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- I managed to get both “She cannot be caged” (rescuing Sazza three times) and “Leave no-one behind” (rescuing all relevant Tieflings) on this run.

- I found out it is possible to both recruit Minthara and save Sazza without having to attack or defend the grove. So far, I thought common knowledge said you had to tell Minthara where the grove is so that Sazza would leave, rather than becoming hostile. Knocking out Sazza next to where you meet Minthara will prevent Sazza from showing up at Moonrise.
However, knocking out Minthara and simply fleeing from combat without harming temporarily-hostile Sazza will make both show up at Moonrise.


- This was also the first time I successfully stole the Idol of Silvanus. All the commonly shown tricks on YouTube seem to have been patched in the meantime (taking it and quickly teleporting to camp doesn’t work as the cutscene triggers immediately; Fog Cloud aggroes the druids; Invisibility is removed once you get close to the idol etc.). Sounds risky to try this on Honour Mode without knowing a working strategy, but I simply parked my party on the slope between the Hollow and the “Stonehenge” area and had Astarion move the idol around a bit. I guess I could have had him pick it up right away, too, because the result was a fight either way — however, it was one that only Astarion was pulled into. Being a thief, he could double- or triple dash in one turn to the beach where only the bear Ormn resides, and flee to camp from there.

- Other achievements on this run included beating Grym without the hammer (kept throwing stuff from the top, just made sure not to do so on the last attack, so that I wouldn’t miss out on XP due to Grym dying to crushing damage).


- Shovel’s ability to initiate combat from invisibility to either surprise the enemies or avoid being surprised myself proved invaluable many times. Against the Magma Mephits in Grymforge, I just sent Shovel ahead to cause them to pop out of the lava, then brought my team in while Shovel was frozen in combat. I later discovered that sometimes, your team can still count as surprised if they join combat later. I guess that’s because the game says “you”, the player, are surprised, so even if some of your characters are not and are already in combat, others that join later the same round will still count as surprised.

- Related to that, the Alert feat didn’t prove quite as essential as many claim it is on Honour Mode. Sometimes I used Elixirs of Vigilance to be on the safe side.

- What was crucial, though, was thoroughly buffing my entire camp with my two camp clerics every morning. Abjuration Gale was pretty much unkillable with Armour of Agathys plus Warding Bond plus Aid at max level. And as Gale was my Tav’s romance choice, it made sense to bring him along for most encounters. Having one night-immortal character in your team already takes a lot of pressure out of most fights or unlucky trap triggers (with a few noteworthy exceptions, of course, namely anything that can shove Gale into a chasm.)

- For that reason, I usually ungrouped my party by default whenever I got near an encounter or trap. It quickly became a habit I didn’t have to think about.

- One of my camp clerics was Brinna Brightsong, simultaneously a Transmutation wizard for the usual potion shenanigans. She was also the one to cast Longstrider on everyone (and Darkvision on Gale and Lae’zel) every morning.

- I did make use of the Invoke Duplicity trick to duplicate items — another thing I tried for the first time — but only for the Periapt of Wound Closure and the Defender Flail, so that both Brinna Brightsong and Kree Derryck (Trickery Domain camp cleric) could have them in camp. I never had to revive either of them. I decided not to exploit Invoke Duplicity beyond that, though.

As always, the encounters you think are going to be dangerous are the ones you over-prepare for (Dror Ragzlin, Nere, Grym, Inquisitor, Shambling Mound, Myrkul, Githyanki Monks, Orin), and which end up being easy as a result.
The challenging ones are often those you didn’t expect to be tough. I don’t think I was ever really in danger of wiping, but these are the encounters where some things didnt go as planned, briefly making me more nervous than during the rest of the playthrough.

- In the Apothecary’s Basement, I was greedy for XP and wanted all the skeletons to wake up (as getting from level 4 to 5 is always a slog, you pretty much have to do one encounter you’re under-levelled for). Usually, I recall this being a fairly easy fight — so I did it after some other things, without long-resting in between. That seems to be a common setup for many encounters that can suddenly go south on Honour Mode.
Unfortunately, letting all skeletons wake up means a lot of damage during a surprise round. I think this was the only encounter I fled for a long time. I had my Tav so far in the back of the tunnel that she could flee without being in real danger of the skeletons reaching her — though I did have to slow down the skeletons with Ray of Frost to get enough distance between my Tav and them to be allowed to flee to camp.


- When fighting Kar’niss, I brought Lockadin Wyll along — and forgot to bind his hexed weapon before combat started, so I had no extra attack. That’s what happens when you suddenly bring in characters you don’t use all that much during most encounters. As a result, I did less damage per round than I could have. The main Harper leader died in combat, so I thought I was lucky and would get to keep the lantern. Instead, another Harper came to pick up the lantern. I didn’t want to jump directly to the dialogue option that initiates combat with them, as I was concerned this might break Wyll’s oath. Trying to talk them into giving me the lantern resulted in the dialogue ending and the Harpers making a run for it.

To avoid the dreaded Isobel-Marcus fight, I quickly entered turn-based mode and decided to attack the Harpers anyway, not from dialogue. I would rather have broken Wyll’s oath and paid 1,000 gold to restore it than risk Last Light Inn falling. Luckily, though, Wyll was standing in a lightless area on the rooftop, having stowed his torch while climbing the ladder, and was far enough away from my party to not be in turn-based mode with the rest of us. So he died and became a Shadow-Cursed Undead.
For a moment, I feared this meant he was gone for good. I took the Harpers down with the rest of the team, took hostile Wyll down, too, then was surprised I could revive him with a regular Help action, rather than having to spend a Revivify scroll on him (after all, he had been dead in between). Upon being helped, he was back to normal again — oath intact.
So apparently, Wyll just happened to die at the exact right time to have plausible deniability when I attacked the Harpers to get the lantern back. :P


- The Meenlocks I knew to be potential run-enders, so I went in well-rested and with Calm Emotions. During the fight, though, I made a slight miscalculation on whether to cast Sanctuary on my Tav concentrating on Haste, or on Shadowheart concentrating on Calm Emotions. A Meenlock hit Shadowheart, she lost concentration on Calm Emotions, and suddenly, we were vulnerable to Meenlock Fear again. To add insult to injury, my Glyph of Warding was somehow placed in between the ground and the root bridge, where no enemy could step on it, wasting a spell. Still ended up beating the Meenlocks, but losing Calm Emotions here is similarly scary to losing it when fighting the Harpies.


- During the Moonrise battle, I snuck through the front door (see my other thread), only Gale was pulled into the conversation with Z’rell, and only he was stuck in combat at first. While I attempted to bring the rest of my party in, Jaheira, right after alert Gale in the turn order, continued her turn, even though I hadn’t passed Gale’s turn yet. She thereby skipped my turn and gave the entire enemy army an extra round, no surprise required. This foolishness resulted in Jaheira’s demise (in this case, well-deserved) — and in contrast to Wyll (if he dies at the grove fight), she can’t be revived. This locked me out of Minsc, too, but at least it speeded up Act III for me this time.



- Cazador Szarr was an enemy I didn’t have to fight, but much like dumpykong, I felt like I owed it to Astarion. I didn’t want him to go back to being under Cazador’s control after the Netherbrain’s defeat (though I think the game frames it in such a way that Astarion could still resist Cazador’s commands if Cazador is alive by the end).

Cazador didn’t bring me close to wiping, but he was the one encounter that forced me to expend all of my available resources.
That was because somehow, none of my plans ended up working the way I had anticipated. And, once again, I didn’t go into the fight fully rested, though in this case, we all had almost all of our spell slots, so it didn’t feel quite as reckless as in the Apothecary’s Basement in Act I. And given how many buffs I had to apply to my team every day, I decided to risk it, being ready to flee with one of my characters all the way to the sewer exit to leave the red zone, if need be.

I brought Astarion along, as I’m never quite sure how well companions take it if they’re not present for their personal quest. (Shadowheart in Act II is well-known to leave; Wyll is well-known not to care.) Of course, I knew Cazador would trap Astarion when the encounter starts, so I tried to start it with invisible Shovel as usual, and had Scratch ready to use the help action.

Turns out Cazador still pulls you into the conversation, even mid-combat, once your characters get close to him (Shovel does not trigger the conversation, just regular combat, but combat will be interrupted for the conversation once you bring in your other characters). In contrast to the Myrkul fight, I hadn’t made Scratch invisible to pre-place him where Astarion would be trapped. So Gale ended up being faster in freeing him.

Astarion then was the first to trigger Cazador’s legendary “swarm” reaction that yeeted him straight into the chasm. Gale fortunately was out of the way at the time.
This made me realise that Cazador auto-trapping Astarion behind himself is actually a security mechanism on Honour Mode, as it separates your party members without you having to do so, preventing them from being thrown into the chasm all at once if just one of them steps into Cazador’s range.

Even though we kept stealing his ritual sources, Cazador kept regaining a bunch of temporary HP each turn.
The swarm reaction was also the ideal counter to my Abjuration Gale — even though nobody besides Astarion was thrown in the chasm (and he was revived quickly afterwards, with Minthara throwing a big healing potion on the ground to heal both herself and Astarion almost back to full health), the swarm reaction meant that Gale couldn’t get close to Cazador like he usually wanted to for Shadow Booming Blade.
Daylight also wasn’t nearly as useful as I expected it to be against the vampire (I had cast it onto one of light-cleric Minthara’s items).

As I burned through my scrolls instead, my second Wall of Ice somehow did no damage, because it created no pillars of ice, only an ice surface — another wasted spell due to what felt like a glitch. Attempting to toss Cazador into the chasm with Telekinesis did not work, either, because the chasm could not be selected as a target for the throw — only the edge of the platform (luckily, this prevented me from casting Telekinesis in the first place, so that I didn’t waste another turn on the attempt.)

Towards the end, all four characters were tossing their cantrips at Cazador.



- During the lead-up to the final battle, one of the Intellect Gluttons exploded and knocked Gale into a brine pool, which counted as a chasm. Luckily, I immediately recalled I still had 9 Revivify Scrolls with me, but I realised I had forgotten that knockback was an issue during this fight.

- I had hoped that Lae’zel not being present when I entered the goblin camp would prevent the camp fight between her and Shadowheart — it did not. (Perhaps you can avoid it if Shadowheart isn’t present, as the artefact should jump straight to you, then?)
That dialogue was merely postponed so far that when it finally happened, I thought I would no longer have to go through it. Luckily, I had enough inspiration ready, just in case. Don’t think I even needed it, but those few scenes where you can permanently lose a companion due to just a single die roll do feel somewhat unfair on Honour Mode — these few known hurdles you feel you have to get across before you can really enjoy the game.

- Dror Ragzlin initiated combat with me after spotting me through his broken wall, once I had already taken down Minthara. I thought the goblins would only become hostile once Ragzlin himself was taken down. Still, that breach in the wall is also an opening for my characters to cast spells through. I think, this time, I just tossed Fireballs, but I’ve also used Hunger of Hadar or Sleet Storm on previous Tactician playthroughs.

- The Nere fight was easier than expected, since I separated my party from the start, and focused on the Mind Masters first.
- The Lava Elemental was also taken out faster than on any of my previous playthroughs.


- The Halsin portal fight was easily solved with Spirit Guardians; this time, though, for the first time I had the idea to place a darkness cloud in front of the portal, with my Tav standing in it. Not a single shot was fired on the portal.

- All Thorms and Yurgir were successfully talked into offing themselves. Voice of the Circle is often considered one of the worst items in the game, but I felt reassured having it on one of my party members who had nothing better to wear at that moment.
- Balthazar had his door opened and died in the Justiciar fight, as is commonly advised.

- The Nightsong wasn’t as useless as I feared she would be. I mean, she didn’t do much during the rooftop fight, so Hastening her was a waste of time — but during the Myrkul fight, she made up for it. Most of the damage came from my own and Minthara’s Scorching Rays, though. As always, I focused on the Mind Flayer first, invisible Scratch freed the Nightsong, and paladin Wyll stood in front of Myrkul to prevent him from using his arena-wide attack. Wyll would always run back and forth between Myrkul and the edge of the platform facing the entrance, which is just outside the bone-chill area.

- I used Sanctuary on the Emperor during the githyanki-monk fight, but it wasn’t really necessary.



- During Act III, a bunch of companions would play their party banter as if they were in a romance with my Tav, even though they were not (and no poly-mods, or any other mods, were active).

- For the Circus, I had Kerz (Half-Orc Hireling) ready as an Open-Hand Monk, and they solo-ed the dinosaurs in the jungle.

- Allied with Gortash and became an Unholy Assassin (had never done so before) to skip two boss fights. I also skipped the Iron Throne and the Steel Watch to keep the alliance, and of course, I skipped Ansur and House of Hope. I took Raphael’s deal for the Orphic Hammer, fully intending not to give it to him, as Gale should blow himself up.


- I found out the hard way that Lorroakan’s Elemental Retort is not a reaction, and that therefore, he can use it multiple times per turn. Still no danger of wiping, but a nasty surprise nonetheless.

- Fighting Dolor at Figaro’s, meanwhile, felt easier than ever this time.

- After the Cazador fight, the House of Grief was a lot easier, and another encounter I over-prepared for, I conclude in hindsight.


- I made sure Halsin was the one getting kidnapped by Orin, so I wouldn’t accidentally lose my win condition (Gale), or my protection (light-cleric Minthara).
Manslaughter chasm was invisibly skipped and the rest of the party teleported to the Bhaal Temple waypoint.

- Orin was the one remaining fight I was scared of, as once again, my normally unkillable Gale would not be safe from the Boon of Bhaal. I had read that it were no longer possible to invisibly sneak up on Orin and toss her into the chasm. But just to make sure I wouldn’t regret not having tried it, I brought monk Kerz along again, with an Elixir of Cloud Giant Strength, and left Gale at camp for the first time in a long while.

- Just in time before attempting the toss — Kerz was already invisible and on the way down the stairs — I remembered I should additionally cased Enlarge on my thrower.
As a backup, I had Wyll for burst damage (wearing Ketheric’s armour so that he couldn’t be shoved by Orin when getting close — learned my lesson from Cazador!).
And of course my Tav for Magic Missile and Scorching Ray to burst down the unstoppable charges.

All of this preparation — just for the toss to still work normally on patch 8! Kerz picked up Orin and threw her into the chasm with no problem before the fight even started.


- At the very end, I was a little surprised that there was no restoration pod in front of the brain stem? I thought restoration pods in Honour Mode only worked once — but apparently, that’s only true for those on the nautiloid? The one in the mind-flayer colony refreshed after I had used it.

Anyway, for the Netherbrain, it didn’t matter, as I was wise enough to pick up potions of Angelic Reprieve and Slumber from the kobold trader — and as Gale volunteered to blow himself up without a skill check required. Still, that could have been a nasty surprise if I had spent a bunch of resources on the courtyard fight (rather than skipping it invisibly like everyone else does).

As I didn’t do Ansur, the Iron Throne, or the Gortash fight, I didn’t complete Wyll’s and Karlach’s quest (broke Wyll free from his pact, though).
Thus, I expected I’d have to go to Avernus with Karlach to save her, as Wyll wouldn’t be the Blade of Avernus to do so.
And Karlach’s death- or almost-death scene was originally supposed to be the punishment for not completing her quest, right?

Imagine my surprise then when the game jumped straight to the epilogue party, without the scene of Karlach on the dockside! Apparently she went to Avernus all by herself, because Wyll simply remained the Blade of Frontiers, as he does when not completing either of his final quests.

So having to watch Karlach die is in fact a punishment for completing her quest, rather than for ignoring it. :P


Finally, as I had suspected from other people’s reports, Raphael did indeed not show up at the epilogue party at all. Taking his deal and then blowing up Gale (and the crown with it) apparently makes him forget about it. Even though I signed the contract, so he should still be able to take my soul as a consolation price, shouldn’t he?

A part of me was concerned that might ruin the run at the last second, especially because there were no demonstrations of this combination of choices on YouTube. But the research I could do in advance made me fairly certain he wouldn’t show up — and indeed, luckily, he didn’t.

As freshly broken-ups, the fight between Lae'zel and Sava about going to the Crèche in the Gauntlet of Shar in the midst of danger with Shadowheart and Karlach standing by in awkward silence, and then mending the companionship on the roof of the monastery while Gale and Wyll investigated the winery, was character-wise, while head-canon, one of the strongest turning points in the story, one that's still stuck in my memory after over two years.