Let's Play: Baldur's Gate Trilogy - Ch26 (Mae'Var)

[Tigranes]

15. Aec'Letec

 

The Obsidianites buff up and quaff down for the greatest challenge of the entire campaign: Aec'Letec the demon/devil/whateverthing. Without mods, few encounters in the BG Trilogy offer greater challenges for character level - with, of course, obvious exceptions like the Twisted Rune. (We'll get there, someday. Maybe.)

 

The cult's colour of choice is orange. Clearly, they couldn't afford a coordinator.

 

We are well prepared for this opener. As the invisible Sorophyx moves towards the archer in the back, a combination of flame strike and arrows down the wizard.

 

Sorophyx' backstab doesn't quite take out the archer, however...

 

And the cult assassin responds with a stab of his own, nearly one-shotting Gorth.

 

We pull Gorth out of the front lines, and Tale follows up his Greater Malison with Emotion. It gets several of the enemies, but the assassin remains standing and manages to take out TrueNeutral. (Seriously. No armour.)

 

TrueNeutral: I thought you were going to fix my shapeshifting abilities!

 

Sorry, I was eating French food in New York. I'm sure you understand.

[Tigranes]

In any case, we get through it alright. Now, though a little cheesy, we decide to exit, rest up, and come back. Aec'Letec is not to be taken lightly.

 

The grand cultist has the fearsome, terrifying name of Tracea Carol. Seriously, that's like a piano teacher's name. You might as well have called her Sheila.

 

And so comes forth Aec'Letec, the proud sole owner of the demon sprite in BG1. As you can see he immediately opens with some sort of special ability that silences several characters, and paralyses Sorophyx. Thankfully, Sorophyx is invisible so should not be targeted for a while. The Wand of Monster Summoning is an absolute necessity here to try and keep Aec'Letec distracted.

 

The danger in Aec'Letec is not so much that he has a lot of health, or that he does a lot of damage. Neither is really true. The problem is he has some sort of crazy paralysis ability, and if you kill him without killing all the cultists standing round dumbly, they explode into a reincarnation of Aec'Letec. So as you can see, we're trying to keep the monsters on him while we take out the cultists.

 

However, there is another thing; notice the white ghost-like icon on TrueNeutral and Nepenthe's portraits. I still don't understand how it works, but sometimes paralysed characters can be hit with a Doom-like ability; it's impossible to remove; and thus, in several turns...

 

...the afflicted explodes into Ghast form, permanently removing them from the party. We never knew ya, Nep.

[Tigranes]

TrueNeutral, too, bursts a little later, although Sorophyx in his invisibility escaped the worst. (You can see him finally participating in the battle, here.) The ghasts are weak and easily disposed of, but the loss of party members dramatically scales down our combat efficiency.

 

By this point, all the cult proxies are dead, and we have a fair number of monsters, so it's time to hit on Aec'Letec. Unfortunately...

 

We both knew it would end this way, Wals.

 

Walsingham: Hey, I didn't think curry was THAT bad for you.

 

By this point we're desperate, and Tale launches a wand of paralysis - and to my surprise, it works! I don't remember the wand working on Aec'Letec at all before. I should mention that he has a lot of magic resistance and great saves, so mages are almost useless against him. Without his MR the fight could be over a lot quicker, as he really doesn't have that high HP.

 

With big baddie paralysed, Tale and Sorophyx, the only remaining members of the Obsidianites, have one last chance to win this battle. Sorophyx's best chance is with +2 arrows, which hit regularly; for Tale, it's a smattering of magic missiles and Ring of Energy, all of which sometimes do damage and sometimes not.

[Tigranes]

Aec'Letec is Badly Injured; thus, more than half dead.

 

We cast a magic missile, and Tale's memorised spells return to him entirely.

 

Tale: WIIIIIILD MAAAGE! YEAH!

Sorophyx: You know you cast about 400 spells before this one good surge?

Tale: I'M WIIIIILD MAAAGE!

 

The paralysis wears off, but he is at near death with several summons left to distract him. We can do this! We can-

 

Oh, dude.

 

I think this had to do with SCS's new targeting AI (either that, or now that I notice in the screenshot, the summons were dead), but when Tale hit Aec'Letec with a magic missile the dude turned around, ran straight to him, and took him out with a single blow. Obviously, I couldn't pause in time because multiplayer games have introduced command lag for the spacebar. :gah:

 

It's difficult to say where we should go from here. By our own ironman house rules, a party wipe means the entire campaign is over, but due to BG's hard-coded protagonist rule, if Tale dies, we can reload. Now, technically, only Sorophyx is alive at this point, but Aec'Letec is near death. It's impossible to know, with some hit-and-run, who might have prevailed. Just for kicks, I decided to have another go, if only to see what happens...

[Tigranes]

We return to the start of the battle. I do get to pause in time, and maneuvre the characters better. Sorophyx is still paralysed.

 

The tactics are essentially the same; get the proxies, stay out of Aec'Letec's way, distract with monsters. This time we're a little more successful at doing this.

 

Then, a game-changer; the wand of paralysis, as usual. Last time I had thought it wouldn't really work on him, but we now know that it does, every once in a while. This gives us plenty of time to mop up the proxies and get to work on him.

 

But wait, you might ask. Walsingham doesn't seem to have moved at all between the last two screenshots!

 

Walsingham: Oh, buggersnips.

 

He was paralysed and doomed just before we paralysed Aec'Letec. It can't be helped, now.

[Tigranes]

Nevertheless, this time it goes quite smoothly, as we still have the firepower of Nepenthe and others to quickly dispose of proxies then deal damage to Aec'Letec. Before the first paralysis is over...

 

...the big baddie has fallen, and the survivors pass round a giant bucket of sweet, sweet XP.

 

In honor of Walsingham, we immediately loot his disgusting corpse and move on to recruit from the nearest tavern. The result is Pidesco, a strong, intelligent but rather flatulent fellow who prefers to disguise himself as a giant cat. He will inherit Wals' two-handed sword, but not his armour, and steal the Gauntlets of Dexterity from Nepenthe just so that a stationery rock doesn't kill him in one blow.

 

Pidesco: Meow.

 

We report the demise of Aec'Letec to Dwarfus Questgiverus, who walks away without handing us a single piece of gold or XP. Pidesco remains on zero XP.

 

And so we are at Baldur's Gate. All other characters are now level 6 or 7 - due to rapidly increasing XP requirements for new levels, the likes of Gorth have pretty much caught up. Originally, I intended to show these two outcomes and have you guys talk about what I should do, but I sort of quicksaved over everything. So, given that we have technically abided by the house rules, it's onward and upward to Sarevok!

 

Gorth: But you know, Sarevok has even higher saves and magic resistance, right? Even without full SCS?

Tale: Yeah, we probably can't paralyse him like Aec'Letec.

Pidesco: Meow.

[Nepenthe]

Pidesco: Meow.

Probably a sign of how fragile my mental state is, but I find this hilarious. :D

[Deraldin]

There are rumors of massacres in the Baldurs Gate area, entire parties wiped out and tavern tales of woe flourishing up and down the Sword Coast. Maybe some entrepreneurial cleric of Waukeen should get the idea of setting up a life insurance company.

Oooh... interesting idea you've got there. Can I convert to Waukeen? :D

Now we just need somebody to figure out quick if Waukeen was dead at this particular phase of FR history or not... I know I keep forgetting.

Waukeen was missing during this time period. There is a temple of Waukeen in Trademeet that you can visit where you can talk with the cleric in charge about it.

 

And so we are at Baldur's Gate. All other characters are now level 6 or 7 - due to rapidly increasing XP requirements for new levels, the likes of Gorth have pretty much caught up. Originally, I intended to show these two outcomes and have you guys talk about what I should do, but I sort of quicksaved over everything. So, given that we have technically abided by the house rules, it's onward and upward to Sarevok!

This is an outrage! I saw everyone else die! There should be a slew of new character openings for people!

...

On the other hand, they'll be a bunch of new openings soon enough anyway. I can wait another couple updates. Sorophyx appears to be cheating death at every turn. I'd say with Aec'Letec at near death you probably could have taken him with just the one character. I'm sure there was a pair of boots of speed somewhere in all the gore left over in that room that could have kept Sorophyx safe unless you sold one of the most valuable items in the game earlier for some reason.

Edited March 4, 2012 by Deraldin

[Gorth]

As far as Tanar'ri goes, I think Fall-From-Grace was much cuter than this Aec'Letec

[sorophx]

Sorophyx appears to be cheating death at every turn. I'd say with Aec'Letec at near death you probably could have taken him with just the one character.

I 'm telling you, I could have killed that thing on my own with one hand tied behind my back! too bad there are no save games left, otherwise I'd show you (I mean, Tig would)

[Deraldin]

Sorophyx appears to be cheating death at every turn. I'd say with Aec'Letec at near death you probably could have taken him with just the one character.

I 'm telling you, I could have killed that thing on my own with one hand tied behind my back! too bad there are no save games left, otherwise I'd show you (I mean, Tig would)

So how exactly are you shooting arrows with only one hand?

[Gorth]

Sorophyx appears to be cheating death at every turn. I'd say with Aec'Letec at near death you probably could have taken him with just the one character.

I 'm telling you, I could have killed that thing on my own with one hand tied behind my back! too bad there are no save games left, otherwise I'd show you (I mean, Tig would)

So how exactly are you shooting arrows with only one hand?

He's been watching LotR again, thinks he can just jab the baddie in the eye with an arrow. I blame Legolas.

[Deraldin]

Sorophyx appears to be cheating death at every turn. I'd say with Aec'Letec at near death you probably could have taken him with just the one character.

I 'm telling you, I could have killed that thing on my own with one hand tied behind my back! too bad there are no save games left, otherwise I'd show you (I mean, Tig would)

So how exactly are you shooting arrows with only one hand?

He's been watching LotR again, thinks he can just jab the baddie in the eye with an arrow. I blame Legolas.

But... he's a halfling (sorta). Enemy eyes are kinda out of his reach.

[sorophx]

an arrow in the knee, of course! if that had failed, I would've just kicked the thing in the balls and finished it off with a backstab

Edited March 5, 2012 by sorophx

[Gorth]

Sorophyx appears to be cheating death at every turn. I'd say with Aec'Letec at near death you probably could have taken him with just the one character.

I 'm telling you, I could have killed that thing on my own with one hand tied behind my back! too bad there are no save games left, otherwise I'd show you (I mean, Tig would)

So how exactly are you shooting arrows with only one hand?

He's been watching LotR again, thinks he can just jab the baddie in the eye with an arrow. I blame Legolas.

But... he's a halfling (sorta). Enemy eyes are kinda out of his reach.

So, he's going to jab the arrow in the baddies knee then

 

Edit: Damn you guys are fast posters...

[sorophx]

ha! pwned

 

edit: and hooray for the new page!

Edited March 5, 2012 by sorophx

[Deraldin]

an arrow in the knee, of course! if that had failed, I would've just kicked the thing in the balls and finished it off with a backstab

I like how you pulled off a 41 damage backstab on the cult archer in the last update only to have the cult assassin one up you not 5 seconds later with a 42 damage backstab to our own archer. :D

[Blarghagh]

Survival! In a way. Revisionist history for the win. So how does this affect the death score?

[Pidesco]

So I'm Baldur's Gate's Cait Sith, now? I kinda like it even though I'm a man holding a cat.

[Oner]

You mean a cat letting a man be his pillow.

[213374U]

That's it! I'm reinstalling this!

 

Funny how you won by... wiping, btw.

[Walsingham]

I can't believe you let us all die, you charlatan! You bloody yorkshire terrier! You ... you...

 

It's a special death spell, you arse! Even I know that! You have to cast thingy and it parboilds the whatsit and we're all fine. Potion of heroism.

 

Gone. Gone. And never called you a mother****er.

[Tigranes]

 

I thought you'd always have my back, Walsy. Beer-chuggin' proper British character from blighty and a wide-eyed foreigner from the colonies! We were in for Rush Hour, just with a narrower target audience!

 

(I think Gorth drunk the last pot of heroism for that fight, BTW)

[Gorth]

*Hic!* Me? nooo...

[Enoch]

Hey, at least you made it past level 1!