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Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal - Yaga-shura fight, broken?

Alienman

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Been replaying BG2 but never played the Bhaal expansion so pretty exciting stuff. A bit too much combat in the expansion though, but one thing. The Yaga-shura fight. I have weakened him so that is not the problem. Just wondering what the hell is up with the spawning on this map? When I approach him several giants and normal infantry spawns right in the middle of my party. It just seems lazy and broken, and kinda makes the game unfair. I mean everything is so damn well designed in this game, but this fight...

Is this a known issue or have I broken something here? Might add that I'm playing the enhanced edition.

And, any tips on this fight? Keep getting mangled. Even my top warriors get crushed by the giants.
 

Stormcrowfleet

Aeon & Star Interactive
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As far as I remember, this fight is indeed retarded with spawns etc. I think it's a matter of doing something beforehand (did you go up to take his heart or whatever before ?). Also, giants are piss when fought from afar. I only had paladins with Carsomyr on them in CC.
 

Alienman

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Yeah I did the heart thingy. I managed to kill him. I put haste on and summoned a couple of minions and just ran down to his place and focused on him. Two died in my party but the deed was done. Damn, what a sloppy encounter this was! So much combat in this expansion, and every encounter seems hard. Like the second challenge now, jeebus.
 

ghostdog

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ToB is a boring grind with badly designed encounters. Such a fucking letdown after BG2. I've never touched it again. If I want a good IE combat-fest I always fire up IW.
 

Alienman

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ToB is a boring grind with badly designed encounters. Such a fucking letdown after BG2. I've never touched it again. If I want a good IE combat-fest I always fire up IW.

I agree. Finished it yesterday. Started pretty interesting, but then as you said... just badly designed encounter after encounter. Felt like a slog. Even went down to easy just to make it through it all, wanted to see the final for my character.
 

rado907

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Apr 23, 2015
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The problem with ToB is that by ToB the player is so stupidly powerful it's hard to come up with challenges. So Bioware resorted to timed fights and mob spawns and other such tricks. The fights are about as good as they can be given how broken the game's balance is by the end. As far as I know you're not supposed to hit lvl30 and walk around with +6 ->25 strength weapons in Dungeons & Dragons.
 

hell bovine

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The problem with ToB is that by ToB the player is so stupidly powerful it's hard to come up with challenges. So Bioware resorted to timed fights and mob spawns and other such tricks. The fights are about as good as they can be given how broken the game's balance is by the end. As far as I know you're not supposed to hit lvl30 and walk around with +6 ->25 strength weapons in Dungeons & Dragons.
Combat is so lackluster in ToB because (as Gaider hinted at in the Ascension readme) they have deliberately toned down the difficulty (with the usual excuses about new players, blah blah). If you try Ascension (which restores some of the enemies and spices up others), together with SCS (which gives them better scripts) not only are the battles really tough, but the insane difficulty becomes just that: insane.

As much as I love IWD, combat feels quite meh by comparison, since all the enemies use the default stupid scripts. I still like the story, atmosphere, art & music better, though.
 

hoverdog

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As much as I love IWD, combat feels quite meh by comparison, since all the enemies use the default stupid scripts. I still like the story, atmosphere, art & music better, though.
IWD with SCS would be glorious, even if it lacks the kind of mage battles that SCS2 is famous for (IWD for whatever reason had much lesser focus on mages as enemies).
 

hell bovine

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As much as I love IWD, combat feels quite meh by comparison, since all the enemies use the default stupid scripts. I still like the story, atmosphere, art & music better, though.
IWD with SCS would be glorious, even if it lacks the kind of mage battles that SCS2 is famous for (IWD for whatever reason had much lesser focus on mages as enemies).
I think even without that many mage battles SCS-IWD would be more difficult than SCS-BG, because it is a low magic (and arcane spells aren't nearly as broken as in BG2) dungeon crawl with limited resting. Ah well, not going to happen, the author of SCS isn't modding anymore. :-/
 

hoverdog

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As much as I love IWD, combat feels quite meh by comparison, since all the enemies use the default stupid scripts. I still like the story, atmosphere, art & music better, though.
IWD with SCS would be glorious, even if it lacks the kind of mage battles that SCS2 is famous for (IWD for whatever reason had much lesser focus on mages as enemies).
I think even without that many mage battles SCS-IWD would be more difficult than SCS-BG, because it is a low magic (and arcane spells aren't nearly as broken as in BG2) dungeon crawl with limited resting. Ah well, not going to happen, the author of SCS isn't modding anymore. :-/
Eh, from what I know, he's just taking a long break due to real life commitments (moving overseas) and not giving up modding altogether. I could be wrong though :negative:
 

Dux

Arcane
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May 26, 2016
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Sweden
It's all coming back to me.

I remember doing all kinds of shit in ToB - Demogorgon included - and stacking levels like mad. At one moment I was level 34 and the next I was at 41. The difference? Absolute fuck all. So my THAC0 went down a couple of notches. Who gives a shit? There's a reason Baldur's Gate started to decline along with the levels you were gaining. Playing at around level 13-20 - okay, that's doable. Not great but doable. After that and everything just collapses into one unceremonious shit pile.

I think the expansion should have focused more on the character and the history while building up to a Kangaxx-like challenge at the end. You know, a fight where you really have to think strategically to win. Hell, having one "invulnerable" fire giant would have been enough as the main opposition. A new Sarevok if you will. Just because it's the endgame doesn't mean that the entire Abyss has to be thrown at the player. A lot of game developers have made this one mistake, turning so many late game experiences into absolute chores. Unfortunately. Less is often more.

The soundtrack was pretty sweet though, I'll give it that.
 

MilesBeyond

Cipher
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May 15, 2015
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716
Yeah, ToB is notorious for being a rush-job. Ascension and SCS help (although they do make it pretty challenging, especially if you don't cheese). As has been said, really the problem is that D&D (any edition, really) doesn't handle high levels that well. HLAs mean that levels 20-30 or so aren't too too bad, but anything 30+ is just pointless. It's nice for multiclass and that's it. Plus the encounters were lame, the villain sucked, I dunno. Just not all that great.
 

Theldaran

Liturgist
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Oct 10, 2015
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ToB is bad, but not worse than your average D&D epic level campaign. Low to mid level is the most fun. There's not much fun in steamrolling through everything and making cheesy spell combos.
 

Melcar

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Killing off entire parties of enemies with a single sorcerer/mage using carefully planned and timed spell contingencies and sequencers is always fun.
 

catfood

AGAIN
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The only thing good about it was Watchers Keep. I think Bioware realized that too and were kind enough to let you access it through regular BG2.
 

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