Solo Blade: A Report

Part 7: Druid Grove & Guarded Compound

After getting rid of the beholder group, I decide to travel to Trademeet first, because they sell a lot of level 6 spells (True Sight!). Sadly, I forgot you can’t buy or sell anything before solving the local problems there: the trade problem and the druid grove disaster. This also gives me Belm +2 and some other goodies, so why the hell not. After killing Ihtafeer and brining his head to the genies, I travel to the Druid Grove (without Cernd, he had to go on his own). After learning it the hard way (dying, that is), I was very careful with some troll packs. Usually, meteors, mislead, my occasionally equipped bow for acid arrows and fireball plus a decoy works. But at the entrance of their hideout, a lot of Spirit Trolls plus umber hulks appeared! Cloudkill took care of the umber hulks, but I still died. Left them alone and decided to come back after getting my new level 6 spell scrolls. Got to the grove centre and let Cernd clean up the mess. Yay for me. After learning Improved Haste plus True Sight, I killed the troll mob and sold all the useless junk to the trademeet merchants.

Okay, time to try and get Celestial Fury. I arrived at the compound, fully buffed myself including various spell immunities (will be needing them: traps + enchantment stuff, and I still was chaotized a few times). I figured the easiest way to get rid of them was luring the members down one by one and letting them bump into my summoned destruction party (three skeletons, two sword spiders, an efreeti and my kitthix, all hasted!). Shit, this tactic only worked with the kensai (which directly gave my katana). Improved Haste with some other stuff gave me 8 attacks/round, so I decided to try it anyway. Ran upstairs, whacked and successfully killed the rogue and one minotaur and flet. Another minotaur followed and was quickly dead too. The mage tried to cast various hold stuff on me but after Remove Magic and breach, the poor guy was found bleeding to dead too. That wasn’t so hard, I don’t think I had to reload one single time!

At the Troll hideout	Another group of liches…

Did I grew so strong and powerful? Why not test it with a little challenge. I walked into the docks district and greeted the lich to the north again - and died over and over again. Okay. I guess I’ll leave her until chapter 6… But Kangaxx has new guards on the first floor: two liches, an improved-hasted dwarf with an instant-killing sword and a bunch of minotaurs. Good. After entering the building, I got a little bit scared and ran away, to leave them for chapter 6 too. But whoops, most of the minotaurs followed me outside! I quickly cast some skull traps and killed them, but this triggered another cowled wizard encounter. Grr, they’re really pissing me off. I went back inside, lured a lich outside (another summon party was waiting there) and ran back outside. The cowled wizards started casting a bunch of stuff - on the lich instead of on me! But they were still hostile. Good, this gave me an easy time taking them out, and letting my summons handle the lich (which obviously didn’t simply die like that).

I had to reload four times, thanks to the annoying little dwarf or halfling bastard. His sword has a chance of simply instantly killing you, no save at all. Great! So stay away as much as possible, or constantly use Mirror Image. That’s exactly what I did - plus improved haste and Celestial Fury. The second lich wasn’t that hard after his spell protections were gone (two remove magics, the first one was absorbed by some spell?). Anyway, I still needed to get one body part of Kangaxx and wouldn’t even dare to try and defeat him until I got another Fury upgrade to +5 or so. Note that as soon as you engage enemies in melee as a bard and have access to level 6 spells, you should have casted Tenser’s Transformation to get a very big boost in THAC0 and AC, plus your HP doubles! Only downside: you can’t use innate abilities and cast spells as long as the spell is active, and it can be simply dispelled by dispel magic.

I knew Kuroisan the Acid Kensai from tactics was going to spawn since I equipped Celestial Fury. Travelled back to trademeet and bwam, he appeared. After a lot of teeth grinding and reloading, I managed to kill him… This fight was a lot harder than the liches or even the beholders, go figure. First of all, the bastard has the habit of yelling “ooh, this is not a good day” and running away, as soon as someone besides myself attacks him (the trademeet guards or summons!). Great, I buffed up and he disappeared. Huh? I walked around to find him, but he was nowhere to be found… Reload. After the tirth reload just to find him, he ran away into one of the now empty genie tents. How strange… Anyway, as soon as I enter the tent and I’m not invisible, he attacks and I’m dead. One slash of his katana brings my HP down to 1/2… That’s not completely fair. His magical protection stays up since he has 4 scrolls of them. Spell Immunity: Conjuration got rid of the acid backlash (Melf’s acid arrow) and Mislead got rid of him attacking me. After all my breach and dispel magic spells were gone, I simply bashed him until they wore off. “Ooh, this is not a good day!“. Grr, shut up and die! He saw my clone and dispelled it. I died. Fuck this… Again and again, finally managed to eliminate him.

Kuroisan wants my Katana.	New and strong equipment

After all these events, I took on Firkraag’s challenge and cleaned out his entire dungeon by myself. Even the adamantide golems fell with Improved Haste and Celestial Fury. Firkraag proved to be a complete pushover at my too high character level (improved dragons, puh, my ass - he only uses wingbuffet constantly and has stoneskin precast, that’s it?). Couple of remove magics, Complete warrior transformation with Tenser’s + improved haste and a lot of other stuff = dead dragon. The summons didn’t even do anything besides standing there, watching me whack away. No reload needed. Firkraag was stupid enough to kill his own mage companion using Dragon Breath which I simply resisted, hah! The Red dragon scales plus my elven chainmail formed a nice new piece of armor with AC0 and +25% fire resistance while still being able to cast spells. Yes that’s right. (Incarnadine Elven Chain)