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Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Tales of the Sword Coast | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | |
Ice Island | Balduran's Isle | Durlag's Tower - Above Ground | Durlag's Tower - Level 1 | Durlag's Tower - Level 2 | Durlag's Tower - Level 3 | Durlag's Tower - Level 4 | Cult of the Demon | |
Durlag's Tower - Level 4
Durlag's Pain
Now the party makes its way to the last level of this dungeon. Avastrian speaks with a spirit who suggests that the party needs to learn more of Durlag before they can make progress.
I continue south past a bridge, and then west. The west room will have several Ettercaps and spiders of various sorts. In vanilla BG1 you could deal with them piecemeal if you edged forward carefully enough. Keep in mind that in SCS they will all join the attack together. Still, they should be more than manageable for a decently advanced and equipped party by now. I am still careful when it comes to Sword Spiders and their rapid attacks though, so Imoen tags one with a Chromatic Orb, and then another with Blindness.
The party then travels to the north end of the room. A Golem will ask riddles about Durlag's past and his family. I won't give out all the answers since they're often random. Suffice to say that if you've been paying attention at all while exploring these levels, the answers should actually come pretty easily.
Once I answer all the riddles I get transported to another room with another four Golems in it. The one to the northeast wants an answer to the question. The other three provide clues. The answer to the question is that Durlag's pain starts in the west, then south, then east, and now resides in the north. The party gets teleported back the hallway near the stairs where they first entered this level.
Greater Ghouls and Crypt Crawlers
I then speak with the Dwarven spirit again. This time I go north a little, and then east through a secret door.
This leads to a very expansive series of caverns. Scattered throughout the caverns are Greater Ghouls and Crypt Crawlers. The latter are like Carrion Crawlers, but they move much faster and attack more often. The same method is still reliable. Avastrian and Khalid position themselves as front guards, while the rest of the party fires missile weapons at the monsters as they're incoming.
I thoroughly explore the caverns in a westwards direction, finding plenty of loot along the way. Some of the more notable items include magical ammunition, Potions of Frost Giant Strength, Potions of Fire Giant Strength, a Wand of Lightning, a Wand of Monster Summoning, and a Wand of Monster Summoning.
Grael
Towards the southwest corner will be a large secret door. The party positions itself to have a clear line of sight past the door before Avastrian opens it. Once he does open it, both he and Imoen send blasts from their Wands of Fire into the room. This is a pre-emptive strike on a large pack of Greater Ghouls and Crypt Crawlers. Their leader will be an especially powerful Ghoul named Grael, who offers a little conversation before he inevitably attacks.
The initial fire attacks soften up the crowd, but Jaheira still finds it prudent to cast Defensive Harmony. And indeed Grael is quite tough in SCS, all the more so because he spreads out his attacks in order to paralyze multiple party members. Note how I had Kivan switch over to his Spider's Bane sword instead of his Two-Handed Sword +3 for this fight, and it proves important in having an extra attacker to bring down Grael.
Grael then leaves behind a Compass Wardstone, which I'll need quite soon. A nearby container has Bracers of A.C. 7.
Flametongue and Staff of Striking
Now the party heads back, towards the southeast corner of the caves. There will be an acid pool that inflicts light damage, with a secret door on the other side.
The secret door reveals a room with a chest. Inside the chest will be a Staff of Striking (extra damage on target with limited charges), and a longsword, Flametongue (+1, +2 vs. regenerating creatures, +3 vs. cold-using creatures, +4 vs. undead). This will be Avastrian's main-hand weapon for the rest of the game, while the Varscona sword switches over to the off-hand. As an aside, the Flametongue can damage lycanthropes who can only be damaged by lycanthrope-specific weapons.
Durlag's Blame
The party continues north. Imoen takes care to disarm traps along the way.
The party eventually makes its way to a room to the west. The door needs the Compass Wardstone to open. The room itself has both a throne and a lot of treasure. A treasure pile yields 13,000+ gp and several gems.
Clicking on the throne leads to another room with four Stone Golems in them. And again, it's the one to the northeast that wants an answer while the other three provide clues. The answer is of course that Durlag accepts all of the blame alone for what happened in the past.
The party is teleported back to the main hallway.
Bone Wardstone
This time the party goes north up the adjacent hallway all the way to its end. Standing at the end will be the spirit of Durlag's wife, Islanne. She's there to provide the option of teleporting all the way out of the tower itself. But just not yet.
There's a doorway to the left. Most of the party members place themselves just south of it. Avastrian goes through the door, and the next one. He thus gets some free shots with a Wand of Lightning on two Helmed Horrors that are in the room on the other side. One of them is killed outright. The other is softened up for melee combat.
A crate in the room has a Warhammer +1. The forge in the middle has magical ammunition, as well as a Bone Wardstone that I'll be using very soon.
Durlag's Fear, Again
Now the party comes back out of the forge, and heads down the door just to the south. They end up in a large room with a line of runes running across north-south. The party can't cross this line just yet without taking massive damage.
Avastrian continues south, and west until he finds a machine. He clicks on it and uses the Bone Wardstone to deactivate the runes. The party can now cross the line of runes safely.
There will be two chests that are both locked and trapped. One will have a Mace +2, and a Leather Armor +3, neither of which I have any use for. The other will have a Sling +3, which Yeslick uses for the rest of the game, and a Large Shield +2, which Khalid will use for the rest of the game.
I now click on the tomb towards the far west corner, and get teleported to another room with four Stone Golems. Three of them provides clues, while the northeast one wants the answer in response to a riddle concerning fear. The first option suffices.
The party is then teleported back to the main hallway.
Claire De'Lain
I now speak to the Dwarven spirit again, and he leads me towards a room to the northeast corner of the area. In the room itself is an adventurer named Claire De'Lain, who warns of a powerful creature named a Demonknight.
Demonknight
When you engage in this fight, you do have the option of clicking on the Mirror of Opposition, and then forcing the Demonknight to fight a clone of itself. But you will have to fight clones of your party members as well. But I prefer to kill the Demonknight straight up.
Now I enter and then buff up to the max, Potions of Fire Giant Strength, Protection from Evil 10' Radius, Mirror Images, Stoneskins, Armors of Faith, and resistance to fire damage for everyone.
The technique I used in vanilla BG1 works for the most part during SCS as well, but with a couple of finer points that you need to be aware of.
First, the Demonknight will start off with a Remove Magic spell to try and remove my buffs. So I send Khalid in alone to bait the expenditure of the Remove Magic spell. If Khalid's buffs do come down, he'll still have a good armor class and his Gauntlets of Ogre Strength to fall back on.
Once the Remove Magic is expended, Jaheira then casts Defensive Harmony. The rest of the party then charges in to try and overwhelm the Demonknight as quickly as possible.
It gets a little trickier in SCS. The Demonknight will cast Power Word: Stun on a character, then cut down that character's hit points, and then finish off that same character with a Power Word: Kill. This is a set sequence. My hope for getting around this is for the Demonknight to target Avastrian, who will be well-protected by both Stoneskin and Mirror Images. The idea is that the Demonknight won't be able to reach the threshold for his Power Word: Kill. For those of you that may not be using a Fighter/Mage, you'll need to find a way to neutralize the sequence that I described. Potions with damage resistances and armor class bonuses?
When my party members withstand things long enough, the Demonknight casts another Remove Magic spell (the other finesse added by SCS). Ideally, the party should have the Demonknight 'near death' so that it requires only a few more blows to finish it off, although this requires making the most of when the party is still Hasted.
The Demonknight leaves behind the Soultaker, a quest item that will become relevant soon.
I find another adventurer named Dalton, and assure him that it's now safe to leave. I then speak to Claire De'Lain again, who promptly leaves.
The video concludes with me speaking to the spirit of Islanne so that she can teleport me outside of Durlag's Tower.
I'm finished with the Tower now, but there's a loose end I want to tie up in Nashkel.
Daer'Ragh
I go to the east edge of the Temple of Helm in Nashkel. Now I buff up to the max, and again with fire resistance potions or scrolls. I click on a specific gravesite, and a vampire named Daer'Ragh warns me to leave his grave alone. I click on it a second time, and get a second warning. I get a third warning, and he summons many Phoenix Guards to surround and kill me. Each one will explode with fire damage whenever killed. I guzzle a Potion of Extra Healing whenever the sustained damage is getting high, and I manage to outlast them. I break even on the Potions of Extra Healing that they leave behind.
There is one last quest in Ulgoth's Beard, having to do with a sinister Cult.
