Prologue

Welcome. Another Journal.

Goal is the usual:
- dominate encounters
- try out new kits / changes
- still end up with something very destructive overall.
- the up above is understatement, looking to end up with something blatantly over the top, haha.

We will play with
- rotating crew memebers in the the beginning
- maxing out exp throughout
- insane all the way (at least the most difficult parts)
- there's a few fights we will skip, as in liches @ temple ruins.

Core of the crew.

Caramip Nimbletoe, Fighter/Illusionist: STR 18, DEX 18, CON 18, INT 17, WIS 17, CHA 5.
Cernd (insta-heal all throughout everything)
Sibel (either Swashie or S/F -> both would be completely new for me)
Neera (Wild Mage . also completely new for me)

So this would let me test quite a lot of the new things at once. And having a wild mage instead of a sorceror let's me also try out the new spells & abilities.

Then I’d need some more muscle on top of that and this is the most likely character we'll have.

R/C -> lots of new cleric stuff to try (with of course cheated so has access to druidic spells... superbly powerful, completely overblownly effective tank)
Paladin -> Keldorn the Inquisitor with all the new Inquisitor tweaks (EDIT. Most likely will swap Inquisitor for Wizard Slayer).

With this party we can spread the “most destructive weapons” around the party and there isn't much overlap. Main goal is still to end up with something that can just steamroll once it gets going, while trying out as much of the new stuff as possible.

"Cheats", or cheats for full transparency. I think powerwise we're still below Necro/Vagrant PC.

- Since we're not going to get any special gear (necro, vagrant etc.) we will give our F/I IA
- C/R has access to druidic spells
- We have BA questline available
- As well as extended mage strnghold + extended ranger stronghold
- I think that's it....
(edit: we also give cleric a kit, which we won't use that much ... but just to see the changes)
- Some items are treated as consumables, like blade of roses, in my game it shall give permanent +2 to charisma. same for reaching ring and some of the thieving equipment. will not micromanage those.

Start:

Chapter 0 (or maybe chapter 1, as in Irenicus Dungeon)

up exp to bg2totsc levels
join imoen
join jaheira (avenger)
join minsc (berserker)

library gives some troubles
join yoshimo for now
mephit portal, full rest before, room is haaaaaard.
do everything
get all geart
exit

start chapter 2
sell gear, monies at 8k, buy a few scrolls (flame arrow + emotion) + scroll case + potion case
exp at 230k per character or so.

do circus tent (leave +1 reputation for later)

pick up Sibel, drop Yoshimo (I think we'll pick him up later)

do the CC quests with our first actual fight:

Bestmaster is much, much tougher than I remembered - though we are playing with very limited arcane capability & handicapped offence here.

Sol. We arrive to free the slaves. Instead we meet… this guy. A self-proclaimed “Beastmaster” and his pet Tabitha, who are caging .. gibberlings?!? We have a chat: “You. You flea circus manager. We’ve seen more threatening wildlife in a mildly upset chicken coop. And that… thing you call a pet? We are looking to make mittens out of it!!" We feel terrible afterwards, animal cruelty isn't for us. We think in this case it's ok, as it was self-defence. Anyway, as long as we can interrupt CD, we're pretty good. PC with skins, ghost armour, armour + shield, blur & mirror images is a phenomenal early game tank. CS tanks Tabitha.

We survive, though it takes maybe 10 tries.

to docks
loot thieves guild
start find proof of mae'vars treatchury
loot mae var
pick up full plate from slaver @ sea's bounty

to city gates
pick of location of trademeet

to temple district
start cult of the eyeless
start sir sarles
visit talo's temple & buy belt
start anarg & fallen paladins

back to docks
mae'var, the talos thing

to bridge district
start skinner murders
pick up horn
loot saerk farrah estate

***
monies almost at 30k
****

solve skinner murders
Long story short, max prebuffs, summon CS + some ogrillons. Grotesque Creature hits hard, looks worse. PC just tanks it at -17 vs crushing and is not even close to being hit at any point - we almost feel bad for it. Almost. We throw everything we have at the enemies, it’s enough. Done. Efficient. Sibel gets stunned. PC under free action doesn't

visit temple and buy 4 points of reputation (1200,1500,2000,2500)
meet neera
meet with anarg's lieutenant (de chatellion or what's hid name)
meet neera in the intersection

to temple district
pick up nicklace from talos's temple
pick up anarg's cup
whack fallen paladins
return cup
do rest of mae'var things
rayic gethras + rest of mar'var questline
whack nmae'var (we're already op for this)
refuse stronghold
get nice sword


****
we're about 460k exp. monies at 44k. we still have oodles of stuff to sell. maybe I should pickup Neera next.

(edit: we don't pick up Neera yet but we ocntinue our escapades in amn
****

save viccy
save jan
talk to sir sarles
visit ore merchant
upgrade silver horn to bronze horn
whack neb (cutpurse sells minor sequencers, we buy 2)
return head
reputation at 18 and we haven't left amn yet
meet sir sarles
visit temple
start "another mission from the temple"

****
I think we're ready to travel out from amn, we have been succesfully avoiding the suna seni fight thusfar. We're a little low on muscle & arcane casting powers, but let's see how this goes.

party at 480k exp. next up, pick up cernd, maybe pickup neera as well? if we pick neera we should definitely pick up those high level summon spells, for they can NRD'ed.

we're in dire need of charisma, haha.
****

windspear hills
start rescue garren's child
return acorns
whack werewolves

trademeet
pink up 1000 gp + 1000 exp from the tent
start animal trouble in trademeet
meet genies
pick up cernd

****
Here we realize a few things.

1st. We should have gone to Umar HIlls before, since we're most likely going to need the shield of the lost (or what's it's name).

The 2nd thing we realize is that we haven't accounted for Mithril Golem - we do not know how to play it, since regen doesn't stack anymore. Argh. this might be a problem.

The 3rd thing we realize here is that with ia_rebalance changes Wizard Slayer isn't that far APR wise from the Inquisitor. So we're probably not going to play Keldorn the inquisitor but Keldorn the Wizard Slayer. Or maybe Dorn the Wizard Slayer, or ... maybe Minsc the Wizard Slayer. That also means that Ultimate Plate Armour doesn't go to "waste" as it does a little bit if it's with R/C, who's protected enough even without it. The only things we need to adjust here is that we're not going with the "non-hasted" WS version. We need to upgrade the speed, I just don't know how it can be done. Normally I would just give WS access to boots of speed, but since WS has it's own boots I can't do it like that. Let's see.
****

druid grove
max buffs, a few elemttals, haste everything and storm through
faldron falls to 3x flame arrow
start BA
druid grove part (Nilthiri)
sibel makes a level, olé!
whack the rakshasha, adratha or what's her name

return to trademeet
finish genies
finish animal trouble
helpin' tiris in trademeet launches immediately, that's nice

to umar hills
do mimic's blood
mae'var questline
invdstigate deaths at umar hills, get shadow temple location

****
hmh. maybe we should do de'arnise keep here? even though we are very limited with our casting ability.
****

we visit trademeet and pick up staff +3 & staff of striking (in order to hit tor'gal).

so, de arnise keep we go.
great yuan ti + wp: max prebuffs, whack spider immediately + just breach yan-ti.
we get 4 spiders from glaecus or what's his name
keep viper tests our limits, we just make it.
we have a look at tor'gal and... oh boy. it won't be pretty. there's the noble trolls - I was hopin' our exp would be so low that they wouldn't appear yet.

We don't make it. It's too much. After 10 tries we give up. Our h2h capabilities are in practice awful, we need a lot more muscle here in order to have a go here. in addition we screw up the saved games so we end up loading a game from before starting the de'arnise keep. We'll be back later when we have more than 1 fighter to dish out damage.

****

A few thoughts on WS vs Keldorn.

We do a bit more play testing and!!! Mein got!!! We're SOOOOOO going for the Wizard Slayer!!!!!

While Keldorn with the right equipment is a complete monster (like pointed out in the thread) we are here to completely dominate. As far as I can tell (and count) the WS can dish out 200pts of damage per round and gets to adequate number of attacks, so it doens't even lose out that much to a "traditional" fighter type like 6.5 Barbarian or so. And it even has special abilities vs. golems, which should work very nicely towards our favor.

But the thing is, in my original thinking I saw WS as being major help in a handful of fights, but I think I was just dead wrong. I think WS will be superbly overly useful easily in the majority of the fights. What it should do is it lets me skip out a lot of difficulty in the game while losing out only a notch to a more traditional fighter type.

The only thing that really bugs me is that it's too slow to play, I won't make it through the game with a WS slouching behind the crew as it's not fun - so to balance it out I think I'll just make it go a little bit faster. If I recall correctly regular speed is about 9, hasted 18 - so will probably give the WS a speed of 15 or 16 or so. That way it's still slow, behinf everything but it won't be waaaay behind everything else as in "not even useful" with my style.

I think that's an ok balance while I do appreaciate the overall work the team has done for that specific Kit and I do get that that downside is sort of required.
****


to amn
do cernd's child
suna seni, we do here - whack cleric, emotion + spell thrust for mage
go to graveyard
start kidnappers who buried tirdir
start wellyn
clear surface area + smaller crypts
we are sooo short on h2h capabilities it's almost embarrasing. we're still with 5 characters & we have just 1 fighter (minsc the berserker). as avenger has been nerfed it's somewhat useless in a lot of the fights.
pick up renfeld's body

start find out what happened to montaron
pick up littleman
pick-upo hexxat/clara (or what her name)
return littleman
whack dragomir, rescue hexxat
clear some spiders
prebek's house
baron ployer
harper hold ambush #1 (galvarey)

***
we visit cromwells and come back with improved yeti hide, which doesn't seem to stack with other equipment. it's a bit shame, that's why we forged it. (I could replace with something but let's see...)
***

finish find the kidnappers who buried tirdir
visit graveyeard and do rest of the crypts and the small quests
clear lower tombs as well

***
We're at about 770k-780k of exp. Next up possibly Neera's / Hexxat's / Rasaad's questlines, or maybe all 3. Or possibly we could do Korgan + Jan Jansen quests here, but let's see. That would get us quite close to getting 6th leel mage spells meaning a major power up. But if we take the wizard slayer route our major level up power wise is soming at 2mexp. So we'll be waiting for that I think.
***

Next chapters, unused for now.

Unused for now.

next chapters unused for now

Notes, listed here for convenience so they won't be scattered around.

- Aerie the Shaman has mage avatar & she's also wearing mage gear
- Tabitha's Hide / armor doesn't fit into a bag of holding (most likely resolved)
- CERND has -4 to con & -4 to str (effects related to auramaster kit)
- The Shadow's Blade (from rejecting thieves guild) cannot be equipped in off-hand?
- 1st ambush at harper hold, galvarey -> they all die from death spell but it also destroyes all gear & doesn't give any exp?
- improved yeti hide cloak says the bonuses stack, but they don't. i wear a full plate, ring of protection +1 and yeti hide and the only thing that is counted is the yeti hide (we lose out on the ring of protection +1)

Which Bag of Holding did you use and how did you obtain it? All BoHs and merchants should properly interact with these items, however the item types they can buy are put into save files. So for example, if you did not have IATweaks properly installed when starting the game, then the BoH you find in Irenicus Dungeon might have vanilla settings, which are not updated after reinstall, and its vanilla version is put into your save. Other such iems/stores will act properly.

The one form Irenicus's dungeon.

That sounds plausible, I had to do multiple re-installs of the mods because I missed multiple strongholds (I didn't have that installed when starting the game) and then had to re-install ia_tweaks numerous times.

I hope that doesn't mix up the game too much.

All new areas and all of their content should be unaffected and scripts/dialogues can be patched dynamically, even if you've already visited an area/talked to a character (they're not put into save files), so I don't think you have to worry.

But just to ensure that the merchants/BoHs work OK in general, can you sell an armor to any merchant in Athkatla and check if you can put armors into S!BAG01 and BAG04 files (obtained via console)?

Alright!

But no, can't sell armors to any merchants, but some do accept armors.

S!BAG04 doesn't accept armors but S!BAG01 does.

Can you check a merchant from an area you haven't visited yet? When did you perform the reinstall?


That's good. S!bag4 is tied to a store with the same name(yes, under the hood all containers are just stores), no matter if it's a new instance of the item or not, so the only way of allowing it to keep armors would be to edit the save file. But since s!bag01 works, that means that the patches to stores were installed properly.

Not sure when I re-installed.

All merchants i.e. in Umar Hills work fine.

Can I somehow revert Damascus Steel Blade to the "original one".

As far as I understand, I now have 2 damascus steel blade files (one from Sibel & one from ia_tweaks).

I think it's less micromanagement for me just to revert it back to the original? But is that doable easily? (can i just copy the file from the sibel mod somewhere or so?)

Thanks again !!

IA_tweaks patches the file, so there's still just 1 DSB file (s!ssw01). The item is also updated with logic regarding +1/2APR when the wielder has *** in 2h, so simply copying the file from Sibel-mod into the override won't work properly.

Probably the easiest way to get non-changed version is to install option 2 of IA_tweaks instead of option 4, as it avoids rebalancing Lady Elowen's creations altogether and I know you like your powerful items

Another way would be to open file:
IATweaks\lib\components\IA_rebalancing\sibel_items.tph
in some kind of text editor and remove the part related to DSB, look for "Damascus Steel Blade" or simply "s!ssw01". The only problem with that is that you'll have to make that change every time you download a version of the mod with new fixes.

Alright. If there's changes about *** in 2h with the sword itself, then I won't make those changes.

The problem with installing #2 of ia_rebalance is that it then changes a few other key items as well, like the ranger boots. and the sibel ioun stone thingy.

I'm looking to play with the full changes, haha

That is true only until you get HLAs, then all non-WS warriors get a huge boost to APR, Inquisitor with unnerfed DSB can even reach 10APR for a short while and consistent 8, or 9 (with Paladin Gloves) for a longer period of time, while WS can only get 4,5APR (right?).

Also unnerfed DSB with Keldorn armor will deal massive damage probably on par with Kensai.

With reworked Whirlwind Attack
With reworked War Cry
If you want, I can prepare a spell that will permanently increase his movement speed, or add the effect to the creature directly of you send me a save file
Yes, that penalty to stats was reworked, as previously it was too easy to just equip an item, drink a potion or cast a spell to temporarily or permanently get rid of that negative effect.

Thanks a lot Jacek!

Added some thoughts about WS to the thread itself.

The thing about Cernd is that now he has 9 str + 9 con and he can't equip his own items anymore.

You're right, the effect got applied twice, it's fixed now.


Yes, it's stated in its description. A few items that grant bonuses to Stealth Strike and Seeking Sword (which is now a standard equippable item). Is that problematic in any way?

Thanks! I'll keep this in mind if I need it.



Right. I just assumed it was the same sword as before.

I think it's ok, just a minor thing - now I can't use it for offhand for Nalia, which would give her 2 weapons +3 quite early on (that blade + long sword +3 from enhanced weapon).

True, at some point I removed stacking from the +2 item, but forgot to update the description ;/ I will make an update whenever I have the time.

That's... interesting, but definitely not intended. Do you have a save game right before the encounter? Or can you send me spwi605.spl file from your override directory?