I beat honor mode once in co-op but I didn’t get the achievement. Maybe it’s because of the cosmetic mods we were using but I was still able to get the other achievements. (Only cosmetic mods, no cheats)
Anyways, I decided to try and beat honor mode again in the pettiest way possible.
Act 1:
I picked dark urge bard and went with Shadowheart, Laezel, and Gale
I ignored pretty much all the side areas like auntie Ethel and the underdark. I mostly focused on collecting explosives. Didn’t help any tieflings, didn’t kill any goblins. Talked through the gith patrol and went to act 2. I skipped the creche ofc and told laezel to stop whining so she left oh well
Act 2:
As a bard it was really easy to talk every boss to death. I killed all 3 Thorms without any issues and blew up Balthazar with some barrels.
I needed more money so I went back to act1 and pickpocketed glomp the looter (he shows up in the goblin camp after the tieflings die)
His inventory resets after a long rest so i could pretty much farm infinite gold off him. If I got caught pickpocketing then I would just KO him and try again the next day.
I then went back to moonrise and bought explosives off the vendors while spamming long rest to reset their inventories until I spent all of glomps money.
Also recruited Minthara
Once I had enough bombs I finished the gauntlet of Shar, respeced shadowheart to lvl 1, and killed her so I could get Aylin on my side. I snuck by all the cultists and went straight to the roof.
The ketheric fight part 1 is kinda hard but Aylin is immortal so i won without too many issues
I then recruited jaheira, went to the colony, talked Ketheric into phase 2, and one shot him with bombs.
Act 3:
I went straight to Gortash, made a deal with him, and headed to the city. I collected a ton of fireworks from the shop, killed some random people, got into the murder tribunal, became Bhaals assassin, and went to Orin. I death warded myself before the fight, blew her up with fireworks (and myself too) but it still counted as my win so yay!!
I went back to Gortash, watched him die to the brain, betrayed the emperor, made a deal with Raphael and freed orpheus, used invis to sneak by everyone in the courtyard, and told Gale to take one for the team
Easy golden dice in less than 20 hours :D
TIL Glomp the Looter is among the small % of NPCs that can be saved with non-lethal KOs, never would've guessed it.
Congrats on the HM completion, sounds like you had a blast.
And here I am, my current HM is at 60 hours and just finished the main part of Act 1 going into the Creche.
But I'm treating it like a normal playthrough, doing a 100% completionist run, roleplaying as usual. I've never been able to speedrun RPG's. The mere idea of skipping content hurts my soul.
Same here! First honor run attempt and I'm at the gauntlet of Shar. I can't handle not trying to get every piece of gear I can lol. Everyone plays the game differently, I only have fun when I'm role-playing and engaging with the story. For the most part it's smooth sailing and the only fights I'm nervous about are cazador and the brain
The wording of that last line gave me a laugh.
"What are we going to do tonight, Brain?"
"The same thing we do every night, Caz: try to take over the world!"
My advice: talk ketheric into killing himself, use scratch to get Aylin, and barrel the fuck out of Myrkul. He is the worst on honor mode. And it makes sense RP wise to barrel or smokepowder the death gods. Freezing ass bastards.
Cazador has a low wis score and Otto's dance will hold him.
Have Gale blow up. Really beautiful and bittersweet scene.
Yes, I am not alone!
Doing pointlessly completionist HM run now. Am at over 100 hours in Act 3, have done everything but Gortash and the final section.
Started another one because I’m putting off Gortash until I’m in the right mood.
in my run, i stocked every single barrel I could for the myrkul fight. probably had enough explosive force to blow him into a different plane of existence all together
How are you getting the barrels to him?
You can just put them in your inventory.
How are you carrying that many?
Uhm, worst case scenario cloud giant potion?
The Mighty Cloth + Cloud Giant potion = 620kg (or 1240 lbs) of carrying capacity, which means 24 smokepowder barrels or 16 firewine/oil barrels. Obviously without The Mighty Cloth, you would only get half as many, but with Cloud Giant potions on everyone in the party is a lot of explosives...
spread them out amongst party members + cloud giant -> invis someone to free aylin so that I can quickly finish ketheric off and move on to phase 2. after ketheric dies, I just moved all of my barrels to the party member closest to Myrkul before blowing them all up w/ my stealth archer from the mind flayer’s ledge.
in terms of positioning, I usually have someone invis @ aylin, two melee attackers on the ketheric/myrkul platform, and my ranged attacker on the mind flayer platform. high initiative definitely helps here
You can "win" honor mode by having Gale nuke the brain at the bottom of the stem? Before you face the dragon/illithids?
When you get to the base of the brain stem, talk to Gale and he’ll agree to release the orb. He teleports everyone else away and destroys the brain himself.
I can also recommend "Kill Raphael in Act1 for XP and armor" for your cheeseboard.
My successful HM run was less explosive-based, but still incredibly cheesy. Now I just play normal difficulty, or even explorer, because I can fuck about without consequences
How?
First, you need to chase him off when he comes to talk to you. It's triggered when you talk to someone who can try to heal you (Nettie, Ethel in her home, Gut, Halsin). Then there's places where, if you walk there, he'll appear. If you have one party member go ahead to trigger the conversation, then switch to one behind, and hit Raphael, he'll vanish and the conversation ends.
The easiest way is to ignore Nettie, play till you clear out the goblin base without going into the underdark. Then there's a ladder going up towards the roof, it's in between Gut and where they're torturing the prisoner. Have someone in your party ready with magic missile, and send someone else up the ladder. Switch, MM and it's done with little risk.
Once he's gone, he'll appear in your camp when you go into the mountain pass. When this happens, have someone (normally a hireling) cast Silence centered on him. Switch to turn based, and attack him. Make sure the last hit just knocks him out rather than kills him. It takes aaaages.
Once done, you get a huge amount of XP and all his loot early
It may be too late but you can usually turn off cosmetic mods, reload a save and trigger some achievements. This was possible at least prior to patch 8.
I didn't risk it for honour mode though and just played that without mods but I used it multiple other times when finishing other achievements. Since honor mode leaves behind a save after you beat it you may still be able to get the achievement.
We could make a list with all the cheeses to help people get their golden die. There's also an achievement enabler mod so you can play with mods in HM and still get it.
I'll add 2 slices of cheese I learned.
• Don't skip the Hag. Just kill her before she vanishes into the fireplace. Be quick as soon as the cutscene ends to turn based mode. You get the XP and her stuff and quest. (if you're really modding just generate the hair).
• Orin fight. Best use for the pokeball (for those like me terrible at barrelmancy). Throw at her from afar without triggering the cutscene. They'll start fighting, but you'll be outside to plan and join as you see fit. But the thing is, what this does is that it doesn't trigger the temple buffs so she doesn't regain Unstoppable. Depending on how it goes, there's a chance she won't even turn to Slayer. Or you can barrelmancy like you did. Lol
Edit: Doing your first HM as Durge is brutal. Respect to you.
Lol I picked durge so I could get the Orin 1v1 for an easier fight
You are 100% cheese lord LOL. Picking durge just for the Orin 1v1 is unbelievably petty. I'm impressed.
FYI you don't even need to talk to the Gith patrol. Just go invisible or use the other way to the monastery region, the one close to the goblin camp.
i always carry a stack of bombs in case i need to get out of a fight the cheesy way. saved my last honor mode run as i accidentally placed a globe of invulnerability a tiny bit over the brains hitbox, ran out of haste potions, and just had a bad time overall so i just clicked the win button
Congrats! I too had to beat it twice for the achievement lol. We should start a club!
Did you do any bosses outside of Orin and Gortash in Act 3?
does the murder dwarf count? I had to kill him
As Dark Urge, you don't have to deal with the murder tribunal at all. Get into the sewers, open the first door with blood, and then your butler will open the second one for you.
That is just a normal enemy. Most all bosses in Act 3 have legendary actions, ex. The Githyanki at the Elfsong.
Then no I didn’t I only fought orin
She does? I just told her to fuck off and she did, lol
(The persuasion option is something like "Raise your blade against me and die a failure, forgotten by everyone", which I felt was very appropriate for my Bard who was very tired of Vlaakith's shit)
That is the Intimidation option, but yes, that is an option instead of outright fighting her.
Lol I had the same thing, I had a mod for hairstyles and getting rid of the ugly shit when you turn half illithid, and I had to redo the whole thing
I went back to Gortash, watched him die to the brain
Hold up a second, what's this?
You know I’m up to Orin and thinking those fireworks and Gale look mighty tempting.
Is it true if you use cloud of daggers with the explosives like smoke powder barrels it gets some sort of multiplied damage output?
Which level were you for the boss fights? Or is the explosives enough to kill any?
Explosions are enough if you have enough
Haha, so how many did you pack roughly?
Until I was encumbered
Any tricks like putting all explosives into one container and throw?
If you send everything to camp as you are collecting them, and if you're in an area where you are able to go to camp before the fight, just go to camp, multi-select everything and drag to your inventory, then exit camp. You'll be able to drop everything in place.
They work very poorly against Sarevok, I found. I had a metric butt-ton of splodybits placed thinking that would do the trick, but not only did it not kill him (or even bring him down to 50% health due to his buffs), but that mofo literally RAN to the pile of explosives to attack it and blow 'em up.
Honestly, it was hilarious. Big badda boom, him flying off scross the room, then getting back up like it was nothing, which it kinda was.
Disgusting, how could you reduce such a respected game mode to such an extreme?
Takes notes
How did you handle the fight against the gith monks in the act 3 transition?
They don’t have any special honor mode stuff iirc, wasn’t a super hard fight esp since the emperor has mind control and Sith lightning
I think I thunderwaved the leader into the void
Yeetus deletus really is a time saver in this fight.
ShartDisgustingMeme.jpg