I have decided to play through Baldur's Gate, so I downloaded the client from http://www.gog.com/en/frontpage/ (Awesome site for classic games btw). Myself having played the game through several times decided to impose some house rules:
#1 - Upon main character death game must be restarted. #2 - No reloading saves to replay a bad situation(example tripping a trap, and reloading it so I can disarm the trap and avoid damage)
I'm not familiar with many exploits for the game and I won't be using any, this is a straight up playthrough. If people like this, I'll keep posting attempts.
ATTEMPT #1 YURGEN FARRAK
I create a standard Human Ranger, named Yurgen Farrak. I only spend a few rolls attempts to get at least decent stats, happy with what I got I moved on and started the game. I decided to start documenting things later so I don't have any real notes here. I did all the standard Candlekeep quests, and used what gold I had to purchase:
Long Sword Short Bow Couple arrow bundles Helmet Studded Leather armor.
With this I was off and picked up imoen. I skipped Montaron and Xzar as I wanted to be a really good aligned party. In the area directly west of Candlekeep I made sure to get the ogre hiding in the top right, the fight went ok but nearly got killed right off the get go sitting at 1 hp from a single swing. I kill the ogre and claim the Girdle of Piercing(an absolute necessary Item when dealing with bandits).
I proceed to the Friendly Amn and turn out lucky facing the mage bounty hunter standing before the entrance, was able to interrupt his mirror image, this is a challenging fight if he can successfully cast this. With the mage dead I move inside pickup Khalid and Jaheria, purchase assorted equipment and move on south to the city of Beregost. Once I reach Beregost I take out Silke easily enough and pickup the bard Garrik. My reasoning at this point is more bodies even very weak bodies are better than less bodies.
I move south and proceed to Nashkel to deal with the Iron Crisis. This is where the game said FUCK YOU YURGEN!!!! In bold lettering and underlined text.
A random encounter between 2 zones:
Bandits are the bane of all healthy parties in Baldur's Gate
I actually yelled oh fuck at this point. Did the game really just throw 12 fucking bandits at me. Although I'm only a hour in this is really heartbreaking. However I try my best to survive:
What a magnificent first round
Garrik IMMEDIATELY FALLS to 1 shot. Having 6 hp is not too great. I drank a potion of invulnerability and a potion of stone defense on Khalid and Jaheria asap(they were the ones carrying those potions atm)
Imoen handle those seven over there, I - being your fearless fighter will handle this one.
With the assistance of stuffing healing potions down her throat- Imoen was able to hold on for a few rounds against the entire western flank of bandits. She however fell shortly after. At this point I have only claimed the life of a single bandit.
A round after Imoen fell Yurgen took a ton of arrows at once immediately falling dead, with the main character down the game is over and so much for Attempt #1.
What I've learned:
To keep potions on the proper characters! I may have had better luck sending Khalid to the western flank but I feel I've been totally FUCKED by the game this attempt, that many bandits at level 1 is just absolutely ridiculous. Oh well. The next character will be a female Elf mage : Sim Ky'ren!
ATTEMPT #2 - SIM KY'REN
Everything starts out all dandy, I purchase a dagger from Winthrop and proceed to Gorion. I decided to skip the starting quests with my mage because you really can't get anything as a mage - there is nothing to purchase and no items to acquire from quests. The only thing I think is of note is the identify scroll I can steal.
After the cinematic fight I get Imoen loot Gorions corpse. I proceed west and head to Friendly Amn. I decide i'll give the ogre a shot and see if no luck I'll run. I didn't even reach the ogre...
We ran into a wolf on our travels and slayed it, Imoen took 3 damage and Sim Ky'ren was complaining about lack of sleep. I decide to take a rest, I'm awoken in the middle of the night by noise.
A fucking gibberling, A FUCKING gibberling
Immediately after dropping Imoen , the gibberling takes 1 swing and drops Sim Ky'ren. That's it, son of fucking Baahl destined to save or destroy all the realm killed by a gibberling. I will be laughed out of hell. But yeah , Sim Ky'rens life gets snuffed out in 5 minutes.
I'm probably going to start up a beefy fighter next, lets see gibberlings fuck me over then.
encounters like bandits ambushes and that damn wolf in the 1st map is why BG1 is my favorite game of all time and not BG2, nothing like getting ur ass kicked the 1st time u step out of Candlekeep. Will definitely follow! You will 100% not make it if ur next char is a mage tho ;p.
Do some easy quests for free quest exp to level yourself up, then it becomes a bit easier. Otherwise, the mage is going to have a hard time with >10 HP for a couple of levels...
All I can say is that I played this game a lot and if you want to play this one through without dying a single time, you should solo your main character a bit before you let other party members join your group. When party members join your team they will get an experience level equivalent to your own (max. lv. 5 iirc) That way you will get much more experienced characters from the get go.
Because of the shared experience pools it takes a much longer time to level up a party than a single character. In some instances Baldurs Gate soloing can be quite over-powered, if you know the game well and know what you have to prepare for.
A mage is the hardest character to play early on, because it takes long before he/she gets powerful. I would definitely recommend a character class than can wear full plate mail - for a safer ride, you know. AC is the most important thing in physical combat. If you manage to get under -6 not many opponents in BG 1 will be able to hit you.
Well, I'll be sure to follow this one. I simply love Baldur's Gate.
Oh, yes. I would advise you to stay away from Durlag's Tower. It's meant to be hard even for capped characters. Too risky!
Ha, that's a pretty nice idea. I might give this a go (right now, in fact, while I'm waiting for some downloads to finish ;D), but I'm going to use Tutu* because that's the only thing I have installed right now.
haha this is fucking awesome. I will do this in BG2, prefer it immensely to BG1, but a great idea nonetheless. Very hardcore and cool . I like people who take traps like a man and don't reload.
Hahahah, they were NOT fucking around with the difficulty of this game. I've done the opening areas to BG1 and 2 so many times I just can't stomache it anymore.
Excellent idea, I actually thought about playing through BG1 without reloading, gonna give it a shot. Recently, I've been playing with my friend, and oh boy Baldur's Gate on multiplayer is sooo much fun.
Intense house-rules, but a terrible idea to do a Mage with those rules. Will get fucking crushed 99% of the time. If you get a good Con/Str, just roll through the beginning with a Fighter. :D
Please post more of these. They put me in mind of my boyhood.
I always used to roll a neutral evil human conjurer. What a pitiful class, a Mage with a minimum Con requirement...? Poor guy. Loved summoning creatures with him, though. Between summoned creatures and the Con he had fair survivability.
BG is awesome. A word of advice however. Ranged characters own this game. If you are using Tutu or BGT and have access to the Archer kit at level 1 it is basically cheating. Also familiars are huge bad-asses at low levels if you choose to go the mage route again. A little cat familiar will wreck like seven bandits. Those classes aren't really balanced around low levels though (and archers are pretty imbalanced at all levels) so this could be considered an exploit. Either way it is good to have a competent ranged character in the party. Kivan is available early on and has high Dex and good THAC0, but he is kind of gimpy. Coran is available late in the game, and is even more gimpy, but he is part thief, and has an illegal 20 Dexterity. Khalid is decent with a bow early on too due to his adequate Dex. Shar Teel as well if you're evil. Get a bunch of ranged characters together and a mage that can summon things and you will not have any trouble in BG1, though this approach will generally get you killed in BG2.
man those were some of the greatest games i ever played, so many memories.
but idk why people dont like mage so much tho, in BG1 sleep is so ridiculously powerful of a spell. could practically solo the whole game as a mage just cause of that spell
Vanilla BG shouldn't be too hard to beat with a ranger/warrior/pala if you are careful.
You can be unlucky at low level since the characters are really weak but once you get level 4 or 5 you will be able to escape easily if the situation becomes too dangerous. The Durlag tower and the wolves of Tosc could be a good challenge though.
I wanted to do the same thing roguelike rules with the SCS mod but i gave up when i realized how hard some fights are ( SCS Sarevok is really nasty ).
Really fun read, don't give up
On June 22 2011 10:52 Keldrath wrote: man those were some of the greatest games i ever played, so many memories.
but idk why people dont like mage so much tho, in BG1 sleep is so ridiculously powerful of a spell. could practically solo the whole game as a mage just cause of that spell
Sleep is only good if you like to load / reload lol.
It won't work well vs mass mobs ( especially ranged ) and high level monsters with res. Mage is definitly the worst class if you want to solo BG1 with the no reload rule.
Also i will quote a long argument i had with a really uneducated guy in the DAO2 thread about BG since this thread is the perfect example of why a game becomes much harder when you can't reload.
On March 10 2011 09:28 Boblion wrote: Yea i like difficulty and mods. What's wrong with that ? AoE spam doesn't work btw.
Nothing whatsoever. Until you expect newly-released games to be perfect out of the gate. AoE spam in what? BG1? 2? You kidding? You could kill that Ogre with the gender-swapping belt on the 2nd map immediately after leaving Candlekeep with just one Sleep spell (which usually took a few reloads to get the thing to stick long enough to kill it, but still) and not suffering a hint of damage. Later on you get Emotion: Hopelessness (and right out the gate in BG2) which works on damned-near everything, letting you smash them one-by-one.
Like if i play vanilla ( and even vanilla is harder than DA2 by a fairly large margin lol ) Also how you spam AoE with a lvl 1 mage ? Dude stop to be ridiculous =(
On March 10 2011 09:43 Bibdy wrote: Yeeeees, and that's why BG2 had a buttload more content than BG1 in a similar development time-frame. Your point?
Well it was kinda funny too see oxxo post and then yours :p
Anyway i'm done. You like DA2 that's fine but don't cry if some people think it is terrible
Sleep is a level 1 D&D spell... you aren't spamming it, but you have access to it right from the word 'go'. One AOE CC spell and its all over. Smack Rest after the battle. Repeat ad winnum. Same as DA:O. It has a cooldown, but all you need is one cast and voila (or you picked a specialized Mage, and than you can do it TWICE...)
And you don't like DA2, so don't go freaking out when some people like it.
I love how you try so hard to find some ridiculous example to explain that BG isn't harder than DA2 lol. I mean yea man you can kill that ogre if you are ready to reload 4 or 5 time, because if he saves vs sleep you are basicly dead. Now if you were not such a whiner maybe you could try to not be a save/load abuser. I mean i can beat the most ridiculous arcade games on an emulator too if i can save/reload at will.
Also dude YOU are the one freaking out lol, i was just answering to DjEtter and then you started to quote me and to say wrong things ( see above ).
It was exactly that, an example. It's not like its the only place you can use the spell. You know, it works even better on those big packs of hobgoblin archers you run into, too, because they rarely resist. Just one cast and a whole swath of the guys are sitting on their butt waiting to die.
But yeah, let's keep pretending like you had to be a grand master at chess to clear your way through the Naskel Mines and that killing a Ankheg at level 4 was just totally impossible. I certainly never killed the Red Dragon in BG2 with ease by throwing Fire Protection on everybody. It was truly luck itself that made me grab spells like Breach and "insert name of one of six different spell ward removing spells here" to roflstomp every mage I came across. No, that game was just HARD, man.
That's why everyone plays with SCS I & II, solo or on hard difficulty + roguelike rules when they try another run lol.
Anyway i have always read or heard that the first vanilla run is hard, even in normal. Did you just read the BG threads here ? Pretty much all the newbies were like "damn this game is hard" because they get smashed by the same ogre that you are so proud to beat with 5 reloads ( lol ).
edit: also lol at you for suggesting that a mage is the easy way to ezpz BG1 since it is by far the weakest character at low level. But yea if you enjoy to reload 5 times at every fight yea the game isn't too hard. Imoen tank gogo ^^
Now if that clown was playing the game like the OP maybe he would shut up next time lol.
Save / load is a huge problem nowadays when it comes down to solo games. It is so easy to brute force your way and just get good dice rolls instead of playing extra careful and planning everything in advance.
Hot_Bid would have never come out alive of Portal IRL :p
This is a pretty awesome idea. Like D2 on hardcore mode, why did I never think of that? I'm looking forward to reading more, I've played the game a number of times myself, oh the memories. Please keep these coming and good luck! I might even join you in this effort. Only after exams are over tho.
On June 22 2011 05:22 genwar wrote: I skipped Montaron and Xzar as I wanted to be a really good aligned party.
Someday I need to play this game as a good aligned character AND as a male. For some reason I'm always attracted to building evil female chars. Dunno why such a compulsive need to ALWAYS play female chars whatever game it may be. Even a game like Fallout. Anyone else suffer from the same obsession?
Fun post thnx for sharing. Gluck w/ your next go. Agreed on the bow or solo mage comment as being very powerful.
ROTAR Finally a fighter, finally got some backing and time to unleash some DWARF RAGEEEE.
I finish the starting quests, and run off into the world. Unfortunately my sage foster father Gorion dies in seconds to some guy who crits for 44 damage. Not to be despaired I was politely greeted by Imoen who followed us from Candlekeep.
ADVENTURE HOOOOO.
All's fine I'm smacking up gibberlings, slaying wolves left and right some old fucker came up to me and was all HAO THERE WANDERER. I decide the best way to truly test my metal is to go face to face with the ogre carrying the Girdle of Piercing. Such an illucid item will surely help me on my quest.
Ow.
All is going fine - Imoen drinks a haste potion and lets the arrows fly, the ogre strikes me a fine hit. Things are looking grim until I chug a healing potion and am back to fighting status. Time to unleash DWARF RAGEEEEEEEE.
The ogre crits, all the realm will fall to chaos.
What I learned: Fuck natural twenties, from now on I'm going to save the ogre for Jaheira with entangle. Let's see you crit then, you fucker. --
Currently playing Attempt #4 it will be much longer as I haven't died yet, but the game still finds ways to fuck me. Great laughs to follow.
Dude, you have to run away from the ogre while Imoen takes it down from afar! Just run around the trees. He'll follow. That's the safest way to do this, and I don't think it's an exploit of the AI. It's just the tactical advantage of being two against one. Besides, orgres are stupid.
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. I like people who take traps like a man and don't reload.
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