Advice for first time soloer

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Hello all,

I just finished SOA my first time through and had a great time. I see lots of references to soloing on the boards and thought it would be interesting to try, but I have some questions about how best to do things.

1. What do you do if you don't have find/remove trap skills? Do you just walk into all the traps and hope you survive?

2. How do you defeat opponents that have magic defenses if you don't have access to breach, pierce magic, etc?

3. How do you survive multiple enemies ganging up on you?

My first time through I had an elf F/M/T, human Mage, elf archer, Anomen, Keldorn, and Minsc. It did get a little easy towards the end, so I can see the allure of soloing, I'm just having trouble imagining how any one character could deal with the variety of opponents the game offers.

Thanks for any advice.

[ March 08, 2004, 20:27: Message edited by: Scot ]

 

Some possible answers to your question, of course there are many more good hints and more detailed ones. If your character is a spellcaster then the answers below are different. So these are general, usable by non-spellcasters either:
1. Use potions, and any help from items with charges. And obviously don't experiment if having 2 HP (so high HP is recommended)
2. Use wands, and anything you have. Let them cast their protections, and then escape, wait until their protections expire, and the return
3. Use the good positions provided by the area (example: stand in a narrow door, so you have to fight only one enemy at a time). Use missile weapons. Use potions etc.
Escape when necessary, and return when you are ready to continue the combat.

 

1. With enough HPs and decent saving throws, you can generally walk into any trap in the game and survive.

2. If you're playing a Paladin, get Carsomyr as soon as possible and use its dispel magic ability as often as you can. Or like Baronius said, just drag the fight on till the spell protections wear out.

3. Exploit the game engine (if you don't mind a little cheating). Kill at least one enemy, flee the scene of the battle, rest, return. When come back, everyone will be healed but they'll be one less of them to deal with.

 

Actually, you've already answered most of your questions - play a F/M/T. That answers 1 and 2. For #3, stoneskin is your best friend. A F/M/T is easily the best class for soloing, and even though your experience is being split three ways, since it's only you, you'll still level up a whole lot faster than a single class character would in a party. The only thing you won't have (obviously) is the ability to heal, but that's what potions are for. As a solo character, you won't have any shortage of gold, so buying potions won't be a problem. One thing I messed up the first time I attempted to solo was neglecting strength. You definitely want to give this character exceptional strength (18/xx) as he has to carry around all of your loot. It's not fun when you win a battle and three full plate mail armors are lying on the ground, but your character can only lift one of them...

 

What class are you planning on playing?

The "easiest" (doesn't mean boring though, I had tons of fun with my Kensai/M) classes to play would be imo:

F/C: Immense fighter using buffing spells.
Fighter(Kensai)/Mage: Best fighter in the game + spellcasting, do I need to say more
F/M/T: Allround, thieving skills (backstab!), fighter + mage.
Blade: Possibly the easiest after K/M to solo imo.
Druid: Summon, summon, summon..

When I played K/M, I just walked through traps with some boosting spells if necessary (saved before). I had ToB installed though, so I got to quite high level (14/30+).

1. Walk through, hope for the best. Buffspells abd potions do come quite handy.

2. Run away and wait, summons might help.

3. Stoneskin, blur, mirror image, improved invisibility, barkskin, defensive harmony, armor of faith etc. Summonings will be your best friends and potions can help too.

 

imo it really doesn't matter too much which class you pick, I personally solo just to have fun, and as long as you know where the items for that character class are than you should be good to go.

 

If you use a bow, the arrows of dispelling are an excellent way of taking down enemy protections. You have used an archer before so you know how powerful they can be - a good solo class, but speed is essential.

Invisibility can also be a life saver. Always have a means to hide your PC.

 

Btw one of the greatest reasons for being a solo c/t is for the backstab+buff spells, it can be one of the biggest damaging attacks you have ever seen, though you need the right weapons with this of course.

[ March 02, 2004, 07:30: Message edited by: cadderly ]

 

A strong and easy to play class is a Beserker dualled to Cleric at level nine. Beserker rage + Chaotic Commands + Death Ward gives you near total immunity to every non-physically damaging attack in the game. With spells like blade barrier, Armour of faith, Rightious Magic etc, your B/C is unstoppable, so-

1.Just wade on in with some minor buffing spells - you will easily have 100+ hp's so traps don't usually pose a problem - higher level traps are taken care of with Beserker rage + Chaotic Commands + Death Ward combo.

2. a) Use dispel magic against lower level opponents with lower level spells. b) Wait it out (weapons like FoA can help disrupt spells through stoneskins etc) c) Hack them up before they can cast spells.

3. Multiple enimies are simple, often no buffing at all is needed. Just destroy the Mages first, then Thieves with backstab, then the fighters. Blade Barrier is almost designed for a B/C taking on multiple enimies.

SPOILERS on Book of Infinite Spells.
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-Once you pick up the book, turn some pages - Spell Turning has come up a couple of times for me and is a perfect spell to make fighting Mages a whole lot easier for a B/C (and any other non-spellcaster).

 

I've been solo'ing a pure cleric (priest of helm) and have been quite impressed. In general its more versatile than a multi F/C, and when some extra melee power is needed I've got Seeking Sword to fall back on. The only disadvantage is that there's no real good cleric race -> dwarves lose dex, gnomes and halflings lose wis, elves can't use their bonus to long swords and bows...

No wonder then that I'm playing a half-orc

 

Well look at it from an rp perspective, it is easy to make people convert to your god if your 8 ft tall and covered in muscle, not to mention the bad breath that half orcs and orcs usually come with

 

IMO the key to going solo is patient, if you dont have anything to dispel protections just wait around till they expire, if he keeps putting on protections (which is very rarely) after the first lot are gone, then just be even more patient, iv started doing solo and been playing many many hours a day for the last 3 days (hmmm maybe i should get out more) and some battles with only like 3 monsters literally lasted about 1-2 hours, just depends on what class you go and so forth, and another little tip, you need!!!! range weapons with solo, because you can beat a flock of 10 strong monsters (as long as they arent immune to range) with just a bow and many many normal/magical arrows, because if all the monsters are melee, then they cant hit you, and it may take much time (about hour or so) but you will come out victorious without losing much health, very useful if your out of potions. and one more tip:
1) enter battle
2) realise you are going to lose, due to no preperation
3) you die (sadly) and realise you didnt havnt saved for days
now there is a hidden message in this story and after you are done yelling because you havnt saved, just remember next time to SAVE! very frequently (just hit 'q') hope it helped, but these are all newb hints so you probably knew these already (just refreshing your memory)