Apologies in advance for lengthy post, spoilers below:
I just wanted to say thanks to Sikret and his team for continuing to develop this mod for BG2, one of my favorite games. After getting a bit frustrated with vagrant protag against ancient dragon (too many silences, no unsilenceable arcane caster) and ancient secret of sulda quest, I sidelined that party, created a necromancer protag (necro PC, RC multi, B(9)->mage dual, riskbreaker, vagrant, cernd), and completed the mod on core difficulty (with one exception), including EDE. Considering the run took me several weeks in real life, the least I can do is share my thoughts on the mod. My install had both tower of deception and the four mod installed, though I didn’t use any of the custom items from either mod.
Notable pre-spellhold fights
I discovered a path out of the city which allows visits to all city areas (except graveyard) to be visited without triggering suna seni, as follows: slums, docks, government, gate, temple, bridge, umar hills.
Samia and company is probably the hardest fight pre-spellhold – if Kaol is killed in the first round, its not as bad, but this feels cheesy. Skeleton warlords are quite tough at this point in the game.
Thaxy (black dragon) is a very good fight pre-spellhold. I enjoyed this one very much.
Shade lord is quite a good fight, probably my favorite, due to balancing PFME and improved haste spells.
Pirate coordinator and conster can be killed in the same manner where no AI scrolls were used – after killing other mobs, fighters rush caster for half a round (after the mage starts casting something else) but back out after 2-3 hits. This is repeated 2-4 times until mage dies. Kaol can also be killed in the first round doing this.
Planar prison warden can be fought without the second yaun-ti group spawning – is this intended? Its much easier this way.
The new screaming statue fight is quite good and of appropriate difficulty.
Improved spellhold
With my necromancer PC, I went to spellhold with 2.17M XP (but level 15), slightly less than my vagrant party (2.2 M XP), yet this caused me to trigger one of the “improved” spellhold versions with the necro. I wasn’t aware this would be the case but decided to continue instead of reloading to save where PC had ~2.1 M XP. The first level (whisper spiders spawning on rest) and second level (continuous spawning of guardians, rest not interrupted) were challenging but doable; however, the third level, which also had continuous spawning of guardians, had 24(!!!) skeleton warlords instead of werewolves blocking the way to the mithril golem. Maybe this encounter takes party design into account, but at present party levels there is only one solution (my party only had 2 barbarian essence potions) – have B(9)->mage use all of the PFMW and some of the AI scrolls accumulated to clear the warlords. This was probably close to gold neutral for the party, but in the event that a party doesn’t have a B->M dual, they cannot progress and must skip gaining important items. I would suggest reworking this encounter – maybe make them the same as the portal guardians from level 1, (Ruhk, elemental golem, and several gem/coin golems) to allow parties of different compositions to have a chance.
Still, that wasn’t the worst part of the improved asylum – the worst was the irenicus fight, where either 2 or 3 waves of 6 golems spawned instead of 1 wave. Having a mage with PW:kill, no hardiness, and limited healing (cernd had barely hit lvl 14), meant that the party had very little chance due to following sequence: golem hits for 45, golem hits for 45,golem hits for 45 and chunks character, or irenicus casts PW:kill. Maybe if I had used death ward on all of the fighters, but instead I used the difficulty slider and beat the fight on novice. This fight was way too hard on core for the party.
Suggestion: Either convert the requirement to trigger the harder spellhold to be the same XP for all classes, or if it is desired that the requirement be different for different classes, have a messenger from Aran/Bodhi appear when the party is close to the limit (perhaps within 200k xp) suggesting they hurry up to finish preparations and leave for spellhold.
Underdark
The second drow ambush (bridge) is now too easy. I won it on the first attempt with both parties. The demon knight encounter was easier than I thought due to numerous and powerful summons (to be elaborated on in another section). Characters afflicted by fear from balor do not show horror icon. The fight with Deriex is easier than the fights in the asylum – for me, the skeleton lords were not summoned until I approached the platform after Deriex – this fight could be buffed.
Post-underdark
This is probably my favorite part of the game due to the varied encounters and numerous resources the party has.
Fiirkraag – this fight was very easy with both parties. 3 skeleton warlrods at this point are no match for the party. I don’t think fiirkraag breathed once. I would suggest buffing this encounter (maybe 5-6 skeleton warlords per round) and change sprite from skeleton warlord to wyvern
Expanded ranger/paladin fights – the fights (assassins/vipe) until the ancient secret are pretty straightforward and could be made more difficult. Casting maze on Auriel in the golem fight makes the extra component to that fight too easy. Ancient secret quest line seems to be quite difficult (duel with fighter is very good fight), but I didn’t complete the drowned soul fight.
Expanded mage – I enjoyed the mage stronghold quests more than the ranger quests. These encounters seemed to have the appropriate difficulty for the party (Pasha fight is one of my favorites), although the old one fight seems to be a matter of surviving 2-3 rounds and then focusing on debuffing/defending; once one grave lich is dead, the fight is won. I didn’t know I needed jasper gems, which were hard to find from vendors (quantity reduced to 1?). the last fight on the demon plane is quite good, though balors (and conster) seem to have impregnable spell shield (except by spellstrike). Once past the balors, the fight is won.
Orcus – the invisible line which dictates whether additional vampires spawn is too close to orcus; without intending to cross it, I did and almost lost a won battle (all skeleton lords slain). Use of improved alacrity and fire arrows on vampires is quite strong. I beat this at PC lvl 22 with necro and received 7(!!) barbarian essence potions – is this too many?
Twisted rune – a very good and tough fight. Stellar gravestones and comets hurt – the text for comet says 10d10 damage, though I think its twice that. Why is the staff of the magi for evil mages only? I would just take away the invisibility aspect to the staff (maybe that ability is lost after layene dies or something) and make it usable to all single class mages.
Squirrel quest – the encounter with Pitre’s party was quite good – I would rename the Exterminator, though, as that is somewhat out of place. From the text with lord balthis, I thought there might be an additional encounter (perhaps after twisted rune?), but if there was I didn’t find it. Maybe that quest line will be continued in v7? Finding the ruby of the gods is a bit too challenging without searching the internet, though I did find the altar in the underdark on my own.
Watchers keep
Supreme leader – one of the most complex fights in the game. Anti-inquisitors were new, surprising, and unwelcome! After killing all of them, the party still had to survive many rounds before supreme leader was killed (though critical strikes seemed to do damage to him). Here, comet damage being more than 10d10 caused a couple characters to be chunked in a couple of attempts. Is it possible to update the text on comet spell to say what damage actually is?
Ancient dragon - this fight is where my vagrant party became stuck; the difference in necromancer and vagrant protaganist is quite severe – with the vagrant party, I was unfortunate to not find robe of vecna (I guess its on the dragon), so my sorcerer and BM were not able to cast a single breach before getting silenced. (note remove magic is not strong enough at PC levels to do anything to the dragon). The number of silences the dragon had were many, probably ~10, and outlasting his lower fire resistance, doom, breath combo proved to be quite difficult (not possible for me at the time). Conversely, with an arcane caster immune to silence (and having +3 cast speed from robe/necklace), the fight becomes very straightforward, with the ancient dragon dying in <10 rounds and elite nishruu being the more difficult foe. So, in this case, removing immunity to silence from the amulet of power (v6 change) made this fight extremely difficult for a party without a necromancer PC.
Question: what is the intended way to kill the nishruu? Many magical weapons seem to heal him
Question: with robe of vecna being a pre-requisite for memory of the apprenti, which is needed for most of mage stronghold, is there a possibility that the robe will be on the ancient dragon? If so, this seems to be too late in the game.
Suggestion: bridge the gap between necromancer PC and other PC classes by allowing a robe (but not amulet, which can be passed around) to be upgraded to give immunity to silence – perhaps robe of archmagi should have this option (example, robe + scroll vocalize + elaboration + 30k gold)
Suldanesslar/hell
The new encounter with rakahasha and greater elemental in the small room is quite good. Hell is very very easy (pasha fight is tougher than this one, which takes place many items/levels earlier), so this fight feels somewhat anti-climatic and could be further improved.
TOB
I think the only thing changed from v5 is Sendai – and this new fight was quite good and challenging. The web golems are very tough foes. Yaga Shura still remains one of the most complex fights in the game. I would rate the various boss fights to be:
Sendai ~ Yaga Shura >> Abazigal > Gromnir > Oasis > Illasera >> Balthazar
Balthazar still seems to be vanilla, which is a little out of place.
Overall thoughts
Between v5 and v6, the appearance of powerful summons (e.g. anaconda, noble troll, greater yuan ti) and buffs to necromancer (RVE regen is very very strong, and skeleton lord from necklace is also quite strong) has led to significant increase in power from casters. This is both good, giving those classes more to do, and bad, as the player can continuously summon fodder to occupy monsters. Using just spell level 7 and 8, for example, a necromancer can summon up to 27 monsters during EDE, and Cernd can summon over a dozen anacondas. This is significant fodder. With the party I used, I was able to summon 6 powerful summons in the first round, 3 of which were instant (necro – skeleton lord, riskbreaker – djinni, vagrant – swanmay, RC – spider, BM – planetar, and Cernd – smilodon), which helped reduce early fight pressures quite substantially. I wonder whether this is a little unbalanced?
Cernd turned out to be quite powerful as a support character; his instant cast healing touch spell in addition to smilodon summon are quite strong. That being said, I don’t understand the large experience gap between level 13 (~1.3 M XP) and level 14 (2.5 M XP) and think the druid progression could be somewhat smoothed out.
I think a couple items could use a bit of tweaking to remain relevant – for example, treefolk’s arm is too expensive (50k + the cost of the club) for being a +3 weapon when you can make a +3 warhammer for 15k. I would ask you to consider reducing the combine cost for the club from 50k to 20-30k and then having a secondary upgrade after underdark to make it a +4 weapon; otherwise I can’t see ever forging it. The rimed club comes too late in the game to be especially useful, though I would still consider forging it. Cloak of arcane immortality is too expensive (180k, 120k for +3 cloak and 60k for upgrade) for what it offers (minor regen, +1 bonus to saves, 5 hp) over the scholastic cloak. I also would wonder whether tweaking Hesperus would make sense – that it requires black blood of Orcus means 1)it comes after one of the few fights where the weapon would be useful, and 2) forging lord of the underworld requires the same component and thus prohibits hesperus from being forged. Perhaps removing the black blood of Orcus component from Hesperus would solve both problems?
Several of the bosses have defensive abilities that don’t really add to the difficulty of the fight; for example, Orcus is very weak without his army, yet the party is forced to fight him for at least a couple of turns to wait out his protections after his army is defeated. The supreme leader has a few more offensive tools than Orcus, but if the party can defeat his army, the fight is almost certainly won, yet the supreme leader has several more hardiness abilities than what it took me to defeat him. The same is true, though to a lesser extent, for the rakasha prince.
The game rewards players for keeping certain golems, ghost spiders, and rakasha alive at various points. For example, the multiple elemental golem fights in WK lvl 4 or lvl 5 or the Auriel golem quest; draining these monsters of summons could be viewed as cheesy, but doing so can also make the fight more challenging. For example, draining the rakasha and greater elemental golem in Sulda would be quite hard regardless of the party level. If this behavior is not desired, it might make sense to increase the XP and gold/item reward on the spawning creature and reduce/eliminate the reward on the spawned creatures. For example, elemental golems could drop 1k gold and 1 of each gem and be worth 1086 XP.
Being a completionist, I would certainly love to see a version of the mod released where both ranger and mage expdanded stronghold quests as well as fighting the supreme golem and green wyrm in WK were available. I understand why they are not in the present version.
EDE
The new placement of supreme/ultra golems seemed to make things a bit easier than v5, where they all start together. I won this fight on my first serious attempt (after figuring out how to order characters to get my RC closest to the prince at the beginning). My party status and strategy:
Party status for EDE
a. Necro, 10.82M XP, lvl 33, 4% kills, MPV: ogremach
i. Golem slayer/dagger of stars+4/mem apprenti/lord of underworld/scarlet ioun stone/belt of hill giant str/gauntlets of dexterity/boots of speed
ii. +2 ring/+2 ring/+3 cloak of arcane immortality
b. Riskbreaker, 10.57 M XP, lvl 39, 35% kills, MPV: ancient dragon
i. shortsword ****, warhammer *****, bastard sword *****, 2 weapon ***
ii. MH: rune hammer +5/foebane +5/cutthroat+4/ilbratha OH: Hammer of thor, indigo ioun stone/boots of speed
iii. +1 amulet/+4 ring/+2 ring/ +2 cloak (foebane)
c. Vagrant, 10.65 M XP, lvl 36, 26%, MPV: greater elemental golem
i. axe*****, flail **, short sword **, longsword **, Warhammer **, halberd**, 2 weapon ***
ii. MH: volcane/short sword of mask+5/ice star+4 OH angurvadel +5
iii. Grandmaster armor/gauntlets weapon expertise/helm of balduran/boots of grounding/girdle of lordly might
iv. +1 amulet/+2 ring/+2 ring/ +2 cloak (balduran)
d. RC multi, 5.34/5.34 MM, lvl 26 cleric/lvl 22 ranger, 10%, MPV: Saladrex
i. MH: flail of ages +5/phosphorous, OH: supreme shelter
ii. Great wyrm armor/improved dragon helm/belt of inertial barrier/boots of ranger lord
iii. +2 amulet/ring of free action/holy symbol/+2 cloak
e. B(9)/M dual, 10.47M XP, lvl 32, 18%, MPV: Ravager
i. halberd *****, quarterstaff *****, 2H sword **, 2H weapon style *
ii. Poseidon wrath/dragon lord/warlord’s blade (str/dex)/royal elemental staff
iii. Robe of good archmagi, gauntlets of extraordinary specialization, circlet of netheril, girdle of cloud giant strength, boots of speed
iv. +1 amulet/ +5 improved ring of gaxx /+2 ring/+2 cloak (archmagi)
f. Cernd, 10.62 M XP, lvl 39, 4% kills, MPV: adalon
i. Personal staff +5/spectral brand +5 (w/belm +2)
ii. Bracers AC 4/circlet golden flower/girdle of fire giant strength/boot of speed
iii. +2 ring/+2 ring/+4 cloak/amulet of the seldarine
g. Consumables items: 3k gold, 150 superior healing potions, 25 scroll of PFMW, 10 scroll of raise dead, 37 scroll of PFME, 12 scroll of Protection from Energy, 28 potion of barbarian essence, 13 potion of magic protection, 22 potion of magic shielding, 4 scroll of wish, 29 potion of stone form (alchemy), 15 potion of defense (alchemy), 25 oil of resurgence, 3 potion of power, 12 potion of vitality, 5 scroll of haste
h. Other items in inventory: improved cat figurine, ring of djinni summoning, noble spider figurine, mana bow, shield of order, bracers of blinding strike, amulet of cheetah speed, hindo’s doom +4, blue orb (heal)
EDE fight
SPOILER!
i. Prebuff with 5 barbarian essences for RC and BM and 3 barbarian essences for RB and vagrant, iron skins, hardiness, improved haste
j. Summon 2x greater yaunti, swanmay queen, greater swanmay, djinni, noble spider, smilodon, noble troll, anaconda, and skeleton lord, cast improved haste on swanmay queen and skeleton lord
k. Position PC in upper left corner, cernd with summons in lower right, move RC to pc position 2, use RC to summon pasha, RC casts farsight on bottom right, PC casts improved haste on pasha
l. RC engages prince (but does not attack), PC runs to upper left, and cernd/RB/vagrant/BM along with skeleton lord and swanmay queen go to bottom left to battle the supreme golem
m. Once ultra focuses pasha, PC joins supreme group, which is using criticals on supreme golem
n. PC casts RVE and gest regen twice and one skeleton grandlord
o. One elemental golem gated before supreme dies, which occurs just as first rakasha group spawns – ADHW take RC to critical, though RC drinks potion of magic protection and cernd heals RC using healing touch
p. PC and vagrant focus elemental golem with criticals, RB/BM/cernd/RC take out rakasha, one noble killed in same round it spawned, others go down in round 2 after triggering AI (BM uses spell trigger 3x remove magic)
q. PC and vagrant finish elemental golem just as bottom right ultra finishes last summons and rushes PC
r. RC tanks prince in upper right while everyone kills 1st ultra (pasha brought it to badly wounded) and then 2nd ultra, in total one coin, one gem, and 4 amber golems spawned and were killed
s. PC casts wish once after golems are down, get rest (first rest), summon heavy summons, move RC out of line of sight and then quicksave
t. Party clears remaining rakasha groups as they spawn (no danger), and use pasha to mark when AI falls off prince
u. After 4-5 AI, Cernd is killed with 145 damage dragon breath (but not chunked); he is raised via scroll and re-equipped, but lost 1st and 2nd lvl spells when equipping helm due to wisdom changing
v. Last AI cleared without a problem, but getting saves/buffs lined up for final push is troublesome, eventually the party wishes for rest (second rest), which results in elemental golem and fallen planetar spawning and barbarian essence buffs go away!
w. Rebuff and easily take out prince with pasha living!
x. Consumables used - 1 scroll raise dead, 17 barbarian essence, 10 potion of magic shielding, 2 potion of defense (alchemy), 1 potion of power, 1 potion of vitality
Overall, I very much enjoyed v6 and hope that Sikret continues to work to improve the mod. I certainly don't expect Sikret to implement any/all of the suggestions I made, but I wanted to share my thoughts anyway. Thanks again for the great mod!