Made another biggish BG2 install

[Thacobell]

1 hour ago, Lava said:

It wasn't exactly the save/mod itself, as when investigating Thacobell sent me his savegame and the crash did not happen on my game, so I think it was something very random and unique, not something that usually happens. I checked the script and everything "around" that event and I wasn't able to reproduce it.

Its definitely very strange. I used your mod on 2.5 and never had this issue. It might be worth noting that Bubb was able to re-create the crash when I sent him my override file as well.

[subtledoctor]

Huh. I didn't have space in the party for a SC thief before, so I didn’t take her along. But now, with Charname and Evandra as full mages and Haer’Dalis as my thief, I could let HD go. (Although it would be a sacrifice - with the MnG Blade kit he is a monster, with better APR/thac0 than the front-line fighters + crowd control and self-buff magic + handling basic thieving duties.)

Maybe I’ll find Skie and take her along to Spellhold, that should stop this. OTOH I want to better understand how it happens so maybe I’ll play until I see the crash again. 

Gonna be a few days until I get back to the game, in any event. I’ve got four different mod updates ready to post, but they need testing first. Not to mention trick-or-treating!

[subtledoctor]

So I've been back to this game over the last few weeks, just playing 5 minutes here and there. I gave up on Fishing For Trouble. Just too many bugs with the Traps of the Living. It should really be changed. Game design lesson: I know some might defend the mod and say "that's the story the author wants to tell, you can't demand it be changed!" but honestly the result has to be a playable game. If the story gets in the way of players getting through the game, then they ultimately won't get the story, they'll simply wander away like I did here.

What I would do is update it for the EE engine. Right now you have to do the double-potion thing - "now you're a ghoul, now you're not, I hope the transition didn't screw up your character lolz!" And even if the potions work right, it's a crap shoot whether the Traps will actually recognize it. (That's what happened to me: I went to a bunch of trouble to make the potions work right, but then the traps kept teleporting me around, I still couldn't get through. And on an iPad, even with the console-enabling mod, you can't do CTRL-J so I was just... stuck.) Instead of all that rigamarole I would simply make one potion, that taints your life force or something. Max hit point reduction, or take a -1 penalty to a chosen stat, or something. Have it set a permanent spellstate on the character. Then, in the traps, add a 318 effect to the spell that causes the teleportation effects, excluding targets with that spellstate. Bob's your uncle, it would work perfectly.

Anyway, in the current game I just moved on. Having loaded an earlier save and done some things differently, the crash that we were discussing prior just... didn't happen. So I got on the boat, went to Brynnlaw, got into Spellhold, had the dream sequence. Another bug there: I made Bhaal chase me outside Candlekeep and went inside so the dream Imoen could work her mojo... but when I went inside, Bhaal did not follow. I went back outside, and he was gone. Apparently Irenicus really did take away my entire divine essence because Bhaal had disappeared entirely! A quick search online turned up the .CRE file I had to console into existence inside Candlekeep, and then it went fine. We went into the maze, and then had the ante-climactic (not anticlimactic) boss fight, which was pretty great. Then I went to the Sahaugin City which was, as usual, pretty 'meh.' We got to the Underdark. I think I did the kuo-toa and Illithid areas, along with the elemental gates, before entering Ust Natha, because I didn't want to be rushed while doing stuff for Phaere.

Things generally went okay. I have no priests with access to the sphere of Thought, so nobody can cast Chaotic Commands. But Charname has 8th-level spells so I could cast Mind Blank twice. That plus some skeleton warriors/invisible stalkers/mord's swords was enough to get me through the city. The illithids were using Will to Power psionics instead of their kind of boring "just Stun everything" vanilla psionic blasts. This was generally good, in that they had more tools available that could not be blocked by Chaotic Commands or Mind Blank. The one wrinkle was that they occasionally used the Detonation power without regard for careful targeting, which sometimes sent everyone - my party but also the illithids and umber hulks - flying away. I should change that out for a power with better targeting.

The kuo-toa was okay as well, except I explored in the wrong direction and reached the king before I got to the part where you can put the tainted tadpoles in among the healthy tadpoles. So he was regenerating like 10 hp/second or something like that. I wanted to keep him occupied so I have 5 party members whaling on him, and sent Evandra to to the tadpole thing. Just as she was about to do the scripted thing to weaken the king, I got the console message that he had died. Without my even looking at them, my party had managed to overcome his regen and whittle him down to zero! I didn't think that was possible.

With my mods, the royal juo-toa blood gives you a DEX bonus and the illithid item gives you an INT bonus. I wanted both of those for Charname (INT benefits him as a wizard, and he had just sacrificed a point of DEX in the Bhaal dream), so when Phaere told me she needed one of them, I had to go into the beholder den. Wow! was this difficult. I don't really know why people feel the need to use the SCS improved beholders, because I find beholders to be extremely challenging in their unmodded state. (Granted, I don't use the Shield of Balduran and my Cloak of Mirroring is modded and very different.) First off, there was no elder orb at the entrance, just two normal beholders. So that thing in the walkthroughs where they saay you can just duck in, kill one creature, and then leave? Wrong. I snuck around the den for a bit to trigger the drow-vs.-hive mother fight, and the illithids-vs.-gauths fight. Those were fun to watch - though the hive mother dispelled by invisibility and then she and the drow turned against me and that was a bit of a fight. I pushed a bit further into the den with my party, but I was encountering gauths and beholders in groups of 3/4/5, and they fairly quickly wore down my defenses. After clearing 1/2 or 2/3 of the dungeon, I had to retreat to Ust Natha to rest.

Here's how I handled beholders: I set up a ton of defenses: Mirror Image (I don't know if it absorbs damaging rays but I think my images were being depleted so maybe yes?), Globe of Invulnerability for ray effects under 5th level (cause wounds, lightning bolt, paralysis), Mind Blank for Domination rays, Greater Spell Deflection to absorb anything else that gets through (petrification and death rays, etc.). Then any buffs I had that could improve my saving throws. Then Spell Shield and Dispelling Screen, each of which blocks one anti-magic ray thanks to my Magic Battles revised mod. I would try to sneak to near where a group of beholders were, then throw a couple summons at them. Summons get demolished fairly quickly - even skeleton warriors and elementals don't last more than 3-4 rounds. But while they are there, they are targets for some of the beholder rays, which means the beholders deplete my Spell Deflection a bit slower. All this means that I can have a few party members who can stand firm and take action against the beholders for several rounds. As a fighter/abjurer, Charname would switch between a longbow and the best spells I could come up with to take down the beholders. Every 3 rounds or so I might summon another bit of cannon fodder, though the long casting times for summon spells generally made this tough. Every few rounds I might re-cast my Spell Shield or Dispelling Screen, to prop up my other protections. Unfortunately those are both 5th level spells so it wasn't long before I was running out of 5th-level slots, and after that there was basically nothing I could do except retreat.

I returned to the den after resting, and made it to the lower right-hand section where the final battle took place. I started fighting a group of 3 beholders and 2 gauths, and while I was whittling them down but some other beholders came over and joined the fracas, and then not one but two elder orbs joined in. I threw out every summon I possibly could, regardless whether they could resist the beholders at all. I had elementals from Yeslick and Haer'Dalis, wraiths from viconia, invisible stalkers from Evandra, Mord's Swords and otyughs from Charname, plus the Moon Dog and Kitthix. Sirene ran ahead and tried to melee, while Charname/Yeslick/Evandra/Viconia/HD threw out every party-friendly damaging and disabling spells they had, and then eventually switched to non-party friendly stuff like DBFireball and Spirit Fire, just to try to thin out the enemy numbers. Finally it was just the elder orbs, and I was chucking Disintegration and Finger of Death and Force Missiles and anything else I could. At the end all of my party members were alive (though two were dominated and needed Break Enchantment), though quite hurt and with basically zero spells left. A lot of what I read about beholder fights paints them as very binary - either you cheese them with the Shield of Balduran, or they massacre you. But this was actually really intense, and fairly drawn out, and took everything I had. I'm sure I was not using the best tactics or spell choices, but my mod list limited me in those regards and anyway it was quite satisfying.

[subtledoctor]

Huh. I just realized that Haer'Dalis is a wild talent, with the "Instinctive Luck" power - similar to the Luck spell, it increases one's luck and skills by 5%. HD has the revised Blade kit from Might & Guile, which is a multiclass mage/thief, and this psionic power can help him out a bit by making him a slightly better thief. And, I just realized... I have not used it once all game. I thought that would be an interesting little addition to his character, but I guess it's not so interesting!

(For context, the Will to Power mod gives all NPCs a very small (~3%) chance to have a psionic 'wild power' and a few PSPs. But for HD it is guaranteed - I decided that will just be part of his background. And the possible range of psionic powers HD can get is a bit circumscribed, limited only to those that would be useful and/or interesting for his build. It could be Eqo Whip, or Poison Simulation, or Fate Link, or one of several others. In my current game he got Instinctive Luck.)

Edited February 1, 2022 by subtledoctor

[subtledoctor]

The rest of the Underdark was more or less without incident. Or rather, without any incident I couldn't handle with relative ease. The one weird thing was something to do with Evandra, which I will hide for spoilers:

Spoiler

I retrieved the spellbook of the Silvanesti elf so that she could get back to Krynn. She taught the spell to Evandra, but said it needed something like "metal bathed in the breath of a dragon." Don't worry though, she said: Adalon would likely help me out. Thing is, I didn't bring back the spellbook while my appearance was that of a drow, because I figured the svirfneblin and the Silvanesti elf would freak out. Instead, I waited until Adalon removed the illusion and returned me to my true form, and then returned the spellbook. Unfortunately now Adalon is gone forever. I hope I didn't screw up Evandra's progression; there are plenty of dragons left to face, I really hope Adalon isn't the only way to do this. If it doesn't already, the mod should probably account for this sequence of events, because it seems totally reasonable to me.

Incidentally I really, really like the Evandra mod. No sappy flirtation, no drama, just a smart companion with some great banters with other NPCs. (I am really enjoying the banter between Evandra and Viconia. "You are no more a darthiir than I am. You will see that one day." So good!)

I left the Underdark (I always loved that corridor drow fight), spoke to Elhan, realized that I need to find a lens (multiple lenses?) for the Rhynn Lanthorn so I'll have to scour the countryside for it. I stopped by the camp of followers of Eilistraee on Soulafein's suggestion; one of them sent me on a fetch quest to Imnesvale. On the way back to my old Aathkatla-adjacent haunts, I stopped by Watcher's Keep, rationalizing that it just happened to be on my way north from the elven camp. Went through the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level before deciding I have more pressing business. While sleeping there I had a dream with someone who looks like Ellesime? And a grove was placed on my map. I don't recall this from other playthroughs - though admittedly it's been about 10 years. Is this mod content? Spoiler if so:

Spoiler

I went to the grove, and the statues drew out my Bhaal essence into an external version of the Slayer, which I had to fight. After I was victorious, they were like "good work, you've subdued it, but you still need to get your soul back, so get on that." I'm not sure what the result was, or what this did. I guess I'll find out? Maybe?

Then I went to Imnesvale, got the stolen book for the Eilistraee worshipper, and fell to talking over drinks with some dude named Hobart Stubbletoes. Next thing I know, I was in a decrepit castle way out in the Anauroch desert! Whaaaaat... yeah, Trial of the Luremaster, baby! I handled the courtyard stuff, got into the crypt with the undead who can teleport you around. (This crypt is really cool, and it's really cool that your party can get dispersed but there is always a way to get keys and bring them back together again. It's like a 100x better version of the "traps of the living" in the Fishing for Trouble mod.) And that's where I am now!

Incidentally I've been paying with all creature-kill XP rewards cut in half. I was worried that I was not advancing fast enough in chapter 2/3, as I completed most of the quests around Athkatla and was only about 13th or 14th level. But since then there have seemingly been a TON of quest XP rewards, which are not affected by the mod. As such, I have over 3 million XP going into TotLM. No HLAs yet because I've set them to come at 20th level rather than at 3M XP. But i still have to do TotLM, the chapter 6 stuff, Bodhi, Firkraag, find the Lanthorn lens, and Suldenesselar. I feel pretty over-leveled at this point.

I also have a metric TON of spell slots - both memorization slots and casting slots. There is a lot of +slot gear, and of course I have high INT. For the mid-level spells, 2nd- through 6th-level stuff, I can both cast and memorize gobs of spells. My party has 5 spellcasters, and we got through the 3rd level of WK (the teleportation maze full of fiends) with only single rest. It was pretty baller.

On reflection, I think getting bonus slots from stats and from items is just too much. Thinking about it, with 5E casting, what seems like the best idea is for high stats to give you bonus memorization slots and items like the Ring of Wizardry to give you bonus casting slots. Or alternatively, for stats to give bonus casting slots and items to give bonus memorization slots. Unfortunately that kind of fine-grained choice is not available right not. I'll put a bit of work into making the 5E casting mod and the SoB stats mod give you the explicit choice to buff your memorization slots, your casting slots, or both.

Preventing +slot items from increasing memorization slots is going to be fairly difficult; so for now your best bet is to skip the 5E component to get bonus casting slots from items, and then in Scales of Balance select the choice to get only bonus casting slots from high stats, and no bonus memorization slots. (That is an obscure .ini option right now; soon it will be an explicit mod component option.

Edited February 7, 2022 by subtledoctor

[subtledoctor]

Just finished Trials of the Luremaster. God, that's such a good prestige dungeon! Right up there near Watcher's Keep and Durlag's Tower IMHO, and for background lore it beats them both. And it throws enemies at you with such ferocity and in such numbers! Here are twelve harpies trying to eat you. Here is a veritable army of minotaurs attacking on two fronts. Here are a pack of werejackals, with caster support, and a glabrezu appearing every 18 seconds. Here is a beholder literally sneaking up on you...! So great.

My only technical issue with the mod ( @argent77 ) is that in a couple of the areas the 'map' button did not work and I could not zoom in or out. The watchnights's crypt was one, the prison level where you need two skulls might have been another; the 2nd floor of the keep might have been another. That's it.

Of course it's designed for ~15th-level characters and mine are 18th-19th, so they never really stood a chance. But siltl, the presssure was almost alwaays on, and it was very satisfying. I clear the adventure in three days - I rested after clearing the crypt and the guardians on the first floor of the keep, then I rested about 2/3 of the way through the jackal dungeon. Then finished it out. The actual end boss is as insanely annoying as ever. That fight would be so much better if he just stayed put and fought with his minions... and the number of his minions doubled. The minions include divine casters and I think maybe arcane casters too, so that would be pretty great.

Anyway I returned to Imnesvale, with an itch to settle some scores. Being in the Umar Hills already, I decided to look in on a certain shadow dragon. Stupidly, I forgot to buff with NPP so Evandra and Haer'Dalis got a bit level-drained. But the dragon only had a chance to use his breath weapon once; I've got Timestop! I sent a wave of summons in early just to distract the dragon, but then I stopped time and removed his magical defenses.  Then he went down very quick.

I think I'll go have chat with Firkraag next...

[subtledoctor]

Fought Firkraag. It went like this:

• Charname: "Firkraag, please observe: it's checkmate in four rounds."
• Firkraag: "But I am of the world's most ancient...
• Charname: "Mate in four, dude."
• Firkraag: calculates... "Ah yes, that checks out." Rolls over and disappears, Obi-wan Kenobi-style, leaving behind nothing but a magical sword.

Not very satisfying. I've never been one to use the SCS Tactics-derived "improved ____" mods... but I think I need it for dragons.

I also did Sirene's late-game quest encounter, which was quite satisfying. An epic-level mage... er, cleric/mage? (Call itself a "Servant of the goddess Talona," but was spamming Timestop at me. Surrounded by four fiends - two glabrezus, a demon knight, and a balor. And another high-level tanar'ri gating in every ~12 or 18 seconds. Good fun!

In these hectic battles, i have a strategy that has been serving me well. Buffs are great and all (my standard set has been Shield, ProEvil, Emotion Hope, and Prayer, plus long-term Stoneskin on those with access and Spell Deflection if I'm facing a caster or beholder)... and I have some decent summons available (fire elemental and Mord's Sword from Charname, earth elemental from Yeslick, lesser air elemental from HD, invisible stalker and demi-shadow monsters from Evandra, and wraiths from Viconia. But summoning spells in my game generally have a casting time of ~7-10. So I also have set of instant-cast summons at the ready for surprises like this battle. Sirene pops the moon dog; Yeslick releases berserk warrior from the Horn of Valhalla; HD drops Kitthix; Charname let Ras the dancing sword out (Spectral Brand seems to be broken in my game ); and Evandra lets out a lesser earth elemental from the IR Ring of Earth Control. They aren't all the strongest summons, but they emerge instantly in the enemies' faces, giving me time to back up and regroup (and send any long-duration pre-cast summons forward). Then 5 seconds later I can start in with proper spellcasting and send my tanks to whatever spot seems tactically ideal.

[Bartimaeus]

I'm always disappointed by dragons...but I've banged the drums on that too many times now, I think. I do use all of SCS's "improved [x]" stuff, and I always set dragons to the absolute maximum and they're still just not that much of an issue. There's also not really any situation with any of them where you could be conceivably "surprised" by their sudden appearance - the two reds, maybe, but they're ironically both gracious enough to let you walk away without issue...so there's not really any reason you shouldn't be prepared for them. If my level 10/11 party had to take on Firkraag without having pre-buffed or prepared a couple Lower Resistances, then yeah, we'd have a pretty major issue...but that's not really the case, because there's not really even a justifiable in-universe reason you would do that, unless you were like...playing a chaotic stupid party that just tried to butcher everything immediately without ever preparing - not exactly the kind of party that would last through an entire game to get to Firkraag in the first place, though...not unless you like reloading a million times.

[subtledoctor]

I played Back to Brynnlaw... pretty good! Basically a bunch of caster fights, culminating in a multi-caster fight against like five or six high-level wizards. (Still not close to that G3 mod...) It played well, the writing was fairly good, the action was fun, it didn't shower me with OP rewards... good stuff. I only don't understand how my character would ever go on a boat ride to a faraway island and back during chapter six. But whatevs.

Then The Sellswords. This one was less good. Some really questionable humor choices, and very limited action. You teleport to an underground metropolis, except this metropolis only has about four houses and ~37 citizens. There are basically two maps. For a "teleport to a prestige dungeon" I guess I am just spoiled by Trials of the Luremaster. Granted, I know that was professionally developed, but, if the modder just put Back to Brynnlaw and The Sellswords together to make one combined adventure, it would come close. Each on its own is instead kind of tiny and not really worth it. Sellswords gives you also gives you too much XP and a bit too much treasure. (And yet, per the logic of its own story, also not enough treasure.)

Then the Twisted Rune! This was fun - although I screwed up pre-buffing a bit. I remembered this as being something like, you teleport there and the lich arrives at your party and you can take him out; and then you can engage the rest of the TR in the other room. That's no what happened. I pre-buffed on the streets of Athkatla, but crucially, I forgot to cast See Invisible. (It only has a 5-round duration anyway.) I entered the place and waited for the lich to show up, but nothing. Precious econds of my buff spells ticked away. Finally I wandered over to the room on the right, and then the lich appeared. I quickly moved everyone into position on the left; but now the fight was starting and I could not see invisible and, even more crucially, I had no summons out yet. The lich contingencied a few cornugons in my face, and then the rest of the TR sauntered in from the other room and I was fighting them all at once! Including the beholder which is super annoying in a group fight.

I got some hardy summons out as quickly as possible - a couple elementals, an aerial servant, an invisible stalker, and Charname's first HLA pick, a Noble Djinn (a re-skinned Planetar with no vorpal weapon). Then Charname, Evandra, the lich, and Layene (or whatever her name is) all cast Time stop within a few seconds of each other. None of them had fight-ending consequences. I was focused on tearing down the lich's defenses - he had Pro Magic Energy up, but once I removed it, Yeslick popped Sunray and Sirene False Dawn. That was basically enough to take the lich down. A pit fiend appeared from somewhere but it was in the back row, not an immediate threat. Some ADHW and Chain Lightnings softened up the TR while Viconia was pretty much just casting Bolt of Glory at the fiends repeatedly from the back row. At the end only Layene the mage was left, but she put up a decent fight, going invisible, spamming not-inconsequential summons at me, etc. I had a 9th-level spell left so I hit her with Spellstrike, and then she was vulnerable. She eventually went down to a Distintegrate from Charname to end the fight, which was appropriate.

The modded Staff of the Magi from the More Style for Mages mod is nice - feels powerful but not too cheesy.

Now to deal with Athkatla's illithid infestation. Then, finally, Bodhi. Then Suldenesselar. The TOB. Oh I have to do the last two levels of Watcher's Keep at some point too. Given how powerful I am, I'm almost tempted to take on Voldemort the Imprisoned-One-who-shall-not-be-named.  I've never done that before, because a0 it never made sense to me, and 2) I play with mods that nerf high-level stuff. (See e.g. my nerfed planetar, and I've never seen a walkthrough or other account of that fight that didn't involve spamming planetars and op vanilla tactics.) We'll see.

[subtledoctor]

Went to the graveyard, into the crypt, killed and staked all the vampires, and… there is a locked door to the lower level that will not open. Apparently it’s a Beamdog addition. Googling turns up thread where someone reported he BD forums, and in typical fashion the Beamdog forum people accused the poster of doing something wrong and used to acknowledge the problem.

Wtf Beamdog.

[morpheus562]

I agree on dragons needing a boost. My last playthrough I beat every dragon on SCS-Ascension Insane difficulty on first attempt (except for Abazigal since his change from human to dragon pinned a character preventing them being able to move). Definitely open to ideas on ways to bring fear back into facing a dragon (or multiple dragons at once in the case of Ascension).

[subtledoctor]

Finished SoA.

I was very conservative going through Suldenesselar, trying to use melee + healing potions as much as possible, but some of those damn "rajah" and "maharajah" rakshasa enemies are tough when they come in packs of 6. They're tossing high-level magic at me, sending Mord's Swords etc. and they are casually immune to just about everything I throw at them. Just a super annoying creature design (especially with SCS AI - they are more or less immune to magic, and adept at keeping up immunity to physical attacks). So that took some of my spell slots. I also had a black dragon to deal with. That went okay, but it required me to use more high-level spells for defenses, summons, etc.

Then I went into the Temple of Rillifane, and I recalled there is a tough and diverse group of enemies here, so I popped my quick-throw once-per-day item-based summons - Cerebus, Kitthix, Ras, a berserker, and a couple lesser elementals. But then I also quickly summoned the avatar of Rillifane, who took out the enemies for me. So all those summons were wasted!

I cleared the whole city. I had the very vague recollection that some elf soldier would let me rest but I was wrong - it is only a temple store for healing services and potions. So here I was, heading to the Tree of Life with 1-2 spellcasting slots at each spell level, on all my casters. The rakshasas had dropped some decent spell scrolls that I didn't need to learn, so I had that. Now, the obvious move is, you rest and the go at the final boss with your full power, right? but, it just didn't seem right. So I saved the game just in case, and forged ahead. Killed all the "parasites" with simple melee, then approached Irenicus. I sent a variety of summons to distract him - a Mord's Sword, a greater earth elemental, some wraiths, some demi-shadow monsters. Then tried to keep things together, lobbing some half-hearted ranged attacks while assessing how to take down his defenses. I hit him with a Spellstrike, which was great, but he had been stopping time and hitting me with ADHW, and renewing his defenses via sequencers, etc. And he was summoning elementals and fiends that could, given a few rounds, mop the floor with my summons. But thankfully, his second-string spell defenses were weak enough that I could take them down with mid-level spells - good since I literally had no high-level spells left. My summons were largely keeping him busy at a distance so I used one of my found scrolls: Incendiary Cloud. This meant my summons would not last long but it also hurt Irenicus and gave me the opportunity to Breach him. It was very close, but I managed to end him right before he could turn the tide of the battle and come at me.

And then, after the battle was won, I remembered that Charname had recently gotten an HLA. I could have shoved a planetar in his face, but I clean forgot.

Then to Hell, and I was VERY glad to see that I got all my spells back. I realized only now that I didn't know how this is done in-game; it's possible the devs might have coded it as a simple opcode 316 'Wish rest' effect, which would work fine for the vanilla game but would not restore spells for my new spellcasting syetems. Thankfully, it must be coded as a real rest because everything worked perfectly.

I'm playing the vanilla game here, no Tactics stuff, to the end fight was an epic-level spellcasting Slayer with two balors and two glabrezus. I buffed to the max, and even used some potions (!) since it's the last fight of the game. The fiends went down quick and then I just mobbed Slayer Irenicus with powerful summons, and I lobbed ranged attacks at him while my casters periodically tore down his defenses and hit him with stuff like PW:Silence and PW:Blind and some direct-damage spells. I don't know if he has like a thousand hit points or insane regeneration like the full-power Kuo-toa king, but it took forever to take him down. He got to 'badly injured' and then just would. not. budge. I used basically all my summons to take some hits from him, and all my healing keeping Ajantis and Yeslick alive while they melee'd him, and all (literally all) my direct damage spells and quite a few wand charges as well. For a while it was a fun nail-biting kind of thing, but after a while it just got kind of dumb. It was like he had a Min1HP item and the fight was on a timer instead of checking for him to die.

But anyway, he died, I got the classic end-game cinematic, and I woke up at the beginning of ToB. And... gosh, I really don't have much desire to play it. I'm already 22md level. I already have 9th-level spells slots. More high-level fights just seems like more of the same. The whole process of growing, getting more experienced and more powerful, is gone now. What's the point?

Damn, i wish stupid Beamdog hadn't screwed up and made IWDEE unmoddable on iOS, I'd much prefer to play through that... Eh, we'll see.

[subtledoctor]

I have fought Irenicus, Illasera, Gromnir and his Bhaalspawn crew, Berenn and the fire giants, Nyalee and her Mirror of Opposition, Yaga-shura and his lieutenants, and cleared the 4th level of of Watcher’s Keep, including the demilich and Saladrex... and I keep forgetting to use my planetar...!

I have to admit, as much as people poop on ToB, these are some very fun fights. 

[subtledoctor]

Got all prepped for the final fight before opening the seal to level 6 of Watcher’s Keep - you know, the beholder, marilith, archer, etc. I don’t know if I’ve ever actually done this fight. Now, at level 25 with some pretty powerful magic, I am looking forward to it. I turn the key and… it goes into cut-scene mode and nothing happens. The enemies don’t appear, I don’t have any way out of cut-scene mode. Only thing I can find online is this bug report from 2006.

Quite frustrating to see the same thing on an eight-times-patched enhanced edition…

[jmerry]

I've run into a number of those broken cutscenes myself. It's always an intermittent thing; quit, reload from the nearest save (often right before), do it again and it works fine. A glitch rather than anything repeatable, and correspondingly hard to pin down and fix.