Infinity Engine Ironman Extravaganza

[mjorkerina]

We need more evil people. Here I am. (sorry for the french text in-game but i bought BG2 a long time ago, wasn't yet into original versions of games and movies and don't feel like bittorrenting DVDs worth of data here.)

An assassin ? pfeh. Didn't stand a chance against my range and magic shooting.

Let those pesky beggars die in hunger. I am on a crusade to eliminate any source of life for them.

Hey, Monty, I still need your fat ass so don't die yet. I'll make sure to revive you and to inflict the punishment you so rightly deserve.

Holy shit, the authority already knows of my criminal plans. The flaming fist sent a mercenary against me, bad luck for him though to be here all alone.

I managed to lower my reputation in beregost by fighting for Silke's sake and then returned against him to loot his body.

I shouldn't lower it too far too soon though. I'm still not enough to crush an army after all.

Now that I resurrected monty, some of my other companions are unneeded and shall be replaced by people who share more of my tastes. It's time to kill.

Violence and bloodshed. Violence and bloodshed. VIOLENCE AND BLOOODSHEEEED. Imoen, Khalid and Jaheira, are now dead, forever, for no one is going to resurrect their rotting bodies i'll burry six feet under.

I found a weird fellow wizard, the name's Edwin. While he bluntly asked me to do his bidding, i think he's quite liked giving me a hand in my plans.

 

[Shannow]

On the glacier I met a nice little crystal golem. Well, it was neither nice nor little but it gave me "some" xp.

This little buggy flees from my mighty ranged assault...

...or did it try to sneak up behind me? Furin anticipated that clumsy attempt and placed a skull trap in its way. His self-doubts are like yesterday's bad weather, quickly forgotten.

The Band is keeping at a distance. Not only do bug queens explode when you squish them, usually death knights hide behind them.

They could have simply sent an emessary to Clan Battlehammer. King Bruenor can tolerate almost anything as long as it is not a drow. If their stinking goblins had kept their stinking carcasses off of Battlehammer lands, the clan would have let them be, half-demons or not.

But if you wish to wage a war on ter...eh...Ten Towns and the rest of Icewind Dale you will create more enemies than you can handle.

 

[Moradil]

Hello,
this is my first post here, but I just can't resist the urge to join ironman challenges. I will enter the fray with yet another underpowered bard trying to survive perils of BG I. Here enters Moreseia, the gore metal girl:

She spends her days shredding on the bass mandolin and dreams of forming her own band - THE SHRIEKERS
Unfortunately, angry neighbours hate loud music and try to kill her:

She decides to set on the road and join forces with untalented. but charismatic Imoen. Together, they enjoy the first gig for hobgoblins:

Three man Band shreds assassin to pieces:

The Shriekers now have four band members, but only one with musical talent. Others are talented only at killing things. Nevertheless, all are very charismatic:

 

[mjorkerina]

Playing an evil wizard right at the beginning of BG1 was too much of a task it seems. Got owned by an army of bounty hunters in a random encounter. They all got bows and i didn't quite have the time for reaction. I tried to stay back and let all my party die before me but still.

This is the last screenshot i could make in the action.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

Awesome!

Keep it up, Shannow. I remember that Sherincal raping my all human party with that sword of hers. It was a case of 'metal up your arse.'

 

[Moradil]

Update on Moreseia:
Advanced to Chapter 2. This is what happens when pyrotechnical device explodes prematurely:

In memory of fight with spiders, Moreseia composed song "Poison". It's going to be major hit!

Even ogres dance on songs performed by The Shriekers.

Currently, Mayor of Nashkel hired The Shriekers for performance in iron mines. The band is ready for some serious hard rocking.

 

[Shannow]

After Sherincal is defeated Bruenor enters this ice temple. He here learns some mor about human nature. They value vengeance over justice and war over peace. "Somebody" killed Lysan 30 years ago and now the aurilites are on a rampage. Furtunately they don't have any ninjas and their Snowhites ares push-overs without some dwarves to back them up.

Well, if it is hell you want, hell is what you get. Sneaking in more troops from the rear is no fair!

And the only one allowed to fight unfairly is Thibbledorf!

Hmm, I wonder what will happen if I break this mirror? Furin has the great idea of placing a skull trap. Seems to be a fetish of his.

Unfortunately the Talisman were transported into the middle of the room, bypassing the trap. But in their haste to get to me some came too near to the trap...

I played a bit with the Battlesqares but they are broken. On the third level the glabrezus teleported to my party instead of fighting Thibbledorf. Those cowards. Well, if the supervising golem doesn't see the kill but the enemy is dead when the time runs out that means that the party is trapped in a room. Since this is clearly a bug, I allowed myself to reload...
After freeing Nathaniel and advancing through the glacier the Band encounters a small village. They have a problem with disappearin children, which is caused by this kind woman.

Who summoned quite a circus to stop us. Well, being dwarves we like bugs ourselves and block their way with some of our own. Katharina decides to show off some mad druid skills. First with lightning, then with rain.

And finally with fire.

Afterwards the Band of the Mailed Fist helps the villagers some more and destroys some old trees on their way through Fell Wood. Thibbledorf can't stop wondering how anybody could have been afraid of some lights and wood.

 

[Moradil]

The Gig in the Nashkel underground club was successful, so The Shriekers advance to Chapter 3:

However, on the way back, Ajantis collapsed from exhaustion. It seems that his drug addiction starts to interfere with his musical performance. Other band members start to worry about his future

Mayor of Nashkel was pleased with performance of the band and gladly paid agreed reward.

The Shriekers now set off to search for lead harpist. Who should it be?

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

The Metagamers arise to fight Icewind Dale 2's ridiculously designed challenges with the one thing they fear most...cheap as hell metagame playing. How exactly are they going about this? By being evil on the character sheet, but being mostly good in gameplay to get the nice rewards and experience. Why? Because on the off chance this band of merry fools actually make it to the later chapters, they'll be immune to all the ridiculous alignment hosing spells everyone seems to use later in the game. Smite Good and Unholy Blight are nasty enough, but Blasphemy takes the cake as the cheapest spell in existence, as it guarantees all non-evil beings in the area to be stunned for a decent amount of time. Combine this with something like....I don't know....a crazy half-demon pair each packing over 1000 hp easily and some nasty weapons, like a scimitar that causes disease, poison, and more paralysis on impact and a really nasty arsenal of other spells....and you get the picture. Not saying they will make it to such cheapass encounters like Xvim and Isair and Madae, but if they do....they'll have the fighting chance a good or neutral party wouldn't really have.

So here they are.

Killing You Guy-A human ranger who likes to be a dual-fisting freakazoid.
Angry Short Guy-A dwarf fighter with an axe. How original.
Eco-Terrorist Guy-A druid who is pretty unremarkable.
Zealous Bitch-A Stormlord of Talos. More lightning is never a bad thing.
Crazy Motherfucker-A sorcerer made specifically so the part always has a lot of stuff to shoot at enemies, even if they lose out on a little variety.
Sort of a Ninja...-A tiefling thief...I mean "rogue" who may possibly be dual-classed to monk, just to kick the crap out of that stupid monastery.

A twisted black tree? Hmmmmmmm.....

Goblins die.

Orcs die, but the dwarf buys the farm due to a freak critical. I guess helmets don't protect against those anymore. Looks like a trip to Targos is in order...

Killing You Guy reverses an exploding barrel trap onto it's creators. Guess they should have played Doom to know all out the power of exploding barrel chain reactions.

Lots of orcs whose families should have opened upa nice life insurance policy on.

The troll is summarily burninated.

Zealous Bitch bites the big one. Quick trip to the Selunite priestess a few maps back solve this...

...only to have Eco-Terrorist Guy bite the big one against the Malarites as well. Guess where the Metagamers head now?

The group blitzes the Shaengarne Bridge and goes into hyper-killing-frenzy mode.

Only to kill the last ogre immediately after he dealt lethal damage to the bridge supports. Fuck.

The attack on the fortress is going well, until the group triggers one of the war drums and is forced to fight all three camps else face constantly respawning worg riders. Three of the group are laid low along the way, first their semi-ninja, then the sorcerer after he ran out of spells, then finally Killing You Guy on a suicidal mission to kill the last drum, in which he succeeds by hacking the shaman up a bit, then dropping an oil of fiery burning on the drum, killing it. Nevertheless, a quick trip to Targos will fix most of the damage.

The Metagamers play goblin exterminator in the warrens beneath the fortress.

Here the Metagamers really start to love 4 fireballs a day along with 5 or 6 snowball swarms.

Unfortunately, the second level of the warrens seem to be quite buggy, slowing considerably, and then crashing. This has put the Metagamers on a temporary halt until I can figure out what to do about it. Will patching midgame make the pre-patch save files unusable like the Fallout games? Because I've actually never tried with an Infinity Engine game and I seemingly forget to patch Icewind Dale 2 up after reinstalling it.

 

[Shannow]

This is a thread I found on slowdown in IWD2 when I was looking for my graphical issues.
http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=26191

I didn't read it but I hope it will help.

On what difficulty setting are you plaing, Edward? Hard? Insane?
While I'm dreading the monastary and the white dragon, I haven't met much resistance yet. The party is more munchkinized than on my first playthroughs but I didn't think it'd make that much of a difference...
I still believe that the Metagamers will pull through

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

This is a thread I found on slowdown in IWD2 when I was looking for my graphical issues.
http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=26191

I didn't read it but I hope it will help.

Sort of. Disabling a few things did help stave off the crashes and speed things up in the area, but it still happens, though only in that one area has anything happened. Not exactly sure what it is. Maybe I should look into the patch. Or just keep trying until everything works out.

On what difficulty setting are you plaing, Edward? Hard? Insane?

Core Rules actually. It's just that Icewind Dale 2 is very....strange to me in a lot of ways and I can't really handle the increased to-hit and damage bonuses of the higher difficulties too well. Mostly because I still have the AD&D mentality that a couple of heavily armed and armored warriors can actually hold up with some divine magic support, a little thiefy disruption to the enemies, and some arcane artillery. Turns out....this doesn't work in Icewind Dale 2.

While I'm dreading the monastary and the white dragon

The monastery I can understand wholeheartedly, but the white dragon fights look like they'll be pretty easy for your crew, unless of course, you're lacking arcane firepower, and I put emphasis on the fire part. Your druid probably has a bunch of fire stuff and protection from cold though, right? I though that dragon was pretty fun actually. One of the best designed encounters in the game and sort signals the decline of the game as well.

I still believe that the Metagamers will pull through

We'll see. I figure that the rest of chapter one now that the drum battle is over as well as chapter two will be pretty simple. Chapter three might cause some trouble, but chapter four is where things break down. That mage and super archer plus umber hulk ambush is going to be brutal, and the monastery as well. The Underdark has the wonderful illithid lair which is going to wreck havoc as well as the mage plus a ton of elementals ambush after it. I doubt they'll make it to chapter five.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

Are you guys powergaming (min/maxed stats) or just playing normally?

 

[Moradil]

Are you guys powergaming (min/maxed stats) or just playing normally?

I play with normal stats, it makes game more interesting. On the other hand, I rely heavily on metagaming knowledge.

 

[Shannow]

Hmm, somehow my last post disappeared. Well, despite having to redo the dragon fight due to crashing upon entering the cave I continued on. Going into the cave caused 2 crashes until I went in unbuffed. I'd forgotten the other dragon waiting in the cave and ran right back out again^^
I buffed and re-entered. Thibbledorf was at a third of his health and the rest were at about half their health at the end of the fight.

The next stage, the river caves, is infested with hook horrors.
Coming from two sides. Will the Band of the Mailed Fist meet its end at the hooks of some horrors?

Well, consedering the fun Bruenor has at squishing bugs it is quite improbable

The hook horrors repeat their strategy a few times. Until two really large groups attack. They also have some hook horror guardians which are even tougher than the normal ones.
The back is held by some summons and the usual undead that Moradin grants Cobble...
A greater command made sure that the summons arrived before the horrors.

It also comes in handy that my greater boneguard is very resistant to piercing damage
Well, the party sent Katharina to talk to those disgusting duerga and Furin conned one of them out of a crossbow.


I'm playing normally with min/maxed stats. I'll put up some screenies after they die/succeed

 

[abstract]

In Shanegarne Pass, the Codexers meet the local orc chief, Torak. The bunch of orcs he sends at them are promptly dispatched, but another wave of archers sees TWD take two arrows to the face and sends him to meet the great dumbfuck in heaven. Jasede saves the day by showering fiery death from the sky upon the orcs.

Our heroes press on into the pass, killing orcs and rescuing the local druid. KC finally shifts his ass into gear and starts chunkifying monsters instead of dying all the time.

More orcs die, and the party rescue the druid's wife, for which they are rewarded with a measly scimitar +1 and a tip. Hack hack, slash slash. One last ambush by Torak and the Codexers can continue into the orc camp. The welcoming committee falls to the combined might of Jasede's rainstorm and a shower of projectiles.

Our heroes decide to help the villagers; Sheek sneaks into the orc camp and opens the gate. A dozen or so dead orcs later and there is much rejoicing.

Now it's time to take care of Torak himself. The summons occupy the orcs, Jasede chews into them with a rainstorm, and the rest of the party pelts them with arrows, bolts and slingstones. After a bit of dancing around, VD ends Torak's misery with a precise shot.

Vrek falls, but not before taking LS with him.

The party ventures farther into the pass and is accosted by a band of assorted monsters. Our heroes beat the monsters back, but VD dies in the skirmish. Fuck!

And this is how it ended. Jasede's rainstorm area of effect spell had accidentally nicked the priestess of Selune in the initial fight with the orcs in the previous area, royally pissing her off. She came back, with friends, one of whom dished out something like 50 damage per hit. Bitch.

I might try again, on normal this time (insane is fucking brutal), if I can suffer through the excruciating boredom of Targos.

 

[Moradil]

Search for lead harpist was successful. However, his manager was real bitch with no clue what is true metal.

After Garrick spitted on the corpse of his late manager, he joined The Shriekers for the tour!

Now, The Shriekers had to present themselves to scout of the "Bandit camp" club. They had to persuade him that the band is worthy to play in the club.
The arguments were fiery, but at last, the location of bandit club was given. Band is going to play there soon!

 

[RK47]

Anyone have the link to download BGTutu anywhere? After seeing the screens I feel nostalgic all the sudden hehe.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Anyone have the link to download BGTutu anywhere? After seeing the screens I feel nostalgic all the sudden hehe.

Easy Tutu for Shadows of Amn here.

And the Throne of Bhaalized version here.

And the information is always useful as well....

http://usoutpost31.com/easytutu/

Should I update the first post to have some popular/useful mods too? Because I'm thinking that might be useful.

if I can suffer through the excruciating boredom of Targos.

You could always enable the console and blast through everything between the initial assault and the palisade attack. You don't really have any danger in those fetch quests so it won't kill the ironman experience.

 

[RK47]

yeh you should, i am talking about BG1 tutu though is there any BG1 version ?

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

yeh you should, i am talking about BG1 tutu though is there any BG1 version ?

http://modlist.pocketplane.net/index.ph ... &cat_id=98

I think that might be of more help then. It's the generic BG1 in the BG2 engine Tutu with no frills.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Metagaming never felt so good as with the power of the slowdown fixer, the Metagamers trek onwards.

Suck on ranged area effect spells you completely helpless enemies.

Time for some carnage.

An old orc with a stick who fights better than half the fortress combined. I guess orcs have the magic of leveling up as well.

Killing more and more and also helping ourselves to the loot. This basically finishes the fortress off.

Can you say pickpocketing spree?

The bigger they are.....the more sword they suck on.

Some werewolves decide to attack the Metagamers and get lit up by a hail of fire.

The Metagamers finish off their leader for posterity's sake.

Sherincal tastes the gigantic flaming cock from the sky.

Time to slaughter some High Priestesses.

Teleporting into a room full of trolls can be a little dangerous.

Crazy Motherfucker bites the dust after killing Oria. Nothing a raise dead spell, which the Metagamers have access to won't solve.

Oswald left without saying goodbye, but left a potion that permanently gives damage resistances, so it's all good. The Metagamers won't need to make him taste the giant flaming cock from the sky.

Limha tries to act all seductress witch on the Metagamers and then goes all psycho bitch on them. Time to shut her up with the flaming cock from the sky.

Wisp fight that goes surprising well.

The dragon survives the power of the flaming cock from the sky so the Metagamers resort to more mundane methods.

Another dead dragon that only yields up 500 experience. Yay asinine experience scaling....but I suppose that's part of the challenge of Icewind Dale 2 and it would be such a ballbuster otherwise.

This. IS. UNDERGROUND! Also "CRUNCH SLURP"? Ow.........now that's a ballbuster......

Unfortunately by clearing out all the monsters too early, the Metagamers broke two quests with the Duergar....Dreugar...Duragar....evil underground short guys.

Harshom makes some bad wisecracks about being such a ladies man. For this he tastes the fully powered titanic flaming cock from the sky, powered by two flame strikes, a fireball, two oils of fiery burning, and a potion of explosions for that extra kick in the pants.

And now the Metagamers head to the monastery and aren't looking forward to it.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

More Metagamers ahoy.

Eight Chambers my ass, eat my blunt weapon immune undead you no-weapon pansies.

The evil short guys die quickly upon ambushing the Metagamers.

Some drow ambush the Metagamers and manage to kill Sort of a Ninja... but die eventually.

The Metagamers exterminate the driders with ease.

The Metagamers now have their own flesh golem. They call him Fleshy.

Sort of a Ninja... goes on a stealth mission to kill the drider machine.

The Metagamers get into a desperate fight caught between two sets of illithid thralls and the tentacled terrors themselves.

They prevail however. Although it took all of their resources just to survive.

Fleshy took one for the team against the Mind Golem. RIP Fleshy.

Brain with tons of psionics, meet hasted, mindless undead.

And the Red Wizard ambush tastes the fiery cock from the sky and chokes on it.

Now only a horde of the undead, a horde of yuan-ti, a temple full of demons, a bug ridden time travel nightmare, another horde of undead, the Legion's best, an avatar of a god, and Isair and Madae stand in the way of total victory for the Metagamers.

 

[RK47]

gave up loading Tutu .. But I can't seem to run Vanilla BG1 on winXP. Managed to patch it up on Bioware site etc, but when I tried to run , it gives me an error.

 

[Makagor]

Guess who's ba-ack? That's right, it's Snow White! It's time to take on the Icewind Dale II ironman challenge.

So we've had a couple of personnel changes since we rolled out of Easthaven for a well deserved vacation. Here's the new roster:

Grumpy ~ CE Shield Dwarf Fighter, who will become a barbarian after four levels
Doc ~ CE Shield Dwarf Battleguard of Tempus
Prince Charming ~ NE Human Stormlord of Talos
Snow White ~ NE Tiefling Rogue, who will take all future levels as a Conjuror
Sleepy ~ LE Gold Dwarf Sorcerer
Happy ~ NE Gold Dwarf Bard

The whole team are min-max munchkinized as much as possible. We've got a beefy lead tank, a beefy battle cleric, a spell focussed cleric, a wizard with decent trap and lock skills, a nuker, and a sweet talking backup jack-of-all-trades arcane combat enhancer. I decided to dump a dwarf for a human, cuz humans are just that good in IWD2 rule set. I'm hoping the two gold dwarves will prove to be resilient arcane casters, comparable to human or aasimar alternatives.

I think this team will be called Snow White and the Dwarven Demolition Team.

Off we go!

Goblins are no match for the DDT.

Prince Charming earns his pay.

Targos is saved.

Orc chunks!

Our first casualty.

Prince Charming gets pin-cushioned by orc archers. After visiting the hippy shack for a raising of the dead our team heads towards the next village.

Another hippy! Notice how Snow White has laid out the flanking orc archers with a sleep spell while Grumpy gets a combat heal from Prince Charming.

That's it for today. SN and the DDT shall attempt to free the villagers tomorrow. And there's something about a hippy sword they need to find too.

So has this team got what it takes to beat IWD2?

 

[Moradil]

Before show in Bandit camp club, The Shriekers decided to practice a bit. After all, playing metal is true artistic challenge. Band members practice playing their instruments (in fact, this applies only for Moreseia) and experiment with various perception altering chemical substances (applies for all members of the band).
See what The Shriekers experienced during one such acid trip: a talking chicken!

Experiments with "acids" are not always pleasant. Following experience made Moresia to write the first ballad.

Appropriatelly musically stimulated, The Shriekers composed and performed song "Zombie Ritual". After finishing playing, the band members had to ask themselves: was it dream or was it real?

This song soon became a local hit and mayor of Beregost gladly paid the royalties:

The Shriekers and mystical chicken visited local acid-hapy mage. He, too, believed that this is some eloquent sub-specie of chickens.

As the mage was old hippie, he send The Shriekers for skeleton skull. When he got it, he started to cast some sort of spell. The result... well, the chicken tasted rather good.