IA v6 Final

[Erian]

Hmm.Explored high lvl classes via shadowkeeper.R/C combo boosted(foreknowledge,animal summoning with sikrets anakondas,disrupt undead).Auramaster boosted(druids much less so).Mages(except necros and sorcs),specialy illusionists,busted to oblivion.Riskbreaker greatly upped(now he is a bit more powerfull then kensai on high lvls),though i dont like means it was made so.

Played for few hours(thanks to saros and geh4th) with vanila NPCs with Yoshimo(slot for Imoen).Liked new undead a lot,they are much more challenging.Tryed Firkraag,now hes not a pushover,like before(it was odd to had ancient red dragon to be much more less powerfull than his minion).Will think about swaping Keldorn for Minsk,since avenger is now not early avaliable.Dragon silence is pain in ass,but i fail to see how Cernd will be more usefull than Aerie in late game.Playing with vanila NPC became very interesting,mostly due to shifted balance of classes.

P.S.Btw Saros,in few reloads of trying to beat Firkraag i havent ecountered your dispel potions effect.Maybe it was Sicrets anticheat measure against multistacking potions.

P.S.S.Sorry for bad english

[geh4th]

Some comments:

 

For a riskbreaker, the only defense against a grandlord is near 100% physical resistance - and you're not going to get this without using potions of barbarian essence. Word of advice: DO NOT waste these potions. In v6 you'd better save most of these potions for the battle with Orcus. (especially you, Saros.) Plan more on killing grandlords fast and healing the damage that was done in the meantime (often via liberal usage of Greater Restoration and/or Risk Decrement).

 

In any battle with grandlords, I always put top priority on killing them first over literally any other target. Unlike most IA monsters they don't resist crushing damage well and while they deal out massive damage, they CAN be gang-tackled and killed by a group of high-level warriors fairly quickly.

 

The "blocking the entrance" type of guy should be someone with stoneskins or ironskins, hopefully allowing others to strike beyond him to hit the bad guys. I used the tight quarters and restrictive positioning to very good effect in the Planar Sphere engine room - using the RC and another guy with stoneskins I managed to kill the golems without taking any serious damage, since they literally couldn't hit my people through the 'skins.

 

Decoy" characters: like Saros, I disagree that mages do the best. As he pointed out, enemies with Polyethelene scripting in IA tend to switch targets away from anyone they can't hit. This pretty much ALWAYS happens for PC's under PFMW, but in my experience they don't consider a stoneskinned character "unhittable". The monsters obediently remain and try to remove the 'skins. The problem with a mage decoy is that mages normally have better things to do than get into melee range and have to worry about re-casting stoneskins. Bad timing = dead mage. A Fighter-Mage serves this role much better (since he wants to be in melee anyways), but can still end up vulnerable in certain situations and still has lots of spells to think about to keep himself effective. I preferred using F/M types as a "nyah nyah nyah, you can't hit me if you don't de-buff me" type of guy. This role has the effect of occupying enemy mage's attentions quite a lot.

 

This is why I preferred my RC for the role of "Meatshield"; he has only a few in-battle spells to think about. Ironskins, Greater Restoration...not much else. It's pretty easy to refresh the ironskins no matter how many times it's knocked down. It's also why I vastly prefer the R/C over the Berserker/cleric. Defense trumps offense in this case.

 

Mantle, Improved Mantle, Absolute Immunity: I didn't ever use the first two, there's always better things to use at 7th and 8th levels. Not to mention, PFMW is better. Absolute Immunity is similarly inferior to PFMW most of the time, but there are late-game battles with certain creatures who (individually) have multiple attacks that are both magical AND non-magical. PFMW doesn't stop these attacks, but Absolute Immunity does.

 

I don't know if the casual observer is aware, but the 5th level spell Protection from Normal Weapons was removed from Improved Anvil. Just FYI.

[Ardanis]

Regarding powerful skeletons: A Skeleton Grandlord is going to hit ANYONE regardless of AC. Period. These things have a THACO of something like -22 (I haven't looked it up recently but it is completely obscene). It's almost impossible to have an AC good enough to NOT get hit - the max AC is something like -26, so if I was right and their THACO is -22, that means a roll of 5+ hits. Fighters: good luck with that.

They have -4 base, 24 STR (+6), +4 sword and GM proficiency, totally -16. You need AC of -26 to negate it completely, toss in Golden Belt to be sure.

Relevant for v5 though...

[Saros]

Some comments:

 

For a riskbreaker, the only defense against a grandlord is near 100% physical resistance - and you're not going to get this without using potions of barbarian essence. Word of advice: DO NOT waste these potions. In v6 you'd better save most of these potions for the battle with Orcus. (especially you, Saros.) Plan more on killing grandlords fast and healing the damage that was done in the meantime (often via liberal usage of Greater Restoration and/or Risk Decrement).

 

The "blocking the entrance" type of guy should be someone with stoneskins or ironskins, hopefully allowing others to strike beyond him to hit the bad guys. I used the tight quarters and restrictive positioning to very good effect in the Planar Sphere engine room - using the RC and another guy with stoneskins I managed to kill the golems without taking any serious damage, since they literally couldn't hit my people through the 'skins.

 

Decoy" characters: like Saros, I disagree that mages do the best. As he pointed out, enemies with Polyethelene scripting in IA tend to switch targets away from anyone they can't hit. This pretty much ALWAYS happens for PC's under PFMW, but in my experience they don't consider a stoneskinned character "unhittable". The monsters obediently remain and try to remove the 'skins. The problem with a mage decoy is that mages normally have better things to do than get into melee range and have to worry about re-casting stoneskins. Bad timing = dead mage. A Fighter-Mage serves this role much better (since he wants to be in melee anyways), but can still end up vulnerable in certain situations and still has lots of spells to think about to keep himself effective. I preferred using F/M types as a "nyah nyah nyah, you can't hit me if you don't de-buff me" type of guy. This role has the effect of occupying enemy mage's attentions quite a lot.

 

That resistance (and above) could be achieved in IA 5.0 by using the Cloak of the Sewers. Rat form, dispel magic to free weapon hands, and Hardiness on top of that (or in case of characters with UAI - Jansen's Adventurewear). However, I think Sikret made modifications to the forms of the cloak. Will go and test it now.

 

I am the last guy who will waste potions of Barbarian essence. I tended to use them in no-reload games only, and in the last battle on top of that. Will even try to win Orcus no-reload without their help, although I doubt it will be possible to figure out a strategy without them.

 

As a side note - have you fought Orcus when PC's experience is above 8 150 000? What are the differences? The bigg mentioned about that a few pages back - that Orcus gets a different script if PC's xp is too high.

 

In my battle on WK lvl 1 random monster spawn, things were like that: block entrance with two proMW mages. Make room for 1 monster to enter. Close the entrance with the mage - that's more like a living door than a wall actually. Attack the lone monster with the R/C. When he occupies the attention of the monster - attack with the rest. And HERE is where the monster surprised me. It actually changed targets, tried to hit anyone hitting it. Well 4 vs 1 - the outcome is clear even with some wounds, but this was my surprise that the R/C decoy didn't work. Same happens with summons decoy btw.

 

I have played enough with F/M types for now that's why I'm lacking one now and took Valygar instead. As for enemy mage's attention - I know how to occupy their attention and to have them cast exactly what I want.

 

As for Skeleton Grandlords - they're not frightening when all party fighters have a decent +4 crushing weapon. The current problem is that party has NONE, since such weapons in chapter 2-3 are only two, now that the Treefolk's Arm has been nerfed, and to make ONE of those +4 weapons I need a permanency scroll located on lvl 2 of WK Ironic, huh ?

Fought these for a long time, know their immunities and vulnerabilities. Didn't know their damage output though

 

@Erian: I am positive about the potion dispellation thing. It isn't announced, because actually Sikret doesn't want it to be. It's a pure cheat, set exactly vs stacking resistance (and maybe other types of) potions and probably green protection scrolls.

 

As for Aerie vs Cernd - it's very easy to point out why Cernd is far better:

Cernd has enormous quantity of spells

Cernd is immune to silence, making him able to stand vs Dragons and Grave Liches and debuff

Cernd has reduced casting time by 3 with the Golden Circlet

Cernd actually has a powerful crushing-damage dealing ability at high levels

Cernd has munchkin items.

Cernd has Improved Alacrity.

Edit: Nearly forgot. Cernd's powerful buffs at higher levels cannot be dispelled via Remove/Dispel Magic. And also, his Dispel Magic has great chance of debuffing. Even if Aerie acquires Remove Magic, she will never dispel anything. Except Mirror Image and enemy potion buffs.

 

All of these Aerie has not - well unless she finds a scroll of Bigby's Crushing hand late in the game.

[Erian]

As for Aerie vs Cernd - it's very easy to point out why Cernd is far better:

Cernd has enormous quantity of spells

Cernd is immune to silence, making him able to stand vs Dragons and Grave Liches and debuff

Cernd has reduced casting time by 3 with the Golden Circlet

Cernd actually has a powerful crushing-damage dealing ability at high levels

Cernd has munchkin items.

Cernd has Improved Alacrity.

Edit: Nearly forgot. Cernd's powerful buffs at higher levels cannot be dispelled via Remove/Dispel Magic. And also, his Dispel Magic has great chance of debuffing. Even if Aerie acquires Remove Magic, she will never dispel anything. Except Mirror Image and enemy potion buffs.

 

All of these Aerie has not - well unless she finds a scroll of Bigby's Crushing hand late in the game.

And Aerie has restorations,mage spell and combat defences(PfMW,illusions,free stoneskins,a lot of usefull party buffs from arcane school,spell shields,spell immunities and so on).

The only REAL trouble is a lack of silence immunity (and somewhat munchkin items) and since i usually give her a robe of vecna(quick placed buff or heal is much more then quick summon or dispel)...

And auramaster has too low surviveability in mid-late game for pure caster.

[Saros]

And Aerie has restorations,mage spell and combat defences(PfMW,illusions,free stoneskins,a lot of usefull party buffs from arcane school,spell shields,spell immunities and so on).

The only REAL trouble is a lack of silence immunity (and somewhat munchkin items) and since i usually give her a robe of vecna(quick placed buff or heal is much more then quick summon or dispel)...

And auramaster has too low surviveability in mid-late game for pure caster.

 

Don't wanna disappoint you, but Aerie's gonna have quite a lot of time to reach her high-level divine and arcane spells.

 

If you lack another arcane caster and intend to give Aerie the Vecna robe, I think you're going wrong somewhere, probably in the party composition. I wouldn't go with just Aerie and another mage as arcane support, especially in a no-reload run. Aerie is too weak. Too many mages use PW: Kill, and she's always in the range.

 

Cernd, although lacking ProMW, has a ton of Ironskins. He also has a lot of buffs, and his HLA is similar to Heal, but can be cast from a distance and in his case, the casting cost is practically 0 (it's actually 3, but with the reduced casting time...). InstaHeal.

 

I haven't played an Auramaster actually, but I think that the comparison is obvious. Try both, if you don't trust me. Besides, acquiring that particular spell scrolls (especially Spell Shield) is gonna take quite some time. Illusions are overrated in IA 6.0, and due to Aerie's few slots, she won't be able to make many party members Improved Invisible when it matters. Her 4-th level slots aren't that much for her to keep both Stoneskins and II. Aerie can be a decent fighter for a couple of rounds with her buffs, but that's about it. Cernd, while no fighter, is a great caster. Aerie is neither for a very long part of the game.

 

Just did some more testing. Results:

 

After resurrection, RB doesn't regain all special abilities. So the exploit is unavailable.

 

Chaotic Commands is invaluable vs enemies that use Knockback or vs Dragon's Wing buffet. Cancels Unconsciousness effect.

 

The Cloak of the Sewers' Rat form grants only 30% resistance to physical damage. Still, if a Barbarian (lvl 19 or higher) turns into a rat, his innate 20% resistances are added to the sum, and he has 50%. With Hardiness on top of that, the result is 90%. And with some sort of Regeneration (best if the Clerical spell is cast) this is the perfect tank for absorbing melee damage. Golems, skeletons, whatever.

 

Just as a side note, this means that a Fighter/Thief multi (if Use Any Item is still available to them - haven't checked) can reach 100% physical resistance, wearing Jansen's Adventurewear, the monk's amulet (Master of Disciplines), turned into rat + Hardiness. Of course, for a normal run, this can be achieved quite late in the game. And F/T multi are not that strong anyways because permanent Improved haste has been removed from the Grandmaster of Assassins dagger.

[geh4th]

Saros: don't you have Phosphorus? If not, what have you used your permanency scrolls on? This weapon is easily forgable before a typical IA party leaves for spellhold, and commonly assigned to a riskbreaker.

 

Regarding Aerie: IMO she's got too few hitpoints to survive many, if not most, later IA battles. She's so fragile that she'd always have to have certain buffs in place (PfME in particular) and she would likely die as soon as they are dispelled (ADHW is deadly to her.) She'd never be very useful in melee and as a caster she's good support but her skills are easily replacable by more useful characters. The multiclass factor means that she'll be severely restricted in gaining high-level spells.

 

Orcus: I didn't have that much XP when I faced him. Sorry, I'm unable to provide info on what happens if you're over that. I'm certain that it's a specifically anti-Saros measure, though - and I'm betting that it makes the encounter nearly impossible.

 

I believe that Use Any Item has been significantly nerfed. IIRC some thief class combos don't get it at all; for those that have it, you can't use many class-only or individual-only items with it. I'm certain that this applies to all forged upgrade items, but it might not apply to a vanilla item such as Jansen's Adventurewear.

[Erian]

And Aerie has restorations,mage spell and combat defences(PfMW,illusions,free stoneskins,a lot of usefull party buffs from arcane school,spell shields,spell immunities and so on).

The only REAL trouble is a lack of silence immunity (and somewhat munchkin items) and since i usually give her a robe of vecna(quick placed buff or heal is much more then quick summon or dispel)...

And auramaster has too low surviveability in mid-late game for pure caster.

 

Don't wanna disappoint you, but Aerie's gonna have quite a lot of time to reach her high-level divine and arcane spells.

 

If you lack another arcane caster and intend to give Aerie the Vecna robe, I think you're going wrong somewhere, probably in the party composition. I wouldn't go with just Aerie and another mage as arcane support, especially in a no-reload run. Aerie is too weak. Too many mages use PW: Kill, and she's always in the range.

 

Cernd, although lacking ProMW, has a ton of Ironskins. He also has a lot of buffs, and his HLA is similar to Heal, but can be cast from a distance and in his case, the casting cost is practically 0 (it's actually 3, but with the reduced casting time...). InstaHeal.

 

I haven't played an Auramaster actually, but I think that the comparison is obvious. Try both, if you don't trust me. Besides, acquiring that particular spell scrolls (especially Spell Shield) is gonna take quite some time. Illusions are overrated in IA 6.0, and due to Aerie's few slots, she won't be able to make many party members Improved Invisible when it matters. Her 4-th level slots aren't that much for her to keep both Stoneskins and II. Aerie can be a decent fighter for a couple of rounds with her buffs, but that's about it. Cernd, while no fighter, is a great caster. Aerie is neither for a very long part of the game.

 

My aerie role is healer/buffer/secondary summoner/tertiary dispeller(i usually have 2-3 arcane casters,2 diviners and 3-4 melee fighters).

And you forgetting something.While ironskins is a good spell,5 lvl divine have a lot of other useful spells to fill(and since other cleric is usually on the front line,his slots are filled with more melee combat oriented spells,and if i go for custom R/C its more so).

And i prefer to give Aerie Vecna intentionally,even if i have other arcane casters.As i wrote in previous post,its much better to have heal/buff/ress to be cast more quickly,than to have dd or summon to be cast that way,specially since i have magic heavy group.

 

 

To geh4th

 

Quite funny in most cases Aerie survives a lot more,than most of other characters(EDE with 2 reloads in first try).Fast death ward,PfME,sometimes mirror image.I keep her almost purely for support.In that role she is invaluable.I tried to find alternative for с/m for my party,but closest is only auramaster and he is not even nearly this good endgame.For other alternatives its either too low survivability to cast anything sensible(fighter-druid builds,fighter-cleric builds) as support,or unbalanced party which makes game much more harder.

[temujin]

enemies with Polyethelene scripting in IA

 

 

Oh dear.

[Saros]

Saros: don't you have Phosphorus? If not, what have you used your permanency scrolls on? This weapon is easily forgable before a typical IA party leaves for spellhold, and commonly assigned to a riskbreaker.

 

Regarding Aerie: IMO she's got too few hitpoints to survive many, if not most, later IA battles. She's so fragile that she'd always have to have certain buffs in place (PfME in particular) and she would likely die as soon as they are dispelled (ADHW is deadly to her.) She'd never be very useful in melee and as a caster she's good support but her skills are easily replacable by more useful characters. The multiclass factor means that she'll be severely restricted in gaining high-level spells.

 

Orcus: I didn't have that much XP when I faced him. Sorry, I'm unable to provide info on what happens if you're over that. I'm certain that it's a specifically anti-Saros measure, though - and I'm betting that it makes the encounter nearly impossible.

 

I believe that Use Any Item has been significantly nerfed. IIRC some thief class combos don't get it at all; for those that have it, you can't use many class-only or individual-only items with it. I'm certain that this applies to all forged upgrade items, but it might not apply to a vanilla item such as Jansen's Adventurewear.

 

As I remember correctly, Phosphorous consumes 3 Permanency scrolls. I used the one inside Slaver's compound to forge Treefolk's Arm, and I'm glad I did because the weapon has bonus damage and THAC0 vs practically everything that's not human opponent. And it can be used by the R/C as well as by Valygar. I collected two other scrolls however, one from the Screaming Statue challenge, and the second right now from second level of Watcher's keep. A third, as I remember correctly, is in the hands of the Planar Warden. I'm inside the Planar Prison now, obtained a second Morning Star +2 (also needed for Phosphorous) and after I finish this, I will have the weapon.

 

As a side note, I did a little more testing and found out that ALL potions created by the Wish spell are sellable. Wands, however, are nerfed, and are unsellable. I managed to create only wands of Ice, Magic Missile, and Sleep. Probably other wands have been erased from Wish options.

 

Another note: the Elite Bounty Huntress can be very easily cheesed, and killed without a fight. Strategy includes quickly sneaking into the planar prison, all invisible, and quickly running to the right, bypassing all neutral so far prison guards. Dispatching a vanilla enemy group near the brazier is needed, because party has to rest. After resting and great buffing, with II too, the party fighters may go straight to the elite Bonuty Huntress and slay her while the rest of the enemies are conversing, and while EBH is casting her True Sight. Not that she's that a dangerous opponent to my high-level party, but she managed to waste a ProMW scroll when I fought her fair, so I decided to cheese the fight for 1 more ProMW scroll.

[the bigg]

Whenever Orcus would cast Remove Spell, if 4 or less party members are alive, CHARNAME is a bard or a non-Necromancer Mage and has 8.150.000 or more XP, he will additionally Purge Magic on CHARNAME.

[Saros]

Whenever Orcus would cast Remove Spell, if 4 or less party members are alive, CHARNAME is a bard or a non-Necromancer Mage and has 8.150.000 or more XP, he will additionally Purge Magic on CHARNAME.

 

Thanks. However, I didn't understand. any condition qualifies, or is the sum of all? Meaning, if PC is a Necromancer, has 5 party members alive, and has 8 200 000 xp, will this trigger the Purge Magic?

 

As a side note, I did forge Phosphorous after the Planar Prison had been completed. Some minor changes in there, like no more falling into the pits, which is good - I was always frustrated of the pits in this place, which made fighting quite a challenge. Now it's a walkover. However, the Planar Warden cheated And I mean it. He used a CC with triple Finger of Death on PC. Well, PC survived by using the cheesy method of immediately equipping party's strongest protective items (thrown to PC by the Riskbreaker, who usually wears those cloak and rings +2). But the actual cheat (except for PC being improved invisible, but hey this is CC and it bypasses II), is that the PC was actually not the nearest, but the most faraway positioned character from the Warden. And CC, if set to target an enemy, can only be set 'target on nearest enemy', as you all know. Actually, by the time the Warden did this cheat, he was completely surrounded by Elite Trolls and party fighters.

 

Also, despite of Sikret's attempts to deny it, there is still the matter of Cromwell sometimes not taking the right quantity of ingredients in order to forge certain items.Meaning, he forgets one of the ingredients and it stays as an extra in party's inventory. Usually, this happens with Cloaks of Protection +1 or +2, and with Rings of Protection +1 or +2. And most notably, I've noticed that such a bug ensues usually with cloaks & rings looted from Jaheira's main harper quest.

 

Edit: the new Wish option : 'ProMagicEnergy on the entire party' is invaluable. I don't challenge any powerful mages without first preparing with it. So a word of advice to others - don't pick ProMagicEnergy at lvl 6. There are far more important spells at that level for a sorcerer.

[the bigg]

Thanks. However, I didn't understand. any condition qualifies, or is the sum of all? Meaning, if PC is a Necromancer, has 5 party members alive, and has 8 200 000 xp, will this trigger the Purge Magic?

All conditions must be true. If CHARNAME is a Necromancer, Purge Magic won't happen even if you are soloing or have 10M XP.

[Saros]

Thanks. However, I didn't understand. any condition qualifies, or is the sum of all? Meaning, if PC is a Necromancer, has 5 party members alive, and has 8 200 000 xp, will this trigger the Purge Magic?

All conditions must be true. If CHARNAME is a Necromancer, Purge Magic won't happen even if you are soloing or have 10M XP.

 

Great. Thanx. Obviously an anti-solo measure. I still don't know why the hell Sikret decided that someone would play a solo bard. That now is a suicide, with bards being deprived of 6-th level spells

 

With this information, I may go and level up the party a bit more. A couple of levels at least thanx. I was afraid to do it because of hidden cheats like the one mentioned above. Since a Necromancer has a free pathway for experience exploits, I will take it

[Nominar]

Edit: the new Wish option : 'ProMagicEnergy on the entire party' is invaluable. I don't challenge any powerful mages without first preparing with it. So a word of advice to others - don't pick ProMagicEnergy at lvl 6. There are far more important spells at that level for a sorcerer.

But Wish is a 9th level spell...