Belhifet gets the party 75,000 xp

You don't get any XP for fighting Behilfet since the game is over when you defeat him and your characters are exported before entering the final battle so the XP when starting HoW with those characters should be the same.

Technically that is correct because of the way the program works. I do have a screen shot showing the award however.

Well, it has been a very busy two weeks but I finally had some time to get back to the game. The twins easily finished off the Eldathyn Temple Level of Dragon's Eye. My strategy was to explore the unlocked areas of the level completely before freeing the captives from Waterdeep. The released captives became our cohorts in clearing the level - nice since its just the two of us. We headed back to the entrance and made our stand there while our friends from Waterdeep roamed the level. Azaghal cast web on the long entrance hallway and we picked off the Eldathyn's and Yuan-Ti with ease using long ranged weapons. After the number of enemies thinned we made our way to the summoning chamber and made quick sport of the High Summoner and stopped any further summons from joining the game. We met up with some of our Waterdeep friends in Sseth's Hall to the north where Azaghal cast another web and ranged weapons again proved very useful. We made our way to the banquet hall where Azaghal cast his last web spell - rinse and repeat. After clearing the level we made our way back to Mother Egenia for healing and rest so that Azaghal could replenish his spells. Time to take on the Vaults of the Yuan-Ti.

No level up this time so stats remain the same.

Nice work Lou. Glad to see you back. I'm just starting HoW. I'm going to take a bit of a break though as I play Lord of the Rings: War in the North. I'll be back with updates for HoW soon. In the mean time I'll still be reading everyone's adventures through Icewind Dale.

I am so upset right now you just don't know:

The Vaults of the Yuan-Ti was going well, it was hard and there were a few rough spots - see attached (1-4). However the showdown with Yxunomei proved almost too much for my brother sister duo to take. Azaghal died after putting up a very good fight and Azabeth was able to finish off the leftovers before death's sting could take her - see attached (5). Azabeth used potions to get back to full health in case there were any lurkers about - if she died it would be game over. She made it, however, here is the rub:

Azabeth grabbed what gear of Azaghal's she could carry and headed back to Mother Egenia to hopefully resurrect Azaghal only to find she was gone. Without thinking she humped the dead body of her brother all the way back to Kuldhar only to be attacked by some Orog Troops - which she dispatched before heading directly to the Temple of Ilmater. Azaghal was resurrected and given back what little gear Azabeth could carry. The two headed back to Dragon's Eye to retrieve the rest of Azaghal's gear and loot the now cleared Yuan-Ti level.

What a surprise to find that the only item left was the Heartstone Gem. All Azaghal's Gear is gone. Azabeth wept for her brother as she plundered what was left of the Yuan-Ti treasure in Yxunomei's Chamber. Hard lesson learned - Put that gear in a storage compartment - Ouch. I think I am going to cry myself.

We have decided to push on - Azabeth Pens the following entry in her Journal:

We discovered Arundel in the upstairs chamber of his cottage, struck down by a man that wore the Archdruid's own face and whose hands were as blood. Arundel barely had the strength to tell us to seek out the ancient elven fortress of the Severed Hand, and that within the fortress is an elven mage named Larrel, the last person who can use the gem to find the source of evil plaguing Kuldahar. Arundel told us nature would guide us to the Severed Hand, and we should be able to follow the World Map to where we need to go.

Okay, a quick update since I only have a few minutes.

Wyrm's Tooth glacier area went smooth as silk. Saved me some slaves, fooled Kerish into thinking we were working for his boss, and then proceeded to clear out the ice museum of every last one of those slimy buggers. Summons here were the way to go. A couple elementals and some undead and we just sat back and pew-pewed with ranged weapons. Maltriet had a grand old time sneaking and backstabbing as well.

The Frost Giants proved to be little more trouble than the salamanders. We took out the human-eating flying beast, then cleared out the guard and the side cave. There was a grumpy wizard in there, but this particular spellchucker went down real fast to a backstab. Maltriet is beginning to laugh maniacally on an alarmingly regular basis... Freed the prisoners here and then went on a giant-killing spree. Again, summons were the key. Warped in some Fire elementals, hasted everyone up, and when the snow settled, there were lot of very large dead bodies laying around. Got some good loot there though. Off to Lower Dorn's Deep.

Down here was another area that was made far simpler through the use of summons. Even the tarnished sentries (although they mowed through the summons pretty fast) went down in short order because they were concentrating on the cannon fodder and not the incoming fire. Salamander stew for dinner. Yummy.

The only thing that gave us a problem was that tower. Went in there prepared (hasted, buffed, etc.) and still Tylleryll fell in battle. The mobs seem to like concentrating on my spellchucker. So, we resurrected her again, rested, and headed to Marketh's hidey hole.

Heh, those sneaky thieves thought they were being clever. They mostly blew up into nifty little chunks. Talked Marketh down after promising his girlfriend that we wouldn't hurt him. He gave up all his gear on the way out. Some good stuff there too. Oh, we'd taken Seth out earlier on in front of the palace. He was a bit too pompous for his own good. Backstab, see ya later. So we didn't have to deal with him inside. We did, however, convince one of the mooks downstairs to quit his day job and become an artist. Smooth talking Bards, FTW!

Anyway, after that it was off to pay a visit to Malavon. His reception committee wasn't particularly friendly, but we managed to get in without anyone being hurt (well, other than the reception committe itself, that is). Turns out Malaovn just isn't a nice guy. He projected an image with malicious intent, which we took down quickly. But then the bastard started teleporting all over the place and tossing out some rather unfriendly mojo. Poor Lyrica, our trusty Bard, went down early. A little later, Maltriet dropped dead. However, we kept up the good fight and finally prevailed. Raised our fallen comrades and looted the place. We found some very nice items and an array of scrolls that the girls were oohing and aahing over for hours.

After that, we took a look down the well and found us some malnourished Gnomes. Tossed them a bag of potatoes, which they greatly appreciated. Home fries for dinner that night. They directed us to their secret city, but warned us of a bit of a bug problem. Turned out they weren't talking about a small cockroach infestation. See link:

http://i1188.photobucket.com/albums/z401/CoelocanthGOG/Icewind%20screens/IWDBugProblem.jpg

Anyway, got to go for now. Will continue later.

...and it all came to a screeching halt.

I've been so busy playing during my free time that I haven't gotten around to updating further. Suffice it to say, I took the party into the HoW expansion (decided to do this after taking down Bhelifet, as it seemed to make more sense, story-wise). Anyway, everything chugged along fairly well, although I will say that the Burial Isle is tough on the Insane setting. Those buggers hit hard.

So I decided to do the Trials of the Luremaster expansion before heading to Icasaracht's Isle. The XP awards were coming fast and furious. By the time I was headed to the throne room for the final showdown with the Luremaster, my Fighter, Bard, Druid, and Cleric had all hit level 30. My mage was level 23 or 24. I had more spells at my disposal than I could cast in a day.

Well, that didn't really matter. When those Spectral Heroes spawned in, they took out 1/4 to 1/3 my Fighter's HPs every time they connected - and there were 9 or 10 of them at the first go, with more spawning in all the time. Things got ugly fast. And it only got uglier when I realized that there were either traps that repeatedly dispelled my party, or the Luremaster was spamming dispels. Within no time, all that was left standing was my Bard, she was down to about a dozen HPs, and the Luremaster was only at Barely Injured. And the Spectral Heroes kept on spawning in. Needless to say, I suffered a full party wipe. Game over, No Reload challenge failed.

I had a save just before teleporting into the throne room and tried again (this time spamming everything at the Luremaster right out of the gate). That worked, leaving me only 2 characters that had to be raised from the dead. So I'm taking the group off to Icasaracht's Isle, but the No Reload challenge has come to a rather ignominious end for me, alas.

Fight the good fight, people, and make us proud of your heroes! Mine shall not be enshrined in the Hall of Fame. :(

We made our way to the Severed Hand and were met by a rather disturbing discourse between what appeared to be an Elven Mage and a squirrel. We made our way into the Hand and found ourselves immediately under attack by the undead that inhabit this once magnificent Elven Fortress that has now crumbled into catastrophic disrepair.

We slowly made our way higher into the Hand taking every precaution as we were slowly running out of ranged ammunition. We quickly found our way to Level Four and were pleasantly surprised to find Lehland, a long dead Elven Merchant willing to part with some enchanted ranged ammunition and quickly re-supplied. We spent some time exploring this fourth level of the Hand and learned much of its Lore. Telanis a long dead Elven Bard gave us some background through song. We also met Lehland an Elven Bladesinger, who is now merely a shade of his former self. He related the events leading to the final moments of the Hand and gave us some very useful information on each of the remaining finger like towers we have yet to explore. Finally, and what proved to be the saddest encounter of all was Sehriya. She is the shade of an Elven Girl who is still looking for her mother even after the long centuries since the Towers Destruction. She allowed us to rest and recover our strength and spells.

Now that we are rested and better equipped it has been decided to venture below and clear the lower levels before investigating the remaining towers as we may need to exit the tower in haste.

With Levels Four and Three cleared and explored its on to Level Two.

-- The Twins

Keep up the fight Coelocanth - Sad to hear of your parties demise. I can only wonder what awaits the twins.

We finally managed to clear the main tower levels. We were ambushed on Level Two and suffered greatly - see attached. Level One proved to be less trouble as the fight was always in front of us and Azaghal used his remaining Fireball and Web spells to make it all that much easier. The enchanted ranged ammunition we were able to procure has also proved to be very beneficial to our preferred mode of attack. We found several magical items but are quite intrigued by one in particular. Azaghal wishes to spend some time examining it so we will head to Level Four for some rest and spell replenishment. I will snoop about while my brother spends some quality time with the treasure he has found - "Boys"

-- Azabeth

We pushed through the Final Towers of the Hand and were able to locate a Bridge Walkway that led from the third level of Sheverash Tower to the second level of Labelas Tower. Each of the Towers proved to be fairly easy because of the way they were laid out. It worked remarkably well to web the main entrance and firball the interior (Thanks Brother) of each of the main rooms. We then picked the remaining shaded inhabitants off with ranged weapons. Each Tower also had a shade which we could converse with. This provided us with much needed background information and also a few quests. In fact we were able to procure a book on Mythal Theory for Orrick back in Kuldahar from the Librarian Custhanatos in Labelas Tower level three.

We finally reached Labelas Tower Level Four and met the ruler of the Severed Hand Larrel. After fixing the Astrolab using the various parts my brother has been "collecting" ;-) (I guess they actually did prove useful), we were able to talk with Larrel at length. After using the Heartstone Gem Larrel directed us to Upper Dorn's Deep and will head directly there after a quick trip back to Kuldahar.

-- Azabeth

Azaghal-Kain Fighter/Mage - Currently 10/11
Azabeth-Kain Fighter/Thief - Currently 10/12

Hey guys,

I'm still here and have been enjoying following your adventures. Lou, nice job brother. Keep it going. Coel, sorry to hear that bud. I expect I won't make it through the HoW or TotLM portion of the game either. There are some tough spots there. Them damnable banshees come to mind...lol. At any rate, I've been playing Skyrim but will return at some point soon to continue. Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving. Cheers!

That "back soon" took a while :p Excellent reading though, hard to believe you can go through all of that game, plus expansions, without dying a single time. Incredibly well done. Thought this was worth a bump, since it's a really good thread with some excellent players.