If so, give us their stats. What race/class/kit/alignment did you use and did you solo that character through BG1 and BG2, or at least BG2 first?

I'm dying to know, because I tried to solo ToB the first day I got it and got my ass royally beat down. I was using my Kensai/Mage, Anorath, that I solo-ed SoA with (He owned SoA). ;)

Looking forward to your replies.

-Immoral

I don't think soloing is really possible without a thief.

So solo AS a thief. I've already done it (well, that was before I repartitioned and reformatted due to a screwed-up Linux install) and they're even more worthwhile when you hit high levels with the Use Any Item ability. High-level thieves can even have their own familiar, then. :)

I have recently started a solo game.

This character is starting in the TOB expansion.

As a result I do not have anywhere near the same level of experience or items that a character that had gone though SOA would have.

I was fortunate to be given Bracers AC3 and the ring of invisibility. The ring of invisibility has helped a lot so far.

I have had to use what could be considered 'cheesy' tactics for most of the battles. That is use the ring of invisibility to determine where the enemies are. I then use area affect spells while standing out of the enemies visual range.

My character is a Elf Fighter/Mage/Thief with the following stats

Str 18(45)
Dex 19
Con 17
Int 18
Wis 7
Cha 8

Main equipment used

Shield of Harmony +2
Long Sword +3
Composite Long Bow +3
Hammer of Thunderbolts +3

Cheers

Craig



[This message has been edited by craigal (edited July 20, 2001).]

I'm not sure that having a thief is totally necessary for ToB. If you have Edwin, for example, you can give him a bunch of knock spells, and you can suck up the damage from traps- yes, it's kind of annoying, but still doable.

he said he was going Solo...

thiefs are almost indispensible.. no matter wat creature u summon. they can only walk on traps.. not open chests/cupboards with traps...

also... F/M/T is great.. only thing is u have to be a half elf...

I have to disagree with the 'thieves are indespensible' theory. I rarely used a thief (imoen) and I feel that although you may miss a few non-essential items without a thief, they are not essential to completing the game or even becoming very powerful

If your soloing ToB, I think the best class to go as is either a thief dual to a fighter (what I'm doing, but I'm having trouble with fire giants right now) or a fighter (berserker or kensai) dual to a mage.
Thief dual to fighter is very good because they can annihalate mages (backstab usually kills it. Once I did 208 damaga to a mage: exploded him :D ) and they are strong fighters, can take out large groups of fighters. (In the north forest where you start I exploded every one of Yaga Shura's troops who try to capture you :D )

Fighter dual to mage, well, no explaining there. Excellent fighters, excellent mages.

My thief//Fighter's stats.

strength 18
dexterity 18
constitution 18
intelligence 3 ;)
wsidom 15 (for some lore as a thief)
charisma 14

Notable items:

Blackrazor (Main hand)
Scimitar +5 defender (offhand)
Daystar (for killing undead)
Belm+2 (just for a massacre in easy fights)
Short Bow of the Gesen (ranged weapon)
Black Dragon Scales
Armour of the Hart+3
Ring of Gaxx
Ring of free action
Helm of Baldurian
Boots of speed
cloak of the sewers
Neckalce of seldrain (whatever, the one you start with in ToB)
Bracers of weapon expretise

Happy Questing!
Shade

Some questions for Shade:

1. How do you get to keep Drizzt's scimitar? Doesn't his very powerful friend get pissed off at you and take it back?

2. Isn't the Helm of Balduran kind of underpowered considering that you can get the pale green ioun stone in SoA?

Saving throw bonuses.

Yeah. The helm of baldurian is good. Also, with Drizzit's Scimitar... (shhhh!!) ;) I fingure if I can kill drizzit and his friends (so easily too) then why should a pesky mage be able to pickpocket this thief with Drizzit's Scimitar. I haven't tryied this yet, but maybe you could just store it in a barrel or chest or something until just before ToB, then get it, kill irenicus, and your homefree. Also, it is not as though the mage guy will come to Hell with you to get his dead friends sword back!!

Anyways, I'm going to start a thread about my guy. I'm having trouble and I need help. And I can tell stories of some massacres.

Why don't you just save yourself the trouble and use ShadowKeeper to get Drizzt's scimitar :rolleyes: Or better yet forget doing it, you don't really have to have it. Other great weapons around.

I haven't solo on this game yet. It is very difficult so far, but we learn things as we go and eventually some sorceror will finish it solo because the sorceror is really the strongest class yet...although the thief is very strong class also.
F/M/T has one serious problem which will not be easy to overcome...due to the experience being divided 3 ways, you will get only 2,666,666 experience points in each of your classes. That is going to max your levels at 18/17/22. This character will be able to dispense whoopass in very large doses, but there is still that problem...Do you know how many level 9 spell slots a level 17 mage has? <insert goose egg here > You won't be able to memorize level 9 spells. That means you can't memorize any of the level 10 spells cause guess where they get memorized? Thats right on lvl 9 slots.

You have much untapped energy. Do you even realize your potential?

Here's a thought, who cares about level 9 spells? I didn't find them necessary same with level 10 spells. I never once used timestop or any other spell and i only used comet once in sendai's conclave. I only summoned a planetar once in watchers keep against that party guarding the keyhole thingy to get to demogorgon. And the sorcerer is NOT the strongest class. Bah, i find normal mages to be better since i don't need flexibility.

Anyways a F/M/T could probably solo the game as could a ranger/cleric or a paladin. All those classes can summon powerful creatures to even the odds and they're all devastating in close combat. Or if you're reaaaaaalllly bored you can try a dual class at high levels.

One last thing about the F/M/T, they can still use scrolls so those time stop spells i know you've saved from SoA will come in real handy ;)

Besides, if the going gets tough the tough casts invisibility on themselves or stealths and walks past all the monsters :D

[This message has been edited by Tyresian (edited July 25, 2001).]

Har! You saying you don't want to experience the new powerful spell casting? Well, I can tell you that is what I'm looking forward to...timestop, wish, powerword kill OH MY!
Seriously though, you are forgoing alot of powerful spells by choosing a 3 way MC....but that has always been the case, in SoA it wasn't such a huge sacrifice, but in ToB it is quite a significant concession.

What did i just say about a F/M/T using scrolls to cast 9th level spells!!!!

And besides, just because you want to experience them doesnt mean they're necessary to finish the game!

I would have to agree with the others, I used a fighter mage theif and he was great. i made him elven for infravision too. I do think it would be very hard to solo ToB though, good luck.

Here is an update on the status of my Solo F/M/T which I detailed in a post above.

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I had to use 2 protection from undead scrolls baught at saradush to get past the wraith disguised as Gorian. I could not kill the vampiric wraiths without using them.

I then went onto the the firemountains and into Yaga Shura's lair. I kept getting killed by the first lot of fire giants inside the lair. What I dd was to use invisibility to run in, grab a ward stone and run out again. Now I have the 4 ward stones. The next trick will be getting the hearts.

I decided next to head to watchers keep to gain some experience and items. I cleared out all of level one except for the statues and one vampric wraith which I managed to lock away in a side room.

Now I will see if I can oversome the statues.

More later

Craig

[This message has been edited by craigal (edited July 29, 2001).]

You'd think that wraith would slip under the crack below the door ;)
Well keep us updated.

If you solo, trust me, it's very hard not to cheat. First of all, you have to kill five bhaalspawns that are hard, and beat Melissan 4 times. Oh yeah, this to everyone who talks about Melissan:
SHE DOESN'T GET KILLED BY YOU!!! In the video, it shows that she gets killed by the thingie dropping and then exploding!!!

I may be wrong, but I have read somewhere that someone is soloing with a monk in TOB. How tough it must be!

Have yet to play TOB myself. so I can't comment on that. But having completed SOA, I can imagine how difficult it is, short of editing scripts and cheating, that is.

Update on Solo F/M/T

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I killed all of the statues using the fog of war and area affect spells for the most part. I have also found the asassination special ability to be very useful.

The second level of watchers keep was fairly straight forward. The chromatic demon was giving me a lot of trouble until I lured it into the slime laboratory and trapped him in there.

The third level of watchers keep got very tough quite quickly. I got past the succubi (sp?) quite easily as well as the room where the demons are fighting. The next room has the Tanar'ri demon who so far is wiping the floor with me. Looks like I'll have to come back to Watcher keep later

Back to the Marching Mountains. Entered the lair while using Improved Invisibility. Found a corner in the first of the side rooms out of visible range of the fire giants. The usual 2xDeath Fog and 4xIce Storm takes care of the giants for the most part. Now all of the fire giants near the entrance are dead. Next I will work my way up through the lair.

Til then

Cheers

Craig

You're goin good, Craig! Keep up the good work!

Alex wrote: "I don't think soloing is really possible without a thief."

If you use Knock a lot, and have a familiar that can Find Traps (the ferret, I think - LN, or the Rabbit - True Neutral) it should be possible.

Is there a spell that can disarm traps? If not, you can just avoid them or protect yourself before tripping them.

Play a bard. It's just like being a thirf/mage.

I'm not seeing the motivation to play solo if it requires cheating or cheesing...but thats just my opinion...I could be wrong.

In constant sorrow, all through his days....

My favorite class to solo would be a Thief dualclassed to a fighter. Also, Subra, I liked ur constant sorrow quote.... I thought that was a great movie

Eh, shadow_thief, shouldn't you be a little more carefull in what you write?
You just write a huge spoiler without even warning, anybody could read that you know.
So watch out next time.

Update on my solo F/M/T

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Cleaning out the fire mountains was not very hard using Ice Storm and Death Fog. Eventually delivered the two hearts and made Yoga Shur (sp?) vulnerable and then headed off to his base camp.

I could not defeat Yaga Shura at this stage so I decided to head back to the Watchers keep to gain some experience/items.

This time I was able to complete level 3 of WK. A useful tactic, was to enter a room, concentrate on one opponent and then hurry back through the portal to rest and recuperate and then repeat.

Level 4 of Watcher keep was fairly straight forward. The Psion blade +5 made the mind flayers easy. Did not bother to fight either the Dragon or the Lich at this stage. The +1 boost to all my stats was nice to get.

Went down to Level 5. The challenge at the top left was fairly simple. I could do 2 parts of the challenge at the bottom but the Dragon proved to be difficult.

At this point I went back and killed Yaga Shura. I basically used multiple whirlwind attacks and a number of healing potions until he went down.

The Oasis was fairly easy at this stage. Simple melee took care of that. I collected LOTS of magic weapons which provided me with lots of cash when I sold them all. This allowed me to buy lots of useful spells and pay for various upgrades by Cespenar.

After a brief visit at Amkethran I was off to Sendai's lair. No real problems until I got to the final batle against Sendai. What I did was knowing the order that the statues came to life I basically stayed on the stairs and tried to kill the statue while staying out of visual range of the next statue to come alive. Once one statue was killed (usually with area effect spells or summoned skeleton warriors) I was able to return to the pocket plane to rest and regain my spells. This tactic allowed me to default all of the statues but I could not defeat Sendai herself.

I then went back to Watcher's keep for more experience/items. I had to use extremely cheesy tactics against the three sets of guardians on Level 5. Basically I laid spike traps and cast lots of Skull Traps on the spots where the guardian would appear after the keys were used. Basically I could cast a bunch of skull traps, rest to get spells back and repeat as often as I liked.

Now I went though the portal to meet the Demogorgan.

There was no way my character could have defeated him without resorting to cheesy tactics. After the inital dialog I laid 7 spike traps at the point where he would reappears. I could not use the Skull Trap spell as it would go off as soon as it was cast.

I then challenged him to combat. As soon as he appeared the seven spike traps went off doing about 60-70 points damage each and he died straight away.

BTW, I had realised some time ago that there was no way that this character could have got anywhere near as far as he has without using cheesy tactics.

One thing though that some of you may have realised is that with an XP Cap of 8000000 spread over three classes I theoretically should not have received any high level abilities. However I was getting a new ability from the Fighter and Theif pools every time i went up a level in any of the three class. This meant that I had quite a number of high level abilities.

Now off to try to defeat Sendai again.

I am out of time now so I will continue this story later.

Cheers

Craig

You run away in the middle of the battle to your cosy little pocket plane cause the big bad giants called you nasty names? What are you, a child of Bhaal or a wimp?!

(seriously, I can't understand why anyone would get any satisfaction out of the game playing that way; run away when it's too hard, use cheap tactics to exploit limited computer AI, why bother playing the game at all?)

Heheh, my thoughts exactly and the reason I'll probably never solo through ToB. I soloed BG with my mage/thief, just to show I could and I only had to resort to cheesy tactics twice. (Sarevok's band and the group in the main tent of the bandit camp.) I really hated that though, luckily most incredibly hard fights could be solved with either good use of the sneaking ability or the use of some uncommon spells (several spells that seem worthless actually have a use when you're soloing). That lightning bolt wand was really helpful, at least until it ran out of charges :p

I have actually played through SOA and TOB using 'legitimate' tactics. I am playing this solo game just to try something different. I agree that it does not give the same satisfaction as playing it the 'proper' way but it is a different sort of challenge and does let me get more value for money out of the game.

Anyway, here is a further update

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Eventually managed to defeat Sendai.

She has a few offensive spells which I was able to endure by using lots of healing potions. The summoned Skeletons and spiders I was able to take on in standard melee without taking too much damage.

Eventually Sendai ran out of protectiuve spells and then I killed her via regular melee

I was now using the following equipment

The Answerer +4
Runhammer +5
Axe of the Unyielding +5
Elven chain +1
Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization
Circlet of Netheril
Amulet of the Master Harper
Ring of Acuity
Ring of Invisibility
Montolio's Cloak
Boots of Speed
Girdle of fire giant strength

I had already reached the experience cap before this battle with Sendai. Perhaps I could have defeated Sendai without doing so but I gave into temptation and installed the experience point cap removal patch.

The next challenge now is Abizagail's (sp?) lair. So far Draconis is proving too tough for me.

I will have to make use of Contigiency and Spell sequencers as well as spells such as pierce shield, pierce magic etc. I've never really used these spells before since in my presious game my PC was an Inquisitor and Dispel Magic at twice my level was what I used in the past.

More later

Craig

It is now later so here is an update

Further update on my Solo F/M/T

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Finally defeated draconis.

Basically used the following tactics.

Moved to area and promptly got wing bufffeted away
Moved close to draconis but not with sight.
Cast time stop
move within range
cas 3 x Pierce Magic
move out of sight
lots of area affect spells such as incediary cloud, death fog, cloud kill, ice storm etc.
Result one dead dragon.

Proceeded though Abizagail's lair without too much difficulty. Abisagail was fairly easy using traps. I laid seven spike traps near where you start in the final room. I moved forward to initiate combat and then ran back to the entrance. The dragon followed, activated the traps and promptly died.

Back to Amkethran. Fought and defeated a multitude of Monks and Mercenaries until eventually they stopped appearing. Using the key from the Guard Captain I entered the monestary.

Balthazaar was easy to defeat and I did not need to use cheese tactics. As soon as combat started I cast either Improved Mantle or Absolute immunity. The monks could not hurt me which gave me time to cast time stop. I then used whirlwind attacks and killed Balthazzar just as the timetop wore off

Now back to the pocket plane to catch up on some of the challenges.

The slayer I defeated though a combination of Tensors transformation, improved mantle, whirlwind attacks and healing potion.

The next challange against Cyric's chosen was tougher. One Cyric disppeared I had time to lay a few traps near where I was standing. I also had a chain contingiency ready with 3 x horrid wilting spells. As soon as the chosen appeared I cast absolute immunity. On of the chosen dies from the traps and the wilting spells. Whirlwind attacks and healing potions and the other three are dead.

So far the ravager has been too hard for me. I will have to plan this battle very carefully.

I wnet back to watchers keep to tie up two loose ends, namely the Dragon and DemiLich on Lvl 4. Both were defeated fairly easily.

I'll report later if/when I manage to defeat the Ravager

Craig



[This message has been edited by craigal (edited August 21, 2001).]

If you want some tips on that, go to the Journal of Elmonster, at this site:http://members.home.net/mrkevvy/journal.html
This guy here soloed through TOB and SOA, starting from BG1.

Mirkwood:
Look at it this way:
Fire Giant hacks off your arm, and proceeds to nearly kill you. Do you, A: Stand and Fight, because running away and becoming stronger is stupid. or B: Run away like any intellectual being, heal, and maybe gain some more experience. From the way I understood your post, you pretty much said A is the only choice except for people who basically cheat.... And exploiting a poor AI is entirely different from running away and trying something new.

Soloing through TOB is not that hard with sorcerer. You can just cast project image, and then summon a few planetars. Then you will be able to wipe out almost anything.

Cheese or cheat, it's your game. That said, it seems as though you're handling nearly *all* the big fights with AoE spells. Unlike most people in here, I consider 'cheese' to be quite legitimate, but it sounds like you could be having more fun.

For example: With Imoen SK'd to a pure thief, I cleaned out the marching mountains while the rest of the party had a smoke. The only thing in there that can detect invisibility are the fell cats, and carefully laid traps can handle those. It *is* possible to hide in shadows by stepping behind a pillar. Use the thief in you. Backstab! Backstab! Backstab! The giants will chase after you (but you should have boots of speed by now, anyway), so they won't catch you. Backstab, step behind pillar, hide in shadows, backstab. Repeat as necessary.

For those you can't backstab, keep up the good work with the traps.

How in the hell did you lay traps for Demogorgon? I thought he always appeared immediately after the dialogue..

After the first dialog he 'disappears' and waits for you to come back. At this point you can lay all the traps that you like near the spot where he will appear.

If I tried to cast a skull trap it went off straight away. Id did not matter has the traps were enough.

Unfortunately, I lost the save game of my solo F/M/T. All I had left to do was the last abyss challenge and the final battle. Maybe one day I'll recreate my character and continue but I am busy with other things at the moment.

Cheers

Craig