Cael
Arcane
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Baldur's Gate The Baldur's Gate Series Thread
- Thread starter Sunsetspawn
- Start date
analysis of haer dalis read it here :
https://darksideofrpgs.blogspot.com/2018/12/haerdalis-tiefling-blade-from-baldurs.html
https://darksideofrpgs.blogspot.com/2018/12/haerdalis-tiefling-blade-from-baldurs.html
Lilura
RPG Codex Dragon Lady
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2013
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- 5,274
Baldur's Gate: Key Quest Mod Itemization: The Power, the Cheese and the Brokenness.
- an in-depth look at quest mod items
- an in-depth look at quest mod items
Last edited:
Delterius
Arcane
Lilura
RPG Codex Dragon Lady
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- 5,274
Advocating? I don't need to support facts in every post that are proven by me here and elsewhere.
Of the 23 items commentated on, 10 are tailored to the arcane. That's balanced.
And that conventional tank is the same one as before, just further boosted by Dark Horizons itemization.
Go and read my SCS all-arcane party run. Again, BALANCED.
Of the 23 items commentated on, 10 are tailored to the arcane. That's balanced.
And that conventional tank is the same one as before, just further boosted by Dark Horizons itemization.
Go and read my SCS all-arcane party run. Again, BALANCED.
Cael
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2017
- Messages
- 22,085
Fighter/Cleric with DUHM has always been the standard 25 physical stats kill everything option, I thought.
Poseidon00
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2018
- Messages
- 2,227
I dig the Assassin 5/Fighter x builds. The fighter HD makes you not crippled in HP, and x3 backstab and poison is respectable. BG1 using the Dagger of Venom and bows, BG2 using Poisoned Throwing Daggers and Firetooth/Angurvadal. Not optimized but useful.
I also like the Skald, offers a different playstyle for sure. Boosting summons and party members rather than nuking everything. In BG2 with Haer using the 18 CON belt, Defensive Spin, the damage resistance flail, and the Skald song AC bonuses, we're tanking stuff.
I also like the Skald, offers a different playstyle for sure. Boosting summons and party members rather than nuking everything. In BG2 with Haer using the 18 CON belt, Defensive Spin, the damage resistance flail, and the Skald song AC bonuses, we're tanking stuff.
I just finished yet another playthrough of the original Baldur's Gate and once again I had a good old time.
Then I decided to port my character over to Baldur's Gate 2 and after a few hours of gameplay I uninstalled it. I've probably been over this subject before but I really don't like Baldur's Gate 2. This "epiphany" always seems to come as a surprise, however, for whatever reason. It's like every time I try to get going with this game I pre-emptively assure myself that I've been too harsh on it in the past. No. This game is deficient. Pretty much every single beat of the narrative and the overall game design is mired in these cardinal sins.
Take the very beginning, for example. You have the preordained party with you: Jaheira, Imoen, Minsc, Khalid and Dynaheir - the latter ones which are already dead. That's the game already decided what you canonically did in the first game. Just like that. There's no way around it. Then you have Imoen who you're supposed to be racing after for much of the game and she has morphed into this insufferable, melodramatic cunt. She's the focal point of the entire game, by the way. Just the fact that you can tell her to fuck off after finally rescuing her is one of the most cringeworthy things ever. It really exposes how badly this game is written. None of it makes any sense. "Sorry, Imoen, but my party is full right now (as it fucking would be) but you can find your own way out from this hellish labyrinth, right?" It angers me that the CRPG scene is still infected by these charlatans who pose as writers. BG2 set the tone for the coming apocalypse, for sure.
Ehhh, maybe you want to unwind a little when you're finally out of the first dungeon. Relax and perhaps leave the bustle of the city for a while, or just wander around town a bit. Well, you can't, because every outside location is tied to some kind of quest and every city zone is mined with scripted encounters at every single goddamn turn. Every single one. Upon leaving the first area in the city you're immediately assaulted by the fag Gaelan Bayle who is the embodiment of modern CRPG design: you have absolutely no choice even if you choose dialogue options that would suggest otherwise. You can literally tell Gaelan to go fuck himself and you still end up in his house, where he tells it like it is: you have no real choice in the matter. Follow the contrived, constricted narrative or stop playing. So that's what I did. Everything about the early game is centered around the fact that you need money to pay an extortionate fee to go rescue someone you have no interest in rescuing in the first place. BG1 Imoen is in trouble? Sure, I'll go on a quest to rescue her. I have nothing against her. She's fun. Emo borderline BG2 Imoen is abducted? Good for me, I say. Finally some peace and quiet for fuck's sake.
The whole thing about paying to get information is also completely skewed. You have the thieves who treat you like a bitch. Then you have the evil vampires who treat you with some degree of respect. It doesn't even matter if it's insincere or not. They tell their price, which is more reasonable, and then they lay out a straightforward plan, as well as an opportunity to clean out the parasitic thieves guild from the city. You get to gib Gaelan Bayle and that sanctimonious nutsack Aran Linvail. That's cathartic. The vampires are going to turn on you but if you keep one step ahead there's no real problem. Two birds with one stone and all that. It makes sense. It's smart. It's not like there's any real consequences to your decision in any way. But, hey, it's the evil option. If BioWare had just made the thieves into someone that you could possibly trust and who treated you with respect instead of trying to blackmail you from the get-go, maybe the dynamic of the game would have been different. I could go on and on with this shit. Your character's significance is rendered null and void about two quarters into the game, at least in the grand scheme of things. Irenicus drains you of your essence and goes off on his crusade bullshit. By then the plot has nothing to do with you and everything to do with Irenicus' incel-induced vendetta against his former hippie elf commune. Who gives a shit? Oh, right, he has your soul and all. Yeah, that's a great way to "motivate" the player to jump through hoops. I love David Warner as much as the next guy but even he couldn't really salvage this odious landfill of a game. He tries, bless him.
I'd rather play Icewind Dale 2 on fucking mute with The View on in the background on my non-existing television at 97% volume while loudly reciting the instruction manual for your mom's state-of-the-art electric dildo even as a diseased vole chewed off my left foot's middle toe.
Whatever, man, I have to bounce. I can't stick around here.
Then I decided to port my character over to Baldur's Gate 2 and after a few hours of gameplay I uninstalled it. I've probably been over this subject before but I really don't like Baldur's Gate 2. This "epiphany" always seems to come as a surprise, however, for whatever reason. It's like every time I try to get going with this game I pre-emptively assure myself that I've been too harsh on it in the past. No. This game is deficient. Pretty much every single beat of the narrative and the overall game design is mired in these cardinal sins.
Take the very beginning, for example. You have the preordained party with you: Jaheira, Imoen, Minsc, Khalid and Dynaheir - the latter ones which are already dead. That's the game already decided what you canonically did in the first game. Just like that. There's no way around it. Then you have Imoen who you're supposed to be racing after for much of the game and she has morphed into this insufferable, melodramatic cunt. She's the focal point of the entire game, by the way. Just the fact that you can tell her to fuck off after finally rescuing her is one of the most cringeworthy things ever. It really exposes how badly this game is written. None of it makes any sense. "Sorry, Imoen, but my party is full right now (as it fucking would be) but you can find your own way out from this hellish labyrinth, right?" It angers me that the CRPG scene is still infected by these charlatans who pose as writers. BG2 set the tone for the coming apocalypse, for sure.
Ehhh, maybe you want to unwind a little when you're finally out of the first dungeon. Relax and perhaps leave the bustle of the city for a while, or just wander around town a bit. Well, you can't, because every outside location is tied to some kind of quest and every city zone is mined with scripted encounters at every single goddamn turn. Every single one. Upon leaving the first area in the city you're immediately assaulted by the fag Gaelan Bayle who is the embodiment of modern CRPG design: you have absolutely no choice even if you choose dialogue options that would suggest otherwise. You can literally tell Gaelan to go fuck himself and you still end up in his house, where he tells it like it is: you have no real choice in the matter. Follow the contrived, constricted narrative or stop playing. So that's what I did. Everything about the early game is centered around the fact that you need money to pay an extortionate fee to go rescue someone you have no interest in rescuing in the first place. BG1 Imoen is in trouble? Sure, I'll go on a quest to rescue her. I have nothing against her. She's fun. Emo borderline BG2 Imoen is abducted? Good for me, I say. Finally some peace and quiet for fuck's sake.
The whole thing about paying to get information is also completely skewed. You have the thieves who treat you like a bitch. Then you have the evil vampires who treat you with some degree of respect. It doesn't even matter if it's insincere or not. They tell their price, which is more reasonable, and then they lay out a straightforward plan, as well as an opportunity to clean out the parasitic thieves guild from the city. You get to gib Gaelan Bayle and that sanctimonious nutsack Aran Linvail. That's cathartic. The vampires are going to turn on you but if you keep one step ahead there's no real problem. Two birds with one stone and all that. It makes sense. It's smart. It's not like there's any real consequences to your decision in any way. But, hey, it's the evil option. If BioWare had just made the thieves into someone that you could possibly trust and who treated you with respect instead of trying to blackmail you from the get-go, maybe the dynamic of the game would have been different. I could go on and on with this shit. Your character's significance is rendered null and void about two quarters into the game, at least in the grand scheme of things. Irenicus drains you of your essence and goes off on his crusade bullshit. By then the plot has nothing to do with you and everything to do with Irenicus' incel-induced vendetta against his former hippie elf commune. Who gives a shit? Oh, right, he has your soul and all. Yeah, that's a great way to "motivate" the player to jump through hoops. I love David Warner as much as the next guy but even he couldn't really salvage this odious landfill of a game. He tries, bless him.
I'd rather play Icewind Dale 2 on fucking mute with The View on in the background on my non-existing television at 97% volume while loudly reciting the instruction manual for your mom's state-of-the-art electric dildo even as a diseased vole chewed off my left foot's middle toe.
Whatever, man, I have to bounce. I can't stick around here.
Lonely Vazdru
Pimp my Title
Theldaran
Liturgist
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2015
- Messages
- 1,772
I played BG2 in 2001 heartily. Maybe not as heartily as first part, but I enjoyed it.
What do you fucking expect of a rogue guild? Should they bring you a fucking red carpet, too? They're in for the bucks, and they still give you two reasonable magic items (one useful for clearing the vampire lair, the other a midrange protection item). If I was Aran I'd give Charname nothing. Charname needs the guild because they know their shit and he/she is a newcomer in Amn. Well, more like they need each other mutually (Aran also wants to take revenge on Irenicus since he decimated the guild).
Anyway that stack of coins you have to gather is just a hook, motivation to pursue some of the quests. But this happens all the time in tabletop roleplaying, so it's fine by me.
Still the quests, in BG2 too, are better than the majority of what you find today (in Bioware games, no less).
What do you fucking expect of a rogue guild? Should they bring you a fucking red carpet, too? They're in for the bucks, and they still give you two reasonable magic items (one useful for clearing the vampire lair, the other a midrange protection item). If I was Aran I'd give Charname nothing. Charname needs the guild because they know their shit and he/she is a newcomer in Amn. Well, more like they need each other mutually (Aran also wants to take revenge on Irenicus since he decimated the guild).
Anyway that stack of coins you have to gather is just a hook, motivation to pursue some of the quests. But this happens all the time in tabletop roleplaying, so it's fine by me.
Still the quests, in BG2 too, are better than the majority of what you find today (in Bioware games, no less).
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Lilura
RPG Codex Dragon Lady
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2013
- Messages
- 5,274
My 98th write-up for Baldur's Gate: The Drizzt Saga.
-- played with original 5 disc version and viewed on a Trinitron CRT monitor.
-- played with original 5 disc version and viewed on a Trinitron CRT monitor.
- Joined
- May 5, 2018
- Messages
- 6,241
My 98th write-up for Baldur's Gate: The Drizzt Saga.
-- played with original 5 disc version and viewed on a Trinitron CRT monitor.
I remember installing this mod when it came out - I didn't finish it because it was bugged. Doesn't it have some kind of quirky system where the modder altered weapon proficiency points - allowing you to get past 5? Or was it 5 in TWF? Pretty sure it upgraded your APR...
Thanks for posting all your gigantic images here. It might save a hapless soul from visiting your abortion of a website.
Lilura
RPG Codex Dragon Lady
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2013
- Messages
- 5,274
You're welcome. Have a lovely day!
Melcar
Arcane
Just block most of that shit and the site becomes readable.
werevolf island was pretty bland even when i played it for the first time
Melcar
Arcane
It was very shit to be honest, specially when you had Durlag's Tower in the same expansion.
Lilura
RPG Codex Dragon Lady
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2013
- Messages
- 5,274
Every major side quest in BG2 is very shit compared to Durlag's Tower (covered by me a few years ago, in-depth).
In fact, Durlag's Tower has more value than BG2 taken as a whole.
It's the jewel in the Infinity Engine crown.
- Joined
- May 29, 2010
- Messages
- 36,759
The original intention was that Imoen would be dead when you found her (hence why she barely says anything once you get her), but they changed this because a) she was being waifu'd b) it was agreed that the motivation for your character being "We gotta rescue Imoen" only for the game to tell you "You can't rescue Imoen no matter what" would be too rage-inducing, and that would be correct for many players.
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