You can delay. This is when you're pretty much supposed to do TotSC, so you're on track. Candlekeep was a trip, no? I hope you have gotten a bit more invested in the story at this point. The expansion stuff was well done, should be fun. Watch out for traps in Durlags obviously!
I'm more invested in the story now, yes . Still can't take the Armored Figure seriously, but I hate myself for being tricked by a simple anagram. While I will finish this run, can't stop thinking of doing an Evil party playthrough before BGII. Though like most moral alignment games, I don't think I'm cold enough to be a bad guy. (Guess that's a good thing no? XD).
You can delay. This is when you're pretty much supposed to do TotSC, so you're on track. Candlekeep was a trip, no? I hope you have gotten a bit more invested in the story at this point. The expansion stuff was well done, should be fun. Watch out for traps in Durlags obviously!
I'm more invested in the story now, yes . Still can't take the Armored Figure seriously, but I hate myself for being tricked by a simple anagram. While I will finish this run, can't stop thinking of doing an Evil party playthrough before BGII. Though like most moral alignment games, I don't think I'm cold enough to be a bad guy. (Guess that's a good thing no? XD).
Well, it's definitely a thing. Some people like evil runs, some peoples end when thier rep hits 20 In chapter 2 :P(me. I intend to do a real one soon though. Want to check out dorn) the game is bias towards goodies though.
Playing EVIL can be loads of fun. However, some suggestions.
Your Rep will require a fair amount of micro-management. The game story line leans heavily towards doing the right thing and rewarding for same. If your reputation goes to high, your "evil" cohorts will leave (presumably you already know this). This can be managed by some random acts of violence on your part. Or, if you choose the 'Bad' (usually the jerk choice) path, you can manage quite fine.
If, on the other hand, your rep goes to low you will get attacked on a regular basis and it can very quickly become unmanageable. This also means that some encounters will automatically go south just on principal. And it is a very slippery slope. Once you start killing folks, your rep with tank VERY quickly. It is also important to note that, once someone goes hostile to you, there is no turning back. You can't simply repair your rep and then they go back to being neutral. And any non-evil companions that you choose are subject to leaving if your rep gets low enough. Believe me, one encounter with a patrol can zero out your rep, leaving Jaheira or Imoen high and dry.
Additionally, the lower your rep, the more things cost in stores, so... If money is an issue, you just made it worse. This isn't a BIG thing because after a certain point in BG1, money is no longer a huge issue unless you are recharging wands all over the place. And BG2 is simply rife with treasure.
finally, until recently, there haven't been enough EVIL party members to make a full compliment. Or if there are, you don't get much of a choice. So if one dies and you choose not to bring them back, you are in tough straights. Likewise, if one has a personality that grates on you, you have very little choice but to take them anyway. And if you want a certain class to fill a specific role, you have very limited choices, more-so than Good parties.
With all of that being said, it is loads of fun to play. Just be aware of some of the pitfalls.
Don't rush the finale....head to Ulgoth's Beard, pick up the quests but don't let Shandalar take you to the Ice Island yet, as once you're there you are stuck until you finish it. Head off the Durlag's Tower, it's basically the haunted mansion of the series. If you can handle the enemies on the path and the upper levels, then venture to the basement levels, a thief is key here.
Quest rewards wont be quite as good in some cases, but evil NPCs are much more personally powerful. Just contrast Garrick and Eldoth!
Wait, they're both kinda crummy...
If you get them using wands and casting a lot of those loot drop spell scrolls they're actually pretty valuable team members. Give Garrick the Light Crossbow of Speed, Haste him (and then the party), and especially if he is using bolts of biting he is delivering a whole lot of poison damage at 3 APR. But even just with regular bolts he's contributing a lot of damage. Similarly, Eldoth's poisoned arrows are great, and should be fired liberally by him at enemy mages (poison tends to disrupt spellcasting). And of course it's also very convenient that they can identify a lot of stuff; and pickpocket quite a number of valuable items. Anyway, properly used I've found them both to be solid contributors.
This might explain that, while I quite like BGII, it's not as fun for me as it is for many others; I see having a thief as a necessity for a fun and balanced party. I get bored of playing a thief PC (nearly) every single playthrough. Because I have to, unless I want Jan. I do take him occasionally.
This might explain that, while I quite like BGII, it's not as fun for me as it is for many others; I see having a thief as a necessity for a fun and balanced party. I get bored of playing a thief PC (nearly) every single playthrough. Because I have to, unless I want Jan. I do take him occasionally.
For me, and I am in no way a power gamer, the relative benefit of any one character is at least as much based on my role playing the character as it is on pure functionality. Admittedly there are as many ways to play the game as there are snowflakes. I take Jan because he is fun "And" he serves as thief/illusionist. I take Yoshi, because he is interesting story "And" he makes a very good thief. etc... but that's just me.
And I've reached a little brick wall called Aec'Letec....sigh. And here I was thinking that after Durlag's, it'd be a walk towards Baldur's Gate and Sarevok.... What's with old games and their expansions REALLY cranking up the difficulty? I knew that guy at the bottom of the tower was too easy to be the final boss....
And I've reached a little brick wall called Aec'Letec....sigh. And here I was thinking that after Durlag's, it'd be a walk towards Baldur's Gate and Sarevok.... What's with old games and their expansions REALLY cranking up the difficulty? I knew that guy at the bottom of the tower was too easy to be the final boss....
yup, he's a pain. The hardest battle in the game actually. If you don't know, you have to kill all the little cultists before you kill the daemon cause he'll take their bodies or something. If you search the forum you should find some strategies. I think a potion of mirrored eyes protects from his death gaze.
Don't feel bad. Aec is just about impossible to beat without knowing what is happening. And it is not easy to figure out:
If you don't kill all of the cultists first, then after you kill Aec he will respawn from one of them. So you have to kill all of the cultists as you hold Aec at bay. Also, if your party members don't use a potion of mirror eyes (4 of them available from the Ulgoth's Beard tavern inn's merchant; more available at High Hedge) Aec will eventually use a "death gaze" on them that turns them into a hostile undead ghoul. (You can still resurrect them after you kill them as ghouls though, I believe.)
Well, after some thinking and research, I saw that Imoen and Dynahear were nearly level 8,so level 5 spells would be available AND they both have Cloudkill. Seeing that the guy was weak to Acid, I spammed 3 of those and after about 20 tries, the dice rolled in my favour and I killed him!!!!! Khalid died, but I'll rez him and done. Now all that's left is Sarevok. Dunno how that's gonna be.... When that last cultist died, I was basically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Io0OQ2zPS4
Hahaha! Well done! Khalid is expendable. . . Look at that, nearly made it to the end! Doing a whole hell of a lot better then I was my first time through BG. . . *Ponders not making it past the first gibberlings*
It's to the credit of this game that there is no one best way to play. If I could get through the game without taking *any* damage I would find it extremely boring
Sure, but I think you misread my point. I'm not suggesting that you can succeed in not taking any damage; I'm saying that your approach to combat should be to try to inflict enough damage to destroy the enemy without taking any yourself. It is essentially impossible to achieve this all the time, but with good tactics, you can finish most fights while taking little or no damage. Occasionally, even with sound tactics, things go off the rails and you get badly pummelled. These fights are the most satisfying because you end up stretching your capabilities to the limit as circumstance forces you to adopt unconventional tactics and the battle becomes a nail-biter as you are uncertain if you will survive.
You can brute force your way through the game, relying on a combination of the most powerful characters and items, copious healing potions, clerics with spell slots stuffed full of healing spells, resting after each battle, and frequent reloads, but that isn't a particularly fun way to play the game, and none of your battles will have any significance or gravitas if there is nothing at risk. You just keep pounding away until either you win or you get frustrated and quit; either way, it's not that much fun, since you're just doing the same thing over and over for hours on end.
You can brute force your way through the game, relying on a combination of the most powerful characters and items, copious healing potions, clerics with spell slots stuffed full of healing spells, resting after each battle, and frequent reloads, but that isn't a particularly fun way to play the game, and none of your battles will have any significance or gravitas if there is nothing at risk. You just keep pounding away until either you win or you get frustrated and quit; either way, it's not that much fun, since you're just doing the same thing over and over for hours on end.
I know exactly what you mean and right back at the start of this thread it's what I suspected the OP might have been doing to find the game unsatisfying. Having a couple of techniques which work reasonably well and relying on them for every encounter so that it's question of either win (badly hurt) or lose/reload and hope the dice favour you the next time around. You can see a great example of that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4guiH8ceoI The way to make the game satisfying, I find, is to play efficiently: to have different techniques for different opponents. It's far more satisfying if you see a group of enemies ahead, lure a couple away and kill them individually, pick off a couple with ranged weapons, sneak up and backstab one, cast 'Silence' to incapacitate casters and only then send melee fighters to finish them off, as opposed to every time cast a Fireball to soften them up then everyone charge in waving swords. It' s much more satisfying to do it neatly, with finesse than brute force - though brute force can carry you a long way.
I don't know I have never killed the cultists or used Potions of Mirroring Eyes, I think it takes away the "badass" feeling of this fight. And it goes just fine each time.
Well, I beat the game! Sarevok wasn't as tough as Aec'Letec but still put up a good fight and got a few reloads out of me. Loved the game, though the lack of an epilogue a la Bioware where you can see the result of your choices throughout the game was a bit sad, but there were no actual pivotal choices so no surprise there. Now I don't know if I should play Shadows of Amn or replay this one as an Evil character...
@InvictusCobra, first of all congrats!! Well done my friend! And secondly I love seeing how this thread evolved from one in which you vented your frustration into one describing your character's glorious feats!
@InvictusCobra If you liked your character, then I'd say start up Shadows of Amn with that character and continue your adventure all the way to its end. If there's something you wanted to try, you could also very easily start over with a new character and then see which character you want to import.
Nothing says you can't do both...although there are so many more side quests in SOA that will make remembering where you left off with it a bit more difficult.
EDIT: Make use of the uber handy user journal to keep notes to self!
I obviously favor SOA, so my recommendation is to import CHARNAME into SOA. You've already been patient with the slower-moving BG, why not try the one where (IMHO) the storyline and attention to immersion and detail are greatly improved.
If you do, be forewarned: those face-rollingly easy trash mobs (not talking about bossses) at the end of BG? Yah, don't trust that's what you're walking into
See I completely disagree. Picking off a few guys - as if their companions wouldn't notice their homies dying right next to them, wouldn't do anything about it because of some imaginary fog of war? That's totally unrealistic and unsatisfying to me.
They are EVIL man. They aren't going to care if their Homies get picked off. They probably owe them money. They are probably saying "Hey, better him than me."
Regarding the rest, LOL. that so reminds me of this adventure that I played in at Gen Con one year. We had to sneak onto this plateau for some reason that I forget. Anyway, we ended up attacking a group, who called another group, and another. We ended up in this all out battle against the entire plateau. It was EPIC right up until the point where we all died.
Point NOT being that my approach is better than yours; just that each player, including OP, needs to figure out what's most fun for him/herself, and not necessarily follow the advice of randos on a web forum.
But as the starting point of the thread was "I'm not enjoying the game" suggesting different approaches was what was needed, wasn't it? He needs to figure out what suits him but in this thread the point is "have you tried this way?"
Well sure. But I just see a bunch of posts that are phrased like "you need to do this.". More specifically on the point of technical strategies, I think a lot of people who have played IE games for years might forget that they began with very unsophisticated tactics, and still found the games to be very fun. To that end, I think it's better advice for a complete newcomer to start out in that unsophisticated way. Learning better tactics is satisfying in itself, and that may be list if someone starts out taking advice from pros.
^^ This totally. There are many MANY ways to play the game. And the BEST strategy is to start out simple and learn how to get more complex rather than being told THE best (most complex) way of doing things.
See I completely disagree. Picking off a few guys - as if their companions wouldn't notice their homies dying right next to them, wouldn't do anything about it because of some imaginary fog of war? That's totally unrealistic and unsatisfying to me.
Different players have different opinions about what constitutes cheese, but even if you disallow a wide range of tactics that you consider abusive, there is still a whole lot of tactical latitude in the game.
Personally, I don't allow myself to use tactics that either lend themselves to repetitive spamming (I also don't make use of extensive buffs, both because they aren't necessary and because they're tedious to apply) or that are clearly an abuse or oversight of the game engine (such as taking advantage of the fact that nobody in Faerun except you knows how doors work or have the sense to flee the area of effect of a cloudkill). I also don't use resurrection (if a companion dies, they are buried where they fall, I mourn, and go on with the game) apart from the three rods of resurrection in BG2/ToB, and I don't reload due to anything except a game glitch or, sometimes, the death of my main character. There are a couple of BG2 items I won't use (a certain shield that makes a certain powerful monster become a suicide machine comes to mind). The same goes for certain spells. And I won't have my party do anything that they logically wouldn't do given who they are and what they know. I happen to agree that luring enemies away one at a time isn't inherently cheesy, though it depends on the situation.
I've played the games many times so my goal is now to have an interesting story unfold that I don't predict in advance, and to try to inject some gravity into the game by making choices have consequences. A new player will have a much harder time (I did, at least) and will probably do a fair bit of reloading and resort to cheesy tactics to defeat at least a few types of baddies, but that doesn't mean that they can't or shouldn't try to take a tactical approach rather than relying on brute force and the fact that you can just reload and try again.
Comments
Wait, they're both kinda crummy...
Your Rep will require a fair amount of micro-management. The game story line leans heavily towards doing the right thing and rewarding for same. If your reputation goes to high, your "evil" cohorts will leave (presumably you already know this). This can be managed by some random acts of violence on your part. Or, if you choose the 'Bad' (usually the jerk choice) path, you can manage quite fine.
If, on the other hand, your rep goes to low you will get attacked on a regular basis and it can very quickly become unmanageable. This also means that some encounters will automatically go south just on principal. And it is a very slippery slope. Once you start killing folks, your rep with tank VERY quickly. It is also important to note that, once someone goes hostile to you, there is no turning back. You can't simply repair your rep and then they go back to being neutral. And any non-evil companions that you choose are subject to leaving if your rep gets low enough. Believe me, one encounter with a patrol can zero out your rep, leaving Jaheira or Imoen high and dry.
Additionally, the lower your rep, the more things cost in stores, so... If money is an issue, you just made it worse. This isn't a BIG thing because after a certain point in BG1, money is no longer a huge issue unless you are recharging wands all over the place. And BG2 is simply rife with treasure.
finally, until recently, there haven't been enough EVIL party members to make a full compliment. Or if there are, you don't get much of a choice. So if one dies and you choose not to bring them back, you are in tough straights. Likewise, if one has a personality that grates on you, you have very little choice but to take them anyway. And if you want a certain class to fill a specific role, you have very limited choices, more-so than Good parties.
With all of that being said, it is loads of fun to play. Just be aware of some of the pitfalls.
Main thing: have them use wands!
And I've reached a little brick wall called Aec'Letec....sigh. And here I was thinking that after Durlag's, it'd be a walk towards Baldur's Gate and Sarevok.... What's with old games and their expansions REALLY cranking up the difficulty? I knew that guy at the bottom of the tower was too easy to be the final boss....
When that last cultist died, I was basically:
You can brute force your way through the game, relying on a combination of the most powerful characters and items, copious healing potions, clerics with spell slots stuffed full of healing spells, resting after each battle, and frequent reloads, but that isn't a particularly fun way to play the game, and none of your battles will have any significance or gravitas if there is nothing at risk. You just keep pounding away until either you win or you get frustrated and quit; either way, it's not that much fun, since you're just doing the same thing over and over for hours on end.
The way to make the game satisfying, I find, is to play efficiently: to have different techniques for different opponents. It's far more satisfying if you see a group of enemies ahead, lure a couple away and kill them individually, pick off a couple with ranged weapons, sneak up and backstab one, cast 'Silence' to incapacitate casters and only then send melee fighters to finish them off, as opposed to every time cast a Fireball to soften them up then everyone charge in waving swords.
It' s much more satisfying to do it neatly, with finesse than brute force - though brute force can carry you a long way.
And secondly I love seeing how this thread evolved from one in which you vented your frustration into one describing your character's glorious feats! I loved reading this: the game has definitely won you over no? Welcome to the club!
EDIT:
Also shows how awesome this forum is. Kudos to the forumites who helped Invictus get underway!
Glad to hear you enjoyed the game, at any rate!
EDIT: Make use of the uber handy user journal to keep notes to self!
I obviously favor SOA, so my recommendation is to import CHARNAME into SOA. You've already been patient with the slower-moving BG, why not try the one where (IMHO) the storyline and attention to immersion and detail are greatly improved.
If you do, be forewarned: those face-rollingly easy trash mobs (not talking about bossses) at the end of BG? Yah, don't trust that's what you're walking into
Regarding the rest, LOL. that so reminds me of this adventure that I played in at Gen Con one year. We had to sneak onto this plateau for some reason that I forget. Anyway, we ended up attacking a group, who called another group, and another. We ended up in this all out battle against the entire plateau. It was EPIC right up until the point where we all died.
Personally, I don't allow myself to use tactics that either lend themselves to repetitive spamming (I also don't make use of extensive buffs, both because they aren't necessary and because they're tedious to apply) or that are clearly an abuse or oversight of the game engine (such as taking advantage of the fact that nobody in Faerun except you knows how doors work or have the sense to flee the area of effect of a cloudkill). I also don't use resurrection (if a companion dies, they are buried where they fall, I mourn, and go on with the game) apart from the three rods of resurrection in BG2/ToB, and I don't reload due to anything except a game glitch or, sometimes, the death of my main character. There are a couple of BG2 items I won't use (a certain shield that makes a certain powerful monster become a suicide machine comes to mind). The same goes for certain spells. And I won't have my party do anything that they logically wouldn't do given who they are and what they know. I happen to agree that luring enemies away one at a time isn't inherently cheesy, though it depends on the situation.
I've played the games many times so my goal is now to have an interesting story unfold that I don't predict in advance, and to try to inject some gravity into the game by making choices have consequences. A new player will have a much harder time (I did, at least) and will probably do a fair bit of reloading and resort to cheesy tactics to defeat at least a few types of baddies, but that doesn't mean that they can't or shouldn't try to take a tactical approach rather than relying on brute force and the fact that you can just reload and try again.