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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Demetrios1453" data-source="post: 9410573" data-attributes="member: 6801060">Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 9): Fire Knife Hideout (Part 2) The battle commences![ATTACH=full]373480[/ATTACH]While Baroness Bella and Bant run up to melee, Bragir begins with his usual opening salvo...[ATTACH=full]373481[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]373482[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]373483[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]373484[/ATTACH]That quickly takes most of them down, and the melee take out the one next to them quickly. Unfortunately, the remaining one tries to run away...[ATTACH=full]373485[/ATTACH]But Brother Baltor runs up and takes him down, even with a chair in the way.[ATTACH=full]373486[/ATTACH]After the battle, we peek into the room through the doorway on the left, but it's just a destroyed laboratory with nothing of interest.[ATTACH=full]373491[/ATTACH]With nothing much else to find here, we quickly retreat back to the secret rooms to rest up for the final push.[ATTACH=full]373492[/ATTACH]Ready to go, we move forward, but then we overhear something interesting.[ATTACH=full]373493[/ATTACH]Well, our unlucky wizard whose body we found must have been this Kybor. I guess it's lucky for the princess (assuming that the prisoner mentioned is her) that he met such a fiery fate.We continue down the corridor and enter a room on the left.[ATTACH=full]373494[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]373496[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]373495[/ATTACH]Apparently the survivors of Gharri's attack. I guess they're better off than the ones marked to not resurrect we saw earlier.The survivors that fled "through the west wall" intrigue us...[ATTACH=full]373497[/ATTACH]There's no door to be seen, but the map does show one. They must have fled through a hidden door![ATTACH=full]373498[/ATTACH]If it's important enough to point out, of course we open it![ATTACH=full]373499[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]373500[/ATTACH]A nice combination of items!  Let's see exactly what they are...[ATTACH=full]373501[/ATTACH]Bracers AC 10 are a cursed item, so we'll just keep 'em around to see if we can dupe some gullible storekeep somewhere. Baroness Bella will get that very nice frost brand...[ATTACH=full]373502[/ATTACH]The elfin chain is a downgrade for everyone, as nice as it is. Even Buffy loses a point of AC when wearing it.[ATTACH=full]373503[/ATTACH] It will undoubtedly sell for quite a bit, though. And Buffy is compensated nicely with the flame tongue and the necklace of missiles. Brother Baltor will upgrade to +2 from his current flail +1. I'll give the mace to Bant, but change it to a battleaxe for flavor reasons. It's a bit of cheat, but it's a very minor change damage-wise (and these games are very stingy at handing out battleaxes).[ATTACH=full]373504[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]373505[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]373506[/ATTACH]We move to leave the room, and...[ATTACH=full]373507[/ATTACH]Well, we're bloodying our cool new weapons very quickly, I see...Brother Baltor runs up to take a few out...[ATTACH=full]373508[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]373510[/ATTACH]And Brin will rain fire on the rest...[ATTACH=full]373511[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]373512[/ATTACH]And quickly the battle is over.[ATTACH=full]373513[/ATTACH]With nothing of further interest in this room, we head out back to the main corridor.[ATTACH=full]373514[/ATTACH]A soon-to-be ex-checkpoint, that is...[ATTACH=full]373515[/ATTACH]LOL. Of course not.Time to for Brother Baltor to take out a few again...[ATTACH=full]373516[/ATTACH]And he's immediately hit by a thrown dagger, losing the spell...[ATTACH=full]373517[/ATTACH]As they're all bunched up in a corner, making spellcasting problematic without friendly fire, we'll just take them down the old-fashioned way, with sword and bow...[ATTACH=full]373518[/ATTACH]Soon, they're fleeing in panic, but as they're boxed in, they have nowhere to go. And soon another battle is won.[ATTACH=full]373519[/ATTACH]We reach the door at the end of the corridor just beyond the checkpoint, to the south.[ATTACH=full]373520[/ATTACH]They must have been guarding something important, so it's time for our first real pre-boss buffing session! We don't have too much now, but in later games, we'll have a dozen or more buffs to cast before the big battles.Brother Baltor casts bless, prayer, and protection from evil, 10' radius.[ATTACH=full]373521[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]373522[/ATTACH]Bragir casts enlarge... And suddenly there's an issue I was unaware of in CotAB.  I've used enlarge in the later games without issue, but hadn't really tried it in this game just due to limited spell slots and lesser effectiveness. At level 8, it will give the target 20 STR, although at higher levels it maxes out a very nice 22 STR.[ATTACH=full]373523[/ATTACH](Quick screenshot from an online strategy guide, as this info isn't put into a nice chart in game material).So, Bragir casts it on Baroness Bella... and it says she's unaffected?!I spent way too much time experimenting on this, but the only character that it affects is Buffy, who is the only one with below 18 STR.[ATTACH=full]373524[/ATTACH]I played around with the editor, and any character with 18 STR (even those without extraordinary percentile 18 strength scores) are unaffected. Only 17 STR or below gain the buff.Weirdly enough, when I created a character in CotAB and then had the spell cast on him, it worked perfectly, even with 18/00 STR. I thought it might be a result of using the editor to change stats, but when I did it after editing the stats for this new character, it worked fine. So, I guess enlarge only works on characters created in CotAB, or in characters imported from PoR but only if they have 17 STR or below. Which, while annoying, isn't a huge loss, as I only used it for special buffing situations like this, and it's not that much of gap in power.  Well, enlarge, I'm sorry to say you're getting dropped from memorized spells until SotSB!Anyway, we continue with the buffing. Both mages cast mirror image (which really helps when enemies target them for attacks - they just lose an image instead of spell!), and Bragir casts fire shield (cold), which helps against fire attacks (Brin was supposed to do so as well, but I forgot after the upcoming debate about the next spell). And then we come to this...[ATTACH=full]373525[/ATTACH]Should I or shouldn't I? Yeah, it will help with initiative and give me lots of extra attacks for the melee, but (spoiler) this won't be too terribly hard of a fight, and, as it's the 1e version of the spell, it will age everyone 1 year. But, conversely, the only one that will cause any problem with is Baroness Bella, as my sole human. Eh, there are elixirs of youth in later games she can take of advantage of and regain those lost years - so cast it we will!Now fully buffed up (other than Brin forgetting to cast fire shield), here is what the group looks like:[ATTACH=full]373526[/ATTACH]And through the door we go...[ATTACH=full]373527[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]373528[/ATTACH]Well, that certainly is convenient of the princess. But I guess slipping those bonds when there wasn't a heavily-armed group of adventurers there to deal with the guards wouldn't have worked very well.[ATTACH=full]373529[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]373530[/ATTACH]Quite a bit more than usual, backed up with magic this time. But being hasted and with fireballs ready to shoot, it shouldn't be too tough.As we're nearing the image limit, we'll pick up here in the next post!</blockquote>

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