Bloodmage Solo POTD Upscaled Megabosses

[karemas]

Hey guys,

So I have been trawling the interwebs for the last couple of days trying to find enough information for me to feel comfortable trying a solo POTD upscaled run with the potential to take out the Megabosses as well. I always like to have a general idea of what spells/skills/stats I am aiming for as it enhances the experience for me - especially when I have already completed the game when it first came out.

After reading several posts and watching lots of videos I have limited my choices to the following:

- Bloodmage

- Bloodmage / tactician

- Bloodmage / priest of skaen

I have a few questions though and was wondering whether you wonderful people would oblige me in answering them

Firstly I like playing a caster - call me ol'fashioned but I'm all about the magic missile - I'm more Raistlin than Gandalf. So does bloodmage / tactician play like a traditional fighter mage from bg2 - i.e. buff, buff and more buff and kill with sword? Also same deal with BM / priest of skaen? Is that all about the buffs?

Secondly I keep reading might is way and then for BM might is dump stat? Which is it? What would be the preferred stats for pure BM? I will have access to the +2 stats on start.

Thirdly - I have looked through the build sticky, trawled reddit and looked through about 30pages of this forum back until 2018 and I cannot find a BM guide - just for simple spells/stats etc for 5.0 or even 4.0 for that matter? 

Fourthly - I prefer to play the game - not stealth for 15 levels - I totally understand the need in a trial of iron/honour mode but I am not aiming for the Ultimate - I just want to kill everything and enjoy phat loots. So if any of the above class combos require that - please let me know!

Cheers

 

 

[Waski]

Bm/tactician works nicely from the start and one item with flanked immu is easily obtainable (just $$$).

[thelee]

BM/priest of skaen will give you tons of utility. tactician will give you brilliant, but bloodmage doesn't need brillant as much per se because they can regen spells anyway, and priest of skaen will give you combo potential with wall of draining and BDD (possibly also salvation of time though you do need brilliant to make that work, but there are other sources of brilliant than just tactician). from a solo survival perspective, you also get shadowing beyond to escape fights so you can pick off an enemy or two, invis your way out of hte fight to reset, and try again.

 

11 hours ago, karemas said:

just for simple spells/stats

imo the really important spells are: slicken, concelhaut's crushing doom, arkemyr's brilliant departure, wall of draining. everything you can else you can take it or leave it.

[karemas]

Thanks for the responses guys. So it seems like multiclass is the way to go.

I feel like BM/Priest is what I would go for - is the loss of high level spells noteworthy compared to pure BM?

What starting stats would you choose for that combo?

[thelee]

5 hours ago, karemas said:

What starting stats would you choose for that combo?

i would say as a starting point like:

10 might / 13 con / 17 dex / 10 per / 18 int / 9 res

and adjust depending on what maximums you can get from your race, and what bonus you get from a background. intellect is king stat for casters, and dex is a king dps stat (and also protects you from interrupts by reducing cast times). blood mage/solo will care about survivability a bit more, so putting in a bit more into constitution than i would typically do for a ranged caster - plus health is an actual casting resource for a blood mage, so i wouldn't hesitate to add more if i had spare points or items. (a priest of skaen can boost con further with prayer/litany for the body. consecrated ground would also be a pretty good spell since the additional drip of health can also give you more spell casts)

Edited November 3, 2020 by thelee

[Tee See]

IIRC, Might affects the damage you self-inflict with blood sacrifice - so for BMs, it's sort of a double-edged sword stat.

 

 

[Boeroer]

That is correct. Helwalker/Bloodmage can be fun - but can also be over very quickly.  

[abot]

priest of skaen/ascendant is also able to beat the ultimate (after you reach salvation of time+barring death door+some way to get brilliant, ascended state is prolonged too). for a non-barring death door+salvation+brilliant thing trobadour/psion is  fun from the start if you like casters and with enough time you can kill anything apart probably dorudugan and/or auranic
[EDIT] details

Edited November 5, 2020 by abot

[karemas]

Hey guys,

So I have been running (stealthing) through the game and I'm now level 16 so have access to BDD, SoT and Brilliant (via cloak). 

But I am having problems starting combat. Earlier in my playthrough I was able to trigger combat using traps but this no longer seems to work.

I've also tried triggering combat and then use shadowing beyond so I could Wall of Fire myself for brilliant etc but then combat ends. 

Not sure what's going on? Any ideas?

[thelee]

What do you mean it doesn’t work? Are enemies actually triggering the traps?

[Waski]

8 hours ago, karemas said:

I've also tried triggering combat and then use shadowing beyond so I could Wall of Fire myself for brilliant etc but then combat ends. 

That's normal without proper god challenge. 

[karemas]

Yes - enemies are triggering the traps while I am in stealthed/hidden.

At the start of the game that would trigger combat and then I could sneak off and buff etc. Now though the enemies are walking into the traps - they take damage etc in the log - but it doesn't start combat. They just go back to their positions and chill out.

[Boeroer]

*Aloth-voice*

"Now that's unusual."

[thelee]

1 hour ago, karemas said:

At the start of the game that would trigger combat and then I could sneak off and buff etc. Now though the enemies are walking into the traps - they take damage etc in the log - but it doesn't start combat. They just go back to their positions and chill out.

??? yeah that's weird.

are you just in one area? or everywhere?

what enemies? what traps? any screenshots?

[karemas]

It was in three locations that I tried all in the same playthrough.

1. Hasongo - where the Sea(?) Troll and Lizard guys were milling in the water. If you don't fight them you have to go inside and swim through a tunnel

2. Beina Bounty - island south of Hasongo

3. Dhwrgas Bounty

Used all types of different traps - all did damage - chain lightning one, fire one etc

It's super annoying as you can imagine as my build is built around solo potd pre buffing.

[thelee]

do you have any special gear that could mess with this?

i literally don't know what could be causing this - traps+damage should absolutely be starting combat.

[karemas]

I thought it might be Irwena's buff for I removed that and it was still happening.

 

[karemas]

Here is a screenshot

[karemas]

So after trying everything from stripping down to removing all effects I have come to the conclusion it's bugged - so I am just going to trigger Combat via the console when the enemies go into the traps

Bit of a faff but at least I can continue to play.

[thelee]

that's such a bizarre bug! what an odd thing to break.

 

in case you want to diagnose it further, i would also suggest using sparkcrackers to lure enemies past the trap (not just onto it), maybe something different happens with AI. do you have like some particularly high stealth skill? 

i guess i'm particularly interested because my ultimate run definitely relied on this behavior for triggering some fights, and if it's possible for the AI to break like this then I feel like spooked that my ultimate run could've hit a huge hiccup without knowing about the possibility.

[thelee]

one other thing - did this happen after hitting a certain level? i'm just curious when this started happening, if there's some sort of key trigger that can help narrow down the problem.

[karemas]

I was using sparkcrackers to pull them past - still no joy.

It started happening when I went to Hasongo and I was level 16 with a stealth of 20 (but I tried lowering my stealth to 1 and still the same) - but I only had done a few combats before then such as the Adra Tower - which I used the trap/sparkcrackers technique to start combat.

Really puzzling.

[thelee]

does warding seal start combat?

[karemas]

Yes it does - but brings me out of stealth.

[thelee]

i don't suppose you can put a save game in a dropbox or something and share a link with me? i find myself very vexed by this bug.