Oh darn, it seems that was that.
Cleared the next level, then almost cleared the snake sanctum where the little girl starts appearing.

But then decided I'll need to go back and sell the loot.
When I come back, I cant open the door down from the level where snakes pretended to be good people. I had the key, but tossed it somewhere thinking it's no longer needed.

Done in by greed. Something to learn from here? :(

---

Edit. Had an earlier save. Requires a couple of hours of replay, but back in business...

Hmmm, I never thought of turning on the turn undead power, I relied on Potions of free action and the threadbare robe to get past the undead no save for ghoul/ghast touch, spells my paladin was pretty immune to getting the lesser prot ring (+2 vs spells only) from the orcs way back at the start. The Luck of Black Bess is a pretty sweet mace even better that it hands out bad luck as you beat things to death.

Warren

Got my duo into Kuldahar last night. They're doing exceedingly well so far, and have managed to pick up a couple Rings of Free Action through the use of my Thief's light fingers. Got some more exploring to do around the village (plus a bit of thievery), then it's off to the Vale of Shadows.

In a halfway-through retrospect, Cleric probably wasn't quite as good choice as I thought.
I was sort of counting on being able to summon stuff between me and bigger enemies, smack them with offensive spells and then finish off in melee all buffed up.

Worked fine until it doesn't work anymore. Turns out the first undead summons is the only summoning cleric does. Guess how long a couple of skeletons and a zombie last against eg ettins? Not very long at all.

So I'm mostly just a melee guy with bad attack skills and ability to heal after a fight. Beats being a fighter and sleeping for a month after each combat, but still not ideal. Thank god for the fighter levels I took at the beginning.

Inventory is also a hassle, NWN spoiled me to expect a bunch of bags of holding or some other backpacks. But no, half the inventory is plot items, the second half potions, then trying to shuffle about so I'll be able to grab some magic items along.

2-4 characters would probably be the ideal fun bunch for me.

Elven tower cleared anyway, started a bit tough but then there was undead, and undead are a walk in the park. With fireworks and exploding flesh.

Dwarven areas now...

Not to go off-topic, but I haven't found any great use of Pick Pocketing...a few gold here & there. Any tips for that, or are you just talking about Picking Locks?

Nope, talking Pick Pocketing.

In Easthaven, Everard has 2 Healing potions you can pick pocket. Other than Kuldahar, there's not a lot of use in other areas of the game. But in Kuldahar you can pick pocket 2 Rings of Free Action, an amulet of Metaspell Influence (one extra level 2 mage spell), Necklace of Missiles (three or less charges of a 6d6 damage fireball usable by anyone), Ring of Protection +2, and three potions (firebreath, and 2 oils of fiery burning, IIRC).

I believe you can get an amulet +1 protection in another area later on as well.

Not a lot, but to me the stuff in Kuldahar is definitely worth slipping a few points into the PP skill.

@Jarmo: I'm finding my Ranger/Cleric is making a great tank so far (and my F/M/T isn't too shabby either, when necessary.) As for toting things, I've tweaked my game to have infinite stacking of items (so you're not taking up tons of slots with gem/potion/ammo stacks. And also infinite bags of holding (necessary with a small party). I've just bought a bag of holding in Kuldahar, so now my limited inventory slots are no longer a worry. Oh, and I also grabbed a gem bag, a potion bag, and a scroll case. Makes life ever so much simpler.

Level 30 cleric at lower dorns deep.
Levels started coming *ping* *ping* *ping* again sometime after the 10th, when it was steady 200K or so per level, instead of doubling up all the time.

This means I'm not gaining anything anymore, and didn't get new spells after.. 14th level?

Things will just get harder and harder now.

Yeah, bag of holding would have been great, summons or high level spells would have been great. A bit of a shame I can't even grab most magic items or jewels. :(

Didn't realize I'd hit the wall already, a party of 2 would have been much better in just about every way...

Jarmo, too bad you've hit a wall already. Hope you can find the rest of the game enjoyable enough to finish.

On a side note, my party of 2 is doing extremely well. Hit Dragon's Eye last night and mowed through the first three levels with little trouble. Oh, sure, there were times where they were low on HPs, but a few pots and/or a few healing spells and they were back in business. I did have to rest a few times, but that was rarely due to needing to recover HPs and mostly to get my spells replenished.

Poor old Presio didn't have a chance. The only spell he got off was his Mirror Image. I slapped a Web spell in the room (boy howdy, I love that spell!), then retreated to draw out the poisoned zombies. Once they were mopped up, I sent the tank in to hit Presio with a Dispel Magic, which nicely did in his protections, then I pulverized him with a nice magic sword that has some extra fire damage, as well as a handful of Magic Missile spells from my mage. He went down faster than the Titanic.

Played briefly this morning and have managed to mop up most of the 4th level of Dragon's Eye (the one with all the Monks). Haven't finished yet, as I still have the High Summoner to deal with, but I anticipate that's going to be a relatively short but very unpleasant battle for that particular reptilian.

I seem to be dinging levels left and right through here, but with both characters multiclassed for a total of 5 classes (RGR/CLC and F/M/T), the experience is divided roughly as if it were a party of 5 pure classes. So they don't seem to be outstripping the mobs too badly. They're powerful, to be sure, but I haven't found many situations where I thought they were completely overpowered yet.

Not to criticize, but this is why I'd rather just go through with a full party. If the XP is going to be split 5 or 6 ways anyway, then I may as well get 5 or 6 attacks per round rather than just 2. I do, however, see the appeal in wanting the challenge of running the game with 2 characters, and I applaud you for being able to do that.

Yeh, I thought of that as well, but there are still advantages XP-wise with the smaller party. As an example, let's suppose we kill a monster worth 3000 XP. With the two character party, each character gets 1500 XP (so 750 XP for each of my RGR/CLC's classes and 500 XP for each of my F/M/T's classes) which is then split between their classes. With a 5 member party, each character gets 600 XP.

Net result here is my RGR/CLC is levelling slightly faster than a RGR or CLC would in a 5 member party, while my F/M/T is actually slightly slower. Logically, I should have gone with a Mage/Thief for my second character, but I really wanted the flexibility of being able to put 2 dots into a few weapons as well as being able to wear the Elven Chain (which I'll get at the Severed Hand - if memory serves, you need to have warrior levels in order to wear it).

Having said that, it the numbers in the first paragraph pretty much amply demonstrate why multiclassing is probably a bad idea. Pure and/or dual classed is where it's at. But I've done that already, so wanted to try something different. A party of the wee folk might be interesting for another run...

*edit* I may have to rethink things for this run. Perhaps I'll tweak the party to replace my F/M/T with a M/T... Bah! I'll just stay with it as is.

*edit 2* Okay, thinking further (a dangerous practice for me), I'm thinking ideal would be a 3 character party. All Human and all dual classed. After 3 FTR levels, all dual to CLC, Thief, and Mage. Thief might actually be better to go thief for a few levels first, then dual to FTR... Got to stop thinking.

From optimization viewpoint dual classes rule, multiclassed characters are more versatile but not really more powerful.

Lets say youll spend... say 20K XP to get.. say 5 levels of something.
If you'd stay on course the next level will be at 40K XP or so, then 80K and so on.
But if you multiclass, you'll start from scratch again, and get 5 levels in another class for 20K and then keep on going.

You'll only stay be behind by as much as you spent on the first class, and with levels almost doubling the XP requirements, that's insignificant. When at around 250K XP and the next level taking another 100K, it almost doesn't even register you squandered 20K in the beginning.

The only thing is when you switch. Suddenly you have all the skills of a 1st level character and you're facing opponents of a 6th level adventurers.

Actually.. IMO, the whole dual-classing system in 2.x is really stupid. 3.x does this a lot better. (But on the other hand, I quite like the multiclassing method.)

Multiclassing has its advantages. For the party thief multiclass is the better choice and when you're soloing you can reach level 30 in both classes during the game, a fighter30/cleric30 is easier to solo than a fighter6/cleric for example.

But the advantages really come from the game not being designed for characters above lvl15 or so. Thats when youve hit the max spell levels.

I'm not sure about 2.x though.. were there higher level spells or stuff. I know at 3.x rules a 30th level cleric would be something like a minor deity or something. By far more powerful than a 15-20th level one.

Not to mean multiclassed character would actually have a much harder time. Versatility has its advantages.


Well yeah, while I dont I cant say 3.x rules would be devoid of stupidity. Basically like learning a second level of bard takes something like, 2000xp if you're young and inexperienced, or 60 000XP if you've been around.

Totally opposite. Wonder what they did with 4.x. Do away with multiclassing altogether maybe.

As far as I can tell, in 4e, you pick your class at first level and stick with it, but you can pick certain features usually exclusive to other classes as feats or somesuch.