Throne of Bhaal: Newbie Thoughts

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The Oasis? All I remember is having to fight a load of soldiers. Not sure how you could just 'pass through'.

Got stuck for ages fighting another one of those Lich fellows. Someone always died each time I tried. One time Nalia died and her avatar completed vanished. Finally won that one but didn't get the Lich's head I wanted to upgrade the Spectral Brand so that must be somewhere else.

Met Balthazar and now off to deal with someone called Sendai.

Big celebration! Finally, found a use for Minsc's near useless 'Tracking' skill!! In the forest, we ran out of people to fight, so Minsc cast tracking and it said there were lots of drow about. But where? So he then cast his other useless spell 'Detect Evil' and it showed that all the little woodland animals had magic resistance so he attacked a pheasant and it turned into a drow. Go Minsc!

 

Wow ! That was really cool. So roleplaying really opens some aspects of the game powergaming never seems to reach.

(In the sense of roleplaying, a good character would try to pass Oasis and not kill innocent people, using Mass Invisibility, for example, as mages there wisely do not cast True Sight by default)

 

The advantage of playing the first run through of every single 2nd ed AD&D pc game with both a paladin NPC and paladin PC is the fact that casting detect evil in every single area reveals all you need to know (smite the bad things!).

 

I still can't believe I found a use for "Tracking". That's so cool. If I was powergaming, I would never even have chosen that HLA ahead of another Greater Whirlwind.

In other thoughts, Viconia's favourite spell is now Fallen Deva. I'm not sure what a Fallen Deva actually is as the avatar is a bit blurry (I keep thinking it sounds like some sort of opera singer) but it does seem to be very effective in battle.

 

Yep it is. But a Planetar, which is the Mage equivalent of an uber-summon is way more powerful...have you tried it out with Nalia?

 

Nalia has only just got the Planetar HLA but it's really hard to fit it in because there aren't very many Level 9 spell slots.

 

The Planetar is stronger than the Deva, although both are pretty damn handy to have around. IIRC, Planetars have more innate abilities. That said, the "Summon Fallen Deva/Planetar" animation is one of my favourites in the game.

By that point in the game, I think "fight" is too strong a word... "slaughter" is more accurate, IMHO. Gives you an idea of just how powerful you are, since you can more or less butcher an entire army.

I remember doing the same thing on my first run through ToB - Valygar did the honours, though. For some strange reason, I didn't see any problem with a PC Stalker, Valygar and Minsc in the same party...

HB, this thread has become addictive; keep it up!

 

Well, hopefully I won’t have to keep this up much longer as the end of this game must be near….

We’ve just had the longest and most XP rewarding battle of the game so far. In a tunnel in Sendai’s lair we had to fight swarms of little dwarf slave things. There seemed to be an almost endless supply of them and they kept showing up in front of and behind us which made tactics a bit tricky. Mass damage spells were only partially useful because they didn’t kill the ones that came along to replace the ones that had died. So, we ended up having to rely on all our summons (Fallen Deva, Mordenkainen’s Sword, an Elemental Earth Prince, a handful of Skeleton Warriors, and even a couple of bears). I also think we must have used up almost all our healing potions and everyone was pretty much down to their last hit points by the end.

I lost track of how much XP we got but there must have been at least 50 of them and at 12,000 XP per dwarf, that’s at least 600,000 XP from one fight. Everyone in the party levelled up after that fight.

 

So there is finite amount of them? You learn something new everyday

 

I think they only stop spawning after you kill the slave master.

 

Yeah, they stop when you kill the Slavemaster.

I liked that part, I killed like 200 dwarfs and orogs the first time through because I didn't know I had to kill the Slaver.

 

Well, we breezed through the various drow and mindflayers but came up short when we finally had to face Sendai. It's pretty demoralising having to reload after almost getting through such a LONG fight. In the end, it was the Fallen Deva who was a big help on this (and I made the discovery that you are not allowed a Fallen Deva and a Planetar at the same time). Elemental Prince helped out a bit as well. Still get mixed up as to which mage-protection-removing spell to cast at which times though as Nalia has so many to choose from.

The other thing is that we are now overloaded with cool magic weapons but my characters have all the wrong proficiencies to use them properly. There are some useful looking Long Swords appearing but nobody in this party has any stars in that weapon type.

So now, on to see Abigail. Surely this game must nearly be over now.....

 

Stop fooling around with the Devas and just whip out a Planetar in every serious situation. You -do- realize he has a dispelling vorpal weapon that always hits, right? (More fun with Greater Malision!) Not to mention spells, seeing thru invisibility, etc...

 

No, I have no idea what a Planetar is or what he can do. The spell description doesn't tell me much.

 

Well, Planetar is cool, but Deva is not much worse, especially if you consider that Vic has more spell slots than Nalia.
And Nalia can cast a Dragon Breath instead.

Two mages walking in the chamber full of Drow, poof, poof, 30 Drow dead.

 

One trigger of 3 sunfires will do it as well

 

True, 9th level mage slots are precious. But Planetar gives you insects, and since he doesn't have a druid on board... Besides, Vic can load up another Energy Blades or Greater Restoration.

 

Yes, Viccy with Energy Blades is cool, I normally spare her Greater Restoration because she whines.

@ Minh Co: trigger of sunfires is my favourite, too, and it deals more damage than Dragon's Breath !But DB is party-friendly, and Sunfire's not. Therefore, for HB it's not an option.

 

Already wishing that ToB ended, eh? Can't blame you.

As to Abigail, I think he is the toughtest, non-cheating enemy you meet, so don't be a scrooge with items and spells.

 

Define "non-cheating"? He is tough, though; never underestimate anyone who's given top billing as a bad guy.

Still, I think I know what you mean, Wirhe - and I agree. There aren't too many harder fights in the game than this, although Illithids and Round Two with Kangaxx are probably worse the first time through.