Cannot see how to get started with this game (BG1EE)
Lucre
Member Posts: 16
I have some idea what I'm doing as I completed both BG1 and 2 when they first came out. Felt a bit nostalgic about the game and thought I'd give the EE a go. I'm finding it brutal. I'm only playing on difficulty level 2, with level 1 characters, but I'm finding that pretty much all the mobs in the game are capable of one-shotting most of my characters. I also find that my own characters can easily go half a dozen rounds without hitting anything. This translates to losing a character (i.e. reloading) in half the combat (probably more than half, actually). Is this the way it's supposed to play out? Am I missing something? Should I be getting one-shot in half my combats; should I be missing well over 50% of the hits? At the moment, I'm just save-scumming my way though the game , and that's killing the fun, as I tend to prefer a hard-core approach (i.e., you die, you have to restart the game).
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Comments
1) Less brutal ambushes
2) Auto-pause when in Inventory
3) Tab to highlight containers and loot.
But the beginning of BG EE can still be quite brutal. If u gear up properly, ur lv1 warriors can take a few hits from weak enemies, but all Thieves, Mages (i.e. those unable to wear heavy armour) will be vulnerable for most of the game, and early on, they can be 1 shot but just about anything. You got to learn to protect your vulnerable characters with your tougher ones.
In my experience BG 1 is very difficult if u decide to 'go off the beaten track' very early in the game, as u might run into enemies well beyond ur level. I am normally a 'completionist' kinda player who tries to explore every corner of the map, but at lv1, u are just not gonna survive an encounter with a Vampiric Wolf.
So I recommed that you stick to the roads early on, level up on the easier quests like saving/killing Dynaheir, before u head into the Nashkel Mines, which are fairly easy once u can survive a few arrows.
However, I'll say this (hopefully it's not too obvious)... ranged weapons are REALLY your friend, especially early in BG1. If you don't want to use cheesy tactics, just make sure at least 1 character in your party has low AC (0 or less ideally), send him/her in to "tank", and have the rest of your party blast fools w/ranged weapons. Bows are great as you can attack at least twice per round.
Dexterity is a very important stat for all your characters, as it lowers AC and raises the chance that your ranged attacks will hit. I hope this is at least somewhat helpful and not too obvious.
The trick with fighting mages early on is to hit them right away, before their first spell is cast - your best bet is a spell or the wand of missiles, something that won't miss. If you have Xzar, have him cast Larloch's. If you don't have Xzar, use the wand of missiles. Mages in the early part of the game don't have much spell resistance, and as long as you can do damage, you can stop them from casting those nasty insta-killer spells like lightning bolt. The level 1 cleric/druid spell Remove Fear, or the bard song is very important against low level mages, too. They love to cast Horror and then you will lose control of most if not all of your party and might as well re-load.
However, unless they changed something with v1.2 for BG EE, I don't think you get that kinda ambush in BG EE...
They definately have the 10 bandits with a bow ambush in 1.2, I have had many charnames turn to dust because of that. As recent as yesterday in my half orc fighter solo run who was ripping the sword coast open before turning into swiss cheese lol
Anyway, that bandit ambush was unlucky, I didn't think it still happened cos I never experienced it in my first BG EE playthrough, and found the random encounters pretty tame overall compared to BG 1 Vanilla, where I'd cross my fingers and pray each time I travel. I strongly suggest that u go to rescue/kill Dynaheir before doing much around Nashkel. The wildnerness region on the way to the Gnoll Stronghold is populated by relatively easy enemies, and the Gnoll Stronghold itself is a nice training ground for low level parties, since Gnolls are easy.
If u are playing Good (highly recommend in first playthrough), pick up Kivan in High Hedge if u haven't already. He is OP for BG 1. Also as people have already mentioned, make sure u target spellcasters first and keep disrupting them, cos a lot of spells can be game ending for a low level party.
Try to remember those random enemy spawn points, they are often areas that also re-spawn. Static encounters will never come back, but the random spawns can come back as quickly as, you moved ten feet away and then your backmost party member went backwards two steps.
It's perfectly normal to struggle a bit at the start, and the learning doesn't really stop for hundreds of hours to come, though thankfully it shouldn't stay so frustrating for too long.
This is an excellent and entertaining LP for BG 1 by my favourite Youtuber. Obviously don't watch ahead of where u are in ur game so u don't get spoiled, but this clearly shows how others also struggle with this game.
p.s. Those bandits...nasty guys, yes. Sleep helps a lot here, but unless you have multiple casters, it's still going to be a very difficult encounter. Here's what I usually do to survive that ambush at early levels. First, I try to get off any disabling spells I have that can take out ranged users (sleep, spook, color spray, command, blind, or even glitterdust or hold person if a bit later in game -- sleep may be the most useful, but any of the above will at least buy you time or take one or more enemies out of the fight temporarily. Every bit helps) At the same time, have anyone that isn't using disablers advance on any bandit that is still able to shoot -- engage as many bandits that aren't disabled as possible at melee. Why? To get them to put away those bows. As dangerous as being at melee may be for your character, letting them shoot at you is almost always way worse. Once your spellcasters are done disabling (if they can), they should also be advancing any remaining unattended archers if there are any, or ganging up on bandits via spell and missile one at a time if the bows are out of the picture. If I can survive the first round without anyone dying, I can usually make it all the way through the encounter alive with these tactics. I may have to burn a couple of healing potions, but I'll make it.
It sounds as if we have a similar attitude to this game, and enjoy it the 'right way'. Yeah, I am judgemental and I do not approve of powergaming or cheese.
I played BG 1 (both Vanilla and EE) with the canon party. Dynaheir is not the best caster, and I also didn't have a cleric, so I didn't have some useful spells. I also didn't know what I was doing a lot of the time. Believe it or not, I never used Remove Fear or Resist Fear until I reached the Underdark in BG 2, because I thought it was something u use after ur party had been Horror'd (and yes I never noticed the 'Resist' wording) and didn't realise it could protect the whole party. lol
I also played BG vanilla for probably 10 years before I realized that you should cast Remove/Resist Fear before any battle against mages or clerics. I always thought it was a wasted spell slot when I could be memorizing another cure spell or acid arrow!
The bandit ambush is actually less bad now than it was in BG vanilla. I remember back in the day, if I got the bandit ambush, I'd just load saved game immediately. I think they reduced the number of bandits or it used to be bandits AND dogs or something. Either way, it doesn't seem nearly as bad now. The wyvern ambush on the other hand, that is a game stopper even for a high level party who knows what they are doing. I hate that one SO much.
Ah... I see. That is bad news. I suppose the pre-patch BG EE ambushes were too easy, which I felt were more of an inconvenience than a challenge, but it's kinda silly to include game-ending events that forces the player to reload through no fault of their own.
In an ideal world, games would be released bug-free and then be left alone. Patches often provides enhancements, but it really annoys me how modern games are constantly changing, which often mess up saved games. (cos as u know, I tend to take my time with games lol)
In case it’s of interest to other newbies, some of the things I learned are as follows:
1. You can actually run away from most encounters, if you need to.
2. At the start of game you may well have encounters that you can’t win. Being surrounded by ten bandits, all evenly spaced, is just plain nasty. I’m not a great fan of the “flip a coin; oops, you’re dead” mechanic, but it doesn’t happen as often as I’d thought at first.
3. Totally agree with the posters above about bows and slings. I used ranged weapons almost exclusively till around level 3 or 4, when I found melee weapons started to become powerful enough (and armour effective enough) to be worth it.
4. Another point mentioned by other posters is the “Sleep” spell. I found this did work very effectively in the early levels.
5. Switch off the AI and micromanage the fights.
6. Oddly enough although I kept stocking up on spells like charm and dispel magic I found them largely useless, and pretty much stopped using them. I don’t think charm or hold person ever worked on a mob that I actually needed to charm or hold; and dispel magic never seemed to remove any debuffs from any of my own characters. Maybe I was just doing it wrong.
7. It’s also really easy to kite powerful melee-only mobs. I found that with this technique I could take down ogre beserkers, bears, dire wolves, etc., with a low level party. One character got the aggro while the other five stood huddled together armed with bows and slings. The kiting character then ran rings around the other five (literally) while they bombarded the mob with arrows. Occasionally (but not often), the mob would aggro another character, and the newly-aggroed character would have to take up the baton. This strategy also worked fine with packs of two difficult mobs (and a lot of micromanagement). Totally cheesy tactics, but effective nonetheless.
8. Sometimes, the RNG just has it in for you. One time, after a really difficult battle, I had to rest up, and I got ambushed eight times in a row while trying to rest. That pretty much used up all my healing potions.
All in all, I thought it was a fun experience, although I’m enjoying BG2 much more. My two major gripes with BG1 are set out below. I’d be interested to hear the views of others on these gripes, in case I’ve maybe missed a way of dealing with them.
(i) It seems very difficult to prepare properly for fights unless you already know what’s coming. I found that once I’d run into a group of magic-using mobs, it was too late to buff. But the buffs are mostly so short term that you wouldn’t want to cast them until just before the fight starts. That suggests adopting one of the following strategies:
(a) After you have seen what’s coming, you reload, cast the appropriate buffs, and start fighting.
(b) You follow a walkthrough which tells you what’s coming. In case it’s of interest, I found Haeravon’s guide for BGEE very useful. (Google “haeravon BGEE” to find it.)
(c) You scout ahead with a stealthed character, so that you know what’s coming. I guess this is what the game expects you to do, but I found it too tedious to be bothered with it.
(d) You turn the difficulty down to “normal”, so you can go storming into just about any battle without buffing. For the most part this was my own strategy.
(ii) I didn’t like the detect traps mechanism. I got Imoen’s detect traps up to 100 as soon as possible, but I still found that I missed many traps, unless I travelled really really slowly. This was despite having “pause on detect traps” switched on in the options. In the end I decided to ignore traps, and for the most part that worked. Occasionally a trap would result in a death and I’d reload. My hatred of traps was the main reason I skipped Durlag’s Tower. Sadly, this aspect of the game doesn’t seem to be much improved in BG2EE.
Basically, the slower you move your thief, the easier it is to find traps (assuming you have the appropriate level of skill or a magic buff on your thief).
Also, you don't need stealth to scout out ambushes if you have a potion or ring of Invisibility. In BG2: EE, the Magic Eye spell is a great scout. It just does nothing to detect traps. There is a priest spell called "Find Traps". it's second level, but if your PC isn't a cleric and you take only Jaheira, you'll miss out on it. Other good spells for dealing with mobs are "keep them in one place" spells like Web (second level mage spell) and Entangle (First Level Druid spell). They aren't perfect, but if you have your caster turn invisible and cast these spells on the mob, you can stand off and pelt them with arrows/bolts/axes/knives to your heart's content until they die. Just be sure not to put your own characters into the area of effect… unless they have a ring of free action.
If you do ever decide to do Durlag's Tower (the top part is marginally easier than the dungeon), take the second level spell "Protection from Petrification" and kill the basilisks on top of the tower to find a very nice +2 Scimitar hidden in one of the chimneys.
Since the second level spell tier is a weak spot for druids, I often fill a lot of those slots with the Find Traps spell. It has some advantages over regular thief detect skill.
The biggest advantage is that when it ticks at the beginning of the round, it reveals traps over a much larger area of effect than the thief skill. Another advantage is that you can keep the well-armored Jaheira or a PC fighter-druid (or cleric) in the front of the party, then bring your thief up from the back lines if a trap is found.
The disadvantage is that it only detects the traps. You still have to have a properly skilled thief to disarm them.
Also, I find that the biggest problem beginners have with the detect traps skill is not understanding that it only ticks once at the beginning of the round, and has a very short range - about six apparent feet in front of the thief, in a small cone-shaped field of vision.
That's why you have to creep your thief forward just a little bit at a time down new corridors, until all the traps are found and disarmed. If the thief moves more than just a bit, he or she will likely walk right into one or more traps before the round ends and the skill ticks again.
Agreed that the process is tedious, but it does add a lot of realism to the game, I think.
If you just don't want to need find traps and open locks in your game, there's a mod called "Tweaks" that has components where you can choose to remove all traps, open all locks, and identify all items. I didn't like that, myself. The one time I turned those features on, I felt like it just took away the reason for thieves and bards to exist, and the game lost something important.
I had seen the mod that removes traps, but I can't bring myself to use it. Even though I don't like the traps, they are a part of the game, and I feel I have to deal with them.
I am with you for not liking traps, but for a different reason. I don't mind having someone to be on the lookout for traps, but I do not like being essentially forced to have a thief (since nobody else can disarm them). The thief was fun the first several times, but now I wish I could vary it up more but still remove traps. I'm not consoled by people who can find but not disable traps. It seems that in general there are a lot of options to perform any other basic task in the game (melee, priest-like spells, mage-like spells, ranged combat), but when it comes to traps, there is only 1 option, the thief. It is alleviated somewhat in BG1EE and BG2 with the addition of kits, but still it is certainly the most limited major component of AD&D 2nd Edition rules.