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On September 27 2011 17:50 bRuTaL!! wrote:
Question #1:
I play monk and I want
-Imoen for story and thief
-Edwin good mage and we have the same name, so gotta have him
-and Minsc probably the best character in any game?
in my group. Who would you take to complete this group and make it good, balanced and interesting?
Question #2.
I never understood why dualclassing character work. If you stop developing for example your fighter skills lvl 9 and then continue as a mage wont you just be a gimped fighter and a gimped mage? Why are they any good?
#1 noooooooooooo! edwin and minsc will most likely leave your party and fight to death. it's avoidable, but you have to know exactly what alignment to keep and what to tell them. you already have a mage (imoen) with a good alignment.
as for the party combinations, think about what you have so far. you character is a strong melee attacker with good magic resistance. he won't be using almost any items. you have a main mage as well as a good emough thief and another melee cahracter. minsc can perform well as a front like tank. give him full plate + shield in soa and he should perform well enough against most physical attackers. in tob, you can replace the shield with defender of easthaven and learn hardiness a couple of times, he should be very hard to kill phisically. his main hand weapon should probably be flail of ages +5 (+3 in soa). near the end of tob, you could get foebane which is an excelent main weapon for tanks so put your last two proficiencies in bastard swords.
what you lack is a support caster, a ranged attacker, a dedicated dispeller, a secondary tank.
aerie springs to mind right away. great support caster, becomes the best caster in the game in tob, good alignment, decent ranged attacker with meteors and energy blades... the only problem is, you can't support her casting ability if you bring edwin cuz you already have two high level mages that need a lot of scrolls. if you do want edwin, drop aerie for jaheira. she is a better ranged attacker and summoner, but can't cast restorations and she's a much weaker late game caster.
next, you need someone to dispell things and screw up mages. two options here - haer'dalis and keldorn. both of them can use carsomir and cast high level dispells. keldorn has a stronger dispell, haer'dalis can dispell enemies without dispelling your own mages and he can use breach. haer'dalis can also serve as a tank (ac items, defensive spin, mirror images, stoneskin...) and he can cast low level mage spells (which aren't a problem to learn, you can get most of them in any shop). keldorn is a better melee attacker and stronger in soa.
finally a ranged attacker. keeping with the good alignment of the party, valygar and mazzy are good choices. they are very simillar, but mazzy has a personality (sometimes). either way, equip them with a throwing axe, a str increasing belt and a shield of reflection. both of them can learn hardiness, so they can serve as a backup tank. valygar can sneak and backstab, he can cast shield of faith but he can't wear almost any armor and he can't get grandmastery.
i guess you don't need the last character if you keep edwin, but i really don't suggest it. re-play the game with an evil party later and use edwin as your main mage. he will be pretty gimped here anyway if imoen uses all the good caster items.
#2 fighter->mage chars are amazing because you can get a lot of fighter's advantages with only a few levels. grandmastery (+3/+3 if kensai), extra attack, high attack rating, using all weapons and armor, higher hit dice + con bonus... the only things you loose are whirlwind and hardiness. hardiness won't be missed because a fighter-mage with mirror image, stoneskin, prot. from magical weapons etc. is much harder to kill than a fighter with 35% dmg reduction. lack of whirlwind will reduce your damage output with weapons, but spells more than make up for that and you can summon a planetar. it's easy to level back to the level that regains the fighter abilities by simply dismissing your party and learning and re-learning scrolls. 15k gold worth of scrolls can easily get you 10 mage levels, you can reduce this cost by saving some quest rewards for this purpose.
alternatively a thief->fighter, thief->cleric or thief->mage dual classes let you max out unlock and trap finding while still being a full time fighter/mage/cleric. a kensai->thief gives you massive backstabs while regaining the ability to use armor once you get thief high level abilities. ranger->cleric gives you extra spells and some fighting ability to your high level cleric.
the rest are better as multi-classes.
with the exception of sorcerer, bounty hunter, blade, kensai and inquisitor dual/multi-class chars are much better than single class chars. at least in bg2 where fast leveling isn't so important.
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Alright, decided to drop my buddy Edwin. Going with:
Myself, monk
Imoen
Minsc
Jaheira
Aerie
Keldorn
I hope this works...
One thing I dont like about BG though is the extreme non linearity. It can cause extreme frustration for me at least. You have no way of knowing how hard the quests are, what order you should do them in etc. Sometimes you might go do some quest or try to kill something for 3 hours and then it turns out you cant even do it or completing a quest now means you cant do something else you wanted to do. Especially since Im so bad in the game, using spells and items, I gimp myself and if I try to do what a walkthrough says I might not succeed.
If you play the game second time or more Id imagine that would be a huge plus  . But for a noobie its a huge pain in the ass. Especially if just exploring etc. isnt fun for you (like me)...
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On September 28 2011 00:10 bRuTaL!! wrote:Alright, decided to drop my buddy Edwin. Going with: Myself, monk Imoen Minsc Jaheira Aerie Keldorn I hope this works... One thing I dont like about BG though is the extreme non linearity. It can cause extreme frustration for me at least. You have no way of knowing how hard the quests are, what order you should do them in etc. Sometimes you might go do some quest or try to kill something for 3 hours and then it turns out you cant even do it or completing a quest now means you cant do something else you wanted to do. Especially since Im so bad in the game, using spells and items, I gimp myself and if I try to do what a walkthrough says I might not succeed. If you play the game second time or more Id imagine that would be a huge plus . But for a noobie its a huge pain in the ass. Especially if just exploring etc. isnt fun for you (like me)...
That's why there are Walkthrough's available. Dan Simpson's ones are the best and most thorough, giving pretty much all the info you need and step by step guide on where to go/what to do. You can find them on gamefaqs.com.
Or even better, go to gamebanshee.com and check out the baldur's gate section. It's a walkthrough with pictures of each area map, very easy to use.
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On September 28 2011 00:10 bRuTaL!! wrote:Alright, decided to drop my buddy Edwin. Going with: Myself, monk Imoen Minsc Jaheira Aerie Keldorn I hope this works... One thing I dont like about BG though is the extreme non linearity. It can cause extreme frustration for me at least. You have no way of knowing how hard the quests are, what order you should do them in etc. Sometimes you might go do some quest or try to kill something for 3 hours and then it turns out you cant even do it or completing a quest now means you cant do something else you wanted to do. Especially since Im so bad in the game, using spells and items, I gimp myself and if I try to do what a walkthrough says I might not succeed. If you play the game second time or more Id imagine that would be a huge plus . But for a noobie its a huge pain in the ass. Especially if just exploring etc. isnt fun for you (like me)...
as a rule of the thumb - the more optional the quest is, the harder it is (and the better are the rewards). for example, if you went out of your way to open up some sarcofagii in the middle of nowhere, collected some statues and then brought them to another sarcofagus in the middle of nowhere, you're probably waaaay of the main story line and are in for a fight. same thing if you go poking around sewers or abandoned houses... as long as you stick to the standard go-to-new-area-solve-main-quest format, you should be fine. the dragons are optional, the house in the docks is optional, the sarcofagus is optional, planar sphere is optional, even nalia's golems are optional. optional meaning you can finish the game without even touching them. they are also the most fun, so...
if you are having problems with the "obvious" quests, it's most likely your approach that is problematic. every fight except the ones i listed are completely doable by a lvl 9-11 party in chapter 2. yes, that includes the cult of the eyeless and yes, without the shield of balduran.
if you having problems with specific fights, ask here.
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On September 28 2011 00:10 bRuTaL!! wrote:Alright, decided to drop my buddy Edwin. Going with: Myself, monk Imoen Minsc Jaheira Aerie Keldorn I hope this works... One thing I dont like about BG though is the extreme non linearity. It can cause extreme frustration for me at least. You have no way of knowing how hard the quests are, what order you should do them in etc. Sometimes you might go do some quest or try to kill something for 3 hours and then it turns out you cant even do it or completing a quest now means you cant do something else you wanted to do. Especially since Im so bad in the game, using spells and items, I gimp myself and if I try to do what a walkthrough says I might not succeed. If you play the game second time or more Id imagine that would be a huge plus . But for a noobie its a huge pain in the ass. Especially if just exploring etc. isnt fun for you (like me)...
That party will certainly work, especially if it's your first playthrough. A nice mix with pretty much everything you'd want.
As for the non-linearity - that's the point of the game. It's supposed to be a huge world waiting to be explored, obviously including dangers and threats you'll have to tackle at a later point.
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I been playing BG games with Big World pack and I installed most Recommended addons from there. Although I had great fun with all additional fights and tougher fights (like bandit camp where everyone and their mother has buffing and healing potions :D) now I ran into a problem. All the extra druid quests in Cloakwood forest led me into some tough fights and after beating them I got some crazy items for Jaheira. I now need to make myself not use them or sell them to have a balanced game. When I equip all of them, my lvl 6 fighter/7 druid Jaheira has -9 AC, less then 10 Thaco and does 1d8+6+6d6 damage per hit and hits 5/2 times per round. She can basically solo the game from now on (has stoneskin of course as well). Before I got these items I used her as support caster that would then join melee afterwards if she was needed. Now she is more powerful then Minsc or Khalid :D
Actually most of my chars are full of weapons and armors that easily rival the better items from BG2 :D
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Yeah, thats a problem with a lot of mods... You just have to not "use" some stuff (if you haven't installed ridiculous hard ones) or most of the "normal game" will become a breeze.
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On September 28 2011 00:10 bRuTaL!! wrote:Alright, decided to drop my buddy Edwin. Going with: Myself, monk Imoen Minsc Jaheira Aerie Keldorn I hope this works... One thing I dont like about BG though is the extreme non linearity. It can cause extreme frustration for me at least. You have no way of knowing how hard the quests are, what order you should do them in etc. Sometimes you might go do some quest or try to kill something for 3 hours and then it turns out you cant even do it or completing a quest now means you cant do something else you wanted to do. Especially since Im so bad in the game, using spells and items, I gimp myself and if I try to do what a walkthrough says I might not succeed. If you play the game second time or more Id imagine that would be a huge plus . But for a noobie its a huge pain in the ass. Especially if just exploring etc. isnt fun for you (like me)...
My all-time favourite party to play is :
Monk
Edwin
Korgan
Viconia
Imoen
Haerdalis
Evil party but if you want to stay on your first choice, this one works really really well and is a lot of fun to play 
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Whichever other guys I take, I always take Jan and Viconia. I love Viconia's character, and her dialogue is awesome (she's also probably the deepest romance option in the game), and Jan is pretty damn funny and a better thief than Imoen ever will be. He also gets the dispel job done pretty well, although he's a weaker mage than Aerie/Edwin/Main character.
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I feel better now. Did the Unseeying eye quest. I learned quite a bit although I still suck  . After like 5 attempts I even managed to beat the adventures in the sewers. AWESOME FIGHT. Took as long as all other fights combined to this point :D. Had to use bunch of potions, run around with my weak characters etc. didnt seem THAT hard though...
I might have screwed up thought. I think I joined the Helm. Didnt pay too much attention. Was asked if I liked a room to store my stuff in which sounded great. Im monk thought, am I not supposed to join another stronghold not a cleric one ? Whats the difference.
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Monks get the Cleric one.
Else you would get a castle .
But the class quests are pretty much "equal" (except the thieve one which is absoluetly horrible and nearly unmanageable unmodded).
If you managed the unseeing i you should be able to beat everything, it is for me by far the hardest place... Fucking Gaunths or whatever the little beholders are called.....
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Wow I can't believe this has turned into a 50+ page thread.
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BG games deserve even more then 50 pages
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On September 28 2011 06:36 -Archangel- wrote:BG games deserve even more then 50 pages
Absolutely. Games like these feel like a lost art nowadays, and there are few cases where gaming nostalgia is as appropriate.
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On September 28 2011 06:40 Shockk wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2011 06:36 -Archangel- wrote:BG games deserve even more then 50 pages Absolutely. Games like these feel like a lost art nowadays, and there are few cases where gaming nostalgia is as appropriate.
So true... When my exams are over I'm gonna start a whole new run again just because of this thread
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On September 28 2011 00:10 bRuTaL!! wrote:Alright, decided to drop my buddy Edwin. Going with: Myself, monk Imoen Minsc Jaheira Aerie Keldorn I hope this works... One thing I dont like about BG though is the extreme non linearity. It can cause extreme frustration for me at least. You have no way of knowing how hard the quests are, what order you should do them in etc. Sometimes you might go do some quest or try to kill something for 3 hours and then it turns out you cant even do it or completing a quest now means you cant do something else you wanted to do. Especially since Im so bad in the game, using spells and items, I gimp myself and if I try to do what a walkthrough says I might not succeed. If you play the game second time or more Id imagine that would be a huge plus . But for a noobie its a huge pain in the ass. Especially if just exploring etc. isnt fun for you (like me)...
Really? During my first playthrough of BG2 I never got permanently stuck or had to backtrack a lot, no matter how low leveled I was. There's literally no limit to how cheesy you can play in this game, every problem seems to have a solution if you just keep trying things. I remember stumbling upon the Twisted Rune quest with lvl 11-12 characters, it took a LOT of reloads, but I was able to formulate a winning strategy in the end.
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On September 27 2011 11:36 Misanthrope wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 20:53 Brett wrote:On September 25 2011 17:56 Rampoon wrote:On September 25 2011 13:53 Brett wrote:
Well, I have to say, this game is fucking intimidating. I would have loved it 10 years ago with shitloads of spare time, but now.. I don't know that I'm even going to bother trying to finish it. The game presents you with the necessary information, but there are like 5 different versions of various spells, each with their own counterspell, and trying to learn all of this is tedious as hell when I only have an hour, or two at most, spare to play the game each day.
To compound things, if you go into a fight without the right spells, or even the right amount of certain spells in your books, you're fucked. Enemy difficulty seems completely all over the place; I'm in de'Arnise hold at the moment, and I go from thrashing the troll mobs and playing intelligently to kill the Yuan ti mage to getting ass raped by the big golem fucker no matter what the hell I do because nobody's attacks can hit the fucker or do any damage. I guess I'm meant to go away and do other quests/level up etc and come back, but it kills any sort of immersion in the game world for me to get half way through a 'dungeon', explore every nook and cranny, and then get raped by one particular mob which requires I go else where and come back with a 'bigger boat'.
Is this what the whole game is like? i.e. get half way through an area, hit a brick wall, go away and do other shit and come back in two weeks when you actually have gear / level required to actually be able to hit enemies (or otherwise find a way to glitch/cheat/fudge your way through)... just so you can progress through the rest of the dungeon... Dragon Age: Origins was like that and it is really fucking dumb. I don't really understand this line of thinking and I see it a lot. In the "real" world you might well run through a dungeon with no problems only to run into a monster that you cannot just beat by standing toe to toe with it and smacking it in the face. Surely it adds to the immersion that you have to do different things to beat a room/dungeon/mob. Maybe running or hiding or just looting the area without disturbing the mobs would be the better choice sometimes. You don't have to kill everything you see. If it really bothers you, beat the dungeon then go back when your pimp and then stand in front of the particular mob/room you are having trouble with and batter them down. Because it's a fantasy game man... The NPCs come to you and say "Go save X!! Bring me Y". It makes no sense, even from a RP perspective, to go to a place (let's use de'Arnise as an example), start the questing, clearing out the dungeon of mobs that dont respawn as you go, and then get to a certain point and then go "Oops! I can't go any further because all of a sudden these mobs are like 50 levels higher and I can't kill them with what the game has presented me with to date unless I already know the game inside out or cheese/glitch the fight"... So then I go off and spend weeks of in game time doing other quests to level and gear up... Only to return to find everything exactly the same as I left it. If you want to push the real life aspect, if I ran off in the middle of the drama at de'Arnise keep, the family members would all be killed and I would arrive to find nothing but more trolls, umber hulks and golems. If nothing is going to be affected by the lapse of time during which I go and do other shit, then there is really no point in sending me off to other areas to get stronger, you may as well make them with a certain progression in mind. Don't get me wrong, I dislike the "monster level depends on your level" style too. I just prefer consistency: if I can do a dungeon, I personally want to be able to do the WHOLE dungeon so that I can move on. Otherwise, the first few mobs in the place should kick my ass so that I know not to go in there. That's all rather moot of course, because as I soon found out, I dont have to kill those golems to continue. For some reason I thought the flail was going to be a necessary part of the progression in the dungeon. If we're strictly speaking about golems here, your frustrations about the confrontation aren't warranted and your example of the situation is inaccurate. It's as simple as: use blunt weapons against golems. It is a complicated game, and asking for help is totally understandable as is being frustrated at first. Just hop over to Athkatla if you must to get a +2 mace and let Minsc loose his furious wrath of justice upon them and laugh as he revels in his Boo-inspired fury. If you want to discuss game design trends, there's probably already a topic, or you could create a blog about your frustrations. If you want to rant after being pissed at anything, feel free to unload here. The Flail of Ages is nearly a necessary part of the progression of the game. Much the same way Crom Faeyr, or Carsomyr are. Go back and get it, your life will be easier and more enjoyable later on when you use it to surprise Irenicus with flail-powered buttsecks. EDIT: Just looked it up, you can get a +2 mace from Mae'Var's guildhall merchant. Enjoy golem rape.
Well, if you don't consider standing at a doorway with a weapon that allows you to outrange a mob dumb enough to stand there til its death (thus avoiding all it's abilities), cheese, then that's your prerogative. I don't feel clever doing that as you seem to. I've been gaming since I was 4. I'm 27. I've done my fair share of AI abuse. I just don't find it compelling.
In any event, I was responding to the other poster's comments re my train of thought. I think the game is great and I continued playing despite what I consider a flaw in the game (shocking I know!) as I realised shortly after the fight is not critical to proceeding at that point in the game. I'm just going to ignore pretty much the rest of your comments because they're obnoxious.
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On September 28 2011 08:55 Brett wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 11:36 Misanthrope wrote:On September 25 2011 20:53 Brett wrote:On September 25 2011 17:56 Rampoon wrote:On September 25 2011 13:53 Brett wrote:
Well, I have to say, this game is fucking intimidating. I would have loved it 10 years ago with shitloads of spare time, but now.. I don't know that I'm even going to bother trying to finish it. The game presents you with the necessary information, but there are like 5 different versions of various spells, each with their own counterspell, and trying to learn all of this is tedious as hell when I only have an hour, or two at most, spare to play the game each day.
To compound things, if you go into a fight without the right spells, or even the right amount of certain spells in your books, you're fucked. Enemy difficulty seems completely all over the place; I'm in de'Arnise hold at the moment, and I go from thrashing the troll mobs and playing intelligently to kill the Yuan ti mage to getting ass raped by the big golem fucker no matter what the hell I do because nobody's attacks can hit the fucker or do any damage. I guess I'm meant to go away and do other quests/level up etc and come back, but it kills any sort of immersion in the game world for me to get half way through a 'dungeon', explore every nook and cranny, and then get raped by one particular mob which requires I go else where and come back with a 'bigger boat'.
Is this what the whole game is like? i.e. get half way through an area, hit a brick wall, go away and do other shit and come back in two weeks when you actually have gear / level required to actually be able to hit enemies (or otherwise find a way to glitch/cheat/fudge your way through)... just so you can progress through the rest of the dungeon... Dragon Age: Origins was like that and it is really fucking dumb. I don't really understand this line of thinking and I see it a lot. In the "real" world you might well run through a dungeon with no problems only to run into a monster that you cannot just beat by standing toe to toe with it and smacking it in the face. Surely it adds to the immersion that you have to do different things to beat a room/dungeon/mob. Maybe running or hiding or just looting the area without disturbing the mobs would be the better choice sometimes. You don't have to kill everything you see. If it really bothers you, beat the dungeon then go back when your pimp and then stand in front of the particular mob/room you are having trouble with and batter them down. Because it's a fantasy game man... The NPCs come to you and say "Go save X!! Bring me Y". It makes no sense, even from a RP perspective, to go to a place (let's use de'Arnise as an example), start the questing, clearing out the dungeon of mobs that dont respawn as you go, and then get to a certain point and then go "Oops! I can't go any further because all of a sudden these mobs are like 50 levels higher and I can't kill them with what the game has presented me with to date unless I already know the game inside out or cheese/glitch the fight"... So then I go off and spend weeks of in game time doing other quests to level and gear up... Only to return to find everything exactly the same as I left it. If you want to push the real life aspect, if I ran off in the middle of the drama at de'Arnise keep, the family members would all be killed and I would arrive to find nothing but more trolls, umber hulks and golems. If nothing is going to be affected by the lapse of time during which I go and do other shit, then there is really no point in sending me off to other areas to get stronger, you may as well make them with a certain progression in mind. Don't get me wrong, I dislike the "monster level depends on your level" style too. I just prefer consistency: if I can do a dungeon, I personally want to be able to do the WHOLE dungeon so that I can move on. Otherwise, the first few mobs in the place should kick my ass so that I know not to go in there. That's all rather moot of course, because as I soon found out, I dont have to kill those golems to continue. For some reason I thought the flail was going to be a necessary part of the progression in the dungeon. If we're strictly speaking about golems here, your frustrations about the confrontation aren't warranted and your example of the situation is inaccurate. It's as simple as: use blunt weapons against golems. It is a complicated game, and asking for help is totally understandable as is being frustrated at first. Just hop over to Athkatla if you must to get a +2 mace and let Minsc loose his furious wrath of justice upon them and laugh as he revels in his Boo-inspired fury. If you want to discuss game design trends, there's probably already a topic, or you could create a blog about your frustrations. If you want to rant after being pissed at anything, feel free to unload here. The Flail of Ages is nearly a necessary part of the progression of the game. Much the same way Crom Faeyr, or Carsomyr are. Go back and get it, your life will be easier and more enjoyable later on when you use it to surprise Irenicus with flail-powered buttsecks. EDIT: Just looked it up, you can get a +2 mace from Mae'Var's guildhall merchant. Enjoy golem rape. Well, if you don't consider standing at a doorway with a weapon that allows you to outrange a mob dumb enough to stand there til its death (thus avoiding all it's abilities), cheese, then that's your prerogative. I don't feel clever doing that as you seem to. I've been gaming since I was 4. I'm 27. I've done my fair share of AI abuse. I just don't find it compelling. In any event, I was responding to the other poster's comments re my train of thought. I think the game is great and I continued playing despite what I consider a flaw in the game (shocking I know!) as I realised shortly after the fight is not critical to proceeding at that point in the game. I'm just going to ignore pretty much the rest of your comments because they're obnoxious.
I never mentioned out ranging the golem or abusing AI at all. Just corrected some misconceptions you had about the game, suggested you take a legitimate discussion about game design concepts this game doesn't make use of elsewhere, and told you where you can find a mace capable of hitting the opponent you were trying to kill.
You seem to have me mixed up with someone else, or are assuming I'm saying something that I'm not.
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EPT
