So the original Crown of the Magister campaign wasn't very hard because there wasn't that much of a variety of enemies, and the majority of them were frontline brutes. But Lost Valley is definitely proving a lot more challenging, if only because there's significantly more enemy spellcasters and ranged enemies this time around. Counterspell duels are definitely a thing here, you cannot afford to mindlessly blow your reactions on the first prompt that comes up in this campaign compared to Crown of the Magister.

I actually do like the rather open-endedness of this new campaign. It seems to revolve around five factions to a point where advancement in one may turn another faction hostile towards you, and I'm trying to reach a point where I can advance each faction enough and get a save before a point of no return in terms of commitment to each faction, so that I don't have to replay through the entire campaign to see each ending. It is definitely well worth my money so far.

I ended up fighting a sidequest boss that required quite a bit of thinking.


The boss has access to Cloudkill (which is going to be FRIGHTENING in BG3, wide AoE lingering poison damage along with the area being heavily obscured) and Ice Storm (ice + bludgeoning damage along with turning the ground into difficult terrain, will probably freeze water surfaces in BG3 too), which combo'd together ended my first attempt to fight her.

She DID counterspell my Fireball at the beginning, but I got her back by landing Blindness right afterwards, which appears to be one of her major tactical weaknesses. Her counterspelling Fireball also meant that she couldn't attempt to counterspell my Cleric's upcasted 4th level Spirit Guardians later that turn either, though I'm not sure if she would have been able to react to it while blinded anyway. I got to counterspell one of her spells, but I don't know what it was due to failing that Arcana check, but considering the check to identify it was DC21 and that countering it with a 3rd level slot was DC16, it was probably Cloudkill or another 5th level spell.

Also Spirit Guardians + Spiritual Weapon is going to turn Shadowheart into a wrecking ball once we get access to them in BG3.

Last edited by Saito Hikari; 08/05/22 10:42 AM.