Reputation 1 run through

Howie

I'm planning a new run through with reputation 1. Since I wouldn't be able to talk to any merchant in the game once I hit 1, anyone know if there's a point picking up gems anymore? Anyone know if there is a merchant that would open to rep 1 party and would buy anything from me?

arondes

I am almost sure the flaming fist will kill you. If you really want to try that, I suggest you import a 40 level character. You do not need the gem. Maybe you do not need money as well.

deltago

Sellable loot such as gems are going to be worthless since even if you can sell them to someone, it will be for little gold and the prices of any merchant will be through the roof.

With a rep of 1 run, you should be just looting things you need and not things you can sell.

Howie

My 18/00 and GM in longbow will smack their sorry ares. XD

DerDuKe

Good luck with that, doubt it will be as easy as you might think. Keep us updated!

Jalily

You can still talk to merchants at rep 1. You'll just pay 10x the prices.

Howie

gotta recruit all necessary party members and hit level 5 first. I killed that rude noble in the 2nd floor of the starting inn first minute of my gameplay :P

When I ran my lawful evil rep 5 party, I found I spent most of my time looting through flaming fist corpses and still gain a lot by selling off their plate mails.

Will try a different approach with my CE party. If I can still talk to an inn keep, that means I can boost pick pocket

Howie

Ok I am running a rep 1 party and it's still pretty fun to play. Only that it's more like Diablo when the Flaming fists and bouty hunters wanted you dead in every corner you ran into.

Level 1 party is still very viable, you just need to roll a rather high stats. Charisma is unimportant since all the merchants are charging you 10x more expensive, but you can still initiate dialogues and purchase screens for stealing. I haven't ran into Baldur's Gate yet, but so far the Flaming Fists are all very manageable. You want Viconia as the evil healer for extended combats and resting, and Montarron to help you steal every thing you need, or you may just be a thief and put lots of points in it.

I powerleveled my party with the Basilisks, that should help a lot when the FFs stepped in. Great fun.

Wowo

Fun idea. What party are you aiming for?

CMN

Something annoying are those flaming fist spellcasters that are already buffed when they are summoned. Gotta have lots of remove magic or dispel memorized!

Howie

Currently my main character is fighter, then Kagain as tank, Viconia as support, Ewin as the nuke and summon, will get Edolth and Skie later on. If I'm getting Sha-teel I gotta dual her to a thief.

The Flaming Fists are buffed up, when they popped it often costs me a save or two. First thing was to cast hold person on the cleric and keep hitting him with my fighter with my composite longbow. While my arrows kept interrupting his spellcasting, Kagain tanked the scout and enforcer taking quite a lot of wounds, Edwin managed to fear two of them with horror, and I'm on a 4 vs. 1 combat, then take them out one by one.

Silverstar

Certainly a lot more interesting than the no-save crowd. How far have you gotten?

Howie

Cloakwood, once everyone in my party hit level 5, it's a walk in the park, but I'm using core rules not insane. Certainly raising up the difficulty could make things a lot more interesting. I can say rep 1 run is really fun, when you stormed into every house in beregost killing people and looting boxes, you can see the game totally expected you to do that, and it is even encouraged in some ways.

I'm a guy on shift jobs and a lot to do in real life, so my walkthrough will be very slow, feel free to add your experience if you like.

Oh btw, since you cannot steal from every merchant you encountered, so resource management is quite crucial. Popping potions is very very very costly.