Baldur's Gate Beamdog's Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 Enhanced Editions

[oldmanpaco]

Play the EE and make sure to give Dorn his back rub.

 

[octavius]

The BG1 EE kind of makes a mockery of the Iron Crisis with cheap magical weapons for sale in Beregost.

 

[Fargus]

The BG1 EE kind of makes a mockery of the Iron Crisis with cheap magical weapons for sale in Beregost.

I used to kill Greywolf for his +2 sword somewhere around Nashkel at the first opportunity, cuz i often played as a fighter class. Didn't want to bother with weapons breaking randomly in the middle of a fight.

 

[V17]

Thanks for all the tips. Playing BG2EE with a few mods, using Core difficulty since I have very little experience with D&D or rtwp in general.

So far the difficulty seems to be just fine - I can easily get a dead character if I mindlessly walk into battle, but if I think a bit it's not difficult to win. Didn't even take me 37 hours to finish the first dungeon. I was a bit of an idiot when rolling my character (didn't read the manual first and remembered less than I thought) so I'm gonna have to stick with a basic fighter build, but it seems like other party members will provide enough variety.

I was quite surprised by how there's so much shit happening all the time, pleasantly of course. It's especially jarring when compared to games where the intro dungeon is literally "please click on goblins for ten minutes" - here there's actual story, labs with horrific experiments, traps, keys, teleports, automatic magic wands, ancient stone toilets (!!) and pools that see into the future and the past. Suddenly makes other games look like lazy crap. And I love the voice acting of Irenicus.


What disappointed me a bit was the graphics. I probably subconsciously expected to be blown away like 20 years ago, which was naive. They were made for lower DPI monitors, so everything is either kind of small or pixelated or blurry.
Now I don't know much about Beamdog, but it seems fucking crazy that they:
1. don't support any slightly more advanced algorithms for scaling graphics, only linear and nearest neighbor
2. didn't think to add high-res graphics support.

The prerendered backgrounds look awesome with AI Upscale (and that's with very little tuning, it could be better), only there's no way to use them in the fucking game.

I'm pretty sure that if the Enhanced Editions didn't get created, GemRB would be more popular and we would be playing through it will full upscale support nowadays. Oh well. Let's go murder some trolls.

 

[Nazrim Eldrak]

Didn't even take me 37 hours to finish the first dungeon

Strange sentence, because you could also write "It didn't even take me 100 years to complete the first dungeon" and it wouldn't make any difference to your original sentence.

1. don't support any slightly more advanced algorithms for scaling graphics, only linear and nearest neighbor

How do you know that beamdog used the linear and nearest neighbor algorithm?

2. didn't think to add high-res graphics support.

Wouldn't the realization of advanced algorithms for graphics scaling (point 1) solve this problem as well? The mention is therefore redundant.

The prerendered backgrounds look awesome with AI Upscale

Looks nice!

 

[Saravan]

Baldur's Gate I and II enhanced editions were on sale for peanuts a few days ago. So me and my friend started a co-op run of both games. It was such a long time ago that I played BG1 and 2 that I kind of forgot about most companions in the original games, save a few notable ones. It's still funny however how from just the very first sentence of being introduced to a new companion that you can instantly tell that these companions were not in the original game, like Neera. You can smell the woke from a mile away. Man, the 90's were a different time.

 

[V17]

Strange sentence, because you could also write "It didn't even take me 100 years to complete the first dungeon" and it wouldn't make any difference to your original sentence.

Somewhere in the thread (or maybe it was in the other BG thread?) somebody shared a few retarded Steam reviews, one of them claimed it took them double digit time to get out of the intro dungeon, I was making a dumb joke referencing that.

How do you know that beamdog used the linear and nearest neighbor algorithm?

It's written in the graphics settings.

Wouldn't the realization of advanced algorithms for graphics scaling (point 1) solve this problem as well? The mention is therefore redundant.

Not necessarily, since they afaik use OpenGL for rendering I think they could implement other scaling algorithms for example through pixel shaders, which would probably be easier than adding support for loading and rendering actual hires images (other scaling algorithms are already implemented anyway). AI upscale would definitely need the latter though, and it would probably look better too.

 

[razvedchiki]

is there any xp overflow when you import from bg to dragonspear and then to bg2?

 

[Gargaune]

is there any xp overflow when you import from bg to dragonspear and then to bg2?

"Overflow?" The SoD XP cap is 500K so you may start BG2 a couple of levels higher if you go through it.

https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Experience_Tables

 

[Sarathiour]

You're going to reach the cap in all of them except ToB if you're keeping the xp cap. It's not a big deal, because of how this xp table work.

 

[Average Manatee]

You'll be a little overpowered at the start of BG2 but the XP curve means it doesn't matter much past then. Doing SoD also kind of screws up the optimal time for dual classing for many classes.

 

[TheSecondRanger]

So what is the status of the EE currently? It is long ago that I played through BG1 and BG2 and I am toying with the thought of another playthrough. At release they were a mess and introduced many bugs. But what about now? Obviously I would ignore any Beamdog companions (Is there a mod?). The UI seems more convenient for modern systems.

 

[razvedchiki]

"Overflow?"

original bg seems to continue to count xp after you hit the cap, that is not shown, but if you import to bg2 they show up. wonder if its the same with the ee.

 

[Sarathiour]

I've never heard of such thing, but I also always plays the xp cap removed (well, capped at 8 millions )

 

[Grunker]

"Overflow?"

original bg seems to continue to count xp after you hit the cap, that is not shown, but if you import to bg2 they show up. wonder if its the same with the ee.

I've imported tons of maxed characters from BG->BG2 and I don't recall this. It's been a while though. Are you certain?

 

[Average Manatee]

That's what installing an XP cap removal mod does.

 

[bussinrounds]

Guys I messed up and picked max HP at level up in the tweaks anthology mod and now I realize how much HP bloat there is. I don't wanna reinstall that shit (and everything after that) so I'm just gonna use the EE Keeper to decrease the HP values (50% on level up)

Question is....which one should I lower.... the BASE HP or CURRENT HP ? Or does it even matter

never mind...current is only the hp values they have now, not their overall HP. Pretty obvious from the description I guess . Don't know what I was thinking...or not

 

[Melcar]

Why worry about it? Unless you went full retard with SCS. Base HP is your HD minus whatever bonuses you get from stats.

 

[bussinrounds]

Why worry about it? Unless you went full retard with SCS. Base HP is your HD minus whatever bonuses you get from stats.

What do you mean, why worry about it ? I don't want to have too much HP cause it'll make the game too easy obviously.

Or do you mean... why worry about which one to decrease from those 2 options ? And yea I have SCS installed (hardcore, no double damage)

 

[Melcar]

Why worry about it? Unless you went full retard with SCS. Base HP is your HD minus whatever bonuses you get from stats.

What do you mean, why worry about it ? I don't want to have too much HP cause it'll make the game too easy obviously.

Or do you mean... why worry about which one to decrease from those 2 options ? And yea I have SCS installed (hardcore, no double damage)

Hold up. You gave yourself max HP but not to the rest of the in-game characters? What a cheater.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Baldur's Gate I and II enhanced editions were on sale for peanuts a few days ago. So me and my friend started a co-op run of both games. It was such a long time ago that I played BG1 and 2 that I kind of forgot about most companions in the original games, save a few notable ones. It's still funny however how from just the very first sentence of being introduced to a new companion that you can instantly tell that these companions were not in the original game, like Neera. You can smell the woke from a mile away. Man, the 90's were a different time.

That, and the fact that their voice lines are mixed in a completely different way than the ogs. 90s tech vs 10s tech.

 

[bussinrounds]

Why worry about it? Unless you went full retard with SCS. Base HP is your HD minus whatever bonuses you get from stats.

What do you mean, why worry about it ? I don't want to have too much HP cause it'll make the game too easy obviously.

Or do you mean... why worry about which one to decrease from those 2 options ? And yea I have SCS installed (hardcore, no double damage)

Hold up. You gave yourself max HP but not to the rest of the in-game characters? What a cheater.

I'm talking about the options in tweaks anthology...It works for your entire party. And yes, I picked maximum by mistake. There's also an option for all the monsters, enemies, etc...in the world to have their maximum HP values, which I also have selected...if that's what you're talking about.

• Maximum - This option will ensure that the dice roll will always be the highest available.
• NWN-style - This option will ensure that the range of possible HPs gained will always be in the higher half of the range, i.e. results will always be 4-6 on 1d6, 5-8 for 1d8, etc.
• Average - The rolls will always be the average of the die roll, e.g. 3 or 4 for d6 rolls, 6 or 7 for d12. The component will alternate rounding up and down for successive levels to keep in the average band.

 

[luj1]

The BG1 EE kind of makes a mockery of the Iron Crisis with cheap magical weapons for sale in Beregost.

Fuck, is there a single EE that is well done?

 

[bussinrounds]

There 's option in SCS or the tweaks mod I selected that replaces +1 arrows and other projectiles with non magical "fine" ones.
Increases the value of the protection from normal missiles spell too.

 

[Average Manatee]

IMO, max HP for everyone is fairly balanced and decreases the power of mages and ranged characters, which is good for both players and enemies. For enemies, player mages with spells like Fireball damage can't as easily end encounters in the first round, and ranged characters can't chew everything up before it can reach them in melee. For players, you don't have to pay autistic attention to your mages because they don't end the game with like 12 HP, which would be bearable in a turnbased game where you can react to enemies shooting you but in RTwP noticing that an enemy archer is plinking at them is kind of hard. Also Sarevok with only like 80 HP is kind of sad.

I can see why people would want to have normally rolled HP for accuracy reasons but I think its an OK change overall. Of course if you want to just give the enemy double HP and do nothing for yourself that's fine, but that's just a straight difficulty increase rather than a game mechanics adjustment.

The BG1 EE kind of makes a mockery of the Iron Crisis with cheap magical weapons for sale in Beregost.

Fuck, is there a single EE that is well done?

Can't check prices right now because my SCS game already has them replaced with masterwork weapons and I'm not going to reinstall just to check. Beregost had +1 weapons for sale in BG1 non-EE (which I can check as I have it instealled). Beamdog added a few more because of how the BG2 proficiency system applied to BG1 means there's far more weapon categories that need to be filled out. Looking at the wiki the prices seem exactly the same. Going to guess that the discounts for charisma and reputation are probably slightly different but I expect that's it. This is only really a buff for the player if in EE you have multiple characters specializing in different weapon types and can get more +1s, while in non-EE if you had two characters with sword or axe proficiency you could only arm one of them.

The one and only exception to this and a "cheap" magical weapon in EE is Beruel's Retort +1, and only because of a bit of an exploit since it's intended to be a throwing axe that you can purchase very cheaply at ~60 GP per 5 axes. But since you can use it as a melee weapon you actually can get 5 +1 axes for ~60 GP.