Has anyone tried Improved Anvil v6?

[saros]

Some vanilla info, concerning the last fight:

You may deploy additional powerful help by increasing your party to 10 people max. Provided you saved 4 Control Circlets, produced from the machine in the Illithid city in Underdark. These provide undispellable Dire charm on a single character for six full hours, meaning enough for the final fight. At first, I thought using them on the Adamantite golem summoned by the Limited Wish spell, but frankly, that golem's not powerful enough, whereas additional mages/fighters will be.

There is a recently discovered xp exploit which may be used to bring these eventual 4 last-fight allies to the cap, then arm then with what spare weapons and armor you have, have them memorize good spells, rest with each of them in the party then disband, then before the final fight starts, use the necklaces on them to charm them. These additional party members won't have access to their inventory for the fight, nor will be able to consume Barbarian essence potions during the fight (but you may still temporarily join, prebuff with potions, disband and dire charm each one of the fighters you want), but on the bright side - they will take only normal damage from each spell/attack, not double if you play on Insane, also they will be immune to the Prince's Universal Purge Magic ability, which affects party members only. Also, they may engage the prince and/or any golem and they will be treated as summons (meaning, enemies won't gate minions while they see only dire charmed characters).

Of course, you may still control some NPCs via circlets even without the xp exploit, but as you may guess - in that case they will be too weak to make any significant difference. Still, I may be wrong about that.

[kerkes]

some extra info for Saros (if u ever want to play with a swash)
armor of stamina - that chick in Bryllaw, forgot her name, has a girl as a prisoner and a back-up mage + reinforcements spawns to no end until they die - ONLY if u have a single-class swash in party (doesn't have to be protagonist).
Red sided garnet - in WK, Demon Wraith (or something), summons undead children (??) - it's on the floor pile. use "TAB" key to highlight it.

[weye]

Thanks for the helpful post about the craftables, Saros

I know this is a v6 thread technically, but I'm playing a IA v5 game, and don't know where to go next, and obviously I can't ask on the IA forums. Party is lvl 11-12: Vagrant, Korgan, Valygar, Edwin, Jan, Cernd. I've done, in addition to all the easy stuff, Lilarcor guards, sewer rakshasa, Torgal, Shadow Jailor, Beast Master, the Slaver Boat, and Borinall. Should I try Firkraag level 2? Mekraath and the Planar prison? Maybe give Thax or the shade lord another crack? I think I should wait until lvl 14 before going to spellhold right? Just took a peek at the pirates and was thoroughly scared, but maybe it's doable...

btw I'm not using multiple strongholds.

[saros]

@Kerkes: Thanx for the info, glad to see you around

Still, concerning Swashbuckler's improved armor - its physical resistances are a pale image of Jansen's adventurewear, meaning any fighter/thief will still have better physical resistances than a Swashie. Not to mentioning more APR, better saves, more powerful items overall, ability to cast spells from scrolls, etc, etc. IA v6's Swashbucklers can't have UAI(just for clarification).

@weye: It's bad that you don't play multiple strongholds, you're gonna miss a lot of things:

Important items (even some IA ingredients, like the Golden Girdle from the Planar Sphere, also a manual of Elaboration in the Bardic stronghold, a whole set of new quests in the extended Paladin stronghold)
Experience (which is important, if you played with Multiple Strongholds installed, your party would already be at mage level 12, if not more).

But to answer your question, on these party levels many things are doable, including Windspear hills lvl 2, the Planar Sphere, Unseeing Eye, Mencar Pebblecrusher, and when you hit mage lvl 12 and are able to cast protection from Magical Energy, you may try the Pirate Hideout as well. Basically, I'm not a very good choice to ask, since I always soloed v5 and never played with a team. Soloing means that my character was way ahead experience-wise, compared to a full team. Also, you may try WK lvl 1 guardians, although it may be a bit early for that - you need to be able to cast at least Improved Haste for that.

[weye]

Pirates are down! Enjoying the mod (V5) immensely.

I should have mentioned that Edwin was in fact lvl 12 already. Can't say protection from magic energy helped much, since it got removed before he cast any ADHW's. What helped more was just spreading everyone out when he started casting a necromancy spell. Also figured out that immunity: divination is really quite good since it doesn't seem to be affected by remove magic, so you can just recast imp. invis every time it is dispelled. The coordinator spent most of his time dispelling Edwin and breaching Jan (trying to set up a PW:Kill), but Cernd just recast death ward every time. A bit of luck was involved as well with the pirate captain separating from the rest of the group momentarily at the start. Also, 4 absolute immunities cast from scrolls... really?

Stoked that I won a scroll of memory boosting, though. I guess that will go towards Circlet of the Woods for Cernd, if I can get Samia's party down and figure out how I'm going to make enough gold for that and Phosphorous.

I'm journaling the rest of my run on gamefaqs, so I don't take over this thread.

[kerkes]

Originally Posted by saros

@Kerkes: Thanx for the info, glad to see you around

Ty.

Still, concerning Swashbuckler's improved armor - its physical resistances are a pale image of Jansen's adventurewear, meaning any fighter/thief will still have better physical resistances than a Swashie. Not to mentioning more APR, better saves, more powerful items overall, ability to cast spells from scrolls, etc, etc. IA v6's Swashbucklers can't have UAI(just for clarification).

I know about swash issues, was forcing myself to play one over and over again- I'm a huge fan of the kit.
Lack of APR diminishes them to a sub-par wannabe fighter with thief skills (which are more-less useless). And yes, bad saves are a big issue (vs. Death is really important). Their "special" weapon (improvised blend) is very nice, does massive (2d6!!) base damage but it comes very late (TOB) unfortunately.

@veye

glad u like the mod. I had great fun with v5 as well. A bit of advice - kick Cernd, Jan and Edwin. They have some bad bad issues. Cernd - imbalanced early, crap late game. Ranger/cleric dual is much better. Jan - Nalia is better. Traps won't kill anything. Edwin - he's ok I guess, but will leave (unless u have Happy patch) .Leave Korgan if u have happy patch, if not - kick him as well. Mark my words....Imoen is good to have...in IA she has wisdom of a 60 year old scholar...

[saros]

Originally Posted by weye

I'm journaling the rest of my run on gamefaqs, so I don't take over this thread.

Basically, this thread IS about IA, and I don't see it geting overflooded with info. Mind you, IA turns the game upside down, and tons of info has to be provided to each one testing the mod.

Protection from Magic Energy will help, plus dispersing the party, since only one person's proME will actually be dispelled. If your mages run SI:A instead of SIiv, plus ProME, plus other elemental protection, plus Chaotic Command and death ward, they will be immune to all enemy spells/effects, and the coordinator would actually have to repeatedly use RRR on them (which he will, too) in order to try and Breach/Remove Magic one of them. However, if you play right, none of this will happen - put the mages in front, so the coordinator sees only them, and the fighters in the back should fight your own fighters.

4 AI scrolls is not something unusual for IA standards - in fact, it's common. Expect every improved mage to have some. Most powerul enemies, like Layene, even have 8 at their disposal. Still, enemy mages usually carry 4-5 ProMW OR AI scrolls. Some mages using ProMW scrolls are vulnerable to normal weapons (as are dragons, usually, except the tougher ones).

Liches use ProMW spells, at least that can be interrupted (if the lich is under heavy hits from several fighters, most probably a spellcasting failure will issue even for such a short-time casting spell).

If you don't have a character/summon close to the enemy, he won't use AI scroll. You may simply wait for 20 rounds, keeping enemy mage busy with your own mages only, and then dispel his illusions, breach him a couple of times, then wait for him to cast a spell (or better, force him to cast one - use Invisibility on a random character, he'll start TS casting), and hit him with everything you got in melee, he needs 1 round for his aura to be cleared and cast AI from a scroll. If you see that your power is not enough to kill him in that round, have fighters retreat before his aura is cleansed, then wait for him to cast another spell before ganging him anew with all fighters - that way all AI scrolls will be yours for the taking.

Gold is abundant in v5, there are multiple gold exploits still working. Xp exploits too.

Do not forge the Circlet of Golden Flowers. Save the scroll for when you obtain the Cloak of Balduran (Windspear hills lvl 2 - Tazok), you will be able to forge a cloak +4, which also grants 25 MR and additional spells.

Otherwise, Nalia, Edwin and Jan are kinda inferior to any custom-made mage, because they lack the proper wisdom (18). Indeed, Imoen should be the better choice, but she's in Spellhold, so I guess Edwin is a good temporary replacement. Jan is not very strong mainly because if you play with no exploits, his mage level will be very low (and that's important). Otherwise, he's maybe the only arcane caster who can obtain 100%+ magic resistance (improved armor + Carsomyr), making him valuable in fights which include cloud effects and/or Storms of Vengeance. If you play with exploits, he's much more valuable than Nalia and/or Edwin.

[Taluntain]

weye, you CAN just open a new thread for it here if you want, you know...

[saros]

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but recently I started replaying the mod and there are several interesting things which any IA v6 player may find interesting (they probably will work for the newer versions of the mod, and definitely - for the older ones):

There are a few items (like varions Diamond necklaces) and challenges (like the Improved Screaming Statue challenge) which are xp-dependant. However, they're PC-xp-dependant, meaning that if your PC has low enough xp, and you have other (probably imported) highly experienced party members, those items/encounters will still trigger.

Random monster spawns, however, have a much more sophisticated xp calculation, since powerful groups have appeared even at PC level 13 (current test party is a low-level PC necromancer + F/M/T lvl 40/40/40 from a completed IA v5 challenge).

The Four mod, which works together with IA, has some bug or other feature with IA v6, which makes the Guardian of the Ring immune to all kinds of damage - physical and magical. However, in an act of desperation discovered that he's not immune to level drain. Using Black Blade of Disaster on him lowered his levels enough. Now I don't know if I could kill him by lvl drain only, but combined this with a Greater Deathblow when the lich's levels were almost drain, and the guardian fell to a single hit. Guardians of the Robe and Gloves are unremarkable, and the Helm guardian remains to be seen.

An imported from BG1 player character (necromancer with Wis and Int 19, and 161 000 xp) created bugs in the game - many randomized or even static items were not dropped, whereas a newly-created BG2 necromancer with Wis and Int 18 created no bugs. I believe this is true for the protagonist only, since an imported F/M/T with powered stats and abilities was present in both games.
Even powerful items like the Robe of Vecna or the Girdle of Hill Giant Strength (which are said to check for number of party members) were still dropped without a problem, with only 2 party members present - necro protagonist and a F/M/T.

Level 4 of Watcher's keep can be entered in chapters 2 and/or 3. Certain conditions have to be met, but it's doable.

There is a way to keep the Amulet of Power while creating the Amulet of Hades - works every time, checked. There is in fact a way to keep a lot of valuable ingredients. However, I haven't found a way to keep ALL of the ingredients needed for a certain upgrade - there's always 1 item lost in the process. The rest can be saved. So in fact not even one of the unique items can be duplicated (at least not without importing). Gold needed the item creation is also non-retrievable.

The Cloak of Balduran, which is dropped by Tazok in Windspear Hills lvl 2 only if Cernd is in the party while battling Tazok, is not dropped if there are 3 party members. Hired 2 decoy party members, and under these conditions (other were the same) Tazok did drop the cloak.

[Ruben]

Resurrecting again, just to say I'm playing through a second run. I actually never got to finish it the first time. I came very close to beating the Epic-Divine-Encounter (EDE, I think it's called), but then just shut down the game and never had any urge to play it again for a while.

Playing a vagrant PC this time instead of a necromancer. Party:

• Current party levels: (average exp ~800 000)
• Ruben - level 10 vagrant. *** axe **flail **short sword. Frostreaver axe+3 and Short sword of backstabbing
  
• Aiene - level 11 riskbreaker **long sword **war hammer *short sword Namarra and +2 longsword
  
• Sofia - level 11 barbarian ** 2hsword **quarterstaff *halberd. Lilarcor
  
• Katarina - dual class Ranger(7)/Cleric(10). **club **mace and * in most blunt. Club+3 and MoD+2
  
• Vanya - dual class Berserker(9)/Mage(11) **Bastard sword **flail *short sword. Flail of Ages and +2 Flail.
  
• Tida - level 11 sorceress
• Spell picks:
• Level 1: Armor, Shield, LMD, MM, CO
• Level 2: Invisibility, Mirror Image, Resist Fear, Melfs acid arrow, Web
• Level 3: Remove Magic, Haste, Vampiric Touch, Flame Arrow
• Level 4: Stoneskin, Emotion, Greater Malison
• Level 5: Sunfire, Breach

This party has fared a lot better than my necro party, with much heavier melee power it's been able to make most fights so far look easy. For instance, in my first run, I recall Lord Glacias (fighter in 2nd level of d'Arnise keep) living so long that I had all 3 Spirit spiders that come one by one slowly from the hall be in the room, whereas this time he got chopped up almost immidiately and well before the 1st spider arrived.

Toughest fights so far have been Shadow Jailor and Greater Yuan-ti at the d'Arnise keep bridge. The last fight took some micro not to be overwhelmed by remove magic + disable spam (hold, chaos, emotion etc.). Firstly all five meleers were at the top of the bridge where they slew the Whisper spider in 1 round. Meanwhile downstairs, the sorceress had cast remove magic (to remove mirror image) and breach on the Greater Yuan-ti, she had also eaten his only RM. The sorc then backed away and only the barbarian, without her rage up, attacked. The Yuan-ti thus wasted his sequencer as the barb could just instantly rage. Next, everyone attacked, the mage having several breach spells memorized to help peel off his skins. The bored sorc however threw out an emotion and that was that.

Will try to take more screenshots (and from harder fights) in the future.

[Ruben]

Update #2

Being a bit lazy, I've decided to let the pictures do most of the talking this update.

Here's the album (53 pictures): http://imgur.com/a/dyYHV#0

• Events (chronologically)
• Failed attempt at the Ruhk the conjurer in Windspear dungeon
• Killed Horrid Rakasha in sewers
• Killed Mekrath and freed Haer'Dalis
• Cleared out the Slaver Ship (got scroll of Imp.Haste)
• Killed the party in the Den of Seven Vales
• Killed the pirates in the hideout at the docks (got scroll of spell immunity!)
• Killed the sewer party
• Did the church ring-quest
• Killed TorGal and earned the d'Arnise keep (got judgement day essence)
• Killed Chaos (2nd druid quest)
• Got revenge on Ruhk
• Cleared out windspear dungeon up until Conster
• Did planar prison
• Forged Phosphorus

Also sided with Bodhi and did all the quests, killing Aran Linvail and obtaining the Amulet of Power.

Biggest challenge was the pirate hideout and the sewer party, both fights similar in the way that the enemy fighters/clerics fall extremely quickly to my buffed warriors and thereafter a long, drawn out battle against the single remaining high-level mage follows. Using summons and splitting up your characters thus spreading the incoming damage thin is the key to success. The wizards SI: Divination (or the invisibility itself) will eventually run out, leaving him vulnerably to breach. Gaius (the sewer mage) actually lives for quite a while even after this, thanks to his high physical resistance coupled with multiple uses of hardiness available. He also seems to have a more offensive oriented spellbook and a hard hitting physical attack enabling him to pose a threat even after many, many rounds.

Average exp is 1,45M, levels 12-13.

Sorceress picks:
L1: MM, CM, LMD, Shield, Armor
L2: Invisibility, Mirror Image, Resist Fear, Melfs arrow, Web
L3: Haste, Remove Magic, Vampiric Touch, Flame Arrow
L4: Emotion, Stoneskin, Greater Malison, Ray of Fragmentation
L5: Sunfire, Breach, Spell Immunity
L6: Improved Haste, Giant Strenght

Not sure what to do next. Think I might want to do Planar Sphere before going to spellhold. Also have to do the Imprioved Screaming Statue challenge before reaching 2.35M(?) exp.

[saros]

Heh, congratulations on giving it another try. Good party, although the Berserker->Mage will be obsolete in many important fights, when you'd desperately need another pure-class warrior.

Yeah you should definitely do the Screaming Statue challenge before hitting 2 350 000 xp with the protagonist, but I don't see the reason to rush it yet.

BTW I forgot if I gave you info about the xp/gold/item exploits in the early game. If you're interested in any of those, I'd be happy to give you info in FB.

You should also consider completing the Unseeing Eye quest, as it's one of the easy early ones. Sikret's beholders need simply some adjustment to it - they're a lot tougher than normal beholders, but have only limited amount of their ray power, being able to fire only a couple of different rays at low speed. You could also obtain Belm in the Druid Grove's Tower.

In fact, you should first clear Mencar Pebblecrusher before engaging the sewer party. If you missed that, go there now, that group is weaker. The mage in it only has Improved Mantle scrolls, meaning that your Phosphorous should punch right through that, and possibly a couple of scrolls will be left for looting.

As far as I remember, Gaius actually runs SI:Abjuration, but yes, he's a F/M, and has multiple Hardinesses, which is annoying. In that fight you need tons of Breach spells (or scrolls) for Tarnor and Gaius mainly, but if your mages are low on level (and they are) - for everyone else too.

I think that at present levels it's also safe to clear the catacombs in the graveyard.

Barbarian for a 2-handed weapon wielder is not a very good choice For max number of attacks, you should pick as many GWWs as possible, while on the other hand, the needed HLA for each warrior is Critical Strike instead. Tried that myself, didn't work very good.

BTW with that party you won't be able to fulfill some NPC's side quests (Jaheira's and Jan's being most profitable, but not only), thus missing xp, gold and items.

Edit: Don't forget that an Enchanted Weapon scroll, used by the sorceress, can create an additional +3 weapon for a day - that may prove essential in the early game, and there are enough such scrolls scattered around for you to be able to read 6-7 of them in tough situations.