Soloing a Sorceror through SCS II V.6.

[Ilyich]

Tree Irenicus and Wraith Sarevok were bug free, however the Enslaved Genie from the Greed test summoned a Pit Fiend, and they both preceded to attack each other. Details on the rest of SoA will be edited into this post when I reach ToB.

 

Edit. As far as I could tell, there were no more bugs in Hell.

[Ilyich]

Right, all the stuff up to and including the Gromnir fight was bug-free, however I have several minor critiques of the Gromnir fight, and Saradush in general. Regarding the Replace +1 weapons component, I'll just refer to affected weapons as +1 weapons for simplicity.

 

1. This has probably been mentioned hundreds of times but the majority of the guards in Saradush wield unenchanted or +1 weapons, making them unable to even hurt anyone who took the Good reward for the Fear test in Hell.

 

This is especially annoying in the Gromnir fight itself, as Eler Had, the thief with the Grandmaster's Armour, used a +1 dagger. Perhaps change his dagger to a +2 weapon so he can hurt people.

 

2. Gromnir himself, with the Vhailor's Helm component now has that helmet, along with an Ioun Stone, and Roranoch's Horn, which is curious.

 

I suggest moving Roranoch's Horn to a different enemy. Examples could include one the guardians of the Watcher's Keep seal, perhaps The Huntress from the fight with the Hive Mother, the Marilith and the others.

 

The Gromnir fight was enjoyable, taking about twice the time for his Vhailor's Simulacrum to unsummon to win.

[Ilyich]

Watcher's Keep

 

Although SCS II does not have any components that improve just the Keep, many of its components have some effect, so I'll do a floor by floor analysis in this post.

 

The 1st floor is bug free, however the Gnoll, Hobgoblin and Ogre statues get no potions or weapons, making them a non-factor in the fight.

 

The 2nd floor has one very odd bug, and although I can't think how it is an SCS II problem, I'll post it here. One of the containers in the Fire library causes a crash to desktop every time I open it, the following screenshot shows the container circled in blue: - http://tinyurl.com/6cuyye

 

Aside from that, there were no more bugs on this level. However the Chromatic Demon is still a total non-event of a fight. I believe that he needs some spells to make it more interesting. Perhaps the following would be appropriate.

 

Fire form gets Flame Strike once every 3 rounds, Air form gets Chain Lightning every 3 rounds, Ice form gets Cone of Cold every 3 rounds and Poison form gets Cloudkill every 2 rounds, as it is the weakest of the 4 spells. If possible, he should change form more often to take advantage of his abilities. If this is too time consuming to script, I apologise for suggesting it.

 

The 3rd floor is bug free, and the fights with the various demon groups are long and tough, as they should be. However, I would like for Tahazzar to let Good aligned characters get the Thieves Hood. Perhaps if you last a certain number of rounds, he declares you strong enough to fight Ka'Rashur, giving you the hood when you return, and then betraying you. He is a Baalor, after all.

 

4th floor and the rest of the Keep to follow in a different post.

[coaster]

One of the containers in the Fire library causes a crash to desktop every time I open it, the following screenshot shows the container circled in blue

 

I had the same problem on my install. It happened in one or two other places too...I can't remember one of them, but the other was on the ground floor of Kiser Jhaeri's house. I wondered if it was some graphical issue to do with the type of trap - on one instance, I managed to successfully trigger the trap and briefly got the meteor storm animation, but it crashed shortly after.

[Ilyich]

I had the same problem on my install. It happened in one or two other places too...I can't remember one of them, but the other was on the ground floor of Kiser Jhaeri's house. I wondered if it was some graphical issue to do with the type of trap - on one instance, I managed to successfully trigger the trap and briefly got the meteor storm animation, but it crashed shortly after.

 

Further progress through Watcher's Keep gave another crash on the 4th floor, with an area effect over time spell trap on a container. Strangely, Ice Storm and Horrid Wilting traps do not crash my game. I have noticed that the crashes resulting from the traps "target" being a short distance from the container, as opposed to activating instantly, like the Ice Storm floor trap on the 2nd floor.

[Jadefang]

The 3rd floor is bug free, and the fights with the various demon groups are long and tough, as they should be. However, I would like for Tahazzar to let Good aligned characters get the Thieves Hood. Perhaps if you last a certain number of rounds, he declares you strong enough to fight Ka'Rashur, giving you the hood when you return, and then betraying you. He is a Baalor, after all.

Ka'rashur actually gives the option to work for him for all alignments, except Lawful Good.

[Ilyich]

Ka'rashur actually gives the option to work for him for all alignments, except Lawful Good.

 

The pit fiend? He just attacked me when I entered his room. Tahazzar, the Baalor, had a short conversation with me, but he too attacked me for "having the stench of order."

[Ilyich]

More Watcher's Keep.

 

The 4th floor is bug free, except for the crash bug mentioned earlier. The Githyanki Encampment is now a fairly difficult fight, although only the 5 Anti-Paladins and the Captain can hurt my Berserker in melee. Regarding the Anti-Paladins, they all have identical equipment, which is as follows. Full Plate +1, which should stay, and strangely, the Unholy Reaver, an Anti-Paladin only variant of Carsomyr. Now I know that the Anti-Paladin kit from Tactics improves Githyanki somehow, so perhaps this is a Tactics thing, as opposed to SCS II. Perhaps all the Githyanki could get +2 two handed swords, and Anti-Paladins get +3 variants.

 

In contrast, the Illithid encampment is pathetic, perhaps it should have more Illithid in there, after all, Carston summons 4 Illithid and 4 Githyanki in the intro cinematic, so it is logical to assume there are equal numbers of each.

 

Lastly, the Spellcasting Demi-Lich was less difficult than Kangaxx, as he only had 1 Time Stop and very few high damage spells.

 

The 5th floor will follow soon.

[DavidW]

Watcher's Keep

 

Although SCS II does not have any components that improve just the Keep, many of its components have some effect, so I'll do a floor by floor analysis in this post.

 

The 1st floor is bug free, however the Gnoll, Hobgoblin and Ogre statues get no potions or weapons, making them a non-factor in the fight.

Vanilla game effect (I think). I'll have a look at it anyway.

 

The 2nd floor has one very odd bug, and although I can't think how it is an SCS II problem, I'll post it here. One of the containers in the Fire library causes a crash to desktop every time I open it, the following screenshot shows the container circled in blue: - http://tinyurl.com/6cuyye

Alas, it is an SCSII bug. I've just found it (I think!) - it's a problem with the way cloudkill-type spells are detected. Fixed locally.

 

Aside from that, there were no more bugs on this level. However the Chromatic Demon is still a total non-event of a fight. I believe that he needs some spells to make it more interesting.

He's untouched by SCSII as it stands - he's one of the few bosses still on my to-do list.

 

The 3rd floor is bug free, and the fights with the various demon groups are long and tough, as they should be. However, I would like for Tahazzar to let Good aligned characters get the Thieves Hood. Perhaps if you last a certain number of rounds, he declares you strong enough to fight Ka'Rashur, giving you the hood when you return, and then betraying you. He is a Baalor, after all.

 

Kind of a bit outside SCSII's remit...

[DavidW]

More Watcher's Keep.

 

The 4th floor is bug free, except for the crash bug mentioned earlier. The Githyanki Encampment is now a fairly difficult fight, although only the 5 Anti-Paladins and the Captain can hurt my Berserker in melee. Regarding the Anti-Paladins, they all have identical equipment, which is as follows. Full Plate +1, which should stay, and strangely, the Unholy Reaver, an Anti-Paladin only variant of Carsomyr. Now I know that the Anti-Paladin kit from Tactics improves Githyanki somehow, so perhaps this is a Tactics thing, as opposed to SCS II. Perhaps all the Githyanki could get +2 two handed swords, and Anti-Paladins get +3 variants.

It's a vanilla-game thing, actually!

 

In contrast, the Illithid encampment is pathetic, perhaps it should have more Illithid in there, after all, Carston summons 4 Illithid and 4 Githyanki in the intro cinematic, so it is logical to assume there are equal numbers of each.

Good idea.

 

Lastly, the Spellcasting Demi-Lich was less difficult than Kangaxx, as he only had 1 Time Stop and very few high damage spells.

 

Yeah, I wanted something interestingly different from Kangaxx. He should have three Wiltings and two Dragon's Breath's though (possibly that counts as "very few" by the time you get to your Berserker's exalted level!)

[Ilyich]

Yeah, I wanted something interestingly different from Kangaxx. He should have three Wiltings and two Dragon's Breath's though (possibly that counts as "very few" by the time you get to your Berserker's exalted level!)

 

He used 1 Timestop, 1 Dark Planetar, 1 Gate and he also has at least 1 Spellstrike.

 

 

 

Anyway, the 5th floor is also bug free, although the Death Tyrant summoned by the "green button" in the Wisdom Key test is vulnerable to Web, and the Hive Mother from the seal fight with Y'tossi didn't do much after its initial buff, until I attacked it, and it didn't follow me around like the rest of the enemies there. I didn't use the Shield of Balduran, because Hive Mothers and Elder Orbs use more arcane magic than beholder rays anyway.

 

Demogorgon to follow later.

[DavidW]

I haven't touched him: don't expect much.

[DavidW]

Yeah, I wanted something interestingly different from Kangaxx. He should have three Wiltings and two Dragon's Breath's though (possibly that counts as "very few" by the time you get to your Berserker's exalted level!)

 

He used 1 Timestop, 1 Dark Planetar, 1 Gate and he also has at least 1 Spellstrike.

That's interesting. What else did he do? His standard casting order, plus or minus a bit of randomisation, should be:

 

Timestop

Dark Planetar

Gate

Gate

Dragon's Breath

Dragon's Breath

Delayed Blast Fireball

Delayed Blast Fireball

Wilting

Wilting

 

with some breaches and soul-trapping thrown in.

Wilting

[Ilyich]

That's interesting. What else did he do? His standard casting order, plus or minus a bit of randomisation, should be:

 

Timestop

Dark Planetar

Gate

Gate

Dragon's Breath

Dragon's Breath

Delayed Blast Fireball

Delayed Blast Fireball

Wilting

Wilting

 

with some breaches and soul-trapping thrown in.

Wilting

 

 

As I recall, after his prebuff he used Time Stop, Planetar, Gate, Horrid Wilting * 3, lots of PFMW every 4 rounds, a couple of Teleport Fields and a lot of Cloudkill, Magic Missile and Flame Arrow. He also used a couple of Maze spells when I got within melee range.

[Ilyich]

Just two new components here, but I'll also cover one I've encountered quite a bit, but neglected to review. There are no bugs in any of these components that I found.

 

First, Improved Fiends is an excellent all round component, and it makes all the fiends far more effective challenges, especially Glabrezu and Baalors.

 

Second, Move the Robe of Vecna makes Azamantes the toughest Lich in the game. The only problem with this, and Liches in general, is that they fall far too easily to the 3 Undead destroying weapons. Perhaps an item tweak for these that removes the massive save penalty, or improve Liches Save vs. Death by 4, to compensate.

 

If I knew how, I'd change the items myself. What program do I use to do this? Shadowkeeper?

 

Lastly, Improved Fire Giant Lair is a fine improvement, and I have no major problems with it, however I believe that Imix needs more than 2 allies, as they fall fairly quickly. Perhaps a couple of Flaming Skulls.