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.

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.

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.

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.

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.



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

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.)

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.

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.

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.

@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.

@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 is not possible in v5.

Some cheesy methods:

SPOILER!

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!

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.

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.

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

SPOILER!


Thanks

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

@Romulas

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

@Spike

SPOILER!

To Sikret:

Hi, I've started on IA v5 not so long ago, and I must say, great job Sikret!



Spoiler! (regarding Spike's question on the Warden)



2nd Spoiler on the same issue


On a separate note, perhaps you should include in the readme certain pre-requisites a party should have before attempting a modified quest?

Spoiler!



UPDATE!

This is in response to Spike's question regarding the Warden.

@LZJ

SPOILER!


@Sikret
If i remember correctly the best moment to travel to spellhold is when your party is between lvl 13-14. Does this count only for the main char?

This recommendation was made for the protagonist, yes, assuming the party consists of 5-6 members and the PC is a single-class character.

Thx, are there any musthaves to survive the spellhold?

@LZJ

SPOILER!

To spike:

Thanks for telling me that. I encountered the above problem with a different party, where my protaganist was a F/M/C who had used the Elven Expertise potion, and my party only had 4 members (protaganist + 3 NPCs). Hence, my experience level was rather high. Perhaps that affected the type of monsters spawned:

SPOILER!



Update:
Thanks for telling me that Sikret. My vagrant party is actually my 2nd party. Haven't gone through the Planar Sphere with it yet.

If I may....


I have a question concerning that...

In deciding when to add those extra creatures, did you factor in the protagonist XP, or the total party XP, or each individual NPCs XP?

I'm asking because I'm currently running a party of 5 and my mage Nalia cannot even cast level 6 spells yet and I already see many mages around me cast things like Mordenkainen's Swords, Spell Immunity Divination, Globe of Invulnerability and other high level stuff. I would hate to see some encounter with added creatures that requires even higher level spells to finish them off, let alone remove their spell protections.

Finally i've beaten the warden. This one was really hard.

SPOILER!


Forged Greater Entropy, Improved Dragon Helm and Master of the High Forest.
Will give Conster and the Shade Lord another try tonight.

@Spike

No problem. Perhaps, Planar Prison was a bit too difficult for your party. I will test it in my own run-through and will see if I need to tone it down or not.

Cheers

I'm really looking forward to seeing your report.

A question related to the fight with Conster.

SPOILER!

@Spike

SPOILER!

Thx, did it. Nice fight. I should be a bit more patient .

Just for the records.

Vagrant - lvlup to 13 (Swanmay-> i'm excited)
Nalia - 13
Cernd - 13
Anomen - 14
Hear'Dalis - 14
Valygar - 12

Finished the following quests/improved fights:
Mencar Pebblecrusher
Copper Coronet/Slavery ship
Lilarcor
Borinall
Planar Sphere
Planar Prison
Anarg
Mekrath and the Imp
Shadow Jailor
Tazok
Conster
Belm
Dalok
Faldorn
De'Arnise Keep

There's still a lot to do .

Great job, Spike!

Did you go for Mekrath without fighting with the sewer's party?

Also, I can see why Planar Prison was difficult for you. Your party had been low level for that battle. I guess the levels were even lower at that time.

Yes, the sewer party is still alive
and yes my levels were even lower when fighting the Warden. I've noticed your proposed time/lvl for this fight and now i know why he was such a pain in the a**.

Gave the Founder of Trademeet a try. Hehe, very nice, but i think i will skip him for now.

/edit
SPOILER!

While what you wrote in spoiler tags are indeed spoilers (because they give information about a specific battle) and you rightly put them in spoiler tags, my reply to it is general; so, I will write it normally:

It's an engine problem. It's not related to IA. Most of the times (though not always), enemies simply ignore (don't see) unconscious characters.

Surprisingly, i could beat the Shadow Dragon at this stage.

SPOILER!

To Spike

Some friendly advice about the Shadow Dragon, as resources and money are rather scarce in IA:


SPOILER!

@LZJ

SPOILER!

SPOILER!

SPOILER!

Thanks, Clown!

Will test him in my own game to see how it goes on. To be honest, Shadow Dragon has always been meant to be the easiest dragon in IA. So, I'm still satisfied if he is doable in chapter 2 (or 3) with some reasonable challenge.

Just a little note:
The Gauth after the bridge in the Unseeing Eye quest keep casting their bolts even when they are unconscious.

It's a vanilla game problem. Will fix for the next version. Thanks.

Need some help:
1)How can i bring down stoneskin or pfmw on a creature, which is immun up to lvl5 spells (i.e. Shade Lich)?
Currently my mage has access to lvl7 spells.

2)Is there any good spell combo/sequencer to kill/disable more powerfull undead like skeleton lords?

Well, one thing comes to mind, the wonderful ruby ray spell. This is why its a good idea to have two high level mage type casters, hence you get off 2 spells at the same time, or that occur on the target within the same round.

As has been noted on this forum that some enemy mages depending on their SI combination require up to 6 ruby rays to shred their defenses. At the higher levels (spellstrike comes to mind) it wouldn't take as many ruby rays.

Hope this helps, as for the skeleton lords, lets put it this way I took a party of about 12th level to spellhold, alittle early but didn't want to run into the "extra defenses if you take your time" thing. I got stomped in spell hold by the 3 skeleton lords, they waxed my party before the lich even had a chance to get into the battle. Consequently I started over, will not go there so soon next time.

Romulas

I thought Ruby Ray only takes care of spell defenses and doesn't take out natural immunities to spell levels?

If your Inquisitor or Mage is high enough level, a Dispel Magic might take down the PFMW. It might slow down the Skeleton Lords too. I remember the hallway Romulus is talking about. I launched a dispel magic to the center of the hallway after stepping through the door to take out the Lich's Immunity: Divination and maybe affect the skeleton lords. I don't know if it worked but the 4-5 skeletons I saw went down quickly to my Imp. Hasted characters. I had a much worse time with the lich.

A successful Remove/Dispel Magic is the only way (provided that the creature doesn't have SI:abjuration of course; if he has SI:abjuration, you will need to remove his SI using Ruby Ray spells first).



Lower their MR first; then all sorts of damage causing spells (except those which inflict cold damage) will affect them. (Obviously, spells which bypass MR will affect them even without lowering their MR: Vampiric Touch, Sunfire and even the less ambitious Larloch's Minor Drain will work. These spells don't cause huge damage to them, but if cast repeatedly, they may change the result of the battle for low level parties.)

Thx for your answers.

I thought something similar, but the problem was to dispell the shade liche's defences. The dispel/remove magic spell failes almost everytime (mage is lvl14). Somehow i manged to beat him. It was a very nice fight. After that the confrontation with Teshal was a piece of cake.

I asked for some advice to beat/distract the skeleton lords, because i did all the fights with powerfull undeads in the same order. The lords are so strong in melee that you have to kill them first. Wanted to know if someone has worked out a different strategy.

Here are coming some more notes/questions:
-The Sunfire scroll in Ribald's store says "handcuffed". I've never seen this before.
-During the fight with the shade lich Haer'Dalis, wielding Greater Entropy, hit him once and the confused symbol is shown above the lich's head. But the lich acts totally normal.

Yeah, it's a mistake (it's my fault, not Sikret's). The description of the spell is correct in the spellbook but the description on the scrolls was overwritten with 'handcuffed'... I failed to spot the wrong description on the scrolls when I was testing.