Speedrunning Immortality

[Retribution]

I think a recent patch match flying creaatures (assumedly including dragons) immune to EQ, as well as RG and fissure

[fallenwizard]

Circle of death kills HD x enemies, not sure if it is because HD is 0 or 1, but fire beetles, kobos etc. very early game enemies are not affected and never been - I've always assumed it is the HD being too low to be registered.

If someone has better explanation please share.

Oh Johny, that actual fight vs Asi on your theurge was faster than my bot pariah, but pariah only buffed 2 spells, making total casts 18 iirc - which is same if not faster - not that it matters much - but lets not be misleading ppl thinking puriah is awfully slow :D

[johannhowitzer]

Interesting leveling idea. I've been tweaking the leveling build; here's what my current build takes in which order:

Wizard 1-3, Ranger 4, Wizard 5-30

Feats
1 - Extend, SF Illus
3 - Empower
4 - GSF Illus
6 - SP, GSP
9 - Maximize
11 - SF Necro
12 - GSF Necro
15 - SF Conj
16 - GSF Conj
18 - Toughness? Also specialize in Illusion, bar Conjuration and Enchantment
21 - ESF Illus, ESF Conj, also RE-specialize in Conjuration, bar Enchantment and Necromancy
24 - 2x Great INT
27 - ESP, Great INT
30 - 2x Great INT

Reasoning for levels
Wizard to 3 gives Invisibility and Ranger gives a bonus GSF feat and AE. Level 4, gotten through shop quests, is the minimum level for efficient Oltuming without some other source of invis. Other sources of invis would require you to have invis to get them fast anyway - like the amulet of trickery from kobold glade - so it's faster to just hit 4 with shop quests fast. Rest is Wizard of course, to get the best spells ASAP.

Reasoning for feats and spec
Extend ASAP for safer Invis. Empower and Maximize early for better Oltum buffs. Necro for U2D and cod right as they show up. All three Conj feats right before they're needed for Unlimited Gate. Illusion spec at 18 to boost Weird, barring Conjuration to allow respec at 21 using ESF Conj, respec is into Conj for Gate, barring Enchant and Necro - Necro is no longer useful at this point as far as I can tell. This can change.



What I'm considering changing from here is specializing at 12 into Necromancy instead, barring Conj and Ench. Illusion performs well enough in Zhents without spec at 18, I think it's 50% chance to kill the guards, and I'd only have the spec for three levels anyway. Meanwhile, Necro spec means I can help out the Oltum much more effectively with U2D. Necro spec will also help with mass killing on tags before Weird shows up, or for things immune to mind spells.

Then, once I can start defeating enemy TR, Sunburst becomes viable at POW and I can double up on Zhents and POW for even faster exp, especially in the tag gap from 25 to 30 when I will have less tags to occupy respawn time. Also quests will be used in convenient places, of course; I already have quite a few ideas about how I'm going to structure the questing. Pretty easy to see certain quests won't be used, such as the slime for Marcus or the four quests in the Crypt. Later quests become such good exp that a detour could be worthwhile - for example, the peppers. Just about any quest that's on my way should be done - any quest that pairs with a tag, even with a minor detour, or other stuff like the shadow moss, which can pair with picking up my second Priest's Circle ring.

It's all starting to come together.

[johannhowitzer]

Hmm. Documentation claims if I have ESF in a barred school, I can change my wizard specialization... but I'm playing a character with Conj barred and ESF Conj and spells pedestal isn't letting me change spec. Do I need to do something else?

EDIT: Okay, where did I read that? It's not on the wiki or in the journal.

EDIT2: Raj stopped by while I was afk and told me to use !despecialize, which worked. Thanks Raj! Wouldn't have been much of an issue if I couldn't respec, as it would just mean not having illusion or necro spec in the late teens, but that still helps. Now I have to figure out what to bar instead of Conjuration... having no access to summons while trying to kill Zhents is a little bit of a problem, needs a lot more resting since familiar is so fragile. Maybe I'll just spec at 21 anyway.

[chirality]

the despecialize command was intended to allow players to easily fix their toons after a 2012 update prevented you from being able to use the epic spell from a barred school, which was a pretty cheesy "exploit" since you could just use epic tome to get desirable epic in barred school.

using a loophole leftover from a QoL improver to re-specialize while levelling a lowbie for some marginal short-term gain seems pretty lame, but any misuse on a 1-40 toon probably isn't important enough to be of much concern.

[johannhowitzer]

Lame in casual play, maybe, but Acaos has said he's a fan of speedruns, and speedrunning is kind of its own animal, isolated from all other gameplay, especially as I'm requiring that the speedrun use open subraces and no pre-obtained gear or gold.

Conj spec is too important to ignore for the Gate benefit in a speedrun, so until then, using some other spec (illusion or necromancy) will speed up leveling. As long as I can figure out which schools to bar, that is! Trick is that I HAVE to bar a school I will take ESF in at level 21. Conj has to be one of those for Supergate, but I apparently can't bar Conj or I have no summons for massing Zhents. The other ESF at 21 is Illusion for Weird, which I can't really bar at any point thanks to Invisibility and using Weird at 18-20. I might have to choose between not taking ESF Illusion at 21, and not using respecialize at all, just going for Conj spec by itself.

[drunkenboastor]

Ban divination and enchantment. Is there a reason to keep div for any buff besides legend lore?

[johannhowitzer]

Premonition, Power Word Kill, and Power Word Stun. Premonition is the most important, of course, but I can probably get by with Greater Stoneskin. I'll look into this.


Also...

Oh Johny, that actual fight vs Asi on your theurge was faster than my bot pariah, but pariah only buffed 2 spells, making total casts 18 iirc - which is same if not faster - not that it matters much - but lets not be misleading ppl thinking puriah is awfully slow

Sure, that's a fair point, BUT frontloading more spells into the buffing means less time spent fighting a boss that can timestop me. Safety is more important than saving a few seconds in a run this long and dangerous. Although Pariah can probably grab Asimathas anyway, I can't remember whether you did.

[johannhowitzer]

Oh, completely forgot something, db. The reason I'm having a hard time figuring out what to bar for illusion/necro spec isn't that it's hard to find a useless school... it's that whatever I bar has to be something I'm willing to take up to ESF in by level 21. That's the qualification for respecializing, and thus the reason I had barred Conjuration.

Divination is, however, a school I could definitely bar at 21.



Someone once told me the Corpse Lord killcount is just kill all the Soulless on the way down. Killed them all just now (4 upstairs, 8 downstairs) and didn't get the tag... that theory's debunked.

[chirality]

afaik the various theories about kc only respecting certain mobs have been debunked; it's just a number that doesn't distinguish one mob from another. 2 examples include kurai and black predators; you can satisfy killcount without killing either of these mobs, despite old "wisdom" claiming that you need to kill some of these "harder" mobs to get kc.

div/ench are the obvious easy choices since every other school contains something you truly do "need" whereas those 2 contain only useful buffs that, while nice to have (premo, leg lore, MB) are completely not required. this is classic wizard issue, since having flexible book with tasty buffs that sorc can't afford is only really available without spec (which is why spec rarely makes sense, but if you need it, then you unfortunately do have to pick something). if you're set on having specialization at all there is really no choice what to bar; anything else just doesn't make sense.

as for PWS/PWK, was that supposed to be a joke

[johannhowitzer]

Okay, I'm confused. I thought Conjuration focus affected Bigby 6/7/9 check, is it Evocation instead? I thought there was a HGE text in the description stating it was Conj-based but there isn't one.

EDIT: OHHHHH I was thinking of Orb spells somehow. Okay then.

[johannhowitzer]

Man, Supergate has SO many uses! From 18 onward, I'll be blipping all over the world constantly. Truly the noblest of speedrun spells. In fact it's so powerful that I'm beginning to consider pushing my reincarnation point forward, until I would get Supergate back immediately upon reincarnation; my Theurge build isn't slated to get 17 Wizard until level 35, though I could potentially push that lower by quite a bit.

Razhid is the biggest determining factor here. If I reincarnate at 30, I get to use Silence on him, completely stopping his mantle regeneration. Implosion also functions well in his area. On the other hand, Sunburst works well too, and I could conceivably take Cleric 3 on my leveling Wizard just for Silence without hurting the build too much.


I have very little info on grapple checks. Grapples are going to be super important later on, so it's critical that I learn more about them, but the logs do not show anything about them. NWNWiki describes how they operate, but I have a feeling HG has altered that a bit. NWNWiki emphasizes the importance of high casting ability, whereas Spell Focus feats are mentioned nowhere. Can someone go into decent detail in explaining how these work, and how to increase chance of success?

[arek]

For BB9, According to nwn.wikia.com

The grapple check starts with a modified attack roll:
d20 + caster's ability modifier + caster level + 12 - 1.
If this roll meets or exceeds the target's armor class, then an actual grapple is attempted:
caster: d20 + ability modifier + caster level + 12 + 4 vs.
target: d20 + strength modifier + BAB + size modifier.
A tie means a successful grapple.

And from the HG Spells Documentation:

Bigby's Crushing Hand
- The damage per round is equal to (CL / 6)d6 + 12.
- Bane Knights add (CL /10)d4 + 8 Vile damage,

This indicates that the grapple check on BB9 is unchanged.

BB6 is different (from the Spells Documentation again):

Bigby's Forceful Hand
- Targets must make a Discipline check against CL + (caster ability modifier) + (caster Str modifier) + (Evocation foci * 5).

This means that STR is a bit more important for BB6 than it is for BB9.

Edit: Here's the grapple check info for BB7 (from nwn.wikia.com):

To hit the target, the hand makes a specialized attack roll:
1d20 + caster level + (casting ability modifier + 10) - 1 vs. target's armor class
To successfully grapple the target after hitting it, the hand must pass a grapple check, with a tie being successful:
1d20 + caster level + (casting ability modifier + 10) + 4 vs.
1d20 + target's BAB + target's strength modifier + target's grapple size modifier.

Which is basically the same as BB9, but with -2 the AB and Grapple check.

I hope this helps.  Good luck on the actual run.

--arek

[Deleted]

Just a reminder that there are many examples of undocumented changes to HG spells.
I personally do not know what the grappling equation is, but I would not be surprised if it has indeed been changed compared to vanilla NWN (ie: NWNWiki's info); Funky/Acaos are probably the only people who can give a good answer to this.

[johannhowitzer]

Well, the ability modifier thing explains why my Theurge build isn't landing any grabs, and I probably can't fix that without switching builds. But the wiki makes no mention of Spell Focus feats, so unless HG changed that, seems Evocation focus does nothing, which makes it a bit weird that my leveling Wizard build hasn't been able to hit much with grabs either.