughs party ?

[pekkae]

So far, has this party been stronger compared to your previous playthroughs party ?

It depends on the fight. Whenever there's a fight where H2H dictates the difficulty, we are much, much stronger. And with this crew, we will grow immensely more powerful with the next 1-1,5m exp.

We have to figure out a way to get past Great Wyrm though, as it will probably be an extremely difficult fight.

[bulian]

Dracolich is easier (fewer PFMWs, fewer wails) before party gets HLAs. Can also be done in Ch6/7 at much higher levels, albeit for reduced loot.

There is no need to complete the Master Brain encounter in Chapter 5. You could circle back later after getting some of the "easy" chapter 6 experience.

[pekkae]

Dracolich is easier (fewer PFMWs, fewer wails) before party gets HLAs. Can also be done in Ch6/7 at much higher levels, albeit for reduced loot.

There is no need to complete the Master Brain encounter in Chapter 5. You could circle back later after getting some of the "easy" chapter 6 experience.

Oh, alright! Thanks! So on the next play-through (whenever that is) I'll make sure to try it before them HLA's. It should be easily doable then as well, even though RvE helps quite a lot.

Ditto for "master brain". I like to do it in Underdark though it is simpler later on. The difficulty in the fight isn't mitigated that much by a few additional levels though the post-Kruin equipment would definitely help. Though even without the OP gear, it's easily doable if we just whack the elemental instead trying to max exp.


This post has been edited by pekkae: Jan 20 2022, 03:32 PM

[lxgxnd9]

So with this playthrough with Jaheria what do you think of Avenger v. Auramaster ? Which is superior in your opinion.

I kind of think with the superior H2H in IA, Avenger is slightly stronger. What do you think?

[pekkae]

So with this playthrough with Jaheria what do you think of Avenger v. Auramaster ? Which is superior in your opinion.

I kind of think with the superior H2H in IA, Avenger is slightly stronger. What do you think?

I think she's extremely powerful as she is. Then she gets to summon the clan spirit, who was our best tank in chapters 2-3 (& still is great).

I've been thinking about this Jaheira vs. Cernd thing but I'll get back to it at later stages. I want to have more experience on maxed out Jaheira & the most difficult battles to properly answer this.

[pekkae]

Bodhi
Vagrant & Jaheira complete the "upstairs", Vagrant with AoP, Jaheira with Shield of Archons. Sleep @ downstairs.

Prebuff to the max, max summons, max prebuff for summons so the normal routine. Some troubles here with the ambush. Mostly because we're lacking +4 weapons so whacking the skeletan warlords is quit the pain. We use 1 scroll of protection from level drain, it goes to Valygar. AoP is on Vagrant, Jaheira gets shield of Archons and Imoen uses Staff of Rhynn. From exp. points this is enourmously succesful as everyone gets about 250k and almost everyone levels up. Every single level is very hepful at this stage as every


Ancient Golem
It goes very smoothly. We're too bothered to stand around and get whacked around by ancient golem so Vagrant goes for a jog. We are lacking the heroic way of doing this, which is to have a DD, activate defensive stance, stand in front of ancient golem while it whacks the DD around. Oh, and cast a few heals every now and then.

Spawns are baited to the centre and exterminated by the crew. Very, very, very simple this way. After all 10 golems are spawned we face the Ancient Golem. Neera IA's and drops IH's on everyone & wishes (we get 25 stats on the 2nd try). Jaheira holy powers & combat trances. Imoen, Valygar + Jaheira also CS. Ancient golem is no more within 2(?) rounds.

We are very very good at "enter, obliterate", not so good at "enter, milk out everything & whack".


Kruin
Goes very smoothly. We prebuff JAheira with PfF. PfC, PfA & PfL. Initiate fight, whack githyaki. Vagrant takes an elemental and goes for a jog, Jaheira takes another one (she has oodles of skins). We milk 9 gems/coins out of the elementals. Then we finish them. Finishing them at this point is quite trivial, they don't stand a chance.

***

We forge
Corthala family true blade (Valygar)
Robe of Greater Invocation (Neera)
Red Coral Armour (PC)
Pendant of recovered light (and fix it locally) (Imoen)
Quarterstaff +3 & Golem Slayer (Jaheira)
Ring of greater djinn summoning (T/M)
Equalizer (Imoen)
We also buy Tymora's Gift (Neera)

***

Green Wyrm
No prebuffs. Neera & Jaheira stay out of GW's sight. So do fighters mostly. We bait out death spells with inconsequential summons, then clan spirit, smilodon & Swanmays tank it until the end. At various stages the GW is surrounded by what must be 6-8 summons. Zone's of sweet air for horrible clouds. Wake up characters wth Barad Ding's Collar Bell (!!!). At various stages & even towards the end, and even with 1 arcane caster + 1 divine the GW looks like it's completely overrun. Regenerating Smilodon is super effective. Clan Spirit is awesome.

When it's out of PfMW's we, IH & enter and CS & whack, it doesn't last for long.

Twisted Rune
Not much problems here, even though we have to play this through a number of times (maybe 5) because every time we botch some detail like we are low on arcane spellcasting capabilities and Neera unintentionally walks into the sight of Vaxall and gets anti-magic ray'ed. Once Layenne gets whacked with Frostreavers cold-damage and Vecna gets destroyed.

Prebuff to the max, Whack Revanek & Shyressa while Neera takes out Layenne's protections. Then Whack Layenne. Then Vaxall. Leave Shangalar the last.

Wk compass level
Not much problems here, besides the Slave Wraith. We find out here, that Imoen's pendant also doesn't protect from level drain so we fix it manually.


**

We forge
Elven ancient expertise (we consoled this item in, because we forgot where it was and we didn't get that drop. Had we known, we would have gotten the drop but...)

**


WK level 4
Finish everything besides the 3x elemental + 2x greater bone & supreme leader

We do Ancient Mage
2xRRoR, then St Breach+2xLR, then SS GM+Emotion+Hold person & hpld person sticks. Great! FUN!

Mystery of the Jewel Casket

Squirreled away assassin's @ bridge district
Prebuff. Enter Exterminate. our h2h too great, our cs's waaay too many + Neera is awesome. It's such a nice fight and we enjoy it to the max.

Lord Roenall
We always end up with Lord Roenall who is completely immune to damage. It seems like completely overblown, considering that this is a fight that should be done in chapter 3. Hmh. After we've whacked him for quite some time (say 2 turns or so), we just manually remove his protections and he's gone in no-time. I'm not sure how this fight is supposed to go but I'm quite sure a Lord Roenall you can't hurt isn't part of the equation.

***

T/M is about 1m exp points away from reaching awesome superpowers. Then we visit IA's items page and notice something that completely destroys our approach. The line is "Memory of the Apprenti: Protagonist is a single class mage or sorceror". And ofc. we don't have that, as we're playing a Vagrant. We can't get MoA.

We thought MoA was forgeable by any protagonist.

This is the one absolutely essential Item that would make our crew + T/M an all-world force to reckon with. Without MoA, she just doesn't have enough spell slots to be awesome. Our crew composition is destroyed, it doesn't work. Our T/M, while she could reach quite ok stats in H2H (thanks to us bending rules & her utilizing cloak of the daywalker), just doesn't pack enough punch to be a completely overblown character like pretty much everyone else in the crew. I mean she'd be an ok & quite diverse character, but just nowhere near to what we were looking for.

Our approach to Arcane spellcasting was to create a completely overblown & absurdly OP archmage from Neera. You see Neera with MoA + AoP + spells + rewards could by 8m exp reach -6 in casting time with vast amounts of spell slots. This would be probably/arguably the most powerful arcane spellcaster available in the game, even more powerful than a Necro with Necro's stuff. She would have been supported by T/M who could utilize circlet of the woods & MoA (depending on the fight), who could reach -4 in casting time if needed with vast amount of spell slots as well. (then Neera would drop to -5 with GRoI). So we would have 2 úber spellcasters where one could also do insane amounts of damage in H2H by small changes to equipped items. Since we've always run out of remove magic's this character could just SI:Abjuration, enter & whack in numerous fights and we would have been free to cast dispel magic' around her since she would be immune. That's why the scrolls we were gathering. Also, the small differences in levels would have meant that T/M would be able to freely cast dispel magic on enemies (say Mariliths) without the other crew members fearing that their buffs would be dispelled when dispel hits. Finally would have reached pretty good Thac0's with decent APR's so the T/M could have been backstabbing & using assassination from grandfather of assasin's ((or what's it called) & It would have worked on a number of different levels. But no. So. Bummer.

That was the plan. Now we're at 5,5mexp and we find out that our plan doesn't work. We could just bend the rules, but since we are "playing as it's meant to be played", it's a "nono". We'll stick by our original promise of playing by the rules, though with this change in mind we'll go back to the drawing board to fix this as we need to make changes to our crew composition. Big changes.

This also means that we were dragging along a completely useless character in chapters 4-5 for nothing. We could have had it so much simpler, even though we were still quite OP in almost all of the fights.

Stilll. Argh. Like complete argh.

***

This post has been edited by pekkae: Jan 29 2022, 08:14 PM

[bulian]

If you have the tweaks mod installed, you'll be able to forge MoTA.

[pekkae]

If you have the tweaks mod installed, you'll be able to forge MoTA.

Yes, but it isn't meant to be forged if your protagonist is a Vagrant (or anything else than a single class mage). As Vagrant gets a bunch of OP stuff as well.

But I think even without MotA (<= that's probably a better abbreviation than MoA), we think we are completely OP.

[pekkae]

I think we got a little bit carried away by stating that our "crew composition is completely destroyed". It isn't.

After some thinking and tinkering*, we re-recruit Nalia to the crew (the F/M version). We then retract all of the progress we made regarding the T/M (incl learned spells, nature's gift, forged items etc.) and give Nalia the same amount of exp that the T/M had (out counting the exp we got from the potions ofc.).

( *We would have taken Aerie, but she can't get improved alacrity )

We then forge Nalia's enhanced ring, give her Vecna & redistribute her weapons proficiencies by giving her a few points in flail's (you know FoA) and Katana. Then we forge Githzerai Blade. And she's like very awesome immediately. Not quite as versatile as our T/M would have been but a better fighter & a better spell caster. Completely OP, that's the way we like it.

We also retract our decision to get robe of the apprenti from the apprentices and get reaching ring instead (and we upgrade it to enhanced version giving +1 spell from levels 1-7). We play test our group a little bit and finish mystery of the shimmering light illusionist & enchanter & greater doppleganger (or what's it called).

Yup. Compleltey OP. And Kensai is yet to get her superpowers. Ditto for RB & Vagrant (well, ok Vagrant now has some for we just got ring of the woodlands) And we just have bioware npc's (though iatweaked ones).

PC Vagrant
Imoen Kensai
Valygar RB
Nalia F/M
Neera (as Neera)
Jaheira

This post has been edited by pekkae: Jan 29 2022, 08:16 PM

[lxgxnd9]

Party looks pretty strong, might be time for an Insane difficulty run haha

[pekkae]

Party looks pretty strong, might be time for an Insane difficulty run haha

Haha. Yea. I'm trying very hard not to succumb into playing the game on insane. Even though many of the fights can be done on insane I'm quite certain micromanaging through demon prince / demogorgon would be ... too much.

Then again, perhaps with v7.

[lxgxnd9]

Is there a rough estimate when v7 will be out?

[critto]

I'd prefer not to make any promises. Life's hectic. I was hoping to get v7 out last year, but didn't have enough time. I did manage to make a lot of progress, though. 90% of the planned TODO list is implemented, the story for the druid stronghold is written and put into the game, structurally. Implementation of the combat encounters, debugging and subsequent testing of the whole thing (start to finish) is what's left.

I'll try to get some work done this year as well.

[kilorew]

Forge Paws of the furious cat for Jaheira. Now she can get 6APR (under IH) with a 2-handed weapon.

I must be missing something on my playthrough, How does your Jaheria get 6 APR w/ IH + Paws of Furious cat?

Mine has 4 APR w/ IH + Paws. Base of 2 ofc, where's your extra 1 coming from?

This post has been edited by kilorew: Feb 5 2022, 05:48 PM

[pekkae]

Forge Paws of the furious cat for Jaheira. Now she can get 6APR (under IH) with a 2-handed weapon.

I must be missing something on my playthrough, How does your Jaheria get 6 APR w/ IH + Paws of Furious cat?

Mine has 4 APR w/ IH + Paws. Base of 2 ofc, where's your extra 1 coming from?

Base 1,
paws of the furious cat 2,
combat trance 3

x

improved haste = 6.

ps. how do you feel about the clan spirit?

This post has been edited by pekkae: Feb 5 2022, 06:29 PM

[kilorew]

Haha knew I was forgetting something, thanks

Clan Spirit seems very strong early chapters, almost better damage/tank then fighters are CH2/3