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To get some additional info on my expedition, read my topic on the SoA forum.

Started a ranger, hardest possible difficulty.

Rolled the following stats:

ST 18/91
DX 18
CO 18
IQ 10
WI 18
CH 9

The sum of those is 91 stat points, which is doable with a little patience. Took me 10 minutes, noticed it's easy to get superb stats with a ranger.

Put ** in Bow and Large Sword proficiency. Disregarding Drizzt's Defender, those classes contain the best weapons in the game, and I don't think I can beat the drow all by myself.

Did all the quests in Candlekeep. The only notable thing was the Potion of Clarity I found in a locked chest I forced open in the 2nd floor of the inn. Lost 2hp againist one of the thugs. Bad luck it seems.

Gorion healed me but Tamoko did the same damage to me in the upcoming battle with a flame arrow(!) (2 points with a flame arrow, come on). Imoen joined me after the battle despite a told her to go home. I took her potions (3 healing, 1 speed) and arrows before removing her. Got the diamond from the tree by the road and left the area.

Met one of the premier mages of the realm but he was not much of use. Found a ring of protection +1 hidden inside a rock and put it on without identifying. Since I know what all items do I plan not to identify them before I have 10000s of gold.

The fight againinst Tarnesh was surprisingly hard. I knew he was going to cast horror so I drank my Clarity potion. All was going well. For some reason, the Horror he casted did not affect the guards who were attacking him. Then, his Mirror images were used up, I was certain of victory but he casted Magic missile. He had only 2 missiles and I had 14 hit points. I should've survived, RIGHT. No, the first missile did 12(!) damage and the other did 8. I died. It would seem that on 'hardest', enemies do +8 damage. However, the thug in Candlekeep did only 2. Maybe his real dam was -6

I reloaded from auto-save and tried again, this time gulping Imoen's speed potion in addition to the Clarity one. I shoot with the bow (faster fire rate) until his mirror images ended, switch to bastard sword and Tarnesh fell before he could get the feared Missile off again. Went to inn, got the quests from upstairs and sold what little loot I had obtained. Bought a scale mail. My AC went to -1. Quite good, actually. Then, I headed towards Beregost.

Met no enemies before reached the town and headed straight to Feldepost's. Did the Marl quest for easy exp. Went upstairs to get the best item of the game. Unrangerlike, killed Algernon and donned his cloak. Did Firebead Elvenhair's Quest for more easy exp. Acted like a common thief and opened every chest in the town I could to get a bit money. Went to the temple and used the gold to get my reputation to 12. Stupid of me, should've done Firebead's quest after this, not before. (Would've saved 100gp that way Cursing my stupidity, donated the 200 to get it to 13. Didn't want to spend more gold and went to do Joia's quest. Hobgoblins were a joke when I charmed one of them. His friends went after him and I finished them all from a distance. Leveled up returning the ring to Joia. +12 hp. Nice. Reputation is 14 now.

Used the cloak to win the battle againinst the belt-fetish ogre. Strategy: Start shooting when you see him. Charm him with the cloak. Tell him to go to the edge of your LOS. Repeat. No HP lost. Girlde of piercing.

Using the two strategies above, I should be
able to beat most humanoids in the game pretty easily. Being a ranger, I can use my special ability of Charm Animal to animals to same effect. Besides, I can hide in shadows in the wilderness.

More later

tram

[ 08-30-2001: Message edited by: tram ]

So good so far, but what happens when you face things like the battle horrors? I found them to be a nasty surprise in the Mines... I kept doing 0 on em, until magic...

Are Battle Horrors immune to all of the following: hard steel, ring of energy, wand of magic missiles (heh) and (charmed) Davaeorn's spell arsenal? I think not, and can always retreat to previous level in order to rest. This is guaranteed to work, unless they regenerate, which they in my experience don't.

tram

Monsters do double damage on the hardest difficulty. Thus, Carbos, or Shank, whichever you werte talking about, would normally be only doing 1 damage. But that means Tarnesh's MM would normally do 6 damage, which is still to high. Aren't they only supposed to do 5 damage max (1d4+1)?

@Tram: Actually, Magic missiles will hurt them. But, for some reason, attacks won't.. .Only magic...

Oddly, I can't recall battle horrors being immune to much anything. They just had flaming swords which dealt a lot of damage. And you could cast Dispel Magic to get rid of those swords.

Anyway, I'm already in chapter 3 having just dispatched Mulahey, Nimbul and Tranzig. Not having much trouble playing. Only death was 1st try againist Mulahey. I tried using charmed kobolds as fodder. A mistake: he had more and better fodder (skeletons) and kept casting hold persons at me: I was killed by skeletons while held. On 2nd try I just charmed the poor half-orc and used his up spells to help me slay all those kobolds adn skeletons. Afterwards, one on one, he was no match to me.

At the moment, my AC againist missiles is -15 without using a shield. I have the aracers of archery, composite bow +1,Graywolf's sword +2, girdle of piercing, boots of avoidance, full plate armor, a ring of prot +1 and other, less important stuff. I see no problems until meeting those battle horrors. Next, I'll be off to get the constitution tome and to buy the horn of Kazgaroth.

The number of critters in a random encounter seems to depend on the size of your party. My solo character runs into groups of 2-3 Xvarts while my full parties seemed to have always at least 6 to fight.

A given dungeon level will run out of critters to send to disturb your rest. My sleep was disurbed by groups of three kobolds 8 times a row, whichafter I was able to sleep undisturbed 5 times a row.

tram

@Rapthyr: Do Invokers have some bonus to damage with MMs (and other evocation spells)? If they have and Tarnesh is one, it would explain the unnaturally large dam.

[ 08-30-2001: Message edited by: tram ]

Originally posted by tram:
<STRONG>@Rapthyr: Do Invokers have some bonus to damage with MMs (and other evocation spells)? If they have and Tarnesh is one, it would explain the unnaturally large dam.

[ 08-30-2001: Message edited by: tram ]</STRONG>

The Magic Missile Damage is wrong. It does 2d4 when it schould be 1d4+1 !!
I got this information as Baldurdash´s Homepage. Kevin has fixed the problem in the Bg1 fixpack which you could download at his homepage [url="http://members.home.net/mrkevvy/"]http://members.home.net/mrkevvy/[/url]

I´m soloing a mage, not a special mage and I am at chapter 3 "just got out of the mines" with 32000 xp and my stats are:

Mage Level 5:
Strenght:18
Dexterity:18
Constitution:18
Intelligence:18
Wisdom:13
Charisma:3

It was pretty hard at level 1, only 1 spellslot, 6 hp and 6 ac.
Good luck with the Ranger!

Phew, finished the game already. Soloing with the hardest difficulty setting is considerably easier than doing a full party with normal. And even more importantly, it's much LESS PAIN in both terms of inventory-managing and handling your forces in battle. The hardest setting was not that bad: you just have to avoid getting hit. Here's some info how I got through some major battles:

TAUGOSZ KHOZANN
The Black Talon leader is about the most dangerous melee fighter in the game, as you can't run any faster than he does. I went straight to him, charmed him, had him kill everyone else in the camp. This got him badly injured and I finished him with a few arrows of biting.

DAVAEORN
Quaffed a potion of magic blocking and run though the traps. Charmed Davaeorn and let his Battle Horrors finish the mage. With the boost of speed, I could run faster than the Horrors, and eventually they fell to acid arrows and fire bolts from a fully reloaded ring of energy.

THE BATTLE IN THE PALACE
First I wondered whether this is doable with a solo fighter-type. I tried once and my butt was handed to me in a very speedy fashion. Then I buffed: potion of cloud giant strength and a draw upon holy might to give me 25 str, 21 dex and con. Add a potion of speed and you've got yourself one helluva ranger. I was amazed what kind of a machine I had begone. The battle was decided in less than 15 seconds as the surviving greater dopples ran from my power.

SAREVOK
Unlike the above, my brother and his lackeys fell on my 1st try. I quaffed a potion of invis and went to start the dialogue invisible. After that, Semaj made his final mistake and teleported to other side of the hall, to near the entrance. An arrow of dispelling followed by arrows of biting: dead Semaj. With the mage gone. I went to get the rest to chase me. Angelo tried casting some buffs to himself but I dispelled those with my arrows. Then he fell and I was left with two big, stupid sword-wielders who were slower than I and kept chasing me. I ran around the big Bhaal plate in the center and both fell to arrows, eventually.

I'll take a break of ~2 weeks and import the same character to SoA to be dualled to cleric. End stats: 19,19,19,11,21,10, HP 97

I was going to try a solo fighter type, But how did you handle traps and unlocking doors, trunks?

Traps - I either stepped on them and soaked the damage or made myself immune (horn of Kazgaroth, potion of absobtion, potion of magic blocking) before going into known trap-heavy areas.

Locked things. With 18/9x strenght, one is able to force many locks. If it's not enough and you need to open the door/chest, drink a potion of giant strength.