I have time on weekend, so I finished WK. Some opinions:

Orc horde: was very enjoying and great. I was thinking if they stop to come at all or shall I loot the pool or do sthing else to stop them. Anyway I decided I hold while I can. I still left plenty of resources (spells, usable items) when they stopped, and I did ancient dragon and machine without a rest after the orc horde. This was that kind of encounter what I likes more: some harder enemies which are cared by my fighters, and many medium-weaker one which are handled by my casters. (Another example for this are those assasins in post Firkraag quest.) Anyway, I think some of the orcs should be a bit more difficult, I mean weaker then those mages, but harder than reguler orcs and archers. And I vote at least 1-2 more waves.

Ancient dragon: very good fight. My only comment: I have found last part of the dragonlord here. I don't know if this is intentional or not, and I don't remember if there is any dragon left in the game, but I think there is no reason to be able to craft that item which is best against dragons only after the last or hardest dragon in the game...

Machine: improved stuffs were great. I kept ultragolem and elemental golem to summon max. golems, before I killed them. It was a bit hard at end, since I was run out from spells cause of orc horde and ancient dragon, my chars were exhausted. So at the end I have 2 amber golems, 2 coin, ultra and elemental there, since I was not able to kill enough fast the last summoned ones. Anyway, I did it. Those mages were craps btw, so some improvements would be fine here.

Guardians of the seal were easy, and that Demogorgon was a joke also for my party... Imho you should make this harder, Sikret, since it is intended one of the hardest battle in the game. Now any improved ToB fight is harder than he...

Anyway, less experience from mosters, and nerfed level table will be great imho, I think end game will be more challanging in 4.3. Now Haer and Anomen has max. lvl in my game (lvl 40), and I have just got Yaga's heart...

And I just realized I haven't found Holy Scabbard for Holy Avanger. Where should it be? Anyway, it is not so big loss. Best feature is 50 % MR, Keldron now has 90 % with that sword, but I am nowadays using 2handed Daystar, Purifier etc. with him, and soon I will have JD sword, so he will use that.

Congratulations, shadan! Finishing all those difficult battles without resting in between was a great job.



Well, Ancient Dragon doesn't necessarily need to be the last dragon you meet in the game. Theoretically, Draconis, Abazigal and even the Black Dragon can be next to him. Draconis (both human form and dragon form) are imporved further in v4.3. Moreover, the halberd is useful even against non-dragons. It grants immunity to the 9th level spell "Dragon's Breath" for example and can fire the same spell with a chance per hit.

I agree about the machine's mages. They will be to some extent improved in v4.3.



Yes, even with Ascension's component installed the battle with Demogorgon is too easy. I will improve him in v5.

Yes, thank you.



If you need spoilers, feel free to send me a PM.

Thanks for the reply, Sikret.



You are right. I was not aware it protects against Dragon's Breath spell. And I hope I will use it against Abazigal and Draconis. I forgot them when I thought ancient drgaon is the last dragon.

I forgot to mention, those improved Fire Giants were great also. They killed my lvl 40 Anomen within 2-3 secs, despite of Armor of Faith... His AC is fairly bad (around -10), since I use Hammer of Thor and Storm Star +5 with him. 5*-s in hammer, 3*s in maces. His damage output is incredible, especially when 10D10 lightning proc applied. So those giants hits around 50 with a single hit. Even Keldorn has a problem sometimes with his -23 AC. And when they throwed away my 2 real tanks (PC and Haer), there were hard times...
Also that named giant, Berenn was cool. I tried to keep him stunned with Power Attack from Keldorn and my PC, Implosion from Cernd and Symbol of Stun and PW Stun from Nalia to prevent his healings, but he healed himself to max HP 2 times.

Imix was a bit easy imho. I just went in and hacked him to dust.

I didn't realise that it was the Dragon's Breath spell that was protected against either... I thought it was Red Dragon Breath too. Maybe change the description to make it absolutely clear?

Sure.

I forgot to mention that picture of the FoD&W is very dissapointing. It looks like an ordinal flail...

I want to ask about Nyalee encounter if those skellies stop spawning or not? My solution was to kill Nyalee, her friends and some skellies, and I flee from that map, since they seemed to be endless. First I thought Nyalee's death will stop them, but no.

Sikret, erase this if you think it is spoiler and send the answer in PM.

The total number of Skeleton Lords in that area is huge but finite. By escaping the map without killing all of them you have just lost the xp you could gain after killing them all, nothing more. In the next version I will probably add some treasure to the last wave of Skeleton Lords to encourage you to stay and fight them all.

Some questions and thoughts:

1. I tried the famous SI: Div + Mislead + improved bard song combo with Haer'Dalis, and was a bit surprised when True Seeing killed his clone 2 times from 2 tries. (JD sword fight and Yaga-Shura). What else, Blur was dispelled by True Sight also. What should be the problem? I am pretty sure, SI. Div was active.

2. I tried to make my dual characters what I am planning for 5.0. I just wanted to see how weapon skills and etc. would be optimal. When I tried to create ranger 8 > cleric, I realized that maybe Stalker would be better than regular ranger. I was surprised when no dual option came up with Stalker. Abilities were not the problem, since I SKed them to 18. I was able to dual swashbuckler, normal ranger, but not the Stalker. Anyone has an idea why?
Anyway, since mage spells comes only at 12 lvl, and his bS multiplier is only x1 at lvls 1-8, so it is not worth. (Suppose backstab x1 means normal damage...)

3. JD sword fight was not too difficult imho. It was not harder than the end of SoA. I found Yaga-Shura and Oasis fight more challanging... Mostly cause of many enemies, when I had to defend my weaker partymembers (Nalia, Cernd). Also Oasis fight is hard, since it starts immidiately after the map loaded, no time to buffs etc... I don't know if it is cheat, but I went to pocketplane to rest after that short conversation. I had to stop to play, but when I will have to play again, I will buff up in the pocketplane, and go back with buffed characters. If this is not intended, it would be wise to prevent pocketplane port in the fight.

4. I have some thoughts about Scribe Scroll and Alchemy HLAs. I have more than 20 HLA in my party from those 2. Avarage gold is 150 from one use, 3000 from 1 rest. If I rest for 4 weeks, that means 250000 gold, which helps to solve gold problems. Is this a cheesy or cheat? In 5.0, it will be less efficient since char levels will be slower, but still there will be a possibility. I would prefer if these HLAs would be picked up only once, they would give a better scrolls, potions..., and items made by them were not sellable.
Alchemy: Barbarian essence, Magic Resistance giving potions etc. Strength potions don't worth, since all of my chars has somekind of strength improving items.
Scribe Scroll: Greater Restoration, Heal or any other useful 6-7th scroll from priests, and useful lvl 5-9 scrolls from mages, bards...

It's actually x2. The kit's description is incorrect in the vanilla game. thetruth reminded this to me a while ago and I fixed it. You will see the right description of the kit while playing IA v5.

In which battle did you manage to teleport into pocketplane: JD or Oasis?



I will consider these suggestions for v6. Thanks.

Oasis.
In JD fight it is out of question. I traveled to WK, killed demon there, teleported to pocketplane, made the sword, rest, buff, telport out = dead demon prince.
After this, I killed Yaga-Shura, and traveled to Oasis. Those bastards killed me 2 times without buffs. Well, killed 1 character, but I give up fights after any of my character dies, since ressurrect is not my way...
So 3rd time, I traveled to oazis, and teleported to pocketplane immidiately after the short dialog. Now I am resting there, and I will teleport back into the fight with buffs.

Anomen hit vs. giant with Hammer of Thor:
72 damage from crit
6 damage from D6 electr. proc
52 from 10D10 electr. proc

Giant was down with a single hit.

Nice, but it will be a bit different in v5. As you know, if you go for the 2nd JD battle in SOA portion of the game, you can't be pre-buffed. I have decided to make it the same way even if you go for that battle in TOB. The battle should not be easier in TOB, right?

Agree. Anyway, with buffed chars, that fight was not too difficult. I am sure without buffs it will be much harder...

What about Oasis fight? Is pocketplane teleport legal there?

Any suggestion about why I am not able to dual the Stalker kit?

Yes, thank you.

Teleport to pocketplane doesn't work during combat as far as I remember. Perhaps, you have paused the game too quickly before the battle actually begins. To be honest, I don't have the time to block every possible exploit which has all along existed in the original game. I have blocked a good number of them, but be your own policeman and don't use them even when they are available.



Stalkers can't dual class IIRC.

Why? It is not mentioned in kit description. And thief kits can dual class... Is this from original game?

In the original BG2:SoA, both Archers and Stalkers could dual class to Clerics. When the ToB expansion arrived it restricted those two ranger kits from dual classing for some reason, while Beastmasters and generic Rangers can still freely dual class. One of the OBC components of the G3 BG2 Fixpack can remedy this.

Yes, as I said, the kit's description was incorrect in the vanilla game, both in respect to its backstab multipliers and its dual classing prohibition. The description is corrected in IA v5 as follows:

Thanks for reply. I can't see the reason behind this btw... Stalker is not overpowered class. So simple ranger left for me.

Well, I reloaded and did Oasis fight without pocketplane rest. Was nice fight. Spell trigger, chain cont. and summoned cannon fodders (from items and spells) was the key.
I can't understand why I can't summon planetar and deva at same time. If any of them is there, others are not allowed to summon. It is not same type monster, only in monster class...

Only one celestial at a time. There's a tweak however not recommended that takes care of that.

I stopped my 4.2 run after a several fails in Divine Epic Encounter. I haven't played since months, but now I thought I will finish it before I start v5. I had a very good try yesterday: I killed all 3 golems, all summoned raksasha, and left only with the prince. But sadly I was a bit low in important spells at that time and my F/I PC and Haer'Dalis died in an accident.
The only reason why I bring this up, beacause I encountered with a very annoying problem. My summoned noble djinn always casted Haste which overwrote Imrpoved Haste on my melee chars... I think this was mentioned earlier on this forum, but it is very annoying and I haven't used a good improved item in the hardest battle of the game. There is a point in v5 changes which says summoned monsters are smarter. I don't know if it contains "don't cast Haste when Improved Haste applied on some party members". Best solution imho if Haste wouldn't be able to overwrite Improved Haste.

Yes, in v5 Improved Haste won't be overridden by any type of haste spell. Quote from Fixes and tweaks document:



However, the greater djinni casts wizard haste (not stalker haste) which means that even in previous versions it wouldn't override Improved Haste.

In v5, the Improved Haste effects granted by items (such as Boots of the Ranger Lord) won't be overridden by haste spell either.