BG 2 Traps and Horrid Wilting. SPOILERS

Heindrich

This thread contains spoilers, but I still don't wanna be spoiled myself, so I posted it in this section. If a moderator feels that it is more appropriate in General Discussions. I will move it promptly.

I have just reached Spellhold and suffered the biggest 'Oh Crap' moment of my BG adventures so far...

Yoshimo was revealed as Irenicus' agent, and promptly left, leaving Imoen as my only thief. Yoshimo also left with a lot of equipment (OMG! I'll kill him! He's got most of the gear I intended to give to Imoen!), including Ring of Danger Sense.

Now my big concern for the future is... even with Ring of Danger Sense (giving him 125 in Find Traps), Yoshimo could not detect some of the traps I've come across already. The most obvious example being the room of spikes and blood in Bhodi's tomb in the Graveyard District, where the traps nearly killed Yoshimo several times without him ever spotting them.

So... given that Imoen is an inferior thief who will never improve, and also won't have the ring to help her out. Am I screwed? Do I really need to recruit another thief to proceed? (And that's assuming I can get outta this trap to return to Athkatla).

Also, another very specific question.

Can anything be done to protect against Horrid Wilting? I've encountered it twice so far. Once Aerie was 1-shot by it from full health. Another time Anomen (who was already wounded cos I don't like to use healing spells mid-combat) was killed instantly from around 40-50 hp.

My thanks in advance for your guidance.

Wisp

The "traps" in the vampire spike room can't be detected or disarmed. Imoen is a sufficiently good thief to get you through the game without any appreciable difficulties from traps. Generally speaking, if you can't disarm a trap with 100 in Find Traps, the trap is not disarmable. There are a few traps that need 100, but not that many.

The 2nd-level wizard spell Mirror Image (rather nonsensically) has a chance of making AoE damage spells miss (and instead hit one of the fakes). As you probably know, it's caster only, however. There's a 6th-level wizard spell called Protection From Magic Energy that makes you immune to Horrid Wilting (and some other damage spells). It's single-target, so you need a few of them to protect your entire party. There's also a 5th-level wizard spell called Spell Immunity that can be used to protect the caster from the entire school of Necromancy. Its duration is short and it is caster only, however. There are some additional spells (Armor Of Faith, Protection From Energy) and one item that makes you partially resistant to magical damage, but of the spells, one is caster only and the other is 8th level. And the item obviously needs to be found first.

Other than that, there isn't much beyond using good tactics (try to position your party so they don't all get hit, and so on) that you can do. There are some potions that can help, but they are rarer than in BG1. You can obviously also improve your saves and hopefully suffer less damage that way. The spells Blur, Improved Invisibility and Mass Invisibility improve save vs. spells.

Durenas

You are not screwed.

You will get to kill Yoshimo before you leave Spellhold, and loot his body of all items.
Imoen is a good thief for the rest of the game. You don't need a dedicated thief to pick locks or disarm traps, as the difficulty does not increase much.

Horrid Wilting is nasty, but the only real thing you can do to protect against it is to spread out, keep your low health people way back, and save often. It becomes less of a problem once you get into the epic levels.

Heindrich

@Amberion

@Wisp

Thanks guys. Much appreciated.

elminster

One awesome item you can use to protect one of your party members from a lot of the damage of horrid wilting is called the Belt of Inertial Barrier. Among other things it gives you 50% resistance to magic damage (so magic missile attacks, horrid wilting, and a few other spells that just deal magic damage and not elemental damage). You can buy it from a merchant in Trademeet after you get the genies out of the town and deal with the druid attacks.

sarevok57

plus the level 6 mage spell "protection for magical energy" has a great duration, 1 turn/level ( 1 turn= 10 rounds)

Durenas

for reference, 1 round is roughly 6 seconds, at 30 fps game speed(the default). So 1 turn is 60 seconds. Assuming you're approximately level 10 a single application of protection from magical energy can protect a character for 10 minutes.

ZanathKariashi

90 is the highest find trap amount you need for BG2...anything higher is non-disarmable. Though I usually have 100 anyway because I'm usually a thief and coming from BG1 which did have 100 requirement traps.


The best defense against Horrid wilting is scouting ahead and backstabbing the hell out of the most dangerous looking mage you see (or casting invisibility on a warrior with something nasty and jumping them). And if all else fails, only 1 character will get nuked (handy to have BoIB on that character, just in case). Or you could use Polymorph Self: Mustard Jelly...it's has 110% magic resistance. 15+ Animate dead skeleton warriors are also decent (70% magic resistance).

10thLich

ZanathKariashi said:

...anything higher is non-disarmable.

Uhm, no. Moreover, wether or not a floor trap is detectable and therefore disarmable at all (e.g. vanilla BG temple of bhaal) depends on the trigger flag "trap detectable" being enabled for a particular floor trap.

If this flag is not set even a find/remove traps skill of 200+ wouldn't do you any good.

Trapped containers and doors are always disarmable unless they're screwed up (e. g. Durlag's Tower tome of wisdom altar in BGT + (BG1?)).

sarevok57

I think in bg2 buddy's house there where you pay him the 15 000 gold pieces to continue on with the game, requires 95/100 in find traps for the 3 containers upstairs, but other than that 90 should be good enough, oh plus you might need 100 for some of the traps in mae'var's guild there? im pretty sure you need 100 in open locks to get all the goodies, but yeah, needing over 90 is very rare

CamDawg

Given the proliferation of +skill items for thieves in BG2, you can probably get away with 80-ish. In later levels when you're flush with spare points you can push it higher.

rexreg

when i play a good party in BG2, Imoen is my best thief & i don't miss having a better one stat-wise

Heindrich

rexreg said:

when i play a good party in BG2, Imoen is my best thief & i don't miss having a better one stat-wise

Yeah it's good that Imoen that even though she's not a high level thief and cannot improve, she does have her points invested in the one thing that really matters. When I first got her back I really struggled with her inability to use 'Hide in Shadows' effectively, so much so that I resorted to scouting with my Charname with boots of speed, and just hoping he can out-run powerful enemies and no traps 1-shots him... lol

However with 3 mages (Imoen included) I've got enough spell slots for a few Invisibility spells so that she's an effective scout/trap finder again.

ZanathKariashi

@10thLich

Read the whole post before you comment, and don't friggin' cut off the part of my quote that already invalided your whole point of you making the post in the first place. Keywords you left out of that quote..."IN BG2".

90 is the highest trap/lock value used in BG2 (and yes, I have confirmed this), if it doesn't work, then it can't be disarmed (though a couple are really close the threshold and might fail a couple times before succeeding, which has yet to be explained. The Threshold system is easy enough to understand..but why is there a 50% failure chance when you meet the threshold by +0-4 points, but none if you're 5 points or higher? Happens to traps and locks and also regardless of whether it's from open lock or high strength in the case of locks).

10thLich

@ZanathKariashi
I never intended to comment on your whole post in the first place. Instead I wanted to comment on the technical background of the ability to detect/disarm traps.