Hi Everyone.

Another Necro journal with some details of the fights. With my latest incarnation of "the most powerful party possible". The idea is to give the reader some concrete things to defeat the respective encounters IA throws at you. We will utilize either our tremendous strengths or enemy weaknesses. On almost all fights, we'll try to overpower the enemy instead of relying on "just surviving" the fights.

The Rules:

* Core Rules
* No personal equipment for "K/T", that means no Jansen Adventurewear no "Sword of the Rashemi" (They also seemed to be responsible for inconsistencies in my last game)
* Simplified Economy (we'll console in the trinkets for the equipment we need)
* Max HP's for everyone incl. NPC's.
* IATweks for modifying classes, Imoen => Kensai & Korgan => DD.
* An item pack the supplement a few missing items (e.g. a club +5, which we otherwise wouldn't have)

We will end up with:
PC: Necro
Imoen: Kensai
Korgan: DD
Cernd
Neera
Custom: K(13)/T.
=> We'll end up with two fighters who are able to reach around -22 & -30 Thac0 and the best tank (fighter) in the game in DD with the most effective spell casters possible.

Chapter 0. The Dungeon.

Join Minsc
Join Jaheira
Join Yoshimo (Berserker)
Join Custom made Kensai (to be swapped for Imoen later on)

Exit Dungeon, no "flaming sword" but we do get a "staff spear +2". It goes to Kensai.
Purchase scroll of "friends"
Sleep
Cast friends inside the inn.
Purchase "chaos", so now Necro has a level 5 spell.

To Slums
Meet Gaelan Bayle, accept quest
To Copper Coronet
Kill ruffians
Take quest from Firkraag

to Governmen District
Talk to Delon, accept quest
Talk to Tolgerias, accept quest
Save Viconia, don't join with her
Save Jan, don't join with him

To City Gates

To Umar hills
Accept ranger quest
Accept "find mimic's blood"
Talk to Madaulf
Talk to minister lloyd
go to ranger cabin
go to umar cave & finish Mimic
Finish "find Mimic's blood"

Go to temple ruins
talk with Anoth (or what's her name), Whack some shadows.
Return to Umar Hills, talk to Madaulf

Go to Trademeet
whack some animals
accept quest from high merchant
Join Cernd

Off to Druid Grove
Kill spiders & trolls
we need two rests in the area
Faldorn
Necro goes full offence, no protections needed.
3x Magic missile (interrupts 3 first spells)
2x Vampiric Touch (interrupts & causes a lot of damage)
Faldorn dies

We return to trademeet
Finish animal trouble & gain some very nice exp

Return to Druid Grove
Adratha's cottage
Prebuff outside with resist fire & cold's, Kensai quaffs an oil of speed, Stoneskins for Jaheira & Cernd
Inside we summon a clan spirit "up stairs"
Initiate fight by attacking "Adratha" with everyone. "Adratha"manages to get absolute immunity up.
Clan spirit takes care of the spawning rakshaha's and the rest of the crew just whacks away
Cernd nullifies the cloud with zone of sweet air.
Jaheira takes aggro of Adratha, takes a hit & renews Iron Skins.
(I'm beginning to like this Jaheira)
Keep whacking & "Adratha" soon dies, no problem!

Return to Trademeet
Drop raksasha head to ground, buy amulet +1 & potion of absorption from genies.
Pick up head from ground & return head to genies
Go to temple & purchase four points of reputation so reputation is at 15 (and gold at about 0)
Meet with high merchant & accept praise, gain almost 20k in gold & 1 point of reputation (reputation now 16)
Buy "Breach" from Kich.
Sleep in Vyatri's to prepare for next encounter

Back to Amn
Land at Waukeen's promenade
Get invitation with Valen
Start "cernd's child" quest

Move to docks
meet Suna Seni on the way
First fight with problems but manage after a few tries:
Rd1. Necro: ironskins, Jaheira: call lightning on cleric, Cernd: Emotion, Kensai Kai & attacks, berserker enrage & attack Cleric . DD switches to thrown axes & goes for Cleric.
Rd2. Necro: Greater malision, Jaheira summon clan spirit, Cernd "chain lightning"
Rd3. Necro "hold person", jaheira attack, Cernd: Emotion
Rd4. 'All of the enemies are pretty much either unconscious or held, so we whack the mage, then the cleric, then Suna Seni.
Rd5. Necro breach & Cernd: Emotion

to Waukeen's Promenade
Go for circus tent, *meh*
Kalah dies to simultaneous flame arrows from Necro & Cernd
(I didn't remember that this was so simple).
Go to Cernd's former house, then the next house (luckily PC has charisma of 17)

to Government District
Finish cern'd child (the evil mage get PfMW up so whack with non-magical weapons).
Cernd leaves for Grove & we leave to retrieve Cernd from the Grove

Next to Docks
Visit Shadow Thieves & start the Mae'var quest line, which means that to Temple District we go

Temple District
We visit temple district and buy all scrolls of "protection from poison" we can find & girdle of bluntness from weathermistress from the temple of Talos.
gold at 25k ( Kensai has Thac0 of 1!)
Since we can't continue the Mae'Var quest line we
1. Finish sir sales
2. return neb's head
3. get dawn ring quest
4. do the "fallen paladins" quest
Then Sleep at Copper Coronet
Finish mae'var and reject thief stronghold, since it's quite shit. We get a nice sword for our effort. Sweet.

Exp now at 500k or so, gold at 60k and we haven't even started chapter 3. Since Jaheira's quest line didn't trigger we have to kill some time.

to trademeet
pick up Rasaad (your quest is terrible & we don't like it).
Finish abandoned theater and Vagrant blades (they have some useful items)
Finish Tears of Selune on the way to the Heretic Temple & do everything there.
Let go of Rasaad.

to the waukeen's promenade
cast friends & purchase scroll of "hold monster" as well as all of the "polymorph other" scrolls they have. We like polymorph other.
Go to Copper Coronet & join with Korgan
Next up GraveYard district
Loot everything besides "king & queen"
Accept Tirdir quest
Kill Uncle Lester

Go to lower tombs

some problems with spiders on the way because of ill-preparations. We finish with 2 used haste's meaning we are fatigued before we even reach the lower tombs

Back to slums to sleep

but Jaheira's quest is triggered on the way. We can't win it. Our fatigued & out-of-spells party with low-hp's can't finish it (tried 3 times or so). But what do you know, you can sleep at the graveyard outside. So we sleep and save the poisoned man on the first try.

to Docks we go
Return poisoned man
activate harper quest
go to Prebek's & "death spell" finishes everyone.
Return Montaron
Sleep in Copper Coronet
Get back Jaheira, visit Docks & Harper Hold
Party at 600k exp. Need 250k more to get IH & recruit Neera.

Note. Jaheira is very useful still, we are planning on swapping her for Neera after 850k exp. Though we need her quests to be triggered because one of her frenemies has an amulet of protection +1, which we will need (as we are planning on forging the talisman of greater protection, grandmaster of flowers & pendant of recovered light).

We sleep & investigate activities in the backrooms of copper coronet
Beastmaster is no problem
prebuff: summon clan warrior, skeleton warrior & berserker. defensive harmony barkskin for Kensai, acid shields for druids
Rd1. Cernd flame arrow on beastmaster, necro: Breach, everyone focuses on beast master
Rd2. Cernd "death spell" for the small monsters, Necro: Magic missile to interrupt
Rd3. Cernd: Unleash Energy on beastmaster, Necro: Flame Arrow
Rd4. Beastmaster dead, pretty much all of the animals dead -> everyone focuses on Tabitha. It falls soon after

We pay Gaelan Bayle and hop to Chapter 3.

Do Wellyn-quest
Solve skinner murders in the bridge district (Korgan takes the lead here and takes aggro of Bone Golem with Defensive Stance)
Do Mook
Then "guild contacts", where the "vampire bride" has magical ability to scan which of our characters has a permanent "negative plane protection". Cernd gets level drained and it's our 3rd visit to a temple in 24 hrs.
Then Mithrest Inn (Amon falls for greater malision + emotion), Mencar Pebblecrusher takes forever to take down even though we have a Kensai with us.

We are about 50k exp short of next level, where with Improved Haste a number of encounters will open up. Gold at 70k. Reputation 20.

So off to the sewers below the temple district we go. Avoid the sewer gang for now, do roger the fence & do the rest

Cult of the eyeless

The lower vault requires numerous reloads, as the Yuan-Ti Mage manages it's saves for 3x emotion 4(!) times. The beholder lair requires even more reloads, due to the crew being ill-prepared.

However, groups of Gauths are easiest dismantled by greater malision + hold monster, while fighters are focusing on one foe at a time. The "blind priest" are vulnerable to horror & emotion. Unseeing eye: we haste & attack with Kensai & DD, once ADHW hits us we move the rest of the group to melee. Unseeing eye falls before it has a chance to cast the 2nd ADHW.

Necro levels up, so now we get 6th level spells so we can start doing the actual quests. But first, before we drop Jaheira, we go to Trademeet & have a date with Chaos (DD defensive stance & both Druid's call lightning x 4 to finish it off). Founder of trademeet; contingency Haste, mass-cures & a death spell for little enemies.

We then sleep outside to force Dermin to appear, Jaheira leaves for harper hold and we go and we go and get Hexxat, letting berserker solo Dragomir. We leave hexxat in the tomb, pick her cloak & Then to docks and pick up Jaheira.

We wonder around for a few days, visit Trademeet, sell some stuff and go to Druid Grove where we sleep in order to force Dermin to appear. Otherwise we would have left ur friend Jaheira at Harpers Hold, but one friend of Dermin carries an all-important item for us (an amulet of protection +1, which we'll need 6). After Dermin is done, we go to hidden refuge and say goodbye to Jaheira and welcome Neera.

So we do Neera's quest(it's horrible and we don't like it),but Gull Dukeem's store has a merchant selling wands & has a wand of polymorphing which we purchase for mere 5k in gold. We'll see later on if the wand actually works. We whack everything in the red wizard compound & move on.

Lilarcor is quite straightforward: use greater malision + emotion for the rats & full prebuffs & piercing weapons for shadow lover.


But now off to the actual quests. Yeah!

Party ,everyone just below 1m exp.

Necro (PC): Level 12, AC 1, Thaco 14, Dmg 4-9, Lupine Sling/martialStaffKnave's Robe, Bracers to the death, meta spell influence amulet
Kensai (Custom): Level 11, AC -1, Thaco -3, Dmg 19-24, Staff of Rhynn/Ilbratha/Spear of Kuldahar, 2xRoP +1, Destroyer of Hills, Cloak of Balduran
Berserker (Custom): Level 11, AC -8, Thaco 6/7, Dmg 5-10, Flame Tongue, Palte of Dark, Amulet +1, Helm of Balduran, 2xRoP +1,
Cernd: Level 12, AC 3, Thaco 11, Dmg 5-10, Bracers to Death, Wooden Horse - necklace, Cloak of high forest, Staff of Arundel
DD*: Level 11, AC -9, Thaco 4, Dmg 11-17, Dwarven Thrower, Full Plate, Amulet +1, Eyes of the Beholder, 2xRoP +1, Clasp of Bron's Cloak (15% physical resistance)
Neera: Level 12, AC 5, Thaco 16, Damage 2-7, Robe of Invocation, Amulet of Power, Bracers of defence 5, Neera's staff + wand of polymorph

(The plan was to use Korgan for the DD but since he's too mean we scrap him and use Minsc with Korgan's stats & class and everything. That way the dialogue is more interesting as well)


Slaver Stockade

We enter through sewers, prebuff; IH on fighters, Berserker also gets free action, potion of acid resistance & PfF , Skins for everyone + mirror images for Neera, Cernd + Kensai (from Ilbratha). Acid Shield for Cernd + Minor globe of invulnerability (from the belt).

Rd1. Neera Greater Malision Cleric, Cernd Flame Arrow Cleric, Necro: Launch MS with 2xweb on Cleric (after GM hits them). Berserker, summons berserker warrior near Haegan & moves in to whack the cleric (Berserker has "free action"). Every enemy is held near Cleric. Korgan goes for Haegan & activates defensive stance. Kensai summons Joolon near Haegan and attacks Haegan.
Rd2. Neera Greater malision Haegan, Cernd emotion Haegan, Necro Lower Resistances (LR) on Haegan.
Rd3. Neera LR on Haegan, Cernd Emotion Haegan, Necro LR Haegan. Cleric is dead so Berserker goes for Haegan as well, leaving minor enemies in the web. Korgan quaffs a potion of rejuvenation (he's taking the aggro)
Rd4. Neera hold person on haegan, Cernd doom Haegan, Necro: Contagion Haegan (all enemies besides Haegan are held / unconscious)
Rd4. Neera flame arrow haegan, Cernd: Dolorous Decay on Haegan Necro: Contagion on Haegan (it hits)
Rd5. Neera flame arrow on Haegan, Cernd moves to cast heal on Korgan, Necro: Cloudkill on where the Cleric used to be
Rd7-8. (or so) Haegan falls. Every enemy is held. Some of them are taking damage from the cloudkill.

No-one was in any danger at any phase.

We finish enemies in the cloud with Berserker (who is resistant to acid which helps a lot), Korgan with Dwarven Defender, Kensai takes out everyone else.Once the wizard appears Neera & Necro: secret word, then remove magic & breach. Cernd drops a chain lightnings to interrupt and an unleash energy.

Very nice fight.


De'Arnise Keep

Greater Yuan-Ti
whack spider, while 2x Secret word, breach on greater yuan-ti & then whack. we also greater malision + doom + hold monster (2x) and 2nd one sticks so it is easy prey after that.

Tor'Gal

Prebuff: Improved Haste on Fighters, summon 2x invisible stalkers (before sleeping, they last for 9(!) hours), skins + mirror images, haste on everyone else so stalkers + joolon + berserker. Barkskin on Cernd + Kensai.

Off we go

Rd1. Cernd moves in to hug gem golem & death spell on Trolls (they fall instantly) & attacks Tor'Gal. Necro Breach Tor'Gal, Neera: Lower Resistances (LR) on Gem, everyone else attacks Tor'Gal
Rd2. Cernd Doom on Gem Golem, Necro & Neera: LR on Gem golem (Tor'Gal fails storm of Vengeance)
Rd3. Necro & Neera: LR on Gem golem . We are hit with dispel from Tor'Gal
Rd4. Cernd: Iron Skins, Neera: IH on Kensai, Necro: IH on DD
Rd5. Cernd mirror image, Necro: Greater Malision on Gem Golem, Neera: PO on Gem Golem
Rd6. Cernd attacks Tor'Gal, Necro: PO on Gem (it hits, yes!), Neera (we interrupt her PO on Gem golem) and start a flame arrow on Tor'Gal. Gem Golem dies. 2nd Dispel hits us. Tor'Gal near death.
Rd7. Cernd attacks Tor'Gal, Necro: Haste, Neera: Flame Arrow
Rd8. (or so). Tor'Gal falls.

We currently have 4 scrolls (3 from Amon or whatshisname and 1 form copper coronet) of "Ruby Ray of Reversal (RRoR)" and our decision on "what to do next" is sort of dependant on us having adequate number of those scrolls.

Sewer party

We do the sewer party first. It would be humongously easier, if we could spare a single RRoR scroll, but we won't since I don't recall where additional ones are and finishing the next quests is impossible without RRoR's.

We summon invisible stalkers & sleep. Summon berserker & joolon, haste everyone (IH on fighters), defensive harmony. Summons move in first, then fighters we start with the easiest enemy first while casters

The fight is quite straightforward:

Rd1. remove magic (for the potions's effect), breach, insect plague (on the cleric)
Rd2. greater malision, breach, insect plague (on the cleric again)
Rd3. emotion, lower resistances x 2 (on the dwarf)
Rd4. emotion, lower resistances x 2 (on the dwarf
Rd5. doom, contagion, emotion
Rd6. death spell, contagion, ray of enfeeblement

or something like that. Essentially we first breach them, then LR so that the dwarf is vulnerable & try to get him with emotion. The mage is the hardest, summons & whack works.

Next up is planar prison

With 4 scrolls of RRoR, it's quite easy. The "greater bounty hunter" takes 2 and Warden takes 2, but you have to be very careful. Enemies in between are dealt with full buffs on fighters, so Chaotic Command, Improved haste + mirror image (on Kensai), casters mostly try Greater Malision + Emotion + PO's (PO's work sometimes). The only thing about warden is, that it starts to cast a 2nd "SI:Abjuration" which we can't remove since we're at this point out of RRoR scrolls because our 2 scroll are used to take down Spell Turning & SI:Abjuration, launched from a trigger/contigency.

Then to Temple Ruins.

Shadow Jailor. Nothing special. Summon, haste everything, breach shadow jailor & 1 heal from Cernd. Then to liches. There's a scroll of RRoR, which we forgot. Nice. Should have had it in the previous fight. sheesh.

I hate these liches, they are beyond annoying. But we defeat them after, what must have been like 50 reloads. In the end, it's quite simple. We do the "2nd" group first, near the corridor, it's a lot easier this way.

1. Summon invisible stalkers x3 (all slots for animate dead & spider spawns & invisible stalkers). Sleep.
2. Prebuff with haste & defensive harmony
3. Berserker runs so lichee casts dragon's breath & we dodge it's effects
4. Run around so lich uses trigger, after trigger is launched activate "berserking", maybe an oil of speed
5. Isolate Skeleton Lord
6. Defeat mummies with summons & berserker
7. (usually at this point lich gets time stop away so Berserker is dead, because it's in liches sights so it gets hit with 3xADHW)
8. use summons to make lich drain spells
9. Kill lich with Kensai (with IH & PfME active)

After 30 tries on Shadow Dragon we decide to do something else. This was horrible.

Planar Sphere

So we're off to the planar sphere, hoping to make a level for everyone in order for Necro to learn RRoR & Nnera would probably take either Mordekainen's Sword or RRoR. We'll decide later.

Halflings, nothing special, summon 3x stalkers, sleep, IH on fighters, haste for the rest. Summon Jooually works)lon. Summons go for halflings while fighters concentrate on 1 enemy at the time, starting with the one spawning south of our group (with insanely effective missile weapon). Other than that greater malision, emotion, slow, contagions and a death spell where enemies & summons are concentrated and we're all good.

Time machine room: Summon 3 stalkers, sleep. IH on fighters, spirit armour for Cernd. We barricade the doorway. Cernd takes the aggro of 2 golems (I think), fighters take out a gem while mages turn one gem into a a chicken (4xLR, Greater Malision, 2x PO us. Cernd uses all iron skins, but doesn't get hit before the gems are dead. Then it's just a coin & bone golem left, we open the barricade & whack bone golem, coin goes for Necro. Necro + Neera LRx3-4 + POx2-3 coin golem into a chicken. All good. Heal for DD and we're back in full health.

Looks like Lavok next. We have 4 RRoR's left. Kensai & DD level up, so they get to lvl 13 giving us a much needed + 0.5APR. In Lavok fight fighters + fire elemental take out Skeleton Lords (2 spawns), Necro + Neera first turn the gem into a chicken, then use all(!) of our remaining RRoR's on Lavok who is pestered by Skeleton Warriors & summons (it get's SI:Abjuration up after we disable it) then breach + PfME + IH on Kensai who whacks Lavok to death. No ADHW's triggered.

Tolgerias; summon 3 stalkers & sleep. IH on fighters, haste on everyone. Protection from fire & cold on fighters. Initiate fight. Fighters focus on "mage", while spell caster doom, gm + flesh to stone on planetar (it doesn't work), then breach plantar & try po on planetar while Cernd tries "insect plague". They don't work. it doesn't matter, Mage falls quickly & we switch to nonmagical weapons and Tolgerias falls quickly, since it has PfMW up but he isn't protected against normal weapons.

Engine Room: We enter through the ice chamber and are met with 1 gem and 2 coins. Cernd tanks 2 coins, while fighters dismember one coin. Necro tanks a gem, while Necro + Neera proceed to turn it into a squirrel. Another gem appears halfway through the fight and Necro + Neera proceed to turn it into a squirrel as well. We just had one spawn with 2 coins + 2 gems. We'll be back here at a later stage to finish the rest (2 spawn with 2x gems, 2x coins and 1 bone devil each)

Lae'liyl: Summon 3 stalkers, sleep, summon 2 fire elementals. Haste on everyone (incl. summons), IH on fighters, defensive harmony + barkskins + mirror images. Summons keep main enemies busy while fighters eliminate enemies one by one. Neera is casting Acid Arrows and Necro is summoning. Our mages get silenced at some point so we use staves of air / fire to summon elementals in the end as we have both air & fire staves. We use maybe 2 skeletons, 3 spider spawna, 2 x conjure animals + 4 elementals from the staves all in all.

One RRoR scroll left (we found one in a container, probably in the Shadow Temple). Maybe Conster has a few more? And where do I find worn out boots?

Since we have a date at the sphere the next day we decide to (finally) do

Pai'na.

Prebuff with Free action (FA) + IH on fighters, FA on cernd.
Move in
Rd1. Necro: Emotion, Neera; Flame Arrow Pai'Na, Cernd: Death Spell. After 1st rd almost all enemies are dead (luckily, Necro/Neera are also not webbed)
Rd2. Necro; flame arrow Pai'Na, Neera: Breach, Cernd: Flame arrow. Fighters: pound Pai'Na
Rd3-4, Pai'na is dead.

So off to "Windspear hills we go".

The plethora of mists are taken down with fighters with IH, Chaotic commands & negative plane protection. We get level drained still. So we visit Temple @ Trademeet. Then back to Windspear Hills and for the Rukh Conjurer, the most insanely annoying fight in the game. Neera tanks it with SI:Abjuration, mirror image + stoneskin. We remove magic & pound but are forced to runaway in circles still. I'd pay 50k for an item that would instantly kill the thing.

We finish everything and then are met with Conster. Our 5 first tries lead to a complete failure, as our plan was to just knock Conster out with greater malision + emotion / chaos or so. The easy version of this fight includes using 2 RRoR's, to take down ST + SI:Abjuration. We have one scroll of RRoR left. We try the fight 5 times with Greater Malision + Emotion + Chaos and Conster makes his saves every single time. It seems idiotic, as yet again this fight is only difficult because of lack of RRoR scrolls. So we bend the rules and erase Necro's already learned RRoR from spellbook and console in a scroll of RRoR.

The fight itself is quite simple. Figters pound Skeleton Lords, Neera + Necro debuff then Breach. Cernd summons a few fire elementals + throws a few flame arrows to interrupt as much as possible. Conster falls easily. We find 5 scrolls of RRoR and re-learn RRoR.

We go to cabin and Kensai, DD + Neera + Necro level up. Necro learns RRoR so we finally have it. Neera takes Mordekainen's Sword.

We go back to Shadow Temple.

Shadow Dragon

We prebuff with Death Ward on casters, Defensive Harmony, Spirit Armout for Kensai, Strength potions & IH for fighters + mirror images for Kensai + Neera

Rd1. Fighters attack, Necro: Spellstrike, Neera: Breach, Cernd: Flame Arrow
Rd2. Fighters attack, Necro: Breach, Neera: Breach, Cernd: Flame Arrow (Neera gets silenced)
Rd3. Fighters are wing buffeted away & attack, Necro: Breach, Neera: Melf's minute meteors (from a cloak), Cernd: Flame Arrow (Dragon heals itself)
Rd4. Fighters attack, Necro: Breach, Neera: Minute meteors, Cernd: Flame Arrow
and so on... Dragon heals itself maybe 2 times, our fighter get level drained (negative plane protection doesn't even help against this), but we make it at some point. Strength potions help immensely.

Shade Lord

Prebuff with IH on fighters, skins on everyone, SI:Divination & mirror image on Neera, Mirror image on Cernd. Spirit armour on Kensai & Barskins on Neera & Cernd

Rd1. Fighters: Summons Joolon, Berserker Warrior & Kitthix near Shade Lord, then attack Shadow Patrick. Necro & Neera: RRoR & Secret Word on Shade Lord. Cernd: Conjure Animals near Shade lord.
Rd2. Fighters: Pound Patrick, Necro: ST GM+Secret Word+Contagion on Shade Lord. Cernd: Flame Arrow on Shade Lord. Neera: Summons a sword (shadow Patrick dies)
Rd3. Fighter go for Skeleton Lord. Necro & Neera: LR on Shade Lord, Cernd: Flame Arrow on Shade Lord
Rd4. Necro & Neera: LR on Shade Lord, Cernd: Flame Arrow on Shade Lord, Fighter go for Skeleton Lord #2.
Rd5. Necro: Feeblemind, Cernd: Flame Arrow on Shade Lord Neera: Summon a sword (we get dispelled at about this point)
Rd6. Only a few shadows remain, Necro tries Feeblemind on Shade lord, Neera casts PfME on Kensai, Cernd Summons an elemental
Rd7. We use ring of ram to throw shade lord to the sides, swords go after it while fighters destroy the altar.
Rd8--> Casters: Flame Arrows & anything on Shade lord, fighter with PfME pound shade lord.

(Shade lord was a lot easier than the Shadow Dragon).

Not much troubles, besides the Shadow Temple so far. We pick up stuff from Cabin & scrolls from "messenger of light" and meet with Marvella and order a scroll of chain lightning from the apprentices.

Dawn Ring & Borinali

Prebuff: IH's, mirror images, skins for everyone + true sight. Neera II + SI:Divination. Necro has a trigger with Greater Malision + 2x Polymorph Other.

Rd1. Fighters: Summons Joolon, Berserker Warrior & Kitthix near Borinali, then take out rune assassins one by one.. Necro & Neera: LR on amber golem. Cernd: Conjure Animals near Borinali
Rd2. Necro & Neera: LR on amber golem, Cernd takes Amber Golem's Aggro & Iron Skins. Fighters are almost through all of the Rune Assasins
Rd3. Necro: ST GM+2xPO on Amber Golem (the Greater Malision hits after PO's, so it would have been better to let Neera cast GM and have a trigger with 3xPO). Cernd: Doom on Amber. Fighter move to pound Borinali
Rd4. Necro & Neera: PO on Amber (the 2nd one hits), Cernd: Summon Fire elemental near Borinali
Rd5 .(I think this is where we got additional Rune Assasins?). Necro: Hold person on Rune Assassin spawn, Cernd: Dolorous Decay on Borinali (it's not effective), Neera: Breach Borinali
Rd6. Borinali dies as well as the Rune Assasins. 1 fire elemental isn't even hurt. We used 2 healing potions + 1 antidote.

We get Water's Edge. Great. We can forge Water's Edge +4 before Spellhold.

PC at 1.8Mexp. Gold at 246k. We need to probably forge at least Cernd's & Hexxat's clocks, Waters Edge +4 & Necro amulet before heading to Spellhold. Oh that reminds me, we have Bodhi to do as well.

We sell some extra stuff, return the dawn ring & activate paladin quests. Gold now 280k.

Back to Windspear Hills we go.

Samia

( This was terrible, almost on the level of lichee & rukh conjurer. Should have postponed this as the last fight but in the end we manage. )

Pre-sleep: Summon 3 invisible stalkers. Prepare spell trigger's (ST). Neera uses a scroll of ST, we have one left for the fight.

Sleep & then prebuff: Summon 2 fire elementals. IH on fighters, defensive harmony, stoneskins, bless, SI:Abjuration on both mages + minor globes on Necro & Neera (from the belt), haste on everyone who does not have IH + all of the summons. Mirror Images for Neera + Kensai. Spirit Armour for Kensai + Barskins for Cernd + Neera. Potion of Cloud Giant Strength for DD & Kensai.

Rd1. Neera: ST 1xGM + 2xslow, Necro: ST 3xemotion, Cernd: Emotion. One of the enemies falls to emotion. Fighters + Cernd take out enemies one by one, while mages are casting breaching & summoning. Neera blocks the doorway with casting PfMW from scrolls (we have 7 all in all).

I'm not sure what happens but out summons manage to interrupt the Cleric's & Druid's casting, while fighters make quick work of the enemies starting with Samia I guess. Berserker almost falls to the thief (Ferrick Ironbalde), who activates assassination - but we throw him back with ring of the ram and escape to heal.

In the end, Kaol is taken down by our Kensai with PfME + IH, while DD is out of reach of ADHW with the dwarves thrower and every other member is out of sight.

No Vecna. Too bad, would have loved to get my hands on memory of apparent pre-spellhold.

** Status **

Party ,everyone just below 2m exp at 1.85m or so. Gold at almost 300k.

Necro (PC): Level 14, 81 HP, AC -2, Thaco 13, Dmg 4-9, Lupine Sling/martialStaffKnave's Robe, Bracers to the death, amulet of charon + belt of inertial barrier
Cernd: Level 13, 80 HP, AC 2, Thaco 9, Dmg 5-10, Bracers to Death, Wooden Horse - necklace, Cloak of high forest, Staff of Arundel, destroyer of hills
Korgan: Level 13, 168HP, AC -11, Thaco 0, Dmg 11-17, Dwarven Thrower, Full Plate, Amulet +1, Eyes of the Beholder, 2xRoP +1, Clasp of Bron's Cloak (+5% physical resistance), while of harmony
Neera: Level 14, 64HP, AC 4, Thaco 14, Damage 2-7, Robe of Invocation, Amulet of Power, Bracers of defence 5, Staff of Air, Arla's Dragonbane, Cowl of Stars, RoP +1 and the ring of acuity

*Kensai (Custom Half-Orc / will be swapped for Imoen the Kensai in spellhold): Level 14, 175HP, AC -1, Thaco -9, Dmg 21-26, Staff of Rhynn/Ilbratha/Spear of Kuldahar, 2xRoP +1, Destroyer of Hills, Cloak of Balduran
*Berserker (Will be replaced by the K/T in spellhold): Level 14, 128 HP, AC -8, Thaco -3/1, Dmg 14-19/10-15, FoA, Blade of Roses Short Sword +3, , Plate of Dark, Amulet +1, Helm of Balduran, 2xRoP +1, Hands of Takkok

Neera's Spellbook:

Lvl1: magic missile, chromatic orb, protection from evil, charm person, nahal's reckless dweller
Lvl2: blur, glitter dust, self's acid arrow, mirror image, resist fear,
LVl3: flame arrow, remove magic, slow, vampiric touch
Lvl4: greater malision, improved invisibility, polymorph other, stoneskin
Lvl5: breach, lower resistances, spell immunity
Lvl6: improved haste, protection from magic energy
Lvl7: mordekainen's sword

Our "to-do" list consists of at least the following (writing these up so I'll remember to do these): Screaming Statue, Grave Yard, Fighter & bard Stronghold quests, pirate cave etc.

To be forged pre-spellhold, at least: Cernd's cloak, Necro Amulet, Water's Edge +4, some rings of protection

Will try to finish the game within the next 12 months. Or so .

12 months? You are probably not wrong there

Yea .

We'll see if I'll lose my motivation, but it's been quiet fun so far again.

King Sthrom's Guardians

Prebuff with Protection from Fire (PfF), IH on fighters, skins & mirror images (+ optional minor globes from limited wish). Storm in with everyone. Repeat for each. We don't try casting lightning bolts in the small rooms, but that might also work.

Crypt King

At this point the fight is *meh*. We prebuff, limited wish negative plane protection & IH on fighters. Neera (amulet of power, skins + mirror images) and Berserker take queen's aggro. It's over before it even begins.

Assasins (squirrelled away)

Protection from poisons on fighters. IH & defensive harmony. Breach when they hardiness. A few summons. Meh.

Screaming statue

Sleep, summon stalkers. Berserker takes the 1st waves chaos's (& berserks). Summons & DD (azuredge) with Kensai finish the mists. The second wave is problematic. We end up casting chaotic commands for frontline & negative plane protection and still Cernd gets level drained. Essentially we try to conserve strength for the first 2 rounds. For the third round we summon 4 skeleton warriors + haste + defensive harmony. Berserker takes the lead with girdle of bluntness + shield (with effective ac of -20 or so) taking the aggro of the vampires. 2 limited wishes from Necro with protection from undead. Cernd gets level drained on the 2nd wave, draining us of "protection from level drain spells". Berserker wins this. Without him, we would be toast (or would have needed to use "protection from level drain - scroll(s)" ).

Pirate Cove

We finish with 1st try even though our preparation isn't optimal. We are already so good in melee they don't really stand a chance. Prebuff with IH on fighters, skins for the rest. We forget to cast PfF for everyone so dragon's breath hits us quite hard. Luckily Cernd has oodles of heal-spells. Death spell for summons. Breach pirate chief. Feed summons to coordinator & immediate true sight when its SI:Divination runs out + PFME on Kensai (DD has belt of inertial barrier)

Back to engine room @ planar sphere

Since on our first try 2 groups of (2xgem, 1x coin + 1 x bone golem) didn't materialize we, in search for exp, decide to do this.

(Normal buffs, so pretty much everything we have. We enter through fire chamber so one golem group is to west of us and one golem group is near the "engine" in north. we barricade the way to west with 2 swords + 2 mountain bears. And trigger the fight.

DD + Necro to north with Kensai behind them. Neera stays behind casting LR's & PO's and GM's. DD activates defensive stance & start quaffing potions of rejuvenation. Cernd is behind him healing all the time. Mages turn golems into squirrels as fast as they can. The first golem party triggers the second party so we are pretty much overrun quite soon after the fight starts. However after DD has quaffed enough potions of rejuvenation (I think we use 5-7 for DD) he is almost indestructible (with some timely help from Cernd). Half way both of our mages are stunned, so we turned only 2 golems into chickens. Even berserker quaffs 4 potions of rejuvenation and takes a gem out by himself, though with the help of 1 sword + 2 bears who provide timely distraction.

We are approximately 100k short of moving to Brynnlaw.

So we try to find things to do and decide to go for the

"fireplace room" at watchers keep.

It has 2-3 coins, 3 gems, greater bone golem and 3-5 skeleton lord / grandlords / warlords. We've never done this pre-spellhold. It's scary.

We prebuff, as usual + DD takes girdle on bluntness, defensive harmony and Neera summons a few swords (DD has AC of -20 against crushing). In addition DD quaffs 3-4 potions of regeneration before the fight.

DD takes the lead with about 50% phys resistance. We initiate the fight, barricade the doorway with DD & Swords, Kensai behind them. Cernd is casting heals. Necro + Neera turn golems into chickens as fast as possible (they both have triggers of 3x PO). Every turn DD quaffs potion of rejuvenation / potion of superior healing if in a pinch. Even with his regeneration of what must be something like 35-40 hp/rd + healing potions + cernd's healing + low AC the DD almost dies (at one point it has 2 hp left when "heal" hits). Berserker is at the back using summoning devices to create distractions. 1st hideous laughter we are unaffected, 2nd one stuns berserker, 3rd stuns both mages. All in all we turn 3 golems into chickens, Kensai with staff of Rhynn gets almost all of the kills while DD tanks. With help of potions, barely doable. Could have used a few strength potions for maximum effectivity but we manage. This was the most resource consuming fight yet but the same strategy will work later on, if we are in a pinch (say Irenicus fight for example).

We still have stuff to do; Belm, Ashideena guardians, Limited Wish quest, fighter & bard stronghold quests and parts of Kangaxx but we decide to move to Brynnlaw.

Brynnlaw

Lady Galvenas mage takes 2-3 RRoR's with a few breaches (Necro has 3 RRoR's). We use Improved Invisibility & SI:Abjuration, so the mage has something to do while we dismantle them. DD blocks the doorway and tanks the guards with defensive stance ofc. Once mage is dead (and Galvena) we drop GM + emotion for guards.

We are already so good in melee that we don't have the time to turn Perth's coin into a chicken before it's dismantled. Perth takes a few RRoR's and whack.

Desharik sends us to Spellhold with the help of Boo.


Spellhold maze

Yoshimo (the Berserker) is gone, in comes K(13)/T to replace him. We also drop our Custom made Half-Orc kensal and replace him with Imoen the kensai so our group is in it's final form. Half-Orc Kensai is much better than Imoen the Kensai, for now. Imoen gets the edge because she has a great personal item, though it comes with a bit of a cost at this stage. But suffering for a while in order to be more powerful later on is fine. A little bit of "suffering" any way, for a little bit of more power later on that is.

We have been transporting the tomes this far, so now it's the time to use them. K/T gets STR, (DD got DEX before), Imoen gets CON (giving her 17), PC gets INT, Cernd gets 3x WIS (giving Cernd WIS of 21 and an extra 5th level slot among others!), Imoen gets CHA. We do some counting and it might be that we give Cernd WIS from deck of many things + machine of Lum the mad + the druid circlet. That would put him at 25 WIS, giving oodles of extra spells (even one extra 7th level spell slot).

We reach spell hold's maze just short of 2,35 exp (2,20M or so). This is crucial, we need to get Cernd to level 15 (2,5Mexp) for regeneration + aura cleansing & K/T's Thief part to reach level 14 (2,48Mexp) to regain Kensai abilities before the Crystal Shards - fight. With DD + Kensai + Thief level 13 this would be terribly problematic (or require oodles of potions). We try to get our exp levels right so it will be much, much simpler. I don't see problems if we can level up. We also have the limited wish "gain exp" in our pocket, if we should reach the fight annoyingly 2-5k before levelling up.

Yuan-Ti group: Remove magic, greater malision, emotion + hold monster. Meh.

rd1. Usually Neera: remove magic, Necro: greater malision, Cernd: emotion.
rd2. Neera: hold monster, Necro: breach / secret word / contagion or so, Cernd; emotion.
rd3. fighters pound standing Yuan-iT's to oblivion


Portal room

Full on buffs. Protection from cold's & acid shield for Cernd. Swords & DD barricade the doorway. Mages with SI:Evocation / GOI turn golems into chickens. Swapping the Berserker for the K/T doesn't change our fight preparations & setup's that much. Berserker was used in a very limited role in almost all fights, because it can't go H2H (since no physical resistance & no reach because it was dual wielding). DD on front line and everything else behind him. Quite manageable this way.


Spider Ambush

Trigger improved web with Imoen the Kensai (who has free action potion) barricade doorway + full on assault from mages + fighters. Free actions from Cernd just to be sure.


Lich + skeleton lord & Coin + Cat'0'nine lives + Librarian

Whack skellys while Neera chain lightning / Cernd unleash energy on lich. Storm in with everyone so skellys concentrate on multiple enemies. Renew skins when needed. After skellys are gone, DD stays throwing Azuredge on Lich while Necro/Cernd go on casting PfF on DD (Lich will dispel it). When lich doesn't dispel anymore, Neera goes to cast PfME on DD. After that the lich is basically stripped out of it's weapons. The only thing it has left is chain lightnings.

Then for the coin & cat o nine lives. Meh. DD takes the aggro with shield of harmony. and we use the same tactic as up above for the librarian & werewolves & skeleton lords taking a lot of time to finally whack the librarian.


Crystal shard kobolds.

We don't reach 2,5Mexp for Cernd before this Crystal Shards - fight. How. Annoying. It would have been soo much simpler that way. Cernd is 9k short. No dice. Bad planning. Should have done any quest back in Amn, but it's too late now.

Prebuff; protection from lightning for everyone, IH's for fighters, barkskins & iron skins / stone skins. Mages have sequencers of 3xPO. Summons a few swords and Joolon.

Haha.

It isn't difficult at all. With two competent mages, Cernd & three competent fighters this is easy. Dodge the improved chain lightnings for summons. We first take out kobolds, then take out spirits/guardians with fighters. Imoen goes for the witch doctor while under protection from cold (she used a potion). DD tanks (but doesn't attack) an amber with defensive stance + potions of rejuvenation. Cernd tanks another one (but doesn't attack) renewing skins when necessary and swords move in to tank the third (they attack). Mages take ambers out one by one (4x LR + GM + Sequencer (3xPO)) starting from Cernd's amber while we are not using melee at all. So mages are casting and everyone else idles (well, after the witch is dead). Witch doctor gets an ADHW targeting the K/T but he quaffs a potion of magic shielding just to be sure. We make it.

When 2 amber's have been turned into chickens & dismantled (each amber takes 3 rounds) and the witch is dead, we heal our crew & charge for the remaining Amber. Imoen almost dies still, even though she starts with 100% resistance to electricity and isn't even hit by the amber.

Should have protected Kensai + K/T from cold & PfME so they could have both gone for the witch. Would have been simpler that way. Cernd levels up. Now we have aura cleansing, which we won't need untill irenicus. We will need those regen's though.



Mithril golem

*meh*

Prebuff. IH's for fighters. Limited wish minor globes. summon a few swords, a few nymphs and Joolon.

It takes 3 tries only because I can't get the cat figurine to work properly on the first 2 tries (or I screw it up somehow). We 3x regen on DD (or 1st rd regen, 2nd rd heal, 3rd rd summon, 4rd regeneration....), who defensive stances and tanks all the way through. Cernd summons some nymphs, as they can cast cure medium wounds as a nice small bonus heal and once the heals are gone we use them for fodder. We also notice on 2nd try that our K/T was using a spear through the first fights and thus didn't deal any damage. And he's our 2nd main damage dealer. Oh well.

Mages summons + resist fears, Cernd heals & summons, our triple frontline (DD + Kensai + K/T) dishes out damage as fast as possible. This would probably work on insane as well, though a bit more planning would be needed.


Irenicus Spellhold fight

Prebuff; Ih on fighters, PfF & PFME on everyone (well, excluding Cernd since he's already at 65% with Belt o f IB). DD quaffs a few potions of rejuvenation (we are down to 15 or so). Potions of strength for DD + Imoen. Neera uses limited wish from a scroll for chain contigency (3x mordekainen's sword on "see enemy") + Necro contingency greater malision on "see enemy". Cernd takes potion of fortitude with potion of agility, giving him 18 con & 18 dex.

Initiate fight.

Necro & Neera SI:Necromancy, Swords go for scouts after they materialise. Cernd goes aura cleansing and tries to cast every spell on his book starting with creeping doom, doom's, emotion's & flame arrows for clones who are conscious & chain lightnings and alicorn lance's. Fighters form a queue behind DD who goes for a clone that's the nearest and then an asylum scout. Most clones are knocked out by doom+emotion combination (I think GM also hits at least some of them), we'll finish them after the scouts are done. Creeping doom hits, yes. Necro & Neera 4x LR (3 from Necro's spell trigger), then greater malision + Sequencer 3xPO on an asylum scout. Cernd drops regeneration for DD.

DD is quite well protected with Defensive stance + regeneration + potions. Imoen & K/T are in no danger because they are properly positioned, so behind DD / Swords. They don't even get attacked. We turn 2 scouts into chickens, the rest are pounded by fighters. Cernd drops insect plagues every 3 rounds or so in order to try to interrupt Irenicus's spell casting as much as possible (conveniently there's an unconscious clone near Irenicus laying still). Swords provide a great distraction in the beginning.

We faced this as brave heroes without running away and even managed to save a few inmates. Great.

Sahugin city

Rebel crews with mages

Since they have SI:Abjuration and we're too bothered to take down their protections (and we're short of RRoR's as well) Cernd loads up with insect plagues & creeping doom's. On every encounter, we drop creeping doom and or 1-3 insects plagues. That and whack. And we're good.


Sahugin Prince

Prebuff: Summon 2 trolls & 2 swords. IH on everyone, incl. one troll. Minor globes (we are thinking about sequencer with 3x fireball) for the crew. Skins + mirror images for casters.

Initiate fight. DD takes lead with defensive stance.

Whack.

No problem.

Well, our summons are overpowering & our crew IH'ed is too much for the prince & it's summons. For fun, Cernd drops creeping doom & and begins the fight with aura cleansing -> flame arrows for sahugin & doom's for everyone. Cernd is really powerful at this stage. Also Cernd mass cures which heals our summons as well. It's really powerful in this fight hence the swords have a high phys resistance so they take very little damage from the vipers. Essentially a few swords, while under attack of most of the vipers, will survive the while battle.

Underdark

There's a few heavy fights here. Our plan is to solve them as easily & as fast as possible (with overpowering the enemy whenever possible). The lone exception is the ancient golem who we'll try to "milk" as many summons out as we can, for exp & coin. So we'll try to prolong that fight for as long as we possibly can while surviving.

That's the plan. I'm not sure how it will work out. Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face.

But anyway we will clear everything easy first while leaving the toughest battles the last.


1st drows ambush

A terrible fight this one is. Our plan to overpower enemies takes a complete nosedive.

We play this through for 2-3 hours and what must be like 20 tries. Confusion goes through our SI:Enhancment and sometimes K/T (who has awful saves) gets confused even though he isn't even in the frame. Argh. We also forget that there's a spell called "chaotic commands", which would have made everything a lot easier (and K/T has a Katana that prevents confusion,which we forgot). And we try the fight mostly with a tactic that doesn't work, as in "fire storm" doesn't interrupt enemy spell casters, which we learn after maybe 10 tries or so. Argh. However, this fight should be quite "easily" doable with the following:

Prebuff IH's & chaotic commands on fighters, Skins, mirror images, barkskins, giant strength for Imoen, Necro & Neera SI:Enhancement & free action to everyone but the DD. DD takes a potion of freedom in quick item slot. We also take limited wish minor globes for everyone + Neera summons 3 swords. Necro: ST 3x chain lightning, SS 1x GM & 2xemotion, Neera: SS 1x gm + 2x slow. Cernd loads up on creeping doom's & insect plagues.

DD runs into the ambush and once improved webs are triggered quaffs a potion of freedom. Then runs back to the crew before getting drawn back to the spiders. Swords (out of web) barricade, DD defensive stances & fighters line up behind them. Necro & Neera release sequencers while Cernd Creeping Doom on the enemy as near the casters as possible.

Essentially Neera summons swords & trolls, Necro disrupts enemy spell casting as much as possible and Cernd keeps enemy spellcasters in order with a creeping dooms / insect plagues every other round or so. At some point we use horn of blasting to interrupt the enemy spell casters. Once death spells removes our summons we summon berserker warrior, djinn, Joolon & Kitthix immediately. Once majority of the enemies are dead, DD switches to "thrown" dwarven thrower & targets an enemy spell caster while the front line of summons, or what's left of them, & fighters move in to pound the enemy.

Done.


2nd drow ambush.

Prepare triggers, summon a few swords. We are dispelled before the fight so no need to prebuff.

DD + K/T + Necro move to bridge. Fight is triggered. Improved web goes to Necro (who quaffs a potion of freedom), while DD + K/T move out of the area to north. DD activates defensive stance and takes the aggro of the enemies north of the bridge. Cernd goes aura cleansing and unleashes his whole spellbook, as usual. Unfortunately ghost spider goes for him so a few spells get interrupted, since it deals magic damage through skins. Neera drops IH on Imoen the Kensai, our initial summons get death spelled so Neera summons while Necro + Cernd interrupt & cause damage as much as possible (Neera has MS8, which is atm quite a powerful summoning spell).

We make it.


Kua-toans incl. the prince.

Nice fights these. Cernd really gets to show what he's made of here.

Prepare triggers. Necro dumps 3x cone of cold on them, while if the area allows for lightning bolts (Necro has SS with 3xLightning Bolt) to reflect back from walls we use limited wish for globes & lightning bolt away. In almost all fights Cernd usually drops 2-3x insect plagues & a creeping doom, all flame arrows he has, 3-4 emotions after every enemy has been doomed & + Necro SS: GM + 2xEmotion. Any combination usually knocks the groups out quite easily and off DD tanks with defensive stance (and effective ac of -20 or so). Might summon something as well, if appropriate.

They don't stand a chance.

For the prince fight Cernd takes the lead and dumps his whole spell book on them starting with doom's, flame arrows and then moving on to cast creeping doom + 4 insect plagues on them. The Prince's crew doesn't get a single spell cast. We also prepared a few triggers for the fight in SS: gm + 2x emotion, which works quite well, ofc. pre buffs with iIH's, skins etc.

In underdark we clear the main area + some parts of western tunnels, then get transformed into drows and to Use Natha we venture. Necro is 350k away from lvl. 18, and this improved alacrity. Neera is 360k away from RvE + IA.

At this stage, Cernd is uber powerful.


Boz + ambush crew

Prebuff; IH, PfME, skins + triggers & globes from limited wish. We also true sight.

Necro walks in and (almost) destroys the crew with ST 3xCone of Cold. Cernd goes aura cleansing and unleashes his whole spell book. Again.

I like this Cernd.


Deirex

Prebuff; PfME on everyone, SI:NEcromancy for mages. IH on Kensai (just to be sure).

Cernd goes aura cleansing, then 2xRRoR & unleash energy (x5). Necro disrupt undead (2x) & Neera ADHW (x1). Deirex dies in 2 rounds or so, the only thing it got out was a breach (or a RRoR) for Necro.


Noble Efreeti

PfF for everyone & ih for fighters. Necro takes the frontline with blue fire shield & oodles of skins. We strip efreeti's protections in spell turning etc., then use lightning + cold damage in addition to non-magical weapons. We win it on the first try & easily. (spell trigger of 3x cone of cold helps quite a lot). Cernd has 2 heals & a regeneration left.


**

We finish everything In Ust Natha, while leaving we whack all of the drow in the city. Return eggs to Adalon & clear out the drow behind the gate. Then for the actual tough fights. Necro levelled up, we take IA. Neera levelled up, we take RvE + IA. We pick up drow full plate in a pile near the exit and now to test our might against the mighty ones in the following order:

- Imprisoned Mage (it's not tough at all but we don't want to overpay for the scroll / free the mage while in drow - form)
- Demon Knights @ temple of Bhaal (so we can get the girdle for Imoen),
- Mindflayer lair (because the final room is quite tough)
- Dracolich
- Ancient Golem

This way we should have some extra HLA's & Wish & natural restoral for the fight with Ancient Golem. And also it's nice to do these challenges now because we do not have to worry about being back in Use Natha in a specific time. Dracolich we could have done even earlier, but I like to max levels before that fight, even though we have Cernd with us who will win the fight for us.

A Note about optimising the party:

Spellcasters

Since we have 3 uber competent spell casters in the party in Necro + Cernd + Neera we will specialise somewhat with Neera's spells.

For example we are not planning on taking spells that both Necro + Cernd have for Neera at all since we those covered. And both Necro + Cernd have immunity to silence + lower casting time than Neera (for quite a while at least). That means no RRoR, no chain lightning and no emotion for Neera. Also no secret word, pierce magic's and most likely no pierce shield. But we'll see.

We'll select at least some unconventional spells for Neera, that have a low casting time so she can better utilise her spell repertoire under alacrity. Essentially she'll focus on protective spells for herself and offensive spells while stripping enemy spell casters of protections will be (mostly) the job of Necro + Cernd. We'll try to select spells so that she can unload her whole spell book under alacrity and then re-up through wish.

Lvl1: magic missile, chromatic orb, protection from evil, charm person, nahal's reckless dweomer
Lvl2: blur, glitter dust, melf's acid arrow, mirror image, resist fear,
LVl3: flame arrow, remove magic, slow, vampiric touch
Lvl4: greater malision, improved invisibility, polymorph other, stoneskin
Lvl5: breach, lower resistances, spell immunity, hold monster
Lvl6: improved haste, protection from magic energy, protection from magic weapons
Lvl7: mordekainen's sword, spell sequencer, power word stun
lvl 8: Monster summoning 8, spell trigger

^ now we have the essential 7th & 8th level summons (that have been really good this far) covered so we can choose spells based on casting time to maximise efficiency. We'll see if this approach blows up later on at least PW:S has been completely useless so far (I've tried it in a number of battles already). I guess it will have it's moments at some point. I hope.

Fighters

We will most likely not select "hardiness" as our go-to fighter HLA. DD has defensive stance, while not providing the same level of protection as hardiness it provides a few other benefits as in it isn't dispel-able + bonuses to saves. And DD has naturally oodles of those, so we have "hardiness" covered at least to some degree. That means we can focus a little bit more on offensive warrior HLA's, meaning critical strikes & perhaps even greater whirlwind attacks.

Kensai will be protected by Judgement Day once we get it, making hardiness non-essential (well, we need it but the need is somewhat limited). So we'll try to focus at first on damage dealing HLA's & we'll try to get as many critical strikes as we can -> she will have APR of 10 under IH quite soon, then also eliminating the need for whirlwind + greater whirlwind attacks. So CS will be our go-to HLA.

K/T will ofc have the thief HLA's so he'll take greater evasion's & avoid deaths mostly.

Demon Knights / temple of bhaal (or what's it called)

Prebuff: PfF, PfME for everyone (PfME from scrolls). IH on fighters. Necro & Neera SI:Abjuration + GOI & ST (Neera casts these from scrolls). Triggers: IH, PfME + Resist Fear. Summon Smilodon, 2 trolls + a sword. Giant Strength for Imoen.

Initiate fight. Aura Clensing for all casters. Demon Knights strip Necro of protections. That's fine, since SI:Abjuration is still up. Necro recasts ST. Fighters pound one enemy at a time (they don't last for long), the other demon knights get one summon each. If we have PfF + PfME we are safe. When Knights strip our casters of protection, renew immediately. After maybe 3 knights are down remove magic hits us. Luckily both Necro + Neera have SI:Abjuration still up, so they are safe. Neera + Necro both use their triggers to re-up IH & PfME on DD & K/T (PfME fails, it's a touch spell). DD isn't taking any damage (+ has great saves) so he's safe, we quaff of potion of magic shieding for K/T. Necro + Neera move in to cast PfME + PfF on Imoen the Kensai, who then joins the pounding. Then renew DD's PfME. Necro gets stripped at this point so she moves a bit away to cast Protection from Energy + SI:Abjuration on herself. It doesn't matter, the demon knights are taken down so fast they lose before Necro has a chance to renew skins.

No-one was in any sort of danger at any time. Well, maybe the K/T a little bit.


We do "mage's proposal"

And DD + Imoen level up. Great. Imoen takes power attack while DD takes Hardiness. DD will take 3-4 hardinesses and after that power attack / critical strike / and perhaps greater whirlwind.



The Master Brain

We summon a sword + a few invisible stalkers. Drop haste on them. Prebuff; IH on fighters, bearskins for K/T, Kensai + Cernd. And skins ofc. True sight for Kensai.

Initiate fight (and move summons in, this takes about 10 reloads per try... and ends up being completely useless, as we could have just used the summoning devices we have instead of trying to trick the scripts. oh well.)

Cernd; Flame arrow umber hulk, Necro & Neera (N&N) Magic Missile Umber Hulk (umber hulk is dead). Summons go for mind flayer, while Ulitharid or what's it's name will get aggro of Kensai, K/T + DD (using a missile weapon in Dwarven Thrower). Cernd + N&N move to north of the room, where master brain can't reach them. Ulitharid dies, K/T + Kensai join casters. DD stays and attacks the remaining mind flayer, while summons are on it.

Brain Golems & Elemental materialise. They go for summons & 1 brain goes for DD. DD gets purge magic from master brain. DD just finishes the remaining mind flayer and joins the rest of the crew (he's down about 40 hp's at this point). The summons stay to provide fodder (it's sort of unnecessary though).

Cernd summons a smilodon, N&N: summon swords. We take positions, DD up front, sword on a side, K/T & Kensai behind them. DD Hardiness.

Cernd drops a regen to Smilodon, Necro IA (then IH on DD, then summons a sword), Neera RvE (we get regen, yeah). All enemies go for DD. Summons (2x swords + regenerating smilodon go for brain golems) while the crew takes out the elemental.

Enemies get separated. Brains are battling summons, elemental is on DD. That's the way we like it.

Elemental summons a gem. Necro is still under IA, so she immediately triggers 3xLR on it, then casts GM, then sequencer 3xPO and Imoen the Kensai gives the chicken a whack. The gem lasted for half a round. Necro casts spell trigger to renew the 3xLR trigger she had. Neera drop IH on the regenerating smilodon.

Brain golems (they are sort of softies) got their hands full in 2-3 swords + buffed up smilodon + a few fire elementals / trolls while frontline takes out the elemental golem. Smilodon, with the help of other summons manages to kill 2-3 brain golems on the way. It's incredibly effective. Once elemental is down to "near death" K/T & Kensai stop attacking. Coin materializes quite soon. Necro drops 3xLR on it, Neera casts GM followed by a sequencer 3x PO. Coin turns into a chicken. Imoen pats it on the head with staff of Rhyn and it falls. Fighters move in to finish the elemental golem, then dd goes for the master brain alone (to get purge magic alone) and then the rest move in.

Brain falls soon after, then it's the already half-dead brain golems left only. If we didn't have RvE: Regen we could have just cast regen from Cernd & used a few potions.

No-one was in any sort of danger at any point.


Dracolich

One of my least favorite fights. I haven't found any way of overpowering the damn thing. We try a number of different approaches, but it seems to be immune to pierce shield's, pierce magic's & time stop (we still have our time stop from a limited wish available).

Cernd death wards & summons, DD tanks, Necro decoys, Neera summons, K/T & Kensai idle most of the time. Feed it summons slowly, 3-5 potions of rejuvenation and we're good. Wouldn't have needed them, but Cernd (as usual) gets completely accidentally level drained so no "regeneration". Mages keep up SI:Necromancies, Cernd death wards DD & himself. K/T & Kensai both use potions.

We use maybe 10 scrolls of spider spawn, 3-5 potion of rejuvenation, 3-4 potions of magic shielding and one potion of magic protection. And one scroll of raise dead, because K/T gets wailed.

10 tries or so. First because of trying to find a way of overpowering it, but later on just mismanaging something dull, like forgot to renew SI:Necromancy on PC.


Ancient Golem

Mages prepare triggers; ST 3xLR, SS 3xPO.

It takes a few tries before we find the rhythm.

We walk in with 2 swords, get purge magic'ked, which is fine because we wouldn't have prebuffed anyway. ( Mages + Cernd dodge the purge because they have skins ). DD defensive stances & Cernd comes in to cast regeneration on him.

Waiting for the spawn to appear we IH kensai and summon a troll. Cernd also casts defensive harmony. Now DD has effective AC of -25 against crushing. And 50% phys resistance. He's quite safe.

Spawns appear. Summons go for spawns (the gem). Kensai & K/T go after the them (& the gem).

Necro 3XLR on coin, Neera GM, Cernd Doom on coin. Fighters whack gem. Necro releases SS and coin turns into a chicken. Gem falls. DD moves away from the group since a purge is coming. Ancient golem goes after him. Purge doesn't affect defensive stance. If DD gets thrown around, we send a sword after them. The key in the fight is separating ancient golem from the summons, as at this stage coin+gem are easily manageable (they don't really stand a chance) and buffs with DD's natural abilities keep him safe 1:1 against the ancient golem.

We turn 4 of the first coins into chickens, Cernd mass cures swords whenever appropriate & at some point it gets a little bit messy but luckily we have a cheat code in RvE:Regen, which we use midway through the fight. After RvE expires Cernd conveniently levels up, we instantly level him up and choose natural restoral, which we immediately use on DD who was in trouble.

After 10 spawn there aren't any more. We IH our fighters, bless + defensive harmony and summon swords, trolls & a smilodon. We get purge'd quite soon after, luckily we have oodles of spells left. DD quaffs a potions of storm giant strength.

Towards the end Necro IA's & casts vampiric touch on ancient golem which falls to it. Nice. Everyone is almost in full health. Necro is 7k and Neera 27k away from the next level. And wish.

Kruin

We do all of the small things (in the just opened areas on the map) and then decide to test our might against Kruin. We try a few tactics and then discard our "interrupt Kruin's spell casting" - thing in favour of just plain power.

We summon a few swords, a troll and a Smilodon, IH on fighters, SI:Abjuration + GOI + ST on Necro (Neera just SI + GOI (from a scroll)). Cernd takes the centre stage with Neera. Regen for Smilodon. Giant strengths for Imoen & DD.

Initiate fight. Cernd: Aura clensing, Neera: IA, fighters go for githyakis, 2 swords fork Kruin.

Cernd: Doom on everyone (I like this Cernd), 11x flame arrows on Githyaki, 6-8x emotions (we try to hit Kruin but no luck) then regeneration on Kensai & Creeping doom to try and hit Kruin (they don't work). Neera drops greater malision, then summons troll, then RvE (we get a skeleton), then another RvE (we get regen), then summon a troll. Imoen the Kensai switches from staff to Water's Edge (off-hand) & Peridan in main hand, giving her APR of 9 (and Thac0 of -17 or so). She Critical Strikes so we kill an elemental golem in a round(?) or so. Kensai with double regeneration (from Cernd + RvE) gets hit a number of times but survives thanks to the very effective regen.

Before the first elemental falls it manages to get a spawn away. So we get 1 spawn from each elemental - they both are gems. Necro + Neera both release ST 3xLR, then GM, then SS 3xPO. It takes a few rounds to turn them into chicken. Cernd takes the aggro of one and one is on the regenerating Smilodon. DD and Kensai are on the elementals.

After the first elemental falls, there's only unconscious githyaki and Kruin, who is pestered by swords / busy removing Necro's spell buffs (mostly). Fighters don't have any trouble finishing the last elemental, Cernd tanks it with DD.

Then there's just Kruin, who is dangerous himself. We feed it summons and immediately after SI:Divination runs out we true sight, PfME frontline & annihilate (2-3 x RRoR's + breach or so).


Alhoon

This is insanely difficult. It's very easy to mess up. Even the start to the fight goes wrong every 3/4 tries, for me at least. We try this 20 times. Then we re-think our approach, since luring GeG to the other room from Alhoon didn't really work. We change our approach to "just overpower them". Should have started with that.

The GeG is immune to +3 weapons and less, so we have a big problem in very limited options for +4 (or +5) weapons. Kensai has +4 weapons while dual wielding (long sword +4 + water's edge +4), the K/T can use staff of Rhynn but DD has been using dwarven thrower & frostreaver up to this point (both +3) and we have no other hammers / axes easily available (besides Crom Fayer which we'll get after this fight). So we do a little bit of testing and find out that the "Kneecapper" counts as a weapon +4 and thus we can hit GeG with it. Great. Now our chances of surviving increase.

We forge Neera's robe for decreased casting time + 2 extra spells per level. Without Greater Robe of Invocation, this is super difficult (we most likely need 2 regenerations and without the robe she has 4 spells per level, which makes it quite unlikely). And of course we need oodles of LR's & PO's. Just to be safe.

Normal buffs (IH's, PFME, ST's (3xLR), SS's (3xPO), giant strengths etc.) plus 3 trolls & a smilodon. Foreknowledge for Neera + RvE:Regen (since we tried this 20 times already). DD takes the initial purge & moves in to whack flayer. Summons go for flayer near alhoon & fighters charge in towards DD. Cernd comes in, aura cleanses and kills the umberhulks with flame arrows & causes some damage to a few mind flayers as well. DD takes the initial ADHW himself (with BOIB & regen, no problem).

We finish the mind flayers besides alhoon and all of the summons move to attack alhoon, separating GeG & Alhoon. Necro drops some Skeleton Warriors to attack Alhoon (but it looks like the trolls seem to do a better job)

When the spawn appear Neera IA's. Necro drops ST 3xLR on it. Neera then GM + PO^2 to turn it into a chicken (the 2nd one hits). Then IH on fighters (they just got purged) and Cernd drops regen on Kensai. Kensai activates critical strike and switches to dual wielding. We kill the GeG quite fast after that (it does get a second spawn away, which we turn into chicken as well). Kensai gets hit but survives thanks to the double-regen.

After GeG dies it's just a few RRoR's and whack, under PfME ofc.



Bodhi

Meh. 3 trolls + a smilodon. NPP's from limited wish. Necro: SI:Abjuration, GOI + ST. Skins for everyone. IH's for fighters + smilodon. Neera SS 3xFlame arrow, ST 3xLR, Necro SS 3xMinor disruptor, ST 3xPfMW, Skins + PFME

Move in with summons. All spellcasters go aura cleansing. Cernd dooms everyone + anhilates with flame arrows while renewing negative plane protections whenever necessary (Bodhi seems to strike through these). Necro MM's, Acid Arrows + flame arrows mostly and drops a ADHW at some point. Ditto for Neera, besides the ADHW. When Cernd's spells are cast he Shield of Archons & renews Aura clensing and then moves in to take Bodhi's aggro (who was on summons thus far). Shield of archons + skins keep Cernd safe. Necro 4xminor disrupts Master Vampire + trigger (3x minor disruptor) + 2x disrupt undead on it. It falls quite soon after that. We use our last disrupt undead o Skeleton Warlord.

Bodhi falls to Kensai's CS. Both DD + Kensai get level drained.



We find the Cursed Vampire Ashes which we'll need for Imoens awesome pendant. We've been really looking forward to this. But It doesn't work the way it was supposed to work. A bummer. (will report in separate topic). The pendant is actually the reason why we have Imoen as a Kensai, instead of a custom Half-Orc (We could have made Imoen the K/T ....). We will take a break and decide what to do.

Before taking a break we visit under dark exit and suldanesselar entrance and gain exp. Almost everyone levels up.

***

We decide to enhance our group a little bit, so we'll give Imoen a slightly better base CON and we also decide we'll get additional magical flower seeds + maze sigil, for Cernd's stuff because we are lacking Imoen's very powerful pendant.

***


Kangaxx

Pre-Kangaxx liches:

Necro ST + GOI + SI:Abjuration + PfME + PfF + Death Ward. Cernd PfF & Death Ward.

Initiate fight. Aura Clensing for both Necro & Cernd. Necro PfMW & 3x disrupt undead. Cernd: 5x unleash energy. Lich falls.

For the last one (who turns into Kangaxx) we also IH & Death Ward our fighters. When the lich turns Cernd + Necro renew aura clensing. Fighter move in to pound. Cernd renews Death Wards as fast as possible but DD still get imprisoned, Necro just casts SI:Abjuration's. When Kangaxx is near death Kensai also gets imprisoned. So we move in to attack with K/T who then finishes the job. We cast freedom & get our crew back.



Firkraag

We botch our preparations & forget that we can't kill firkraag while there are spawns left. So once initial wave is down, we CS and Necro breaches under IA and we go pounding with our full might wasting our at this stage precious fighter HLA'a since we can't kill it. Neera stays out of sights and Cernd controls everything from the middle at some point drawing a skeleton or two.

Smilodon with regen & IH works tremendously well in this. So do trolls. Towards the end we are somewhat out of resources so Neera casts wish. We get "double length time stop with alacricity" - great. Then she just moves in and dumps her whole spell book on Firkraag starting with lower resistances (she had mental agility + foreknowledge active). So LRx3, Breach, 10xMM's, 10xAcid Arrows, 8xVampiric Touches .(or so).

Firkraag is gone.



Umar Witch

We prepare max damage causing triggers, Necro CC 3xADHW (see enemy), ST 3xCone of Cold + SS 2xEmotion + slow. Neera CC's 3xgreater malision (see enemy, she doesn't have yet great offensive spells for CC). ST 3xLR.

IH fighters, Skins, Foreknowledge, SI:Divination + Improved Imvisibility for Neera. GOI + ST for Necro. Summon a smilodon + 3 trolls. We walk in. Imoen almost dies, as she gets attacked by Skeleton Warlord. Luckily it then targets Necro, who is also in the vicinity. Necro under alaricity, with oodles of skins & PfMW when needed, is more than safe from the Skelly.

Casters IA / Aura Clensing. Then just unleash everything in their spellbook. Fighters whack whatever remains, which isn't much.



Squirrelled away assassins @ bridge district

We try this 20 times (or so). Both N&N have CC's of 2xMS8 + PfMW, which just doesn't trigger properly, that's 10 tries. And when we get them to trigger ("see enemy", so should be about immediately after entering) we try to disrupt Pietre. After 10 tries or so, we notice that we can't disrupt her (there's an aura or something). Oh well...

Prebuff with everything (IH's, skins, PfME). Both N&N take SI:Abjuration, GOI (Neera casts one from a scroll), ST for Necro. True sight for Necro. Cernd perfect camouflages, mirror images & acid shield's.

Initiate fight. CC's trigger as they should. N&N&C aura clensing. 2 trolls on nearest enemies each. All fighters focus on the nearest exterminator (on the right). We can't kill anyone after the first round, even though the nearest enemy is already "near death". Necro & Cernd cast RRoR's & chain lightnings (aiming to interrupt as much as possible) so there's a constant array of interruptions to casters. Pietre still gets a storm of vengeance away (it ends up interrupting only a breach from Neera, a flame arrow from Cernd and Contagion from Necro). We 2RRoR the mage, then secret word, then breach (Neera). Pietre gets breached. Cernd drops a regen on DD. Necro unleashes a flurry of hold person's, contagion's, feeblemind's, PO's & Power Words (Silence & Stun) but none of them hits. It doesn't matter. Once mages defences are down we flame arrow, K/T moves behind him, quaffs a potion of invisibility and finish him with one blow (he was down some hp'x. Then we start to backstab the rest of the enemies. If they get hardiness up Neera breaches. Regenerating DD with defensive stance / hardiness is very, very tough.



Troll Mound, or just flame them.

Prebuff: PfF for everyone, IH for fighters, barskins for K/T & Kensai. Giant strengths for Kensai & Cernd.

Take care of first wave, then aura cleansing / IA for casters. Fighters move in (unfortunately we get dispelled at this point by the queen) DD hardiness, K/T & Kensai both take potions of fire resistance. Cernd drops 2x fire storms in the middle of the mound followed by an incediary cloud from Necro. Neera greater malisions, LR's & flame arrows. Quite soon our crew is taking so much damage (from the fire mostly) we are forced to RvE:Regen (we get in on the 2nd try). Queen & King don't take much fire damage, but the Queen doesn't get a single spell away because the damage interrupts. The rest of the trolls however do, so soon there's only K&Q left. Conveniently the queen then zone of sweet airs our clouds away, it's the only spell she gets away during the whole fight. Necro stripped queen of spell protections and Neera breaches. Queen is taken down with 8x acid arrow + 15 chromatic orbs (or so).

The Vengeance trolls start spawning and Necro 3x Incendiary clouds a part of the troll mound. Cernd quaffs a potion of cold resistance (he has active PfF) and runs into the cloud. He's being followed by 6 vengeance trolls, who start to take (a lot of) fire damage immediately. Necro and Neera are under PfMW. They both move to the edge of the cloud, Cernd runs a circle and then back into them and they release ST 3xCone of cold from Necro and a cone of cold from Neera (scroll). Cernd takes a few hits (is down to STR 7 or so at this point) but the Vengeance trolls fall. The rest of the vengeance trolls are taken down by the fighters. Kensai, again is super efficient in clearing these so she just just Critical Strikes and takes about 2 trolls down with a single CS.

Then it's the King alone. It takes a bit of time. We're out of CS's so we summon a smilodon, 3 swords + a planetar. We IH smilodon & planetar. King keeps knocking back a target and then runs away after it, so we are forced to run in circles around it while avoiding the cloud. It mostly attacks Kensai, who doesn't have anything to protect herself with so Cernd uses natural restorer's and plantar heals.

King dies. After King is dead, Cernd's giant strength runs out and because his ability scores are still drained he falls. Planetar raises & heals him.



Spider Queen

We try this a number of times with the successfully up above used tactic in "just flame them", putting 3x incendiary clouds in CC and loading up with fire storms. But since the spiders are immune to fire & dispel with hits, it just doesn't work (as our PfF get dispelled so we end up annihilating our frontline). So we change our approach completely.

Cernd loads up with free actions, mass heals & chain lightnings. Necro emotions & chain lightnings.

We don't prebuff (well besides giant strength for Imoen & K/T). DD takes the initial improved web alone while quaffing a potion of freedom (we're down to 3 or so). Neera goes IA and improved haste's everyone. Then casts greater malisions, slow's, hold monsters (we don't even get one to stick) and summons swords & trolls Necro drops a few chain lightnings but just sort of idles throughout the fight. Towards the end she summons a few swords & trolls though. We separate spider queen & spawns, so summons are always on spider queen and fighters pound spawns. And we fight outside the improved web's area. DD hardinesses / defensive stances and we just plain out annihilate. Cernd drops a regeneration on DD. The queen's summons do not have any chance against our frontline (Our Thac0's are: DD -17, Kensai -20, K/T -10 while buffed), especially the Kensai is ridiculously effective and by this stage has 3 CS's. In a slight pinch in the beginning Kensai just CS's and goes through a number of spiders within the duration of a single CS. Cernd drops free actions for frontline when the spawns manage to dispel them and we heal our crew when necessary.

After a while queen is alone, surrounded by 1-2 trolls, 2 swords and a smilodon (under IH & regen). We have oodles of summons left + 9 or so level 9 spells (RvE or Wish).Then we just wait. Cernd comes in every now and then to cast mass cure on summons. Every now and then we get some spider-summons. Once all of the summons are done Kensai activates CS and Spider Queen is no more.



Chromatic Demon

Prebuff: summon a few swords, IH on fighters, barkskins. PfF for fighters.

Initiate fight. Casters go aura clensing. DD hardiness. We release triggers of 3xLR to amber golem and to chromatic demon. Cernd Dooms. Neera Greater Malisions. Then 3xPO from sequencer. Amber is turned into chicken (and finished with a flame arrow). Hold Monster's for Chromatic Demon, who is then held after the 2nd one sticks. Fire-salamander is taken down by fighters and the ice-salamander gets 3x LR + Doom + the 2nd sequencer of 3xPO to turn it into a chicken. Since we have PO's still left & aura cleansed and nothing to worry about (as demon is held) we cast PO's at chromatic demon and what do you know, we manage to also turn it into a chicken.

I like this fight.



Green Wyrm

We yet again mess up completely with our preparations, as we don't recall these fight in that thorough detail.

Necro doesn't have Memory of Apprenti so her spell slots for level 5 are limited to 6. It's a problem since we will need a lot of Breaches. We CC 3x Pierce Shield's (on "see enemy"), then SI:Necromancy + Goi + ST. Neera foreknowledge. IH on fighters. Both mages have ST Hold monster + LR + Breach. Cernd loads up with zone's of sweet air.

We walk in. Necro & Cernd IA/Aura clensing. Pierce Shield's take down initial spell defences (and lower magic resistance for about 30%) and then it's just a battle between breaches & pfMW's. We are a bit out of sync and manage to waste 2 breaches from spell book with breach hitting green wyrm just before it PfMW's. We try to cast some breaches from scrolls but it's way too slow. So it's either wait and hope for no 3xFinger of Death trigger or so something else. So Neera RvE's, get's mental agility IA's and walks in, releases a trigger of breach + 2x LR. Before Green Wyrm gets silence away Neera drops her whole spellbook on green wyrm (all 1st, 2nd & 3rd level spells + some 7th level spells). She's joined by Necro.

Green Wyrm dies. It wasn't pretty but got the job done.

K/T levels up so we finally get UAI getting an enormous upgrade to K/T's capabilities

A note.

Our approach of selecting a bit unconventional spells has been an enormous dud so far. Power Word:Stun should be very useful spell we've tried it in a number of encounters already and have about zero successes with it. While there's an abundance of times our crew would have been better off had Neera had RRoR instead of it. Ditto for "hold monster", which has been a useful spell in 2-3 fights, but it's nowhere near the utility of the likes of "cone of cold". Also we would have been better off taking emotion instead of improved invisibility, since it's so enormously useful in so many fights.

Also missing chain lightning has been a pain. Even though we've had those spells "covered" Neera has played the part of the main spellcasters for quite some time. And missing the essentials from her selection wasn't a triumph.

At least so far.

So, what's wrong with Imoen's personal item?

I'll report in the other topic so that everything is in one place. I have additional notes as well.

Hybrid Tiefling

It takes a few tries, since the wild magic zone is so unpredictable. We just have to get 2RRoR's on Hybrid Tiefling and a breach and PfME on whoever pounds it. The hounds are taken down with DD on front (with shield of harmony), Kensai at the back with Critical Strike (CS) & Staff of Rhynn (She does about 35pts of damage per hit so 200pts/rd).

K/T backstabs half of the other enemies with the help of potions of invisibility, which we have hundreds of.

We are thinking about forging the backstabbing enhancing dagger for him to use.

**

We finish WK compass level with Wish + Spectral Brand from Gambling Gambion. We sell some stuff & forge MoA, resolving our problem with limited spell slots. We have 6 manuals of elaboration and 7 permanency scrolls and 400k in gold left.

We will forge based on necessity, there's a number of items we absolutely need for the Demogorgon fight, which we want to do as fast as possible.

We forge grandmaster of flowers, paladin's bracers & enhanced armour of stamina. We should also do green wyrm plate, but we will leave it for the next phase. Then we forge staff +3 & golem slayer. Then we sell some additional stuff, mostly scrolls and forge golden spider figurine + ring of greater djinn summoning. Now we have about the best summons in IA as well (except Swanmays). And zero gold.

This is an insane jump of power & usability for K/T in a short time. He goes from -5 Thac0, 3 APR & AC -2 (before the green wyrm fight) to -7 Thac0, 5 APR & -16/-23AC, 20-30% phys. resisitance and regen of 9-11hp / rd. And without buffs, we have 4,5APR's & -9Thac0 with Golem Slayer. That's well, if not game breaking, at least "golem breaking" capability.

The things we absolutely need for the demogorgon fight are Judgement Day, Royal Elemental Staff (or Both of the Royal Elemental Staves separately also works) and (maybe) the Hammer of Thor. We would also like to have the Circlet of Golden Flowers, Great Wyrm plate, girdles of cloud giant strength & lordly might, Necro ioun stone and FoDW. Plus a few rings of protection but the GP's required for those will mean postponing that fight. Probably. We'll see.



**

Why is it so cold down here?

Prebuff, Protection from Cold on everyone. Fighters take IH + Free Action (in that order). Giant strenght for Imoen the Kensai + K/T.

Necro takes initial purge, then launches PfMW + Protection from cold + 2xMS8 (from contigency + chain contigency). Neera CC's launches with GOI + 2xMS8 (Neera launches Necro's Contigency + Chain Contigency with chromatic orb).

Then Necro IA's, all fighters Kai / Critical Strike and go for ice golem. Enemies are going for our summons. Necro releases sequencer 3xRay of fragmentation + casts 5 rays of fgragmentation and the Ice Golem falls before it even gets the 1st ice storm away.

We milk all 6 summons out of the elemental. Then pat it on the head with Golem Slayer.


Marvella Finale with Pasha

We get purged in the beginning, so no prebuffing (besides Foreknowledge for Neera & Giant Strengths for Imoen & K/T). Both mages have CC's with ST+GOI+PfME / PfE. We summon 2 swords, 2 bears and Joolon.

Initiate fight. After we get purged Necro PfMW's, Neera & Cernd start IA/Aura Clensing.

If we can seprate the enemies in the beginning we are safe. If they all go for Pasha we are a little bit in trouble (but solvable with 2xregen on Pasha & healing via Natural Restoral) since we want to save Pasha's life.

The fight itself is quite straightforward. A few remove magic's to make sure our fighter can pound. Cernd heals & summons some fodder. We also lower resistances of abyssal escorts and try the following: "ray of enfeeblement / contagion / slow / chaos / hold monster / polymorph other" but nothing works. Well, luckily pounding works and we are really good at it.


Limak

Initiate fight. Necro has a CC with 3xKhelben's Warding Whip (on "see enemy"). They hit Limak. After that spellcasters IA/Aura clensing. We turn ambers into chickens with the normal process (without attacking them so no protection from lightning needed). After that, we can't breach Limak immediately. K/T takes Limak's aggro with Golem Slayer giving him 55% phys resistance against crushing. Cernd drops regen on him. Our backup is that we can "hardiness" through wish, which would give K/T a nice 95% phys resistance stripping Limak of it's damage.

After a few rounds (2 maybe) our true sight works(?) and we can breach. After that, it's just whack. We activate critical strike from Kensai & DD, and Kai from K/T and Limak is toast. We forget about the 3xADHW but manage to survive it.

We sell some stuff and forge Green Wyrm plate. We are thinking about forging the potion of superior mentality, but we don't really have any need for it but we do have a number of needs for that gold.


Ultimate Arcane confrontation

CC ST+GOI+Foreknowledge, Contigency PFMW (<= both "see enemy")". ST: 3xFlesh to stone, SS: PfF, PfC + Stoneskin

Initiate fight

Launch trigger + start SI:Necromancy then IA.

Once IA is done, renew protections (ST, GOI) then summon planetar, then 2RRoR on nearest lich, then launch trigger (ST 3xFlesh to stone) and turn it into stone. Then resist fear, luck & haste on planetar (also protection from evil is a nice bonus), RRoR on 2nd lich and renew IA (possibly re-cast PfMW) before. Then just another RRoR & disrupt undead until the lich is dead. Once we're out of Disrupt Undead's Old One finishes the last lich. WE can help with bigby's crushing hands.

**

We visit WK level 4 ("lum the mad") and are delighted to find 2 greater bone golems & 3 elemental golems in the room west of Carston. We prebuff with PfFire, PfCold, PfLightning on Cernd, K/T + DD. Cernd also gets acid shield. Then IH.

Initiate fight. Whack bone golems. Separate elemental golems, summons & Cernd tank 1st, DD tanks 2nd, K/T tanks 3rd. Cernd casts regen on tanks once they are out we use RvE regen & milk all 18 summons. We get 35k in gold from the fight. Great, since we are short on gp.



Twisted Rune

We normally would have postponed this a bit, but since we need their stuff we decide to do this. It isn't very difficult though.

Normal buffs. IH's for fighters. PfF's for everyone. NPP from limited wish. Cernd death wards all casters & mages SI:Abjuration + GOI + ST. We should be quite safe. DD equips belm in off-hand.

Initiate fight. Necro triggers 2xMS8 & foreknowledge, Neera triggers 1xMS8 + foreknowledge + PfMW. All caster move a little bit away from Vaxall's sights & go aura clensing.

DD takes remove magic alone (but doesn't lose IH), DD + Kensai CS on go for Revanek. K/T summons a berserker warrior, who attacks Shangalar. Shangalar gets 2 trolls + berserker, 1 troll stays to fight Shyressa. Revanek doesn't last long & fighters move in to attack Shyressa. Cernd is nearby renewing NPP's when they are removed. No-one gets level drained. Necro summons a troll but there's a little bit of a lag before we can target Shyressa. She doesn't have anything else to cast so she casts PFME & PfE on fighters. Neera drops a comet on Shangalar to knock it back to the small room. Once we can target Layenne casters strip her of protections (Necro & Cernd) then just magic missile & acid arrow until she's "near death".

Shyressa doesn't last for long, Cernd renews NPP's twice. Neera starts to renew IA, fighters move in to pound Layenne. She then wishes, gets back in full health but without protections she's taken down immediately. Fighters go for Vaxall and once we can hit it (quite soon, maybe after the initial PfME runs out) we just activate CS from DD + Kensai and it's toast.

We re-do our spell selections to suite whacking a lich but we don't get magical rest (we try 7 Wishes). Then it's quite a boring ordeal, with DD throwing azuredge and feeding Shangalar summons. Once we can hit it lasts for half a round or so.


**

We do a little bit of calculating and even though we want to go for Demogorgon as fast as possible we probably need to go to Suldanesselar first. We do have oodles of stuff to do in other areas as well, but we're somewhat short on cash.

We forge Circlet of Golden Flowers, giving Cernd a much needed boost with 7th level spell slots.

Heading to watcher's keep to dismantle supreme leader next.

**

Supreme Leader

Max prebuffs for fighters.

Enter, whack everyone in the first chamber. Neera's CC with 2xMS8 & Foreknowledge launches. Move in with Cernd to the 2nd room to take leaders aggro. The rest of the crew +trolls follow. Necro drops a few trolls there (with CC of 2xMS8 & Foreknowledge) & a ST of 3xChain Lightning. Trolls go for supreme leader to get a quick break for Cernd so he can get aura clensing away (to renew skins immediately) Cernd + trolls stay and fight Githyaki + leader in "the 2nd room" while the rest head to the blacksmiths, we whack the one who is making coins immediately. So Imoen goes for blacksmith, DD takes out stone / clay golems with Crom Fayer and K/T focuses on existing gems with golem slayer. Mages move in, go IA and turn a few coins into chickens. After 1st blacksmith is down Kensai takes care of the inquisitors (with timely help from DD & K/T)., Mages start summoning trolls & swords which are sent to help cernd. Necro moves towards Cernd so she can also chain lightning away. We summon the greater djinn, IH it and send it to help Cernd.

We let the blacksmith who's making gems live & milk 8 gems out of it. (Then we accidentally kill it, as our aim was to keep it "near death"). A single gem golem lasts for half a round or so against 18 APR's from DD & K/T with crom fayer / golem slayer.

The leader itself is tanked by Cernd / Summons / Noble spider in the end. Once it's PfMW's are down (which takes like forever) and we can hit we just CS away and even though it has extremely effective hardiness active it still gets about 120pts damage per round (as both DD & Kensai both hit about 600pts/rd under CS).

We thought this was a hard fight before? Our "Plan A" of using "time stop" from limited wish cast by K/T and then whacking the supreme leader under stopped time isn't even needed.


Demi-lich

Prebuff: Death Wards on everyone, IH etc. Move in under alacricity. Turn golems into chickens. (We forgot about dispel magic so K/T gets imprisoned). Kensai under CS / IH / Death Ward whacks the demi-lich. It takes all of her CS's to do it. DD gets imprisoned half-way through.


Saladrex

Max prebuffs (IH's, PfF's, Regen, Giant Strength for fighters & minor globes, Barkskin for Kensai, mages take SI:Abjuration, GOI + ST). Enter. Whack. Once it gets PfMW away switch to nonmagical weapons. CS helps quite a lot.

**

We finish the WK level 4 and run into some troubles with the demon lord fight (the JD fight #1). Before we haven't had any troubles with it but we are so low level we can't dispel the death knights. Argh. So we skip it & decide to visit Druid grove for the enchanter + return Denni's gong + ancient mage @ troll mound. Plus after we come back, we can cast chain contigency again.

Ancient Mage

Prebuff, initiate, IA, debuff mage. Then whack. Then we PfF, PfCol, PfElectricity & PfAcid our crew and go milking for coin & gem golems from the 2 elemental golems.


Then we go to Suldanesselar

We blow through it like it was butter.

For both of the tougher fights (black dragon & geg in one of the houses) we prepare triggers.

For Black Dragon K/T lures the hardwood golems a little bit away from the dragon, while N&N turn them into chickens. Necro & Cernd strip the dragon of protections and once we can hit it Kensai & DD just CS and its toast. We manage to whack the dragon before creeping doom hits us.

Similar approach for GeG. We enter with max non dispelable buffs, DD runs into the rakshasas (no ADHW triggered) casters IA/Aura Clensing, rebuff, summon a smilodon (+ regen &Ih on it), noble spider (+ regen & ih on it) and the greater djinn (+ IH on it). Then whack & summon. Spawns get 3xLR + GM & doom + 2-3xPO. GeG doesn't last for long against ciritcal striking Kensai + DD (belm off-hand to maximize efficiency).


"Final Seal" - level in Watchers Keep.

The globe machine room has 4 elemental golems & 3 greater bone devils. How nice. We milk all 24 spaws out of them. DD Tanks 2 golems & K/T tanks 2. They both have very low AC against crushing & double regen + immunities to elemental damage ( PfF, PfC, PfA, PfL or protection from energy / elements). Cernd controls in between with heal's if necessary & renewing regenerations when needed. We also net about 50k in gp, great!


Ancient Dragon

It's an epic battle of wills between Necro and the Wyrm. Necro loads up with foreknowledge + ST + GOi. We also cast SI:Abjuration, PfME and Death ward on Necro before we enter. Neera stays back and just summons & wishes & renews IH's. Cernd buffs with everything he has but he'll take the Nishruu so he's pretty much out throughout the fight. IH on fighters.

We then confront the dragon, Necro goes IA gets mental agility and then drops her whole spell book on the wyrm (with -5 casting time) starting with CC 3xPierce Shield, which didn't work as planned as ancient dragon is -30% MR instead of -90% like we assumed. Anyway it's protections are down so Necro then breaches & lower resistances by LR/Pierce Shield. Neera RvE:Regen's after 1,5 rounds or so. We try to reduce magic resistance to try and get something to work against the Wyrm but we don't really find anything. Neera drops ST 3xLR on one of the Dragon's minions so we can dish out some magic damage & turn it into a chicken. Necro breaches and while renewing IA K/T breaches the ancient dragon once.

Pounding works though. Once we can hit it constantly both DD & Kensai CS and then it's about 1200pts of damage / rd so ... and nothing lasts for long against that.


Judgement Day

This is a fight with 3 stages. First stage is taking care of the spawns. We buff, summon fodder and drop IH on fighters. The minions are taken care with concentrated effort from 2-3 fighters at time and are stripped of protections with remove magic's / dispel magic's (in case the caster is Cernd).

The second stage is surviving the "burn mortals", so you'll need oodles of resist fire & cold's, PfF's, protection from elements / energy for fighters & Cernd, in my game mages are using red fireshield's. Neera has +30% from robe and Necro takes ring of fire resistance, so they are both covered. Cernd got hit with multiple lower fire resistances from the prince so he is extremly vulnerable. We lose the first fight after 4 hours (or so) of playing time because we just miss renewing PfF on Cernd when he gets hit &permanently. We need 2 magical rests to clear this. Luckily no wish-scrolls were used.

The 3rd stage is the actual pounding of the demon, which doesn't take long against our supercharged front line.


Back to the "globe machine"

The 4 grave liches.

Necro (with -5 casting time) strips them of protections and turns 2 liches into stone (one with a trigger of 3xflesh to stone). Cernd destroys one with implosions & nature's fists and Necro disrupt undead's the last one.

GeG + Ultra Golem
We dismantle the GeG first, it's just full on pounding with IH & CS on fighters, Tenser's Transformation & KAI for K/T. Then for the ultra golem while the we get rid of the spawns by the normal process of 3xLR + GM + Doom + 2-3xPO.


The Orcs

This is one of my least favorite fights. It takes forever and it's so dependent on luck, as we need yet again 2 magical rests. And it isn't really a big fight and this takes ages. This is where a ranger would help, for those extra dispel magic's would come in real handy.

Whack the mages immediately after they appear, it takes a single remove magic / dispel magic and a fighter with IH. Smilodon helps quite a lot here, so we cast regen & IH on it. Planetars are almost uselesss because they don't have resistance to physical damage, they don't last even with an active regen and other summons will get death spelled, so it's quite limited where we can use them



Lavok's Postmortem adventure // Force Fight

There's multiple waves of enemies. Balors take secret word + breach but the greater bone golems are the ones that cause big problems. We don't have berserkers with us so our ways of protecting ourselves are quite limited. And no protector, so no mental equillubrum. The hideous laughters are especially hazardous with the continuous dispels.

Luckily we have uber-cernd with us who has 15 level 4 and 5 spells, giving us enough chaotic commands / free actions / aura clensings so we can deal with dispels as we don't even have the improved cat figurine. It just requires an additional aura-clensing or two and Cernd running around like mad trying to keep everyone buffed. (we can also use scrolls & K/T for this, if in a pinch).


** Status before Demogorgon **

Necro (PC): Level 27, 114 HP, AC -9, MoA, Bracers of icelandic pearl (+50 cold res), circlet of netheril, amulet of hades, scholastik cloak, belt of inertial barrier, paws of cheetah, guard's ring & ring of greater djinn summoning
DD (Minsc with Korgan's stats): Level 30, 221HP, AC -22, Defender of Easthaven / Crom Fayer, Green Wyrm Plate, Dread Bond (+1 STR & immunity to panic!), Helm of Balduran, 2xRoP +2, Clasp of Bron's Cloak (+5% physical resistance), shield of harmony, girdle of glory (+3AC). 35% phys resistance without buffs.
Imoen (Kensai): Level 30, 247HP, AC -4, Judgement Day /Waters Edge +4, Indigo Ioun Stone, Amulet of Ilmater, 2xRoP +2, Cloak +2, Paws of cheetah, Cload giant girdle (She has a Thac0 of -26 & -18
Cernd: Level 29, 145HP, AC -9 (non buffed), Staff of Woodlands, Paws of the furious cat, Circlet of golden flowers, Aegis of torment (+3 AC, +2 Con, +15HP), 2xRop +1, Master of high forest, girdle of bluntness, Paws of the cheetah
Neera: Level 27, 107HP, AC -2, Martial Staff, Robe of Invocation, Bracers of defense AC3, Obsidian ioun stone, Black Wolf Talisman (+10 cold res, +10hp), Rop +1, Cloak +2, Tymora's Gift (+10 magic resistance, +3 luck), paws of the cheetah
K/T: Level (13)/30, 255HP, -16AC, Noble Staff of Air / Golem Slayer / Keryvian + FoA, Enhanced Armour of Stamina, Gauntlets of Blessed might Necro Ioun stone, Ring of Gaxx, Cloak of Daywalker, Boots of Ranger lord + piercing girdle. 35% phys resistance (70& against crushing with golem slayer).

Neera's Spellbook:

Lvl1: magic missile, chromatic orb, protection from evil, charm person, nahal's reckless dweller
Lvl2: blur, glitter dust, self's acid arrow, mirror image, resist fear,
LVl3: flame arrow, remove magic, slow, vampiric touch, dispel magic
Lvl4: greater malision, improved invisibility, polymorph other, stoneskin, fire shield (red)
Lvl5: breach, lower resistances, spell immunity, hold monster
Lvl6: improved haste, protection from magic energy, protection from magic weapons, goi
Lvl7: mordekainen's sword, power word: stun, spell sequencer, spell turning
Lvl8: Monster Summoning 8 (MS8), Spell trigger, foreknowledge, bigbys' clenched fist,
Lvl9: RvE, Wish, CC, MS9 + IA, comet, dragon's breath, energy blades, summon planetar

We also hoard every scroll of remove magic & dispel magic we can find for the fight (we have about 20 or so all in all)

**

Nice progress! Good luck with Demogorgon.

Where did some of your items come from? There are a few I don’t recognize that seem to be from PS:T.

Also, how much of your healing late game is from Cernd vs RVE? Seems like you had an easier time with Supreme Leader than most.

So, the patch to Simplified Economy fixed the AI issue in the Supreme Leader fight, I presume?

I didn't try it yet. I'm somewhat behind with this journal so I'll try the patch after I finish the game so I'll report back later.

Thanks! I already did it, but I've just been occupied with everything else to write a report on it.

Items

I have an additional item pack, it adds some nice items that I don't think are overpowered but complement the items in IA quite well. they might be from PS:T, but I wouldn't know as I never made it that far with that game.

The extra items I currently have / have used during the game

Bracers of Icelandic Pearl (Bracers, +50 cold resistance, cone of cold 1/day, adhw 1/day)
Dread Bond (Bracers, +1str, immunity to panic)
Tymora's Gift (Belt, +10 MR, +3 to luck)
^ This is a great fit for Neera and even the graphics match her Robe. With GRoI + Amulet of greater protection + machine of lum the mad's 5%MR + Tymora's gift Neera is up to 50% in MR
Clasp of Bron's Cloak (amulet, +5 Physical resistance)
Amulet of Ilmater (amulet, +1 AC, +3 Saves, immunity to poison)
Aegis of Torment (amulet, +3AC, +2Con, +15HP)
^ This is super powerful and probably among top 5 most powerful amulets in the game. In my game Cernd equips it. We also gave Cernd + 1Con from machine of lum the mad bringing his CON with the amulet to 16.
Black Wolf talisman (amulet, +10HP, 10Resistance to cold)
Girdle of Glory (belt/girdle, +3AC)

Especially the belts/girdles & bracers are nice and I think compliment the items in IA quite well without being op. The only very powerful item is the "Aegis of Torment" and even that pales in comparison to IA's amulets.


Healing Cernd vs RvE

Well it depends quite a lot. There's a few heavy battles before Demogorgon (JD & orcs mostly) where relied heavily on RvE. Also with Ancient Dragon we used RvE because Cernd was out through the whole fight since his job was taking care of the Nishruu, thus no regen. And ofc in the demogorgon fight we are very relient on RvE + Wish.

But because we did Demogorgon quite early we have been completely OP since then so we haven't really needed healing that much. The fights we had left in SoA parts of the game felt like vanilla content. We could easily afford to play around even with orcus & milk all spawns/summons out of it.


Supreme Leader

Since DD had Crom Fayer & K/T had "Golem Slayer" the supreme leader fight becomes easily doable. They both have Thac0's of around -16 or so and both have 9 APR under IH. With CF's insta kill of stone & clay golems and golem slayers effectiveness against gem's especially they don't really have a chance. And ofc we have Kensai with 9 APR & -23 Thac0 (buffed) to take care of the inquisitor's (or what's their name). By supreme leader fight Kensai also had 5 critical strikes (0 Hardinesses) and she dishes out 35pts of damage per hit, so about 280-350pts / round without CS. The front line is very well optimized for this fight.

Demogorgon

Max prebuffs (PfF, PfC, PfME, GOI, SI:Abjuration, IH's, skins, mirror images, perfect camouflage etc.), max summons (greater djinn, smilodon, greater yuan-ti & noble spider + IH's on them) and mental agility for N&N N&N cc Foeknowledge+ST+PfMW. DD takes barbarian essence + protection form level drain. DD equips Dread Bond, Shield of Harmony + Defender of Easthaven. We divide potions of barbarian essence a few potions of storm giant strength + potions of fire resistance among the crew. K/T also get stonesking, pfmw + SI scrolls.

Initate. Summons go for Kazuul, except greater Yuan-Ti which goes for Kargoth. DD attacks Demogorgon, then backs away to attack Rozvankee. Necro, Neera & Cernd go aura clensing. Once IA is finished Necro debuffs Nulonga (3xRRoR + Breach), then Belcheresk then Saint Kargoth. If Kazuul activates smite we immediately breach. After Nulonga's protection are down Necro IH Kensai, who CS and together with K/T obliterate it (it might get PfMW up and if so then we need to breach again). Necro ST 3xLR on Kargoth. About here Neera's IA activates and she immediately ST 3xLR on Belcheresk. Cernd bark skins, then dooms after LR's hit targets and then flame arrows (11x or so) Kargoth, who is immune to fire damage but takes piercing damage. N/N both SS 3xAA, then MS 2xAA, then drop 20 chromatic orbs + 20 AA's on Belcheresk. Nulonga dies to pounding, Belcheresk to acid damage. N&N then drop all 3rd level spells in flame arrows to Kargoth. Cernd moves away from Flame Arrows to casting implosions / nature's fists on Kargoth. After Nulonga dies K/T switches to Noble Staff of Air and goes to help greater Yuan-Ti, which is almost dead. Kargoth dies soon after. Kensai goes for Kazuul. We re-arrange our spellbooks (remove /dispel magic's, summons and any spells that allow protection from fire (fire shield red's, PfME, PfEs etc.)Necro LR's, pierce magic's, greater malisions + PO's Vargouille into a chicken then starts summoning trolls & RvE's while Neera LR's, summons and then goes on to wish:rest. (We get it after 5 tries). Kazuul dies soon after, as nothing can take Kensai's pounding.

Then the real battle begins. DD tanks demogorgon & Rozvankee, while the rest of the crew do their best to survive while dismantling Vargouilles and the unending waves of abyssal escorts. Keep up fire resistances, concentrate attacks on minions. CS helps immensely against Vargouilles. Immediately when Rozvankee's SI expires we IA, true sight, RRoR & pound it into oblivion.

We try to setup our crew so that everyone has a way of protecting themselves if they find themselves in a pinch. That's PfMW scrolls for Necro, Neera & K/T. Cernd, DD & Kensai take barbarian essences. At one point Necro is surrounded by 5 mariliths / abyssal escorts and she stands pat while casting and then renewing PfMW's from scrolls when necessary ( maybe 8-10 PfMW's from scrolls all in all ). In the end K/T still almost dies (since he forgot to renew PfMW).

We use maybe 8 barbarian essences, 5 protections from level drain, 20 scrolls of remove/dispel magic, 20 scrolls of PfMW, 5-10 potions of fire resistance and a few potions of storm giant strength, 4-5 potions of agility and a few scrolls of protection from poison. And probably something else I forgot.


Post-demogorgon fights

(We forge a bunch of stuff incl. noble staff of earth, great wyrm plate, supreme shelter, girdle of lordly might, necro's robe, staff of strength etc. )

Rune Assassins (Windspear Hills)
Grandfather of Assassins
Guarded Compound
Improved Theshal
Good, Bad & Ugly
City Gates Lich
Viper Queen
Orcus
Irenicus

We are so insanely powerful after the Demogorgon fight that tactics for these fights become trivial. And we have soooo much fun with these. Our "tactic" boils down to enter, activate aura cleansing & obliterate. If unsuccessful, repeat. For example the rune assasins @ windspear hills (the first post-demogorgon fight we do) our crew hardly gets hit. We empty our spellbooks and then re-up through wish ( it isn't needed, but it's much fun ). We enter, CC's launch with Foreknowledge, ST + GOI. Everyone goes aura clensing. Neera takes mental agility. Then we dump remove magic's, LR's, pierce magic's, GM + Doom's + slow's, 2x triggers of 3xCone of Cold's (both Necro & Neera), dispel magic's (for enemy mages) then 10 emotions (from cernd), 10 chain lightnings, 10 dragon's breaths, 10 Power word: stun's with implosions &unleash energy's & finger's of death and so on. At some point we RRoR & breach the mages, drop AA's & flame arrow's, then LR + Stun. Anything left standing is obliterated by turbocharged Kensai. K/T whacks the golems while others are busy.

There isn't even much we need to prepare, besides the Orcus fight where we need a number of NPP's & some prebuffs in summons and foreknowledge in CC. but even in that fight we can easily afford to milk all summons our of Orcus & just play around with it. Dismantling a wave of vampiric summons is completely trivial. No protections from level drain - scrolls are even needed. Cernd just drops 2-3 NPP's and possible casts shield of archons for himself. We also seems to be able to dispel Orcus (and we have 4-5 implosions / 7 nature's fists & 12+ bigby's crushing hands as well if we need to dish damage by spells) so it's PfMW's are useless. GBU's final fight we use double regen for the Inspector and finish it without too much milking, hence we can't control the good inspector.

Illasera

Debuff, anhilate. Strip enemy spellcasters of protections with (nx) RRoR & Breach, interrupt casters with flame arrows / nature's fists from Cernd. K/T activates assasination just because it's fun. For Illasera we lower resistances (with LR & Pierce shield) + GM + Doom + whack and then stun / hold person + emotion. Then milk all 10 spawns.

Gromnir

Normal buffs. K/T goes "assasination" for the spawning enemies @ west. Everything else is quite straightforward. We can't dispel Karun the Black but they still do not stand any chance. We try to hit it with creeping dooms / insect plagues etc. but none work. Still, Karun goes about mostly trying to unsuccessfully debuff Necro (a battle which Necro dominates due to low casting times & oodles of spells). Once it's SI:Divination runs out we just true sight, debuff & Karun the Black falls. DD tanks Gromnir etc. with natural restoral & a timely Regen. We also summon a skeleton lord & IH it, it's amazingly effective.



Marching mountains

Off to the marching mountains we go where we mostly PfF's for everyone & whack away and/or use acid damage which works very well here.

**

After Marching Mountains we do some counting. We have manuals of elaboration left, as well as permanency scrolls and even two scroll of memory boosting. What we want to forge still is, improved cat figurine, one maybe two rings of protection +4, maybe Cernd's staff, possibly flail of defending and wounding (but even of we don't have it, we are completely OP), nature's gift. But that's pretty much it. We do not have anything else we could make.

**

Yaga-Shura

We are still so completely OP that we do this fight with only 1 level 9 spell besides IA's (we wish for rest and get it on the first try). And even the wish:rest is mostly because when initiating the fight Cernd had only 1 call lightning memorized and we're too lazy to reload & change memorized spells. We enter, Yaga-Shura runs, whack 1 EFG and Yaga-Shura returns. Then we have our fun. Again. Elite Fire Giants are taken down with 10xCO + 10XAA (and a few whacks or so), Yaga-Shura's resistances are lowered with pierce shield. Elite bodyguards (or what's their name) take 3xRRoR + Breach + LR's / pierce shield's. Theya re mostly met with K/T, who in a pinch can equip Carsomyr for 50% MR (60% all in all with Ring of Gaxx). Then it's just a never ending continuum of anything that can hurt them (mostly chain lightnings, vampiric touches, flame arrows & emotions, whic don't work on EFG's though). Cernd loads up with call lightning's (after Wish) and dumps about 10 of them on Yaga-Shura (and it's minions). A single call lightning can do about 100pts of damage per hit (well, Yaga Shura has about 80% resistance but is still hurts because it lasts for such a long time). At some point Cernd drops a natural restoral on DD. We dump our whole spellbooks on the enemies. We also try PO's, contagions, hold monsters etc. but none of them work. I wish hold monster would work on EFG's.


The Oasis

We are planning on scrapping RvE from our spell selection but we forget the nasty unbreachable smite the General has. Luckily we had a few RvE's momorized when entering because we are forced to RvE:Regen at some point. (mostly because "remove disabling effect" didn't work) Anyway, the fight is much fun, if we could, we would have wished for tougher enemies. K/T tanks all of the gem golems. Yes, all. Spellcasters go IA and lower resistances (mostly LR's & pierce magics), doom, gm's, turn golems into chickens with PO and humans unconscious with emotion, while trying also every spell that we have on the general. I recalled that implosion would work on him but it doesn't seem to do that much of anything. Anyway once we've lowered resistances and the gem-situation is under control we chain lightning away and activate "resist magic" when the bodygurads (or whats their name) with 3xadhw triggers appear. In the end the General's abilities (apparently unbreachable hardiness + regen) keep him abit safe but we still manage to get it to badly injured status (by 5 continuous CS's from Kensai & DD) and surrounding the general with 3 greater Yuan-Ti's & Skeleton Lord (all under IH). In the end the General focuses on attacking Cernd which is fine since he has 14 iron skins or so, so General's efforts are pretty much completely wasted. Once the "hardiness" or what's it called runs out, the General is toast in half-a-round or so. Cernd has 6 iron skins left.

*

No tactics necessary.

Cernd

If you have been following this journal you might remember that we gave Cernd the tomes from bg1 + wisdom from machine of lum the mad + wisdom from deck of many things + upgraded circlet of golden flowers pumping Cernd's wisdom to 25.

With the bonuses in Wisdom and stuff we've gathered we have an abundance of spell slots. Currently our level 35 Cernd has the following spell slots.

7th 16
6th 18
5th 16
4th 16
3rd 14
2nd 15
1st 15

In addition to those we have 3 natural restorals and 10 nature's fists. After the demogorgon fight we could have pushed through a number of encounters with only Cernd's casting as for example he's quite adept at killing liches (with any combination of nature's fists / implosions / unleash energy's). With auramaster's natural abilities + equipment + bonuses, we have constant bonuses to casting speed that make an enormous difference in the fights. Even "nature's fist", which is quite useless on a regular Druid becomes a formidable weapon, that can take down a single powerful enemy in a round or so as we can drop all of the memorized nature's fists within a single aura clensing. With the abundance of 7th level spells we can easily afford to take 3-5 aura clensings which means that we can empty Cernd's whole spellbook within the span of a few rounds (or within the duration of 2 aura clensings or so). Also in a number of fights Smilodon is a great ally; Cernd summons a smilodon & drops a regen on it, while Necro drops IH & PfME on it to make sure it's safe. I'm unsure of the stats it has but it seems to be able to take down a gem golem on it's own. Also greater elementals work wonders until the very end, especially Sunnis with its iron skins.

The only thing Cernd doesn't do well is h2h, but even in h2h we can drop Cernd's effective AC to around -28 & skins & mirror images so Cernd is quite safe against everything except bosses and a few rare regular enemies. In the demogorgon fight Cernd can't be really used against Vargouilles, except with barbarian essences, because he'll get annihilated too fast. But other than that, Cernd is amazingly effective.

Sendais enclave

We don't really have any troubles here. Our spellcasters are way too effective, our spell slots way too many. The only thing that takes a reload or two is the lich, as we can't dispel it (even with level 35 (or 36 or so) Cernd, so we try to find a way to trick the disple with Khelben's Warding Whips for example. Our tricks do not work so we have to wait out and feed it summons. At some point it imprisons K/T, as we forget that "avoid death" doesn't help against imprisonment. We milk some spawns out of it & cast freedom after we're done.

In Northern tunnels we dump incendiniary clouds and fire storms and let enemies run into them where they are met with DD who has 100% resistance to fire. Kensai takes care of the spawning enemies on east.

The finale with Sendai is quite straightforward as well. On of the statues (or what's their name) take 3 RRoR's. The invisible statues are dealt with Skeleton Lord, which we IH & regen so no "True Sight" necessary because it can see invisible enemies. No RvE regen's cast. Webgolems are turned into chickens & finished with MM / AA. Sendai's pet is quite troublesome though it is tanked by Smilodon with regen throughout the fight.


Abazigail's lair

We waltz in and forget that Draconis can silence Neera, who has all of our breaches. Draconis manages to get the 3rd PfMW up and Necro runs out of breaches (she had only 2) So Cernd goes Aura clensing and drops 10 nature's fists on Draconis while frontline swithces to nonmagical weapons & they activate "critical strikes" for both DD & Kensai. Draconis drops within a single round.

In Abazigail fight we try to whack the golems first, but they seem to be death proof (it takes 1 round or so to get an elemental to "near death", where it stayed for 5 rounds or so). So we lower abazigail's resistances with LR's & Pierce shields, then breach, then both Neera & Necro renew IA's, Neera walks in and they 20xMM, 20xAA, 20xFlame arrow while Cernd drops 10 nature's fists or so ... and Abazigail is toast half way through before silence hits Neera. No RvE:Regen needed again.


** Status before EDE (unbuffed) **

Necro (PC): Level 35, 144 HP, AC -10, 40% resistance to magic, 55% resistance to magic damage + minor resistances
STR 9, DEX 18, CON 16, INT 19, WIS 19, CHA 20
Stuff: MoA, Bracers of icelandic pearl (+50 cold res), circlet of netheril, lord of the underworld, cloack of arcane immortality, belt of inertial barrier, paws of cheetah, guard's ring & ring of greater djinn summoning. Martial Staff / Sling of Everard.
Spell slots: 1st/12, 2nd/13, 3rd/13, 4th/12, 5th/12, 6th/13, 7th/16, 8th/13, 9th/11.
MPV: Ancient Golem, 5% exp in game / chapter

DD (Minsc with Korgan's stats): Level 39, 245HP, AC -22 (effective -25 / -26), Thac0 -17. APR: 3, 25% phys resistance without buff & 110% resistance to fire + minor resistances
STR 25, DEX 18, CON 19, INT 10, WIS 9, CHA 7
Stuff: Hammer of Thor, (Axe of Unyielding +5, Runehammer +5), Great Wyrm Plate, Gauntlets of Extraordinary specilialization, Helm of Balduran, 2xRoP +2, Clasp of Bron's Cloak (+5% physical resistance), Supreme Shelter, Girdle of Bluntness, Improved Cloak +2.
MPV: Limak the mastermind, 17% exp in game, 21% in chapter

Imoen (Kensai): Level 390, 277HP, AC -6, Thac0 -29/-24. (Damage: 39-53 / 34-41) APR: 5, 20% phys resistance without buffs
STR 25, DEX 18, CON 18, INT 9, WIS 18, CHA 10
Judgement Day / Waters Edge +4 (staff of strength +4 / Ravager +6), Indigo Ioun Stone, Amulet of Ilmater, Helm's gift, RoP +2, Cloak +2, Paws of cheetah, Cloud giant girdle
MPV: Ancient Dragon, 32% exp in game, 30% in chapter

Cernd: Level 39, 165P, AC -5, 45% magic resistance, 40% magic damage resistance (gains up to 75% MR if "magic restance"is cast)
STR 22, DEX 9, CON 16, INT 12, WIS 25, CHA 17
Stuff: Noble staff of Earth, Paws of the furious cat, Circlet of golden flowers, Aegis of torment (+3 AC, +2 Con, +15HP), Heartwood Ring Imp. ring of gaxx, Fire giant girdle, Master of high forest, girdle of bluntness, Paws of the cheetah
Spell slots: 1st/16, 2nd/16, 3rd/15, 4th/17, 5th/17, 6th/19, 7th/16
MVP: Draconis, 6% exp in game / chapter

Neera: Level 34, 104HP, AC -6, 105% resistance to fire, 50% resistance to magic, 100% to poison
STR 11, DEX 15, CON 16, INT 10, WIS 18, CHA 11
Stuff: Noble Staff of Fire, Greater Robe of Invocation, Bracers of defense AC3, Obsidian ioun stone, Talisman of Greater Protection, Rop +2, Cloak +2, Sorcerian Ring, Tymora's Gift (+10 magic resistance, +3 luck), paws of the cheetah
Spell slots: 1st/11, 2nd/11, 3rd/11, 4th/11, 5th/11, 6th/12, 7th/12, 8th/11, 9th/10
MVP: Green Wyrm, 3% exp in game / chapter

K/T: Level (13)/39, 293HP, -22AC, Tac0 -15 / -8, 45% phys resistance (55% against crushing / 70% with golem slayer), 10% resitance to magic
STR 23, DEX 25, CON 19, INT 13, WIS 14, CHA 12
Stuff: improvised blend & defender of easthaven (or Golem Slayer / Noble Staff of Air), Enhanced Armour of Stamina, Gauntlets of Blessed might Necro Ioun stone, Protector of the woods, Ring +2, Cloak of Daywalker, Boots of Ranger lord
MVP: Demon Prince, 35% exp in game / 32% in chapter

Neera's Spellbook:

Lvl1: magic missile, chromatic orb, protection from evil, charm person, nahal's reckless dweller
Lvl2: blur, glitter dust, self's acid arrow, mirror image, resist fear,
LVl3: flame arrow, remove magic, slow, vampiric touch, dispel magic
Lvl4: greater malision, improved invisibility, polymorph other, stoneskin, fire shield (red)
Lvl5: breach, lower resistances, spell immunity, hold monster, cone of cold
Lvl6: improved haste, protection from magic energy, protection from magic weapons, goi, chain lightning,
Lvl7: mordekainen's sword, power word: stun, spell sequencer, spell turning, finger of death
Lvl8: Monster Summoning 8 (MS8), Spell trigger, foreknowledge, bigbys' clenched fist, pierce shield
Lvl9: RvE, Wish, CC, MS9 + IA, comet, dragon's breath, energy blades, summon planetar

**


EDE

Prebuff; PfE / PfME / PfL & PfF on front line. Summon Joolon, Moon Dog, Berserker & Greater Elemental

We are still so completely OP that it doesn't cause significant problems, but we do have to tinker a little bit with our spell selections & optimize. In the start we send Joolon, Berserker, Moon Dog + greater elemental on an Ultra. Pasha to 2nd ultra and the rest of the crew to the supreme golem.

We first take out the supreme golem (it takes 1,5 - 2 rounds or so, with Kensai's CS, DD's CS & K/T under TT (from Noble staff of Air). Then we whack an Ultra. Pasha is on the 2nd Ultra (we drop PfME, IH & Regen on him in the start). Once our crew gets our ultra to "near death" Pasha has dismantled his Ultra. He's quite effective. Then it's just a marathon of waiting our the absolute immunities and whacking a few waves of raksasha summons. At some point we take a magical rest. We use maybe 10 barbarian essences and a few potions of fire resistance and 2 potions of magic shielding, because we want to make sure Necro is safe when she's hit with ADHW's. By the end we have so many barbarian essences left we could dump them in a pool and go for a swim.

We don't know how many waves of Raksashas there are so unfortunately Pasha gets killed when the last wave hits us. Damnit. The Prince dies within the next few rounds. Would have liked to see what he has to say after the fight. Naturally we can't raise him.

We go for the throne straight afterwards to see how that fight is but even with our quite depleted crew we win the fight on the 1st go. We spare our spells and during the last round our casters go IA and unleash everything in our spellbooks.

a few final thoughts

The K/T is an insanely powerful character. While we sort of cheated as we got the Swashbucklers armour for the K/T even without it it's just nuts. We can reach thaco of -22 (or so) with him while having a continuous 40% phys resistance (50-60% with Swashbucklers armour). But the best part about the character is that we can utilize a wide variety of gear that otherwise wouldn't be available for us. The 2nd thing is that since he can cast spells from scrolls, it brings a whole new dimension to what we can do in the game. While we didn't have to use it, the limited wish time stop would be an interesting choice since with an APR of 10 (and a Thac0 of -17 or so without TT), it's probably an extremely effective combination against pretty much anything else than a boss that is immune to time stop.

The K/T was the first character max out levels which it does somewhere midway through ToB. So there's quite a lot of room for that character to improve by just dualclassing the character later. The fighter side can be easily developed into level 15 or perhaps even into level 18. The first place I see where it might be a problem is the orc fight, where you'll probably need UAI or else it will be very, very much micromanaging. Though for the JD fight the UAI is a near must, if you do like I do and do the fight as fast as possible. A level 15 Kensai would give the character a base Thac0 of 1 (with Kensai's bonuses) or so and a bonus of 2 with TT. In the end that's +1 ThacO when under TT which the character will be for most of the time during the most difficult fights.

I was trying to max out our exp in order to get Cernd to level 14 for the Kobold fight in Spellhold but I realized at some point during the game that I could have easily just used a manual of elaboration and 50k for nature's gift which would have solved that nasty business completely. In the end it wasn't (and isn't) needed because with the right tactic the fight isn't even a tough one.

The Demogorgon fight was easily the most time, energy & resource consuming fight in the game. But also one that is definitely worth it. Doing demogorgon as fast as possible makes the crew insanely powerful and while one can easily breeze through pretty much the rest of the game (well, besides EDE) it's still so much fun.

For the demofight I might try it at some point as it was meant to be played, so without the extra items I had + without the Swashbuckler's armour. Though the only item that really helped in the fight was the "dread bond" since it gives immunity to Panic. Alternatively I could have probably just used the Peridan for DD, and optimize a little bit further. Doing this again I would definitely forge the hammer of thor for the fight and made sure one of my characters could use it for it, together with Royal Elemental Staff help quite a lot in the fight.

Neera really gets to another level after the demofight becoming a true force to reckon with. In my game mages roles are Necro RvE's and Neera Wishes / uses her tremendous selection of 9th level spell to whatever the situation needs.

We didn't get to forge everything we wanted to as we were, in the end, one ring of protection +4 short, as well as a Halberd (either one of the uber powerful ones), which we never seem to able to afford. Though in the end we have an abundance of resources left including 5(?) manuals of elaboration, 10 or so permanency scrolls and 20 barbarian essences / potions of magic shielding/ potions of magic resistance with 100 oils of resurgence + 300 potions of superior healing (we never really use those).

As a final note, I've said this a number of times but this mod is amazing. It's extremely well balanced, super fun and I've spent more hours on this than I care to count. Thanks a lot for making my favourite game of all time so much more enjoyable!

Congrats on finishing the run! I wouldn't go as far as to claim the mod *extremely* balanced, plenty would disagree with that assessment :-) Nonetheless, glad you're enjoying it so much.

I have recently started a run of my own (which almost immediately went on hiatus for various reasons), but I did manage to remember how fun IA could be. With luck, I'll be able to experience the mod anew somewhere during the next five years or so

Nice job! You did it so quick in my experience.
I followed your progress over the last month and it just seems like a smooth ride most of the time. I also never thought of using polymorph other on enemies like golems. I generally hit them with the relevant damage time and endure them, but I guess disabling them them this way also just takes them out.

I am a bit confused on the kensai thief. Did you replace him with kensai Imoen and dual Imoen at the same level 13?

Overall I agree that any type of fighter mixed with thief is very good to have. Kensai thief is an obvious damage bringer
I also found that mod introduced items help a lot with bonuses and immunities that are virtually absent on IA items. Like panic protection or early negative plane protection.

Thanks. Ofc ppl are free to think that . What I mean by extremely well balanced is that everything in the game is doable with the right tactic & depending on your party composition while utilizing your strengths. Assuming the party is balanced. But for sure it takes some time to get to know the various details & aspects (and the easy possible sequences of events) while if one misses some key aspects things get really difficult like my first run where we went to spellhold while our party had 1,6Me exp.

Why did your run go hiatus? And that sounds great, if you find the fun in the game again. I finished the game yesterday and I planned a new party a little bit already (since I want to try Jaheira & finish Vagrant's quests) but I don't think I'll do it right away. Maybe after 12 months or so.

Thanks. It was quite quick I think.

I've played through almost every encounter already a few times so for the toughest fights I knew quite well already. The plan was to make it as easy as possible by just overpowering the enemies in all encounters and it turned out quite well, the most troublesome fights were liches in temple ruins & the first drow ambush.

PO works great with golems and if my calculation is correct, it's also less spell-slot consuming than dismantling them with Ray of Fragmentation / Hand of Undoing. Also since we can use triggers & sequencers for LR's / PO's, the process is quite smooth quite early.

I was planning on replacing Yoshimo with Imoen as the K/T but didn't because of Imoen's pendant, which is super useful for a Kensai. Also, coincidentally Imoen has almost perfect stats for the way I play a Kensai. So when Yoshimo left us & Imoen joined us I dropped my custom made half-orc Kensai for Imoen the Kensai and Yoshimo for a custom made K/T. In the end we didn't even use Imoens pendant so we could have easily just used Imoen as the K/T. We would have been a little bit more powerful that way since the custom made Half-Orc Kensai is more effective than Imoen the Kensai.

Pre-spellhold -> Post spellhold

Necro -> Necro
Neera -> Neera
Cernd -> Cernd
DD -> DD
*Kensai -> Imoen the Kensai
Yoshimo -> K(13)/T (Custom)

*Custom made Half-orc with 19str & 19con

I do not use the items I consider are OP / that give you huge immunities early on (like permanent NPP). I listed the items I used in a previous post and I'm going to reduce the items I use even further in next possible runs. And it is exactly like you wrote the a permanent NPP is very powerful that's why we were really looking forward to getting Imoen's extremely powerful pendant. I mostly use the pendants & belts from the packs since they compliment IA's items very well. For example without Tymora's Gift we don't really have any choice to give to Neera, besides a strength-enhancing belt which is practically useless since Neera doesn't do h2h in my games.

If anyone is interested the item packs are "Item Pack by Daulmakan 1,8" & "Item upgrade mod pack by Westley Weimer v 4.0". But they do introduce a few items that are completely OP, which we did not use & new ways of forging (like rings of protection +2 for 5k), which we did not use either. And yes, the "dread bond" with it's immunity to panic is super useful in Demofight, though we could have used Peridan for that as well.

We tried to select a little bit unconventional spells for Neera but the tactic wasn't very successful. So we have some spells in our spell book that weren't used almost at all. Would definitely change the following for the next run for a sorceror:

Lvl3: slow -> lighting bolt, dispel magic -> protection from fire
Lvl4: improved invisibility -> emotion, fire shield (red) -> rminor disruptor
Lvl5: hold monster -> shadow door
Lvl7: finger of death -> protection from elements
Lvl8: bigby's clenched fist -> adhw

The usual reason – RL stuff happens.

Ah, you had a kensai and a kensai thief. That is confusing

It seems feasible to get a Kensai(21)/Thief dual by very late SoA, I think. It seems UAI is still in the game, so that would mean that the character could (a few times) cast IA from a scroll followed by Kai, CS, and Backstab. Yikes!

I thought we had fixed the Swashbuckler armor and gem to always drop in one of the tweaks mods but I haven’t looked at the game and certainly not the scripts in quite a while. If not, we probably should do that modification at some point. There is some chatter about a couple of other tweaks to add before v7 comes out, but we’ll see.

Pekkae, What are your thoughts on Kensai (pure) vs Riskbreaker in terms of damage output, survivability, and overall utility?

I don't think there's a scroll for IA, as it's a "quest "level spell. But limited wish timestop with assassination should be possible while having 10APR & CS. But it'ss just one-off where you can use it. And the biggest bosses are immune to time stop, and even if they're not they are probably immune to backstabbing. I didn't even try backstabbing bosses, as it's so rare where it works. It's fun when it works though.

K(21)/T(23) should be doable late SoA yes, as it's 7,4Mexp points. The character would be "ready" for final-seal level fights in WK. Should be quite the beast that one. But it does lose out the ability to use Royal Elemental Staff's TT (as it drops Thac0) and it takes such a long time so I'm not sure if it's worth it.

I haven't played Riskbreaker that much, just one game so I wouldn't know. But Kensai I think is quite the straightforward character, it's biggest drawbacks can be easily handled by correct positioning pre JD and after you get JD it will almost completely nullify the drawback of not being able to wear an armor. In the game up above my Kensai didn't even take "Hardiness" 's (only 2) so only critical strikes. By the end it has a thac0 of -30, so it should hit on every hit except a critical miss with 10APR under IH. I could easily drop an IH on Kensai and leave it alone with an elemental golem, once you get either skins / pfmw your Kensai is safe. And because of JD the character is even self-healing.

But I'll probably give the riskbreaker another chance as I'll succumb into trying hard / insane at some point.

Good point on IA being a high level ability and not a scroll. Whoops!