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

[Pidesco]

I'm kicking ass!

[Calax]

Given how much I'm punching everything, I feel like you shouldn't have given an insane personality to me, and just stuck more to "BLAST IT OPEN! *Whack* OPEN *whack* OPEN *whack* YYAAAAAAY" sort of thing.

 

 

Although I suppose if you really want one, you can multi-class me to thief. FISTICUFFS THIEF OF DOOOOM!

[Gorth]

Hey, we all know what role "red shirts" are supposed to play in stories, right?

[Blarghagh]

Haha, my character is deliciously pointless. Carry my useless dead weight, others!

 

That moment when you switched Tale's alignment I heard The Who in my head screaming, the CSI way. It was hilarious.

[Chilloutman]

If you still be in need of rouge you can swap my blade with thief - probably that two weapon wielding kit. You can choose personality as you want. I imagine him lazy as hell. Only reason to move forward is fatloot or vision of taver wench.And he is scared of dark and vampires because he seen in mad (psychadelic moshrooms) dream he saw Buffy serial for 4 hours stright make him scream in horror because he fought it will never end. Ok now I am too far, just make him how you wish

[Pidesco]

They are dirty adventurers, they don't need makeup.

[Tigranes]

Replacing No Thief In Party with Thief Too Lazy To Do Anything seems appealing.

 

I will update fairly frequently during the winter break, since I imagine BG2 will take forever anyway. I don't know if there are any forumers who haven't played BG2 several times, but I'll try to show the lesser known quests and paths, also.

[Humanoid]

Only ever played it once (not meant to be a slight on it), so it'd be assured that it's been a decade or more since I last played it. Heck, I completely forgot about the existence of that crystal room with the genie shown just then. >.>

[Deraldin]

Thankfully, the retargeting flaw settles on another goblin, and narrowly misses me. A little less luck and it might have been a half-party wipe.

 

So close... I mean nice job Tale! >_>

[Tigranes]

18. An Efficient Use of Human Resources

Click Here for Table of Contents

 

Guys, I've had a premonition. We go round that corner unbuffed, I'm- uh, we're gonna die. Now, I know some people say buffing is boring, that they'd rather go in there and press the Awesome button until things drop dead. But in my party, we do things old school.

 

Web and Chaos,

 

Animate Dead and Cloudkill. You see? Not a scratch on me, uh, us.

 

Gorth: With the Duergar's incredibly low saves, we could have just fired the Cloudkill straight away.

 

No, we couldn't.

 

Ilyich, a duergar so useless I assume Irenicus only kept him around for end of year parties requiring stumpy dwarves in costumes, falls soon enough.

 

Beyond Ilyich, though, there isn't much. A locked door we can't open - and a strange machine, whose only purpose seems to be to keep the Cambion in stasis, whose only purpose for being here seems to be to be kept in stasis.

 

Pidesco: Great dungeon design, that.

 

Well, let's get to it. That thing isn't earning us XP staying like that.

 

Nepenthe is turning out to be quite the chunker.

[Tigranes]

Returning to the other side of the dungeon, we come across a beautifully furnished room.

 

Hey, listen!

Who the hell are you?

Something here is not what it seems! Maybe you should DETECT TRAPS?

You've got to be kidding me.

Click me to learn how to DETECT TRAPS!

Oh for- we don't have a thief, you moron.

Thieves are highly recommended in the party! Did you know they can be used to DETECT TRAPS?

...

 

Okay, look. We don't have a thief, but we need whatever's in those chests and shelves. We're gonna have to make do. You, cast whatever buffs we have on Nepenthe.

 

Nepenthe: What? Why me?

Tale: You're the tank.

TrueNeutral: All we have is Resist Fire/Cold. Hope there aren't any spike traps there. Or steam. Or swirling blades. Or-

Nepenthe: I hate my job.

 

Nepenthe: Yup. Hatin'.

 

Nepenthe: Oh, look! A strange statue!

 

Nepenthe: Still hatin'.

 

Nepenthe: Yep.

[Tigranes]

Nepenthe: Guys, gonna die, brb.

Tale: No, no. I think you got it all now. Heal up just in case we come across some more.

Nepenthe: Wonderful.

 

We recover, from the gazillions of gold worth of loot that mysteriously disappeared in our imprisonment, one Helm of Balduran.

 

Bunch of naked women ask for our help. Obviously, we accept. The acorns, in fact, are found in Ilyich's corpse;

 

returning them is enough for yet another Pidesco-Up.

 

Pidesco: THAC0 16, here I come!

 

(These alarms call two golems to action, but of course, we destroyed them beforehand.) Nepenthe, you're up.

 

Nepenthe: Son of a-

 

Nepenthe: These ones hurt even more!

Tale: Okay, okay. This is going to take us forever. TrueNeutral?

 

Nepenthe: Wait, we could do that all this time? But-

Tale: Well, we still need someone to trigger those traps. I didn't think you'd want to know they were there.

 

I mean, isn't it worse now, knowing you are walking into giant, fiery balls of pain?

 

Whatever works for you, I guess.

 

Nepenthe: Right, there's the key to the portal for the second floor. Can we go now?

[Tigranes]

(I will mention that we also pick up this nifty little fellow. Actually, the Equalizer is a pretty mediocre weapon, as Special Craftable Item Sundered In Three Pieces go, but it's the thought that counts.)

 

Last rest, we also remembered to have Calax memorize Draw Upon Holy Might to increase his strength...

 

Calax: My muscles, they are as deep and rugged as the Applachian Mountains!

 

The last thing we do on this level is check out the strange locked door, which is opened using the Air Elemental Statue...

 

...ah. This might be a lengthy detour.

 

The Pocket Plane of Air is full of mephits, who are mostly annoying, but dangerous to our low-level, equipment-less party when in groups. One of the mephits disable me and Nepenthe with... dust, or something.

 

There's a fire mephit pumping out Aganazzar's Scorchers, a frost mephit- and we rely on some lucky heal spells not being interrupted to stay in business.

 

My flame arrow shorts out, but thankfully, the explosion is harmless. We mop up.

 

The djinn in a bottle asks for a flask to be freed, in exchange for a weapon.

 

Obviously, it had to be at the very opposite corner of the dungeon, with the naked women.

 

The reward, for some reason, is a Sword of Chaos +2, Sarevok's former blade. We hand it over to Nepenthe, as reward for his recent usefulness to the cause.

 

Nepenthe: I assume this does not mean the end of my trap detection duties.

 

Pidesco levels up. Again.

[Tigranes]

And now, finally, we arrive at the second level of Irenicus' dungeon. (I've been using the Dungeon-Be-Gone mod for years, but actually, it's a pretty well made dungeon, as far as starter dungeons go. It doesn't really have any atmosphere because there are so many different things crammed into it, but there's some nice foreshadowing, some interesting set pieces, and if you're new to the game, or you're playing with a weird underpowered party, and/or have SCS installed, there are some challenges...)

 

Yoshimo the Bounty Hunter threatens to keep us trapped in a neverending dialogue loop, but luckily, we know just the right way to get out of it: select the only answer that is the Right One. Oh, Bioware.

 

Look! It seems to be a body lying upon the table! Try clicking on things when your cursor turns into a question mark to learn more about the world!

Bite me.

 

All the wanton killing is sufficient to have TrueNeutral level up. (I keep forgetting he can shapeshift now, but we'll see if it's bug-free.) It is important that my minions continue to grow in power, that I may wield them for greater uses.

 

The dungeon also features various clones Irenicus had been making of Ellesime, that chick that totally dumped him couple centuries back. What a skank.

 

And, of course,

 

TrueNeutral: I found a trap.

 

Everyone get back to a safe distance, and let Nepenthe do his thing.

 

Nepenthe: Seriously, guys? You can't, like, jump?

 

Don't be silly, this isn't a FPS. Whoever heard of an RPG where you can jump?

 

Nepenthe: Steam this time, I see.

[Tigranes]

Next, we come upon a room where the decorated floor is full of traps, fired from wand pedestals on the left; the arsenal include magic missiles, fireballs, lightning bolts, cloudkills-

 

Nepenthe: Wait, wait, what?

 

-all of which are disabled by inserting the various keys we found throughout the dungeon. Of course, the fact that we can run along the left side to insert the keys means we could just bypass the traps this way. This is why you don't want to cut corners with your dungeons, really.

 

There are only a few rooms left to search before we exhaust the second level. A fireball should take care of these goblins-

 

Oh, my.

 

Pidesco: Run run time.

 

We dispatch the goblins easily on the other end of the corridor, but within there is an ominous silence.

 

Gorth: Alright, I can hide in shadows, I'll go have a peek.

 

...turns out Nabassu can see through hide in shadows. I will remind you that their arsenal include paralysis, death gaze...

 

...and that they are too fat to fit through standard issue corridors. Problem solved.

 

Another room, another decor style, another creature type. Yep.

 

Everywhere we see signs that multiple factions and allegiances are conflicting even in their common desire to assault Irenicus. The vampire drains two assassins within four turns, but it is just enough for hasted Gorth to pump some +1 crossbow bolts (which we use up entirely).

 

As the vampire turns to smoke and flees for a hiding place, the remaining assassin-mage turns on us. Using SCS AI's precision, it lobs a Melf's Minute Meteor at Calax, disrupting his Dispel Magic casting.

[Tigranes]

We finally get a Dispel Magic off, but it didn't manage to breach her defenses. (I believe that Dispel Magic has a % chance to breach certain protections, and here she has Mirror Image, Minor Globe of Invulnerability, and who knows what else.)

 

Still, one mage with a depleted spellbook is no match for us.

 

And at last, the end is in sight. We have escaped Irenicus' Dungeon! To freedom, nonlinearity and sidequests we go!

 

...Or, another cutscene.

 

Irenicus, with the benefit of Improved Alacrity and Cutscenitis, eviscerates his opponents in a whirlpool of stacked spell animations. I am now convinced. Clearly, this bastard knows power. He has it. I must have it.

 

So, child of Bhaal, you have escaped. You are more resourceful than I had thought.

You're not going to torture us any longer.

Torture? Silly girl, you just don't understand what I'm doing, do you?

I don't care what you're doing, let us go!

I won't let you leave, not when I'm so close to unlocking your power.

 

Yeah. Magic missiles. That'll do it, Imoen.

 

Enough! I will no longer listen to the babble of ignorant children.

[Tigranes]

Some robed wizards appear. Their coordinated lack of fashion sense reveal their bureaucratic nature.

 

All involved will be held. This disturbance is over!

Must I be interrupted at every turn? Enough of this.

 

Party time.

 

This mage's power is immense! We must overcome him quickly.

Your pathetic magics are useless. Let this end.

Even if we fall, our numbers are many. You will be overwhelmed.

 

What? No! I've done nothing wrong!

You have been involved in illegal use of magic. You will come with us.

 

Uh...

 

Well. At least we all leveled up. Except me.

 

Pidesco, did you-

Pidesco: Pid-up!

 

Great.

 

(P.S. Yes, I wrote that cutscene dialogue from memory, too. Oh boy...)

[Pidesco]

I predict I'll be the strongest party member soon.

[Chilloutman]

Good job in dungeon. I dont remember that Nabassu at all. How many times have you rested? Or you got luck for scrolls and potions?

[Deraldin]

Good job in dungeon. I dont remember that Nabassu at all. How many times have you rested? Or you got luck for scrolls and potions?

 

The reason you don't remember the Nabassu is because it's not supposed to be there. Tale summoned it by accident with a wild surge.

[LadyCrimson]

I love the convo/commentary bits. Good stuff.

[Gorth]

Obviously, it had to be at the very opposite corner of the dungeon, with the naked women.

 

Tsk, as if we needed rational reasons for going there...

 

Also, Tigranes fail at the colour yellow

[Blarghagh]

Hey! Listen!

[Tigranes]

The Nabassu was summoned by Tale's fireball getting a wild surge, as you can see in the text-box in the screen. I rested twice, once in each level, and drank several potions of healing - healing was the main problem, rather than running out of spells.

 

Also, I'm happy to take suggestions on what sidequests/areas you'd like to see first/next.

[BBMorti]

Ah, the joy of being the person who triggers the traps. Would mages not be able to far better protect themselves from trap damage? Or even the mighty Trueneutral, at least, has regeneration in his werewolf form.