A big update this time, finishing the main story of BG1 and moving into SoD. More comments after.

*****

We fought a lot of creatures, especially dopplegangers and undead in the lower levels of the tower. The lower levels were covered in an acid slime. Filthy, dangerous, nasty. One of the worst things ever!

We talked with the ghost of Durlag himself. I think. Christopher and Imoen got into a long talk about what all this was. All I know is this place is haunted. We killed a demon on that lower level. I had thought a demon fight would be harder? He was just full of hot air.

We went back to the fishing village to return the dagger to the Dwarf, but we were attacked by a group of warriors and thieves. We lost the dagger. But the dwarf knew where some cult was holding a dark ritual to summon another demon. Oof. Well we can’t let that happen!
This demon was a little tougher than the other one. Imoen hit him with some sort of acid globe thing (Jill will never remember “Vitriolic Sphere”!), the little squirt is funny to watch!
Call this a semi-out take! Its not exactly right, but kind of funny to watch!
Then we took a boat ride to find some famous guys ship! I’ve never been on the ocean before. The island was over-run with two packs of bad doggies. We had to put a lot of them down. There’s a lot fewer dogmen now.

Then it was time to head back to Baldur’s Gate and see if we were still in trouble. We were. But soon enough Christopher was able to explain to the City Dukes how we’d been set-up by my brother, Sarevok. He was standing right there at the time. Awkward! He started a fight and we had to chase him down.

We’ve come a long way Jill. We can do this, you can do this.”

We defeated Sarevok, we really filled him with a lot of arrows. Fast.

We were allowed to rest up at the Duke’s palace after, Imoen was getting some proper mage training from a nice Duke lady. The rest of us made a quick run to round up some of Sarevok’s followers.

Then Christopher and I got married! Wow! Married in a palace! To the best guy I’ve ever known. Then we said some goodbyes, everyone had things to do. The city is getting crowded now with refugees coming from some trouble up north. I think we’ll need to look into this. I’m working with my sword a little more, if its just Christopher and I, I should be able to cover him so he can pray and cast spells.

*****

A few thoughts on this sub-optimal team. Its really been fun, and with a combination of sensible tactics, and a lot of buffing sometimes, the team has been very successful.

One minor challenge, neither of my melee types (Jaheira and Minsc) were proficient in Long Sword, Bastard Sword or Dagger. Those are the only specific weapons that can harm the Greater Werewolves. That meant Minsc needed to take a weapon he wasn’t proficient in and buff up a little. It worked fine. Scratch three Greater dogboys.

Now getting into SoD there will be some changes to my team. Imoen and Alora are just not available. Jaheira is available late, but my plan is not to use her on this part.

So continuing with my theme of a sub-optimal team, Jill will take Jaheira’s place on point. She currently has High Mastery in Short Bow and Specialization in Short Sword. So yeah, she’ll be using her short sword for now. The “good” news is she can take Mastery in the sword at 9th level, which should come by the mid-point of SoD. The bad news is, that means she won’t have Grand Mastery of Short Bow until she hits 12th level sometime in BG2.
Remember Jill has a unique (if minor) form of damage reduction, that makes up for her middling constitution. Also now, with Draw Upon Holy Might she can get a 15 constitution.
But equipment-wise we’re in a good place for this change. Jill can take the Boots of Speed, Gauntlets of Ogre Power, a +3 Short Sword, a suit of Full Plate Armor, and a few other helpful things. That should all add up to saying between the build and the gear, Jill will be effective in her new role.

Minsc will remain in the second spot. He rocks, and he knows it! Or at least Boo knows.

Christopher is up next. All he’s really good at is being a cleric. We need one of those!

Then we have Dynaheir, Minsc’s witch. She is a capable mage and will fill the spot nicely. I like how having her along for this part of the adventure adds a little more drama to the start of BG2.

Flaming Fist Captain Corwin will join with us. With her at archer, Jill is less needed in that role.

And finally, the team recruits the refugee half-elf Erato, who they met at the Elfsong Tavern. She’s a Cleric of Tymora and a “Scout”. She is a custom created NPC via A7’s NPC Generator.

As with all things on this run, this is mostly a mediocre team. Corwin might be the ringer? She can tear up a battlefield. Let’s see how this goes!

2 responses to “Jill: Update 5”

  1. Zeno Avatar

    Well that’s another fun trip through! That out-take is hilarious. Looks like Imoen force-fed him lime Jello. And he *hates* lime jello.

    The out-of-focus ac id-slime dungeon is a really cool effect I like how well it captures that texture. And the wedding and wrap-up scenes are always fun,

    Jaheria encouraging Jill is a great story-video. Really captures what you were going for I think – and that can be hard to do with these video shots. I get really frustrated with the inability to poke and prod and tweak for 50 takes, pop out the editor, etc when it comes to movies. I think mostly I just miss that I can easily spend an afternoon playing with image designer just learning how some niche effect works. But both the generation time and the images-per-month limit make it impossible to do the same with the videos. So the learning curve is a lot slower.

    .

    Liked by 1 person

    1. atcDave Avatar
      atcDave

      Yeah the Vitriolic Sphere made me laugh. I did one try and decided there were too many problems to try and get it right.

      Jaheira offering encouragement took three tries. The first one they got romantic! The second, it just made Jill look very elven. The third, well there’s still some of the elven thing, it shows when Jill turns her head. But it’s much less pronounced.
      I do think, these sort of character moments come out better than the action scenes. I like just making the characters breathe a little. They have added a separate “start” and “finish” option, where you put in two pictures. Which seems like a great idea, but I haven’t had many opportunities to try that out yet.

      The wedding caused problems. DALL-E wanted to make it way too silly/cartoony. So I built a model of Jill from some favorite renders and did it all in OpenArt. That worked great, except for spending still more of my monthly points there. I predict I’ll run short again this month. Funny, just a few weeks ago I was thinking I might drop that account!

      And yeah, the learning curve is really steep on the videos!

      Like

Leave a reply to atcDave Cancel reply