The difficulty of the final fight is due to the Ascension mod and SCS. Ascension completely changes the structure of the fight, adding a lot more enemies and making Amelyssan herself much tougher. SCS mainly just makes the AI smarter. I'm not sure about the menu issue. I've never encountered it, but I would guess that it might have to do with your key binds if it's caused by alt tabbing. I'm fairly sure the unlimited containers component comes from Tweaks Anthology. That's where most of the quality of life components I have installed came from. Thanks for watching and commenting!

@@boldthumb4621 Yeah it's probably something to do with my resolution / fullscreen mode that triggers the bug. It's minor, but annoying considering the vast amount of alt-tabbing I do while playing. I found the unlimited container thing from tweak anthology, however it came with far too many things I did not need. So I ended up getting "Near Infinity" and just editing the container themselves to have "0" carry capacity (which means unlimited). Did keep the extra colored bags, but their name is all messed up - as long as they work, IDC. Thanks for answering, and I really loved that solo sorcerer Let's Play. I did one as a solo Sorceress a very VERY long time ago for BG2, but I always got tired of it half-way thru. See you around !

Thanks JD! As you said before, certain people who say solo is easier might not have actually tried to play without massively abusing cheesy strats or just overlevelling. Playing this way requires figuring out new strats that you wouldn't have otherwise considered, which is really fun for me. Appreciate you commenting :)

Swords, not words!

I never thought of that, but you're totally right-Azula totally belongs there 😂 F/M/T is a fun class. Thanks for watching and commenting!

I'm not a fan of the component that removes items in Spellhold. Of course, it makes sense from a roleplaying perspective, but the area doesn't really give you enough equipment to get through it if you're playing insane/double damage and if you are trying to restrict how much you rest. I mean, I don't even think there's a single health potion in Spellhold. It's also extremely tedious to have to get all your stuff back, and it tends to bug out and duplicate a bunch of items, so I don't install it anymore.

Well, in my case I had the whole party, so I could resort to 2 rests I think. Though I don't like abuse them, you're abolutely right that there is almost nothing in the dungeon. If I had mages tuned with the LoB and lich would have summoned dark planetar, I think I would legit need to just run circles unless it's time runs out, because there was only a single +3 weapon, which was a spear xd

They should really nerf being a player. It's too OP.

Are you comparing it to the BG1 portrait or BG2?

The Imoen portrait, I believe someone created it with AI and posted it in Davaeorn's discord, so I'm not sure if you'll be able to find it elsewhere. The Hound portrait, I took from a Google search and just adjusted the size and file type for the game. The Sarevok portrait is part of a realistic portrait pack available at Nexus Mods.

Your pathetic magics are useless. Let this end.

No, this run is not solo. You can check out the description for details. I just started solo at the beginning to get to 1.25 million xp so that my companions would be at the highest level possible when I pick them up. I don't think it would be possible to beat the game (at least not with the mods and settings I have) with a solo shadowdancer. But it will still be challenging because I won't have any wizards, clerics, or druids. The party will be almost entirely doing physical damage. If you prefer solo runs, I have two completed ones on my channel: a dragon disciple and a fighter/assassin. You can find them in my playlists.

@@boldthumb4621 Understood. Thank you. I don't really understand English. And so I watched the solo playthrough. Powerful enough

I had to look up the Wand of Lightning exploit. I hadn't heard of it before. Similar concept to duping items for infinite gold I guess. Just saw a video of someone summoning 6 golems with the book. Pretty nasty.

@@boldthumb4621 I'm all about the exploits...😈😈

@@boldthumb4621 what's the name of the video? Thanks! 🫡😉

@@User_Un_Friendly It was on reddit. It should be easy enough to find. Just google "BG2 Wand of Lightning bug", and it should be the top result.

@@boldthumb4621 Ah! Thanks. Btw...in theory, though I've never tested personally, or read anything about it, targeting containers is possible using the wand of Lightning. Use a Clairvoyance scroll to reveal the entire map, Target a room fairly far away with a visible container, and drop 6 Cloudkills. 😳🤯😈😂

Thanks craig!

Yup. Assassin + Short Sword of Backstabbing (RR) = Big Dick Backstabs. In this case, it's an 8x multiplier. Even better is having Black Blade of Disaster in the main hand. You can easily get over 500. That's why one of my favorite builds is an assassin dualed to mage. They put out more physical damage than fighters.

@@boldthumb4621 And people say backstabbing falls off in ToB. Way to prove everyone wrong! I'm doing an SCS insane playthrough with Item Rando (and Ascension but I'm not in ToB yet) as an F/M/T, one of my personal favorites. With RR items and UAI, your strats are pretty close to being an F/M/T anyway. I'm taking notes here, lol. You put up great videos!

@@JDSilvergun That's nice of you to say! And that's exactly why I post them. I just try to do fun runs and hope that others will benefit from my many years of playing the game. Let me know how the run goes.

That's pretty much what I was going for with the two solo runs I have on the channel. They're not nearly optimized enough to be speedruns, as I just winged a lot of the parts of the game. It would also be hard to standardize such a thing with all the different mod components that people may or may not have installed.

I'm glad you enjoyed! I don't think the assassin kit made much of a difference in the end. A basic F/T would have been just as capable of this. Assassins are just cool and fun. A barbarian could work. I've done BG1 solo with a barbarian in under two hours. I doubt that a pure thief class could ascend though. You just don't have the DPS to get through some of the tougher fights, especially in ToB. But BG1 and SoA are likely doable with lots of cheese and skipping harder fights.

Thanks! This is one way of doing it. I also have a video of doing it solo as a sorcerer, but it takes a bit longer.

I've never tried NPC project or the Nalia romance mod. While I thought the romances were kind of interesting when I was younger, I don't really spend time on them anymore. I've never heard of Longer Road. The spell interface mod is Bubb's Spell Menu. The other main mods I have installed are SCS, Ascension, Rogue Rebalancing, IWDification, and some components from Tweaks Anthology.

@@boldthumb4621 Longer Road lets you get Irenicus in ToB. I take it you have to import saves or character files between 1 and 2, with each one modded separately.

@@Dan-uf2vh Having Irenicus in your party sounds cool. I'll have to check it out. And yes, I have to mod BG1 and BG2 separately. I've never played SoD, nor do I intend to. I've seen it on stream, and it doesn't interest me.

@@boldthumb4621 Your videos are great! 🎉. I see you skipped Watcher's Keep...well, considering the gear there isn't really suitable for a Dragon Disciple, completely understandable. I am curious as to why Khelbens Warding Whip, and both Ruby Ray and Spell Strike. Do you really need the others with Spell Strike? And what use is Khelbens? 🤔🧐. A spell trigger of triple Pierce magic to blast Spell Shield and lower their Magic Resistance, then a Spell Strike and Breach followup is all you need.

@@User_Un_Friendly Thanks so much! I skipped Watcher's Keep because this was sort of a "speedrun". The aim was to beat Amelyssan as fast as possible as a solo dragon disciple with difficult mods and settings. As for the spells, there just aren't that many good level 7 arcane spells. I think I used Khelben's a couple times in the run just to ensure continuous removal of spell protections in the event that an enemy would recast them, for example, with a contingency. I think I used it against Irenicus in Hell if I'm not mistaken. Ruby Ray is essential because it can remove Spell Trap, which Khelben's and Pierce Magic cannot, so it's useful throughout the saga, especially since you don't have many other great level 7 spells anyway. Project Image is powerful and quite useful in a party setting, but I'm not a fan of it in a solo run like this, as it can get you into trouble.

Stats don't really matter all that much on sorcerers, and it's easy to get good rolls on them. I knew I would need high strength to unlock certain doors. The dexterity was for ranged thac0 and AC. As a solo run without a healer, the regen is really nice to have, and since this was an attempt at a fast run, drinking healing pots would have added a fair bit of time, so the max constitution was justifiable in my view. I knew I wouldn't be dealing with too many mind flayers, but I figured why not put the points in intelligence. In hindsight, I could have probably put intelligence lower (9 for wands and scrolls) and boosted wisdom (9 + 1 book), as I had an insight potion dispelled at a crucial moment during the fight with Amelyssan when I was going for a rest, so it's not 100% a dump stat on a sorcerer or mage. High charisma for npc interactions and good prices because I knew I would be buying some expensive items at various points in the run and didn't want to have to spend too much time scrounging for gold.

I've added a link in the description of the video.

@@boldthumb4621 thanks!!

Thanks! Yeah, it's a habit to try for both at this point when I can. It's my favorite weapon in the game even though it's not technically the best, and I probably won't even use it in this run.

@@boldthumb4621 I was wondering if you had long sword proficiency lol. I should really be trying to do this. Even if it's not the end-all be-all, it's still a very cool, unique weapon.

So, just an update. I ended up using Blackrazor in this run. Turns out it's extremely useful against dragons.

Yeah, there was really no other way to pull it off. It's definitely cheesy, but I wanted that ring 😂

@@boldthumb4621 I legitimately liked the strat. There was a long fight later in the video for people that wanted to see a bit of a struggle lol. It's funny though because I'm pretty sure that strat wouldn't even work on vanilla (or if you didn't have the improved demiliches of SCS) since they are immune to all spells anyway.

I have quite a few mods installed. One of them is SCS, which generally increases the difficulty of the game, as it makes NPCs tougher and smarter. In this case, it buffs Liia Jannath by having her cast a lot of protection spells, which really boosts her survivability compared to the vanilla game. I haven't played vanilla in a long time, so I don't know if there are some strategies for keeping her alive. As far as I remember, it was usually Belt who would survive in vanilla (with SCS, it's the opposite), and I never really struggled to succeed solo unless I was playing on Legacy of Bhaal mode, which significantly boosts enemies' HP. The only way to pull it off was to use Chaos scrolls to CC all the dopplegangers and then pick them off one at a time.

I don't remember how I learned that, but it's a bit surprising, as it can be a tough fight at lower levels. I also prefer siding with Bodhi, especially with Rogue Rebalancing installed, but siding with the thieves is just faster and easier.

The shield I'm using is the Shield of Harmony +2, which gives immunity to charm, confusion, domination, and hold. Against vampires, which use domination quite a lot (and which will kill a solo run if it lands), it's almost essential.

@@boldthumb4621 niceee uwu

@@boldthumb4621 but i noticed charmed characters are not attacked by the enemies, they are treated like they switch faction

@@TheMorbillos96 It's a bit inconsistent in my experience. I'm not 100% sure how it works, but I've seen some situations in which a charmed solo character will be treated like you describe, but other times you see the game over screen. It might be a difference between charm and domination, but I'm not sure.

@@TheMorbillos96 In solo play, getting charmed is an immediate game over unless you have some mod that makes it otherwise.

Thanks a lot for the suggestions. I don't know if I'll be revisiting this particular run anytime soon, but you're absolutely right. There are no doubt tons of timesaves possible in late SoA and ToB. I definitely spent a lot less time optimizing. What games do you speedrun?

@@boldthumb4621 Lately I've mostly been playing ALTTP (Zelda A Link to the Past) for SNES. I used to play Super Metroid (SNES) a lot too. I've also dabbled in Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy 8 (PSX) speedruns. Both of those last 2 I'd say are bad casual games that make really fun speedruns because of how the game mechanics work. For BG2 I've done some no reload plays with SCS and Item Randomizer, but I've never done a full on speedrun. There are some common strats in the vanilla run that still work on SCS though. I believe I already mentioned getting Bloodscalp's boots in another comment. I do that every time I play. Casting Clairvoyance from a scroll works on all maps, whereas casting it from memory may fail. The advantage of this is that it saves time walking across maps where you aren't doing anything but moving. It's not a massive time save, but it does add up. I'm also not above doing the Time Stop/Shapechange -> Mind Flayer strat if I don't feel like doing a fight "legit." It works on the final Irenicus, even with SCS. Unfortunately Ascension does not allow you to do this to Yaga Shura, last I checked. Which is unfortunate because if you have only SCS installed (and not Ascension) you can skip the forest and the mountains entirely. I realize it's not the same as with Ascension, but it is an interesting difference. I'm planning to put some more time into BG2 hopefully soon. SCS with Item rando is really fun, and I do like looking for optimizations here and there even if I'm not officially speedruning. Sorcerers are one of my favorite classes so I had to watch this playthrough. I keep getting hooked on ALTTP because there are so many different rulesets and categories for speedrunning it due to all the glitches that have been discovered for that game, and it also has a rando on top of that. So there are a lot of ways to play that game. I do want to put some time into BG2 as well though, because it's a really fun game. The early route you had in BG2 was super solid in this playthrough. Even if you did start just winging it at some point it was still well done that you got through it. Playing solo and modded is quite difficult (anyone who says solo is easier probably never tried it), especially for a lot of the later fights. Even having 2 people in the party makes it massively easier, even without an XP grind section.

Not sure what you mean.

@boldthumb4621 Out of character creation, the character has over 30 hit points and improved aclarity. Your mods don't increase the challenge, but nerf the game. Nerf means to make it easier.

It's OK, you don't have to be a purist. Play the game however you want.

@@freefall9832 Thanks for your permission.

@@freefall9832 The hit points make almost no difference. Enemies do double damage. I could have accomplished this just as easily without the extra hit points. They come from the familiar, which is the actual overpowered early "item". Improved alacrity is only outside combat. Its purpose is entirely for the convenience of faster buffing outside combat. There's only one instance in the whole run where I use it in combat (off-screen webs), but it again wouldn't have made any difference to the outcome; it just made it faster. There are thousands of aspects to the game that could make it easier or harder. You could say that using arcane magic in the first place is too powerful. I mean, no one asked you about your opinion, yet you felt that you had to share it. Why is that? Do you feel insecure about your skill in the game? Why don't you post a video of your own gameplay to prove what an absolute gigabrain alpha you are?

Do you mean where Amelyssan teleports on you and you get stuck? If so, I'm not sure if it's SCS or Ascension, but it's been happening for as long as I can remember playing with these mods.

@@boldthumb4621 Other people have had demons teleport on their characters and get stuck. It seems like it's related to the SCS Improved Fiends and their "teleport without error" ability, but last I checked David W. said he couldn't reproduce this problem, despite lots of videos and clips of it happening from lots of different people. I'm not sure if this thing specifically with Amelyssan is SCS or Ascension. Congrats again on finishing! These are great videos. I haven't seen anyone else doing SCS/Ascension solo. I saw someone doing LoB SCS stuff, but they were using the infinite nahal's glitch, so I was very unimpressed.

Yeah, I've spent way less time playing ToB than BG1 and SoA, so I felt like I needed the levels to ensure that I could get through the final fight, as I've never tried it solo with these mods and difficulty settings. Thanks for watching!

@@boldthumb4621 Yeah, I understand what you mean from looking at the final fight. SCS alone is a lot of general improvements that make the AI harder to deal with, but Ascension really puts it over the top with so many extra enemies/bosses. I haven't seen anyone else soloing SCS/Ascension (on any difficulty, let alone on insane), so the fact that it got done is still a big achievement. I did watch all the videos, but it's kind of a blur in my head. I understand the desire for safety with the extra levels, but if you or someone else were to run this back, we could tighten up the grind and make it more efficient. I want to probably rewatch or skim some of the videos so I can be more specific and say something helpful. One thing I think maybe you were not aware of, is that Ribald's Special stock buys for the highest prices in the game, even higher than the shop in Suldanessellar. The only downside is he won't buy ammo. I think I remember you being a bit tight on money in parts. Maybe going to Ribald sooner in chapter 6 would help that. Also, the shop in the City of Caverns buys for very high prices if you need some gold to hold you over.

I just checked. It's SCS v34.3. As far as I know, SI: Enchantment has always blocked innate confusion from umber hulks, but I could be wrong. Not sure why they would have nerfed that.

@@boldthumb4621 Someone who I trust in the IE discord told me the EE fixpack changed it from none school to enchantment school. It seems it's not an SCS thing. I know you asked for other thoughts on the run. I'm reading through your replies now.

Hey, sorry for the late reply. I really appreciate your comment. As for talking to Renfled and skipping the fight, I have to give credit to Davaeorn there. I saw him do it on stream. I sided with Bodhi because I have Rogue Rebalancing installed, and it makes the Shadow Thieves guildhall and Aran fight significantly harder, especially as a solo sorcerer. (You basically need a thief in the party to pull it off.) I'm pretty sure I used the penultimate version of SCS, as the last one (as far as I heard) still had some bugs. (I still haven't installed the latest one, as I haven't really played the game in months.) As for playstyle, I don't stick to any particular one. I like to do long, slow runs where I don't necessarily grind for XP but that I make challenging in different ways (for example, all-thief or all-mage parties in BG1). When you do have time, I'd love to hear your thoughts about the rest of the run (if you ever get to it).

Thanks! I started it but abandoned the run for other things. I haven't even touched the game in months. But I might come back to it someday.

I'm glad you figured it out!

@@boldthumb4621 took a while but yeah, the mod is great, allows selecting all inside a container to sell (no more dble-clicking for full qty for each item) and few other QoL. The only bad thing is that it reverts to the old journal/quest log, which is much harder to sort thru. But yeah, a good find indeed. Your channel is too, That's some nice speed running. Will be following the adventures of "Princess Azula" in BG2 later in the next few weeks 🙂

Thanks a lot!

You mean the XP cap? In the Enhanced Edition, the XP cap is 8 million. Azula's around 3.5 million here, which is pretty normal for this part of the game, even with a full party (assuming you don't skip much content). She finishes SoA with 4.5 million, which is nowhere near the cap. I wouldn't say she was overpowered. For some fights yes, some fights no. With the mods and difficulty settings I used, fights were still challenging. I just had to prepare for them properly. For example, the Kangaxx fight could have very easily gone wrong. I don't see how it would have been doable at a significantly lower level. The final fight in ToB was also very difficult, despite being over the XP cap (about 9.5 million), but I don't think that being at the cap of 8 million would have made much of a difference. I had fun with this run anyway. What XP do you think I should be at by this point of the game to make it more fun?

@@boldthumb4621 in the original XP Limit designed for SoA, I think it was 2,75- 2,85 something like that . I always fight Firkrag around 2 mln but sometimes for challenge I go before chapter IV so it will be around 1,2 mln . 3,5 mln is OP for SoA because You have HLA . These fights in SoA are not designed for HLA fights . Come on Deva ? For a Firkrag fight ? HLA only for ToB .

@@HoneyBadger1184 Hey man, play in whatever way you enjoy the most.

@@HoneyBadger1184 Did you not see how heavily modded some of these fights are, or did you only see this video out of the whole playlist? SCS is a totally different game than Vanilla. And the video poster is also using RR which adds a very cheesey fight (CoC) that the mod author himself recommends having a full party with at least 2.9 million XP on everyone beforehand. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. This isn't the vanilla game.

Not exactly. For BG1 and early SoA, yes. But for the rest, I had to figure out routes and strategies as I went, so I would practice sections until I could pull them off cleanly and then record them.

I'm not exactly sure, but I think it's a bug caused by a mod component that increases the max HP of all creatures in the game. I tested it a while ago, and as far as I remember, the Imp familiar gives the most HP but gives the least in vanilla.

@@boldthumb4621 I tried your allignment so a double checked what imo gives . Nowhere near that level that You had .

@@HoneyBadger1184 Do you have the same mod components installed?

@@boldthumb4621 You have weidu log? I thought You were not using any modifications

The installation is clearly bugged, you see "Invalid: 123123" text all the time. Probably some components modifying the maxhp are conflicting resulting in cheated max hp amount.@@HoneyBadger1184