I don't have any fireplace pictures but I assure you we've had a few evenings by the xmas tree and fire.

The chilly weather has meant cozying up inside... of whatever.

Weekends and sick days inside have featured jammies, snacks, and art of all mediums:

We even did some low-voltage electronics thanks to Rob.

And for Cooley's birthday we obliterated some hot pot.

After some time away, I'm finishing up my tactician-difficulty lizard paladin run on BG3. As mentioned previously, the last few hours of the game are about hopping between archvillains, in any order.

1. Gortash

The Gortash battle wasn't too challenging this time around, though I had one false start when I tried to get a sneaky hit on him. Last time through I baited him outside, away from his turrets. This battle was far more straightforward: off-tanks smashing snooty conspirators.

2. Viconia

The House of Grief battle has swarms of ads and jerks that cast Bone Chill nonstop. I reverted to my PT1 strat and progressively fell back down the entry path, casting overlapping Hunger of Hadar and Spike Growth. I kept my concentration characters out of harm's way and used my tanks to light up the enemies that trickled through.


In PT1 I let Shart kill her parents (per their desires), this time she saved them against their will. Meh.

3. Cazador

I was going to talk to Cazador, but with some pleasant Dancing Lights to set the mood. Turns out, the light (which vampires are not fond of, who knew?) aggroed him immediately so I just rolled with it, not sure if the discussion sequence was necessary to ascend Astarion after combat. Cazador never even trapped Astarion, which - from my brief reading - was supposed to happen regardless of the conversation. I guess I read too briefly:

BG3 Wiki

Daylight can also be used to trigger the fight with Cazador and skip the cutscene completely, allowing you to start the fight with Astarion already free.

... boring conversation anyway.


On PT1 I sheltered in the nook underneath the entrance and caught the melee characters in brambles. With this unexpected start of combat, I set up on the stairs and bottlenecked everyone there - everyone except the jumping werewolves. But with Cazador's ads stuck behind my tank, we wailed on the elder vampire when he dove straight into the thick of things.


As suggested earlier, this run is largely about 'the road not taken' so I did the semi-evil thing and ascended Astarion. That, of course, meant paying 10k in indulgences to the oath police. As a gigavampire, Astarion has (drumroll) one additional bite skill. Seems oversold.

4. Ansur

Ansur took a couple of tries. His AoE attacks and reactions are no joke and he kept killing Gale in the first round, before the wizard could get up his invulnerability dome. Sanctuary is a super-useful ability that I barely employed in PT1 and could have helped with this predicament. Alas, only my main carried Sanctuary and he needed to escape his post-converation proximity to the dragon. What's more, I quickly realized that the elementals needed to be dealt with right away because they did an unreasonable amount of damage to my squishier units.


Eventually I got the elementals killed and a globe up and was able to either range him from this refuge or melee him and tank the reaction damage. Triggering Ansur's reaction strike with a summon was helpful for a few turns. Dragonslaying arrows were surprisingly useless; this one was all about having several Globe charges. Notably, the Globe had to be in the center of the map otherwise Ansur would simply hang out beyond ranged range.

5. Orin

For the Orin fight, it was nice to have killed Gortash beforehand so I could convince Orin to leave her captive alone. Who says there's no honor among assassins? On the minus side, I quickly found that demon-Orin could, in one turn, jump almost everywhere and multiattack a tank to death.

Other than being super lethal, the Orin mechanic is having Sanctuaried characters that refresh her stacks of Unstoppable (invincible for n hits) every round. Since these minions are in Sanctuary, one has to AoE them (or similar) to interrupt their buffing. I tried Sleet Storm to see if this would stagger the casters. I think it did but, more importantly, the ice knocked Orin prone.

The battle got a little weird after that, Orin ran downstairs and summoned a few skellies from a dead lizard with no clothes, meanwhile the remaining ads attacked my squad. Orin then went up onto the balcony and wandered around before eventually returning so I could kill her with a squad that was on HP fumes.

"I'm not like Orin, am I? Am I???"

6. Raphael

I found Raphael to be fairly challenging in PT1 so I was steeling myself for a tough fight on Tactician. He was easy and I'm not entirely sure why. Things that might have helped:

• I knew about the battle mechanics - buffing pillars and second phase.
• I brought blugeoning equipment for the pillars and Gale packed Artistry of War (it's super effective).
• Everyone drank elixirs of flame resistance before the fight.
• I had Yurgir fighting for me rather than against me.

Raphael didn't really do much in his first phase. I cast Darkness on him (I thought he had darkvision?) and hit him with some mild debuffs. He had a difficult time hitting anything and I eventually cast Hideous Laughter when he finally emerged from the smoke. The ads got close to killing Gale, but Hope was there with the heals. Perhaps I had enough summons out that Raphael wasted his precious few rounds targeting them.


By the time Raphael entered his second phase, he was surrounded by my main, Minthara, Yurgir, a deva, and an elemental.


The Remnant II final boss has either been buffed or is a lot harder one difficulty level up, so Me and J rolled another Remnant campaign to level a bit. I think we're going to try a few more runs at the boss and then jump back in to the Elden Ring DLC.

Danielle's creation.

My buddy Keith tried camping out on top of a building once. He was shooting crows, but the police were too busy tear gassing him to ask what he was doing up there. He screamed for an entire YEAR every single time he opened his eyes! Oh, man. At first it was funny, then it just got sad, but then it got funny again! Oh, man.

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