This whole text is a SPOILER! I analyse many fights and note weaknesses of many harder opponents so DON’T read it if you haven’t won IA before! (well it might help some beginners if they’re not sure how to win a fight, but it’s better to try it at last some times before reading here or in other journals how to cope with enemies!)

Hi everyone, I’ve decided to try IA6 for the 5’th time. Previous runs were with necro prot. and all ended with failure(due to crappy team or because I got bored). That means I have no experience with tactically-challenging battles like ancient dragon or even guarded compound, that’s why it can be really fun this time

I love creating strange and(hmm, at first glance) useful teams, so I decided to go with following characters:
Vagrant Captain Jack Sparrow(hey, that’s me!) with stats: 18/93 18 19 9 14 12 and ***** in axes * in flails(+ ** in dual-wield)- the only other option if one doesn’t want to use necro, this guy might probably be an extreme killer at the end with 90 elemental res. 85 physical res. permanent Imp haste and 85% magical damage res.

Inquisitor Mordimer Madderdin who has read charisma book: 18/00 18 18 7 13 19 I’m still not sure if it was a wise choice, and I have no idea which items he should use! ** in ls * in flails * in 2h and ** in dual.

A beautiful ranger(7)/cleric Crysania with stats 18/96 18 18 9 18 3 and some random specialisations(blunt ofc...). Without a good cleric the game can be overwhelmingly hard(bravo Nicoper ). No one heals as good as this lass, and if needed she can show that women are not as weak as some may think(especially with 1,5m long hammer >.< )

B(9)/M Edward Elric(yeah, had no good name for this one) 18/51 18 18 17 18 3 having * in 2h and ***** in 2h sword, in my previous runs B/M was surprisingly effective, so... why not?

B(9)/M Gandalf 19 18 18 17 18 3(made out of the same BG1 char as previous one but with str book) * in 2h and ***** in halberds (I’ll explain this choice in a moment)

A womanizer and a jester, who wishes only to have an adventurous life, B(9)/Druid Sindbad The Sailor with stats 18/57 12 18 8 17 17 having * in 2h and ***** in staves

Why this and not something other?
- I want to see how full physical power can cope with all the monsters awaiting for my team.
Somehow I detest BR’s and consider them too powerful, they have no place amongst my friends!
-Why 2 B/M? Well, I’m always confused which spells should my sorc take And without necro protagonist I need 2 arcane casters.
-But hey, wtf is B/Druid man? The answer is simple: I have totally no idea, but druids are awesome(best regards Cernd, and sorry that I couldn’t join you this time), they have iron skin and many 7lvl slots(from items) + nice summons + nice new HLA. Also having a druid fighter forces me to use weapons I’ve never used before. (eg spears)

Before we start I have to note some things:
- Sindbad is an adventurer in a new region, he sometimes abandons the team, which means that some NPC quests will be done and he will have some less exp.
- I use max life per level, because I’m not a good player and I’m scared of golems and so on
- my mages are super-intelligent and they learn all spells they want without wasting more than 1 scroll.

So here we go:

Dungeon-be-gone, this guy always makes me smile.
Our dear friend Imoen was taken by that pervy Irenicus, who knows what he’ll do to her in the spellhold
Party goes to the circus, easy fights and easy loot.
I’m not sure how powerful Suna is, but I want to meet her asap, so right after killing some weaklings in the slums we go to the bridge district, sadly no one can identify the horn, which could be really helpful with... ehhh, I’m gonna spend that 100!
In the night we helped some shadow thieves’ who were assaulted by a vampire.
Dealt with the murderer in the district, and travelled to the docks, here we’ll get enough exp to activate Crysania’s ranger class, and we’ll identify the horn.

Even identified, the horn was useless, because Jack was confused before he used it but the fight itself was a bit easier than I thought. Firstly all 3 barbs activated their rage, Jack tried to summon, Crysania went a bit noth-east, and Mordimer as her bodyguard did the same. Barbs dealt with assassin and cleric within seconds, pally casted his first dispel magic(not sure if it had any effect except for the fact that mirror images were dispelled) and Crysania managed to summon 3 skeletons. Everything else was just slaughter :> No one was even seriously injured, although Sindbad has pretty high AC.

First 2 Mae’var’s quests done, Crysania gains 8’th level, and after the wizard is dead, Sindbad gets +2 staff

Mae’var is dead, but we can’t yet get the reward because we would waste a lot of precious exp.

So now little quests like Neb and teddy-bear, barbs need to get 250000.
In one of the crypts found an axe+2 for Vagrant, great! Barbs still need 5k more exp... time for more tomb-riding.
During 3’rd ambush my 2 barbs noticed that without magic they can’t really stand against more powerful enemies, and Sindbad with a smile on his face said that he’d become a master druid before they could even learn to read... and... they really wagered about that.
We’ve dealt with “ogres” at the beginning of our journey through the windspear hills, gave back the acorns, and travelled to the umar hills, now we need to get 20000 exp with B/M’s to get 3’rd lvl spells, and we won’t level up till 10 lvl, Sindbad also won’t level but above 3’rd level(He does get proficiency point at 4’th lvl doesn’t he?)

Some minor quests and killing in umar hills gave us enough exp. Now the reward from Renal (short sword+3, money and our beloved EXP).
Sindbad left the party, he wanted to visit The 10 cities, but promised to return. So we decided to help our old friend Jaheira, but only killed 3 groups of the harpers, and met Sindbad again(his ship was attacked by Kraken or so he says...)(from now on I won’t modify my party, it misses the point).

Travelled to umar hills, and Sindbad reactivated his Barb class, I see now that his specialisations could be better(only 2 in spears, 5 in staves and 1 in other random skills).
Nasty vampires attacked our friends twice during 2 nights, so they had to be punished. Paid 15000(Bodhi, we’ll defeat you twice with great pleasure!) and dealt with a dock-vampire(first quest for thieves). Somewhere around here my Barbs regained their skills, and finally my team can shine.

Forged ankheg armor and gave it to Sindbad. Now we’ll go to sewers. An unpleasant inquisitor blocked our way, so my inquisitor had to teach him a lesson, which proved to be deadly ;( (but that pally had a nice armor, which(although stained with blood) has nice stats).

Oh, somewhere in the meantime my team freed slaves and killed the beastmaster with his pet. So now Crysania wields our second +3 weapon. We have shortage of these Thinking of buying things like spear+3/halberd+3/staff +3(that one with +druidic spells), but we can’t yet afford them.

Woohoo! An epic fight against 2 spawns of Yuanti on the 3’rd floor of the sewers. Mordimer still has 9 lvl, so no dispel on mages Now I think that the battle would be much faster if I had used fireballs... But anyway, even simultaneously they were easy to defeat with berserk and chaotic commands.

Well... I’m not really sure when the device works on the unseeing eye and when not... Sometimes it works despite the protections that the beholder has, and sometimes doesn’t work even after dispelling them, so I had to pound him(and with something like 80/90% physical res. it’s a nightmare!)

After the quest Captain Jack Sparrow and Mordimer got 10’th level, finally we can dispel Yuantis’ protections. Now time for D’Arnise, we’ll do all except for Tor’gal due to lack of IH and +3 weapons. For the first time Mordimer proved to be useful . Sad news are that we still can’t defeat keep viper and I hate buying things before 20 reputation... this means: Lilarcor+FoA. Glaicas had no chance, time for greater Yuanti. The team was too fast for him, I’m not sure if the snakeman was trying to cast PfMW or not, but eventually was not able to cast anything except for dispel magic, which didn’t really help him. So now forging time

Got lilarcor, no problems here, now fallen paladins, and we’ll get frostreaver. All-pound-squad destroys everything, even the snake had to yield. Now time to help the druids.

Fight with Faldorn is an interesting one having 10 lvl vagrant but luckily all 4 mountain bears were at my side, so there was no option I could lose.

Time for 2 druid quests(hope we can deal with Chaos at our current levels).

Rakshasas and Chaos defeated. Crysania got 11 level, what to do now? Slavers, we need that last point of reputation.

The assassins concentrated on Edward, so his stoneskins were destroyed way too fast and he had to drink our only potion which gives AC. Also greater command made Captain Jack Sparrow unable to do a thing for almost whole fight, however he had a good rest, and when the captain appeared we showed him that we support Lincoln, and fight for freedom
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Only 30 000exp left for Captain Jack Sparrow and Mordimer to lvl up. Bought halberd of harmonium, now only Sindbad has no +3 weapon(I’m not sure whether I want to waste my precious coins on arundel’s staff, I’ll wait and see what will drop from Founder and Thax.)

I’m starting to feel that this party composition is far more powerful than anything I’ve tried, I had no problems whatsoever with the previous fights. However: we can be silenced easily and Mordimer is almost useless(another berserker with ***** in flails would be much better at the moment)

Tor’Gal... no tactic was the best tactic here, buffs+summons and eliminating his minions before him. A part of JD found here, wonder where are the remaining parts.

No idea what to do now, probably 2’nd quest for shadow thieves and pirates then, we need SI and if I’m not mistaken one scroll is there. Also lack of IH is a great hindrance.

And 1 more thing, for the first time Mordimer was turned(by Tor’Gal). ATM the fights are easy, we can cope with them having the pally running wild, or sleeping Captain Jack Sparrow, however we’ll have to prevent that in the nearest future.

No problem with 2’nd quest, 3 vampire brides killed here, time to buy protection from cold scroll to defeat the pirates(well we have enough HP to survive the mage’s shield, however I don’t wanna risk PW kill or comet chunk due to low life.)

Ehhh, no pirates at the moment, our damage and hits per round are not enough without IH, which means: Pebblecrusher(or something like that) and temple(yeah, let’s kill Thax having such low levels(I’ve NEVER managed to dispel her/his protections despite using RRR and breaches, only spellstrike works here don’t know why, and we have no such spell and I hate using scrolls, selling them is much better option.))

Oh, I’ve just remembered that we still have amber golem to kill. No problems here. However fighting amber golems is a traumatic experience(what about spellshold? That moment is awful! 2 mages with RoF is clearly not enough there.)
Got lucky vs Pebblecrusher, after pally’s dispel(some guys drank pots but no idea about their effects) and malison+emotion+greater command everyone was down so just a quick slaughter.

Time to sell some stuff and put some other stuff to The Barrel. Now we have 159k gold, not bad, however we’ll need something like 3mln or even more and I’m not sure whether we’ll be able to afford it even late in the game. Now we’ll buy martial staff + 3(only 4k!) and later we’ll probably craft royal elemental staff. Now everyone has a +3 weapon. Also bought 2 minor sequencers. Errr, is there nowhere we can buy fireshield blue? I’m not sure whether I should buy robe of good archmage, it’s enormously expensive and we need every last coin, but +1 saving throws tempts... nope, for now shadow jailor. Right before entering Thaxy’s lair B/M’s got 12 lvl, but only 1 slot for 6’th lvl spells, that is certainly NOT impressive

Well, interesting thing, Thax has 2 healing spells, and managed to kill Captain Jack Sparrow a second before the dragon was slain (Jack was confused due to the dragon’s last spell...) Unfortunately at current levels I see no suitable tactic(without an ability to remove dragon’s protections of course). This time we’ll maximize our APR by lowering defence, the dragon has many long-time-cast spells, so this can be helpful. It’s worth noting that 3FoD have no chance of killing Gandalf.

Hmm... I just wanted to try whether I can debuff the dragon and it worked, however my party was unprepared for the fight(as I’ve said it was just a test) and it worked... for the first and ONLY time, so eventually loaded and had to pound Thax with normal weapon... And no nice items(he has a chance to drop a sword+3 if I’m not mistaken)

Planar prison time, we need phosphorus and loooots of exp+ it will surely enable us to defeat the pirates and well, maybe founder.

I have no idea why elite bounty huntress is totally immune to physical damage after a round or two, that makes no sense at all. And it means that we will use our precious RRR scroll... Ummm, not 1 but 2 scrolls... and I’ve finally understood why she was immune to my attacks. Maybe we’ll need to load, if I’m not mistaken warden needs to be treated with 3 RRR to dispel SI, and we have only 2.

Now 0, we had to use both scrolls and in addition cast breach right after RRR because he would just recast his SI. Second IH scroll as drop and many useful items + phosphorus in the nearest future Decided to kill pirates first, because I have only 1 potion needed to create phosphorus.

Fantastic drop (though it’s probably as usual, however lots and lots of money from this fight and found part of vagrant’s armor + belt if inertial barrier(was it always here?) and SI scroll, which allows us to loot some parts of red dragon’s lair(everything except for the dragon itself, windmaster and Samia probably(we’ll get her later, but before heading to the spellshold, we need powerful eq. And gold!)))

Forged phosphorus a ring+2 and a cloak +2, money deplated to about 100k... but we need saving throws.
Defeated Bodhi, got Hammer from the sewers and belm.

Most epic fight with shadow lord without using RRR! Now that was something Gandalf died here(was confused and started pounding the lord under PFWM so stupid wizard died really fast I just needed exp, that fight wasn’t really tactical, the trick was to bring SL to about 60% life and then attack him only with vagrant who had 35%res and best saving throws, then heal him asap due to PW:kill, the lord dispelled all our buffs at some point so I was really surprised I managed to defeat him. )

Firkraag’s lair. The mists were extremely easy to beat with only 2 IH characters. No problems with the transmuter, though he has enormously low THACO and nice APR.

Hmmm... Captain Jack Sparrow is our main damage dealer, however he can’t last ling in a fight against golems or skeleton lords and above, insane run with vagrant must be... well, insane

I love improved vampires, they’re relatively weak and give nice amounts of exp. Killed Tazok, but we will probably need our mages to get next level to get second 6’th level slot before killing Firkraag’s mage. (Which means about 10/15k exp more, so we’ll go for dragon slayer which grants immunity to turn paladin if I have good information... err, sorry, forgot about Samia no sword for now!)

Yeah, the mage is always fun, and the drop is just tremendous! Now we’re gonna sell all the items, and then... no idea, probably statue+planar sphere. After that we’ll have a swanmay, I want to see how powerful they are.
Gold back to 193k. I must say that I don’t like that part of upg ranger stronghold where from nowhere appears a nymph and gives me once a week zounds of scrolls which can probably be sold... I’ll use her only when there will be a drastic need for gold.

Statue fight, vampires alone are weak, but with the rest it is quite hard to last longer, so we had to kill the master before the second spawn.

Planar sphere- strange thing, no golems in the room with the head of our golem and we need that exp! Give it back! Ehhh, so time to defeat Lavok, maybe we’ll be able to save RRR scrolls, but to do that we need many things to happen.
Hahh! It worked though only by mistake, because Lavok had black blade of disaster spell, which he cast and went downstairs. Fought some lizardmen and got 13 level with Mordimer and vagrant, which means massive saving throws bonus, 1/2APR bonus and swanmays, + pally can dispel 18lvl enemies

And Crysania got 14’th level and that means all mages have to die! (creeping doom is awesome!)

Ummm... why is a mage able to cast remove magic on a partially invisible character? That’s unfair! Anyway managed to defeat Tolgersomething and his fellow mage without RRR again . BTW Mordimer can dispel her buffs, he’s slowly becoming useful.
Demon was as easy as usually. We have now many rings and cloaks, probably time to forge, but firstly trademeet.
No good drop here(he has a chance to drop staff+4 and maybe something else, but I’m not sure).

Ehhh, party has about 1,8mln exp and I have only some tombs to do, and Watcher’s keep + later Samia and party. No idea where else I could farm exp, and I don’t want to fight against improved guys from bard’s stronghold...
Forged 2 cloaks+2 and 2 rings+2 money about 145k.

All paladin stronghold quests done and 1’st floor of WK except for 1 room(I hate that, no golems in planar sphere and only golems/mists/vampires in the room(last time I had a bunch of skeleton lords and golems if I’m not mistaken, which means far more exp.))

Bought Vhailor’s helm, we’ll need that death spell against Pai’na.

After whole complex Gandalf still needs 3k exp to 14’th level, which will enable us to defeat 2 more groups of enemies. And after that... No idea we can hit something like 2,2mln exp before going to brynnlaw and still not activate improved spellshold, should I try king and queen of trolls? Swanmay has already proven to be useful against enemies that can be hit only with +4 weapon, but vengeance trolls are too much
Sewer party was a laughable encounter, even though I had to change tactic drastically in the middle of the fight.

HAHAHAHA! Managed to defeat Samia even though I had no idea that the skeletons can be hit with a +3 weapon, which meant 8 rounds less being hit by Gandalf... Still, a great fight! I had to use 1 PFMW scroll and 1 best healing potion(heal spell has too long casting time for Jack to survive)

We defeated her for 2 things: EXP and druid’s circlet, which we’ll upgrade now, you can’t have too many creeping dooms, anacondas, fire storms and regenerations.

And about our tactic: firstly buffs+ swanmay(our only summon, we need space) party goes up and Gandalf blocks the entrance so that skellys won’t come too fast(he has 2 PFMW +many scrolls). 1 char talks to Samia and Crysania starts creeping doom(man I love this spell, I’d love to have that version which Chaos casts ). Gandalf fires GM+2x emotions and Edward 3x emotions which almost always eliminates 2 guys(cleric and some other minor dude). Samia goes for Gandalf and Kaol starts a spell(breach if I’m not mistaken), now the party gangs Kaol(Gandalf has IH and Melf’s meteors so 10APR destroys stoneskin really fast). After he’s killed Gandalf casts PFMW and the party kills the remaining members of Samia’s team. (Elric and Gandalf breach each time some1 uses hardiness). Then Gandalf allows 2 skeletons to enter, party gang them and Crysania+Sindbad heal Jack.

After selling the loot we have 220k gold, time to upgrade the circlet and forge ring of djinni summoning.

After mage’s stronghold decided to visit the room without golems for the 10’th time... they’re here

I’m highly tempted to brew the exp potion for druid, which we’ll drink in spellshold(not sure what exactly triggers improved spellshold, so better not risk.). But firstly we’ll defeat playhouse’s invaders, the mage is irritating because he/she has fairly high MR, which means it’s hard to put him/her to sleep even with 5 emotions, but that is not a real problem, we won’t allow him to do any harm to us or waste precious(yes, we love gold) scrolls.
Hahh, got lucky and emotioned her however we have enough spell slots to do it other way, it only made the fight easier. Captain Jack Sparrow has about 2,1mln exp and I have no idea where else could I go, so probably time for Brynnlaw. We’ll try to tackle 2 Kangaxx’s liches but I’m not sure we can cope with them.

After brewing the potion we still have 115k gold. Not bad, however we’ll need lots and lots more!

Headed to Brynnlaw, got to Spellshold via road. Lost intelligence, drank druid’s potion, Crysania got 16’th level.

Librarian and his pet... This is interesting Firstly extremely tiring fight with the cat(many rounds which means no buffs, and buffing means cat’s debuff, and a loooong time to kill it). Noticed 1 thing that surprised me: after some rounds people which appear turn into skeleton lords and greater werewolves, hope it happens even after killing the librarian, because exp is never enough(that is till 12,2mln).

The fight was really hard, had to defeat the cat multiple times to be able to win, and use 1 PFMW scroll to defeat skeleton lords and g. Werewolves. Also won because Crysania has nice saving throws with her eq(3 ADHW without it=dead) and 25% res. to magical damage.

No problems with the book, we got an ingredient for supreme shelter, I really want to have this shield.
Now time for 3 amber golems(3 or 4, not sure). The most awful fight I’ve encountered in whole IA so far. Of course it’s not that hard, but something might not go as planned. What is more, only 1 B/M has RoF, so we’ll have to use more other spells(vampiric touch and larloch).

Ufff, it was a relatively easy fight(witch doctor was dispelled by Pally). However during fight with mithril golem I forgot that I have GR spell, so Mordimer died(insane damage+bleeding )
Now time for Irenicus, forgot that he has to be heavily wounded to run away, and got smashed by 3 ADHW. Second try was a successful one, I kept my distance and ADHW was used only on 1 char with mirror images, even managed to cast creeping doom on Irenicus. Sindbad got 14 level finally, an immensely important level when it comes to the prince and drow ambushes.

After selling things we have about 250k gold, which is a really small amount, even though we haven’t forger treefolk’s arm. Fortunately now we’ll be fighting wealthier enemies, like Firkraag or dracolish, in addition there are more elemental golems which means even more gem and coin golems.

No problems with random fights, and even the prince was not a challenge to my team(note that last time I played(with necro prot. R->C B->M Cernd, and 2 others I don’t remember) I had a number of reloads to make everything ok.)
And now a perfect-coin-golem-killer lands in hands of Sindbad (spear which has+10 piercing damage, only +3 enchantment though, so useless against more dangerous opponents )

Now time for the first ambush. Bought mass invisibility. Saving throws and AC are important in this fight. Put PFMW PFME and IH to spell trigger, we need some1 to take improved web on him, so that no one else would be entangled. In addition we have many RRR remembered(4 to be specific, mages must become breachable) 1 instance of creeping doom(I hope that it will hit 1 or 2 enemies despite their MR) and 2 firestorms. With perfect timing: the storms deal damage to the drow, then their protections are casted and my B/M enters their range of sight to be hit by webs, then RRR+breach+MR from pally and total destruction with IH.

Luckily Crysania’s stun ended just in time to cast greater restoration and heal my invisible teammates, except for this I had no problem.

Second ambush was also easy, again spell trigger with the same spells and engaging drows while the rest kills the spider.

I’m really greedy, but decided to buy spear of withering(+4 weapon and+4 additional poison damage for 32000 ) and that golem-slaying rod.

Elder orb is... well, with many prebuffs I had much harder time than with only haste(not improved!), that was awkward, but without buffs Crysania got improved miscast magic, and with them it was Gandalf who was hit, which meant not enough RRR to be able to breach the eye.

Deirex and skeleton lords were just free exp, however I had hard time trying to defeat noble efreeti without destroying his body(thinking that maybe there is some drop) but then I noticed that he’s vulnerable to acid arrow which has not bad damage and then there was no problem anymore.

Also this time I’ve managed to finish the new quest, that one about colours.

Defeated the matron, reported to Adalon, killed quo toa prince(pally can dispel him ). Captain Jack Sparrow got level, decided to take hardiness. Now it’s time to defeat our friend the dracolish. During the maze pally got level, took deva because we need all summons possible, also took smilodon for Sindbad. I’m unlucky, Crysania needs still about 20k exp to level up and we’re right before the entrance to the final boss. I’f I remember correctly he has an ability that kills everyone in a range if we fail saving throw, and maybe even 2 kinds of silence. Also he has 4...5...6...7! PFMW so 1 person with a bunch of summons should deal with him till the protections wear off. Oh and all buffs are dispelled... well, that IS a hard battle.
Interesting how understanding your opponent can make this fight an easy walk . Death ward+ wondrous recall are the key to victory, also skeletons are immune to everything the dragon can do except for physical damage of course(and death spell but he has few). I’m really happy that I have 6 nice fighters otherwise the pounding part could take too long and be disastrous. Even with this party I had to cast limited wish during the last part of fight to ensure no levels would be drained.
No interesting drop except for staff of rynn. Dealt with knights from demagorgon’s statue, the fight is always... weird. I have no idea what happens but thanks to 3 PFME, belt+25% magic damage res and Jack’s cloak with GR I managed to defeat them with only Sindbad down(didn’t notice he had breached/dispelled his MFME)

Tried Kruin, but he’s of higher level than 24, which is sad, we’ll have to gain more exp to be able to dispel him. Defeated 4 vampires in graveyard district, destroyed vampires mists and a party in one new area, also wind master was not a big deal. However Mordimer still needs 120k exp, and I’m not sure how strong Bodhi is in IA, so don’t want to risk fighting her before some items are forged. This means that we should kill Firkraag (only if any1 with a +3 weapon can hit his skeletons) and probably we’ll deal with the spider queen to be able to proceed further into WK.

Ehhh, I have no good tactic for Firkraag ATM, with necro and Cernd it was way easier. I’ve decided to trigger Kruin in the forest to be able to deal with troll mound, teshal and probably with kangaxx before him(I ran away, yes. But I’m too weak a player to cope with him at the moment and with current items/levels)

Hahahaha Kangaxx was never that easy, with warblade, dragon halberd+4 and staff of rynn +3x enrage demilich died in less than 3 rounds. No good drop though, except for our perfect ring :> and freedom scroll which will be used to free that guy in the underdark. (We have mantle of waukeen and haven’t yet reported to the mayor of umar, so we’ll get +2 reputation instantly). Most important thing about defeating him was to use ring of ram as fast as the lich appears, then we can smash him from 2 sides (mages from one, and Sindbad+Jack from the second, right after killing him Jack(with death ward just in case) runs for his life to the corner). Prebuffs include all resistances possible, GOI, ST SI:abjuration, giant strength and IH.
Bought CC scrolls from adventure’s market, now we can use much more buffs, and thanks to that we defeated Teshal without problems(yeah, it can be done pre-spellhold so the fight itself isn’t that demanding). Got belt and nothing more really worth our attention(except for gauntlets which give 18 dex. Because Sindbad had only 9 or something like that, which means +4 AC, nice). Having 4 people fighting with a +4 weapon(3 2-handed and phosphorus) we can go see the trolls, if I’m not mistaken there is always an armor for vagrant, and maybe some other random/or non drop.

Trolls were weak, but so was our precious drop. Decided to tackle Kruin, strangely he was alone and unbuffed in the northern part of the forest, dealt with him, and then destroyed all golems and gith. What should we forge now? I have no idea ;/ Red coral armor, ankheg armor, wave for now.

Ehhh, in the end I’ve forged one more +2 ring and even poseidon’s wrath, which means that gold is about 100k only
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I’m not sure I can manage to do it, but now it’s time for one of my favourite fights and this is Alhoon(to be precise: the group before him). As a try I decided to go to the room with my cleric and cast dispel magic with pally, it worked on the cleric! Also they do not cast protections from elements which is strange, hope I can deal some damage to them using cloud spells. After a bit of trying here’s what I’ve seen: this battle can be pretty much 1-sided. Cast all possible protections on Edward, PFMW in spell trigger, another pfmws in spellbook, SI: abjuration, giant strength partial tenser and cast creeping doom on him, right after the spell is cast he uses II and strikes the room solo focusing on cleric(true seeing and that storm of vengeance). Also this can be done without spell trigger with pfmw but with sunfire, then casting normal sunfire from spellbook. In the meantime the rest buffs themselves and Edward debuffs the mage(casting pfmw from time to time). This tactic means that only golems and skeletons are left and we all know that they’re weak if left alone

Ehhh, no vecna does it mean that the robe is in ancient dragon’s lair? (or wherever he is). Veeeery bad news even green wyrm will be much harder now, and ancient wyrm is probably even better than that dragon child of bhaal. But his drop must be simply amazing! Also wonder what about twisted rune, they’re probably almost invincible...

Hmm, got blade of roses, periapt of proof against poison and some minor things. I’m too scared of greater elemental golem to try to get more exp by waiting till he summons minions(can he summon amber golems?) even with our full power assault he managed to purge us, though lasted less than round after that, still summoned 2 coin golems(we like those, we have much better equipment against them) . Forged Crom, gold is about 160k now.

Defeated grave lich in the the city gates(managed to cast 2 pfmw which means no RRR scrolls). Also defeated the master brain, and nothing good here...

Now Firkraag stood no chance, with spellstrike at the beginning and breaches when needed he was bound to fail, but left no good drop at all. Forged improved dragon helmet and 2 rings+2 also bought fortress shield(we’ll forge supreme shelter when we have more money). Our main goal should be gold now, having nice saving throws I think we can face spider queen now, and then forge noble spider figurine(the spider has some really nice resistances which means a good tank, his offensive skills are of less value to us.)

Spider queen: buffs like aid, foreknowledge and mass invisibility, the queen managed to summon 2 ghost spiders, but we had no problems(only once Captain Jack Sparrow was webbed).

Forged golden spider figurine, now it’s time to defeat umar bi...witch.
Lots of exp here, then went to WK. Second level was easy as usual, forged the truth and FoA+4. After 3 De’arnise quests Mordi got 21 level(** in 2h swords and first critical strike) and Gandalf(comet as HLA). Defeated Roenal, he had no chance agains our mass attack with 2xcritical strike

Green wyrm was... laughable even though he was somehow able to block all 6 ADHW. With mass prebuffs and Crysania “sacrificed”(she was the first one to be silenced) all fighters started pounding the dragon, while mages activated imp. Alacrity, then bombarded the dragon with flame arrows and magic missiles from contingencies right after 3xlower resisitance, occasionally we breached the dragon and in the end pally and Captain Jack Sparrow activated critical strike. Loot: long sword+3, boots of woodland, ring of air control and minor other things. I wonder whether I should scribe wish, though 2 scrolls are needed to forge 2 important items.

After selling almost everything we can our gold is 130k, pretty low and we need greater djinni. Now it’s time to defeat rune assassins, I’ll note here that this will be first fight I haven’t played yet.
Notes concerning the fight: (mass reloads to see what can and what can’t be done), guildmaster drops girdle of hill giant strength and amulet +10%MR. He has PW kill and AI scrolls(UAI) but he’s extremely weak(my B/M can defeat him before he can do real harm), gated assassins still drop items, I’m not sure whether they’re gated more than once, the weakest are golems, we can ignore them till the end if the mages(but... why not?) can be defeated before destroying the golems. 3x abi dalzim takes care of all minor assassins and coordinators peel through protections really fast, also SOME buffs may be performed in the room without being attacked.

Side note: I love this place, everyone has some valuable items and we need money more than any time before!

Ok now time to defeat the guildmaster for real. Mass buffs with 3ADHW on hit, then fight with all our might, the drop is... I have no words, it’ll be more than 100k gold! And the exp is the same(guildmaster gates maaaaaaany servants and he does it really fast and they have tremendous drop!). We also got half of a note, and I have no idea what it can be, probably will get the other half while fighting same party, time to report to Va...something, the girl that told us about these assassins.

Decided to try some ranger new quests, hope I won’t make a mistake(like when playing for the first time when I had no idea that I had to take right dialogue option in the underdark). Enchanter was defeated easily, now time for illusionist, luckily Mordimer can dispel her spells

Defeated doppelganger and viper queen. Well... grandfather of assassins... This fight is ill! We’ll wait for more exp and 9’th level spells.

Now Bodhi time, no problems with minions on 1’st level, and... now I know where Orcus is but 8 grandlords at the beginning were enough. Interesting thing, decided to defeat the vampires only with Jack, and there were too many of them in the corridor so some of them decided to strike from the second side and met Drizzt who was drained to death! No one survived.

Grandlords are vulnerable only to crushing weapons, I have to remember that while fighting Orcus.

Mordimer needs to achieve 24 level(2 levels more) to be able to dispel much more(hope he’d be able to dispel that cowled wizard with II), so WK time again. Whole 3’rd level is easy and profitable, after selling everything gold is about 400k, will forge rimed club.

Eventually forged: amulet+2, rimed club and warlord’s blade(10% physical res.). Explored all WK3 except for supreme leader and 2 minotaurs, fought 21 golems(3 elemental), sold many things, gold is back to 300k. Now time for guarded compound, I haven’t been able to do it right during my necro run.

This time however no problems whatsoever, decided to wish once on 1’st floor and got 25 stats, RRR’d and breached Sion, the rest was just slaughter. Greater elemental golem gates his minions so fast that we had to deal with all 9 of them(3 amber, that really hurt!). Found holy scabbard, but improving Carsomyr really misses it’s point. Over 70k (50k+garnet+others) just to gain one 5% ability which even can’t peel through PFMW? No, thanks!

Now Mordimer got 24’th level, we can try and see whether he can dispel II from cowled wizards, and then probably squirreled away(no idea how the quest proceeds after defeating prime assassinators or something like that).

YEAH! I could dispel her and the fight was easy then. I’ve done squirreled away too, the ending fight was a bit strange and Mordi died because I hadn’t been able to heal him and activated hardiness too late. Now... maybe twisted rune? Grave silence, vampire, sorceress, lich’s protections, assassin... yeah, that’s a fun party

After selling all the loot and clearing bags of holding a bit we have now 525k gold, high time to forge cat figurine. I’ve counted all permanency scrolls needed to forge everything I need, and it’s 10 more than I have
Forged: cat figurine, enh. Pride of legion, GoLM and supreme shelter, gold back to 260k or something like that.

As I’ve mentioned, time to defeat twisted rune now. First impressions: sorceress uses her staff to become invisible, cool Sikret! Beholder is the weakest one, we can dispel him easily. If he can’t see mages, Shangalar launches remove magic and if can then grave silence, ehh I’d love to have Hesperus now, and boots of IH(hope I can find 1 more scroll, because I’ve scribed 2 and have 2 more now, maybe ancient dragon wherever he is?). Unbuffed Captain Jack Sparrow with CS is equal in strength to the warrior, we can protect only 5 characters from level drain(amulet, 2x shield of archons and 2xPFMW). The fight is a calm one, I could last 1 round totally unbuffed and only Jack was almost dead. Now about tactic: we’ll launch 4 true seeing’s to be sure no nasty backstabs will land, and I’m not sure how often the sorc becomes invisible. We’ll kill them probably in order like that: beholder->warrior->vampire(only if (s)he’ll stand still and attack Sindbad)->the rest

Ring of ram=Shangalar out, he’ll be occupied by some summons, and the vampire follows nearest non-protected char, so (s)he’ll have to die first probably. Sorc seems to be the least of a threat. Err... was I mistaken thinking that there should be a thief? Never mind, our goal is to: make sure only pally is dispelled, push Shangalar to the smaller room with some summons, then kill vampire, (s)he appears on the other side ot the table than beholder which gives us an excellent occasion to use dispel from pally. Sorc can be easily peeled of her protections by RRR from CC, then probably will use breach from sequencers.

Additional note: using mass invisibility forces Shangalar to use true seeing which enables us to buff Mordimer properly.

Ummm... first try and... improved comet? WTF WAS THAT! Completely destroying Jack who had 60% res to everything? No thanks, something is NOT right here... but everything else works almost perfect(only Shangalar decided to come back to bigger room)
Err... VECNA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MWAHAHAHAHAHA I had no idea the robe can be found here. The fight was awesome, btw sorc can’t be killed until she casts wish or until some time, she wished for sleep but only she and Shangalar survived till that time and she died seconds later

What to do next? I may try Orcus but need to forge staff of strength, also there is only Supreme leader and grandfather of rune assassins, that’s funny but prince of undead seems to be the easiest of them. (Though never fought any of them). In the end decided to try supreme leader. With hardiness he’s almost invincible, the amount of gith is frightening and on top of that we have to race through 3 rooms to get to guys who summon lesser golems and they’re extremely durable. I’ll have to do something to occupy Supreme Leader for some time, maybe ring of ram again?

First note: comet is better than ring of ram, and comet which you can cast at 0 speed is even better, summoners are susceptible only to crushing weapons, time to use belm for the first time, supreme leader don’t cast dispel magic when he sees a mage. Ummm... they create coin and gem golems too! And numbers of gith are really impressive, I’m not sure whether they are gated or not. Anyway we need to get to the summoners using only 1 comet. I think that 3xADHW on hit might help us when they start to swarm around us, also cat figurine prevents golems from slowing us.

Hmm, one of the summoners can be hit with crushing weapon and second by piercing.

Yeah, after killing them anti-inquisitors appear and it seems only electric attacks can harm them seriously(85% or something like that physical res). Spell triggers with 3xchain lightning, changed prebuffs(aura of flaming death on druid and globe of blades on Crysania). Comets are really helpful here and the only scary enemy is the leader(he debuffs us), first try was unlucky, bad number of spells and leader wasn’t pushed away where we intended him to.
Hey! I want my paladin to have something like torturous inquisition! Nice damage and dispels buffs even under SI:abjuration.

Ummm... mass stoneskins, mass protections from magical weapons, mass hardiness, and on top of that body equilibrium! WHAT?
Ufff, this time I managed to defeat him, though unnecessarily wasted critical strike on pally which meant supreme leader could activate his regeneration any time. Pally was able to dispel him, so after defeating everything else I could defeat him with all our might!

The dragon: this fight is... well, no arcane magic means normal weapon pounding. I’ll try him after selling things. Firstly we go to 5’th level and... Ancient dragon Ufff, finally I know where he is! Noble efreeti is weak, though many spells(=time) must be spent to defeat him, salamander prince is even weaker, I have no idea what about elite nishruu. Anyway if he’s most ancient dragon of all then we’ll let him live for a bit longer, but not too long! Btw hope the dragon CAN be killed before his minions(and hope they don’t respawn like chromatic demon’s mobs) because I see that elite nishruu has extremely high regeneration.

Now time to defeat random(are they random?) spawns on 5’th level which means: 4elemental golems and 2 Greater bone golems and 4grandlords+shade lich. They should provide enough exp for some of my party members to gain level, then we’ll see if the globe spawns are improved(yeah, Sikret would never disappoint me, I’m sure they are!). We need 1 more crushing weapon +4 to be able to face Orcus.

After selling some stuff gold is 315k and I’ll forge only axe+5, not knowing when we’ll need permanency scrolls most. Funny thing, I think I’ve sold an ioun stone by mistake and now I can’t forge improved one... (to be sure I’ve read some journals and people forged it right after killing Kruin).

Defeated demilich, as usual: ring of ram and pounding, found scroll of protection from magic and azuredge+minor stuff.

4 elemental golems on the 5’th level destroyed, exp from them is our best friend. Hmm, I wonder what about the globe machine, 4 coin, then 4 gem, what next? 4 amber? 5’th level seems to be my favourite, no drop whatsoever till now, but gold and exp in enormous amounts! Time to try 4’th level dragon.

Yeah, he was the weakest dragon I’ve encountered, prebuffs made to distract the dragon(SI, GoI, ST), 6xgiant strength, 6xIH, pro fire and minor buffs, I wanted to try whether he can be breached after CC 3xRRR but spell shield bug appeared as usual(he’s breachable, right?) so I had to pound him with normal weapons. Loot: finally defender of easthaven and staff of ram! Now we’ll be able to face the prince of the undead! But first we’ll defeat some more creatures from the globe machine. And before that I’ll forge flail of defending and wounding.

Hmm, Gandalf needs only 200k exp to level up and get *****in staves which means 2 additional attacks, so I’ll probably try to postpone the fight with Orcus till then.

After forging we have only 150k gold and 4 permanency scrolls, improving ring of gaxx becomes a dim future... but now we’re much more powerful, time to exp!

No problems with mages and spiders, but... decided to see what will be next concerning golems... 2 ice golems that purge magic and are relatively durable and an elemental golem. They’re hard but seem doable, worse thing is that in the end there is an ultra golem(again: WTF!) and greater elemental(purge and stuff).

Destroyed skeleton lords and grandlords, had some problems with vampires but they were ok(here Gandalf gained 24 level!). Err... 4 grave liches? Necro with help of a guy with improved disrupt undead was supposed to defeat 3 of them... extremely fast destroying our protections and this improved comet... yeah this will certainly be fun, but not now! We’ll go for 4 grandlords, a shade lich and a grave lich on the other side of this location. I really want to go to the elven city but heard that it may bug extended ranger stronghold(is that true?).

Interesting, grave liches can be easily dispelled by Mordimer that means we can really defeat them!

I must say that my party is finally powerful decided to defeat grandfather of assassins... and did it without even slightest problems. Though I had no patience to wait till some more reinforcements come and killed the leader fast. With mass protection from poison(2 items and 2 characters), PFMW and skins, with aura of flaming death and globe of blades+GM and our best summons + the fact that Mordi can dispel buffs from mages and our halberd protects from ADHW we slaughtered them all! And gold is back to 375k, however... we’ll have to forge green wyrm’s armor, why? Because some n00bish diviner wants it! Grrr, if it wasn’t for swanmays’ sake I wouldn’t even consider it! We’ll waste 75k! Hope that the loot will be enough to compensate it... Errr... a deity? Wow, I like the plot of this quest!

Yeah, ultra golem with nice regeneration and 90% physical res(tried slashing, piercing doesn’t work at all), gates amber golems and purges magic... perfect, just perfect! How powerful can be supreme golem then?! And I’ve heard that last IA fight is against a god... Hehh, the fight is an interesting one, though ultra golem has no drop whatsoever... pretty sad Ummm... We fight against a great number of golems and... “Brown bear did 2 damage to Squirrel”! Hahh it was awesome
Uff that was a really tough fight, we’re too weak to destroy ultra golem before second purge appears However I must say that amber golems are still the most formidable opponents. We’ve used 75k gold to forge green wyrm’s armor and got 125k! + a nice axe, however we already have volcano and flail of defending and wounding offhand.

Gandalf learned foreknowledge because he has 50k more exp than Edward. (he’s immune to ADHW and sometimes I forget that mages usually have 3x this spell). Time to visit elven city and see what happens there, plus I’m interested in items that an ugly dragon might have. I hope that there I’ll find IH scroll...

Noble Rakshasa+ greater elemental golem, great! And the dragon has some golems of ill power, that apply miscast magic and are... hard...
Haha, swanmay queen can defeat an amber golem without much trouble! I love them! I’m so scared of rakshasas that I decided to kill them asap, noble rakshsasa died before 2 rounds(fast rush with Jack, CS and remove magic from Mordimer, right after it landed 2 other members joined and pounded him to death).

Found our 3’rd IH scroll! Great! Forged the boots and now it’s time to defeat the dragon, fortunately he can be breached easily, but his golems are extremely powerful...
The dragon CAN be killed before golems and he himself is a weakling, when we can cast breaches at almost instant speed(casting time=1) and have 2 powerful fighters with critical strike, the dragon has to fall.

Decided to defeat 4 grave liches now... It seems that the best strategy is to go there only with Jack, who is invincible when it comes to liches: 100% fire res+regeneration and Poseidon(did it without Poseidon, ADHW is not scary really to the greatest of pirates!) and many GR used by cleric.

Also defeated ice golems and elemental one, I must admit that ice golems are scary... luckily they can be dealt damage by RoF which Gandalf can fire at the speed of light(though has only 8/9 and then has to use limited wish...).

After that decided to deal with greater elemental and ultra from globe machine, the tactic is to separate them(elemental should chase after Edward who has PFMW and ultra should try to hit Gandalf), and after ultra purges we gang upon him, then pound for over 3 rounds and wait for purge which lands on Gandalf, who erects protections and IH and then the golem is killed. Elemental dropped usuno, so now we can forge hammer of thor(2.5 additional dmg, mass electrical dmg and 100%res sounds interesting enough ).

Also I see that the key summons some guys that drops club of detonation, and that means we’ll forge royal elemental staff!

Forged these 2 weapons, gold is less than 90k. Sad, we still need: Hesperus(don’t know why, there are no scary undead in ToB if Sikret hasn’t changed that), gaxx and +4 ring(for mages), JD sword and that dragon slaying halberd, diamond sword(because we love the song from Tobuscus ) which is about 1mln gold... oh, and ancient wyrm armor for cleric!

Before killing Orcus I’ll show how my team looks like now: (items are specifically chosen to fight grandlords):


Captain Jack Sparrow: level 27, 5CS 3Hardiness and contact with nature, *****axes, **short swords, ** long swords, **2dual wield, **flail, **warhammer, AC -16(+additional -2 to slashing), crimson ioun stone, red coral armor, gauntlets of weapon expertise, 2x+2 ring, cloak+2, AoP(prince of undead has not only skeletons, but vampires too, right?), girdle of lordly might, boots of ranger, offhand flail of defending and wounding and main hand hammer of Thor.


Mordimer Madderdin: 27level, 5CS, 3Hardiness and deva, **long sword, **short sword, **2h sword, * bastard swords, **dual wield, **flail, AC -22(+additional -7 to slashing), improved dragon helmet, 2xring+2, supreme shelter, phosphorus, amulet of greater protection, cloak+2, golden girdle, enhanced pride of legion, paladin bracers


Crysania: 32level, all proficiencies, AC -11(-24 with all buffs and additional-4 to slashing), armor of hart(we need ancient wyrm to die to give her a better armor), ring+2, cloak+2,amulet+1, symbol of lathander, girdle of bluntness, bracers of blinding strike, pale green ioun, offhand rimed club and FoA.


Sindbad the Sailor: 29level, 3 natural restoral, 4fist of nature, smilodon and many more,
*in 2h, *****spear, *****staff, ***club, **dual wield AC -13(-23 with buffs), improved ankheg, circlet of golden flowers, amulet+1, 2xring+2, cloak+2, boots of grounding(105 elec. res) girdle of bluntness, gauntlets of dexterity, staff of the woodlands(we need everyone to wield crushing weapon)


Gandalf: 25level, *****halberd, *****staff, *2h sword, *2h weapon vecna, amulet+1, vhailor, gaxx, cloak+1, ring of acuity, gloves+1thaco, belt of inertial barrier, royal elemental staff


Edward Elric: 25level, *****2h sword, ****halberd, **staff, *2h weapon robe of good archmagi, helm of balduran, amulet+1,ring+2,cloak+1, gloves and boots+AC vs missiles, belt 20str, staff of ram
Orcus IS doable without barbarian essences! That means more saved for later! Well, first attempt was not successful because Mordimer had cat figurine and it was him, who was stunned(=no heal because clerics silenced and no free action because... clerics silenced ). Hope that he can be dispelled by Mordi or Crysania, he gates some weak skeletons from time to time and also every some rounds a master vampire appears near one of our characters. Silence of the dead is scary! It lasts more than a turn... and this means we’ll have to retreat with mages and clerics and leave the fighting only to warriors(hope that vampires will appear near my casters, because we can use only 1 scroll of protection from level drain and we’ll use it on silenced mage).

Phew! Now, that was a real fight! Many times Orcus was sure he’s already won, but in the end it was us who stood triumphantly over his dead body! The most scary moments were:
1. When Edward’s PFMW was interrupted by vampires and 1 of them started chasing him(he ended with 10 level or something like that...)
2. When master vampire was pushed to one of these small chambers, because I was not sure whether he can go out
In the end we got 4 barb. Essences and black blood, but no permanency scroll! I want one to forge Hesperus! But anyway now we have 19 barb essences! Btw Jack got level here and took 4’th(and probably last) hardiness, and this means that we gained lots of exp. Orcus managed to summon 3 waves of lords and 1 of vampires, probably it was his limit because then we fought for another 6 or 7 rounds before he died(Mordimer is awesome with his dispel magic!) and no other creatures appeared except for master vampires.

I’ve tried to do the 3’rd new vagrant quest... but this was impossible without barb essence and I’m NOT gonna drink one before final fight... and that means only 1 thing. What can grant Jack permanent barb essence? It’s JD sword of course!
The demon lord was easy, at first I was going to finish him as fast as I could, but after he got to badly injured and summoned minions+regenerated, I decided to fight till the end of his summons(they give exp so they must be finite). In the end 14 minions and the weakest of them: the demon... Now we need only mage half of the JD. It can be forged before ToB(no “cespy only” in the item list) and this means that it has to be in the WK and what is a better place for such important components than dead body of last SoA dragon? I’m sure Mordimer can dispel him even though mages can’t breach(they’ll probably be silenced, I don’t think that the wyrm can be killed as easily as Jon’s dragon, with only 1 char silenced.)

Little notes about the dragon: it seems he has constant improved alacrity, his minions are too weak to be really mentioned. I have a strange feeling that this fight won’t be a really demanding one, nishruu and salamander can be slain with weapons and efreeti can’t survive melf’s AA assault (about 20 cast at insta speed), spellstrike needs 1/10 of a round, rest of our spells none(I don’t think I’ll be able to breach him, because efreeti must be killed before silenced and that means no time for breach probably, or maybe one of my mages will be still unsilenced, that’d be great!), interesting: nishruu has a helmet btw the wyrm is stupid... he casts remove magic on Jack who had no spells cast on him(yeah had IH from his boots only and was silenced).

Hmm, an even better thing, I can make the dragon silence only Sindbad first, this means some more rounds(or about a round, the dragon is really fast) for the mages to peel through dragon’s protections

Ummm... the dragon has more than 150% magic resistance... good to know(I mean I’ve lowered his resistance by 90% and still he resisted 2 lightning bolts(just wanted to see whether he’s vulnerable to anything except for good pounding))

The fight was terrible, mass greater doom means only Jack and Mordi can hit him(when they’re not silenced that is), lower res+improved fireball, this doesn’t need any comment. 5 or more greater silences... won just because wishes were good. And it wasn’t before a try when 3xADHW killed my party when the dragon was on verge of death. (wished for IH on everyone and protection from magical energy, though in the end ADHW didn’t land due to Jack’s fast pounding (90dmg per round)). Mordi died however just before that(I haven’t noticed that his res is that low and thus couldn’t prevent the fireball from killing him).

The drop... hindo’s doom, mage half of JD, last halberd needed for that beautiful dragon killing one and some really minor stuff. Well, we’ll scribe wish and monster summoning VII, they’re nice, but I think we can win without timestop for example.
Anyway, now we’ll finish WK and then time for really not amusing but somehow tempting 3’rd quest of extended vagrant stronghold. I’ve tried it before during this run, however without JD sword I’d have to drink barb essence(s) in order to get some mirrors, so no, thanks.

The lich... only good thing about him was drop, he was so weak I didn’t even bother to avoid being silenced(all fighting characters were silenced after he was RRoR’ed).
Hmmm... another demon to defeat... They start to bore me, undead prince, prince of demons(the imprisoned), demon lord, yeah one more or one less doesn’t really matter, I only hope that his minions will provide us with a good number of exp. Our gold is about 11k now

Ummm, the fight against demon prince is harder than I thought.
It’s insane! He’s invincible! Burn mortals, mass remove magic, mass protections that only Mordimer can dispel(and Crysania sometimes but before she cast the spell the demon manages to run away... ). Luckily he summoned only 1 marilith and my mages(27 levels) were able to dispel them. A note for future me: swanmays all the way, The Truth deals additional 1 to 2 damage which is awesome, and the most important thing: RBs or more characters with critical hit!
Sad thing, I haven’t used spear of withering even once, and it costed me about 25/30k. Time to sell it for mere 12k. And now we can try to tackle that ill 3’rd vagrant quest. (I know that the fights are awful from one of users, personally tried only anti-ranger, and it was so hard without barb essences that it pushed me to defeat ancient dragon and forge JD sword)

Well I also hope that in ToB there will be lots and lots of gold, I have no perma scrolls and no gold(and need to forge gaxx, ring+4, dragon slaying halberd and ancient wyrm plate).

Arrrgh! Gaxx would be most precious now! But sadly no way I can forge it before ToB. So back to 3’rd vagrant quest: with my eq mirrored vipers died faster than they managed to spawn(3 groups pounding from 3 sides every group had 2 nice summons and 2 party members). Mirrored grandlord, windmaster and ghost spider didn’t stand a chance(ghost killed before summoning lesser spders!), also mirrored shade(fight to get ability to breath underwater) was easy.

Not much to say about mirrored golem fight, Jack with CS is enough to destroy him, and we get 1 precious barb essence! (now 21 in eq, hope we can get much more! (each of the fights for mirrors provides 1 barb essence if I’m not mistaken(I haven’t defeated the drowned spirit yet so I’m not sure))).

When fighting anti-ranger we can’t really use JD sword, because it has 5% chance to cast PFMW and this means all enemies start pounding swanmays. Also when near dead anti-ranger summons mirrored warrior who has to be killed before our main enemy(anti-ranger heals completely after summoning him). What is more they can’t be killed before first swanmay disappears(I don’t believe someone can do that, if you can then I’d like to see, record it please) and the mirror can’t be taken before the fight ends, that means 2 elemental golems and their minions to cope with after defeating anti-ranger. Having to deal with so many enemies(which can hit really hard, also anti-ranger has 9APR) means that we NEED 100% physical damage resistance, which means 2 barb essences(since we can’t use JD till anti-ranger is alive).

We need to forge a ring+3 (to be precise gaxx and 3 rings+4 would be perfect) to be able to fight 5 mirrored ghost spiders... Changed Sindbad’s armor to full plate(same protection against piercing as ankheg and we could wear a +3 ring). Items distributed so that Mordimer has -5 va spells, Jack has -3, Edward has -1, Gandalf has -5, Crysania and Sindbad have -2, all but Gandalf become invisible, both mages have in CC foreknowledge, partial tenser and summon elite troll on hit, right after the fight started Jack summoned swanmay queen in a safe place and mages activated ST(giant strength and PFMW), then LMD on each mage(Edward had cast improved alacrity right before the fight) and extermination of spiders. After all of them are dead just a usual gang attack on drowned soul, no problems whatsoever. Ahh, a note that drowned spirit is just a mithril golem with another appearance.

Anti-ranger killed using 2 barb essences and hardiness.

Final fight: since Mordimer could remove master’s buffs and we could breach him, the fight was rather easy.(though the master has 36 level, our 35 level cleric couldn’t help with her dispel magic(tried about 5 times, so I think he has 36 level)). Fight was rather boring... waiting till he stops casting(Captain Jack Sparrow is invincible, he can take any amount of spells without really bothering) and then just pound till he die(x2...). Upgraded lakesider’s axe is still weak, so we took 5 barb essences instead(I’m not sure whether it works, but after gaining 2’nd mirror one can take 5 barb essences from the pond and after killing the master just go out and sell precious ruby of gods!)

Sold all we could, gold back to almost 200k, forged 2 last cloaks +2, one ring +2 and after selling potions we managed to forge great wyrm’s armor. Gold is equally 673coins And I like that deep red colour of the armor!
We have nothing else to do here, time to kick some mage’s ass! We have 29 barb essences, this means everyone can have 100% physical res when needed! (hope we can save them all for last fight).

Since we could prebuff, Irenicus on the tree stood no chance, no improved alacrity? Well, we needed less than 1 turn to kill him, and I’m not sure whether he could be defeated before his golems. Anyway 3xRRoR during improved alacrity + breach= every normal mage is dead.

Last fight: only buff was IH from wish(+summons which were also hastened), no problems here(knight->balor->marilith->golem->slayer) though slayer has insane regeneration rate! (maybe he just used regeneration spell something like 5 times or maybe it’s constant anyway with 5 chars pounding and 1 debuffing he stood no chance). Note: it’s important to kill balor and demon knight as fast as you can because they lower fire resistance(balor does it too, right?) and slayer has some comets...
Illasera: was this fight really improved? Luckily there were some grandlords, which means exp and gold. Random quests in town, sad thing we can’t sell our magical items because prices are lowered, hope it changes in next city. (they offer +2 and +3 weapons which means lower prices when we sell them). Vampires killed solely by Jack, Gromnir stood no chance, though his mage is immune to remove magic somehow! I want an item like that too Sikret! (I mean it’s not a boss, so it shouldn’t be his inborn skill). Marching mountains=only weak enemies, after selling loot forged dragon lord, funny thing but this red dragon breath is extremely efficient when it comes to killing Yaga’s guards(humans). Also forged axe of unyielding, staff of ram, halberd+6, spear+6 and foebane. Yaga’s “mother” killed without problems, though I had to run away from skeletons and they killed Sindbad(good thing, Jack with his eq can take any amount of skeletons himself. In general he’s invincible, no fighter or mage can do real harm to him).

Well... my big brother was a real surprise, he’s even more invincible than Jack! As much prebuffs as we could(IH from wish, PFME and hardiness from wish), many RRRs and even more stone/iron skins. After 3’rd wave the greatest pounding in the game began, but... Yaga was able to withstand it for over a turn! He has 1 hardiness if I’m not mistaken and can be breached, he’s vulnerable to acid and electricity(Thor’s hammer deals about 20/30 damage with each electric hit and dragon lord kills those weak spawning warriors with dragon breaths). Probably should’ve remembered more improved alacrities(all wasted RRRing enemies) and make good use of AA and other spells. Loot was good, the hammer still has protection against level drain, great! There is only 1 place where we might meet undead and it is in the next city(always forget the name) so probably I won’t forge Hesperus, sad thing... but that means money to forge diamond sword!
The oasis. Over 10 gem golems which means nice loot, also lots and lots of other enemies, they probably have good stuff too! Maybe we’ll be able to forge gaxx and other +4 ring before our winged brother is dead
Anyway firstly we’ll go to Amkethran. Random quests here, killed lich, sold many things(gold is about 130k).

Outsides of Sendai’s enclave.

Draconis- killing dragons has never been so nice! (dragon lord I mean) But the dragon is resistant to dispel magic(is there any1 who isn’t now?...)
Now THAT is what I like! Abazigal can be dispelled easily, but when dying he summons ice golem and ultra golem! + Salamander prince but he’s of no value whatsoever. Hope Jack can cope with Abazigal alone just like he did when fighting his son, good thing is that he has 95 cold res. I have strange feeling that Necro could just give them hell(literally) with infinite spell casting(well, 12 fire arrows and so on, they’re acid and cold dragons after all, I think only ancient dragon isn’t vulnerable to such things.).

I’d really love to see a version of IA where one can get all these improved items just for a specific protagonist, but the fights are greatly improved.

Left Abazigal alone, time to clear some of Sendai’s enclave. Drows in barracks have really frightening ability, each successful hit with crossbow drains 1/2 str and worsens our saving throws(+improved web= certain death), this meant charge with Jack and Mordimer(best saving throws and I was too lazy to buff or sleep) to kill the drows(and to force them to go melee). No problems here.

Sold lots and lots of stuff, gold is back to 210k. Unluckily we’ll have to get something like 1mln because: we want giant girdle(30k), 4 pairs of boots of speed(200k), gaxx(120k+90k) and 3 rings +4(just to be sure that if final battle needs saving throws we’ll be prepared). Forged hindo’s doom, another GR is GR-eat!

HEY! One can’t forge boots of speed from some pairs of worn out boots! That means 1 char won’t have permanent haste...

Oasis: improved alacrity then buff everyone, the best thing was that the main fighter propelled Jack to Northern part of the map and he was surrounded by cleric, mage and about 10 golems, that means 12 enemies less Mordi used dispel when needed(Jack’s mage can breach, and we have finite number of hardiness skills so he had to be eliminated fast), then after we slaughtered all, Jack decided to show the main fighter how to fight. This encounter was fairly easy, golems are no threat to us, mages were weak, priests even weaker(dragon breath or something works wonders here, also hammer of thor can inflict full damage if I’m not mistaken(dealt 74 one time)).

Abazigal: he’s as weak as any dragon(except for the might ancient dragon of course). I have a strange feeling that his minions(2 golems) are invincible (ice golem had nead dead for something like 2 rounds of IH pounding with 5 chars), but when I concentrated only on Abazigal he died really fast=Mordi and Jack pound, mages debuff+lower res+spell shower, Sindbad summon meat for golems and Crysania+Mordi use dispel magic(it’s faster and safer to do it this way than try t breach and be silenced(Edward was silenced anyway right after spellstrike)).

Forged FoA+5 and gaxx. Sad thing, we’ll need much much more gold and I’m not sure what can be useful during last fight.

Drow ambush: 10x dragon breath then finish with Jack, when no one drains his stats or weakens his saving throws he's invincible (Well, I could probably just finish these grandlords that lich summons with Jack, but it wouldn’t be funny at all). So the lich: everyone has 1 or 2 crushing weapons(Mordimer has JD offhand, he needs that damage reduction badly and Sindbad has rimed club+supreme shelter). We can kill the lich in 3 rounds probably, but I’ll prolong the fight(well it’s a lich, no problems killing him when only 1 mage is silenced, not that we’re afraid of stellar gravestone or something) to get more gold from his minions(don’t be ridiculous it’s last lich in the game if last boss isn’t a lich and I highly doubt it, so he must have more than 7 minions! And grandlords(hope they’re summoned after first wave) ale extremely useful(pots of resurgence and 1500 for scrolls, hope we won’t need any resurrection scrolls for last fight, but just in case I’ll take one or 2 with me))

Errr... his minions weren’t grandlords... Every 4 or 5 rounds he summons or 2 bone devils or bone devil and greater bone golem or lord+granlord(I’ve prolonged the fight to get 2 or 3 such spawns). The lich himself was no threat to my party, even without buffs he couldn’t really hurt us with stellar gravestone! (75% or more fire res and liches can’t lower it!)

Next rooms were easy, is there anything interesting till the end? Sendai looks really weak, she has... a pet a ghost spider(any purpose for him to be here? His web won’t help him and he+minions die easily). Ehhh: the pet is EXTREMELY resistant(2 rounds of critical strikes from Jack made him injured(but not before second CS had ended)), but it’s nothing, web golems(similar to hardwood ones if I’m not mistaken, same miscast magic and stuff) are indestructible! (3 damage with critical hit? Resistant to everything except for slashing? They should also have web ability on hit to make them perfect!). It seems that Sendai is the weakest of them all (well, ghost spider might be weaker) + she’s easily dispelled by pally.
Sold many things(for example psion blade, Yaga’s armor, staff against golems, about 500 potions) and forged 3x boots of speed, we’ll probably be able to forge another ring+4 , good, however now it’s time to kill Sendai, Gandalf memorized black blade of disaster.

Since Sindbad can’t use slashing weapons(my mistake, should’ve put ***** in scimitars instead of clubs) and has high saving throws(-1 to spells only), some1 will have to stay near to spider’s spawning place, to take improved web, so that Sindbad can pound the pet. Btw, Sendai poison with her weapon, so sadly I had to give forged amulet to Mordimer, which made Jack’s saving throws against spells -4 and that leaves 5% chance of being entangled.
No reloads, this fight IS really easy and miscast magic lasts only a few rounds. Is it me getting better or do the fights get easier? Sendai herself fell to ultimate combo vagrant+JD+FoDW.

I’ll probably share some ideas with Sikret on how to improve Balthazar. It is said that he’s the most powerful of the 5 and yet he dies even faster than the first one of them.

Rakshasa prince... yeah so that’s why fist of nature deals x3 damage to rakshasas! And 12 elder swanmays too! Tomorrow will write more on this topic, however the fight looks really interesting!

We have lots of space here, which enables us to run away for example, I’ll probably run as much as I can, I don’t care, he’s a god... Some notes: supreme golem CAN be killed before rakshasas spawn and before his second elemental golem is gated, and that means 4 more swanmays to defeat them! We’ll try to keep swanmays alive, they’re master golem killers(they deal with amber golems, I hate amber golems!) and their ability pierces PFMW so they kill rakshasas too! (not that we’ll let them run their protections for long). Supreme golem on the other hand is a supreme swanmay killer(first try: I run away to see how swanmays can cope, 2 were killed by supreme golem before any of ultras could bring even one to badly injured). Prince has to take his time before casting ADHW(lol his minions do it much faster!). He has weak AC for a final boss, but his insane regeneration compensates it. (probably more than 50 per round, we’ll see later). He dispels our magic pretty often(well, he’s a god, duuh!).

Sad thing, we’ll have to take most of ADHW’s only with equipment change(Poseidon ^.^ + other stuff, I’ll probably even change Mordi’s armor to firecam, we can always rise our fire res using tons of items, and we have mere 2 scrolls of PFME+ we need all IH possible(and giant strength) to inflict as much damage as we can and as fast as we can, AC won’t be needed).

Supreme golem has 5xfire shield(blue, red, green, more green, and less blue, that is damage from all 5 sources) that inflict something like 1-5 damage from each source, no problem with correct prebuffing and items.

Well, it’s time to present my team for the second time(I have no patience for such things, so sorry)


Captain Jack Sparrow: 35 level,-15AC, 276/86 HP, usually 24str, 10CS, 6hardiness(should’ve taken more CS)
Red coral armor, x2 ring+2, amulet of seldarine, gauntlets of extraordinary specialisation, boots of ranger lord, girle of fortitude, balduran’s helmet, cloak+2, many weapons(mainly axe of unyielding and volcano(for fire res) in main hand and JD offhand(for +2str+damage reduction)). He’ll be main damage dealer in this fight, perfect res, constant 10APR and things like that.


Mordimer Madderdin: 35 level, -12AC, 214 HP, 24str, 5hardiness, 10CS, 2xdeva
firecam armor, paladin bracers(improved), dragon helmet, amulet of greater protection, 2xring+2, cloak+2, boots of speed, golden girdle, foebane mainhand and phosphorus offhand, second main damage dealer, has 7APR and many CSs which are great for supreme golem and later for the prince(to hit everytime, I don’t think that criticals deal more damage to him)


Crysania: 7/39level, -13AC(then -15), 195 HP(more with spells), 25str
Spellbook:
11xGR, 4xheal, 8xwondrous recall, iron skins, 2xrise dead, 6x mass cure, 2xrighteous might, rest is not really interesting(mainly protections and holy power for combo holy power+RM)
amulet+1, cloak+2, ring+2, holy symbol(later ring+2) boots of speed, BoIB, bracers of blinding strike, ancient wyrm armor, pale green Ioun, hammer of thor mainhand and FoA offhand.
Main healer(team healer), with some ways of healing swanmays. She’s a good tank for spells


Sindbad the Sailor: 9/39 -13 AC, 195 HP, usually 23str, 12 fists of nature, 3 netural restorals,
7 anacondas, 3 regenerations, 1AOFD, 5heals, 7wondrous recalls 1stoneskin, 10mass cure, then random spells
full plate armor, gauntlets of dexterity, golden flower circlet amulet+1, ring+2, gaxx+5, cloak+2, boots of speed, belt+23str, staff of ram+6.
He’ll keep track of swanmays and summon, summon, summon! Has staff that has 20 charges of shambling mounds. Something like 80 HP not resistant to anything... but good for distraction.


Edward Elric: 32 level, 162HP, -4AC(-6 later), 20/24str
3xwish,1x improved alacrity, 2x yuanti, 1xplanetar(yuantis have weapons+4 or better, planetars don’t but they heal swanmays ) 4xforeknowledge, 5xpartial tenser, 11 limited wishes(heal and restore spells) 7xIH, 3xgiant strength, 4xSI(heard that using abjuration can make the fight much harder, so we’ll use necromancy), 5xprotection from acid, 1xstoneskin, 7xRoF (we hate ambers, we don’t want to go close to them), 2x protection from cold, 6x remove magic(we also hate PFMW run by rakshasas) 1’st and 2’nd level spells are of no use in this fight
robe of good arcimagi, gauntlets of weapon skill, netheril, AoP, ring+3 and cloak+2, girdle+20str, ring of wizardry, warlord’s blade, dragon lord


Gandalf: 32level, 152HP, -10AC, 22/24 str, almost same spells
vecna, gauntlets of weapon expertise, helm of rock, amulet+1, ring+2, ring+3, cloak+2, boots of speed, girdle+22str, Poseidon, noble elemental staff.
Mages buff, mages summon, mages debuff, mages fight, these are 2 multifunctional killing machines.
The plan is to defeat supreme golem before first rakshasas spawn, then destroy them, help+heal one part of swanmays, then last 4 and try to keep them alive while pounding the prince.

Time for the fight:
First time(hope that it’s also LAST time)
at the beginning djinni+noble spider entertain the prince, Edward stand near to him drinking barb essences, the rest pound supreme golem(we had enough protections to neglect his shield damage). After maybe 3 rounds the golem is dead, we kill elemental golem then(only 1!) and rakshasas gate, they managed to dispel 2 IH, so Gandalf improved alacrity and buff+ debuff(many PFMW on rakshasas), one rakshasa team attacked eastern swanmays, so we left them for a bit, dealing with western team, then Jack rushed to help northern swanmays, sad thing, one was already dead now as I write it: northern ultra is badly injured, noble rakshasas are dead, only 1 horrid is still alive, eastern ultra is injured.
About a round later one ultra is dead, second is badly injured, Sindbad naturally restored one of swanmays, and now it’s a race for second one’s life: amber pounds her(near dead) and Crysania casts heal. ARRRGH! Universal purge magic: purges all magic possible AND makes our spells fail, that means Crysania can’t save poor swanmay(however Sindbad can! He’s real friend of swanmays, not Jack!). An army of swanmays marching towards another golem, that’s just beautiful! (they still have lots of life and Crysania can heal them fast well, hope they won’t run away after last ultra is dead... ).

Ummm... somehow I got my resistances lowered... ALL OF THEM! Even physical, WTF is that?

Calm down, all golems are dead, now it’s just us and the prince! Let him see what Captain Jack Sparrow and his crew can do!

WHAT? Nooooo! It seems that rakshasa prince has a shield that deals MAGIC damage! And I have no means of preventing it... Except for wish that is, but I think these nasty universal purge magic’s are still somewhere there. Great! He has absolute immunity, and it’s probably undispellable...

Swanmay elders DON’T attack the prince... I think that selling these protection from magical energy scrolls was the worst thing in my entire game, now we have NO means of defeating the enemy(bringing him to injured costed us 1 greater restoration). Strange now the swanmays see the prince... really strange.

Second purge landed(some weak rakshasas dealt with just before the purge). Wished for IH on everyone(swanmays too, they swarm around the prince and I’m afraid I’ll have to kill them because their damage output is too low )
I’m SOOOO lucky! Both mages wished: one for IH on everyone, second for protection from magical energy

Arrrgh, second AI! Btw this is perfect: IH’ed swanmays deal great damage and still my 4 characters can(well, even 5) hit from afar with 2h weapon(not Jack though...). Now we have 10 fully healed swanmays that should attack right after prince’s AI wears off :>

When badly injured he cast another IA... 9 swanmays alive(or maybe some are somewhere on the other side of this location because dragon breath landed, 2 mass cure heal swanmays to 100% after dragon breath, btw he dispelled our magic, so swanmays are normally hasted and Jack has no PFME).

Hahh! Rakshasas leave PFME scrolls! That can be our chance after another universal purge! (How many more IAs do you have?). Oh! Another purge magic just after rakshasas spawn... and Jack is blocked by a vast number of swanmays! We need to lure the prince closer! Next 2 wishes: first for IH on everyone! Second one for a wand... things don’t look good, managed to get him to injured and another dragon breath appeared(couldn’t finish healing spell on near dead swanmay so she’ll die now probably). Ehhh... another AI! That becomes awful, really! He had 2 on injured, 2 on badly injured... does it mean I need to endure 2 more on near dead!? Well... if it wasn’t for lack of PFME scrolls this fight would be really easy with our lovely swanmays... Winning without them would be just a nightmare... (though they mainly help when fighting golems, now their mass attacks equals about 1 or 2 my characters). Looks like no more gated rakshasas, not that this would make a difference.
Our last wish: haste on everyone except for party, we’ll try to finish the fight before another purge, injured prince cast another dragon breath... that means only 2 characters pounding, very sad
6’th AI, this means no more, right?!

Wait wait wait wait... He CAST his 6’th AI and... said that he’s defeated
It was probably due to fact that he got to near dead right after started casting ADHW, I didn’t want to stop pounding him(though no PFME, we had almost 100% HP with everyone, so they didn’t stop attacking).
Poor rakshasa, he lost his supreme golem, which can’t be created that easily! In the end about 6/7 swanmays were alive!
Melissan was slashed by the true god of murder, CAPTAIN JACK SPARROW!







Some notes:


B->Druid was my worst choice, Cernd or RB(khe khem, I mean kensai) would be much better, he could only summon some creatures and run iron skins, had bad thaco and couldn’t use many items, don’t try any other druid than auramaster!
2xB->M these were my main strength throughout the game, 1 is a must, but 2 of them make fights even easier!

Having 12 swanmays I could deal with the prince without any barb essences(got 32, used something like 20 still didn’t need them, R/C had 7 more GR and we had hindo).

Vagrant is extremely powerful against almost everything, in the end could solo Draconis, though had no acid rasistance, but he mainly shines when there are many opponents, not bosses.

Having only 2 characters that can use CS is a great disadvantage(so change B->D to kensai!), mainly fighting demon prince and supreme leader(his AC is really insane...)

Last fight is really easy if you have a number of PFME scrolls or you can wish for rest. I really like the idea of helping swanmays, though it makes the fight a bit TOO easy. Wonder whether necro has some helpers too...

Inquisitor is great! Though only on core, he can't get more than 50% DR(well, without JD) so grandlords/golems can make almost insta-kill



Sikret or other modder: if you want, then make spoiler bars, I have no patience for that and here is so much non-spoiler info that spoilers would mainly outline the parts that shouldn't be read.