well, I finished the game with 30k and i did sell lots of magical items i found in chapter 4 / amanuel hoard (finished IWD with around 40k as well as the smithy in Kuldahar had nothing of use for my party to buy). Up to that point i never thought the "economy is broken". Mostly i lost gp through buying several ingredient pouches and potion containers (which cost a fortune)
I found a lot of containers/pouches as loot. Had at least two for ingredients and two for potions.
because i seldomly use summons but rather potions/powders thus having lots of ingredients in the inventory. I think summons break the combat so i refrain from using them.
Oh yes, summons are uber powerful - not because of individual power of the summoned creatures but because AI cannot prioritise between foes and will strive to kill harmless spiders instead of your heavy fighter dealing 30 points of damage with every swing.
Also, most summons bring to the field a group of creatures. Sometimes it becomes completely crazy, with 50-80 creatures on the screen. In the final battle both me and the endboss summoned so many allies that nobody was able to move, we were stuck in a complete clusterfuck, with no possibility for tactical move, everyone was just whacking their immediate neighbour
In these games , difficulty depends very much on how often you rest, how much you use spells like "healing mist"...
They should have restricted resting then. I managed to rest without problems in the final location, which, given its nature, really should not allow this.
Also, you should play on courier if you're familiar with the IE games, on this difficulty you can't revive dead party members and enemies have better stats.
So you just load when you lose somebody, lol. The penalties for losing characters are so ridiculously high in BG-CoD (you lose not only an experienced party member but also most of his/her gear, including epic items, which is plain stupid, should be able to just collect equipment from the corpse) that I doubt many people play real Ironman.
I agree that where it gets most difficult is in the last chapter though if you tackle the adventurer groups in the early going south of isilbright they can be a tough matchup as you're underleveled and they have better gear (like the group in Fasitgrove).
Still it's totally doable. Some of the groups of crazy elves might pose a challenge, but you return after a level or two and beat them.
But except of those i didn't find that looting had better gear or that buying from merchants isn't worth it.
Kendall blacksmith in garden of delights has quite unique gear for example.
Alakai sword (the one you collect) or that one-handed longsword that deals ice damage are ridiculously powerful and you can only find them in the game world, not in shops. Same with the most powerful armor and shields.
Agree on the romances initiated by the love interests, they were like a game in the game in BG2. Now, what we mostly have is a non-gated catalogue of questions player can ask and before you know it, you've finished most dialogue options.
It would be disappointing if the devs stopped here, with the measly amount of around 100k from kickstarter they were more true to the IE games than Obsidian with their 40x bigger kickstarter.
I think now they're hoping for a new Kickstarter to finance the expansion. I wish them good luck, but remain sceptical.