Which dungeons in BG series do you prefer?
levelworm
Member Posts: 41
I'm always a big fan for dungeons, and there are quite a few in the series. My favorite ones are Durlag's Tower and Watchers' Keep. Not much to say about Durlag's Tower as it's a traditional dungeons with some puzzles, many good fights, a few mazes and a final boss. It's short comparing to Watches's Keep, but is still the longest one in the original game, and probably tough for even experienced players. I never entered before the party reached lvl 5, but it may be beatable with a lvl 4 party decorated with strong armors, magical weapons and lots of potions. Watchers' Keep is a different story. It's huge, so huge that I only bested it for twice; and it's difficult to beat, as it was designed for ToB, not BG2, but surely an experienced player can beat it well before ToB. WK introduced many interesting puzzles, say, the text-adventure part and some of the other puzzles in later levels. It is richer than Durlag's Tower, which follows the classic route of "fetch-stuffs-and-beat-monsters", and is also very frustrating at times.
IMO Durlag's Tower is a solid adventure a party of friends can finish in a couple of nights, while Watchers' Keep is a game in itself and probably requires much more patience, and of course, rewards the player with much better rewards.
What's your opinion? What are your favorite dungeons in the series?
IMO Durlag's Tower is a solid adventure a party of friends can finish in a couple of nights, while Watchers' Keep is a game in itself and probably requires much more patience, and of course, rewards the player with much better rewards.
What's your opinion? What are your favorite dungeons in the series?
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Comments
Ulcaster is not a hard dungeon in general, but it's extremely hard on low level when you have nothing that can harm those slimes. But the main reason I like Ulcaster so much is because it has a background and great atmosphere. I wandered around there, made my home there and asked myself questions like "What happened, really?". It's a sad tale of one of the better magical school and now it's just...gone.
Watcher's Keep just gets me because of the atmosphere. I couldn't care less about Marileths or whatever Pit Fiend wanders down there. Demogorgon and my player character could've been friends for all I care. Plus, the introduction to WK is just so...damn...cool.
As far as BG1 goes, Tales of the Sword Coast dungeons are great overall. Durlag's Tower is excellent. I liked the werewolf isle as a whole. However, the ice cavern area (Shandalar's cloak) was just a pain in the rear.
Watcher's Keep is a really difficult one to place for me. I do love this dungeon, but if it's played once you're out of Saradush in ToB, then you have your little stone of recall/teleport scroll/pocket plane ability thing to steal you away whenever things get a bit too dangerous for you and to always give you a place to sleep safely. If played before having the pocket plane ability (or as if you didn't), I rank this dungeon at right below Durlag's Tower I think. That pocket plane, while a great idea, really ruined a lot of ToB for me as obviously on my first play through I just used it as it was meant to be used, which greatly reduced the challenge of the game. Later, when I started restricting things like my reloads and stuff, I just didn't use the ability except in certain areas, which made ToB considerably more enjoyable.
Sometime I do hope that we have more memorable dungeons in Neverwinter Nights.
I agree with FrozenCells that there is something extremely satisfying about emerging from the Cloakwood Mines. It places you at a milestone, so there's a kind of additional reward there.
And reading ajwz's comment "Theres nothing better than wandering out of a 5+ level dungeon, in the deep red hp, no more spells memorized, and more treasure in your backpack than you can hold" reminds me of the Nashkel Mines... which I find makes this also one of the more formidable dungeons.
I also liked Windspear Hills, I'd like to return there some time.
I second the fondness for the temple sewers and related quest.
The little bit of me that used to play WoW is also jumping up and down about the abundance of loot throughout the Windspear hills dungeon.
Watcher's Keep, while pretty cool, did not feel like a cohesive unit. You went down a level, got in a whole different area with it's own isolated conflict, murdered everyone and went down another level. It didn't so much have a feeling of progression because was just something different every time.
I like Ulcaster, it's short, fairly generic but still has a nice story attached to it. Feels like an Old School PnP sidequest.
The Unseeing Eye beholder tunnels were meh (I mean, why do Beholders have flesh walls? I never got that...) but the temple to Amaunator was very cool and his sidequest incredibly tragic. I am SO stealing it for my PnP group though.