[cerveza_fiesta]

Jenisapt Rul, on 11 January 2011 - 06:43 PM, said:

cerveza_fiesta, on 11 January 2011 - 06:32 PM, said:

The controller is red too...which is kinda cool, though I'd rather get a pink one.

At least nobody would ever steal it.

Mainly it's due to the fact they make a pink controller at all. They have a black, blue, red, white, green, transparent....and then make a pink one as if marketing for girls or something...cause sooooo many PS3 games are girl-oriented.

And because I'm an emo/goth/hipster/douche and am TOTALLY non-conformist. I must have the pink one if only because nobody else does - and to match my pink skinny-jeans.

So cool being an individual.

This post has been edited by cerveza_fiesta: 13 January 2011 - 03:40 PM

[Gothos]

cerveza_fiesta, on 13 January 2011 - 03:36 PM, said:

If you're going solo, I've seen some folks do it with a FMT (fighter mage thief) combo class. You get so much xp that you level up in all 3 pretty quickly...plus you don't have to completely abandon any of the play styles completely. That's more the powergaming method though, likely a lot harder to do it as a single-class.

I tried it a few years back, solo class as wizard. I must note however that it was with Throne of Bhaal, so I did have a higher xp cap and new spells, which made it 'more trivial'. Well, OK, not exactly trivial.
It's very hard at the start, but once you gain a few level - 6 times as fast, mind you - it becomes... easier. Some fights are even easier solo than with a party (like Kangaxx), but basically you'll have such an arsenal that as long as you know what's coming, you can be ready for anything. Your worst worry is prolonged fights with no place to rest - like the last location with Irenicus - I had a lot of trouble there (meaning I had to reload once). With the right tools, numerous fights become... anticlimatic, if you have TOB spells, but even without them. Along with the right gear, pretty soon you'll start ludicrously owning everything. Exploding Skull and Horrid Wilting are turning points. For harder fights, mix that with sequencers.
From TOB spells, the most useful ones I found were Alacrity, Summon Fallen Planetar and Energy Blades. But you can really do it without them as well, you'll just be resting more.

[cerveza_fiesta]

I always wanted to get around to a thief playthrough solo.

Thieves are just so much fun once they're leveled enough to stealth everything.

I remember there's a place in town...maybe in the "gate" quadrant of the main city (can't remember exactly) where there is a spot you can go into a secret room and battle a lich.

and he's goddamn near impossible to kill. I remember the only way I got him in the end was to get him near a load-screen door and using the load-screen exploit where you go through, wait for him to follow, hit him the second he appears and then go back through the door before the game cycles through his attack phase. If you time it right, you can get him casting (and wasting) a spell each time you go through the door...so I just did that until he exhausted his spell supply and slowly but surely hacked him to pieces. Sure its an exploit but there was no way I was killing him otherwise.

He was even a 2 stage fight a la WoW...first stage as a zombie thing and second stage as a floating skull that kicked even more ass than the zombie stage. And even with exhausted spells he was almost a one-shot for any of my characters.

Phat lootz too.

[MTS]

I guess solo would be pretty easy with a wizard. Stoneskin, Mirror Image and Protection from Magical Weapons offer more protection than high hit points and any suit of armour in the game ever will. Plus there's other spells if you get into trouble, like Improved Invisibility, Shadow Door or Mislead. Your only worry would be Pierce Magic and Breach. Horrid Wilting is fantastic, and you'd get that pretty early too, although Skull Trap (brilliant spell) would serve in the meantime.

I'm going to try solo wizard then, sounds fun. Mage or sorceror do you think? I'm leaning towards sorceror, as they have more staying power, but they can learn fewer spells IIRC.

[Satan]

For soloing you should go with the wizard. The range of spells will make him much more adaptable to whatever situation you may encounter.

And that is by far the two most nerdy sentances I've written in years.

[Gothos]

What Bryn said.

In any case, you mean Kangaxx, CF, and... he's not really that hard. The lich phase, just treat him like any other caster, there's good spells to counter that. As for the floating skull - the demilich phase - well... two spells.
Protection from Spells - Abjuration (5th level spell, makes you immune to Abjuration school of magic - where Imprisonment is)
Energy Blades, or Melf's Minor Meteors - a slow but effective way of dealing damage to him. He only has like 55 hit points.

On my solo playthrough I already had Summon Fallen Planetar when I got to him (and I went there as soon as I unlocked the area), who absolutely owned the Lich form. Then PfS, Energy Blades and I went to make coffee.

(mind you, Summon Fallen Planetar also bloody rocks for clearing roomfulls of beholders. He'll be immune to most of the shit they do, and even if they stun him, he has blade barrier around him)

My fight with Nizidramanii'yt - the black dragon in Suldanesselar - took something like 2 rounds Time-Wise - 3xLower Resistance in a sequencer, Time Stop, Alacrity, and like 6 exploding skulls and horrid wiltings, though I probably only needed like 3 wiltings to kill him.

If you're playing with ToB, get all the gear you can that lowers cast time. With like 2-3 of them, exploding skulls are instant, and horrid wiltings take like 0.3 sec.

Bonus Tip: Make sure you go to the Sauhagin place after Underdark and MAKE SURE YOU GRAB THE SPELL REFLECT CAPE.

[Satan]

You've sold me. I'm downloading Baldurs Gate II now. It WILL be glorious!

[cerveza_fiesta]

It's fun for sure. Definitely go wiz instead of sorc if you're soloing. Sorcs are good all 'round but you miss out on the pure blasting power and adaptability of the mage, especially in higher levels. It also gets a bit lame spamming magic missiles and fireballs through the whole game too. I always like how you can load out a mage for a specific type of battle then switch him up for the next one. Multiclass is pretty dang powerful though, something to think about. Especially fighter mage...takes awhile to get going but man do they ever kick ass later on.

IIRC I did the beholder dungeon using only the paladin NPC that you pick up in the chapel district. By the time I found the beholder cave, between his anti-caster gear (from me) and his natural resistances (from high wisdom) he was damn near impervious to magic and just waded through murdering everything in there.

I think I did kagnaxx long before I was supposed to in BG. He was impossible to fight despite numerous tries. Maybe if I waited til later he would have been more manageable

[MTS]

Only taken out the Shadow Dragon at the moment, haven't done any of the liches, will probably have a crack at them and Firkraag soon. Honestly, the Kensai/Mage class is utterly broken though, I'm thinking of just ditching all my party members except for when I need them for quests, it's just so easy. I'm playing on insane and unless I'm facing mages or something with a fair bit of punch like beholders, golems etc. I barely even need to use spells to protect myself. Even then I can just cast Breach or Remove Magic and they're dead before they can get anything dangerous off, since I've got so many attacks per round. And as I was a Lawful Good fighter with great constitution before switching to mage at level 9, I started out with like 100 HP, got to about 125 before becoming a mage, then casting Find Familiar gave me another 24. Well worth an inventory slot. So ~150 HP, Robe of Vecna = pretty much instant casting time, Celestial Fury + Dak'kon's Zerth Blade are an unstoppable combination that also increases your spell repertoire, and you can get them pretty much from the start of the game to boot with some gold scrounging(IIRC costs about 40000 gp to get RoV and DZB, which you easily have by the time you switch over, and the only thing stopping you from getting CF from the beginning is a challenging but not impossible dungeon).

Haven't even got Spell Triggers, Sequencers or Contingencies yet, or Tenser's Transformation, which looks like an absurdly overpowered spell for a Fighter/Mage type. Double hit points, +4 AC, attacks are as powerful as those of a fighter at the same level, attack receives a +2 bonus and hits for 2 extra damage. The downside is that it disables spells, but who the hell needs spells with those sort of bonuses? It's only a problem if you're soloing, but unless you're a vanilla mage you're probably going to outlast their protections anyway.

By the way, if you're soloing as a wizard or fighter/mage wouldn't you get an insane amount of exp just from memorising scrolls? If you have like 17-18 INT from the start (which you should anyway), you're only really limited by how many scrolls you can carry, and there's no one else to distribute the experience too. There's probably like something close to 40 spells that you'd want to have, plus many more useful ones for a solo'er like Find Traps and Knock, and you get between 1k and 6k for each spell IIRC - that's a lot of exp.

[MTS]

'I cannot be caged! I cannot be controlled! Understand this as you die, ever pathetic, ever fools!'

Jon Irenicus is probably my favourite villain ever.

[Gothos]

He's still just an elf pansy, though.

He's got nothing on Saren, Kain, Arthas, Shodan or Kerrigan.

[amphibian]

Gothos, on 17 January 2011 - 11:49 AM, said:

He's still just an elf pansy, though.

He's got nothing on Saren, Kain, Arthas, Shodan or Kerrigan.

Alma on Master Ninja. Ugggggghhhhh.

[MTS]

I wouldn't say he's got nothing on those guys, he's a pretty damn awesome villain at the start of the game at least. Shrouded in mystery, and just uber badass. I mean, he's got a harem of dryads, blows up part of Waukeen's Promenade, slaughters some Cowled Wizards, visits you in your dreams, and breaks out of Spellhold while spouting one of my favourite lines in the whole game. His persona gets kinda neutered when you get to Suldanessellar, I agree, but the guy is so badass even when you kill him he drags you into hell with him. Guy just won't quit.

[Gothos]

I have to ask..


WAT?

[MTS]

Gothos, on 17 January 2011 - 12:36 PM, said:

I have to ask..


WAT?

Is that at amph or me?

[Gothos]

That's at amphibian.

In any case, all that said, he's STILL AN ELF. That's like -9001 points in badass.

[MTS]

Gothos, on 17 January 2011 - 01:05 PM, said:

That's at amphibian.

In any case, all that said, he's STILL AN ELF. That's like -9001 points in badass.

...touche. He still curb-stomps anybody who comes near him though.

[Gothos]

MTS, on 17 January 2011 - 01:22 PM, said:

Gothos, on 17 January 2011 - 01:05 PM, said:

That's at amphibian.

In any case, all that said, he's STILL AN ELF. That's like -9001 points in badass.

...touche. He still curb-stomps anybody who comes near him though.

The player kinda kills him, you know.

[MTS]

Nothing beats the player though, so that doesn't really detract from his badassness. Probably to his credit that he manages to be such a pain in the ass despite that.

This post has been edited by MTS: 17 January 2011 - 01:52 PM

[Gothos]

It's mostly http://tvtropes.org/...nePowerToTheMax though