As last update ended in a dramatic cliffhanger, we're thrown immediately back into the action!
Or rather, we would be, if there was some kind of time limit to rush us. But there's not, as Bioware cannot into urgency. We can make preparations to our hearts' content.
Lame.
This includes some shopping in both the thieves' guild and Sorcerous Sundries (the wizard shop).
Lame, but convenient.
And this is what our final setup looks like. The Protection From Undead scrolls are a gamble - I've never used them before and want to check out how they'll work against Skeleton Warriors in the labyrinth. That should be funny.
Watch me laugh.
The Codex' stats before heading after Sarevok. Greater Basilisk is holding its place for quite some time already. I think only Sarevok himself could dethrone him now.
Heading downstairs, we reach this room, with some girl lying down on the floor.
A girl lying down on the floor?
She's wounded, You fucking perv!
Oh. I won't be talking to her then. I know how these things work. Someone's wounded, I talk to them, they die. Like that guy in front of church in Tristram.
Oh yeah, I remember him. He died right after talking to him.
Exactly. Let's just go around this girl.
But no go - she initiates dialogue on her own.
Fucking NPCs, completely deprived of survival instinct!
Wow. She actually lived through. I am
disappoint surprised.
We move into the labyrinth, soon encountering first enemies - GREEN SLIMES!
What.
Exactly.
Their relatively low difficulty level means they are only able to make a cameo in this update.
But soon, more excitement is abound, as just a few steps further, we meet an OCHRE JELLY!
What.
Yeah, I don't know what it is either.
It doesn't seem much stronger than green slimes, although certainly has more HP.
Our next encounter is MUSTARD JELLY!
You've got to be fucking kidding me.
But wait! The excitement has just doubled, as there are two MUSTARD JELLIES!
This is supposed to be the ultra-exciting and hardcore final update? Fighting fucking pudding? What's next? Cookie monster? If I were the audience, I would demand my money back.
Oh yeah, jokes aside, mustard jellies actually manage to wound and poison our hero. But there's no real threat, since we're stocked up on the purple potions, which both restore HP and cure poison.
It's the bottle that is purple, not the potion itself.
Even after curing the poison, jellies offer serious resistance - their ranged attack is quite accurate when we're not in melee range (like all shooters, they suffer -4 THAC0 then).
They are defeated, eventually, thanks to the might of Spider's Bane.
And my skills.
And The Codex' skills, of course.
But yeah, the sword has done a good job too. If only I could say the same about the armor...
Next enemy on our way is... GRAY OOZE!
Alright, fuck this shit. I've had enough. I quit.
You can't quit now!
Oh yeah? Just watch me!
This is the last one, I promise. No more jellies, slimes and oozes ahead. Really.
You better start praying that you're right!
The ooze is... well, not a threat.
As promised, there are no more puddle-type enemies. Next monster we meet is a Doom Guard.
Right. Let's pretend I said nothing and go back to the oozes. Can we?
We summon a bunch of helpers to distract him. Random Number God declares that the ones slaughtered shall be gnolls.
Have I mentioned I really like the monster spamming approach? Well, I do.
It turns out there were two Doom Guards in the nearby area. We start shooting them with arrows +2, but they turn out to be immune. Was it always like that, or are these Doom Guards
some kind of upgrades?
The better question is: what the fuck to we do about it?
Oh, that's easy.
We use the gnoll buffer to retreat, hide, and sneak by the Doom Guards. Gnolls die as predicted.
Farewell, brave friends. Your sacrifice will be remembered. Until the next screenshot, that is.
Finally, we meet a Skeleton Warrior. I was starting to doubt my memory. Time to try Scroll of Protection From Undead.
I have a bad feeling about this.
We use the scroll. A nice icon of red skull in blue circle appears on The Codex' portrait.
What exactly is it supposed to do?
It should protect you from all atatck made by the undead, of course!
I'll let myself remain sceptical about it.
Oh fuck! I'm bleeding red ice crystals!
Conclusion #1: Scroll of Protection From Undead does not protect from arrows shot by the undead.
Death count: 158
Loading game.
That was fucking unpleasant.
Sneaking by?
Hell yes.
But before we are able to do that, we have to disarm the traps in this corridoor. Whole this labyrinth is a kind of Dungeon For Dummies (TM), as potentially trapped places are marked with a green symbol on the wall (visible in the screenshot). There's also a similar red symbol, which I think means "you're heading the wrong way, you fucking moron" or something like that.
This is somewhat tricky, as switching to detect/disarm trap means Hide In Shadows will remain active only for a few more seconds. Disarming traps while staying hidden requires some patience and moderately careful timing.
But is not very hard overall.
Moving past the skeleton warriors. They're probably one of the most annoying enemies in the game, as they shoot quickly and accurately from behind the traps, and tend to hit hard with their magic arrows. Disarming the traps is the key - after that Skeleton Warriors quickly fall, even to a moderately strong party.
I prefer to sneak by nonetheless, as they would drain my most precious and most difficult to renew resource: Hit Points.
Another corridoor with the green markings.
And another Skeleton Warrior, this time with a sword. And this means...
Oh no...
Oh yes! Scroll of Protection From Undead!
Let's see what this baby can do in melee!
Apparently, it can do shit.
Conclusion #2: Scroll of Protection From Undead does not protect from weapons wielded by the undead in melee.
Death count: 159
Reloading.
Are you done with the fucking experiments on the living and undead flesh?
Yes. I am very disappointed in these scrolls.
Not as much as I am. Trust me.
Hide. Detect. Disarm. Retreat. Repeat.
Sneaking by the skeleton, into the next corridoor.
There'a red mark here. I'm not sure if my "dead end" interpretation is correct. Anyway, there's also another Doom Guard.
Have you noticed, this labyrinth is actually kinda dull?
Oh, yes. I have. Many times.
Sneaking by the Doom Guard and another Skeleton Warrior...
...into a dead end. A trapped dead end.
This dungeon must have been designed by the same moronic jerkass that also made Candlekeep catacombs.
After some backtracking into another corridoor, we reach the area exit, with the obligatory dying backstabbed mentor-minion of Sarevok.
Yeah. We both know the drill. I'm not talking to him. Although he probably doesn't deserve to live.
We are of course not leaving yet - there is still a lot of fog of war to uncover here. Although it's only done for the sake of completion, as there is absolutely nothing to be gained from it (except maybe some XP, if we cared about that).
There are actually two routes to this place from the entrance. This is the other one, which we will now follow from the exit side.
There is a fair amount of dead ends...
BLOODY HELL! What the fuck!?
Oh look, an Invisible Stalker.
No fucking shit!
Since The Codex is about to die, Mirror Image is our best bet at saving his life.
I fucking hate these fucking stalkers.
But sometimes even the best bet is not good enough.
Death count: 160
Load game.
I fucking hate these fucking stalkers.
Yes, You already said that.
That's because I really fucking hate them.
Not sure where exactly we met the stalker (it's usually invisible after all), we're caught off guard one more time.
Once again, Mirror Image to rule them all.
I hope it fucking works this time.
And it doesn't...
Death count: 161
Loading.
I am really disappointed in Mirror Image as of late.
Yes, it seems it has ceased to be our life-saving spell. But no worries, as we have a worthy replacement.
Monster summoning, hell yeah!
Stalkers (yes, plural) have not turned visible yet, but the message box already revealed their presence.
There's one!
Time for magic missile to the face, motherfucker!
I'm not sure if they even have faces.
That's beside the point!
Second stalker appears. Summoned dogs drop like flies, so we acquire some help for them.
Unlike Doom Guards, Invisible Stalkers don't have the "magic arrow immunity" skill. We use this fact against them.
And switch to a sword in the latter part, to conserve arrows - going back to a shop right now would be anti-climactic (if even possible).
Green rune on the wall = traps.
And there's one more stalker here. We learn it the hard way.
Fuck!
It doesn't give us much of a chance to summon help or anything like that.
Death count: 162
Loading.
Have I mentioned...
That You hate Invisible Stalkers? Yes. Believe me, I'm not too fond of them either.
It's time to swarm it with gnolls.
Go forth, my minions! For
certain death glory!
What do you say to that, mr stalker, huh!? Not so fucking pleasant a situation, is it?
We use the gnoll buffer and Spider's Bane's superior reach to combat the stalker from a safe spot.
Victory is ours.
Summoning monsters: is there any problem it CAN'T solve?
Area completed!
Good. Geezus fuck, that was tedious as hell.
We reach the underground city of... well, just the underground city.
It doesn't look like much, but everything's better than that fucking labyrinth.
We don't want this update to drag on needlessly while being so close to the end battle, so we're going to cheat a little bit here.
Area completed!
Clairvoyance: completist's best friend!
But it would be too easy if we could just move on to the final battle - there's one encounter before that.
Who are these guys?
Iron Throne's assassins sent to kill Sarevok for his betrayal.
He betrayed them? When?
In the so-called meantime. We must have missed it.
So, these guys are on my side? Finally, some help!
Forget it. Don't you see the red circles? They want to kill You too. You've been a thorn to the side of Iron Throne for a long time now.
Oh yeah. Screw them then.
For a moment I'm tempted to just sneak past them, but I know our noble audience doesn't like it when I'm omitting
interesting encounters, so we're going to kill them.
I'd like a word with the audience, if I may...
You certainly may
not.
We start with Mirror Image and Web, following with a series of FireBalls from Wand of Fire.
Rahvin seems to be the leader of this little party.
Fucking plot getting in the way of good fun again. I thought we were done with it after the last update.
Almost.
It's not bad as long as there are two archers vs The FireBall Flinging Codex (our hero's AC vs missile weapons is still very good).
Unfortunately, Rahvin seems to be supplied with exploding arrows. These hurt
a lot.
Confirmed. Fucking empirically.
Also, their mage, Shaldrissa, appears on the scene. No doubt, casting some nasty spell.
Third FireBall finally kills one of them (the thief guy, whatever his name was). Yet another player enters the pitch - Gorf The Ogre (a frog pun, anyone?).
Why do I suddenly have an influx of bad feelings?
We
run escape retreat from the ogre, but reach a dead end. We're left with the necessity of fighting it in melee.
Mirror image!
The spell still hasn't regained its usefulness, it seems.
Death count: 163
Loading game.
Monster spamming?
Shouldn't do any harm (to us).
A tactical error is made from the start. We cast from outside enemies' sight range, but our monsters are summoned
inside it. That leaves us with only one group of hobgoblins before they react.
Some Haseo guy begins slaughtering the poor hobgoblins (another named Carston is shooting at them from afar), while The Codex faces a duel with Shaldrissa.
I've got something for you, bitch!
We employ our new secret weapon: Arrows of Dispelling. One hit is enough to deprive Shaldrissa of her protection spells. Most important of them being probably Mirror Image.
Say hello to my little friend!
We don't actually manage to kill Shaldrissa, as Rahvin begins overkilling hobgoblins with his FireBall arrows. The mage dies in friendly fire - which is literally fire. The Codex is saved by a chunk of wall, but we now have to defeat Haseo in melee.
Mwahahahaha! Slaughter!
The Codex proves his combat superiority by cutting Haseo in half. Meanwhile, the archer guy Carston is probably very upset at being shot with fireball arrows (or maybe he really liked Shaldrissa?) and starts dealing an awful lot of damage to Rahvin.
As everyone no doubt can see in the message box, Rahvin responded with violence too. Gotta love when Your enemies turn against each other. We don't want to interrupt them directly, so we summon some more War Dogs.
Our summons surround one of them, but Carston and Rahvin are only interested in killing each other. Also, the ogre is still alive, we need to do something about this.
Like what?
Like fireballing the area. One of the War Dogs kicks the bucket. Casualty of war. In the meantime, enemy closest to us (Carston? Rahvin?) was eaten by War Dogs. The other one dies of FireBall poisoning.
Another FireBall is cast, killing some guy named Wudei, who I missed before (he must have been the party thief). After that The Codex enters melee himself, encouraged by the ogre being webbed.
Gorf soon gets his naughty bits bitten off by our War Dogs. We are only left with defeating a wolf summoned by our enemies.
How ironic that the last enemy we kill before the endgame is a wolf.
What kind epic loot could be dropped by the enemies directly preceding the end boss, You ask?
Gold. Jewels. Rings and necklaces. I don't get the developers' sense of humor at this point.
Magic arrows - this is somewhat better.
These Arrows +2 and Arrows of Piercing are actually the only really usable stuff found here.
Approaching the temple of Bhaal.
Hell yeah! Let's kick Sarevok's ass!
In a moment.
Before we enter - we have some resting to do.
And more resting.
Uh... why?
Oooooooh.
I'll probably forget to use it anyway, but it's better to have it, than not - especially in the context of exporting the character into Shadows of Amn.
The Codex' final stats. I wil spare everyone the lengthy rant about statistical average XP value of a single kill (280) and how many gibberlings that would make.
At least for now...
We're inside - and already in a very important spot. As You can see, the center of the room here is out of bounds for The Codex.
Only temporarily, of course.
Or not.
Yeah, these traps cannot be disarmed. Damn cheating game. We'll just have to remember not to step on them.
Not that the sides are safe, mind You.
Such deviousness!
Fortunately, these are not immune to our hero's skills.
Ha! I rule!
The other side is trap free (which is good), but if we come too close to the sarcophaguses here, they spawn
Doom Guards Battle Horrors (which is bad). Try to guess if I remembered that.
Fuck.
We use the combat method proven successful against Doom Guards in the labyrinth.
Except I can't escape anywhere.
That's what we carry Wand of Paralyzation for.
Awesome!
Battle Horror meets his death.
We leave our hobgoblin helpers near the entrance and sneak by Sarevok to uncover the whole room (stupid, I know).
The dialogue is triggered regardless of invisibility, it seems.
Luckily, there's an option to end it quickly.
Good. I only like talkative bosses when You can kill them in dialogue. In a non-stupid way. I am looking at you, Eden!
Some Semaj guy appears and immediately teleports out of our sight range. We start hearing screams of dying hobgoblins.
My keen deduction senses say he's near the entrance.
We immediately move there, accidentally spawning another Battle Horror on the way. Surely, this will
not bite us in our collective ass later.
Don't call me Shirley.
When we arrive, hobgoblins are all dead already.
Nooooooo...! Oh, wait, I don't really care about that.
We say hello by shooting an Arrow of Dispelling at Semaj, who loses all his buffs.
This almost feels like cheating. Almost.
We're following with a series of Arrows +2, but Semaj is a cheating bastard and releases Contigency with some mysterious Tattoo of Power. The Codex is affected by a Greater Malison spell, which fucks up his saving throws (if I remember correctly). At this point, I should have used the potion of magic blocking (or something like that), which would grant us automatic saving throws succes.
But I didn't.
That's... not good?
The Codex is affected by Chaos.
What? Where? Who?
Semaj decided to finish the combat and casts Cloud Kill.
What? Why? You? You!
But not all is lost, as our hero regains some parts of his consciousness and starts shooting at the mage with pre-equipped Arrows +2.
It works surprisingly well - Semaj soon croaks.
Yes! Yes? Why? No?
That unfortunately does not change the fact that The Codex is standing in the middle of a double damage dealing Cloud Kill.
Will our hero survive?
What? Ow. *cough* Why?
He does!
Yes. Awesome. Ow. Who?
I patiently wait until Chaos wears off.
Talking to Sarevok disables the ability to leave the temple, and resting inside is imposssible. That means our margin for mistakes got severely reduced.
After some heavy drinking, we're ready to continue.
That was one trippy fight, I tell you. Now let's kick some bhaalspawn ass!
We proceed to do just that.
He's alone against us and one million wardogs. We've already won!
Not exactly. Angelo (archer) and Tazok (melee fighter) join our enemy soon. The difficulty level is about to get a serious spike up.
Like they really could do something here.
They can, as Angelo is one of those fireball-arrow-shooting bastards and quickly slaughters all our summoned helpers.
We find ourselves outnumbered and, what's worse, outsworded.
The Codex manages to leave our enemies' sight range in time - nobody follows.
That's just stupid. It's not like I could've escaped far away, could I?
There they are - the three amigos.
They seem to be... just standing still.
Maybe they forgot why they were here?
Time to remind them!
They are here to DIE!
But not by FireBall, it seems, as damage it deals is just pathetic. All of them must be sporting some serious fire resistance.
Oh, right, I forgot to summon monsters before shooting that FireBall...
You've got to be fucking joking!
Angelo keeps fireballing the area, but his damage rolls must be unlucky, as The Codex only loses a couple of HP. Even Tazok is hurt more than that.
Since our monster buffer got raped once again, we save ourselves with a Potion of Invisibility. Sarevok immediately forgets about our hero and decides to kill the first thing he sees - Angelo.
What.
Actually, that's probably because Angelo hurt Tazok, or even Sarevok himself, with his fireball arrows. The game does not differentiate accidental damage from purposeful one.
This is too stupid to be true.
But yeah, they start to fight - with Angelo still shooting fireball arrows (in fucking melee!). The Codex gets hurt in the process, but Tazok does not bother with air burning around him and still fails to see our invisible hero.
Of course, the suicide bomber archer is no match for Sarevok in the long run.
Mwahahahaha! Slaughter!
...
Must be a family thing.
I decide to follow the initial plan, so we assume a defensive position and summon monsters in bulk. And we get rushed a the previously released Battle Horror.
I completely forgot about it.
Luckily, we still have some charges on the Wand of Paralyzation.
Sarevok decides to join the party.
You're too soon, I'm not ready yet!
Paralyzed Battle Horror dies soon. Meanwhile Sarevok organizes a bloodbath for our summons.
Mwahahahaha! Slaughter!
We reinforce our troops with fresh recruits all the time, shooting Sarevok with Arrows of Piercing between the spells.
Mwahahahaha! Slaughter!
Stop it already!
That 24 damage he deals would get doubled if he was fighting You directly.
That would be so not cool...
Mwahahahaha! Slaughter!
That's it! I'm going to fucking kill you!
So... What has changed?
You are next on the list, smartass!
Go forth, my minions!
Why does it look like You're the end boss for him here, not the other way around?
It doesn't... Oh, wait, it kinda does. Weird shit.
Hahaha! The loser got hit by a gnoll!
Well, that means the gnoll dealt more damage to him than You did.
What? Fuck! We have to do something about it!
I take a moment to think and remember that we have these, which should improve The Codex' accuracy.
The combat is entering its final stages. Not that You can deduce it from the screenshot, but trust me - it is.
It drags so long that some of the oldest summons are beginning to disappear, but finally accuracy improved by Potion of Heroism does its job and Sarevok gets final arrow to the... I don't know, leg?
HELL FUCKING YES! The bow owns his shit!
Congratulations.
Thanks! What happens now?
Ending cinematics, I think.
Or not.
WTF is this shit?
We get BG2 credits instead of our outro movie. Some kind of tutu bug, I guess.
I can't believe it! This is so fucking lame!
We've both seen the outro, so no big loss, right?
Um...
What? You haven't? Didn't You finish the game before?
I never said I did! You assumed that, and I just never corrected that mistake! I got rather far, it's just...
Right.
Here's the outro for You, then.
Okay... And why didn't you do that with all the previous cinematics?
We're not here for the plot. Besides they all were rather lame.
This one too. And I don't really get it.
Oh, You will. You will.
THE END
-----------------------------------
Thanks to everyone who followed and commented the LP. I hope You enjoyed at least some parts of it. I certainly did (some parts, that is), but hell if it wasn't a chore at times. Whoever thought of that fucking "no run-throughs" rule should be killed, chopped into pieces, burned and buried - if it wasn't me, that is.
Don't turn off Your PCs and/or kill yourself just yet, as there's still more to come. I am planning to LP BG2 (+ToB) too, but my enthusiasm is not high as it was before starting this one. The game will be started no earlier than in February, as I really need a break from Infinity Engine. In the meantime, I shall put up a poll that will let You (yes, You!) decide on the playstyle of the following LP. I don't really feel the drive to play it solo insane (I am
not fighting dragons in this setup, forget it), so I'll let You decide if You'd rather want to see it played solo/core -or- insane, but with a (limited or full) party.
The first approach would allow me to keep the LP playstyle (and writing) as it is, but the second will allow noble codexers to volunteer as meatshields and take part in the exciting adventures. (I also have pre-defined party variant ready, just in case.)
Details shall appear soon.
There's also one more bonus update to be posted, but don't expect anything special (and certainly don't expect continuity).