Why are these weapons good/bad?
Heindrich
Member, Moderator Posts: 2,959
So now that I've finished my first blind playthrough, I've treated myself to looking at lists of items and seeing what I missed in BG 2. A few obviously jump out, like Ring of Gaxx, (though I'm not sure I could've handled a Demilich in SoA anyway), Big Metal Unit (Never would have found that playing blind and roleplaying Good) and not keeping Carsomyr safely in the bag of holding was an epic fail I regretted sorely.
Having occasionally seen names mentioned in discussions on this forum, a few items have come to my attention that I either A) Don't understand why everybody loves them.
Don't understand why nobody mentions them.
A)
1. Belm: A +2 Scimitar that increases APR by 1. It looks nice, for sure, but with such a low enchantment, I guess it's gonna primarily be an offhand weapon. Which means you're gonna lose a lot of THAC0 unless u have very high specialisation in Scimitars and Two Weapon style. Unfortunately, there's no real standout scimitars in BG 2, so if u probably need to use a different weapon for mainhand, which means u won't get very high specialisation for both weapon classes... Oh yeah, and +1 APR seems kinda insignificant compared to 5 APR for MMMs.
2. Celestial Fury: I love this weapon, and of course will use it again, but given how much people talk about it, I was disappointed that I couldn't upgrade it beyond a +3 weapon in ToB. I almost never used its lightning charged ability (for reasons explained before lol), but even when I did, it wasn't usually effective against whatever that was tough enough that couldn't be handled on the edge of the blade itself. The random extra lightning damage was mostly useless, because it was unreliable and the main difficulty in BG 2 was being able to hit enemies, not hitting for how much damage. The thing that really made the weapon amazing for most of SoA was the chance to stun, which is basically a death sentence for its victim, but as enemies got tougher, hitting them in the first place became increasingly difficult, and I'm pretty sure the worst foes out there are immune to stun anyway.
1. The Answerer: which I used to replace Celestial Fury, even though I had ++ in Katana and + in Long Swords for my Fighter/Mage. Of course you get this very late in the game, but I am still surprised that nobody ever mentions it. As a +4 weapon, it can hit some things that are innately immune to +3 (Melissan and Ravager, I think, amongst others...). Each hit makes it easier to hit the same target again, both with physical attacks and spells. You can basically not bother with Lower Resistance if you got a fighter who can hit reliably with The Answer!
2. Daystar: Am I right in understanding that this blade counts as a +6 vs Evil enemies?! (Which is basically most enemies). And it's utterly devastating against undead. AND it's got Sunray... which I haven't tried cos I've never used a monk, but the description looks amazing! If it really is as good as I think it is now... I really regret never noticing that Inn at the city gates.
Having occasionally seen names mentioned in discussions on this forum, a few items have come to my attention that I either A) Don't understand why everybody loves them.
Don't understand why nobody mentions them.A)
1. Belm: A +2 Scimitar that increases APR by 1. It looks nice, for sure, but with such a low enchantment, I guess it's gonna primarily be an offhand weapon. Which means you're gonna lose a lot of THAC0 unless u have very high specialisation in Scimitars and Two Weapon style. Unfortunately, there's no real standout scimitars in BG 2, so if u probably need to use a different weapon for mainhand, which means u won't get very high specialisation for both weapon classes... Oh yeah, and +1 APR seems kinda insignificant compared to 5 APR for MMMs.
2. Celestial Fury: I love this weapon, and of course will use it again, but given how much people talk about it, I was disappointed that I couldn't upgrade it beyond a +3 weapon in ToB. I almost never used its lightning charged ability (for reasons explained before lol), but even when I did, it wasn't usually effective against whatever that was tough enough that couldn't be handled on the edge of the blade itself. The random extra lightning damage was mostly useless, because it was unreliable and the main difficulty in BG 2 was being able to hit enemies, not hitting for how much damage. The thing that really made the weapon amazing for most of SoA was the chance to stun, which is basically a death sentence for its victim, but as enemies got tougher, hitting them in the first place became increasingly difficult, and I'm pretty sure the worst foes out there are immune to stun anyway.
1. The Answerer: which I used to replace Celestial Fury, even though I had ++ in Katana and + in Long Swords for my Fighter/Mage. Of course you get this very late in the game, but I am still surprised that nobody ever mentions it. As a +4 weapon, it can hit some things that are innately immune to +3 (Melissan and Ravager, I think, amongst others...). Each hit makes it easier to hit the same target again, both with physical attacks and spells. You can basically not bother with Lower Resistance if you got a fighter who can hit reliably with The Answer!
2. Daystar: Am I right in understanding that this blade counts as a +6 vs Evil enemies?! (Which is basically most enemies). And it's utterly devastating against undead. AND it's got Sunray... which I haven't tried cos I've never used a monk, but the description looks amazing! If it really is as good as I think it is now... I really regret never noticing that Inn at the city gates.
3
Comments
A1: the only classes that truly don't benefit from belm are berserkers and fighters and mages. belm (and kundane another "speed" weapon) is most effective with Improved Haste because it lends an extra attack to your mainhand. basically the idea is to get as close to 10apr as possible (without GWW). you don't care about not hitting with the off-hand because 9 attacks with something foebane is so damaging anyway
A2: celestial fury. loved for the stun effect, much like the stupifier in bgee
B1: yep, i love the answerer. combine IHH with that lower resistance and you make any enemy vulnerable to magic
B2: daystar, might not be raved about, but i'd imagine everyone does know and appreciate its power. the only thing is that its main use is against undead and the mace of disruption and azuredge. i think it's too limited to be considered in the same realms as FoA and CF
1. Belm: You're underestimating the importance of APR, I guess. Whether you have any pips in scimitars doesn't matter, Belm is just there to make your main hand that much more powerful.
2. CF: You're right, it isn't worthwhile in ToB. However, it's one of the best weapons in SoA and you can get it pretty much in the first hour.
1. It's not that impressive to me. TBH I usually don't find connecting hits that hard in higher levels.
2. Daystar: Uh, it explicitly says +4 vs. evil?
IHH? Probably something really obvious once u mention it... lol
@FinneousPJ
Oh... I always thought that meant an additional +4 bonus on top of its base enchantment. Ok... that's not so devastating then.
As for hitting enemies, I guess it depends on characters... I kinda messed up my proficiencies, with ++ in Scimitars, ++ in Long Bows, ++ in Katana and + in Long Swords, ++ in Single Weapon and ++ in Two weapon style at the end. And guess what my setup was at the end of the game? Long Sword and Shield.
I carried Dak'kon's Zerth Blade in my pack for all of SoA, but by the time I had ++ in Katana and Two Weapon Style, extra low level spells and a bit more AC was useless.
Belm is awesome because you can get it really early and an extra attack is very useful. I won't go into the math of APR offhands but suffice to say that there are few things that give you more damage in the offhand than one of these babies.
I find it unlikely it means an additional +4, that's not how you usually write enhancements in DnD.
Hmm, by the end of the game you should have 0 Base THAC0, so with weapon enhancements and STR bonuses even the long sword should have been at around -10 THAC0...
Ah okay, I've not played PnP, so not familiar with some terminology.
I've just checked my save from just before the final stage of the final battle vs Melissan. Charname had 1 Base THAC0 (He was fatigued, that causes a THAC0 penalty right?). His actual THAC0 was -7, with The Answerer. But I guess where he's really pretty poor is APR, which is 5/2. How do u get to 9 or 10 APR?! Do you need Grandmastery?
I agree that Celestial Fury isn't very good late in ToB, however it's great throughout SoA. The main benefit is that it is available very early on in the game.
The answerer strikes me as pretty weak. By the time you get it, your melee combatants will have THAC0s of -10ish (factoring in strength and weapon bonuses) and should be hiting anything with ease. So making the target easier to hit is irrelevant.
Daystar is certainly great against undead, but really it's only useful against vampires. It's less useful against liches because of their magical defenses against weapons - once you get those down, they fall fairly easily to pretty much any weapon. Personally I prefer the mace of disruption - mainly for the immunity to energy drain it provides.
Ultimately the issue with answerer and daystar isn't that they are particularly bad, just that they compare poorly to the real powerhouse weaponry such as Flail of Ages and Carsomyr.
Celestial Fury is good for stunlocking, which is about it. If you're having trouble hitting, going for a higher enchantment level will help with the connection problem, but it's not really a problem with the weapon per se.
Never got far enough in to ToB to snag the answerer, but at that point it seems like the weapon to get if you are having problems connecting with spells or weapons. Problem is, it has a 'wind up' problem, ie you have to get some hits in before the effects become noticeable.
As to Daystar, wasn't there an issue with how it functioned in vanilla BG2, like still not being able to hit stuff like Kangaxx even though it was supposed to be a +4 weapon against evil?
But then, the problem with longswords is that there are so many good ones, in contrast to katanas, of which there aren't many.
The problem with the Answerer is its low Attack Speed, I never used a sword wielding fighter in BG2, so my M/T was much worried about hitting fast and running, which was prettty imposible with the Answerer, but it was of great use against Balthazar in hands of Keldorn.
Also, Fatigue needs to be really heavy to start causing penalties, like 5 or more, if you were fighter level 19 you should have base THAC0 1.
+1 APR Default (All Classes Start with this)
+1 APR from Fighter level 13 (You get +1/2 at 7, and +1/2 at 13)
+1 APR from Grandmastery (+1/2 Specialisation [++], +1/2 again at Grandmstery[+++++]).
A Single-Class Fighter (Or dual-class Fighter who dualled either into Fighter or from Fighter above level 13) will have a basic 3 APR. Multi-Classes, Rangers, Barbarians and Paladins are stuck at Specilisation, so they can only get 2.5 APR, or 5/2 which is what you have.
From here, you dual-wield, which gives you another +1 APR with your off-hand weapon, setting you to 4 APR (or 7/2 for Multis/Paladins/Rangers/Etc). However, if you equip a "speed weapon" in the off-hand (Belm, Kundane, Scarlet Ninja-to), it adds a bonus APR to you *main hand attack* [this is kind of an exploit in the code: the game adds APR to the character, not the weapon, and since the off-hand is hard-coded to have 1 APR only, the bonus APR goes to your main hand weapon). This will set you to 5 APR. Or 9/2 if you only have Specialisation. 5 APR is the *maximum capped base APR*. If you then cast Improved Haste, it will double your APR, setting it to 10 (or 9, with only Spec.)
If you cannot get Grandmastery or you dualled from Fighter before level 13, and are thus capped at 9/2 APR, you can equip the Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialisation from Watcher's Keep, which grant a bonus +1/2 APR. This will set you at the base cap of 5 APR. If you *already* have 5 APR the Gauntlets will not give you further APR.
B1: If you hit reliably with the answerer you don't need to drop MR or AC, you'll get a quick kill anyway...
B2: It's good but hits "only" +4 as pointed out already instead of +6 and that only since EE, before that it hit as a +2 magic weapon so not capable of damaging some of the worst foes. And even that change in EE is not widely known yet.
Yes, Sunray is good and helps in early harder undead fights (e.g. Firkraag undead room) but it's nowhere near as good as Azuredge which in addition to the instant kills is a returning unlimited +3 ranged weapon that you can equip a shield with (useful in the early BG2 game) -> My main complaint about Korgan that he can't wield it. Improved Mace of Disruption is also much better since while not ranged it has the instant kill, now hits as +5 and protects against energy drain.
1. If you can't hit with the offhand because it's only +2 (true against some of the more difficult enemies where it really counts), then you effectively have 8 APR with IH rather than 10. If you had put, say, Crom Faeyr in your OH instead, odds are you'd be doing more damage unless your strength is already obscene. Maybe you could also grab an offhand that gives you another sort of bonus like an immunity.
2. Shields aren't worthless! I just went all the way through the saga, including ToB, and at no point was AC useless. I did go to great lengths to keep AC as low as possible though. I reached *at worst* -22 on Korgan with bard song at the end, but could get to -23 or -24 if I wanted. Some shields also provide valuable bonuses other than AC.
3. 2H weapons can be good. I was really enjoying myself with Staff of the Ram and Ravager. They are both absolutely brutal with GWW and still good with Improved Haste. I don't think there was a single fight where anyone was left alive after I had spent my GWWs.
Re: Shields
Most shields are pretty boring, but there are a few that make a shield worth using for at least one character. The Reflection Shield +1 makes you immune to missiles, so you can stick it on a back-line character (Aerie perhaps) and enjoy not having to worry about ranged enemies sniping your low-HP teammates. The Shield of Harmony +2 is honestly a really powerful item, giving a lot of valuable immunities (Charm/Domination/Confusion/Hold). I really like using it on at least one character as a main off-hand.
If a couple of new shields get added in future DLC or and expansion then they may be worth revisiting.
In terms of weapon selection in SOA, if you can build your chars around 3 melee weapons, the rest makes little difference.
1) celestrial fury - for stun and stun only. Good on your fighter/mage or thieves for backstabbing. Using staff for backstabbing is pretty sad.
2) flail of ages - 33% slow and elemental damage goes through stoneskins and interrupt mage spellcasting. Equip this on your main fighter or fighter/cleric
3) daystar +4 vs evil - a free +4 weapon right off the bat in act 2. It does double damage vs undead. I would say this sword is on par with blackrazor +3.
Since there is a wide selection of +5/+6 weapons in TOB, and with HLA available, it doesn't matter what you end up using.
I didn't read everything this time but, here's my answers:
A1) The point of Belm is to let a fighter/mage etc. reach 10 APR without using Greater Whirlwind which only lasts 1 round. For example, my Fighter/Illusionist with the Gauntlets of Specialization and Kundane offhand has 10 APR when I cast improved haste (and that lasts for like 30 rounds when Neera casts it). That means I can use critical strikes and get 10 guaranteed hits, 8 from Crom Freyr for like 40+ damage each and 2 from Kundane for like 30 each if it can hit (and it hits almost everything in SOA). I switch over to Defender of Easthaven if I need to and mainhand I switch to Mace of Disruption +2 (counts as +5) when I'm hitting undead.
A2) Celestial Fury was my favorite weapon before TOB came out, now I don't specialize Katanas any more, because I'm not a huge fan of Hindo's Doom, except as an item to bring out just to cast the restoration. These days I only specialize Katana with a Thief type because its the best backstab weapon outside of Watcher's Keep.
B1) Anything you can hit with the Answerer (especially with difficulty mods) will be easily killable anyway, because it no longer has weapon immunities, and my fighter/mage or Jaheira will take it down in one round of critical strikes. Otherwise, I would have to burn timestop/ improved alacrity and a bunch of debuffs like spell strike and pierce magic then a breach anyway so whats the point of using the Answerer? The only time I use mass nukes to kill things is against the sidekicks not against the main enemies so if the sidekicks are magic resistant, I'm not going to go around hitting each of them 3x with Answerer, I'd just kill them one at a time.
B2) Daystar I only found out when I got to TOB that it was fixed to +4 in EE. I assumed it was like in Vanilla so I carried it around purely as a Sunray caster for the whole game (using Mace of Disruption/Azuredge for the instant kill on undead instead). Next time I'll use Daystar as a primary weapon if I have a longsword user.
I can understand that Shield of Harmony is situational, but it's a situation you get into all the time because the game loves those mages. I'm not a big fan of the Shield of Cheese though and never really found it necessary.
What I do personally for a "tank" is carry both any useful shields (lowest AC and Shield of Harmony) and any situational weapons along with my main weapons. Level drainers? Something with Negative Plane Protection. Trolls? Something with acid/fire. Undead? Daystar or similar. I don't *always* use shields on my tank but I do most of the time.
The Equaliser... Why did I spend almost an entire game lumping around pieces of a +3 weapon?
Similarly if the Wave Halberd, Dragon's Breath Halberd, Skullcrusher Mace, Impaler Spear and others were available earlier they'd have a good transitional niche before being replaced with everyone's Uberweapons of choice.
The other bad one for me was Aslyferund Elven Chain +5... 40,000 gold and a scroll to upgrade my armour... I thought it'd surely be amazing. Then realised all I got was AC improved by 1.
Protection from Normal Weapons? ... In Throne of Bhaal?! Are you joking?! I am already innately immune to +1 weapons!
I would have really loved more interesting shields. I think that the Defender of Easthaven's bonuses would work way better on a shield than a flail, and do a lot for the style. A shield that could cast Protection from Magical Weapons or Chaotic Commands once a day would definitely get mileage out of me. Any good bucklers at all for thieves/bards (and the ability to use a buckler and a bow simultaneously) would be very interesting as well.
Don't get me wrong, that armour is really nice. From the moment I found it, I no longer needed to bother with Spirit Armour for Charname. If it was earlier in the game, it would be like Carsomyr awesome.
However, 40,000 gold (and scroll) for a 1 AC upgrade is pretty disappointing. And actually I did have a gold crisis in ToB (3 arcane casters with spellbooks to fill, and high level spells cost loads) until I went to Sendai's Enclave. So it wasn't a negligible investment. Thus the disappointment, given how much more it costs than everything else, I expected better.