Hi to everyone again!
I just seem to find IA to be to enjoyable not to post here again, so...
Regarding my previous post "last words" - I decided to disregard "the off-topic anvil discussion" completely for several reasons (beside the above-mentioned), the main being this:
People there seem to be quite experienced BG2 players. They probably find the vanilla game too easy (and it is) and Improved Anvil great(and it is), but too hard. So they want to make it easier, which won't happen. So now they fret about it endlessly. Good for you guys and gals! Enjoy.


Anyhow...
I wanted to make a post of some of the best moments in IA experiences for everyone to read or/and submit their own posts.

To start with an example, I'll submit 3 very enjoyable battles:

1. First time ever with Dracolich
The party was : f/illus protag, Anomen, custom berserker, Haer'Dalis, Imoen and Valy. Relatively low levels, we waded in through the maze to find the oh mighty Draco. Reloaded. Prepared different spells. Died to vail. Repeat 7 more times. Rewrite spelbooks, Haer'Dalis - all 3.lvl slots with remove magic. None worked, reload. Try same tactic again, reload 2 more times, Haer'Dalis can't dispel him. Rewrite spelbook - all 3.lvl spell slots meteors. Anomen only healing, death ward and sweet air. Goes good this time, for a while. Imoen gets her defences killed asap. First vail, Imoen dies. Next vail, Valy and Anomen are both dead. Some time after, Draco is badly wounded, soon near death. protag is out of spells, but stoneskined with 30hps left. Pray Draco doesn't have PW:kill. Berserker gets level-drained and has 60hp left, Draco is attacking him. Haer'Dalis casts his final imp.haste on himslef, hits the Draco with melfs meteors 3 times in a row. Draco dies. Haer'dalis lvl 19 - most powerful vanquished - Dracolich. I couldn't believe my eyes.


2.First time Ancient Dragon
_Hard battle, no doubt about it. Same party as above. First try - fully buffed, we entered area. Die. Next try, my protag reads TimeStop scroll when wyrm appeared. Reload. Try again, got burned before I got to do anything. 4th time, I'm more careful. A misty creature attacks my prot, so I cast pfmw. I do the battle, kill mist with berserker, protag and Valy and Haer'Dalis and Anomen finish of the salamander and all together we go for the Efreet who dies soon, while Imoen spellstrikes and breaches the Dragon + kills his MR - he does pretty much the same to her. She gets silenced and dies, but the dragon is open to both breach and spells! Great!
My protag attacks the dragon, who kills his protections and breaches him. Crap! I try to cast "pfmw". I have no spells in my spelbook but 2x magic missile! WTF? I survived with uising wand of spell striking and sequencer/trigger and expending a lot of pfmw scrolls. Valy nailed the beast with his +5 katana. It was a great battle.

3.Suna Seni. For 80th time, perhaps
Vagrant, kensai, jester, ranger-cleric. a custom sorc. We were on our way to Trademeet, got ambushed in woods by Suna goons. (wanted to try this with no prebuffs). first round - jester fires magic missiles on cleric to disrupt his command spell, succesfully. Sorceror moves away a bit and reads a scroll of "chaos". Kensai and prot went to attack cleric. my rang-cler (didn't hit dual yet) starts hold person on a fighter. Suna wizard casts chaos (or confusion, don't remember). All in the battle (both my party and Suna goons) failed their saves vs "chaos", hold person affected the fighter and thief also. Cleric died next round (prot killed him). my sorc was not affected by confusion (he was out of area-of-effect), and Suna wizard was immune, turning this into one-on-one wizard duel while everybody else were battling each other. Pure chaos! Luckily (wisely!) I bought 3 "secret word" scrolls in Alkathla for my sorc! Jester was killed when my confused kensai hit him for 30+ hp with a critical hit (she had swrd of chaos+2). Only my prot and sorceror survived the battle! (Suna killed my kensai) Brilliant, pure fun!

1. Knight approaches protagonist, asking me to speak with Vanya. I go to the Order and speak with her, heard the voice, and laughed out loud. Sikret probably got his girlfriend or wife or somebody like this to do the voice acting; she is a horrible actress by the way. I reloaded a couple of times just to listen to her recite the viper queen quest introduction over and over.

2. "Don't stow thrones in grass houses." Then some drow in the tavern owns him for blaspheming. Somehow I never encountered this in the vanilla game. Pretty amusing.

3. Drizzt: Howdy there stranger
Protagonist: Defend yourself, fool!

No, Lady Vanya's voice actress has no relation with me. She is a known person in various modding sites and communities, but for some personal reasons she prefers to remain anonymous regarding her voice acting in IA. She asked me not to mention her name in the mod's credentials.

Yeah, it's a shame that it is not Meryl Streep who's voicing her. ;]


Hmmm...my dwarven barbarian (freshly resurrected, without armor) activating GWW and beating Skeleton Grandlord to a raw-boned pulp during Orcus fight....and then, with like 5 hitpoints left, turning back and doing the same to another one.....was the most memorable moment for me.

It has been some time since I last played IA (...and I'm probably not going to again), and I never been to EDE so I give you the three hardest fights I encountered:

1: Drow ambush
2: DROW AMBUSH
3: dROW aMBUSH

I never managed to get past past those guys. I restarted several times with new PC afterwards, but finally I gave up.

Here is one for you.

My toughest fight up til now was Faldorn with a Riskbreaker. The only tips I can give are:
1. level up seriously
2. use horror on Faldorn when she is about to cast those bears, making her miss that save and waste the bear spells
3. try to hit her silly with your bare hands... stoneskin is not funny, but having to use staves is the worst!
4. go for the summons as much as you can
5. use improved haste at the right time
6. be a chicken as much as possible

I've tried it every level since I became level 9 or something, but every time I got a bit further, some other spell was irking me. You will in the end feel ashamed that you have had to outclass her by many levels before you can kill her off...

Ha! I blame multistronghold component from ease of use. ;]


but yeah, Faldorn is a pain in the a... for single class fighters.

Not necesserely. It depends on your alignment. Even CG characters could cast one vampirich touch but neutral characters have even more possibilities. LN character can cast 2 Larloch's Minor Drain + 1 horror + 1 vampirich touch. The minor drain is very important in this battle because it has a really low casting time and it is perfect to disrupt enemy spellcasters. For LG and NG characters it is really very hard however.

I'm Chaotic Good and I have 2 Cure Light Wounds, 2 DUHM, 1 Horror and 1 Slow Poison.

It's a bit weird. The abstart.2da I check with NearInfinity says that I should have 2x SPIN101 (cure light wounds), 2x SPIN102 (slow poison) and 2x SPIN103 (DUHM). The innates I received are completely impossible considering the table. Hmm.. unless I'm looking in the wrong spot.

LG: 2xSPIN101, 2xSPIN102, 2xSPIN103
NG: 2xSPIN101, 2xSPIN102, 2xSPIN103
CG: 2xSPIN101, 2xSPIN102, 2xSPIN103
LN: 1xSPIN101, 1xSPIN102, 1xSPIN103, 1xSPIN104, 1xSPIN105, 1xSPIN106
NN: 2xSPIN101, 2xSPIN103, 2xSPIN105
CN: 2xSPIN102, 2xSPIN104, 2xSPIN106
LE: 2xSPIN104, 2xSPIN105, 2xSPIN106
NE: 2xSPIN104, 2xSPIN105, 2xSPIN106
CE: 2xSPIN104, 2xSPIN105, 2xSPIN106

Anyway, for the innates I had available, only the horror was a help against her. I would have loved a Larloch's Minor Drain or a Vampiric Touch.

Still, it is nearly impossible to kill her early game if you cannot or are not specialised in staves. Vanilla Faldorn is much easier though.

Slayerchange is too easy. No fun.