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Difficulty of BG:EE Compared to the Original?

CanageekCanageek Member Posts: 6
edited July 2012 in Archive (General Discussion)
I may be the only one worried about this, but will the difficulty of BG:EE be a lot higher then the original? I played BG with TuTu on a my Dad's computer while visiting a while back, and I had a lot of difficulty with fights I recall breezing through when it first came out (Specifically the 4 bounty hunters you fight after the Nashkell mines and the large wolf + dire wolf + vampiric wolf pack out back of the Temple of Helm). I mean, I'd think things should be easier, as I didn't really use much in the way of tactics when I first played (I was in grade 5 or 6), and I've got a lot more experience with RPGs now. He also noticed that it was a lot harder then the first time he played through it, a number of years ago.

Is this increased difficulty trait of the TuTu install he has (i.e. he used an installer that added a difficulty mod by mistake), a general trait of TuTu in specific or this this a general trait of how BG:I and BG:II interact? My best guess is that the fights with NPCs are harder since they are built using specializations and I believe kits, but I could be wrong on this. Will NPCs in BG:EE be rebuilt in the same way, or will they be more similar to how they are in vanilla?

Comments

  • ZeckulZeckul Member Posts: 1,036
    I've heard a few times that Tutu increases the number of spawns on random encounters; apart from that it's generally easier than the first: max HP on level up, max heal on rest, new kits that weren't designed to be used at level 1... Hopefully Beamdog is aware of the balance issues and fixed everything.
  • LozLoz Member Posts: 19
    The fight with the four bounty hunters you mention has always been a tough fight. It seems strange the wolf pack spawned a vampiric wolf unless you went there at a high level. As for the enemy NPCs - just installing TuTu shouldn't give them kits as far as I know, and certainly not the AI to use any new abilities. It is possible you had a difficulty mod installed (something like scs would explain the behavior you report).

    TuTu itself with no extra mods is generally considered to be slightly easier than the original Baldur's Gate for various reasons. The main ones being that you have more spells to use and more kits/classes to choose from. Your walking speed is also faster meaning you can kite slow monsters like bears around more easily.

    BG:EE will likely be a degree easier than TuTu. This is because on top of the BG2 features coming over ala TuTu it will also include new content and raise the xp cap. The reduced difficulty will be felt once you have completed more content than you could originally have done and your characters outpace the original xp curve.

    I also anticipate BG2:EE will be a considerable amount easier than the original BG2 because the increased xp cap in BG1 will carry over to your characters in BG2. This will mean you'll always be a step ahead of the original xp curve. Not to mention BG2:EE will have new content of its own.

    The way the designers dealt with the problem of increasing the xp cap in the original TotSC expansion was to increase the difficulty of a few late game encounters. For ToB they didn't and the end of SoA is noticeably easier with it installed because you have access to HLAs etc. Unfortunately I believe the team is not allowed to edit content already in the game so I expect the EE's to be like ToB in this regard. However the games will still probably be challenging for anyone who doesn't play it often or is new to it. For the people that replay it regularly - they require difficulty mods for a challenge anyway.
  • The_New_RomanceThe_New_Romance Member Posts: 839
    The vampiric wolf behind the temple is always there. Why? Nobody knows. It doesn't have to do with your level. Dudleyville also lists it.
  • CanageekCanageek Member Posts: 6
    Odd, sounds like he set it up wrong; I think he used a premade installation someone gave him, so it is possibly they added a bunch of stuff to it. Thanks; I thought it was that all the NPCs had specalizations and such now (Misc was specialized into two-handed as I recall, so I didn't take him for the first time, I went with the Paladin instead)
  • XezmeraudeXezmeraude Member Posts: 91
    At least we wont need Tutu or BGT to justify for EE anymore. The mods are ancient days in gaming now. All included their codings in EE. Might just be regular core rules (which I always play on to make it like my PNP days) with everything touched up and smoothed out. Might be a slightly different challenge with the fixes now already patched in the coding, but not much of a different notice of feel to it. Just a more PnP 2nd edition style with no bugs or issues. What they could do is everytime you load the game, the battles are randomly determined every time you load the game and/or move into an area so you dont always know what to expect but keep the groups in the same hit dice of monsters native to the area and/or reshape how they are positioned in the area or spot an make it for a different game each time. Could be an idea for Overhaul to look at, but still keeps the game at the setting of difficulty.
  • AnaximanderAnaximander Member Posts: 191
    edited August 2012
    Tutu spawns a lot of monsters that scale with your level(i think that is the case or it's one of a few install options), there's different settings that can make spell casting opponents very difficult to deal with as well. BGT the spawns are more sparse. People with Tutu or BGT comfortably running tend to have a few other mods running too that can affect difficulty. Original BG spawns are a distant memory to me unfortunately I've only played the game modded in various ways the last few years...
  • SchneidendSchneidend Member Posts: 3,190
    Zeckul said:

    I've heard a few times that Tutu increases the number of spawns on random encounters; apart from that it's generally easier than the first: max HP on level up, max heal on rest, new kits that weren't designed to be used at level 1... Hopefully Beamdog is aware of the balance issues and fixed everything.

    Actually, a lot of the kits are actually hindered by the fact that they weren't designed to be used at level 1. As far as I can tell, only the Paladins really benefit all that much due to their immunities.
  • bigdogchrisbigdogchris Member Posts: 1,336
    I feel the exact opposite. When I played Tutu I thought that BG 1 was much to easy. I emailed one of the developers about this a few months ago and they said it would be looked at when play testing. My main concern is that abilities like Dual Wield are incredibly powerful even at level 1. The BG1 content was not designed or balanced around the abilities of BG2/Throne. I expect BG:EE to be easy.
  • CanageekCanageek Member Posts: 6
    Well, I made a straight class wizard (mage?). The only reason we wanted TuTu is our disks didn't work on either of our computers.
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