Hello there. At last, my holiday has started and I have finished my BG1 TuTu game, so that I can enjoy the awesome IA mod! I know I am kinda late but I was so busy with my school and exams and all...

Anyway. I also have other difficulty enhancing mods so my game is one of the hardest around, I think. Old mods offer no real difficulty to me though as I know how to deal with their challenges. Indeed, I started doing old mods quests, like Thief stronghold and Trademeet, they were tough, but I was ready for them and finished them without too much trouble.

I love this mod. I really appreciate the awesome challenge factor IA introduces to my game. I have played previous version before, it was hard but very doable.

My party, finished BG1 TuTu with ToTSC so was slightly of higher lvl in the start.

Protagonist-Wild mage:So fun and powerful!
MP created Inquisitor-Very useful!
Jaheira-good, dependable lass.
Viccy-She is useful with MR and clerical spells.
Minsc-He is strong and versatile.
Yoshi-Thief at the moment, sets traps. Immy will replace him though.


This time it was very difficult. More difficult. Copper Coronet:Beastmaster was doable but needed luck and a few tries. Then I assaulted Slaver's HQs and got slaughtered...fast.

Those assasins kept spawning, and they were virtually immune to most spells, chaos, hold, command etc. did not work at all. So I chose brute force, protected all my party with pro from fire and spawned fireball after fireball...this took care of them. Cleric was not too tough, but Captain Heagan...Oh my God! He was very fast, (perma improved hasted?) and he had a very unpleasant regeneration rate. He was badly injured and a few rounds later he was uninjured. My hasted fighters could not kill him, and he wasted everybody singlehandedly. This really troubled me, I reloaded and I left the HQ for the moment.

Another regeneration problem. Druid Grove, I know Belm is no easy treasure anymore but I did not expect it to be 'that' though. Perhaps I lost my touch for challenge? In the previous version there was one improved spider and it was not very tough. But this...Ghost Spider...it has insane regeneration as well, and it has many allies. All are extremely fast, tough, deadly and difficult too kill!

With the help of all protection spells in the book (Free Action and Pro from MW helps a lot), and continous spawning of Sunfires and hasted melee action, I killed its allies but Ghost spider just does not die! It regenerates too fast, and kills with ease. What to do, what to do, slow may work but I don't have time to cast it, I only have one mage, my protagonist, who is a wild mage, and he is busy drawing attention from other spiders and blasting sunfires. (which by passes MR but does not help much.)

Sunfire really helped against Founder of Trademeet though, he was down with the help of steady crushing weapons and sunfire spells.

Pirates in the Docks. The mage was toned down significantly compared to previous version (he does not cast Dragon Breaths anymore) but his contingency with THREE Finger of Deaths on my mage PC was smart. Vİccy's Death Ward protects from it, but the Pirate Captain is too tough. He is rather...unnatural. Does he have buffs or is he just that good? I will go there soon again.

I returned to Slaver's HQ, and I focused on Captain Haegan. Blasted three fireballs via Spell Sequencers (courtesy of NRD, I am not that high lvl yet) and he was badly injured...This was my chance and I managed to kill it via a big assault. Rest was just little trouble. I did not know I could not rest or come back but I prevailed against annoying mages inside...Though Yoshi did not make it, ahh well I was able to raise him afterwards.

What do you do to deal with the insane regeneration of some enemies? Also, why are those assasins are immune to mental effects? And I noticed they did not give XP upon kill. Was this deliberate or a bug? Considering they keep spawning and I kill lots of them, I was a little pissed off that I got no XP at all. (some IWD2 memories come to surface..ahh.)

Any strategies against Ghost Spider? It is tooo tough! My party is lvl 12-13 so I guess I must lvl up a lot.

Also tackled Troll Mound and Sewers Party. Now I like a challenge, but I guess I must lvl up a little more before it can be a fair battle. They are tooo tough!

Actually, after dispelling the buffs of Sewer's party, Greater Malison+Emotion+Chaos trick does put a few of them out of the battle, but Gaius (he was the mage, right?) keeps spawning ABDHWs and I am not relaly prepared for that. It nukes all my party, killing my protagonist with one hit sometimes. Also, Yoshi's traps do absolutely nothing against them! Sikret is really the bane of the cheesy gameplay!

Heh, I managed to beat the Improved Rakshasa of Sewers though. Fun!

Which quests do you reccomend as for now? I flinch from going for Windspear Hills. Really. I think I will do Temple quests right now, Beholders are tricky but they are only buffed by my previous mods. And not having Shield of Balduran is a nice change.

Again I must congratulate Sikret for such a wonderful mod. I enjoy all the hardships and extremely difficult challenges offered by this mod, it truly encourages me to play BG2 non-stop! And another bonus, so far, my game ws running without ANY slow-downs, with top performance! Wow. This is really cool, as even my previous installations caused annoying slowdowns thanks to many mods installed. But now it is even faster than my BG1 TuTu game! I am delighted, ofcourse!

Thanks for the answers, ooh I hope I did not cause you much headache. As a newbie to this mod, please do forgive my naiveness and enthusiasim! I just love this mod too much!

Hi, Silverstar!

Welcome back!

Hey, you are doing very well. As you said, you just need to level up before going for some particular enemies.

As for the assassins in slaver's buidling, they have the same sort of immunities the other assassins in Skinner's hideout have in the vanilla game, nothing more.

Hope to read more from you again soon. I know you as an experienced player and a tactician, so I'm sure you will find the right way to deal with enemies without many hints from me or others. Good luck!

I don't know Sikret. Thank you for your compliments, I was confident in my abilities and experience as well, but this time everything was a lot harder than the mod's previous version. I even thought I had lost my edge. Few battles I won, tested me to my limits and I had to do many reloads but to tell you the truth, I enjoyed every moment of it. I know and appreciate the tiny tweaks too, like the party can not retreat once a major battle breaks out, and there is no stealing from shops, and I do not have Robe of Vecna! (though I bought a Robe of The Good Arch Magi from Trademeet, heh) Well...I guess I will be busy playing B2G for a very long time this summer. Thank you very much again for that!

I've heard it mentioned that the slow spell may have an effect on the regeneration rates of enemies. This would make sense, since Slow is supposed to slow the target(s) down in time compared to everyone else.

It does, as much as haste doubles the regeneration rate. At least I think so in the first case.

Yeah, slow is a lifesaver in some fights - I took out Torgal at a fairly low level and the founder of trademeet by tossing 3-4 lower resistances, a greater malison and a few slow spells. Improve hasting your party doubles their attacks per round and hence mellee damage output.

The pirate captain dude has around 60% damage resistance and when he casts Hardiness it goes up to 100%. I ended up beating him with an all out improved hastened mellee assault and downed him before he was able to cast it. Also, it should be noted that breach is able to remove the effects of hardiness.

Slavers hold just about killed me too - I found it very tough and resorted to just using plenty of buffs, brute force and a few summons.

Belm fight was impossible for me when I tried it (admittedly at a very low level) and I'm yet to give it another attempt. I've given the sewers party a few tries and they've just been too difficult.


As for what to do next the Unseeing eye is easy enough; the beholders are a walk in the park and the 2 improved battles are very doable with a 12/13 party. After that the first two levels of watchers keep are good for items and xp, I'm currently stuck on the chromatic demon, but until then is easy enough (and you can grab that nice +3 returning crimson dart for your wild mage). I found De'Arnise Hold pretty difficult when I did it (lvl 9/10 i think), but it might be a real option for a 12/13party.

Thanks for replies.

I know Slow is needed to counter regeneration, but it is difficult to slow those enemies as they have tons of MR, immunities, protections and even then, best saving throws.

Anyway, ofcourse this can not discourage me!

I beat Teshal and his zombie city last night. Now that was though. Getting out of Storm of Vengeance, dealing with the Bone Devils and other nuisances fast was the key. Even then, the insane regeneration rate of Teshal really nearly was too much. Potions of Invulnerability, Giant Strengths and oils of speed helped too.

I then killed the Pirates in the Docks district. Dispelling and quickly killing Pirate Coordinator helped. A lot. Pirate Captain needed to be breached regularly, and then died. Other pirates were though but doable.

A question for Sikret. How do you give such an impressive regeneration effect to those creatures? Via an item? I am asking because I had a problem in my game with the Docks Lich. A mod adds a female lich to docks, and she is a really unique one, with excellent scripts and all. She likes releasing multiple Death Fogs, Incendiary Clouds, Ice Storms, etc in a very small place, she has Time Stop scrolls and uses them, has a lot of undead helpers as well, she was originally tough, but now I think your mod, somehow, modified her too. She had an insane regeneration rate which she did not have previously!

What's worse, when she is Badly Wounded, she casts an uninterruptable Pro from MW, Time Stop, Improved Haste, Black Blade of Disaster, and Tenser's Trans and then attacks recklessly. My Jaheira had an AC of -12, save vs death of 1, with IronSkins to boot she was pretty untouchable by the lich, but even when my whole hasted party assaulted her, he regenerated too fast! She is injured, one round later, Uninjured...It was annoying, especially when she attacked and killed Minsc and even once disintegrated my poor Wild Mage. Sigh. In the end, she killed Jan, Viccy, Minsc, my Inquisitor dispelled her BBoD, and only Jaheira's Dolorous Decay spell managed to slow her down for us to finally kill her. It was waay tougher than it was before, and I suspect it is your mod's doing?

She originally had Cloak of Balduran too, now the cloak is nerfed and is only of +1 protection. IA again, right? I at least managed to get a Ring of Invisibility, and a Time Stop scroll:way to go for NRDs!

I tried Tower of Deception mod just a few minutes ago, the Marilith near Astral Shard...she had a nasty regeneration rate too. I have Improved Shard installed, but I am not sure what it does. I will try and beat that Marilith eventually, but I once got her good, did a tons of dmg with my melee fighters but she regenerated too fast.

To tell you the truth I really despise that regeneration rate, and I fear it may plague all of my tougher enemies, is this intended or a bug via an undroppable item which gives some abilities to tough enemies? That Docks lich battle could last forever if she was not slowed down.

I loved this fight! I alluded to it in another thread. This is a fighter-mage kamikaze (and lich) to really put some fear into you - at least at lower levels. You are right in that the lich is much tougher now. It uses Sikret's scripts, but I'm not sure about the regeneration rate.

Improved Anvil has an "improved liches" component which (among other things) grants some regeneration to all liches, but it's not insane. My guess is that the lich in question has had his own regeneration and then it has stacked with the regeneration IA has added to all liches. This is one example why you should not install any other difficulty enhancing mod when you play IA.

I don't think that the lich you mentioned uses any of Improved Anvil's scripts, because none of liches in IA cast uniterruptable Pfmw. None of them cast Tenser's Transformation either.

As for Cloak of Balduran, yes, IA has nerfed it.

A few lower resistances and a greater malison helps But yeah, its only really worth it on the really tough ones.


The trick is to lure them only a few at a time and use a decoy or two to hold them up .

Btw, what mod adds the lich?

Tactics Lich on the Docks is the subject of conversation. I concluded that the lich is borrowing some of IA's generic scripts because it seemed to do the routine explosion of protections that IA's mages do. Of course, my memory sometimes fails me. I am *sure* the lich is a more difficult battle than it was. The uninterruptible stuff comes because the lich will spam spells from scrolls (typical of Tactics). The real challenge is to kill her quickly enough to take those scrolls. However, I suggest that you at least one time allow her to live for awhile. Eventually, she'll run out of spells and do the melee combat script. That's pretty cool. Unfortunately, I doubt it will be too useful for us to emulate this tactic as players. I don't think a transformed mage will do enough damage in the hard fights of IA before his defenses fail and he dies while unable to cast spells...

Oh decoys help. Fully charged Wand of Monster Summoning is very very useful to delay and seperate enemies and have them waste their .


OK Sikret, I asked for it, I agree it was my fault. It was fun though, and a very big challenge.

I had to swap Yoshi for Jan, Jan is far more useful with mage spells. It is great relief to have a back up mage in the party too. Poor Yoshi's traps do nothing to IA enemies andhe dies too fast. Jan has stoneskins and mirror images, haste and breach at the very least. I will take Yoshi to SpellHold though.

@Stu

Err, I can not remember, Unfinished Business or Improved Battles? EDIT:rbeverir says it is Tactics, I must check.

Sikret's IA adds regeneration to Marilith's weapon. Astral Shard Guardian has this weapon in main hand and off-hand and I believe that same regeneration rate stacks, so I think she regenerates 6 HP per round.

Silverstar: It ain't UB wich adds that lich. You might want to look at the readmes - it's wise to do

It's Gebhard Blucher's "Lich in the Docks" component from Tactics.

If she dual wields (two of) that particular weapon, she regenerates 36 hp per round.

The weapon is equipped by Noble Mariliths and Abyssal Escorts in IA, but none of them weilds more than one.

OMG, 36 HP/ round... It will be hard to kill her.

@Shaitan

Thanks, I will.

@Shadan

Yes, hard but not impossible. Luckily, she had SI:Diviniation, not the ever dreadful Abjuration, so my Inqusitor was able to dispel her buffs fast. I sent my heavily protected Wild mage to tackle him with Rynn's Staff+4, My Inquisitor aimed the Dispel magic so that it only hit Marilith and my Wild mage, luckily I had SI:Abjuration. Then Jan and I lowered her MR, and casted a Greater Malison, she then got stucked in her own WEB! Then my Improved Hasted fighters, with 5 attacks/round, made short work of her. Astral shard was invulnerable but I somehow blasted it with a fireball. Oh well I will not question the miracle.

Sikret, I absolutely loved what you did with Planar Sphere! Very challenging and scary, but very doable with right tactics!

Those improved halflings are rather scary, but Viccy gated in a Pit Fiend (improved) which really slowed them down. We dealt with the archer and psionic guy fast, while mage, suprisingly, fell down to a GM+Emotion combo. PF single handedly destroyed the fighter guy, improved PFs are rather scary, but I hope you won't mind me playing with improved PFs, it is the way they are originaly created in PnP, with 6 attacks/round, slow, save vs poison or die, 20d6 fireballs, remove magic, imp. invisibility, and gating another when near death. Luckily Viccy had casted Pro from Evil 10'radius on us.

Lavok...How should I put this, my wld mage had to protect everyone with every spell he got, Protection from Magic, Electricity, etc. and had to bait his remove magic spells himself. Summons distracted him, while my guys used ranged weapons AND normal missiles. Heh, funny that such a powerful, lich-like mage is not immune to it! Gem golem there was not too annoying, Jaheira, with an AC of -13 and Iron Skins, is quite capable of tanking them forever.

Lavok had regeneration too, but I am grateful it was not insane. This is a good sign. No enemy in the Planar Sphere had that annoying insane regeneration rate which I hate sooo much!

Tolgerias...This guy was tough, but I tricked him to waste his spells on me , suprise, I had two SI memorised, and with al protection spells in my book neither ABDHW nor Comet could touch me, though three FoDs were scary, Viccy has put a Deathward on me. Big hint:Always put Death Ward on your mage guys in every major fight, it helps as they have sucky save vs death magic! And he was not immune to normal missiles neither. He fell down easily after a while. Nameless mage chick there was more of a nuisance, she summoned ogres and carrion crawlers...Wow! Scaaary!

I also beat down the defender of the robe, from your TheFour mod. Quite accidentaly and suprisingly easy. Gem/coin golems are not very scary any more when you can tank them and know how to hurt them. I guess I am improving. But I did not dare to don the robe, it sounded powerful but too scary. It is my protagonist afterall! I sure do miss Robe of Vecna, though.

The improved demon fight outside, came quite challenging, but doable in the first try with some micro-management. Switching wounded tanks and healing them was the key. Viccy stayed in the back, casting Heal and Greater Restoration when needed. (very useful!) She also easily dominated an army of ghasts which Mahurezis raised with her mighty Turn Undead. (luckily she did not turn my Imquisitor though!) I now have a nice item part named after some one I know too! Cool!

I think I am getting the hang of your mod. And Planar Sphere has never been so much fun before! My wild mage just hit lvl 14, and I bought a lot of nice items around (I killed so many gem golems I made a real fortune!), also constructed a ring of protection+2 and cloak of protection+2. I wish to go to Asylum now, is my lvl good enough? I also have Improved Asylum mod, which will really make things hard, I think. Just the way I like!

Your mod is still the greatest I have ever played! I love it soo much!

I'll second that - I thought that the sphere was perfect dificulty-wise for a lvl12/13 party - It was very challenging and I me fighting tooth and nail, however I think I only had to restart once through the entire sphere (when lavok finger of deathed my pc). Just about every fight was awesome!

I just beat the Chromatic demon after heaps and heaps of planning, 7 project images and using the rod of resurrection like theres no tomorrow. He has been the toughest non-regenerating character I have fought thus far - he just stays alive soo long and summons some very tough creatures. After hacking into him for what felt like ages on 'injured' I started trying a few disabling spells - spook worked well, but made him hard to hit, emotion solved that though! I didn't think fear or emotion would work with a demon, but I suppose after being locked up for several thousand he must have very low moral or something.

Do you mean the Chromatic Demon in Watcher's Keep level... 2/3?

I thought you could do with the following damage types and he would be somewhat of a breeze if you had 2 tanks. I cannot remember any change in him in Anvil 2.0 (which I played last year).... oh man... I can't wait for Anvil4.3

- fire against ice (spells, arrows, some weapons, firetooth?)
- ice against fire (very few spells, few weapons)
- lightning against slime (very few spells, very few weapons)
- acid/poison against air (some spells, quite a few weapons)

the same!

Yeah, you'd think so...
I tried that a bit, but I'm not sure if the arrows did that much - I kept getting weapon ineffective messages for all my arrows (even FireVsIce and PoisonVsAir etc) and they didn't seem to force him to change form too quickly. Spells I found were a lot more effective at this and I used them as often as I could (in rounds where no one required a resurrection). He's much harder than what he was in the Vanilla game and summons Amber Golems (way tougher than your average gem or coin type), Salamander Princes and these difficult shadow things. There were about 4 or five of these at the start and he kept summoning them throughout the battle. At the start I got the demon to chase my kensai/thief to keep him out of the battle (this annoyed me - I was trying to get him to follow my 13beserker/10cleric who was more useless). Taking out his friends took positively ages and the princes especially have a few tricks up their sleeves.

After taking these guys out I started to focus on the demon and boy he can take a pounding! I went through 6 charges of a rod of lightening, around 5 flame arrow spells and he didn't stay in air/fire form for that long (thank god). I was using mostly +3/4 weapons and these did about 2 damage per hit.

Vampric touch was awesome against the Amber golems btw, thanks for the tip Sikret!

Oh wow, that encounter certainly changed! I'll have to come up with some more tactics if I'm going to have to beat these things.

Ah yes, you're right.
In this case I will remove her off-hand weapon and add her extra attack instead.

I'm glad you liked it.


I recommend that you uninstall all such cheesy things/mods from your game if you want to experience the true challenge in all battles.


As I have said before, don't use any of the 4 items from my "The Four" mod. They have problems which need to be fixed in a future version. Just enjoy the battles but don't use the items.


Enemy evil clerics will do this for you in v4.3


Thank you very much for the kind words. I'm glad that your initial frustration is fading and you are enjoying the game.

Cheers

Well I was never really frustrated, I just thought the insane regeneration rates I encountered could have been a bug or mod conflict.

As for Improved Pit Friend, I don't think it is too cheesy, PF is as strong as it normally should be under 2nd edition AD&D rules (which, I think you worship too!) plus they are as big threat as to my party. They keep sapwning remove magics which also dispel my party (and their pro from evil too!) and their tendency to blast 20d6 fireballs occasionaly hurt a lot too, though they are good fodders as enemy mages can not get rid of them easily. Don't worry, I am not abusing it, so far I used PF against halfling fighter in the PS and against a group of Greater Mummies in Asylum.

Byrnlaw was easy enough. Galwena and her pet wizard was not too tough. Mage was not immune to normal missiles so my improved hasted party made short work of him. Galwena was as if she was not improved, she did not have any HLAs, is it normal? Cowled wizard was nasty, he casted Absolute Immunity which made him immune to everything so I had to grit my teeth and deal with Coin Golems he summoned. In the end we bested him.

I had to avoid Stoneaxe dwarf for the moment though, I did not have the required spells (and NRD helps only sometimes), he will be there when I am back, right?

I am now in Asylum, and it is great! Kobold avatar and Amber Golems were nasty, Jaheira saved the day, thanks to her Harper Pin she was immune to resiudal effects of Amber golems, and Viccy had enough time to cast pro from lightninging on Minsc and my Inquisitor too. Rest was pure hack and slash, but fun!

Ancient Tome, I beat all fights in one single attempt and the treasure was great, I needed that ruby ray of reversal. Golems were no trouble, but I gasped when I saw Ghost Spiders and its crones. YET, this time, I managed to beat them all, my wild mage released three ABDHWs which cleared the lesser spiders, and my improved hasted fighters were able to deal with the freaking Ghost Spider!

UB also adds Bodhi to my game, each time I rest, Bodhi comes and attacks with her vampires, ofcourse, at this point they are not very threatening but fun regardless!

It is good to know that UB and Improved Asylum mods are compatible with your mod's modifications to asylum, Sikret!

The library was tough. Too tough than you intended, I think, there was a coin golem, cat o'nine lives and TWO liches! I think these two are added by Improved Asylum, but they use your scripts so they are extremely deadly! So I had to close the door and deal with the golem and cat. Neither was too tough, I am proud to say that we made reaal short work of them. My fighters have 19 STR, Jaheira has 18/00 thanks to Ogre Gauntlets, and when I improve haste them they do pretty impressive damage in melee! Only, Coin Golem needs crushing or piercing dmg. I had Ryns staff+4, Club+3 and Spear+3 so no problem. I could also cast another +3 weapon from a scroll of enchanted weapon if needed though. I must say Improved Haste is a VERY useful spell all around, I have all my sixth lvl slots filled with them, save one which has a PfMW for emergency.

I will have to deal with the two liches somehow as there is a most valuable Finger of Death scroll in there, the bane of all mages around. I already have a strategy, I have dealt with one lone lich a few minutes ago, so two can't be too tough, I hope.

I had to stop playing as my mum wanted to play some old NES games on my PC, heh heh heh, it is good though, I was playing BG2 non-stop for hours and my eyes kinda hurt. I can't find time to play IWD games any more Sikret, all I want is BG2! It is all your fault you know!

Consider me one of your faithful fans!