Item or spell that you discovered that changed your entire style of play
booinyoureyes
Member Posts: 6,164
Sup, fools!
I just loaded up my game and I realized how much my style of play had evolved. I've played this game on and off for so many years with major restartitis, so I have really, really, REALLY changed my preferences a lot. I used to just fireball with mages and hit things with fighters, using my thieves just to open stuff and not get me killed while begrudgingly taking a cleric along so they can heal me.
Man did I suck!
Nowadays there are so many things I do differently. I'm trying to recall what spell or item or ability or whatever I discovered that changed my style, and came up with a couple.
Debuffing spells:
SLOW is such an incredible spell and makes some really tough battles an absolute joke.
Sleep is very similar too. I never used it in my early years, but now I realize just how super important it is for the earlier parts of the game. Its the only way I survive BG1 playing on the hardest difficulty.
Doom/Greater Malison: These spells open up a whole lot of possiblities
Breach: I used to have Keldorn dispel everything.... derp
Summons:
I didn't like the idea. I thought that having "other people/creatures" do all the work would detract from my characters being the stars of the story. Minsc needs to kill things, not some spider. Yet as I discovered how many cool things you can bring in I gave it a chance. Mordekein's sword is such a beast, and planetars/devas just dominate things.
Items
Speed Weapons: Sad story... I used to not know what this meant. I didn't even know you only got one extra attack on your offhand. I used to put flail of ages offhand and not bother with items that increase your APR. Man, does Belm, Scarlett and Kundane really make your fighters so much more effective or what?
Efreeti bottle. Didn't even know this baby existed until someone on this website told me (think it was my girl Dragonspear). Now this is my favorite summon
Robe of Vecna: just... amazing. I heard here and there how powerful mages could be but I always hated casting times so I underutilized them. This is a game changer, and on a cleric/mage it just works magic (literally)
Then I had a brilliant idea: If I learned so much over the years, and still am nowadays, maybe I should ask around. I might find a new trick or two myself. Heck, I still don't use Spike Traps.
So please, feel free to share what sort of items/spells/abilities really changed your style of play and made "encounter x" easier or made you rethink entire classes.
I just loaded up my game and I realized how much my style of play had evolved. I've played this game on and off for so many years with major restartitis, so I have really, really, REALLY changed my preferences a lot. I used to just fireball with mages and hit things with fighters, using my thieves just to open stuff and not get me killed while begrudgingly taking a cleric along so they can heal me.
Man did I suck!
Nowadays there are so many things I do differently. I'm trying to recall what spell or item or ability or whatever I discovered that changed my style, and came up with a couple.
Debuffing spells:
SLOW is such an incredible spell and makes some really tough battles an absolute joke.
Sleep is very similar too. I never used it in my early years, but now I realize just how super important it is for the earlier parts of the game. Its the only way I survive BG1 playing on the hardest difficulty.
Doom/Greater Malison: These spells open up a whole lot of possiblities
Breach: I used to have Keldorn dispel everything.... derp
Summons:
I didn't like the idea. I thought that having "other people/creatures" do all the work would detract from my characters being the stars of the story. Minsc needs to kill things, not some spider. Yet as I discovered how many cool things you can bring in I gave it a chance. Mordekein's sword is such a beast, and planetars/devas just dominate things.
Items
Speed Weapons: Sad story... I used to not know what this meant. I didn't even know you only got one extra attack on your offhand. I used to put flail of ages offhand and not bother with items that increase your APR. Man, does Belm, Scarlett and Kundane really make your fighters so much more effective or what?
Efreeti bottle. Didn't even know this baby existed until someone on this website told me (think it was my girl Dragonspear). Now this is my favorite summon
Robe of Vecna: just... amazing. I heard here and there how powerful mages could be but I always hated casting times so I underutilized them. This is a game changer, and on a cleric/mage it just works magic (literally)
Then I had a brilliant idea: If I learned so much over the years, and still am nowadays, maybe I should ask around. I might find a new trick or two myself. Heck, I still don't use Spike Traps.
So please, feel free to share what sort of items/spells/abilities really changed your style of play and made "encounter x" easier or made you rethink entire classes.
Post edited by booinyoureyes on
12
Comments
Here's a couple extras I thought of:
BG1:
I used to cart all the wands and potions from Candlekeep to Bhaal's Temple. It was a major breakthrough when I started using them.
Instead of attacking mages at the start of every round, wait until the moment they begin to cast and pause. Then fire a MM or arrow to interrupt the cast.
Full parties make the game more challenging. It was a foregone conclusion I had to have a full party. When I began soloing or playing in small groups, I realized how much easier the game got. That was counterintuitive to me.
This will be a fun thread to read!
Neutralize poison. Yeeeaaaahhh.
Magic scrolls. What.
Strategy:
- Buffing summons. Like you (until recently) @booinyoureyes, I'm not too fond of summons, but on solo ventures I do use and happily buff summons. Solo'ing becomes lonely every now and then
- the Breach spell, I never bothered to study all the different spell protections and the debuffs they require, but Breach almost always does the job (except against Liches and against the highest level spell protections afaik)
- Solo'ing: initially I thought that solo'ing was synonymous with suicide, but boy was I mistaken.
- Using consumables (wansds, potions), like @JLee said.
- Damage resistance > AC later in the game.
- Invisibility and Non-Detection: I'm feeling like a bull in a china shop with my current heavily armored warrior party, yet that's how I started out...
- APR
- Sanctuary and do whatever you like (heal, buff, open locks and doors, disarm traps, turn undead)
Playstyle:
- No-Reload: this does equal suicide in my case, but it's great fun and has completely changed my way of playing.
- Multiclasses, my first completed BG1 playthrough was with a vanilla Ranger, my first completed SOA run with a Swashbuckler. (I never completed TOB until two years ago, because my TOB CD was damaged.) I used to think that multiclasses were Jacks-of-two-trades, masters of none. Ever since I dicovered Fighter/Thief, Cleric/Ranger, Thief/Mage, and recently Cleric/Thief I find it much less appealing to play a single class character (with a few possible exceptions).
- Before starting a new game, writing a short backstory/characterization of your charname. Makes each game a unique experience.
Items:
Boots of Speed, Boots of Speed, Robe of Vecna, Boots of Speed, Speed weapons, pretty much anything that makes you do stuff faster
Then, Spell Immunity changed my playing style completely much more becase with SCS you can put Spell Immunities on a Chain Contingency (that was keymapped) so Improved Invisibility + Spell Immunity: Divination + Spell Immunity: Abjuration so I'm immune to dispelling too.
Items that changed my playing style:
The Wand of Wonders
The Deck of Many Things
Cloak of the Sewers
Jan Jansen's Armor
Staff of the Magi
Big Metal Unit
Big Metal Rod's Ammunition
The biggest thing I've learned with experience is using area effect spells. I barely used them at all on my first couple playthroughs, now I'm firing them off constantly.
Like Jlee, i used to hoard all nonpermanent items (wands, potions) and to never use them.
Now most of my bgee runs rely only on these kind of items.
I usually play as neutral or good-aligned melee or thief-types, so Dynaheir was my go-to BG1 mage for the first few years I played. I didn't know that sleep, slow or any other awesome Enchantment spell existed. Derp.
"Alright everyone, stick together, make sure the casters stay in back, careful now we don't want an ambush."
Me with boots of haste.
"Everyone wait here while I do the everything. WOOOSH!"
Also, I have recently (literally like these past two weeks) began to use consumables. It changes the dynamic of the first game completely. I'm still somewhat reluctant to spend them, but at least now my wands are in quickslots and ready to go instead of sitting in my Bag of Hoarding Holding waiting for that big, dangerous moment where I really, really, really need them (and then forget they exists/am too lazy to rummage through the bag for them)
Buffing summons seems to be my next move. Would make good use of that "Strength of One" spell for elementals and stuff. Thanks @Blackraven for that one.
Also, because of what @atcDave said, I am now gonna explore more multi-class characters. I had Aerie in an early playthrough but horribly misused her, and I've recently made a cleric/ranger who is pretty far. Now I want to try so many more (looking for suggestions)
My party: A hit to no effect? Minsc needs a bigger sword. I don't know Minsc, let's just wait till his spell wears off, he can't hide forever.
Enemy mage *casts Chaos, Fire Arrow, Magic Missile etc etc.
...
Minsc did 19 damage to Charname
Enemy mage did 14 damage to Charname
Charname: Death.
I was young once too lol.
Anyway, about multiclass recommendations:
'Anything'/Mage (or /Illusionist for awesome Gnomes) is great. One out of my two completed trilogy runs was with a Fighter/Illusionist, but I actually like Thief/Mage (i.e. Backstabber/Mage or even Swashbuckler/Mage) better, because the thief class brings all kinds of nifty options that the more brutal fighters don't have.
I once ran a gnomish Cleric/Illusionist lass through BG1. She had a legit stat score of 97, which really helps with this multiclass since you'd like to have pretty much every stat but CHA maxed. Unfortunately in BG2 my game crashed and I had to do a re-install. A fantastic class with almost unlimited options, potentially very powerful, but since you have so many options this multi isn't very straightforward to play so it can still be a challenge and very instructive to play one. I still have her .char file, so I might just take her through the game once again at one point.
And finally, the Cleric/Thief. Frowned upon by many because supposedly the two classes don't complement each other very well, but my experience has been quite the opposite.
Admittedly, it depends a bit on how you look at it. Does the Thief part enhance the Cleric part? Not that much, or at least less so than the Fighter part in a Fighter/Cleric (better fighting) or the Mage part in a Cleric/Mage (good spell combos, triggers, contingencies).
However if you look at it the other way around, the Cleric class might well be the class that best complements the Thief.
- The Cleric's Thac0 progression is pretty good, so you can become a competent fighter if needed (although obviously the Fighter/Thief has the better Thac0 plus weapon specialization).
- The Cleric buffs are likely to make the Cleric/Thief the best backstabber in the game.
- The Cleric/Thief gets a number of nice summons that can act as decoys that enable him/her to hit and fade and hit again.
- As mentioned before the Cleric is the best class at buffing others, including summons. (I agree that the Thief/Mage also has summons but less buffing options; the Fighter/Thief doesn't have any summons to begin with).
- Sanctuary allows the character to use their thieving skills (picking locks and looting chests, disarming traps) without being bothered by any nearby enemies.
I wouldn't be surprised if in the course of my game current game, my Cleric/Thief reveals more nice synergies.
Ah, and one more thing, the rogue classes and the priest classes have the fastest level progression, so that levelling up doesn't feel like a drag.
Sequencers also. I get that you can pack together several spells that 'hey presto' go off in sequence. it just doesn't seem worth the time invested "To me". but then again, I'm not a great player. i just have fun with it.
Thieves arguably are one of the best multiclasses. Fighter/Thief and Mage/Thief both enhance the base thief class hugely, and either can synergise well without losing out on skillpoints or thief HLAs.
Spell - Emotion Hopelessness
Complimentary to that concept: the fact that jewelry and gems never depreciate, and are weightless.
And the real reason for wanting all that money: Recharging wands.
What else: Anhkeg shells & anhkeg hunting. Anhkeg plate mail. Gorion's belt, combined with Winter Wolf hunting. Sleep & Color Spray. The long range, long duration Charm spell from Algernon's cloak.
Neera. DO NOT be afraid of Wild Maging it.
The first time I picked up Viconia she one-shot the Flaming Fist guard with Command, I thought 'WTF just happened?' and took my first long, hard look at Cleric spells. This in turn made me realise that a Cleric is a whole lot more than just a walking medicine cabinet and opened my eyes to wonderful world of pre-buffing.
I still haven't got my head around sequencers yet but I'm working on it - I just have to work out which order to do what against whom etc. (oh for the days when I had an ISIT dept. at my beck and call)!
By far the most useful and enlightening information I've found has come from posters on this board - thank you all!
I've use full sequencer a couple of times. Load some spells. Then at the next battle let it fly. Don't bother about trying to get the lost spells back first or you will end up confused.
Also, spells cast from wands bypass certain spell protections (like minor globe of invulnerability), so I go crazy with the wands when I fight mages now (especially Kahrk)
Throwing weapons (axes, daggers) work pretty much the same way so you can use them as melee weapons instead. Not a huge benefit once you get ones that magically return to you (other than for avoiding penalties for using ranged weapons in melee), but it can be really useful at the beginning of BG1 where you can buy Beruel's Retort (+1) throwing axes cheap in Beregost.
At that price, who needs swords? Axes for everyone!!
http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG2/SpellsReference/Main.htm
Using those two items you can do pretty much all of Cloakwood with zero issues.
With casting time 0, you silence a mage before Contigency runs for the enemy wizard. Muted, even Liches will try to engage in melee (weapon: Nails) against your fighters.