I think we should be pretty good to go now for the Rivington antics. I found 2 more Dins, HM Sorcerer saves from last year. They're both already past the coronation, but least the saves all worked. Takes some of the pressure off when we die or fail to achieve.
Red Eye Din was underlevelled and not very well equipped. I think in that one we must have totally skipped the Ancient Forge, or maybe a few things in Act II, not sure. Our Rings and Amulets were sorta meh, but we divided the kit as best we could. This time I bought a few more Grenades before robbing the Gnomes, and we have a half dozen Smoke Powder Barrels in addition to the big Barrel from Philomeen, I think we might have enough to pull it off without the Runepowder bomb which would be nice. Instead of talking our way across the Bridge right away we took things a bit slower to catch up with Orin and hit lvl 9 doing the run around. I figure probably best to just get it all out of the way, since once we light it up at Wyrm's Rock it might be hard to run back over to this side again. Mainly cause of the spellcasters with counterspell in that room, can make it tough if we're not all invisible or get caught with our guard down. I made sure to consume a few more tadpoles while we detoured for our Black Hole. Took me a while to get everyone sorted and dyed, but I think we're basically there. I went Death for Shadowheart, Stars for Jaheira made Jaheira the radiant dmg dealer with the luminous plate and the gloves, while Shadowheart focuses more necrotic. I kept her with the kick boots and the jump gloves, but her spirit guardians I usually go green now just for flare. Did it that way mainly just so Shadowheart could wear more of her thematic gear. This time I bought an extra Cloud Giant potion so we can try to throw more stuff into the room, also going to try and see if I can get some use out of Olivers ring, for a little trickery callback while we try to get the stuff into position. Hopefully Gortash gets nailed this time! Third time's the charm right?
I'll have to find out tomorrow hehe
We thinned out the herd quite a bit this week, but also found a few we'd saves we'd forgotten, so that's a plus. I knew there was a reason I kept some of those Dins on standby lol.
ps. For the Nautiloid meta I also saw another Melth innovation earlier tonight. Instead of using firebolt to trigger the Cambion trap, he used the mage hand to reposition the Nautiloid tanks right next to the spot where the 2 Cambions first spawn in. Then, by walking to the edge of the tunnel platform with Shadowheart, set off the fire in the far room and made tanks explode that way, just using movement instead of an action. I recall trying to do something similar once, but goofed and accidentally set off an explosion by moving a barrel onto the fire prematurely, but he had it down to a whole method. Like using hide as the last action so as not to get spotted when the Devil's spawn. Looked pretty cool! I think the basic meta there, absent any sort of specific class/race/subclass for the main character, is still built around Shadowheart's Command/Bless, and Lae'zel's Mage Hand and drawing AoOs once she has Zhalk's Sword. The basic series of moves is Command Drop, then bursting Zhalk down, springing the trap vs the other 2 Cambions and then just keeping the Flayer engaged vs the Devils w/ 1 imp alive so he stays green.
I think the level of tedium involved is sorta rough though. Lots of repositioning of objects within the environment and lots of throws and friendly pushes. Mostly vs the Mind Flayer since those always succeed, as long as preview arcs for the shove are showing blue, then positioning Lae'zel to draw the opportunity attacks. Anything beyond that seems sorta hard to plan around in a more general sort of way. He used Hexblade with Booming Blade and Hex and did some pretty sav damage, after getting screwed with like a spike bulb and a skull for the loot drop hehe. Very impressive!
I still feel like something needs to go the party's way, or else it's pretty hard to manage in time. Like a Flayer stun basically, or the hasty potion, or a crit hit or miss, something like that. For my sensibility the idea of building the character completely around just this first fight, with plans to respec later probably wouldn't satisfy me, but it's pretty hard to imagine pulling it off without any sort of cantrips or special moves to even the odds. Like I mean trying to do it as just a regular fighter or whatever, seems like that would be very frustrating. I enjoyed using the Jump meta with Sorcerer mainly because it can be cast on everyone, and also there's a good chance if Shadowheart succeeded with her command, that Lae'zel can then jump and equip the sword all in the first round, which is pretty nice. An extra turn to attack or draw attacks with it, but that only works for Class that can choose Enhanced Leap from their spell list. Longstrider seems like it would also be very nice, but again, just not something that everyone can reliably have at the ready. Unless the main character has a decent way to deal dmg, I guess their best use would probably be to just shove imps and toss health potions, but that's not really the most exciting. Some classes just bring more to the table than others, which is part of why the Nautiloid feels very uneven to me. Some Class/Race combos just get more to work with and there's nothing to offset that really. Like choosing to play as a Fighter rather than a Sorcerer, I don't get any cool extra weapons to balance the scales. A rogue has to work with the same trap setting materials that everyone else uses. Classes with the choice cantrips or rituals seem to have a pretty big leg up vs Classes that don't. STR based classes have the greater jump distance and can hurl shove a bit easier, but the DEX focused classes have more weapons available from the loot pickups and a better chance to get a good order of battle. The lack of decent armor or a shield at the outset is annoying, as is the inability to choose a weapon. They stick us with a Longsword to wield 2 Handed, regardless of what type of fighter we might be imagining.
Like I wish we could just choose to have a Flail or a Maul or whatever else, maybe a Shield or have it priced out to be a choice between cool armor or cool weapons, but with not quite enough gold to buy both. To me that would probably have been more interesting than trying to parse out hella environmental objects, using bulbs and barrels and whatnot. Just the basic weapons with the associated special moves. Choosing the starting kit would have been fun. Having a named weapon, even if it was mundane, but where we get to pick the starting weapons!
