Fired up the Neutral Party again

When I last left our ambivalent heroes, it turns out I was in the middle of Firkraag's dungeon. I had fought all the way to the start of the maze where you had to assemble the burial mask. Being out of practice, it took me a while to get used to my situation again, but killing off the six guardians seemed practice enough. Just had my protagonist sorceror open up the door, cast cloudkill on the guardian, and run away. The random beholder in the middle of that maze (which was there since placing beholders in random rooms of dungeons is great fun!) was given similar treatment, though it survived the first cloudkill and had to be put down with a chromatic orb.

The last guardian was fun for the whole family. While through the maze it was just my PC invisible with the staff of the Magi and my halfling fighter/thief perma-hidden in shadows, it turns out that last guardian is about 100% resistant to magic and my sorceror (not having lower resist...yet) being useless, I had to drag everyone else through to beat this one guy down, though once I got the folks in place he was no trouble. I go to the burial chamber and rest since my sorceror blew all his spells. When I wake up I loot the tomb of the dragon stuff, triggering the Samie or whoever she was to try to come take it away from me with her gang of thugs. She didn't even make it into the room. My sorceror threw a cloudkill into the room they were in and Jan shut the door. After two of those they were all dead on the ground. I love cloudkill. With the maze done I went on to the other branch, which I had apparently scouted out with my invisible sorceror some time before. What I forgot was that there were all sorts of ugly enemies in those rooms I had scouted, and had to fight off greater wolfweres, an air elemental, some golems, and then some orogs (well, they ate a cloudkill and died before they got very far). Then it was off to face my old friend Tazok from BG1. Softened him and all the orcs up with a cloudkill, then magic missiled Tazok to death. Loot the room, rearrange spell books, rest again. Talk to Firkraag, kill his flunkie mage (got a rhythm going for enemy mages: Breach -> Malison -> insect swarm, then beat down with weapons. Kills 'em dead). Rescue the kid and then it's time to do what I came to do.

And then after stomping up and down all over Firkraag's minions, the big red dragon himself is a nasty one. I may have to resort to some creative abuses of the Infinity Engine to beat him, as all the legitimate ways I've tried have ended horribly (though I might just be out of practice, that happens when you don't play a game for six months). I can usually get him down to "injured", resists lowered, malisoned, breached, and insect swarmed (for comparison, when I fought the Umar Hills shadow dragon, just doing that was enough to cause it to bungle its save vs. breath weapons and start fleeing when it got swarmed and I beat it the first time without taking a hit) without any major hangups, but by that point his melee attack is what just rips my characters to shreds. When I get him down to "Near Death" usually all of my characters besides the PC and Jan are dead (with about 50% chance of being chunked). One time I actually beat him, but he killed my PC at the same time. Only Jan survived to tell the tale, the greedy little gnome.

I think that I might have a protection from Magical Weapons scroll somewhere, but I might not. Since I'm not really interested in getting the holy avenger in his loot stash, I may risk just disintegrating him once I've weakened his defenses. Or maybe I'll lay some pre-emptive skull traps on the middle of the room and then lead him to them after I've lowered his resists (I wonder if Firkraag can eat six skull traps and still survive?). Or if I'm feeling really cheesy I'll start the fight off with Cernd casting Magic Resistance instead of Jan casting Lower Resist (which shouldn't even make him go hostile), then start off with a simultaneous Greater Malison and Disintegrate. So many options, hopefully one of those will work.

-CC