Welcome.

Playing like it was planned to be played. As I have some time on my hands until the end of January and it's like a lockdown here in Finland, what else am I going to do? ( I could ... read books, finish school or something else but ... oh well)

The rules

- No non-protagonist-related drops (no Necro's stuff etc.).
- Our Custom Characters get 90 points to divide among attributes.
- We have the tomes from bg1 to spread among our crew
- Simplified economy + we'll console in the trinkets we need
- No personal stuff, except for the NPC's we are using
(EDIT: - We learn all spells (so we lower difficulty when scribing scrolls)
(EDIT2: - Forging restrictions in place as well)

The exceptions

- We will most likely give our sorcerer (sorceress) the same bonus spell slots as other mages get. I don't get why sorcerers spell slots are not developing in later levels where as every other arcane caster's slots will. Though this will be at such a late stage that it doesn't probably matter at all.
- We have a few supplementing items we'll use throughout the game (described below).

****

Thoughts on the crew

I think I have this figured out.

We are not looking to survive the mod. We are looking to obliterate all opposition and in every and all possible encounters to milk away as many summons as possible to max out our rewards. Our plan is to once again do the demogorgon fight as fast as possible and then just dominate the rest of the way. Demogorgon with my style requires enormous spellcasting capabilities up front while enormous H2H capabilities throughout the fight. We'll try to construct our crew so that every character will be completely and insanely OP once they are fully developed.That's the way we like it. That's the plan. I'm not sure how it will work out. The 2nd thing is that we like characters who can fill out multiple roles, even though in some cases we lose out on some uber-powers.

For Chapters 2-3 we'll just take on rotating crew members so we'll ave as easy time as possible as we want to maximize fun while minimizing endless reloads & trying to figure out tactics. Or our tactic boils down to maximize strengths, enter, obliterate, repeat.

Since we are playing with a Vagrant we won't have a Necro with us. That means we could be somewhat more powerful in chapters 1-5 as plethora of characters are much more powerful than a Necro throughout chapters 1-5 (think: Berserker/Mage, Auramaster, Thief/Mage or even Nalia or especially Edwin). Edwin can easily wipe the floor with a Necro until chapter 6 (+2 spells per level, mirror images, II's). However, since we'll still need 2 spell casters and we absolutely need a sorcerer for early access to all lvl 9 spells, we won't bring Edwin along to spellhold. Most likely. And we want our supporting arcane spellcaster to be able to do something else than just casting, so Edwin won't fill that spot either.

****

Composition

We have our "tank" covered in Vagrant, who by chapter 7 will be better at tanking than any other character in the game. So no DD this time around though we will take one for chapters 2-3 but we most likely won't bring a DD around for spellhold so our tanking capabilities there will take a big hit. Gladly warrior HLA's won't be that far away once in chapter 4 but for a few key fights we'll need a way to survive. As the fights in chapters 4&5 are dominable with 2,5 fighters (that means 2 full fighters +a dual classed / multi-classed one), our plan of bringing along 3-4 full fighters (or characters who count as such under buffs) means we should be more than equipped to handle those encounters.

We are quite set on Vagrant obviously. After that it's Jaheira and Neera. Those are the locks. Neera because of the nice extra quest in ToB and also because she has great stats & personal item. Jaheira because we've never played it and we need healer. She's supposed to be great and she can fill out both "healer" spot as well as dish out huge amounts of damage in H2H (while buffed).

Vagrant is the best tank in the game and can deal & absorb an insane amount of damage as well, but we do need some help up front so we'll take either one of the ultimate damage dishers, so either Riskbreaker or a Kensai. I can't wrap my head around why RB is better than a Kensai, but I've had a Kensai / a version of a Kensai with previous runs so I'm really too familiar with it - I've done everything I wanted with it. Riskbreaker would be a nice change. That's the only reason we are leaning towards a RB.

We need a supportive arcane caster, so we'll do a custom thief/mage, who'll join in Spellhold. This character will fill out a number of roles, it can support in h2h and will fill out the role of supportive arcane caster. It can also hide in shadows and backstab. Yay!

Then it's just the last slot. We have 3 fighters already in Vagrant, RB ( or Kensai) and the Avenger (so 3 chars who can critical strike already). We have our arcane spell casting covered in Neera + Thief/Mage. We have "only" Jaheira as a healer so we have quite the doubts about our healing capabilities, as we are lacking a Necro & Cernd. So we would likely be looking into healing as well as H2H capabilities.

Pure Cleric's are out of the question because the dual classed version is superior in every way, even getting a 7th level fighter dualled to cleric pumps the cleric to a whole new level. So our choices boil down to dual-/multiclassed fighter-cleric characters where a character like Dwarven Fighter/Cleric would probably fit perfectly. Normally we would be looking into Fighter/Druid combinations, since it's easily and by far superior to the cleric-combinations but ... we already have that in Jaheira and I don't want two very similar characters. Also various Paladin's (or a blackguard for it has permanen NPP + immunity to fear) would be a possibility but since they are quite terrible as healers and lose out to a regular fighter in H2H, it will most likely be a smoother ride with another type of a character on board. And last but definitely not least is the Ranger/Cleric combination, enabling the OP version (where the char will get druidic spells as well). We don't really see why if druidic spells aren't enabled would anyone play that class, as losing out grand mastery and/or faster level gains hurts. A lot.

We are leaning towards the R/C or the dwarven F/C. The F/C could easily utilize staves until chapter 6 when it gets the warrior HLA's. It won't be any sort of a problem protecting that character unitl then. Also Rasaad could be an option.

So we would end up with the following, where last changes will be made in Spellhold. It would be easier if we postpone the last changes until chapter 6, but that feels a little bit like cheating.

PC: Vagrant
Jaheira the Avenger
Neera the Sorceror
Custom T->M
Custom RB (or a Kensai)

And the last slot (most likely) goes to;

Custom Dwarven F/C
Custom Ranger/Cleric combination
Mazzy Fentan
Blackguard (possibly Dorn)
Rasaad

****

Non IA Item's we'll use.

I think compliment IA's items quite nicely while not being OP (with the possible exception of Aegis of Torment)

Tymora's gift (belt +10MR, +3Luck, ch 3)
Black Wolf Talisman (amulet, +10HP, +10Resistance to Cold, +1 AC, ch 2)
Clasp of Bron's Cloak (amulet, +5 phys resistance, ch 3)
Aegis of Torment (amulet, +3AC, +2CON, +15HP, ch 6)
(Edit: we also upgraded the reaching ring to a version that has bonus spells from levels 1-7, instead of levels 5,6 & 7)

+ possibly

Amulet of Ilmater (amulet, +1 AC, +3 Saves, immunity to poison, chapter 6)
Sash of the Black Raven (for a monk, +2 thac0, +2 AC, chapter 6)
Heaven & Earth (mace +4, +2 str, ch 6)
(EDIT: ^We only used amulet of Ilmater)

(EDIT: If anyone is interested the item packs are "Item Pack by Daulmakan 1,8" & "Item upgrade mod pack by Westley Weimer v 4.0". In addition to the items up above they do introduce items that are completely OP, which we do not use & new ways of forging (like rings of protection +2 for 5k), which we do not use either).

Will be following along, I found out IA is impossible to beat solo (Managed to get to EDE but the regen was too much)

But I am determined to beat it, seems like full party is the go. Will your prior runs party be more OP or will this ones do you think?

Should be quite a tough journey, if you want to Solo. Some of the fights though might be easier with a solo character, like the golem fights where they can't do anything against a solo f/m with PfMW.

Did you Solo through JD & Demogorgon, Good Bad & Ugly and the mage stronghold fight with Pasha? I really can't see how those are possible, especially demogorgon.

This will be the most OP party possible with current rules.

Yeah cleared everything except for Demogorgon (Lower fire resistance was too much) and EDE (Couldn't output enough damage over the regen)

That's why I think it's impossible for solo (on this patch anyway)

I assume your prior run w/ the necro had the superior party.

What spells don't sorcerers get? The last time I had a sorcerer was probably around 6.1-6.2

Somewhere around level 30/31 or so Mages get +1 spell per level. Sorcerer's do not.

( or at least on my necro run necro gets the bonus spells while a sorcerer doesn't. so necro ends up with more spell slots than a sorcerer )

Here's a simple template to follow for as easy time as possible. Will touch upon quests where there's something to touch upon.

Join Minsc (Berserker)
Join Jaheira
Join Yoshimo (Riskbreaker)
Exit Dungeon, no "flaming sword" but we do get a "Bala's Axe". It goes to Vagrant.

The start is trivial. We do the following quests:


Find mimic's blood

Madaulf wants to make a deal with the village

Animal trouble in trademeet
join Cernd
Faldron: We interrupt "creeping doom" with Llarcloch's minor drain. Then charm 2 bears, then next 2. Then attack with all and Faldorn is toast.

Trademeet genies / Adratha's cottage
Prebuff outside. Summon clan spirit up stairs. Initiate by attacking Adratha. Cernd / Jaheira, with skins, takes aggro. Adratha misses absolute immunity and clan spirit takes care of spawning rakshasas.

Suna Seni
We interrupt the cleric, then just drop n x emotion on them.

Kalah & Circus tent- quest
Cernd is completely OP for this

Sir Sarles

Return neb's head

The "fallen paladins" quest

Do all of the thief stronghold quests (the Mae'Var quest - line & reject stronghold)

Jaheira's poisoned man quest

Xzar & Montaron

Solve Skinner murders
Clan Spirit with Minsc takes the lead here. Clan spirit is quite OP at this stage. It's easily our best tank at this stage.

2nd Druid Grove quest (the troll)

Dryads at Windspear Hills

Rasaad's quests
So join Rasaad, drop Yoshimo

Investigate activities in the backrooms of copper coronet
Max prebuffs, interrupt beastmaster, death spell for little enemies. Clan spirit tanks tabitha.

Hexxat's request (tomb of dragomir - part)
Join Clara. drop Rasaad

Wellyn

Baron ployer

Move to Chapter 3 (not a single difficult quest done)
Join hexxat

Mook (we have a berserker + AoP + Hexxat so no problem)

**status**

Party at 730kexp
gold at 70k

We haven't needed a mage yet. But now for some changes: Join Edwin, Join Korgan (so now we have 4 temporary members in Cernd + Edwin + Korgan + Hexxat). We buy a few spells for Edwin (for 2,5k or so) to make his spell selections useful (stoneskin, greater malision, emotion, hold person + lower resistances). We also forge iron horn of Valhalla + buy Clasp of Bron's Cloak. We are looking to lose Hexxat immediately after her quests are done and Edwin will make room for Neera quite soon.

** /status **

What we're planning on doing with the NPC's is use their strengths in the beginning, activate their quests and then after we're done replace them by permanent party members. That way we can max our exp from the mundane stuff and leave as much content as possible for post-spellhold adventures. And it's nice to have a little bit of variety before we lock our crew.

Mencar Pebblecrusher
Max buffs. Max summons. Clan Spirit tanks. Remove magic, greater malision + emotion (x 3). Hexxat summons some wolves for fodder.

Korgan's quest
Spider groups take greater malision + emotion

Find the kidnappers who buried Tirdir

Pai'Na
rebuff with freea action, then Death spell + whack

Hidden Refuge (the minor quests)
Drop Edwin, join Neera

Cult of the eyeless
Just greater malision + emotion away. Emotion is far more effective than "hold monster" here.

**
Party at 875k exp. And Neera takes Improved Haste. Great. And now we're going to dominate.
**

Druid Grove part 2, the Chaos quest
Very easy with a double-druid's call lightning away.

Slaver Stockade
We prebuff, enter, summon fodder (Joolon, Berserk from Iron Horn) near Captain. Cernd interrupts the cleric with flame arrow, then we greater malision + emotion away. Jaheira summons some bears. Captain (haegan was it?) gets remove magic, then gm + emotion (he doesn't fall for emotion, but everyone around him does).

Forge Paws of the furious cat for Jaheira. Now she can get 6APR (under IH) with a 2-handed weapon. A barbarian / ranger / paladin / dd has to wait until "final seal" level for the gauntlets of extraordinary specialization to get to 6 APR under IH). So an avernger is like a a turbocharged fighter at this point. Then she gets to summon the clan spirit, which is more effective than a regular fighter at this point, especially against golems. It's nuts.

Hexxat's Quest #1 (the claw of the black leopard)
Whack the unfortunate spirit priests,

Crypt King & Queen
Forge enchanced cloak of dragomir
Join Nalia, drop Hexxat. We are overjoyed to find out that Nalia has MS6, great! Now we have lan spirit, minotaurs and soon swanmay's and mordekainen's swords.

De'Arnise Keep
The first fight where we need a tactic.

I'm unsure what's happened, but Tor'Gal fight has 2 giant trolls + 3 noble trolls + Tor'Gal + Gem. With dispel's and everything. that seems a bit too much. We haven't had a single difficult fight up to this point and we are on our way to maximizing exp so ... ok. But the thing is. We don't really have weapons +3 that can hurt the noble trolls, besides frostreaver and the staff of Arundel. PC is level 11. Then again. We're OP.

Max prebuffs. Summon clan spirit + Joolon + Minotaur (Neera has MS6).

We divide them. Cernd takes the gem, Korgan (+ Jaheira) takes 3 noble trolls + 2 giant trolls. PC + Clan Warrior + Minotaur go for Tor'Gal. We first death spell giant trolls (Cernd), finish noble trolls (Korgan + Jaheira + Flame Arrows from Neera & Nalia), then mages turn gem golem into a chicken, while the fighters focus on Tor'Gal. We use some wares in 3 scrolls of flame arrows, 2 scrolls of lower resistances, 1 haste + 4 potions of superior healing + 4 potions of extra healing. This took time & thought. Quite easily doable but not quite "march in and dominate", as we're looking to do.

Borinali (dawn ring - quest)
Don't attak the amber, turn it into a chicken. gm + emotion for assasins. breach borinali when he activates a HLA.

Summoned to the harper hold

Rescue Garren's Child / Windspear Hills
Even though we feel we are too low level for this, the first batch of golems isn't a problem. It goes rather smoothly, DD & clan spirit barricade the doorway. We always summon the clan spirit, at this stage Clan Spirit is our best frontline tank. And it's not even close. We're only doing this because Conster has RRoR scrolls. The 2nd batch is more problematic but the biggest problems come from eminent vampires as DD doesn't have a range weapon so he's quite useless. We have to do this fight with summons, Vagrant + Jaheira. We just barely make it, as Vampires regen quite fast. The eminent vampires are the most difficult fight here, everything else we kind of breeze through.

Conster fight is nice. We can easily spare 2 RRoR scrolls, as we get many more from here. (Planar Prison here we come). We prebuff in Firkraag's lair so IH on fighters + Holy Power on Jaheira. Move in & Jaheira summons the clan spirit, Cernd Joolon near skeleton lord #2 (to buy time for clan spirit to skin up). Fighters go for Skeleton Lord #1 once they materialize. Casters first 2xRRoR & unleash energy, then Secret Word + Breach + Doom, then Greater Malision + Hold Monster + Cernd Flame Arrows to interrupt, then Hold monster again and the 2nd one sticks. After that we move to distract the Skeleton Lords (Neera has 5 skins & -1 in casting time) and cast a few heals on fighters. After we've milked all Skeleton Lords we whack Conster., who is held. We find 5 RRoR scrolls and are overjoyed. This is the 3rd fight that we know of, where "hold monster" actually works.

** Status **

Party at 1,3Mexp
Gold at 80k
24 Dispel / Remove magic scrolls (Yea!)
0 Barbarian Essences
7 Scrolls of RRoR

Fun level: Much fun.

** / Status **

I checked the 2DA file and At lvl 31, mages catch up to sorcerers in terms of total spells per day cast, except necromancers have +3 per day, +2 from item and +1 from being a specialist mage. Neera gets some bonus spells from her robe as well, so I suspect you will have quitw the arcane fire power.

Nalia is probably better long term than a multi T/M, particularly considering her OP ring. But it depends what you want out of the party member.

Good luck with the run!

My Necro run has Necro at +1 spells per level (levels 1-7) compared to Neera. That's after we've dropped all spell-slot adding items. At 10,5 Mexp. They are both level 34. (Edit: I remember incorrectly that Necro is up +1 spell per level at later stages but it was just +1 spell throughout levels 1-7. or at least that's what my last run was)

I completely get why Nalia is great. But I have a plan.

& Thanks!

A note about wares:

From every store we encounter will buy all scrolls of dispel magic as well as all scrolls of remove magic. This is a small marginal cost for us at this stage, but it is a thing that makes us rely a less on wish:rest down the road. A lot less that is. It's sort of a bummer though, as this particular thing makes a certain fight / fights a lot easier for us, but if you are playing for the first time or so you are going to have a lot harder time because you didn't prepare throughout the game. And even though some merchants can be accessed later on, a few important ones won't be so you'll actually lose a few scrolls that can be the difference between winning and losing a fight.

The 2nd scroll type we almost always buy is all "protection from fire" scrolls, for similar reasons. It will be super important down the road. Even with our setup up having 4 characters who can cast that spell (Vagrant, T->M, Jaheira + Neera) I have a feeling we might need this. It's like a very cheap life insurance down the road.

We also usually buy potions of absorption & insulation, for there's a few encounters where we know we'll need 'em. Also we buy some potions of agility for Neera and potions of defence, though we will get these from HLA's as well at some point. (IIRC).

It seems that scrolls of remove magic have been intentionally omitted from the game as they are quite rare. (we've only ever found 1 merchant who would have 3 scrolls of remove magic for sale ). For our purposes, remove magic is far superior to dispel magic though even with that we have a plan. We'll see how it works out.

The only other important thing that we buy in terms of scrolls & potions is potions of freedom where we buy all and every potions of freedom every time a merchant has them. When writing this we have 8 potions of freedom with us.

These simple preparations will make a big difference. We think.

Good luck with the run, when are you planning to tackle Demogorgon?

Thanks! We'll see if we need it

We'll try to do Demogorgon as fast as possible. Probably will be done around 7-7,5 mexp.

Riddle in the sewers
GM+ emotion for rats. We buy Spear of Kuldahar for Shadow Lover. We're OP for this already (Jaheira has 6 apr under IH). Korgan tanks ofc. Clan Spirit under IH has 6 APR (or so) & a +3 spear, how convenient.

Sewer Gang
Use 2 scrolls of RRoR here. Nothing that special. Summon Clan Spirit, Minotaurs & fire elementals. IH on fighters, haste on summons (CS gets IH). Whack enemies one by one, CS takes Hatchetman, it can easily tank him for the needed time. It's nuts. Our other summons take the cleric. Interrupt enemy casters as much as possible. DD walks in to the middle and defensive stances. The only question is how many improved mantles we get. (We got 2).

Nalia's Quest

Free Haer'Dalis from Mekrath
Prebuff. Full on melee from everyone against the imp. Then finish the earth elementals.

Planar Prison
Haha. It's never been this easy. We din't even get hit in the Warden fight.

Prebuff before entering; IH, Chaotic Commands, Holy power +Draw Upon Holy Might (DUHM) for Jaheira. Elite Bounty Hunter is taken down with 2xRRoR, Secret word + Breach + LR + Greater malision + Doom + emotion. (that's 3 rounds). The other enemies aren't a threat. Vagrant takes the planar hound with shield of harmony. Then we immediately go for the Yuan-Ti group, since buffs are still active. For Master of Thralls we summon a few minotaurs & Clan Spirit (which is reeeeally effective), and drop haste on them, again. Then storm the enemy 1st round: remove magic + greater malision + 1 emotion and then 2nd round: 3x emotion and we're good. That was fun.

Two rests in the sphere. One rest before the master of Thralls, One rest before the warden. For warden we summon a few fire elementals, minotaurs + clan spirit. Again. Chaotic commands on everyone. IH o fighters + Jaheira + Clan Spirit. PfME on fighters. Whack planar hounds (maybe 1 round and they are both gone) then storm the warden, who takes 2RRoR + Secret Word + Breach. Clan Spirit gets whacked but our front line doesn't even get hit. No ADHW's triggered. We didn't get save a Thrall though, too bad :/.

Our plan of "enter, oblitarate, repeat" is clearly working.

Cernd's Child
We let go of Cernd. You should really hang with your kid instead of going on adventuring with a bhaalspawn. I mean what is wrong with you ?

Cleric stronghold part 2

Ruling the De Arnise Keep part 2

Return dawn Ring (we did Borinali already)
Recruit Anomen to replace Cernd. And we want to do his quest. We're 50k exp short of 1,55Mexp & Planar Sphere.

Belm
IH + Fa + all buffs in our books. Fighter move in. Then casters + Anomen. Anomen already gets on everyone's nerves.

Hidden refuge (the red wizard enclave part)
Whack everything for the big fight in the bar. We gm + emotion + horror. And true sight once or twice.

The dueling families of Trademeet (funder of trademeet - thing)
Summon some fodder & whack under oils of speed. We're too good in melee already. Korgan tells Anomen he's full of s**t.

Cleric Part 3

Planar Sphere
Halflings are no problem. We + summons are completely OP for this fight. The Cleric manages to get greater command away but we have the "barad ding's collar bell" so we can wake our crew up. As a side effect it makes our crew deaf. (Deaf! Deaf as in "can't hear anything".. ? That makes me wonder, as I know of one fight where being unable to hear *cough* *wails* would be a great asset. Could it be... hmh... )

Golems in the time machine room> We barricade doorway with Clan Spirit, DD defensive stances & Anomen drops a regeneration on him. It's nice to have regen + "hardiness" in chapter 3.

Lavok fight has 2 gem golems + 4 skeleton lords. How nice. Max prebuffs so PC, DD, Jaheira + Clan Spirit (Under IH) and Anomen, minotaur + aerial servant (under haste) take the Skeleton Lords. Neera, with AoP + 7 Stoneskins tanks the 2 gem golems. A skeleton warrior goes for Lavok. After 2 lords are down (1,5 rounds or so) Clan Spirit goes to help Neera. It can easily tank a gem golem for extended time at this stage. Then we take out the remaining Skeleton Lords. Groups of skeleton lords are always easiest to take down by just storming them so they will concentrate on multiple enemies. Anomen with a staff stays back and mass cures once. Once Skeleton Lords are down, DD moves in to hug a gem + Anomen drops regen on him. He's quite safe. Once gems & skeletons are down we PfME DD & Jaheira (use 1 scroll of PfME), 3xRRoR, Breach & whack. 3 RRoR's left. Vagrant levels up. Great. Now we are even more OP as we can summon a Swanmay.

Then Tolgerias, where we just PfF + IH and use non magical weapons. We forget that we can summon a Swanmay. Maybe for the next fight then.

Lae'Illyl (or whats it's name). Summon Swanmay Clan Spirit, Minotaur + Aerial Servant. Ih on fighters + Clan spirit. Holy power for Anomen + Jaheira. Haste for rest. Draw upon holy might for Vagrant + Jaheira. Enter. Drop 1 maurezhi (or something like that) with ring of the ram temporarily. Fighters take out one enemy at the time while summons go for Lae'Illyn (to try and interrupt). We don't interrupt a single spell, though summons get it to injured. Remove magic's are problematic, since we run out of buffs. DD is frontline of our frontline and we get regeneration away before silence hits us. After that the fight is won, as DD just whack away with everyone using staves behind him So our margin is a little bit thinner than it could have been, but we easily make it.

Engine room requires many a reloads. Exactly the thing we're not supposed to do. As we are planning on overpowering enemies, not make up tactics . Anyway, we forget something dull all the time (like renewing skins). We enter through fire chamber, the western corridor is easy to block. Neera blocks it. DD tanks on the other end with defensive stance + Anomen drops a regen on him. DD can easily take 1 golem under regen + defensive stance but 2 are a bit too much. So we turn one of the frontline golems into chickens, which conveniently blocks a second golem from reaching DD. As long as we keep the chicken alive, we can focus on 1 golem at a time. (Repeat x2). We leave one group in the engine room for later.

** Status **
Party at 1,75Mexp
Gold at 175k
28 Dispel / Remove magic scrolls (Yea!)
0 Barbarian Essences
3 Scrolls of RRoR left.
** /Status **

I'm currently doing a Necro playthrough (+Korgan, Barbarian Minsc, RB Haer'Dalis, Valygar and Cernd) and am in Spellhold atm. Did all fights except the super hard ones in Ch3, and this was the single hardest fight. Maybe because I limited myself in 2 ways, no resting and no exiting the room between golem packs. I wonder if it's an oversight, since most other fights have the exits disabled until the encounter is over. Anyway, it was horrendous, probably around 30 reloads and 18 OoR + many other healing potions. I don't remember this room being this difficult in previous runs, but maybe I rested between packs.

Why are you collecting those? And how did you get so many?

Unless Korgan is a DD I'd imagine you had great difficulties there.

I think you are too hard on yourself. 30 realoads takes the fun out, as you don't have to do it (or at least for me ). You could use the chicken-trick described up above for limiting the damage + blocking the corridor, then it's probably doable. I won't even try though personally. I just do 1-2 packs, get the stuff I need & then out & return later on when I can dominate .


How did you manage with the Crystal Shard kobolds with that crew?



For demon fights later on.

I still don't understand. Aren't scrolls cast at level 10 always?

I'm just about to do it. I remember it being extremely difficult in previous runs, but I don't foresee any extra problems with this crew. Bought 30 OoR before wrapping up Ch3.

Potions are level 10.

Scrolls I think about the same level as the caster is. At least in my games every single time I've had to rely on wish:rest, mostly because I run out of dispel magic's (or remove magic's), even the scrolls. This time I'll make a conscious effort to buy every single scroll from every single merchant whenever I encounter them. I'll probably need about 50-60 scrolls in order to pull through. Also, with this run our wish:rest capabilities are limited.

( I think. not 100% sure but ...)

According to this, scrolls are cast at level 10 in BG2
https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Item_levels

If so they might be useless against high level demons, have you tested them yet?

Thanks! But doesn't it say that the effects from scrolls cast as level 10 for the purposes of dispelling their effects?

IIRC correctly, even in the Vanilla TT scrolls were quite hard to come by & super useful for dual classed fighter / thieves with UAI, as you could easily drop your thac0 with it so it took the caster level into account (so after your thief got UAI you could get you thac0 base to 0 with TT)

I'm not sure of course, but it would make sense that this specific thing is changed in IA. I've never seen anyone mention that they were dispelling an enemy casters who were using scrolls of AI / PfME / Mantle, even you could do it from quite the low level onwards.

And yes, for those demon-fights later on I've had to previously rely on scrolls to some extent, if our wish:rest fails for example.

(I double checked and tried a scroll in a fight and yes we can dispel with it)

Interesting! I might start buying scrolls then, although I won't have as much problems as I'm running a Necro PC.

Solamnic Knights

Cleric stronghold part 3

Cleric stronghold part 4 (storm the temple)

Ashideena Guardians

Guild Contact (so Aran's task #2)
Ahh. We've waited for this for quite the time!

We prepare to max out vampire bride spawns so we 1st drop the guild contact unconscious and then turn it into a chicken. Then we start to milk the spawns. Vagrant with AoP & IH whacks the first 3, then Jaheira summons the Clan Spirit which we IH, then it casts shield of archons ... and wait...and wait.... and wait... but there's no more spawns :/, all of our preparations wasted (we were planning on milking 20 or so spawns). Anyway the chicken wakes up & immediately activates power attack and goes for DD. it does 2 point of slashing damage per hit.

Cool.

Temple Ruins
Shadows> Anomen walks in & activates "turn undead" and they die.

Liches. Liches are terrible. We don't have any weapons against them. Or so we though. Then we find out that an improved hasted clan spirit under PfF is very efficient as lich will focus on it. How nice. So we take care of the rubble, then leave CS whacking the lich while DD uses the throwing axe +2. Once its PfMW's run out, Jaheira Holy Power's, Neera IH's & PfME's her and she draws upon holy might. And moves in to whack. And the lich is gone.

Thaxll'ssilyia Summon CS, Swanmay, Anaconda & Minotaur (<= that's op for this). IH on fighters, skins, mirror images + haste on summons. Neera & Nalia take on opposing sides. DD moves in to whack, Anomen moves in to cast righteous magic & then gets the first greater silence (I wish I could greater silence Anomen). We then Secret word x 2 from Nalia, as Neera loses a round for she has to quaff potion of magic shielding to dodge the 3xFoD. Then it's just 2xbreach per round from opposing sides, once a breach hits another side starts a breach. That and whack. And we're good. Maybe 1 heal for dragon or so. Anaconda & minotaur initiate their best application to the "Darwin-awards list" as they run into a death fog and anhilate themselves. It's too much trouble babysitting those two. We find blade of the roses. Great. Now we can have 21 Charisma.

*After the fight Anomen starts complaining about how "these pathetic skirmishes of ours aren't worth the time I spend cleaning my weapons" ... Like wtf are you talking about? We just killed a dragon. LIKE JUST A MINUTE AGO?!? Jaheira turns around to try and cast raise dead on the Dragon. We want to see if it could be nice enough to cast greater silence again on Anomen. Unfortunately our raise dead doesn't work on the dragon. We then use the Barad Ding's collar to make everyone else in the party deaf. Peace at least. We can see the lips moving and silently thank Barad Ding for putting together this marvellous item.

With our crew & summons Shade Lord is a breeze. Prebuff, enter, summon a swanmay, clan spirit, minotaur & aerial servant. Fighters take our shadow patrick first. Anomen drops regeneration on DD & goes to stand near the shadow altar and activates turn undead (so shadows die in one round). After shadow patrick falls DD goes for a skeleton lord together with the remaining summon in clan spirit. Mages first 2xRRoR shade lord, then secret word & breach, then 4xLR, doom + GM + hold monster and the first one sticks.o. After that we PfME Vagrant who whacks. Fortress shield as a drop, we already had the sentinel so it's not that big of a difference.

Summoned to the Harper Hold
Jaheira leaves. We go to pick her up.

Ranger-Protector part 1 (lord Tombhelten)
They attack for we didn't want to to give away the medallion less than 2k gp. We make almost 4k + we have the medallion still. We return it to the container where we found it.

Paladin-Stronghold duties, part 1
We'll be running into umar hills any way, in order to do the ranger-quests so we might as well do these while we're at it.

Jaheira's quests final battle

Ranger-Protector part 2 (Madaulf inna cave one)

Paladin-Stronghold duties, part 2

Running the five flagons playhouse part 2.
Vagrant levels up. Great. We have about 200k worth of quests we can do before Brynnlaw. Sheesh. Only Bodhi is 60k / per character (IIRC). I'm hoping to fit screaming statue in as well.

Paladin-Stronghold duties part 3

Bodhi
We are completely OP for this. Clan Spirit has "shield of archons" and so does Anomen. Vagrant can wear AoP. So we have 3 fighters with undispellable NPP and 2 (Korgan + Jaheira) with dispellable. IH on everyone. Storm in. Obliterate. Exactly like we planned. For once we do not milk everything that we can on the Lassal fight. We're too short on NPP's so we cant.

** Status **
Party at 2Mexp
Gold at 215k (we forged some boots of speed)
26 Dispel / Remove magic scrolls (Yea!)
0 Barbarian Essences
2 Scrolls of RRoR left.

We are actually running out of room to grow, instead of running out of things to do. Well, better this way.
** /Status **

Samia
This fight sort of still gives me the creeps because the last time we had terrible time here and we're not very well optimized for this fight. Max prebuffs, max summons, max prebuffs for summons. SS (we use a scroll here) with emotion x greater malision x hold person.

Initiate fight: Emotion gets Kaol. Whack. It's a complete mess. We almost still dont make it, even though e get enormously lucky in hitting Kaol. That's because of bad positioning & overall strategy (we focus on multiple enemies as in Ironblade & Samia with strongest damage dealers, rookie mistake). Nalia blocks the corridor with PfMW's. Just when the skeleton grandlords are done Kaol wakes up. Luckily we can target him, but it looks like we lose 2 scrolls of absolute immunity because of our mistake. Damn it. Also Nalia & Anomen get whacked (PW:K). We make it. It wasn't pretty though. Jaheira raises them.

We welcome circlet of the woods dearly as now Jaheira can Iron Skin properly. Yay! No Vecna. Dammit.

The we do the King Strohm's guardians (PfF's, IH's & skins, storm in with everyone). Tomb mist causes more problems than Samia's party.

***

Our plan of "let's recruit random party memebers in NPC's, do their quests and then drop them has been a complete washout turkey-debacle so far. We're at 2,15Mexp. So about 70k short of moving to Brynnlaw. And we still have oodles of stuff to do. How long do I have to wait for Anomen's quest to trigger? (Edit: we did do Nalia's quest though, so that's something)

We drop Nalia off at De'Arnise Keep. Pick up money. Then to screaming statue with Hexxat & hope that Hexxat's quest #2 is triggered.

But we can't pick up hexxat. Our reputation is too high. Argh. So we go to screaming statue with a group of 5. Maybe we'll pick up Edwin for the engine room, which has about 25k exp per character still left.

***

Screaming statue
We are quite well protected having 3 capable fighters with undispellable NPP (AoP + Shield of Arcohons x 2). First two waves we summon skeleton warriors, for the last wave we summon the clan spirit & shield of archons for it. We use a protection from level drain scroll here. It humongously easier that way. And we're not expecting to run out of those anytime soon. That's because we don't really need those scrolls. Bodhi should be doable without 'em.

Engine Room (the final group of golems)
Prebuff, enter, summon clan spirit, swords + swanmay. DD tanks with defensive stance + regen. We dominate. We don't take Edwin along.


***

We've finished Nalia's quest and Korgan's quest. Jaheira's is still ongoing & we need to finish it, for we need Jaheira's item pre spellhold. Anomen's is ... nowhere in sight. And Edwin's quest has a lich and I don't want to fight liches, unless I absolutely have to. So we go to copper coronet to re-pickup Hexxat, walk out and luckily hexxat's quest #2 is triggered right outside.

***

Hexxat's request part 2.
Whack everything.

(we pick up stuff as in empty a few temples from Oils of Resurgences that we are going to need & manually lower our reputation as we don't want to do anything nasty)

** Status **
Then we go to woods to sleep, Terminsel appears and we get the harper Pin. Finally.

Then we have a look at the bg wiki and find out that we've been dragging Anomen along to do his quest but we won't even get any xp from it. RAAARRRRGGH. So we just drop Anomen and join with Valygar, who we found out can be turned into a riskbreaker with IaTweaks. That's great, so now we don't have to do a custom character. Plus he has a nice personal item that with my plan really well compliments that character.

This small change makes enough of a difference so that we end up changing our crew composition for a bit. More on that later on.

We sell some stuff in all extra items we're not going to use. We go to Cromwell's to forge, but the sergant Natula thing is triggered on the way. We take care of the enemies in Planar Sphere and we're up so much in exp that we can't take any more or else we'll trigger improved spellhold. When we make it to Cromwell's we forge Nature's gift, water's edge +4, Harper Pin and boots of speed's, ring of djinn summoning, and a ring of protection +2

We drop DD, and pick up our Custom T/M (she's called "Mazzy") together with Yoshimo.

We leave a lot of things to do for chapter 6 in fighter stronghold quests, bard stronghold quests, pirates & all of watcher's keep, raksasha in the sewers, Edwin's lich (of we ever do it) & pre-Kangaxx liches, squirreled away we didn't even start and what else.

Party at 2,2Mexp
Gold at 20k
about 30 Dispel / Remove magic scrolls (Yea!)
1 Barbarian Essences
RRoR in spellbook!

** / status **

I've found using limited wish to get NPP on all party members makes this encounter almost trivial. I generally save all the scrolls for Orcus.

Yup. It's super for this fight. But Neera doesn't have the spell & the only scroll of limited wish we have is needed later.

I have a plan for Orcus .

To Chapter 4 we go.

Help Ginia & Ason

Get Stonefire axe

Do the Lady Galvena - quest
We whack the mage and leave galvena attacking skinned & mirror imaged Neera. Then we whack all of the guards. They don't stand a chance. Once we know there aren't any more coming we whack Galvena. Mage drops 4 absolute immunities. That's 12k. Nice.

Whack Perth the Adept
Then we visit spellhold grounds for a casual late night whack (mists, pun intended)

Desharik send us to Spellhold

** Status **

Crew at Spellhold maze

Our crew is in it's final form. After play testing and tweaking around for a bit, we decided we are going to use Valygar for the Riskbreaker, as mentioned earlier and we'll use our "last slot" for a Kensai. So we drop our initial assumption of needing healing and maximize our H2H capabilities by picking (arguably) the best fighter in the game. So Imoen the (IaTweaked) Kensai, welcome.

We know that with our setup we will be in trouble. For our lack of arcane spellcasting capabilities puts us in an enormous hole for a while. But we don't think those troubles will be unsolvable, but it won't be as easy-breezy as possible. We will suffer in a few fights and it will be very tight. But suffering for a while in order to be more powerful later on is perfectly fine for us. It's actually preferable. The whole chapters 4-5 would be humongously easier if we would just switch the crew in Chapter 6 but as mentioned earlier, we are reluctant to do that, as that feels like cheating. Besides, after Spellhold it will start to even out and we can better utilize our strengths quite fast afterwards.

Our plan of "milking as much exp as possible" is also problematic in the sense that our group is atm (& in the immediate future) much, much, much better equipped to solving problems with "whack everything within a round", than "survive for a long time to max exp". Actually, we will get our milking superpowers at a much later stage when the majority of our milking possibilities have already been solved. The tradeoff is, that even if we do the milking part in a little bit harder way, we will be extremely well equipped to handle the easily most challenging encounters in the game. And ofc. when we get our milking superpowers, the rest of the milking will be, well, cushy.

Voilá our group, for the rest of the game. (With one exception we'll take later on.)

Vagrant, Str 18/87, Dex 18, Con 19, Int 9, Wis 12, Cha 19 (he got the charisma tome earlier)
Jaheira (Avenger)
Neera (Sorcerer)
Valygar (Riskbreaker)
Imoen (Kensai)
Custom T/M (Assassin), Str 15, Dex 18, Con 14, Wis 17, Int 17, Cha 9

PC at 2,33 Mexp. Jaheira is about the same level.

We use the tomes we have been dragging this far, so PC gets str + dex, Jaheira gets 3x wis, T/M gets int, Valygar gets con.

Vagrant (PC): Level 14, 155 HP, AC -12
Stuff: Frostreaver + fortress shield / harmonium halberd, Shadow Dragon Scale, Helm of Balduran ,2nd sword arm gauntlets, clasp of bron's cloak, destroyer of hills, 2x Rop +2, Cloak +1, Paws of cheetah

Jaheira (Avenger): Level 13, 98HP, AC -2,
Stuff: Staff of Arundel / Spear of Kuldahar, Orc leather, paws of the furious cat, circlet of the woods, harper's ward, 2x RoP +1, Cloak +1, Paws of Cheetah, elves bane

Neera: Level 15, 65HP, AC 8,
Stuff: Martial Staff / sling +3, Robe of Invocation, Pearly white ioun stone, AoP, Rop +1, ring of acuity, atoy's belt, cloak +1

Assassin level 18, 92HP, AC -5,
Stuff: Martial Staff / Shortbow +1, The night's gift, ln zekk gauntlets, hood of the honorless, wooden horse necklace, 2 x RoP +1, Cloak +1, belt of minor invulnerability, Paws of cheetah

Valygar (Riskbreaker) Level 16, 163HP, AC -2,
Stuff: Solemn Duty / Kneecapper + Waters Edge +4 (off-hand), pale green ioun stone, black wolf talisman, 2xRop +1, cloak +1, girdle of bluntness, Paws of the cheetah

Imoen (Kensai): Level 16, 129HP, AC 2,
Stuff: Staff of Rhynn / Peridan + Blade of Roses, Amulet +1, 2xRoP +1, Cloak +1,

**

Wares
Gold at 44k
30 Dispel & Remove magic scrolls (Yea!)
1 Barbarian Essences
8 scrolls of PfF

**

Neera's Spellbook:

Lvl1: magic missile, chromatic orb, protection from evil, llarloch's minor drain, nahal's reckless dweller
Lvl2: horror, glitter dust, melf's acid arrow, mirror image, resist fear,
LVl3: flame arrow, remove magic, hold person, protection from fire,
Lvl4: greater malision, emotion, polymorph other, stoneskin,
Lvl5: breach, lower resistances, spell immunity, cone of cold
Lvl6: improved haste, protection from magic energy, protection from magic weapons
Lvl7: mordekainen's sword, RRoR

** / status **

You definitely have a lot of melee power, but how good is Jaheira? I want to try Avenger someday but it looks like a worse priest and an even worse melee fighter.
Also, are you dualing the assassin at 21? I've never dualed that late, isn't it horrible to have to babysit for 5M xp? Although I guess the T/M starts becoming useful as soon as they get lvl 6 spells.

She's like an ordinary druid, but with super powers. The Clan Spirit was the best fighter we had almost through chapters 2-3. She's like a turbocharged version of an ordinary fighter early in the game, because of skins + holy power + paws of the furious cat. Getting 6 APR with 2H weapons in Chapter 3 is really, really good.

Assasin duals at 23, when we get UAI. And yes, it's horrible having to babysit that character. But, I'm hoping, that in the end it will be worth it

***
Portal Room
Prebuffs, summon a couple of swords + Swanmay, CS. Jaheira runs to golems & uses the horn of blasting to interrupt Rukh conjurer.

Then we draw the golems out to the courtyard, where we materialized in the first place. Full on attack from everyone, make sure that 2 golems take a sword. Neera & Jaheira take aggros, finish bone as fast as possible (for we have awful saves).

It takes a few tries, mostly because hideous laughter gets us all the time / something else, like Jaheira accidentally blasts herself and gets whacked by the golems.

Assassin is completely useless. Will put a separate note when Assassin can actually accomplish ... anything.


Spider ambush
Max prebuffs, max summons, dodge web & anhilate starting with whisperer spider(s).


Crystal Shard Kobolds.
We suffer. Oh boy we do we suffer. It's so difficult it's super annoying. Our group is comprehensively ill-equipped to handle this encounter. And it comes down to optimizing positions & equipment and everything. Completely opposite to our mantra of "enter, obliterate, repeat"

Anyway, we PfL + PfC + IH + Everything else we have. Dodge improved chain lightnings with summons. Jaheira tanks an amber (#3), but doesn't attack. Neera tanks one (#2) while starting to turn the amber #3 into a chicken (skins, lr, lr (interrupted), skins, lr (interrupted), lr, skins, and so on). Summons go for the amber #1

Fighters take out guardians, then witch doctor. Jaheira interrupts doctor's greater malision with horn of blasting. After witch doctor is dead they go fo amber that is surrounded by summons, so the amber #1. We full assault it (completely opposite to how this is the easiest), then withdraw to heal when hp's are down. Vagrant quaffs 4 oils of resurgerence. We manage to whack the amber #1.

Then for Neera's amber (#2). Vagrant, who now is healing about 30 hp's per round takes the lead. Others quaff healing potions and follow. Whack, when near death, retreat, heal. With help from the clan spirit, who is target of aggro, we manage to whack it. Valygar is at 10hp's, Imoen is at 4 hp's :/. Neera has gotten 4 LR's away to amber #4. Vagrant goes to stand near the amber to offer a target for aggro (he's still regenrating very fast), Neera starts GM and Jaheira iron skins. It's the last one she has. Clan Spirit comes to help (we skinned & wonderous recalled a few skins before for CS) and attacks. Amber goes for clan spirit. Great. Greater Malision hits. Jaheira Dooms. Neera PO's & the first PO hits. YES!

We win. With the slightest of margins.

( For A LOT easier time, we could have used a scroll of spell sequencer (3xPO) and a scroll of spell trigger (3xLR) which we both have. But as I don't remember where the next ones of those scrolls will be, we are very reluctant to do that )


Tomes
Neera conveniently levels up before this fight & we get a level 8 spell. We take Ms8. Ofc.

For coin we summon a sword. (it takes the aggro, while everyone else whacks). For gem Neera goes to hug the golem while the rest of the crew whacks (we use 1 stoneskin on this). We are actually highly appreciative of gem golems for they bring us many a magical gifts later on <3. For Ghost Spider we summon a djinn & kitthix. Vagrant takes improved web with potion of freedom. Kensai is improved hastes & Valygar uses innate IH.

Then for the actual fight. How to milk as many spawns as possible from the Elemental, with a crew of 5 with terrible tanking capabilities and no Cernd. We try a few different approaches but come back to the same conclusion. It's Jaheira's job to tank the elemental, it's probably the best way. There's no way Vagrant can take it - he's still too weak. Neera could, but she seems to run out of skins way faster than Jaheira. Also Neera doesn't have acid resistance, only through potions, so she would take a lot of damage even while skinned up (+50% through potions but that's it).

The fight is very tricky. We lose it once after we've milked 4 golems out of it. We could whack it before it gets a single spawn away, but we lack the "endurance-skills" to properly do this as in getting all 6 spawns out. We have to tank it with skinned character (under PfF, PfC, PfL + acid resistance from spells / potions). So we play it around to 3 spawns (Jaheira can easily tank till about here) and then drop the golem. When we drop it we have a swanmay, 2 swords & joolon we could still summon + Neera has 6 skins. Maybe we should have continued but ... oh well.

We use maybe 8 potions of extra healing, 1 potion of acid resistance + 2 potions of regeneration for the fight.


Mithril Golem
Valygar conveniently levels up before this, so we get chain breaker stance. It will go to great use immediately. So we have 2 regenerations to use on whoever will take the Aggro. If my calculation is correct, we have ...

5 APR from Vagrant
6 APR from Jaheira
9 APR from Valygar
5 APR from Imoen
6 APR from Clan Spirit
----
31 APR with Fighter Thac0's. That's better than if we had a party of 6 Barbarians with 2H weapons.

+ attacks from all of ur summons (Swanmay, Noble Trolls + Swords) against the Mithril Golem. Somehow I don't see a problem here. Plus we can chain breaker stance with Riskbreaker.

**

Well, it isn't as easy as I thought. Vagrant is a dreadful tank at this point. However, Vagrant quaffs 5 potions of rejuvenation pre fight, then we enter with swanmay, clan spirit & noble troll. Everyone fully buffed ofc. Jaheira follows and drops 2xregen on Vagrant. After that he's regenerating about 70-90hp/round. It's enough to take down the golem. Riskbreaker helps quite a lot with chain breaker stance. No barbarian essences required.


**

Irenicus
Well, we're really glad we didn't use that spell sequencer scroll earlier. We use it now to GM+Emotion+Hold person. We also limited wish CC for 3xSwords. With that setup it's easily doable. Max Prebuff's (so IH,s skins, SI:Abjuration for Neera, PfF's, Vagrant takes minor globe (from the belt), giant strength for Imoen, potions of invulnerability for Valygar + Imoen)

1st rd Jaheira casts regen on Valygar, who chain breaker stances. Sequencer takes down most of the clones and conveniently makes them immobile. Jaheira then Creeping dooms nearest immobile/unconscious clone from Irenicus and it hits Irenicus as well. Great. Then we single out the scouts, swords work as detractions & whack. For once, we don't summon the Clan Spirit. After the launching the trigger Neera joins H2H. She has instant skins so she's safe.

Sort of.

Well. Neera gets PW:K'ed, as she gets hit with meteros & immediately drops below 60 hp. Jaheira raises her soon. Then T/M gets PW:K as well, with similar treatment. We raise her after the fight is done.

We pick up Yoshimos's heart. We'll need it later.

**

Nice run so far, been a fun read

Do you have an item pack installed? or am I crazy few items I don't recognize, if it is which one is it?

Also where do you get the staff of rynn from in IE I assume its not on Ribald (Been awhile since I've played IE)

It's part of the item randomization. If you're lucky it's accessible somewhere in ch3.

Thanks. I'm happy you like my journal .

Yes, I have 2 item packs. I added the description to the first post of the journal, where they probably should have been from the start.

The Staff of Rhynn was with founder of trademeet. But as Nominar pointed out as well, it's part of the randomizer program so there's a few possible locations for it.

**

Back to Brynnlaw and we whack Desharik (or what's his name, he's worth 15k or so) and let Saemon guide us to the sea. When Saemon departs, or tries to, Assasin backstabs him. He's worth some 18k or so. Great.

**


Prince Vinyardi
Our H2H too great, our summons (waay) too powerful. I mean waaaaaaaayyy.


1st drow ambush
CC's for anyone without a mind shield. Summon troll, sword, Swanmay + Clan Spiri. IH's, skins.

PC takes improved web with potion of free action. Very smooth and quick. Our H2H capabilities are too much.


Rescue the Svirneblin child
No rewards necessary + backstab the other nasties.


Western tunnels
We clear this part. Prebuff wih skins, ih's and an occasional barskin for Kensai.

Kua'Toan wizards & priests are taken down with insect plague / creeping doom + 3x cone of cold trigger from Neera. The 3 xCoC trigger actually almost kills the wizards & priests. Together with insect plague & creeping doom they are defenseless. Ditto for the prince fight, summons move in first, while our frontline takes out the royal guards. Jaheira creeping doom's & insect plagues, neera chain lightnings (from scrolls & debuffs). Assasin summons fodder thru items.


2nd drow ambush
We summon our help in Swanmays, Clan Spirit & trolls, Valygar takes the western side. PC takes improved web and manages to direct it to the small enclave in the rock near the ambush (with potion of free action ofc.). Our summons move in for H2H, while our characters stay back, buff and then move in to whack. Valygar goes chain breaker stance. We manage after a few tries.


Ust'Natha
We blow through this. Assassinate Jarlaxle, more exp that way. We whack the whole city and everything in it on our way out. We return silver's egg's & whack the drow near the entrance and come back to Underdark.


We would like to take this opportunity to highlight that even though we just killed an entire city full of sentient beings, and even all the evidence "au contraire", we are actually pacifists in our group and we don't think violence is a viable option for solving problems

** Status **

We do mage's proposal and Assassin levels up to 23. Great. We take UAI and immediately dual class her to a mage. Then we finish "mage's proposal" and she gets 20k of exp. She then sips nature's gift (*hölökynkölökyn* as we say here in Härmä) giving her 270k of exp to start with and even some usefulness in combat, as now she can be a decoy. Now we can use her for something at least, instead of just dragging her along. We give her fire tooth for now. So yea... Neera levels up, takes RvE + IA. ofc. There's a stark contrast with usefulness of our arcane spellcasters

** /Status **

Demon Knights
hmh. I don't think this has has ever been so easy.

We prebuff with PfF's, IH's & PfMW's (on frontline, but no IH on Jaheira - she's tanking). Summon a few Swanmays & clan spirit & kitthix (Kitthix goes to the altar). T/M also casts SI:Abjuration.

Initiate. Swanmays each take 1 demon knight, clan spirit takes one. jaheira takes one. Valygar, Imoen + PC take one (it lasts for half a round). Neera IA. Fighters then move on to the 2nd one, who is pestered by CS (didn't haste it this time as we're short on level6 spells). It gets horror away, luckily Neera just resist fear's (x3). Valygar runs around to the bottom part of the screen where the 2 bottom ones are pestered with Swanmays. Neera 3xRRoR + Breach on a demon knight and then SI:Necromancy. Valygar goes for one near him at the bottom and activates power attack and what do you know, the demon knights can be stunned. So Valygar stuns 1 knight and then moves on to the 2nd knight, leaving the helpless knight to Swanmay. Jaheira gets breached a few times but she immediately just skins up again. Our frontline just takes the knights out one by one, they don't even get a remove magic away.

After the fight PC is down 18 hit points and Jaheira is down 26 hit points. Demon Knights obliterated.

(Edit: Haha. We actually forgot to reset our difficulty setting, as we lowered it to "easy" because we were learning spells. So that's why it was so easy. Naturally our self esteem takes immediately an enormous hit and we'll try not to brag about our accomplishments later on in this journal. We play it again on core. Much more challenging this way. They get a dispel magic off but still Valygar stuns 2 demon knights (or at least one, the other one dies so fast we don't bother to check) and I think Imoen stuns one. Ive never used power attack before. Well anyway, this was much fun still even though we are not nearly as dominant as we thought. Now we will fetch our "jackass" - hat and go sit in the corner and be ashamed )

Ok, I seem to recall there being a list of items and potentially where they could be (I only remember the Robe of Vecna locations) is there something like this floating around in the wildnerness ??

I read your edit about putting it on easy accidentally, happens to the best of us

Pretty much all of the powerful items are randomized throughout the game. Nothing is floating in the wilderness, the stuffs are with powerful enemies.

Yup

It’s curious that you can kill Saemon when you did. I’ll be interested to hear whether he self resurrects in TOB.

Probably. We'll then have our backstabbing superpowers back, so the plan is to backstab him again.

Master Brain
This was NOT fun. Shiish. We suffer, yet again, voluntarily though.

So this took 6 hours. Exactly the thing we're not supposed to do. But, dominating is a little bit harder than we thought. All of the time & realoads because we were looking to max out our exp. (well, 6 hours for 2 victories but still)

In the end we even don't get all of the 6 spawns, we just get 4 (or 5 as we accidentally pick up the loot at some point & we lose track). It's insanely difficult to get this done with just one hardiness and constant micromanaging of the crew when a small sidestep can cause the whole operation to collapse (as in someone runs to the sight of the master brain and it dispels us). We do have RvE, but if we're lucky we get regen 50% of the time. Anyway. Not much problems, well, besides the obvious. I'm not sure if the extra exp os worth it. But as we've done this "max exp's" thing consistently throughout the game we should be able to achieve something in the end. By something I mean awesome gamebreaking superpowers, where we will be like she-hulk meets superman meets wonderwoman meets he-man meets captain planet meets popeye the sailor-man with spinach injected directly in to the veins.

T/M isn't completely useless anymore. She was scouting and cast PfF, PfC & PfA in the fight on Vagrant. That's... something.

Jaheira took natural restoral as her first hla, should have taken the smilodon. It's uber in this fight.



Dracolich
Well, our master plan of using Barad Ding's collar bell doesn't work. Even though it makes characters deaf, they can apparently still somehow hear the wails. (I think it would have been an extraordinary turn of events, had it worked, but sadly no. So. Bummer. ). We make a mental note of it and our plan is to bribe Cromwell to upgrading it to "improved Barad Ding's Collar Bell", so it would make us completely deaf. Being deaf is also the sole condition that the rest of the crew will allow Anomen to join us again.

One of my least favorite fights. Takes a number of reloads because our preparations are always off. T/M get wailed. We use 2 RvE regens (which is ok for 4 level 9 spells) because we though it had four PfMW's and it actually has seven or eight or so. We use all of the "spider spawn" scrolls we've gatheded up to this point.

Start: whack skins as fast as possible, nullify "death fog's", send in summons to be whacked. Wait out level drains when hit with shadow dragon breath and try to dodge the breath with casters (as you'll lose spells if you are hit)

We use maybe 14 scrolls of spider spawn, 5 potions magic protection / shieding and towards the end we are quaffing oils of resurgerence like it's the only good mojito day in an all-inclusive resort in Mexico during the only annual getaway week from the prosaically joyless profanity that is our daily routine we will never, ever, ever, ever, ever-ever get .... why is our life miserable?


**

We are not really looking forward to suffering as in "let's milk ancient golem with our completely ill-suited crew for it", so we skip ancient golem for now. (Thanks again to Critto for pointing out there isn't anything chapter specific about that fight). Luckily, we do know of a few fights where milking can be best achieved with our strengths. Then we will have to give a shot to Firkraag & Green Wyrm before we decide to do Kruin. I think the most plausible scenario with Kruin fight is that we'll take out one elemental golem straight away, then we'll milk all 6 spawns out of the 2nd one. We have to wait out Kruin in any case, since we can't dispel him. We'll see how the next fights go, but there's even a small chance to be back with ancient golem before Kruin. We'll see.

An elemental is worth 60k. An elemental with 6 spawns is worth (on average) 216k + 12k in gp. There's a big difference. And as alleviated up above, we think this will make a difference in the end (and would like our T/M to level up as fast as possible in any case. That extra exp is really valuable).

**

The small areas
Mists; chaotic commands, ih's & summons and whack. And an occasional chain lightning.
Troll groups: death spell. it's quite fun.
Vampires: IH + AoP on PC
Other than that we use the 3xCoC trigger in a fight, it's very effective

WK level 1
At the fireplace room we prebuff to the maximum and summon to the maximum. Then we prebuff our summons to the maximum. So greater swanmay, swanmays, smilodon, clan spirit, anaconda + swords/trolls. Use all IH's we have. Potions of defense / invulnerability for Kensai & RB. Haste for the rest. Activate HLA's + everything else we have. Then we open the door and have ourself a traditional all-out pub brawl! Like everyone against everyone! It's a absurdly hilarious & complete blast!

Neera gets stunned but we break the stun with Methilda's harp. At some point Valygar gets hit in the head and loses a tooth. By the end he's grinning like a madman. We go to the character info page to make sure if he in addition to the tooth lost a few points of intelligence. Luckily no, so we are quite relieved as we dodged that bullet & no reload is necessary.

Spider queen
Pretty much same approach as up above. Dodge improved web's as much as one can. Maximum OP strength in the beginning. It's a great fight for us since swords are so good at tanking the queen. We always reserve a few mass cures to the end where spider queen is surrounded by swords and then we can easily heal them. We are running low on resources towards the end so we're not 100% sure if we got all os the spawns, but we think so.

Wk level 2
We blow through this. We turn the chromatic demon into a chicken & milk all 6 spawns out of the elemental. EFG takes remove magic + PfF on crew.

Then we wonder into Windspear Hills, where a certain quite the obnoxious and vindictive wyrm is loitering around.

Windmaster
Meh. It just gets the hurricane thingy off, then immediately when it's worn out gets whacked by Imoen. 24 APR's from RB & Kensai & Jaheira with Criitcal Strike's is OP in this fight. Our plan was to win it in a single round. Probably could have, but Valygar forgot to chain breaker stance so he couldn't critical strike immediately.

Firkraag
PC equips dragon scale shield + has dragon helm in inventory. With those two items, we can buff his fire resistance to 95%. Summon the greater swanmay, clan spirit, trolls, anaconda (or so). Ih's on everyone incl. clan spirit. We face the dragon and get taunted. TAUNTED!!

We taunt the Dragon back: "You! You look like time has done you far worse than we ever could! You should have been preparing for facing us, instead of preposterously loitering and making up silly plans you roaring mistake of evolution, a perfect insult to the colour red, you apparent outcome from an unhappy union between a crocodile and an absurdly large ostrich - uttering your name makes us gassy while our toenails grow astray. We shall remove your horns and use our comprehensively mediocre skills to sculpt tiny decorative figures out of them which we will then sell at the market for a really, really, really cheap price!!!"

Firkraag goes berserk and attacks!!1!

Then we whack away. T/M moves in, casts secret word & takes the greater silence alone (the 1st one). Neera then moves in and her CC with 2xRRoR & Breach is launched, then she wtihdraws and just happily summons away. Jaheira takes the 2nd somewhere mid-fight (it also unfortunately hits PC as well, so he can't summon swanmays any more).

Our h2h is too great for the skeleton warlords. Imoen is in trouble at some point so clan spirit casts regeneration on her. In the end firkraag is taken down with ordinary weapons by Valygar & Imoen (both CS'ing) & PC & Jaheira We also mirror image & SI:Abjuration T/M so Firkaraag will cast both true sight & RRoR on her. No troubles here, besides the initial test of how greater silences are cast.

We apologize for the profanities up above. Jaheira is 800 exp pts. away from level 20 and "perform ritual".


Troll mound
Haha. Our h2h too great, our summons too many. Imoen blows through vengeance trolls like they were butter with CS (even though she's only at 7APR & 21STR). We try to Wish for PfME's since we forgot to cast it, but it doesn't work (4 wishes) so we just dodge the 3xADHW while PC takes the full force of the trigger. He goes down -50% in HP's, clan spirit then comes and casts regen on him. Clan Spirit and greater swaynmay survive through the fight. Swords work wonders against the Vengeance trolls. No RvE regen's and not a single heal spell cast (we did use the cat figurine though & healed Valygar with CBS & cast one regen on him at some point from Jaheira)


**

So next up, it's either Kruin, Ancient Golem or Green Wyrm. We're not really looking forward to any of those fights. We'll probably do Kruin, for then we can do some other stuff as well, before going on milking. Oh, we forgot Bodhi. 4 team members at 130k from next level. Could we get that from Bodhi? It's one extra Hardiness / CS. Hmh.

**

So far, has this party been stronger compared to your previous playthroughs party ?

It depends on the fight. Whenever there's a fight where H2H dictates the difficulty, we are much, much stronger. And with this crew, we will grow immensely more powerful with the next 1-1,5m exp.

We have to figure out a way to get past Great Wyrm though, as it will probably be an extremely difficult fight.

Dracolich is easier (fewer PFMWs, fewer wails) before party gets HLAs. Can also be done in Ch6/7 at much higher levels, albeit for reduced loot.

There is no need to complete the Master Brain encounter in Chapter 5. You could circle back later after getting some of the "easy" chapter 6 experience.

Oh, alright! Thanks! So on the next play-through (whenever that is) I'll make sure to try it before them HLA's. It should be easily doable then as well, even though RvE helps quite a lot.

Ditto for "master brain". I like to do it in Underdark though it is simpler later on. The difficulty in the fight isn't mitigated that much by a few additional levels though the post-Kruin equipment would definitely help. Though even without the OP gear, it's easily doable if we just whack the elemental instead trying to max exp.

So with this playthrough with Jaheria what do you think of Avenger v. Auramaster ? Which is superior in your opinion.

I kind of think with the superior H2H in IA, Avenger is slightly stronger. What do you think?

I think she's extremely powerful as she is. Then she gets to summon the clan spirit, who was our best tank in chapters 2-3 (& still is great).

I've been thinking about this Jaheira vs. Cernd thing but I'll get back to it at later stages. I want to have more experience on maxed out Jaheira & the most difficult battles to properly answer this.

Bodhi
Vagrant & Jaheira complete the "upstairs", Vagrant with AoP, Jaheira with Shield of Archons. Sleep @ downstairs.

Prebuff to the max, max summons, max prebuff for summons so the normal routine. Some troubles here with the ambush. Mostly because we're lacking +4 weapons so whacking the skeletan warlords is quit the pain. We use 1 scroll of protection from level drain, it goes to Valygar. AoP is on Vagrant, Jaheira gets shield of Archons and Imoen uses Staff of Rhynn. From exp. points this is enourmously succesful as everyone gets about 250k and almost everyone levels up. Every single level is very hepful at this stage as every


Ancient Golem
It goes very smoothly. We're too bothered to stand around and get whacked around by ancient golem so Vagrant goes for a jog. We are lacking the heroic way of doing this, which is to have a DD, activate defensive stance, stand in front of ancient golem while it whacks the DD around. Oh, and cast a few heals every now and then.

Spawns are baited to the centre and exterminated by the crew. Very, very, very simple this way. After all 10 golems are spawned we face the Ancient Golem. Neera IA's and drops IH's on everyone & wishes (we get 25 stats on the 2nd try). Jaheira holy powers & combat trances. Imoen, Valygar + Jaheira also CS. Ancient golem is no more within 2(?) rounds.

We are very very good at "enter, obliterate", not so good at "enter, milk out everything & whack".


Kruin
Goes very smoothly. We prebuff JAheira with PfF. PfC, PfA & PfL. Initiate fight, whack githyaki. Vagrant takes an elemental and goes for a jog, Jaheira takes another one (she has oodles of skins). We milk 9 gems/coins out of the elementals. Then we finish them. Finishing them at this point is quite trivial, they don't stand a chance.

***

We forge
Corthala family true blade (Valygar)
Robe of Greater Invocation (Neera)
Red Coral Armour (PC)
Pendant of recovered light (and fix it locally) (Imoen)
Quarterstaff +3 & Golem Slayer (Jaheira)
Ring of greater djinn summoning (T/M)
Equalizer (Imoen)
We also buy Tymora's Gift (Neera)

***

Green Wyrm
No prebuffs. Neera & Jaheira stay out of GW's sight. So do fighters mostly. We bait out death spells with inconsequential summons, then clan spirit, smilodon & Swanmays tank it until the end. At various stages the GW is surrounded by what must be 6-8 summons. Zone's of sweet air for horrible clouds. Wake up characters wth Barad Ding's Collar Bell (!!!). At various stages & even towards the end, and even with 1 arcane caster + 1 divine the GW looks like it's completely overrun. Regenerating Smilodon is super effective. Clan Spirit is awesome.

When it's out of PfMW's we, IH & enter and CS & whack, it doesn't last for long.

Twisted Rune
Not much problems here, even though we have to play this through a number of times (maybe 5) because every time we botch some detail like we are low on arcane spellcasting capabilities and Neera unintentionally walks into the sight of Vaxall and gets anti-magic ray'ed. Once Layenne gets whacked with Frostreavers cold-damage and Vecna gets destroyed.

Prebuff to the max, Whack Revanek & Shyressa while Neera takes out Layenne's protections. Then Whack Layenne. Then Vaxall. Leave Shangalar the last.

Wk compass level
Not much problems here, besides the Slave Wraith. We find out here, that Imoen's pendant also doesn't protect from level drain so we fix it manually.


**

We forge
Elven ancient expertise (we consoled this item in, because we forgot where it was and we didn't get that drop. Had we known, we would have gotten the drop but...)

**


WK level 4
Finish everything besides the 3x elemental + 2x greater bone & supreme leader

We do Ancient Mage
2xRRoR, then St Breach+2xLR, then SS GM+Emotion+Hold person & hpld person sticks. Great! FUN!

Mystery of the Jewel Casket

Squirreled away assassin's @ bridge district
Prebuff. Enter Exterminate. our h2h too great, our cs's waaay too many + Neera is awesome. It's such a nice fight and we enjoy it to the max.

Lord Roenall
We always end up with Lord Roenall who is completely immune to damage. It seems like completely overblown, considering that this is a fight that should be done in chapter 3. Hmh. After we've whacked him for quite some time (say 2 turns or so), we just manually remove his protections and he's gone in no-time. I'm not sure how this fight is supposed to go but I'm quite sure a Lord Roenall you can't hurt isn't part of the equation.

***

T/M is about 1m exp points away from reaching awesome superpowers. Then we visit IA's items page and notice something that completely destroys our approach. The line is "Memory of the Apprenti: Protagonist is a single class mage or sorceror". And ofc. we don't have that, as we're playing a Vagrant. We can't get MoA.

We thought MoA was forgeable by any protagonist.

This is the one absolutely essential Item that would make our crew + T/M an all-world force to reckon with. Without MoA, she just doesn't have enough spell slots to be awesome. Our crew composition is destroyed, it doesn't work. Our T/M, while she could reach quite ok stats in H2H (thanks to us bending rules & her utilizing cloak of the daywalker), just doesn't pack enough punch to be a completely overblown character like pretty much everyone else in the crew. I mean she'd be an ok & quite diverse character, but just nowhere near to what we were looking for.

Our approach to Arcane spellcasting was to create a completely overblown & absurdly OP archmage from Neera. You see Neera with MoA + AoP + spells + rewards could by 8m exp reach -6 in casting time with vast amounts of spell slots. This would be probably/arguably the most powerful arcane spellcaster available in the game, even more powerful than a Necro with Necro's stuff. She would have been supported by T/M who could utilize circlet of the woods & MoA (depending on the fight), who could reach -4 in casting time if needed with vast amount of spell slots as well. (then Neera would drop to -5 with GRoI). So we would have 2 úber spellcasters where one could also do insane amounts of damage in H2H by small changes to equipped items. Since we've always run out of remove magic's this character could just SI:Abjuration, enter & whack in numerous fights and we would have been free to cast dispel magic' around her since she would be immune. That's why the scrolls we were gathering. Also, the small differences in levels would have meant that T/M would be able to freely cast dispel magic on enemies (say Mariliths) without the other crew members fearing that their buffs would be dispelled when dispel hits. Finally would have reached pretty good Thac0's with decent APR's so the T/M could have been backstabbing & using assassination from grandfather of assasin's ((or what's it called) & It would have worked on a number of different levels. But no. So. Bummer.

That was the plan. Now we're at 5,5mexp and we find out that our plan doesn't work. We could just bend the rules, but since we are "playing as it's meant to be played", it's a "nono". We'll stick by our original promise of playing by the rules, though with this change in mind we'll go back to the drawing board to fix this as we need to make changes to our crew composition. Big changes.

This also means that we were dragging along a completely useless character in chapters 4-5 for nothing. We could have had it so much simpler, even though we were still quite OP in almost all of the fights.

Stilll. Argh. Like complete argh.

***