(no spoilers please) playing without patches on the Mac App Store
GreenWarlock
Member Posts: 1,354
After 4 months waiting for the patch to arrive on the Mac App Store, it seems the official policy is to wait for the as-yet unannounced v1.3 (see OSX Forum) so it is time to finally venture into Athkatla with a version known to have game-breaking bugs. I am looking to collect tips, without spoilers, that will allow completion of the game with minimal distraction of the known issues.
First - the nastiest game-breaker is a bug in the Save Game logic that will reset the world state. This appears tied to a memory leak, probably with piles of treasure dropped by monsters. My solution here is to minimize saves, treating each game as a no-reaload (despite not having enough experience for this yet) and quitting and restarting the game every 2 or 3 hours, or every 3-5 maps if I am running through quickly.
Second - reloading a game will lose any spawned enemies (typically off-screen). This means losing loot, experience, and possibly plot items. Address this the same way as item 1, play for a no-reload game, and replay each map completely if you must reload, rather than frequently using quick save. The autosave is handy, as it is often saved just before you arrive at the new area, so you get a completely fresh run at the map.
Third - there are game-breaking infinite dialog loops with the new characters, so it may be best to avoid the four new DLC characters entirely. I am experimenting with playing through some of their content in chapter 2, as the infinite loops occur later, but they are not recommended for a full play through.
Fourth - Watchers keep will frequently not be available after the initial Irenicus Dungeon, but it *is* intended to be accessible in the Shadows of Amn episode. Apparently the workaround for this is to, immediately upon being released from your cage at the start of the game, check the world map using the top-right button on the dungeon map. This should show Watcher's Keep at the bottom of the map, and if it is there (always has been for me) it should remain accessible for the rest of the game. If you are deeper into the game before you notice the keep is missing, the only way there is either via the console (something I will not do), to wait until the Throne of Bhaal episode, or to restart the game from the beginning and try this tip.
Fifth - hopefully obvious. When playing a multi class character, all classes are listed as the multi. In practice, the class experience levels are listed in the order that they are printed, so a fighter / mage /thief will list three classes, all labelled fighter / mage / thief, but having different levels and xp breaks. The first will be fighter, the second mage, and the last will be thief. This has no effect on gameplay, only readability.
Help wanted:
Apparently there is a fix for the weapon mastery/greater weapon mastery bonuses, but I don't know what the un-fixed state is. What bonuses am I actually playing with? As far as I can tell, the character screen is reporting the expected EE edition bonuses.
As far as I know, there is nothing to be done that active and inactive buttons look the same, we must simply learn to live with a broken user interface until a patch is released.
Hopefully, following these tips (and any more you share) we should be able to make it all the way through Throne of Bhaal.
Luckily for me (in a sense) I have around 10 characters parked up that have completed BG1, waiting for the patch that is no longer planned to ship. At least one of those is planned to play through without using the new characters, so on with the adventures of Darty McFly, the halfling dart-flinging warrior with grand-master darts, and a chip on his shoulder about the tall folks (completed BG1 with a party of all shorties, looking for the shortest workable party of SoA/ToB)
First - the nastiest game-breaker is a bug in the Save Game logic that will reset the world state. This appears tied to a memory leak, probably with piles of treasure dropped by monsters. My solution here is to minimize saves, treating each game as a no-reaload (despite not having enough experience for this yet) and quitting and restarting the game every 2 or 3 hours, or every 3-5 maps if I am running through quickly.
Second - reloading a game will lose any spawned enemies (typically off-screen). This means losing loot, experience, and possibly plot items. Address this the same way as item 1, play for a no-reload game, and replay each map completely if you must reload, rather than frequently using quick save. The autosave is handy, as it is often saved just before you arrive at the new area, so you get a completely fresh run at the map.
Third - there are game-breaking infinite dialog loops with the new characters, so it may be best to avoid the four new DLC characters entirely. I am experimenting with playing through some of their content in chapter 2, as the infinite loops occur later, but they are not recommended for a full play through.
Fourth - Watchers keep will frequently not be available after the initial Irenicus Dungeon, but it *is* intended to be accessible in the Shadows of Amn episode. Apparently the workaround for this is to, immediately upon being released from your cage at the start of the game, check the world map using the top-right button on the dungeon map. This should show Watcher's Keep at the bottom of the map, and if it is there (always has been for me) it should remain accessible for the rest of the game. If you are deeper into the game before you notice the keep is missing, the only way there is either via the console (something I will not do), to wait until the Throne of Bhaal episode, or to restart the game from the beginning and try this tip.
Fifth - hopefully obvious. When playing a multi class character, all classes are listed as the multi. In practice, the class experience levels are listed in the order that they are printed, so a fighter / mage /thief will list three classes, all labelled fighter / mage / thief, but having different levels and xp breaks. The first will be fighter, the second mage, and the last will be thief. This has no effect on gameplay, only readability.
Help wanted:
Apparently there is a fix for the weapon mastery/greater weapon mastery bonuses, but I don't know what the un-fixed state is. What bonuses am I actually playing with? As far as I can tell, the character screen is reporting the expected EE edition bonuses.
As far as I know, there is nothing to be done that active and inactive buttons look the same, we must simply learn to live with a broken user interface until a patch is released.
Hopefully, following these tips (and any more you share) we should be able to make it all the way through Throne of Bhaal.
Luckily for me (in a sense) I have around 10 characters parked up that have completed BG1, waiting for the patch that is no longer planned to ship. At least one of those is planned to play through without using the new characters, so on with the adventures of Darty McFly, the halfling dart-flinging warrior with grand-master darts, and a chip on his shoulder about the tall folks (completed BG1 with a party of all shorties, looking for the shortest workable party of SoA/ToB)
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Comments
New content is buggy but not realky fixed by the stopgap patch so you can play it if you are prepared to read some spoilers and keep extra savegames.
So far, I have finally put together what I hope will be the final party for my first character, who is just hitting the million XP mark in chapter 2 still, and played the initial content for a couple of the DLC characters who he will not be taking forward. I have an interesting spread of xp across the party from around 400k - 1,000k, so we'll see how that works out over the long haul. The guy furthest back is a bard, so hopefully will level fast enough to keep up.
I am also just exploring the early stages again with another character or two, as I build confidence to play on.
So far, no major game-breakers other than the one annoying start-up that does not have Watcher's Keep, unfortunately for a character who planned to hit there early.
Also, I am seeing quite a few more crash-to-desktop cases than with BG1, but mostly have not lost too much gameplay. I notice that if I leave the game on pause for a while (e.g., several hours if distracted by something else) then the game will crash, just on the pause screen alone. I am guessing this may be the memory leak alluded to in the patch notes, so I will continue to periodically close/restart the game to be safe.
Final observation may just be memory playing tricks with me but the banter timers seem awfully quick. I had two party members play out most of a romance worth of banters just crossing a couple of maps, 6 or 7 distinct sets of banters. One of the pair had just rejoined the party after a long absence, and it felt like the banter timer had been running the whole time they were out of the party, and they caught up fast! Likewise, I am being very careful to run through everyone's quest lines quickly as they also seem to want to race through their content far faster than I remember - but that could just be fading grey cells.