And my classy serial killer is now level 5. Other characters are a few XP late.
As a Duergar I can now turn myself invisible? That. is. very good!
I took Luck as a feat, but it works like Tides of Chaos, it only prompt as a reaction on a fail, not an automatic ADV when I want.
I knew there would be an ambush here, and I'm using my new mushroom friend to re-animate corpses for me.
I also leveled Astarion to level 5, and took Counterspell as my unique level 3 spell. Same, I leveled Karlach to level 5 Barbarian.
I initially levelled Shadowheart to level 5 Cleric, but didn't feel inspired, so instead I recruited Wyll and made it a Monk. I'm going to test that out tonight.
I have made friends.
The poor guy is in a dire situation.
With my extended spell range I can target the torch.
Except for his two weird friends, my characters looks a lot like my character, Tymlis, in wow, with the tier 2 set.
Thank you for this rare moment of carnage, Astarion.
Two critical fail and two fails, I will not know what there is to know here.
I'm a bit tired of the Underdark, I want to meet more humanoid figures than the weirdness of the area. I might try to get back to the surface, but I also have this myconid lord following me, waiting to exact vengeance on his kin. I'm unsure I can leave him here or not.
Same for the Susurr flowers. How can I have them sent above ground without losing them?
I left the Sussur flowers in a chest, right next to the teleportation circle. With one on top of the chest. By keeping them in the Underdark I'm sure they won't get destroyed. By putting them next to a teleporter I can still access them quickly if I need to. I left one outside the chest to check if somehow items disappear if they are left too long unattended.
Now I want to see if the flower could de-activate the Selune chest I had found in the Owlbear cave. But it means I'll have to bring the chest all the way to here...
I built a ladder up to the Moonstone, trying to see if I could cancel its magic with the Sussur flower. It doesn't seem to work, but it made me realize I could just hit the gem and it might destroy the effect. I don't want to do that, as it's too good a trap to destroy.
Where did Glut go? While I was respecing Astarion to take Enhance Ability, he disappeared, damn.
Ah, here he is.
I'll leave him here for the time being.
I had the Shapeshifter's Boon equipped on Astarion while disguised, and I tried to pickpocket.
The d4 bonus didn't seem to be applied.
Wow, I crafted a Silence Dagger. This is amazing.
Now, let's see the chest. I want to grab it and bring it near the no-magic flower in the underdark, but picking it up doesn't work as it triggers the trap. I can throw it, but I still take damage.
I tried to move it on top of other containers. Moving on top of wooden boxes broke the boxes. On top of the gilded chest it refused to stay on top.
Even range attacks still triggers the trap effect.
The anti-magic field seem to be working from the flower I had inside a chest in my camp. So it didn't die. Gonna try taking the chest with me.
The upper chest contains the flower. Karlach is affected. It seems the chest is also affected, but let's try. Nope, still effective.
If we can't open it, we'll try to break it.
Seems like it worked!
Haha, you can even roast your companions in friends of NPCs.
I have so much in Sleight of Hand that my success is negative.
I discretly throw the heavy chest full of no-magic flower next to the potential hag. I'll now put my people in position, and start talking.
Ok, she didn't use a spell but used her potion, that's fair.
Why is my mini map all red?
Holy fuck, what the hell is going on here?
Oops.
What a very well written room. You can sense how the hag is lawful evil.
I'm trying to take the flock of weird creatures corrupted by the Hag by surprise.
A surprise round and a rogue later, one is down. I didn't turn invisible by killing him, though.
Because they were already engaged only with Naeblys, I was able to move (actually jump), Wyll above their head to reach the spellcaster in the back.
Astarion could put two to sleep, thanks to the initial damage done by Karlach and Wyll.
Wait wait wait what. The hag can take control of her pawn and just like that remove their Sleeping condition?
Thankfully Wyll did kill them quickly.
I think I only looted one corps. Why do I have that many masks?
The weird potions I found on the hag laboratory would make great things to throw at people.
Whoops. I thought breaking the cage would allow me to catch Mayrina when she would be falling. Seems not, and I just sent her to her death. Well, too bad.
Jumping genius Karlach, and her aura of spellcasting death is running toward the Hag.
Seems like she can do things that are not spells. I'm keeping the chest close to my chest though, but now I need to find which is the real one.
I also realize I never was prompted for a Counterspell. Maybe they weren't spells?
She's almost down. I could have shoved her in the river below, but I want to loot her. I tried to put her to sleep, but I couldn't target her.
Oh, she's asking for me not to kill her. That's interesting. This game is sooooo deep.
Oooooh. Too bad it's on Karlach, I would have taken it on Naeblys no questions asked.
Oh, I can actually chose who will have it.
Let's got for DEX+1
Well, I didn't kill the hag, didn't loot her and killed the young lady I was supposed to save. I'm not sure I got the best part of this deal.
She had a coffin protected in her backyard with one Connor Vinderblad in it...
And a... wand? With Connor written on it.
Oh, it was her husband. Can I reanimate him?
Hmm, doesn't seem possible.
I tried the wand I found on her desk, seems to be a Wand of Resurrection?
I don't know what to do with Connor, so I'll put it in a ribcage and send him to camp.
Seems like wearing the mask allows me to see more than usual?
Seems like wearing the mask somehow disabled the traps?
And sure enough, it disabled the door.
And that got me to the Underdark, to the part I came earlier.
Back to the surface I stole back something I had sold in the past, that might be helpful on Wyll now.
I also combines items I had lying around to make a new spear.
Let's see if I can steal this now.
Let's see if we can pull this off and leave with the consequences of failure if not. I fired arrows of darkness at the base of the idol, and attempt to hide in it.
From the top down view and the debuff, I'm pretty sure I'm in the radius. Now, will I be able to pick the thing?
Now I'm hiding, I can clearly see that I am not in their cones of vision.
Ok, I managed to take it. And just for fun replaced it with one of Selune. Throwing them off. Now, I need to get away from here quickly.
Thankfully, as a Duergar I can turn invisible. It's written once "per battle", but I wasn't in a fight. Maybe activating turn-based was enough. This means I could have a free invisibility whenever I want, all I need is activating turn-based mode.
Wait wait wait, a Druid started running at the end of the turn. Maybe she saw something.
Maybe because I lost my invisibility. Not sure if because I used Click Heels, or because it was the end of my turn.
Hmm, seems I lose Invisibility if I walk into water or out of it.
Oops. They started attacking everyone! Ok, they were evil druid anyway, gonna fight them all I guess now.
But ahem, I forgot to take a rest... I'm tapped out.
I could see stuff happening in my log in real time while I was handling fights in turn-based mode. People are getting killed and there is nothing I can do.
Ok, the fuckery has started.
I'm killing the druid quickly, but the Tiefling also die.
I found the archdruid!
I got the druid caught in the anti-magic field. This should make the fight easier.
Looks like the bonus of both weapons are applied, even if you attack only with one. I was doing a main hand attack, and the target still had to save against Fly Trap. I'll now have to test if explicitly hitting with the off-hand also does the additional cold damage of the main hand. I'll also need to check if attacking with Naeblys main hand also silence the target from the dagger in the offhand.
Why are they all around me like this? Aren't they supposed to be friendly tieflings?
Oh, I got it. She got Mad. Shit, it's because I had her drink a Potion of Haste, she turned Lethargic at the end of the effect, and because she didn't hit anyone, the Yeenoghu curse hit... I'll have to remember to not haste her again.
What the fuck Karlach. You mad-woman, you threw a Smokepowder bomb in melee, while your body is made of flames! No wonder you killed all the innocent tieflings.
I got some nice 1XP here and there, and she's still mad!
Stop that! Stop hitting her, she'll kill you!
I cast a Ray of Frost on her and put her to sleep.
I also put one of the tiefling to sleep. Pfiuu.
I knocked out the remaining Tiefling, don't want to kill them. But this one is hidden behind a close door I can't open, so I'll misty step to her.
Oh shit no, I'm in the Anti-Magic zone, I can't cast it. And Karlach is sleeping.
I had to cast Hold Person on her and fly above the wall. All those spells just because she couldn't stop attacking.
I can pickpocket the chest out of Karlach. I'll throw it far away.
Pfiuu, thanks for that!
So, how many survivors?
What's funny is that having this in my backpack grants Sylvanus Blessing to everyone around me. Proficiency in Nature and Animal Handling.
I wonder if it stacks with this.
Wow, shit. I won't be able to repair the heart? Well, one has to learn to live with the consequences of his actions I guess.
My test thing doesn't seem to work. I gave her Sylvanus' Blessing, but she has no Reverberation.
Survivors:
- Lakrissa
- Bored Ox
- Hungry Ox
Another quest "completed".
Ah shit, that one is a sting. Zevlor is dead, so he won't be able to give me the sweet XP for this quest.
Well, they're all dead except for one. And the goblins have always been very civil to me and never attacked me, so I didn't think they would be the one bothering the grove...
I still need to find Haslin, though.
Well, not really, they're actually still here and preventing me from looting the corpses.
Well, if I can't resurect Dammon, at least he could still be useful.
I put most of the bodies in the evidence chest.
My main issue with having everyone dead is that I no longer have any merchant to sell my stuff too, except the ones in the Underdark (but I'll kill those soon as well).
Well, and that Mol seems to also be dead, so I can't even validate the quest of stealing the idol. Well, I wonder if I shouldn't reload. I'm fine with living with the consequences, unless it makes quests buggy. Here Mol is dead but that wasn't supposed to happen. I might just reload and do it the right way...
So, let's start over and confront Khaga first.
Wow, well done, I didn't see that coming, didn't know they were that close. This is kind of little details you take for flavor that suddenly turns to be very important for the story that I like.
Oh, good. First ever use of Counterspell. This would have forced me to have DIS on all attacks (so, no Sneak Attack, good spell against a Rogue), or incur 2d8 fire damage each turn. Let's cancel this.
I then had Karlach send the Chest of Anti-Magic on top of Kagha. This will probably help.
Fly Trap (off-hand) keeps proccing when I only attack with the hand. It doesn't seem to have the same effect on Naeblys. Is it due to the weapon or because Wyll is a dual wielder?
This will go well with Karlach. She's already healing herself whenever she hits. And each time she will now do more damage.
Finishing Mol's quest gave me a +1 Ring.
Wait, why would the goblin care about the idol?
Oh, because the Goblin is a druid, of course.
I bit the toe of a goblin off, and now they are attacking me. Gonna try to kill the four of them by myself. The chief had to yield to my prowesses.
haha, a book about spirits
Oh, so there's a dragon. Can I pickpocket that thing?
I managed to throw the anti-magic chest next to the dragon at least.
Oh, while I'm at it, here are two things I need to test:
- Can I put the anti-magic flower into a spellcaster pocket in advance of a fight, to prevent them from casting?
- Can I knock out a NPC, pickpocket their weapons, and give them the Flail of Madness, and hope they will equip it and start attacking their friends?
Well, seems like I can't. Seems like this message is an auto-fail when the creature can't be pickpocketed.
I put two cats to distract them, they don't seem to react. Maybe it's time to invoke the Ogres?
At least I can see they have some quest items.
How can I check that much? Well it's because of the amazing free Duergar invisibility.
Well, considering her name and the size of her sword, I assume she will drop it if killed. None of my characters yield two-handed weapons, so I'll pass, though.
Oh wait, this one is level 12. Shit.
Well, I pickpocketed him anyway. I should have waited for the start of the next turn, though...
Let's call the Ogres.
Oh, and I also opened the flask, that invoked a SPectator, but he didn't had time to move that the Gith had killed it.
Ok, ok, ok. That's an interesting challenge. Can I kill this party at my current level?
I tried to reverse pickpocket them to add heavy stuff in their inventory to make them encumbered, but it seem I cannot add stuff that would be above their weight limit.
They also do not react on pickpocket, they don't try to chase me.
So, I want to see if I can isolate myself above ground and make them stuck below ground. I stacked stuff in the way, hoping they won't be able to come.
I broke the ladder on this side.
I also blocked passage here, and access to the ladder.
I buggued the rock face here. Whenever I try to climb up, it plays a looping climb down animation.
I just hope they're not clever enough to jump because I don't have much protection against that.
Physics can be weird.
So, as soon as I attacked, the leader and his dragon flew away. But, when I invoked an hostile creature (like the spectator, they stayed here and attacked it). Hmm, maybe if I invoke the hostile one far enough away so it triggers a fight, they will stay and I can attack them?
The other have some kind of Misty Step mechanism, but they don't seem to use it correctly. When they do, I can shove them back down.
Well, they can jump and use Misty Step. Still, better to have them here.
I made Astarion cast Fear on her, she dropped her weapon. Maybe that could work on the master one before he can flee?
What the? Even with the blessing Karlach attack me?
Fucking crazy Karlach, when she's made she's throwing whatever she has, and more often than not it's smokepowder bombs!
I managed to win the fight and I saved, but I'll reload the save from before and see if I can kill Voss.
First, I need to extract some more Sussur flowers from the Underdark. I had manage to remove one, but I'm not suceeding in removin the others now.
So, I have one Sussur plant in a gilded chest. I'm sending the chest to camp and going to camp.
Hmm, it has withered.
If I go directly above ground, they all wither. If I send one directly to camp, it withers as well. If I put three in the chest, only one withers.
Stacking three made them all wither...
I played with the chest of the mundane, to transform them into mundane items.
Sending the mundane items to camp seem to keep the field active.
Well, two withered and two stayed mundane.
But when I went above ground, even the two mundane turned to petals...
It seems that there is something with the number of flowers.
Putting one flower in the chest, sending the chest to camp and then opening in camp kept the flower as a flower, but wthout its power.
Even on the ground, it doesn't do anything.
The powerless one doesn't even stack with the others.
I didn't dream it, I did manage to take one sussur flower with me, it's in a chest and it is not losing its power.
Putting two in a stack, and two isolated allowed me to keep the two stacked.
Well, the simplest just worked. Just stack the 4 in a gilded chest, send chest to camp, teleport above ground, go to camp, pick it up, and get back on the overworld.
And with that, I'll be ready to lay my trap.
The goal is to have Karlach jump on the other side of the bridge and invoke an hostile monster from there. Or have Astarion and his distant spell create one there. Hopefully it will put Voss into turn-based combat, so we can attack him and he can't flee. If we attack him directly, he flees, but if an hostile creature is around, he seem to stay. Maybe invoking the Ogres might work. I need just enough monsters to be able to act.
Other way might be to put Susurr flowers everywhere so they can't cast spells, and maybe add explosive barrels as well?
So, the goal will be to reverse pickpocket the flowers in the NPC pockets, and see how I can get Karlach on the other side.
Let's do some tests. This is Karlach default jump distance.
Annd this is with the Swisery Boots.
I'll actually use bottles to mark how far I jump.
Doubling my movement speed doesn't have any impact on the jump distance.
I checked if I could use Dimension Door to send Karlach on the other side, but the radius is not good enough. I might have to get closer, but it might just trigger the cutscene.
Jump triples my distance, which makes it pretty far, but requires an action to cast, so I would need to cast that before going stealthy.
Hmm, the distance seem to be ok, but it's telling me the target is invalid.
I reverse pickpocketed the flowers in their inventories, then I blew the horn. Hoping the Ogres would attack them and it would initiate combat.
Seems like Lump just stayed there, not even moving or turning hostile.
Let's try the Iron Flask now...
Ok, so it appeared, but doesn't seem to initiate a fight. Yet.
I jumped in the river, which killed me, but when my soul came back, it counted as me interacting with Voss and he flew away. I might need to invoke the Spectator closer to him, so he would attack, and I remove my invisibility so I'm part of the fight maybe.
Also, I want to see if I can throw things on the other side of the bridge.
I tried to get another vantage point, from another roof, but seems I can't jump on that.
Yep, definitely not possible.
I managed to get there with Dimension Door, but still, seems not possible to then go down on the other side of the bridge. I'm too far to animate dead, or invoke a monster from here.
And by panning the camera, it seems that the other side of the bridge is supposed to be off-limits, I don't think I can actually go there.
I could conjure Ice Mephits through a scroll, and the Gith did not react to them...
They can create an area to make creatures prone. If I target the ground it's ok.
But if they walk on it, they need to save.
It turns to mud after a while, but I can target the ground next to a creature and they will save. If I target them they will surely attack.
Ok, so once Voss failed his save, it started the battle. And he immediatly teleported away.
I also uncorked the bottle far from Voss, and the Spectator just stayed there. I attacked it, it made Voss see me and start his cutscene. I will now try to uncork in Voss cone of vision. Hmm, Voss didn't attack. Everybody else attacked, on their own different turn order, but not Voss.
Let's not try to uncork right in front of him and attack him. If it does not work, I'll try to create a ring of barrels around him so his friends can't come to help.
Attacking him while he was attacking the Spectator did 0 damage, and 0 of Sneak Attack, and triggered the dialogue cutscene. And... somehow crashed the game. Ok, I think I will have to do the fight normally, and not bother with him. I'll just open the fight with a Fear spell, in case I manage to get him drop his weapon, though.
Well, I can't drag a barrel from my inventory to the ground without breaking invisibility. Dropping it as well. Moving it on the overworld does the same. Throwing it from afar could work, but barrels break when I throw them, I will need heavier chest.
Ok, from now on, I'll keep the very heavy chests and send them to camp!
Pickpocketing something out of him does trigger the dialog, so I think my Sussur plant is lot on him. No problem, I still have 4 others, and it will be fun if next time I encounter him he can't cast spells.
I stole a Divine Bone Shard from him before he flew, and he didn't order his retinue to attack me. Maybe I should attack them still.
Ah shit, they start running away, I couldn't engage before they dissappeared. I want to kill them! I reloaded and try to attack them after they tried to run, but it didn't turn them hostile. I didn't manage to kill them before they disapeared.
I tried firing an arrow of darkness, to be hidden from view from Voss, but it turned everyone hostile and had Voss flee. But it didn't break my invisibility, weirdly enough.
So, firing arrows of Darkness on the floor does not break invisibility! But Fire, Cold, Lightning, etc. Every other arrow I try did break it. Interesting!
I tried to put the darkness fog right on the edge of Voss. My hope is that maybe if I turn visible after pickpocketing him, I might still be hidden from view.
YES! That worked I can steal everything from him without triggering the cutscene. I'll still leave the Sussur flower as a present.
I attacked them, but because I closed all issues and prevented them from using their spells, they don't know what to do.
I continued back to the goblin camp. I stealthed my way to the backroom. Lots of treasure here.
In it there is an amulet to cast a Heal cantrip that can put an ally to sleep...
ADV if surrounded by 2+ creatures. Good one.
And boots similar to the boots of speed.
I'm trying to test this. I throw a healing potion to Karlach, and she had an effect displayed as "Dipped in Poison".
Her weapons seem to only add +1d4 though. I did try again on another weapon, and it seems to only be 1d4, not 1d6.
So yes, this was displayed in the log. It's really, only 1d4.
And it stays like this for a time limit, not a number of hits.
It also works if I heal myself with a potion.
All of that when drinking a potion. Blessed, and poison on my weapons, in addition to the healing.
I now need to test if it works with the Yeenoghu flail. But it doesn't seem to trigger outside of combat, attacking friendly creatures.
Anyway, I kept exploring with my rogue and only him.
But attacking with the flail doesn't trigger the poison and bless parts. So I might switch to another weapon and simply use healing potions as enhanced Bless+Poison potions.
I decided that being the Dark Urge really lends it to an evil playthrough. So I'm going to side with Minthara and kill everyone at the Grove. Actually, find ways to kill every single living being here is a good goal.
For that, I'll need to swap Wyll and Karlach, the two good-aligned characters with more evil ones. Shadowheart as a Shadow Monk, and Lae'zel as a Barbarian.
I've once again been swallowed by the respec dark hole. Shadowheart is now a Shadow monk, and I'll have Lae'zel as a Battlemaster instead. I intend to pick Minthara later as a Gloomstalker to go full shadow-themed group.
I've also played with the meta setup. I updated my laptop to fire BG3 at startup, with a custom flag to skip the launcher and directly load the latest save game. I added a mod to skip the logo animation as well.
I also added a mod to enlarge the size of containers display.
And another to have custom containers that auto-pick items of a specific kind, and auto-stack them.
After two evening spent installing mods, respecing and re-configuring hotbars and keybindings, I came to the conclusion that the game is getting too easy. I might be over-leveled for where I am, but I like to kill everyone and do all the quests.
The hardest fight I ever did was the first one against the hurt intellect devourer. Since then, everything just got simpler and simpler.
So I decided that I will try to finish act 1 with only three characters. I'm going to ditch Lae'zel. I could ditch Astarion, but it means losing access to Cat's Grace (which is basically all he's good at right now). I could also ditch Shadowheart but that would mean not having a tank, so having to bypass all fights through guile and exploits. That could be fun, but I want to have some of the story unfold in my first playthrough.
I'll probably do a solo run later. Maybe one where my only goal is to assassinate the other tadpole-infected people and grow my Illithid powers. One where I avoid most of the fights and focus on the big bads.
And here we go. I've played fine without a healer for some time, I can now ditch the second tank. Maybe I'll add Minthara as a Gloom Stalker later, but we'll see, game is easy enough as it is.
I decided to turn on the tieflings at the Grove, and embrace my inner urge of killing everyone. The Absolute seems as good a god as any, as long as she gives me power.
Oh, and the Psionic Backlash Reaction is great, I can inflict 1d4 damage per spell level as a reaction when someone casts a spell.
Wait, he one-shot Shadowheart?
One Hellish Rebuke the turn before, and that Divine Smite after. That's brutal.
I tried Survival Instinct on Shadowheart that was already down, but it didn't heal her.
Looks like reinforcements are on their way. I should kill them as well!
I'm "allied" with those goblins BUT I'll still add a flaming sphere in the tunnel, hey.
haha, not sure how I did that but I managed to get the goblin to turn on each other (but thankfully, Minthara stayed allied).
I like the damage Shadowheart is doing. Her staff does 1d8 + 1d4 cold. Whenever I do cold damage, I do +1. I have a ring for +2 damage. I have dipped my weapon in fire. And if I drink a healing potion, I also add 1d6 poison damage.
Done!
Two Duergars, followers of the Absolute are on a boat.
You, what? You're a duergar yourself you idiot.
Don't you run that fast, you have nice loot for me.
Two are simple weapons with no special effect. One deals additional Radiant Damage, which is good. Last one can frighten, and has bonus against Frighten. There might be a good synergy for when I'll make Astarion a Sorlock later.
I'm exploring the Duergar fortress.
I couldn't open the door, but I could fire an arrow that would push the chest down. There is still a skeleton behind the door though.
Well, throwing a smokepowder bomb at the gargoyle worked.
Maybe I should get back the idol of Selune I left at the Grove
Wow, this is a lot of damage. Keeping that for bosses.
Haha, she realized I picked her stuff. So brilliant.
And WOW. Even better once dead. This is the stuff.