Baldur's Gate The Baldur's Gate Series Thread

[hell bovine]

Here's something for the experts.
Let's say you cast Insect Plague on an unprotected enemy. When it hops to the next enemy will it bounce back on the caster if the said enemy was protected by Spell Deflection?
I though casting it on someone unprotected could be a cunning plan to hit those bastards with all their spell protections.

Shouldn't bounce, from what I remember. You can also cast insect plague on a friendly target (party NPC or summon); it won't do anything to them, but just jump to the nearest enemy.
PS definitely do the golden bones quest with SCS

 

[Barnabas]

I’m in the drow city right now just fought a gang u come across as u leave the drow city. There was 2 mages a giant thing a thief, they imprisoned me. It was one of my harder fights. The drow plate armor is so good wish I could legally keep it but not gonna try and cheat it

My party is me cavelier (flail of ages) Minsc (lilacor) keldorn (holy avenger), Jaheira club+3, imoen and Aerie

 

[Tigranes]

I'm starting to regret more and more not picking up Nalia (Edwin was never a choice role playing wise), since I'm still stuck at lvl 6 mage spells with Aerie, which means disabling enemy protections is starting to be a real problem. I chose Storm of Vengeance for Anomen's first HLA since it's party friendly and should disrupt groups of spell casters for three rounds. But maybe Summon Deva would have been better.
I also regret not making CHARNAME a cleric who could dual to Mage, since he's the weakest link in the party.
And ditching Jan and keeping Imoen as a pure Thief was maybe a mistake too.
Oh well, we'll see how far I can get before hitting a brick wall.

I did a few non-cheesy tries on the Twisted Rune. The vampire is mostly harmless due to Turn Undead, and the fighter dude is a pushover. The Beholder was the third who went down in my best try, but then the game crashed.
I took it a sign I should head for the Watchers' Keep instead.

If Aerie is your only mage in the party then you've given yourself an intentionally weakened party, given their importance in BG2. In terms of standard no-brainers without any intricate theorycrafting, I'd usually say one dedicated arcane spellcaster is important; thieves are gimped in vanilla BG2 which is why your permanent companions are all multi/dualclassed.

You can come back to it, it can indeed be fun to try and minimise the cheese, but with that party you probably do want to do the early WK levels, maybe up to 3.

 

[Somberlain]

Bards also make for excellent backup mages for buffing and debuffing. A lot of players probably don't realize it since it seems so counter intuitive, but spells cast by bards are usually more powerful than mages or sorcerers, because thieves and bards require less xp per level, their caster level will be higher. At the end of SoA, your bard/thief is going to be something like 5-6 levels higher than your sorcerer/mage, which makes a huge difference when it comes to spells such as Remove Magic, which is one of the best spells in the entire game.

Of course, bards will never be able to cast highest level spells.

 

[octavius]

I kind of regret not recruiting Haer'Dalis, since I like his dual wielding and combat abilities, and he's the only one who can use a number of items. But I recall from a previous game that like Viconia he was rather frail and usually the first one to die in a hard fight.

 

[Parabalus]

I kind of regret not recruiting Haer'Dalis, since I like his dual wielding and combat abilities, and he's the only one who can use a number of items. But I recall from a previous game that like Viconia he was rather frail and usually the first one to die in a hard fight.

He has access to lvl 6 (8 with RR) mage spell so he's way tankier than Viconia. He's a slightly gimped F/M which is still bonkers.

Bards also make for excellent backup mages for buffing and debuffing. A lot of players probably don't realize it since it seems so counter intuitive, but spells cast by bards are usually more powerful than mages or sorcerers, because thieves and bards require less xp per level, their caster level will be higher. At the end of SoA, your bard/thief is going to be something like 5-6 levels higher than your sorcerer/mage, which makes a huge difference when it comes to spells such as Remove Magic, which is one of the best spells in the entire game.

Of course, bards will never be able to cast highest level spells.

Skull Trap with a Bard is particularly devious, one of the mods (SCS?) gives it a cap because of them.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I've reached the final level of Durlag's Tower and after exploring some rooms I decided to take a break (and also unload all the phat lewt). I've explored the Carnival area, the Archeological Site area, and I'm about to finish exploring the Lighthouse area. Really, the big issue with BG now becomes much more obvious: very empty open areas with little content to them, yet absolutely filled with trash encounters (I'm tired of wolves, hobgoblins, kobolds, and basically every other trash mob Baldur's Gate loves to throw at you by the fucking dozen). And respawns.

The great thing about Durlag's Tower is that space is limited but useful, and not absurdly claustrophobic to prevent proper navigation (despite the ocassional pathfinding brain fart). The empy areas usually have a gist to them, like traps or surprise encounters. And there's a huge charm to the whole place, with the rooms beautifully crafted as opposed to another woods/grass/mountain/sand pattern. The entire place is great, and I believe Baldur's Gate would have benefited from following in the Fallout design of having random encounters (which ironically are already present in Baldur's Gate, and are the few times where combat isn't so annoying) outside of the main maps. You can easily tell the difference between a handful of petrified adventurers warning you that Basiliks are roaming the area, and Hobgoblins that spawn for no reason a few feet ahead of you.

If Baldur's Gate had followed the design principles behind Durlag's Tower for the entirety of the game, it would have been a much better RPG. As it is, going back to those areas after playing DT feels like serious decline.

I've just finished the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion and I have to agree with you, and likely a lot of other people, Durlag's Tower is like playing a completely different game to the rest of Baldur's Gate 1 and it's expansion. I'd likely be a lot more positive about it if it hadn't been fucked for me at the offset though.

I played BG1 vanilla from a disk and then, when I'd finished that, loaded up the TotSC expansion from another disk. Unfortunately, Bioware shipped the wrong discs to the UK, shipping the USA/Canada version of TotSC which wouldn't play on a UK PC. I had to faff around with a patch to get it to accept the disc and even then the patch assumed I was using the original 6 disc set rather than the collectors edition single disc sets, causing even more faffing around. Then, when I'd finally got it working and had completed the prison Island and went off to Baldur's Gate city to get the sea charts I was able to see that the game hadn't updated to the new TotSC map, Uthgart's (or whatever it was called) vilage wasn't on the map and neither was Durlag's Tower.

I looked around for another patch for this, but none existed. Some google results gave a solution, but nothing downloadable and my game files didn't seem to have the game files they were talking about to amend. After a lot more faffing around I gave up, only to, at the last minute, try a mission start and then it gave me the correct map... but with their preset generic suggested party build, not the characters I'd played BG1 with.

So my appreciation of the game has been marred from the outset by having to learn all these new characters, having no new character creation and basically doing the whole expansion with someone else's party.

In one of your other posts below this one you said that the werewolf island was lazier even than the prison island, to which I'm amazed no-one corrected you, but the prison island is a 100% copy and paste of the Kobold bridge map from the original game. I almost laughed but I was too busy crying at the time. The werewolf island was ok, it fit the same theme as the rest of BG1 with its huge map with nothing in it but the odd NPC, a couple of lame quests and some trash mobs with a half-decent big fight at one specific location. The post-big-battle epilogue fighting was pretty stupid though, as was, like you say, most of the dialogue and character motivation. I'd already guessed the 'plot twist' as I'd tested out killing some annoying NPCs before leaving the village... though just as save, test, reload, not as actual actions.

But Durlag's Tower? Holy shit, they actually made a proper game. I was fully expecting to shit all over it, but no, it's for real. Maybe they were short of staff that week and some guys came over from Black Isle to do some contract work...?

My only real issues with Durlog's Tower stem from, firstly, the disc problem, in that I was now saddled with Edwin as my mage instead of Minsc's girlfriend, meaning I had fuck all Identify abilities, and, secondly, like the main campaign, I was now saddled with an inventory full of runestones instead of scrolls, both of which factors are a real pig if you want to minimise world travel (due to disc instability) and not go back to town before completing the dungeon. So it's hard for me to give a properly fair view on that stage as I was still getting frustrated more than I should have been, but at least it wasn't from bad content or combat. Also, I thought the loot from that area kinda sucked considering the (in-game) hype of that place. When I did finally get back to town and identify everything, only about three things were useful to anyone, and only then on a very scenario-dependent level. A hat which prevents fear? Meh, everyone has anti-fear spells that they'll be casting in that kind of situation anyway. A gorgeous flame sword? Meh, it's only +1 except against XYZ random enemies, so my original +2 is still better unless random scenarios etc. Etc etc etc. A couple of nice +3 items, but the odds of someone using those specific items... meh, if you'd known at the beginning of the game then maybe.

The final, final boss fight for the expansion, the demon, was a cool fight, I enjoyed raging at it until I'd figured it out, but I still think it's an extremely cheap 'difficulty' tactic to introduce "bad guys with powers no-one else has" right at the last minute. I mean, it's hilarious when you beat the guy and get the end-credits-cut-scene only to then die as soon as it over because of the demon's delayed 'fuck-you' spell, but I didn't have a crowd watching me so it was more of a case of *facepalming* until I'd worked out how to spot the new thing and how to deal with it. I mean, it's good because it makes you think, but it's also just cheap because.. it's a cheap dirty trick. So I'm mixed on that encounter. The AI for it was good though.


All in all I'd say the expansion has a lot going for it while at the same time still not really giving me enough to ever likely consider replaying BG1.

I think if I was to ever play BG1 again I'd need some kind of mod. A mod which quite literally cuts out all the crap and just gives a good tight semi-linear adventure. One where someone's gone into each map and just cut everything that's pointless bollocks. Pointless house with three boxes in it? Cut. Pointless swathe of land with nothing it it? Cut. Pointless dead-end strips to dungeon mazes? Cut. I know you can do all that by player choice anyway, but if I replay this in ten years then I'll never remember where all the 'good' stuff is, and I'm never 'wandering about' BG1 again, ever, I know that for a fact.

 

[Lacrymas]

I don't know what Aec'letec ability you are referring to. If you mean his Gaze attack, then no, basilisks also have a gaze and Aec'letec's is countered the same way. If you mean his revival, then yeah, but that's part of the encounter. Baldur's Gate 1's big open maps serve to make the adventure seem more adventurous and big. Yeah, it's smoke and mirrors, but it does its job, if you are raging at the lack of a quest every 2 steps you are missing the point. Not only that, but BG1 was an experiment at the time, trying to push into a genre looooong dead by that point, so the amount of content they did manage to cram in is admirable. Is there a little bit too much combat with bottom feeder mobs like kobolds, gnolls and diseased gibberlings and a little bit too much walking around in samey forest areas? Yes. Does it make it unplayable? No.

BG1's biggest problem is the patchwork design of its content, nothing being connected to anything else and there's no sense of pacing because everything is in a vacuum. You are constantly in this fugue state of nothingness and wandering about stumbling on stuff to do until you decide to continue on with the main quest. It kind of works, I guess, but eeehhhhh. Its virtues heavily outweigh the bad sides.

 

[Sigourn]

In one of your other posts below this one you said that the werewolf island was lazier even than the prison island, to which I'm amazed no-one corrected you, but the prison island is a 100% copy and paste of the Kobold bridge map from the original game. I almost laughed but I was too busy crying at the time. The werewolf island was ok, it fit the same theme as the rest of BG1 with its huge map with nothing in it but the odd NPC, a couple of lame quests and some trash mobs with a half-decent big fight at one specific location. The post-big-battle epilogue fighting was pretty stupid though, as was, like you say, most of the dialogue and character motivation. I'd already guessed the 'plot twist' as I'd tested out killing some annoying NPCs before leaving the village... though just as save, test, reload, not as actual actions.

I didn't meant to say it was literally lazier than the prison island, only that it really felt lazier because of how uninspiring the whole of it was. Just another huge, pretty looking map, but devoid of content. The prison island was much more interesting despite having a copy-pasted layout (I didn't notice this to be honest).

Durlag's Tower was pretty cool, but as you said the loot kinda sucked. Being the ultimate end-game location, I feel as though no amount of loot will make up for the fact the game is essentially over.

I mean, it's good because it makes you think, but it's also just cheap because.. it's a cheap dirty trick. So I'm mixed on that encounter. The AI for it was good though.

Yeah, that was absolute bullshit. I was more than willing to let some of my party members die permanently (I had lost around two or three, I think), then the cutscene happened and suddenly my Ranger died.

 

[hell bovine]

I've once abandoned the werewolf island final quest (to slay the big bad wolf). All of the party, except for the main character, turned into hostile werewolves. (though I'm not 100% sure if this was original game, or modded content)

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I don't know what Aec'letec ability you are referring to. If you mean his Gaze attack, then no, basilisks also have a gaze and Aec'letec's is countered the same way. If you mean his revival, then yeah, but that's part of the encounter. Baldur's Gate 1's big open maps serve to make the adventure seem more adventurous and big. Yeah, it's smoke and mirrors, but it does its job, if you are raging at the lack of a quest every 2 steps you are missing the point. Not only that, but BG1 was an experiment at the time, trying to push into a genre looooong dead by that point, so the amount of content they did manage to cram in is admirable. Is there a little bit too much combat with bottom feeder mobs like kobolds, gnolls and diseased gibberlings and a little bit too much walking around in samey forest areas? Yes. Does it make it unplayable? No.

BG1's biggest problem is the patchwork design of its content, nothing being connected to anything else and there's no sense of pacing because everything is in a vacuum. You are constantly in this fugue state of nothingness and wandering about stumbling on stuff to do until you decide to continue on with the main quest. It kind of works, I guess, but eeehhhhh. Its virtues heavily outweigh the bad sides.

Well, to me, the appalling pacing ties into the repetitive and mostly empty environments combined with endless trash mobs, to which my comment about modding out all the crap would indeed also help make everything a bit less of a patchwork, but we're likely talking about the same point but just using different reasoning. I certainly wasn't raging about not getting a quest every 2 steps, so there's clearly some misunderstanding going on, which is a shame because I think we're both talking about the same thing in terms of criticism.

Regards the Aec'letec battle:

I can't comment on the revival thing because that was the one aspect that got spoiled for me when I googled for the cult's location. Yeah, yeah, yeah, dur, it was 2 houses away from the quest-giver, but now imagine someone new to the game turning the other way out the bar and trying to look for it on the world map... etc.

Is the gaze attack the same as the Basilisk attack and should someone be able to 'work that out easily'? No, it's not, because:

1) It's delayed, not instantaneous.
2) You do not have 'Ghast to human' spells.
3) the icon for it on the portrait is different.
4) You can remove it before it takes effect.

Without someone making the not necessarily logical leap of assuming a gaze attack is the same as any other gaze attack then there's fuck all reason someone would assume they are the same thing with the same pre-buff requirement. Once experienced with spotting it, I dealt with it the same way you deal with most ailments... Dispel Magic.

But that boss encounter is 'different' in quite a lot of ways, most of which are indeed fairly cheap tricks, but regardless, the hard part was not defeating him, but defeating him without anyone dying as, most importantly, his AI was extremely good as he didn't get distracted by summons and specifically targets your weaker characters, hones in on them once paralysed and doesn't get easily distracted from finishing them off before you can whittle down his 180hp... after waiting before trying because you have to deal with the revives first. So its not really about one thing in particular, but a combination of factors which have zero connection to the rest of the entire game's learning process. So I killed him several times but usually with Imonen or the Cleric dead at the end and only died myself a couple of times before I'd worked it all out. So yeah, fun battle, but I'm just critiquing the fact that they needed cheap tricks in order to devise something that was fun, rather than put some effort into making it 'fit' with the rest of the game (see your point regarding patchwork gameplay).

 

[hell bovine]

Is the gaze attack the same as the Basilisk attack and should someone be able to 'work that out easily'?

Doesn't it literally say "death gaze" whenever he uses that ability in the combat log, though? (it's been awhile since I've last played it)

 

[Colour Spray]

I think the first Baldur's Gate is more of an acquired taste, in that sense, because I wasn't immediately drawn to it the first time I played it, either. The second time you play asks much less that you go out on a limb on the off-chance that you might find something interesting; and the memorable parts leave enough of an impression that you're not likely to miss anything important by zig-zagging through the wilderness areas with a certain goal in mind. So that there's less need to meticulously reveal every last patch of fog of war on the off-chance that something is hidden there.

I read your criticisms and don't think you're being particularly unfair, even where I disagree, but making everything too obvious can end up being worse. There's even less inclination to replay a game that reveals all of its tricks to you far too easily.

This potion will protect the drinker from all forms of petrification including gaze attacks. The effect will last for 10 rounds or until dispelled.

^ It's understandable if you take that to mean gaze attacks that also cause petrification.

I can also understand why you're credulous over Sarevok but the story is never told from his perspective, so I'm less eager to make any assumptions on the character's motivations. If he's more aware of the stakes at play than charname, he may also be less keen on over-extending his reach too early and drawing the ire of the other players in the game.

And, to Baldur's Gate's credit, there's few games this well made that don't hurry passed the first low level epoch in your character's career. No doubt a side-effect of the d&d campaign heritage that it takes.

 

[Lacrymas]

The potion should say "including ALL gaze attacks", but, yeah, I never really had a problem with that ability even on my first playthrough. I saw he does a gaze attack, reloaded, drank enough potions of mirrored eyes and gg.

 

[Jason Liang]

The original BG1:EE should not be counted among the top 20 or even top 30 crpgs of all time, even if you include SCS, mods, the Beamdog companions and the Dragonspear dlc. There is a huge leap in quality from BG1:EE to BG2:EE. It's ridiculous that the last codex poll still rated it ahead of ToEE, Darklands, KotOR, KotOR 2, Pool of Radiance, Ultima IV, V, VII and Underworld, even IWD:EE and IWD2 (and I seriously detest both IWD: EE and IWD 2). Even with all the updates and modding that it's received, BG1:EE is still NOT a good RPG. It's ALMOST ~ BARELY a good cRPG.

Even Skyrim is a better rpg than BG1:EE. There, I've said it!

 

[Dzupakazul]

The original BG1:EE

 

[virgin_newfag]

Currently playing BG for the first time, starting from 1 like a true pro. Anything I should know without having to read the manual? The discovery of TAB button was fundamental for example

 

[hell bovine]

Eh, BG1 can accomodate a variety of playstyles and parties, and has plenty of NPCs for hire should some of them meet an unfortunate end. That said, get a thief, get them to 100 in find traps and open locks and always, always scout for traps in dungeons.

 

[Lacrymas]

There is only 1 dungeon worth anything in BG1 and it's Durlag's Tower. Coincidentally, it's also one of the best dungeons in gaming history. Yeah, you need find traps and open locks.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Currently playing BG for the first time, starting from 1 like a true pro. Anything I should know without having to read the manual? The discovery of TAB button was fundamental for example

Simple class thieves suck big time in AD&D. Do a multiclass thief if it's you main character, fighter/thief is my favourite, but whatever floats your boat.

If you play vanilla BG, going in the inventory does not pause the game, so don't do it in combat, unless you really have to. You'll be free to totally abuse inventory management during combat in BG2 though.

Missile weapons, and bows in particular, are really powerful in BG (even without kiting like a little bitch), so you might consider using a fighter as an archer rather than as another tank.

 

[ga♥]

Single class thief in BG1 is allright, its in BG2+TOB that starts to show weakness.

 

[Baardhaas]

Currently playing BG for the first time, starting from 1 like a true pro. Anything I should know without having to read the manual? The discovery of TAB button was fundamental for example

Don't be afraid to use potions, wands and other stuff that gives you an edge in a fight. The game throws plenty of them at you, so you really don't need to save them for that special occasion.

Take your time. There aren't many time sensitive quests and those that are, usually include a NPC who will remind you constantly about it.

 

[Dzupakazul]

Single class thief in BG1 is allright, its in BG2+TOB that starts to show weakness.

Single-class Thief in BG1 is only alright if you consider that the early game is basically "shoot your ranged weapon a lot", which is what most people default their rogue to doing anyway, and you need a thief to disable traps and locks anyway. For actual combat performance, it's pretty trashy, and arguably the weakest of all classes (even a level 1 Mage can generally shut down a combat encounter up to three times a day with a cast of Sleep; Bards have Long Bows, spells, and the ability to use wands) in combat.

Where Thieves generally shine is extreme late game of BG2 where they get ridiculously good HLAs where they can even play quasi-mage as long as they have scrolls (and abusing Vhailor's Helm lets you keep all your scrolls all the time). Solo Bounty Hunter was the first documented character to beat SCS + Ascension + Legacy of Bhaal; there's a post about that on Beamdog forums. Late-game is also where Assassins get their x7 stab modifier and where Swashbucklers get the opportunity to easily reach sub -20 AC.

 

[Gimble]

If you are going to import the character into BG2 (or are playing BGT) , then you will want to play a class that is enjoyable through the best parts of these games - which is BG2 base content. TOB is mainly one battle after another with very little questing and most classes are viable for the expansion content even on SCS/Ascension with the HLAs + items + optional exploits.

Fighters are pretty much one-dimensional without HLAs, which you wont have during BG2 until the expansion areas. Thieves' backstab remains good throughout BG2 content until expansion where you run into backstab immunity very frequently and then have to rely on HLAs alone at that point. Fighter-thieves and Fighter-mages are very good throughout. Mages/Sorcerers are the most versatile single class in BG2.

BG1 is also a pretty ordinary experience compared to BG2, but worth that first playthrough.

 

[virgin_newfag]

Well thanks for the tips guys. I had already started with a pure thief but it's not too bad so far. I think I'll make a new char in BG2 though