.. and hot damn if things dont go smoothly this time around.

Slightly optimized party, wizened from previous mishaps.

Human Paladin
party leader, talker, all around handy guy. Good saves, no fear. No weapon focus (yet anyway)

Human Cleric6/Paladin1
(Paladin level might have been a mistake, but gives all weapon proficiencies and better base attacks.)

Human Sorceress, because sorcerers are awesome and handy. It's sweet to be able to cast 6 identify's in a row without fumbling with spell memorization lists. Maxing out spell penetrations and empowerments and stuff, magic missiles rule even at late game. The 18 charisma babe of the party. :) Good dex and a crossbow are nice.

Elf Thief3/Ranger4
Thief skills are a must, but not quite as much as to spend a whole character just for that. High dex, weapon finesse and exotic weapons - spiked chain. The only long reach hand to hand weapon that uses finesse in the whole game. Ranger works great with rogue levels, dead accurate sneak attacks ftw!

Human Barbarian/FIghter
Pure fighter would have been just as good, but as I picked a gruffy looking portrait I just went with the flow. Extra hitpoints help. Glaive specialization, because glaives have reach and reach is totally awesome here.

Elf Wizard5/Ranger2
Because a) that's what elves are all about to me, b) with elven armour and shield + longsword he can hold his own against pretty tough opponents in melee (especially with mirror image + mage armor) even if his hit accuracy is totally crap. c) Spellswords are just plain awesome.

Things I've learned

1. Long reach melee weapons are awesome. Glaive or halberd over a greatsword anytime. The only D&D type game where this is so.

2. Web is about the most powerful and awesome spell in early game. The only D&D type game where this is so. A bunch of opponents gets stuck, they rip themselves free and get stuck again. All the while my archers pepper them full of tiny holes. Take an ogre or something even bigger, web + ray of enfeeblement and he's stuck right there, twang twang feathery pointy death.

3. Hotkeying 5-foot step, ready against approach, coup de grace, read magic and identify make the difference between a frustrating and an enjoyable experience. Hotkeys are awesome.

4. I say awesome way too much. But awesome is just such an awesome word!

Looks just plain awesome! You''re rolling with pretty much my party of choice. Web spells plus lots of bows makes for a nice pincushion or seven. Just remember not to send any fire based spells into the mix!

Does ToEE give the negative XP thing for having a multi-class of such different levels or were you going to dual class the Paladin into a Cleric? (My IWD and ToEE memories might be merging here, but I think I went charismatic human fighter who turned into a kick butt Sorcerer with lots of HP and a long bow to supplement the spells.)

Regardless, have fun and keep us up to date. I'm slowing working my way through Drakensang right now.

I think the rule goes something like; your favoured class can be way above or below the secondary or tertiary class without penalty. Demi-humans have a set favoured class, but for humans it's whatever's the highest one.

So I'm assuming there's no penalty for my paladin-cleric, the elven favoured class is wizard, so any wizard-other class combo is fine. (but an elf paladin-cleric would be penalized). That's what I'm hoping anyway, and seems to work out as everybody levels up the same time. Except the elf wizard a bit later as I've burnt a few XP by enhancing the glaive and the spiked chain.

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Awesome! Cleared out the Water Temple on the first attempt. Sorcerers boosted spell penetration really did the trick here. Webs, Ice storms and Magic missiles ftw. Reached 9th level for the effort.

Water Temple on the first go is pretty awesome. That Juggernaut thing is a handful. Now I'm getting jealous, particularly since it's after 5pm and I'm still at work! I'm just happy the proxy server doesn't block gog.com like it does everything else remotely resembling fun.

Thanks. I'm actually going to try and learn from this. Being only a casual 4e D&D player makes this game very hard for me.

Mind you, it's not been completely as smooth as this the whole time.

Fire temple took 2 failed tries (before I went back and buffed the party up with fire resistance).
The Giant needed about 5 fails (in the final time with web + enfeeblement, the party took no damage)

Overall we've been cutting through them like the wrath of god though. :)
It's bloody satisfying to see how we can come up against 4 ogres and an ogre shaman,
and just slay them on the spot without a second thought!


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A couple of things I really should have done differently.

Fighter/Barbarian, if I'd done a pure fighter, I could have enough feats for Whirlwind attack, which would be totally awesome with a long-reach weapon like Glaive.

If I'd have taken Holy as a second cleric domain, I could now craft holy weapons (2d6 against evil). I did take Law first, which lets me make Axiomatic stuff (2d6 against chaotic). Either one is good, but both would have been awesome. Holy is the better one in Temple of Elemental Evil.

Crafting holy weapons seems to be the route of choice in ToEE. I'm too set in my ways to mess with crafting and recipes, but dang it would have been nice in ToEE since quality magic weapons are few and far between! Likewise, paying hard earned XP for a magic item... forget about it.

You finish the new content yet? I got stuck in a bug (Arena of Heroes) in a pre 6.0.0 version of the Co8 patch so all the stuff post Temple is going to be brand new to me on my next play through.

Level 11 now. The only CO8 addition I've done is velkwood bog. And I didn't bother to install the newest CO8, 5.xx something works fine for me.

Elven armors rule! Blue chain has the same protection as full plate, but with better Dex bonus. My elven Wizard/Ranger is pretty awesome with elven chain and the never missing Fragarach sword. Never mind the low base attack bonus when the beautiful mother of a sword never misses!

(For some reason, we didn't find the prince but found his stuff insted, which works.)

Found a Holy spiked chain and boosted it with better attack bonus and shock damage, sweet. Fighters glaive is now +3 flaming beauty. Both my crafters are now 2k+ XP below the rest of the party, so I'll probably limit further crafting.

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Well dang. Had to load an older save (good thing I keep a dozen of those).
Who'd have guessed sampling Hendracks charmed concubines would fall both my paladins. :(

This time it's barbarians only...

Hey ho! Greater Temple purified of all life. Lutz dropped by and I think I might well have beaten him, if Cuthbert hadn't saved us. Thanks.

I think I'll try the endgame without clearing out the elemental nodes. Because I seem to remember the nodes were a bother.

Did some further weapons boosting. Paladins Frost Brand now also does shock damage, while Cleric gave up longsword +3 and a sweet +3 shield in favour of holy ranseur, which got boosted to +3 +axiomatic. Reach ftw.

Nodes were quite annoying, though the fire one was pretty darn difficult. Never did figure out what to do with a slew of salamanders all launching fire balls at me at the same time!

You should be able to keep plugging away with the Co8 content I think. Sounds like fun, though shouldn't you be doing a little work today...

Sorry for such a question, but how does crafting work? Being able to make really good weapons and armor would be really friggin handy.

Edit: I actually thought to look it up myself. Yay for not being lazy.

How has the XP hit been on your party overall when crafting all these good items?

Didn't craft wondrous items (yet at least) even if I took the feat with both cleric and the wizard. Armor either, just weapons.

Adding a +1 is pretty cheap, I think under 200xp, not that much even in the early game. Upping to +3 and one or two other enchansements is costlier at 2000+ xp.

Still reasonable, the whole party is much more effective and they are (most of the time) at the same level as everybody else. But the hit is enough that I'm not going wild with boosting every which item.

Now that I think about it, I didn't figure out the salamanders either. They mass bombarded my spellcaster to oblivion no matter what. Even when I put him half a map away far beyond line of site, they went boom boom boom like bloody artillery.

I think that *might* be exploitable with enough fire protection. Not sure at all..

The other choice would have been to accept the casualty and resurrect, but I ended up just ignoring them altogether.

And I have the benefit of a whole different timezone for my gaming hours, and the ability to browse forums during workday...

The biatch is dead!

Took a few tries, but the final succesful fight was actually almost easy, considering how completely unfairly hard the final fight is! Much depends on what she summons and how soon.

The second last attempt was annoying as hell. Lost half of the party, was finally getting her near death... and didn't the game decide it's a fine time to crash. D:

Anyway...

Stoneskin for the whole party, protection from evil, protection from chaos, bless, prayer, bulls strength, calm emotions, the works.

Grabbed Burne of Hommlet along for the final fight, thought he'd be of assistance and I guess he soaked up a couple of hits before dying. Hey, he seemed and acted like a tough guy, so I was all lawful here!

Maybe half of the damage was from my sorceress blasting away empowered and normal magic missiles. With 2 levels of Spell Penetration, I averaged 3-4 of 5 missiles going in. The rest was from frontline hitters, scoring rare hits every few tries, weak from the poisons and panicky. No other spellcaster could overcome the biatches spell resistance, but they were handy healing others and clearing out the enemy masses.

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Oh, I thought I'd check up on CO8's Keep on the Bborderlands, but that seems to be in developement limbo. Will check up again one of these years.

Well done sir.

What about the Moathouse Respawn, Verbobonc, and the just created War of the Golden Skull?