True Ironman Survivors Competition (BG1 Tutu)

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I'm afraid I've begun again (what happened to the rest of you? You're not *all* dead).

Same basic concept as the last run - mage/thief, only with ridiculous stats - 18/18/18/18/8/14 - total of 94(!). Not sure why I bothered with the charisma though - only superhigh charisma seems to be rewarded at all.

Highlights thus far:

Killing Silke - scary stuff. Just me, Kagain, and Imoen. She made her save against my sleep spell, which I was kinda counting on. But then Immy disrupted her, and Kagain scored two critical hits in a row dealing ~20 damage each. Big *phew*. Imoen leveled here, as well.

Picked up Branwen, and then immediately went into the tent with the psycho mage. Stupid, I know. When he made his saves we ran for it. He hit Imoen with horror and then chased Branwen, hitting her with a melf's acid arrow - and then I realised - Imoen has all the healing potions!
Thus fell Branwen.
http://i875.photobucket.com/albums/ab314/Aikynaro/branwenalas.jpg

Into the mines - party is Kagain (1), Imoen (3), Viconia (2), and Elyea (1/2).
The bridge over the lava (why the hell is there lava in a mine, anyway? Isn't that an awful idea?) - I forgot there was a second trap and Kagain charged over it. 'twas over suddenly.
http://i875.photobucket.com/albums/ab314/Aikynaro/kagainalas-1.jpg

Had a *very* hairy moment when I failed my hide in shadows while sneaking around the kobold commando. Fortunately, a sleep spell took most of them out. First time I haven't lost someone on that bridge.

Mulahey went down easily. Xan held off the kobolds with colour spray while the rest of us beat him while he was unconscious.

Nimbul - another scary one. Got his mirror image off, and we started scattering. He caught Viconia and horrored, but she saved. Command Word Kill! - several times.
Xan steps up and gets mashed into a bloody pulp by magic missile, and seconds later we take him down.
http://i875.photobucket.com/albums/ab314/Aikynaro/xanalas.jpg

So yes - now to find a new tank, preferably one without attachments. As we have no men in the party let alone one that can beat Shar-teel, it looks like Ajantis or Kivan - might go for Ajantis, seeing I don't like him very much and so if he dies during the low levels it's not such a horrible loss. If Immy or Viconia die, I'll probably go the Minsc/Dynaheir combo again.

Update:
Aaaand Ajantis is dead. Beaten to death by an ogre just as I was thinking 'yay! flawless victory!'
http://i875.photobucket.com/albums/ab314/Aikynaro/ajantisalas.jpg

I now have Kivan, and we've killed Greywolf. Also, while recovering the boots of stealth I encountered a Mr. Bub Snikt, who is the best there is at what he does. I loled - a sign of ever increasing geekhood.

 

We aren't all dead, but the thread is looking decidedly ill. I haven't made much progress recently, but I do have an update.

As the party was hanging around the Gate, we decided to help Aldeth out at the Merchant's League. Easily done, so we cleared the Seven Suns while we were at it. Oddly, Scar seems to have disappeared from the game- he's nowhere to be found. Strange, but he isn't plot-essential.

After restoring the Tymoran priest's boy to him, we lifted Lothander's geas and received the information that Marek was hiding out at the Blushing Mermaid. Turns out that the ogre Lurze was harder than Marek himself- Kagain was a single blow away from death at one point.

We did the second of the side thief quests and then headed over to the Hall of Wonders to acquire the telescope. It seems that Alora had it in for us and shouted for the guards continuously while Safana pilfered the place. No matter- a potion of invisibility ensured her easy escape with the goods. Continuing the theme of thievery for the night, we recovered the Spellship components after an easy fight.

Side quests out of the way, we decided to get on with the plot and penetrated the Iron Throne. Obviously, the lower level barely even registered, but the top level was a different beast entirely. In order to do this, I did some pre-buffing (including Haste) and opened the fight with a Fireball from Xan's wand and a Potion of Explosions from Jaheira. The rest of the party fired various missiles while waiting for the second wave of spells. This included Animate Dead from Branwen, Horror from Xan and a Wand of Fear. In hindsight, I should have fired off this before the fireballs. The disabling spells proved to be very effective- most of the Acolytes started running around uselessly, but not before getting off two Confusions. Happily the skeletons absorbed the worst effects, but Kagain and Imoen were also affected.

The rest of the battle was, essentially, a rush to save an unresisting Kagain from being beaten into a bloddly pulp by and opposing fighter. I was pretty certain that I'd lost him, but a series of Critical Misses from the enemy allowed me to get three CLWs onto him and the day was saved.

If anyone is still playing this and gets to the Acolytes, do not underestimate them- I get the feeling that I was fortunate with the way things went off. Left to their own devices, these guys will rip your party members apart.

The final thing I did was report back to Eltan and return the Candlekeep.

 

Haven't played in the last few weeks, but picked it up yesterday.

After Firewine and doing random quests in the wilderness, time came for bandit camp.

Party killed Jinx. What irony

(Basically, my lack of micromanagment killed Jinx. We attacked the bandit camp and things were going rather good - until Minsc decided to get caught up in Dy's Stinking Cloud spell and didn't seem able to shake it off in ages. We were planning to withdraw, but stayed so he doesn't get pelted to death by arrows. The party had blocked up a narrow path in the forest and when I tried to move Jinx out of the way (Tadeush sp? was chasing her, though near dead) the rest of the party just stayed ther. I had completely forgotten that I need to move them manually out of the way, and voila. Before I even noticed, one dead wild mage.)

It makes a far better story to think that they simply eliminated the greatest cause of their misfortunes so far.

 

Well, I'll just give a brief summary of what happened with the last game - it was a while ago now.

I had a very stable party with Kivan, Imoen (dualed to mage), and Viconia. We picked up Khalid and Jaheira to help us out with the bandit camp (they were level 1, so very much arrow fodder). We cleared the place out with only Khalid dead though.

I decided to wander around a bit and level - Imoen especially was lagging behind due to the whole dual classing thing. Having the helmet of charm protection I thought 'Yeah - sirines!) and set off.

This was stupid, because beyond charming, they also have poisonous arrows. Kivan died. We fled after taking great risks to recover his equipment.

We decided to just get on with Cloakwood, picking up Coran (who is really annoying with BGNPC installed). We gained a shiny sword for ourselves and made it to the wyverns. My fantastic party was well and truly unraveling - Viconia was killed.

Picked up Faldorn and into the mines. Getting close to the bottom I decided on impulse that we should rest.
Stupid.

We were disturbed in the night by twelve archers all of which who were aiming at me. To add to the stupid, I tried casting mirror image instead of drinking an invisibility potion or even casting Shield (which probably wouldn't have saved me either - but still...).

 

I CLAIM VICTORY! *primal roar*



My entire party was dead in the first 15 seconds, but I did not despair - for I had 3 wands of fire, 4 potions of explosions, and 3 oils of fiery burning. Not to mention 4 invisibility potions, 5 oils of speed, and 10 arrows of dispelling. Not even an oshi- battle horror could bring me down!

(I actually think I didn't have near enough invisibility potions - but I couldn't find anyone in the game that I hadn't bought out their entire stock already...)

I wonder how it would have gone with my party-of-choice, who died in the Iron Throne battle which I won under similar circumstances ('oh dear, everyone is dead. Time to turn invisible and fireball the **** out of everything').

Lessons learnt:
Quayle is more useful than people give him credit for - Tiax, Garrick, and Eldoth are all completely ****ing useless though.

Kagain is a hero - he shouldn't be wasted by picking him up too early when everything is superlethal. Alas, he perished in the Iron Throne building along with Quayle.

Wands of fire along with hiding in shadows (and invisibility when that fails) is all you need to not die horrifically when all your friends are dead. Haste helps too.

The only NPCs in the game that survived (i.e. weren't recruited) were Skie, Faldorn, and Alora.

 

Well done Aikanaro!

I feel like I'm late for the party and I missed all the fun. Ironman requires both skill and luck and we all know that sometimes these are not enough to save the lives of low level adventurers.

 

Congratulations!

Feel like playing BG2 Ironman now?

 

I'm considering it I think I might wait until uni's finished though, because I really should have been doing things other than playing BG

 

Congratulations, Aik! *applauds*

 

Whoa I never believed someone can succeed! Very BIG congratulations! Now that is something I will never ever be able to accomplish, as I like SCS and other mods and my games are all trial-error and about finding the strategem which works.

 

Heh, you kept that one quiet Aik! I thought everyone had lost interest in this, so I never bothered finishing my run (the end was getting rather dull). Very sneaky.

Congratulations nonetheless.

 

Woo! Congrats Aik!

I started a run with a stalker after I posted on this thread the first time, but then things went bad no sooner than Nashkel, when that bounty hunter in the inn cast Rigid thinking on Khalid, who started killing the customers. Rep into 1 faster than you can say holy-moly and bounty hunters all over my hiney...so that was that...maybe I'll start a new run soon enough...

 

Heh - Rigid Thinking is the worst thing that can happen to you, I think - it and Confusion. In the winning ironman game I murdered people both in Nashkel and in Baldur's Gate because of them. Lots of fleeing-town happened while we ran off somewhere to desperately do some good deeds

 

Someone needs to start another one of these things.

 

How about with SCS as an AI boost? I'm down for it if a few others are.

 

Oh jeez, I wouldn't last for a minute under those circumstances. I am down for a BGtutu or BG2 ironman competition though.

 

Oh, man, the enemies in BG are just too boring and predictable without SCS. I'm happy to try the Ironman even if others don't use that mod, though!

 

Okay, so we got me and Mr. Mermaid. Any other takers? And what should be the rules?