going insane...

Remove all ads!

*spoiler regarding the location hammer*

its just after the little bridge thing that asks you the riddles, kind of hidden in a nook to the right of the structure.
*/spoiler*

/edit: should have mentioned in my above post that the levels quoted were of my sorcerer, just because it seemed like a good enough average and influenced what spells I had available

 

Oh the one that does electrical damage.

 

the same

 

OK, my uninstalling seems to have messed up, so I ended up with lots of creatures and stuff related to other mods that didn't have dialog, etc. Far from anything game-breaking (though it could have proven to be later on), but really annoying. So I started over fresh only with IA this time.

Have done most of the stuff I did with my earlier party, except unseeing eye and the clearing of the temple area and the likes.

My party this time around is: Me (R/C), F/M, F/T (dual scored 18/00 str! sweet!), Sorcerer (looses big time at earlier stages compared to the Wild Mage I used due to the the very narrow selection of spells, but great for spamming glitterdust and breach!), Jaheira and Minsc (maybe to be swapped with Sarevok in ToB).

I'm currently clearing D'Arnise keep and everything has gone smooth so far, my F/T has basically been soloing all the trolls (backstab+flame arrow and it's goodbye).
The Yuan-Ti mage on the 2nd floor was a little tricky, but at least it doesn't throw SI: Abjuration but rather Divination so went down to an initial backstab (it is possible to cheese this fight by using a backstab+invis potion combo, maybe you should consider invisibility detection by script?) and the spamming of glitterdust and breach. Chaotic Commands was essential on my F/M and sorc to make sure that they didn't get disabled and could keep revealing and disabling the bugger.

 

Good party selection! It could have been a bit more powerful with Anomen instead of Jaheira (clerics in general have a better selection of spells for IA compared to druids), but it's not a big deal.

And with a ranger protagonist, you will be able to play the mod's best quest: The Mystery of the Shimmering Light, which is part of the expanded ranger stronghold.

Keep us updated.

 

I Just loathe Anomen and lub my Iron Skins. Besides I need someone to romance! .

Just owned Glacias seconds ago. Was pretty straight forward, positioned my party around the door so the spider could not see us, sent my F/M in to trigger him the quickly retreated. All the usual buffs, and had rested prior to the battle just after stone-/Iron skinning all who had it, so I could get 3 'skins' on everyone instead of 2.
Immediately had my F/M and my sorc throw Lower resistance, follow by a couple more fromt he sorc, then began spamming MM and when out of those Chromatic Orb. He quaffed a helluva healing potions, so the fight went on for ages . But in the end, I prevailed! party is 11ish now, have cleared all the interior but the basement now, not sure if I can take on Torgal just yet, but sure gonna try .

 

Did you like Glaicas's new dialogue (and the special document with him)? I have so far received quite contradictory feedback from different players in this respect; some players said that they liked it very much, whereas some others reported quite the opposite.

All in all, it should be taken as the opening scene of the expanded fighter stronghold (to be fully implemented into IA v6).

 

Well, it's a little hard to say. At the moment when the dialog occurred I must admit it seemed a little odd and out of place to be frank... Many things in the game do, however, until some light is shed upon it and you can see it from a broader perspective. However as you say it's part of a larger stronghold quest planned to be implemented in 6.0, so it's taken completely out of context, which is why I think you should maybe have waited with implementing that part until all was done. The dialog itself was, as usual, very well written though .

Is it realistically possibly to beat the Greater Yuan-Ti with a level 9-11 party? I can manage to take down his protections alright (when dispel magic works) by using dispel magic, spell thrust (or any dispelling spell to knock off the spell shield), spell thrust and then breach; and by carefully retreating and rushing back in to avoid my entire party getting their saves messed up by the mallison or from getting chaosed and the likes. However once they are down he still rips my mellee apart before I can get his resistance low enough to do some serious MM spamming (and to be frank even then the damage he takes ain't anything to write home about!).

 

Thanks for the feedback about Glaicas!

The Greater Yuan-Ti doesn't have good saves. As a recommended tactic, use Emotion (4th level mage spell) or Greater Command (5th level clerical spells) against him. Specially, if you lower her saving throws by a Greater Malison spell beforehand, he will surely fail his saving throw against those spells.

 

I did it!....having said that it nearly killed me, took at least 4 or so decent attempts and half a dozen false starts and ended up settling with 2 dead party members. I had Keldorn on my party at the time and used his dispel magic a few times, and I think I cast emotion from a scroll, but iirc it didn't stick and I ended up just bashing on on the Yaun-Ti, rotating my front line, using potions etc and just letting him wear through his spells. So it's possible, just not recomended (Torgal was much tougher though).

Nice party btw - almost the same as mine, but with a few kit differences and Keldorn instead of Minsc.

 

amg! A hermaphrodite Yuan-Ti .

Thanks for the input, I'll try emotion!

By the way experienced a bug

log:

// Log of Currently Installed WeiDU Mods
// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod
// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name
~SETUP-DUNGEONBEGONE.TP2~ #0 #0 // Dungeon Be Gone V1.4
~SETUP-IMPROVEDANVIL.TP2~ #0 #0 // Improved Anvil for SOA & TOB

 

It's not an IA bug; it's rather a well-known but harmless bug of the vanilla game. When the first Brus spawns, the script doesn't immediately set the Global Variable to the new value to ensure that he will not spawn again. Setting the variable is left to be done in Brus's dialogue. Sometimes Brus just delays a bit before initiating his dialogue and consequently the script spawns him over and over again for a while. Once he initiates the dialogue, everything will be normal.

 

Did the temple quest and then finally smoked the Greater Yuan-Ti. And then the spider . Now I can forge the flail.

 

Congratulations!

In v5, there is no way to fight the Greater Yuan-Ti and the Whisper Spider separately. You will have to face them together. We have tested it several times and it's still quite doable even with a 9-10th level party with the right tactics.

 

Owned the horrid rakshaasa again, did not yet have SI: Abjuration this time around but did have a prot from magic though so it went smoothly enough with some carefull re-buffing. Damn it's hard to play and type when you can only use one hand!


By the way Sikret, I'm saving all tactics I've used in IA so far, and will be saving the rest as well if you're interested in the specifics for whatever.

Mencar Pebblecrusher and his goons are down as well! pretty straight forward once I got the mage down. Backstab>invis pot>backstab had him running for his life before he could even think of buffing.

 

backstabbing Pebblecrusher's mage FTW!!! - I did the same, but used invisibility 10" radius to quickly take out Pooky (the familiar) 1/2 a second later with the rest of my party.

The horrid rakshaasa - thats the one in the sewers right - did the kobolds pose much of a problem for you? I kind of cheesed him away from them by running through them with an invisible character (he can see the invisible and gives chase, while the kobolds cannot and stay put).

 

Nah, emotion rawks .

I just threw a Dispell magic and took pooky out 2nd as well, then the rogue and barbarian and lastly mencar.

Got Torgal down tonight as well! He's a tricky one indeed! Had done the Aran Linvail Quests beforehand, so had gotten the amulet of power meaning that with very careful timing I could could breach as he casted resulting in preventing him completely from casting his storm of vengeance (and all but a couple of summons). From thereon it was a small matter to bring his resistance down, slow him and pin him to the floor! afterwards my R/C soloed the gem golem (I only had FoA which could damage him).

Pai'Na is down as well. Had free action on all. Paused as soon as I entered and had my F/M cast breach and my sorc a coouple of emotions, then focused on the whisper spider first, interrupting the drow with MM as she tried to get insect plague off. When it was down I killed her .

 

Good work with Torgal - I also found that spell disruption, lower resistance and Slow was the key (I didn't have the amulet though ). I think I started with an invisible thief behind him (triggers a True Sight casting - tying him up for a round) and then made sure I hit him with a Magic Missile just about every round thereafter (I think I had a project image scroll, a sorcerer and a F/M for the occasion). It still took me heaps of reloads to do though (I think I took him at far too low a level - my sorcerer had just become lvl10 and just had access to 5th level spells).

What level are you at and have you tried the first few floors of Watchers Keep yet? - I'm thinking it might be a good venture for the arrow and potion bags before heading out to Brynnlaw.

 

I'm 10-13 (have quite some multi classes), and the first thing I did was to clear the 1st floor of WK, might attempt some more now, though, considering the sphere as well.

Swapped Jaheira for Anomen in the end anyway, for a lil extra power.

Cleared the slaver stockade today. Went surprisingly smooth with naught but a single reload. Had all my front liners improved hasted and immediately ordered them to go for the cap'n. meanwhile my casters bombarded him with lower resistance, and then mallison and finally slow. In the end he fell to steady sword swings with a constant bombardment of MMs in between my sorc and F/Ms attacks.

The Wizard wasn't a big problem either. Had my F/T sneak up on the dwarf and backstab him. afterwards I had my F/M deal with the Golem while my R/C was pounding on the wizard with FoA.

Up to Lavok in the sphere now. Doing allright, the gem and coin golems didn't prove to be too much of a problem now that I've fought a some of them before.

The halflings were a whole different matter, though!
Had my party camped near the entrance to the area and moved my R/C up alone to trigger the 'event'. Immediately had him focus on the mage as he had FoA and I didn't have a ruby ray to take down the SI: Abjuration. the rest of the party took on Torgan. The mage soon fell, so I had my R/C help with ganking Torgan. Minsc and Anomen fell. Afterwards we took on etnu, he gave me a lot of trouble and my F/T ran out of bolts, so he accidentally wandered into melee and got owned pretty hard by the pesky halfling. It was a small matter to kill the cleric when the rest was down.