The Durlag Experience Part I: Xzar and Montaron Die

Whew, it's been a little while since I last updated...but I have been playing.  I end up playing and playing waiting for something major to happen before I post a blog, but it always just seems that I update eventually with more than enough material to fill up a healthy-size post (due mostly to my rambling nature...on display right now).


Last time I left, I had set up the tour for Durlag's Tower in Ulgoth's Beard.  I had just found out I was a genuine true-to-life Bhaalspawn, I'm being hunted by the Flaming Fist, and I just had to battle my way through several dopplegangers that took on the form of murdered loved ones (just like Durlag!).  Also, most of my groupmates are getting very close to maxing out their experience levels here on the Sword Coast.  If now's not a good time to head to the Tower, I don't when a good time would be.

Traveling east through the carnival

So we traveled through Nashkel first...rested, sold off some wares, et cetera, then headed east to take on the Tower.  By the time we arrived at the gate, we were yelled at for being late.  Sorry?  Well, as most of you know, the tour started off alright, then started going horribly wrong.  Traps, demonknights, general chaos.

So my party took to adventuring ourselves.  Like every dungeon before this, I had Montaron scout ahead, alternating between detect traps and hide-in-shadows.  I know there are a lot of traps here, and that this is the most challenging dungeon in the entire game...so we took it slow.  I wanted to clear the superterranean levels first, which is the natural thing to do.  In the beginning, everything was going fine.  Ran into a couple of basilisks on some of the rooftops...found it was better to have Shar-Teel just use a Potion of Mirrored Eyes and absorb all the death gazes.

Everything was going pretty great in the beginning.  But of course, nothing good lasts.  We headed up to another floor, and ran into that ghost who had been indebted to Durlag.  He was able to cast Chaos at my closely-clustered unit of troops...this led to some disastrous consequences, as usual.  Most importantly of which was the killing of Xzar by Idaen.

Damn...at least I can still get him resurrected.  But now that I've mentioned that, let me sidebar for a second.  I've had NO perma-deaths that I can recall this entire game.  In my first game (for those that read playthrough 1.0), I had so many heart-wrenching perma-deaths I didn't know how I could carry on sometimes.  I am on core rules, so perma-death should still happen.  I ran some tests having to do with strength potions and Ajantis attacking weaker members of the party.  I found that the paladin could actually take characters below -10 hp, and their portrait would still be there for me to resurrect.  WTF?  Perma-death would still happen if hit points got really negative (like a 24-strength critical hit to someone with 7hp left...their hit points would decrease to maybe -30 hp or so, and then they WOULD disappear).  I'm not sure what's going on here.  Definitely something with BG2/Tutu rules being applied to BG1...but I'm not really sure.  Shrug.

So my plan was to keep trudging on with the five of us until we were out of spells or health, and had to rest.  Then I'd make the trek back to Nashkel to resurrect the necromancer, and we'd continue on.  Unfortunately, before we came to a "natural" break point, Montaron missed a trap and got fried by a lightning bolt.  Shit!  I was taking it real slow with him, but apparently not slow enough.  Time to cut our losses right now and head back.

The four of us remaining climbed back up the lobby and camped out...this seems like an ambivalent enough area for us to rest regularly...it will beat going outside every time, that's for sure.  Headed to Nashkel and got the Zhents breathing again.  We regrouped (literally) and headed straight back.  The tower may have won this past round, but we'll be able to conquer it...no doubt in my mind.  It's just going to take some time.  It's my first run through it, ever.

On our way back in, we had an opportunity to clear out the entire external surface...mostly skeleton archers and the like.  Once that was done, we head back inside.  That's where I'm at right now.  Here's the party:

Idaen, lvl 7 cleric/lvl 7 ranger
Shar-Teel, lvl 7 fighter
Ajantis, lvl 8 paladin
Montaron, lvl 7 fighter/lvl 8 thief
Imoen, lvl 6 thief>lvl 9 mage
Xzar, lvl 9 necromancer

More to come soon.