Finished the trilogy with Neera and Rasaad

Thrasymachus

So I finally finished the BG trilogy with my character 'Zeno'.

I completed BGEE last summer. The party roster included:

• Zeno (half-elf blade)
• Imoen
• Viconia
• Coran

Zeno completed Neera's quest in BGEE, but it *appeared* that she died during the confrontation with the Red Wizards in Adoy's hideout. However, it turned out that she simply was 'zapped' away by an unfortunate wild surge, since she appeared intact in Athkatla a few months later.

Zeno also completed Rasaad's quest in BGEE, but tensions between Rasaad and Viconia led Zeno to advise the young monk to meditate and train by himself in Nashkel. Fortunately, Zeno and Rasaad were reunited a few months later in Trademeet.

I started BG2EE with Zeno in December, and played off and on over the past six months.

Here is the final party composition (right before the last battle with Melissan):

• Zeno (39th level Blade)
• Neera (27th level Wild Mage)
• Rasaad (37th level Sun Soul Monk)
• Mazzy (35th level Fighter)
• Valygar (31st level Stalker)
• Imoen (26th level Mage, 7th level Thief)

Zeno ended up with 32% of the kills in this game – including Draconis and Melissan – so Blades definitely can hold their own with fighters and mages.

I was worried about poor Zeno when it seemed that he could lay only one trap in any area. Fortunately, I found a fix here to place into the 'override' file that restored this HLA to its intended function. Those traps were quite helpful! I can't imagine how I could've defeated Draconis otherwise.

The Rasaad quests in both SoA and ToB were a lot of fun. Overall, I really enjoyed his storyline, which was something of a surprise, since LG monks really are not normally my cup of tea.

Neera also was a solid NPC. I enjoyed the romance, and appreciated the absence of any 'therapy sessions' in it. Her final talk in SoA was surprisingly touching IMO.

So, kudos to the Beamdog team on Rasaad and Neera. They are worthy additions to the game.

Overall, it was a great experience. I look forward to doing it all over again with a different character! (But I'll wait until the 1.3 patch is released before doing so.)

Gotural

Great to hear about your experience with the new NPCs, cool Charname also ! What weapons did you use for Zeno ?

Loub

You know, I haven't had an éclair in over 5 years. I'm thinking of rectifying that tonight.

I also never had peanut butter, I wonder what it tastes like?

Maybe I should have a peanut butter éclair?

I also want a Paçoca Milkshake, I wonder if BK is still selling it.

I am also craving for key lime pie, maybe I should order one from my mother.

It is obvious that you are not a completionist judging by your unmaxed exp, likely you haven't done Watcher's Keep. Which is a shame, because, in a party of 6, the dungeon is worth about 1,3 million exp for each party member.

Thrasymachus

Gotural said:

Great to hear about your experience with the new NPCs, cool Charname also ! What weapons did you use for Zeno ?

Thanks!

In ToB I relied primarily on Crom Faeyr and Scarlet Ninja-To.

Throughout most of SoA I used Belm and Kundane.

Carsomyr was employed on occasion (especially when battling mages and liches).

For undead I used Azuredge.

Other weapons were used when dictated by the occasion, or for the sake of variety.

Thrasymachus

Loub said:

You know, I haven't had an éclair in over 5 years. I'm thinking of rectifying that tonight.

I also never had peanut butter, I wonder what it tastes like?

Maybe I should have a peanut butter éclair?

I also want a Paçoca Milkshake, I wonder if BK is still selling it.

I am also craving for key lime pie, maybe I should order one from my mother.

Um, okay.

Loub said:

It is obvious that you are not a completionist judging by your unmaxed exp, likely you haven't done Watcher's Keep. Which is a shame, because, in a party of 6, the dungeon is worth about 1,3 million exp for each party member.

I did do Watcher's Keep. Not sure how I could've reached the max with a party of 6.

Zeno ended up with ~ 7,535,000 exp.

MacHurto

I dont know what the hell is wrong with me. On a party of 6 I never even reach 7 million. And I do everything! I swear!

With regards to the topic at hand, Spike traps can basically solo ToB. I killed several sendai, draconis, abizigail, Balthazar, 50% of the guys in the last seal battle in WK, demogorgon and Melissan with them. Not sure there is anyone important you cannot kill with traps. Maybe Yaga-shura because of minions spawning all over the place?

EDIT: the dragon in WK is one. He becomes hostile if you trap the lair, now that I remember. Not that he is that much of a challenge anyway.

Blackraven

@Thrasymachus, congrats, i think you've had a very nice gaming experience!

@MacHurto, it's not you, same here. I think I ended up somewhere around 7 million with a full party. Quest order does make a difference (the difficulty level and XP value of spawns depends on the level of parties), but I doubt that explains a huge gap of altogether 6 million XP.

Thrasymachus

None of the other members of my party reached 7 million exp (Imoen, of course, was the furthest behind, thanks to being trapped in Spellhold throughout much of SoA).

I rotated through some NPCs early on in SoA, so that probably is what pushed Zeno ahead of the others.

Loub

Thrasymachus said:

None of the other members of my party reached 7 million exp (Imoen, of course, was the furthest behind, thanks to being trapped in Spellhold throughout much of SoA).

I rotated through some NPCs early on in SoA, so that probably is what pushed Zeno ahead of the others.

This is strange, usually I end up hitting the 8m mark around Bodhi with a 3-person party (I do all good- and neutral- aligned quests), and reach the end of ToB with at least 13m exp on CHARNAME, assuming I take Sarevok with me.

For instance, in my current run with a Cleric/Mage and a 4-person party I've already hit the 7m mark -I've just completed Watcher's Keep, and still have pending quests with Neera before gtaking on Bodhi.

CrevsDaak

@Loub‌ but you're playing with 3 (or 4) characters. When I play with one character (solo run!)I reach 4,5M in Chapter 3, Chapter 2 if I have SCS and by thus take longer to pay Gaelan Bayle (or Chapter 3 with SCS as well if I side with Bodhi).
When I play with six characters (full party), I tend to reach 3M/character in Spellhold or (depends how much I do of WK) in Chapter 3.

MacHurto

I guess my charnames are always slow learners

Loub

CrevsDaak said:

@Loub‌ but you're playing with 3 (or 4) characters. When I play with one character (solo run!)I reach 4,5M in Chapter 3, Chapter 2 if I have SCS and by thus take longer to pay Gaelan Bayle (or Chapter 3 with SCS as well if I side with Bodhi).
When I play with six characters (full party), I tend to reach 3M/character in Spellhold or (depends how much I do of WK) in Chapter 3.

Actually, in this particular run I literally duo-ed BG1 with my Cleric/Mage (Half-Orc and Invoker, if you're curious - also had a 94 point buy) and Imoen EEKeepered as a Rogue-Rebalanced Swashbuckler specializing on Scimitars. I believe I finished the game with a little less than 900k XP, which obviously contributed to high levels in SoA due to scaling enemies.

Juris

The new NPCs really add to ToB. I'd have liked to see some additional content for the old NPCs though. The new NPCs really overshadow the old ones in ToB.

JuliusBorisov

Gallowglass

Hmmm. In my last completed run, I played pretty completionist by swapping all of the NPCs in and out as necessary to do their personal quests (including all of the new-NPC quests in ToB). I didn't hang around anywhere for protracted grinding of re-spawns, and was playing with a full party of six, on Core difficulty, completely unmodded, with nothing EEKeepered. By the time I was about to confront Melissan, everyone was over 7M XP, and my protagonist and one NPC were over 7.5M XP, but no-one had capped out at 8M.

With a moderate amount of grinding (e.g. of Fire Giants in ToB) I could have capped out by then, but I was curious to see what XP I would reach without doing that. (So having found out, I popped back to WK and capped everyone out by abusing the Machine of Lum the Mad, before returning to demolish Melissan ... who was actually quite easy to beat with a capped-out party :-).)

MacHurto

I cannot even remember how difficult Melissan is any longer. In my two EE runs I was so much wanting to get the run done with that I just trapped the hell out of her (no pun intended)

Loub

MacHurto said:

I cannot even remember how difficult Melissan is any longer. In my two EE runs I was so much wanting to get the run done with that I just trapped the hell out of her (no pun intended)

Personally, Amelyssan is pretty mediocre without Ascension (which I can't get working because I lost the fixes which were posted on the forums) - she can easily be soloed on core difficulty by anyone capable of counterspelling, since she doesn't have much in the way of health and forgot that as a Cleric/Mage she is supposed to cast spells and instead wades into mêlée like an idiot, where she is honestly mediocre - I've never seen her killing my Devas and Planetars - the real threat in her battle are the creatures she summons when she syphons Bhaal's essence, if only because they can force you to spend precious spell slots in your battles with them by stalling and thus making your buffs and summons fade - Amelyssan herself only has 200 Hit Points, which I can honestly take down in 2 rounds with a Cleric/Mage alone.

Pretty disappointing, really.

Twani

MacHurto said:

I cannot even remember how difficult Melissan is any longer. In my two EE runs I was so much wanting to get the run done with that I just trapped the hell out of her (no pun intended)

Last time I played, I tried a no casting playthrough. No heals, no magic spells (despite three mages)- instead, my three mages, two fighters, and one thief (with no backstabs) just wailed on her with weapons and waited out her buffs.

We still beat her soundly, without losing a single member. She's really that easy.

Loub

Twani said:

MacHurto said:

I cannot even remember how difficult Melissan is any longer. In my two EE runs I was so much wanting to get the run done with that I just trapped the hell out of her (no pun intended)

Last time I played, I tried a no casting playthrough. No heals, no magic spells (despite three mages)- instead, my three mages, two fighters, and one thief (with no backstabs) just wailed on her with weapons and waited out her buffs.

We still beat her soundly, without losing a single member. She's really that easy.

Indeed - it's pretty anticlimactic.

When I first played through the game, I was like - 'Oh look, this bitch again, who knew? *laughs*' - and then I said 'Fuck, this is the epic battle I was promised?' when I saw her in all her 'glory'. But then, while fighting her, I truly wondered if a last boss could be that easy and started theorizing that she was the penultimate boss and we would really fight the remnants of Bhaal himself in a twist. But no, after killing her, that was it - all that buildup, all those bosses, all that flair was all lost when the solar came and pretty much said 'Congratulations! You've just triumphed over the easiest last boss in the history of video gaming. Now have a cookie.'

Thrasymachus

Juris said:

The new NPCs really overshadow the old ones in ToB.

I plan to use Dorn and Hexxat in my next play through. However, those NPCs have been more harshly criticized (at least here) than Rasaad and Neera. Still, the change should be interesting.

element

yeh Neera is great

not so fond of Rasaad played bg2ee twice and am yet to be able to actually finish his content thanks to all the all the bugs