Baldur's Gate - Blathering into the Labyrinths

Lilura ventures onwards in part 6 of her playthrough of Baldur's Gate through the Labyrinth of the Warders, the Labyrinth of Doors and more of Durlag's Tower .

Generic (i.e, non-scripted/hardcoded) monsters respawn at intervals to hinder the party as they backtrack through corridors and chambers in their attempt to solve the puzzles, but respawns can be suppressed by camping a party member in line-of-sight of the spawnpoint. Reloading also refreshes generic spawns and may add to already-existing ones (true of the campaign in general). Resting frequently results in ambushes, but having to defend the camp against a few Ghasts is preferable to hiking all the way back to town, which is annoyingly time-consuming and may result in overworld waylays, anyway.

The gating encounters, the convo with Bayard (see the "cellar" section, below), the type and number of hostile denizens, the fifth circle scroll drops and the tough traps and locks all point to the design of Durlag's Tower catering to parties of maximum level, or not far off. Sure, veterans may start off with a first level party and rapidly gain levels as they go, but for the purposes of my treatment the party will be borderline-maxed, as that's what the design calls for.

In addition to a thief, new players are advised to bring along a bard for their valuable loremastery, enabling them to easily identify magical items instead of relying on the Identify spell, which consumes first circle spell slots that should instead be loaded with Magic Missile, Chromatic Orb and Blindness. (Ninth level casters unleash five missiles inflicting 1d4+1 damage each. That's respectable, and it's also handy for dispersing mirrors and spell disruption. A seventh level+ caster will unleash an orb inflicting 2-16 damage and stunning the enemy for 20 rounds. Nice! I have already espoused the virtues of Blindness in my Arcane Spells section of Blathering Part II.)