Baldur's Gate The Baldur's Gate Series Thread

[Zboj Lamignat]

You could get invested in a character, read their dialog, do their quests, and then walk over a disintegration trap and they turn to dust.

My favorite instance of this was the disintegration trap in the Planar Sphere. It's as if it was made specifically to help players get rid of Valygar after he forced his way into their party.

You don't have to recruit Valygar to get into the Planar Spehere.

 

[Chippy]

From reading these comments about the lack of hoy key use, it's clear to me that I have more TWF points, a higher DEX and INT score, a better initiative, and just bigger hands than all of you. Out of the 100 hour playtime, players who only use the mouse probably waste 20 just scrolling around.

 

[Rephyrnomicon]

You could get invested in a character, read their dialog, do their quests, and then walk over a disintegration trap and they turn to dust.

My favorite instance of this was the disintegration trap in the Planar Sphere. It's as if it was made specifically to help players get rid of Valygar after he forced his way into their party.

You don't have to recruit Valygar to get into the Planar Spehere.

In fact, the BEST way into the planar sphere is to kill him and rub his body all over it until a door magically appears.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Rephyrnomicon Amateur. You open it, but then turn Valygar into the Cowled Wizards.

 

[Rephyrnomicon]

Rephyrnomicon Amateur. You open it, but then turn Valygar into the Cowled Wizards.

Oooh, you're right. I stand corrected.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

You could get invested in a character, read their dialog, do their quests, and then walk over a disintegration trap and they turn to dust.

My favorite instance of this was the disintegration trap in the Planar Sphere. It's as if it was made specifically to help players get rid of Valygar after he forced his way into their party.

You don't have to recruit Valygar to get into the Planar Spehere.

In fact, the BEST way into the planar sphere is to kill him and rub his body all over it until a door magically appears.

Yup, and you don't lose any rep for it, either. Seriously, the fact that you can create your own party and completely ignore the irritating companions without losing anything of interest* is such an underrated pro of BG2. I wish PF games worked like that.

*I guess some of the items you get from Jaheira's quest are the only notable exception.

 

[Krivol]

*I guess some of the items you get from Jaheira's quest are the only notable exception.

Their quests are worth some Exp but I am not sure how much - I usually tried to do all minions' quests during a playthrough. Still, items can be 'borrowed' from Shadow (or EE) Keeper, if your build really depends on those.

I never stomached EE companions, but their quests are supposed to be epic and I believe items from their quests can be quite powerful. Can anyone confirm that?

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

The companion quest xp is similar to keep xp in that the amounts are negligible in the grand scheme of things. I used to create 5 chars and get companions onboard one by one to do stuff, but completely dropped it for just straight up full custom party goodness.

Edit: talking about the original content, of course. I have no idea about the EE companions.

 

[ga♥]

Jaheira quest, the harper line, not the curse one, gives a shitton of XP and useful items, like another ring of wizardy.
And it ends with 100k XP just for your char (if you get Elminster approval) on top of that.

 

[Rephyrnomicon]

*I guess some of the items you get from Jaheira's quest are the only notable exception.

Their quests are worth some Exp but I am not sure how much - I usually tried to do all minions' quests during a playthrough. Still, items can be 'borrowed' from Shadow (or EE) Keeper, if your build really depends on those.

I never stomached EE companions, but their quests are supposed to be epic and I believe items from their quests can be quite powerful. Can anyone confirm that?

The half orc moron's quest in BG1:EE is the only way to get elvish chain in the first game, if I recall correctly. Great for your fighter/mages

 

[Cael]

*I guess some of the items you get from Jaheira's quest are the only notable exception.

Their quests are worth some Exp but I am not sure how much - I usually tried to do all minions' quests during a playthrough. Still, items can be 'borrowed' from Shadow (or EE) Keeper, if your build really depends on those.

I never stomached EE companions, but their quests are supposed to be epic and I believe items from their quests can be quite powerful. Can anyone confirm that?

The half orc moron's quest in BG1:EE is the only way to get elvish chain in the first game, if I recall correctly. Great for your fighter/mages

Elvish Chain is basically Robes of the Archmage without the bonus stuff. Given that with the expansions, you can end up with something along the lines of 1x Good Robes, 2x Evil Robes and about 3x Neutral Robes, why care about the elven chain?

 

[Grunker]

Leave it to the Codex to make not using hotkeys a virtue

 

[Sarathiour]

*I guess some of the items you get from Jaheira's quest are the only notable exception.

Their quests are worth some Exp but I am not sure how much - I usually tried to do all minions' quests during a playthrough. Still, items can be 'borrowed' from Shadow (or EE) Keeper, if your build really depends on those.

I never stomached EE companions, but their quests are supposed to be epic and I believe items from their quests can be quite powerful. Can anyone confirm that?

The half orc moron's quest in BG1:EE is the only way to get elvish chain in the first game, if I recall correctly. Great for your fighter/mages

Elvish Chain is basically Robes of the Archmage without the bonus stuff. Given that with the expansions, you can end up with something along the lines of 1x Good Robes, 2x Evil Robes and about 3x Neutral Robes, why care about the elven chain?

Iy you're a mage/fighter, r going with armor/spirit armor and some robe is probably a better deal

 

[Sarathiour]

Alright, I was\ still intend to do another run of BG2, since I never really finished ToB, just got really close to the end. And I scoured the internet just for fun for alt portraits for shits and giggles, found some fun ones, but also found it weird nobody ever did an edit of the real photos they used for making the companion art. So here with my shitty gimp skills I did it myself for Vicky.

and with some lighting effects from gimp,

Can be used as a bmp portrait if you guys crop to the necessary sizes any way you want.

I mean, it sure beat the new wotc version

 

[Average Manatee]

Neera's BG2 quest unlocks a magic shop with a lot of powerful scrolls and some items. She also gets https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Thayan_Circlet which is incredibly good for wild mage. Her TOB quest also lets you pick up some high level spell scrolls, I think 1 each of most of the powerful ones. Her BG1 stuff is completely irrelevant though.

No idea what Rasaad and Hexxat get. Was planning on doing another trilogy playthrough where I took all the EE NPCs and checked them out. Still, pure thief and pure monk are basically joke classes, they'd have to get some insanely powerful equipment to be worth using.

 

[Grunker]

Neera

 

[Average Manatee]

Neera

Same reaction. She's so horrifically written in every conceivably possible manner. But its also the only way to enjoy the absurdly broken wild mage kit without playing one yourself.

Incidentally, does anyone know whether you have to romance the EE NPCs to get all of their content/items, or is it enough to just have them in the party and do the quests when they come up? I don't think I'd be able to bear doing a beamdog romance.

 

[Jvegi]

ohmygodomhygoooodohohohmygod

 

[Average Manatee]

>3 hours
>in this video we'll talk about every single character in BG2, BG1 guide will be coming later



EDIT: Just a few minutes in and he's got some weird customized ruleset with a bunch of modded items/spells and other crap (I think some kind of expanded spell progression mod?). Not really a good guide IMO. I can understand making a guide that assumes SCS since its kind universally accepted but I have no idea what some of the stuff he's talking about is. Playing double damage insane SCS is also pretty moronic in the first place, I think SCS literally disables the difficulty damage multiplier by default?

 

[Baron Dupek]

found it weird nobody ever did an edit of the real photos they used for making the companion art.

... or maybe someone did that, but then they went missing because hosting sites did random cleanup or shut down?

 

[Arvennios]

I never bothered with hotkeys in any game.

You don't have to, but setting a couple of them can be very helpful, if only for essential commands like healing, potions and frequently used buffs.

 

[Mikeal]

Leave it to the Codex to make not using hotkeys a virtue

Well duh codexers always have to stand out from the normies crowd by any means necessary even with something so basic as hotkeys. Seriously the only reason why turd-based games are popular with old farts on Codex is due to normies inability to play in them.

 

[Jvegi]

EDIT: Just a few minutes in and he's got some weird customized ruleset with a bunch of modded items/spells and other crap (I think some kind of expanded spell progression mod?). Not really a good guide IMO. I can understand making a guide that assumes SCS since its kind universally accepted but I have no idea what some of the stuff he's talking about is. Playing double damage insane SCS is also pretty moronic in the first place, I think SCS literally disables the difficulty damage multiplier by default?

SCS, Tweaks and Ascension, as vanilla as it gets. No added items other than some Ascension stuff.

Playing double damage insane SCS is also pretty moronic in the first place, I think SCS literally disables the difficulty damage multiplier by default?

Moronic? Ok... Weird statement, but ok.
SCS disables damage scaling, but you can turn it on if you're good enough. You obviously are not, but the guy is (and so am I, hue hue).

 

[Average Manatee]

EDIT: Just a few minutes in and he's got some weird customized ruleset with a bunch of modded items/spells and other crap (I think some kind of expanded spell progression mod?). Not really a good guide IMO. I can understand making a guide that assumes SCS since its kind universally accepted but I have no idea what some of the stuff he's talking about is. Playing double damage insane SCS is also pretty moronic in the first place, I think SCS literally disables the difficulty damage multiplier by default?

SCS, Tweaks and Ascension, as vanilla as it gets. No added items other than some Ascension stuff.

No, he's definitely got a ton of items that are not vanilla at all. He mentions Abashi hide practically every 5s and I can't find it on the wiki. I also noticed he's got a ring that doubles 1st level spell slots which is 100% broken for wild mages (the ring is available in BG1 but NOT BG2). It's kind of hard to overstate how broken it is when a level 5 wild mage can cast 10 level 9 spells, more than a max level Edwin.

Moronic? Ok... Weird statement, but ok.
SCS disables damage scaling, but you can turn it on if you're good enough. You obviously are not, but the guy is (and so am I, hue hue).

The thing is its not hard, it just means you need to cheese the game with mages. Like, he says that mages are the best class in the game. I totally agree, but its disingenuous when he then assumes you play modded stuff that makes mages way, way stronger. Mages can just become immune to all damage easily, you could set the damage multiplier to 20x and it wouldn't change things for them. He's also using mods that give mages way, way more spells.

It's like if someone made a Fallout 2 weapon guide that said the turbo plasma rifle was the best gun in the game. Then they revealed that they are using a mod that doubles all energy weapon damage and makes all enemies crit you if you aren't equipping an energy weapon. What's the point of installing a bunch of mods that make the already best stuff in the game more powerful? It doesn't need it.

 

[Cryomancer]

How much of the BG canon is made by TSR and how much is by WoTC?