September #9 Shadowheart Origin #6 Honour Mode part 3 Act1:2 almost done

Finishing off Act 1.

The party

Shadowheart Trickery Cleric 7

Nothing too exciting, my MC is usually fairly balanced and not too specialised in any direction. She has the ring and gloves that make her bless and blade ward everyone when she heals them.

Lae'zel War Cleric 7

It's way too easy to burn through her divinity and war priest charges but she's a solid warrior.

Gale Tempest Cleric 7

My main nuker when I need him. Throw a water bottle, cast call storm, use divinity charge to deal 60 damage. Managed to 'one-shot' Ethel so she would beg for mercy (and give me everything).

Astarion Death Cleric 7

Occasionally using his touch of death or whatever to do some bonus necro damage; recently discovered that a level 4 animate dead spell summons not 1 but 3 skelly archers/zombies so that's great. Shame I'm so close to the Shadowlands were it'll be less useful if at all.

Timeline

September 21st - Played Bg3 a little bit! Long rested and started the Grymforge. I was struggling a bit but 4 skeleton archers are so good.

September 23rd - Cleared as much of Act 1 as I could handle; finished off Grymforge; I managed to one-short Ethel with Gale’s Call Lightning, Water and Max damage ability. Phase spider was easy too, could not reach Flind, Spectator was annoying but I had 4 drow on my side; partially cleared the monastery.

September 24th - killed the Gremishkas and went into the creche: usual process but took my time, it’s much harder as I can’t deal much damage (yet) but discovered I can summon 3 skeleton archers with 1 level 4 spell slot, very handy. They can also drink elixirs (discovered in a prior run) and have stuff like mage armor cast on them so I have lots of options. I had levelled up to 7 prior to defeating the sub-overboss and her wolves easily, got the Blood and the final fight was my beloved gith trader. All that’s left is the overboss and undead patrol outside, will have to do that in October.

Assessment

Every fight I'm used to being somewhat quicker in previous runs takes a bit longer. Having a small horde of animated undead helped get me back into the game. Need to maybe optimise my characters a little more; maybe re-spec some of these feats and whatnot before the Shadowlands. I also have the Dexterity Gloves and so on so can dump dexterity on one of these characters (all of them have 16) and redistribute as usual. I went with Resilient Constition on 3 characters (Con15>16) but was a bit of a waste as I'm not casting that many concentration spells.

Got to level 7 quicker than usual probably because I killed almost everything I could.

September #8 Shadowheart Origin #6 Honour Mode part 2 Act1:1

Mainly just clearing up the middle of Act 1.

The party

Shadowheart Trickery Cleric 5

Nothing too exceptional so far, I don't think I'll get much more use out of disguise self or anything for a while.

Lae'zel War Cleric 5

I'm out of charges at the moment so Lae'zel has mainly just been swinging swords and pushing with the help of an elixir.

She has a lovely ability to add +10 to a missed attack.

Gale Tempest Cleric 5

He now has some fantastic options, making him more of a killer. One amazing moment was having someone throw a water bottle at one of the giant owlbears, then having Gale use Call Storm and his maximise damage abiltiy to do 60 lightning damage. That could pay off really, really nicely later.

Astarion Death Cleric 5

I can now Animate Dead (with everybody too) so he had a couple of skelly boy assistants. I foresee having a lot of summoned help later in the game!

Other than that he has a nice necro damage boost I have used.

Timeline

September 19th - tried to attack the Goblin Camp again and got wiped out (almost). Gale's necrotic aura killed a bunch of them after I fled with SH.

I killed all the Zhents and went into the back of their cavern to get to the Underdark. I think I just fought various things down there, Hook Horrors etc to get to help get to level 5.

I went back to the Goblin Camp and destroyed them.

I systematically wiped out the interior, who were neutral/friendly while the outside had been hostile due to Crusher. Astarion fled and revived Gale mid-combat and came back. Limited resources on my part call for unusual tactics! Dror got blown up and Minthara, who had left for the Grove, came back. Damn. Killed her too. Everyone level 5.

Cleared the Arcane Tower and then back to the surface to kill Flind, who was trapped inside the cave rock. So killer her warband but not her. Oh well! Then I took out the Owlbears I think.

Not much left to do in Act 1; Ethel, Phase Spider, Gith Patrol and off the Act1 part 2 (forge & creche). Will treat myself to a long rest before doing those, maybe long rest before Ethel/Phase/Forge then go to the mountain pass as usual and get a long rest there. I usually try to limit it to 2 long rests anyway, have not taken one yet.

I got a few level 2 and level 3 spell slots from levelling up so that helped extend the options I had.

Assessment

Flying it and finding all sorts of new and weird stuff.

September #7 Shadowheart Origin #6 Honour Mode part 1 Act1:1

 I had limited time before leaving the country for a couple of weeks so I thought maybe I'd try to clear Bg3 again with my last remaining Origin character: Shadowheart (SH).

The party

Note: pretty much all 4 members have the same stats, 10/16/15/8/16/8 except SH who had 10/16/14/8/16/10. I gave the other 3 members Resilient:Constitution as their level 4 feat while SH took Wisdom to 18.

Shadowheart Trickery Cleric 3

I decided to keep her Trickery (more like I forgot to change it) but also had some vague plan that I would keep her on Trickery domain until act 2 and if she decides to dye her hair I'd go Light Domain then.

Lae'zel War Cleric 3

I was originally going to kill her like I did SH in the Lae'zel run BUT as I was in control of SH, SH didn't do her usual "ew a Gith" dialogues by default so was much more reasonable on both sides.

War cleric charges are AMAZING I burned through them so quickly though. You get an extra attack with your bonus action which is like gold dust before level 5. And I'm all-clerics so we don't have access to Extra Attack anyway (I think).

Lae mainly rocked the Everburn blade for a bit but would switch her to Dexterity based stuff later and a shield.

Gale Tempest Cleric 3

This class didn't pop off yet (later it would)

Astarion Death Cleric 3

Starts with Sleight of Hand so he's my lock picker when I don't just tear down doors/break chests. Nothing too exciting (yet)

Timeline

September 18th: I didn't actually end up doing all that much but it was eventful. Managed to command:drop the Everburn blade. I escaped the Nautaloid with a very friendly/helpful Lae'zel and Us and had to fight the Intellect Devourers alone. Blow up the tank next to them and just kite away and shoot back at them. Took only one psychic blast to the face but killed them.

Almost ran into Astarion but instead went around and got Lae'zel first - messed up the scene so had to figth the two Tieflings to the death (they are way stronger) but then recruited Lae. She is so single-minded about the zaithisk purification. I was watching for any tension with SH specifically but all seems well.

Got Astarion and Gale and then cleared the bandits/Withers' temple easily enough. I have a thing on thse 'all-class' runs where I'm not allowed click any other class so Astarion was 'Rogue and Cleric' and Gale was 'Wizard and Cleric' etc for a bit but then later got to re-spec everyone at camp to pure Clerics. I believe it was after the battle outside the gate of the grove, which I finished in record time by simply blowing up two nautaloid tanks next to the goblin warband. Combat ended after round 2.

Usual Grove checklist EXCEPT I messed up after a bit; I had Lae'zel use her Mage Hand to pick up the Druid's statue which caused the druids to become hostile. You have to rob it later, not mid-ritual. Cue huge druid versus tiefling war. I managed to escape relatively unharmed out the back door with Sazza but it was a massacre. I left Lae'zel behind (she was stranded on the Harpy beach) and noticed all the druids bunched up in the druid prison cell. Had an idea: what if I blew them all up?

So I went around the map with 3 characters and grabbed every firewine, oil and smokepowder barrel I could find. I talked my way through the Blighted Village (SH had Trickery: Disguise Self so became a Drow) and into the Goblin Camp. Basically searched most of the map short of the main blockages (Flind, Ethel, etc). I accidentally aggro'd the outer Goblin camp (sigh) by trying to finish off Crusher in a duel. Crazy run. So fled out of there for the moment.

But then finally at the end of this particular session I blew up all the druids.

Assessment

It's fine - slightly more interesting than my failed all-Wizards run even with almost no spell slots left.

September #6 Ogame bits

 I was mainly trying to unlock level 18 in Lifeform techs again; got closer to level 15 on most of my planets.

		Quarters	Farm	School	HiSchool	Silo	Skyscraper	Lab
1	Iasryugard	65	60	13	8	42	29	27
2	Phair	67	60	13	8	42	29	27
3	Ophi*	65	60	14	10	42	30	27
4	Aether	65	60	13	8	42	30	27
5	Emerald	65	60	13	9	42	30	27
6	Six*	66	60	14	9	42	29	27
7	Kala	67	60	14	10	42	29	27
8	Xenog	68	67	13	9
9	Necut	70	62	15	10	42	32	27
13	Dragonine	67	68	15	10
10	Fimbul	65	60	13	8	42	30	27
11	Myrna	66	60	13	9	42	29	27
12	Elfenglasse	66	60	13	8	42	29	27
	human 18:	74	68	15	10	42	29	27
	(rocktal) 18	75	78	16	11

I had to park it in late September but managed to get planet 13 mines in line with everywhere else and completed the Silo/Lab/Skyscraper minimum requirements on all planets. Many of them were around 38/27/25 or something like that but got them to 42/29/27 on all human planets easily enough, even started to expand the schools/hischools. Will probably have to switch some of these over to Rocktal eventually, maybe just the 4 deuterium planets but idk.

September #5 Halo 1 co-op online

 I got to play a couple of sessions of Halo 1:CE this month, myself and my friend Dave got as far as just after Assault on the Control Room. Firts session we just did Pillar of Autumn but session 2 we got through AOTCR.

Hopefully we'll clear Halo 1 and 2 over the coming months, he's never played those.

September #4 Gears of War Reloaded Co-op Campaign part 2

 We cleared Gears 1 easily enough!

September #3 Gears of War Reloaded Co-op Campaign part 1

Dom-curious!

Dom stealing some artwork... I was Dom for once!

It was good fun - we managed to clear as far as Act 4 on Normal mode. No sense going for unnecessary frustration with Hardcore mode or whatever.

I don't actually have the Hardcore or Insane achievements on the Steam version (plus all the multiplayer ones ugh) so will have to go back for that one day. Plenty of time, I hope.