Are 95% of the spells useless? I've loaded up my healers with nothing but healing spells and mages with missile spells and haste. It feels like I'm playing the game wrong. I just exited the first dungeon.
My main character is a neutral good kensai. I've been reading guides about kensai/mages so I'm going that route. Which party members should I get?
Though I do remember playing a Paladin (all the way through from BG1) because they're decent melee and have the ability to heal and buff too. Mortious fucked around with this message on 01-19-2012 at 07:03 AM.
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. - John Kenneth Galbraith
Oh yeah.. and the best weapon in the series (found in Throne of Bhaal) is a Paladin only two handed sword. Talk about a stroke of luck I was already a Pally. Mortious fucked around with this message on 01-19-2012 at 10:25 AM.
No reason as to why he was in a basement of a normal house though. Maybe he was just chilling and I came in and killed him.
I'm a monster. 
I went into some sewers and theres a group of dudes that made my guys straight up go panic mode but I somehow won after reloading a billion times.
On top of that, a lot of the time, the game's scripted AI that you can give your party sucks ass.
General thoughts from running through the entirety of Baldur's Gate 1 last summer:
-Keep at least one or two Anti-CC abilities on your characters at all times. Also, hold on to anything that prevents CC. CC abilities from what I remember are Charms, Holds, Sleep, Fear, and there's a couple of other ones too. I know paladins get Remove Fear. Get your mages the spell Dispel Magic (there's a higher level version in Baldur's Gate 2 iirc) and use it if your group ever gets hit by a really nasty CC ability.
-Your party will need at least one main healer. This character will probably have almost nothing but healing spells prepared. Almost anyway, make sure they have some sort of anti-CC spells prepared, and any party-wide buffs they can have prepared are incredibly important as well.
-Try to stack your main character's stats as best you can. If you're going to be a melee fighter, make sure your STR, STA, and DEX are at least 18 base. Unlike DnD 3rd Ed, Dex still gives you massive returns in terms of armor bonus with a full suit of plate armor on. You'll get hit noticeably less doing this.
-Make sure your party has at least one rogue. Can be multi-classed, whatever. You need to have someone that can detect and disarm traps. When entering a new room in a dungeon, try to lure enemies out of the room into a previous room, and then after killing all of the enemies, carefully and slowly move your trap detector around the room. The game's distance on trap detection is fucking horrible, and it is very easy to get gibbed by some bullshit trap in the middle of a room that for some reason you couldn't detect.
-Some obvious things: Keep healing potions on all of your characters. Keep Oils of Speed on all of your characters. Scrolls are very useful for certain buffs or CC abilities that you don't use too often.
-Be cheap whenever you can. If you have to fight some monster that does stupid amounts of damage in melee, but doesn't have anything for ranged, don't be afraid to kite the fucker around in circles once he gets pissed off at one of your characters. Clogging hallways with summoned monsters to form choke points is not a terrible strategy either.
-Pause. A lot. Also sometimes it is actually better to turn off your party's AI and do everything yourself.
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I remember trying to play BG1 and I got to like the first town and there was a mage waiting for me there that used magic missile or something and I died five times in a row then stopped playing.
In Baldur's Gate 1 there's this extra expansion boss that is absolutely fucking retarded. He has this melee attack that heals himself for damage dealt and increases his maximum HP. There is no cap on how much he can increase his maximum HP by. If you take too long to kill him, he will have so much health you will not be able to kill him.
On top of that, he's highly resistant to magic.
On top of that, he has a very high amount of armor so he's hard to hit.
On top of that, he has a mage buddy that you must kill at the beginning of the fight that has AoE and crowd control spells.
On top of that, you have to kill 6 or so cultists that have surrounded him. If any of them are alive when the boss dies, they instantly die and turn into a perfect replica of the boss.
Finally, he does some retarded Death Gaze ability that he can do instantly to any of your party members within range that will put a Hold effect on them for a fairly long period of time as well as a debuff. If you don't remove the debuff within a certain period of time, the character instantly dies.
Aec'letec is quite possibly one of the most difficult bosses I've ever had to deal with in an RPG, and it took a few hours of messing around with different strategies before I managed to kill him. Willias fucked around with this message on 01-24-2012 at 04:23 PM.
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Willias stumbled drunkenly to the keyboard and typed:
-Try to stack your main character's stats as best you can. If you're going to be a melee fighter, make sure your STR, STA, and DEX are at least 18 base. Unlike DnD 3rd Ed, Dex still gives you massive returns in terms of armor bonus with a full suit of plate armor on. You'll get hit noticeably less doing this.
Unless this was changed exclusively for Baldur's Gate, I'm pretty sure D&D 2nd edition rules did have a dex bonus max on suits of armor. While you could get suits of full plate that would allow for decent dex bonuses, I don't remember if there were any suits that allowed for a +4 dex bonus to AC.
This would occasionally lead to, say, a suit of banded or splint mail being better than a suit of full plate due to the dex bonus to AC that was allowed. Especially magical suits of armor.
Basically, just make sure you check each piece of armor before you go ahead and equip it to make sure you don't actually lose AC by doing so.
It was probably the most epic game series I've ever played, especially if you take the same character from BG1 (at his shitty level 1) right the way through to Throne of Bhaal where you get into Epic levels and finally claim your birthright and become a new D&D god.
I kept the same companions throughout, I'm a manly man but the stories of what happened to them after you complete the game had me tearing up.
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Falaanla Marr's fortune cookie read:
Unless this was changed exclusively for Baldur's Gate, I'm pretty sure D&D 2nd edition rules did have a dex bonus max on suits of armor. While you could get suits of full plate that would allow for decent dex bonuses, I don't remember if there were any suits that allowed for a +4 dex bonus to AC.This would occasionally lead to, say, a suit of banded or splint mail being better than a suit of full plate due to the dex bonus to AC that was allowed. Especially magical suits of armor.
Basically, just make sure you check each piece of armor before you go ahead and equip it to make sure you don't actually lose AC by doing so.
Except that a number of "D&D Games" were either buggy or just didn't bother with those calculations/checks. The only games that I know of that were particularly detail oriented in that aspect were the old SSI games...
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nem-x still thinks SARS jokes are topical, as evidenced by:
I'm still mucking around Athlatka in Chapter 2. I kind of want to rush to get Imoen back in my party but I don't want to get raped trying to do so.
Imoen sucks. Let her rot until you've pretty much done all the sidequests you want to do.
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. - John Kenneth Galbraith
Also, even if you think you might be reloading enough as it is, get the Baldurdash difficulty tweaks. They ramp up the difficulty on some SoA bosses, and most ToB ones, making the latter extremely satisfying. The thing is, by the time you get to Throne of Bhaal, you have so many godlike powers that the fights don't really feel up to snuff.
I'll always fondly remember the fight against Abazigal who in the Baldurdash version comes with one added dragon and a bunch of extra drakes. (Only have 5 characters because there are only 5 Boots of Speed to be had in the game, not counting that terrible suit of armour.) Suffice to say, it took a lot of micromanagement to finally get it right.
If you want to ditch Yoshimo, I always enjoyed Jan as a replacement for my thieving needs.
Anyways, how is the Icewind dale series in comparison? GOG is having a 2 for 1 thing going on right now
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nem-x painfully thought these words up:
Anyways, how is the Icewind dale series in comparison? GOG is having a 2 for 1 thing going on right now
Didn't really like them. They focus very heavily (almost exclusively) on combat and dungeon crawling. There is about as much story in them as in the average Diablo game (another series I don't really like). If that doesn't bother you, they're probably pretty good games.
Edit: They are the polar opposite of Planescape: Torment. Which you should play, if you haven't yet. Tarquinn fucked around with this message on 02-22-2012 at 02:22 AM.
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nem-x wrote, obviously thinking too hard:
So I'm in the underdark right now. I'm definitely missing my kensai at the moment since he turned into a crummy mage. I only did the de'arnisse keep sidequest outside of town and left all the other stuff for after I return. Still saving every five seconds.Anyways, how is the Icewind dale series in comparison? GOG is having a 2 for 1 thing going on right now
Do you like the story of Baldur's Gate more or do you like the strategy-based combat more?
Because the Icewind Dale games focus almost entirely on combat. You build a party at the beginning of the game, and that's what you're stuck with. No interesting companion or NPC characters, just the party you build yourself and the next ridiculous fight in front of you.
Icewind Dale 1 is actually older than Baldur's Gate 2, so expect 640x480 resolution and some weird issues with the 2nd edition DnD rule set. Icewind Dale 2 is based in 3rd Ed DnD, and was the last Infinity Engine game that Black Isle made.
Also, I don't think there's much that connects Icewind Dale 1 and Icewind Dale 2 story-wise, so you can basically jump right in to the second game with no story issues.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-02-29-website-teases-new-baldurs-gate
Edit: Source
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boblemoche, SA:
I would like to be optimistic, but from the twitter of Trent Oster, the guy behind the website :https://twitter.com/#!/TrentOster/status/170634043753381888
Seems like an iOS port.
Tarquinn fucked around with this message on 02-29-2012 at 01:56 PM.
Enhanced edition? What?
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
