What's with the difficulty..? (Spoiler)
unhidemymenus
Member Posts: 39
It doesn't make sense to me. The hardest part of this game by far was getting to level 3 from level 1, and trying to figure out how it works. From broken weapons to getting surrounded by 6 skeletons when you rest, there was no part of the game with more reloading than the start. I hit a vampire wolf that I actually couldn't hit. I would get one-hit by bears when trying to kite with a mage while imoen tried to shoot it. Get hit by fear or confusion and don't even bother waiting for it to wear off, reload. And so on..
Couple this with there is literally no information within the game as to what thac0, ac and many other things are or do, it's stupidly hard to start off. The only way to actually start and get going is to look up elsewhere which stats matter and what all the terms mean in the game. On the iphone, there is no way to see the specific stats of abilities (unless it's an ability that you happened to read about in character creation. But you wont remember numbers). You have to google what they even do.
Then... you get fireball and realize how bad the AI is.
As soon as you get fireball the entire game is a joke easy. The solution to every fight is take advantage of the bad AI and hit them with fireball splash when they cant see you. Or if one sees you, hit them with fireball, they walk up and you 6v1 them, then pick off another.
SPOILER FIGHT SPECIFIC STUFF
I beat the chess board in durlags tower without the enemy moving from their squares. 2 mages with 3 fireballs each and 2 people with bows with 2 explody arrows each. Then after cleaning up the tower, that group of 6 or so people guarding the room with the last boss took just a similar amount of fireballs. They don't even get to attack.
The last boss is also just a mash of AI breaking strategies. I beat it so ez.. Boots of speed coupled with a haste spell makes your character fast enough that after initiating the conversation with saverok, you can run out of sight and he won't attack you. You can kill the mage and battle horrors and even save and rest!! Then just get saverok to charge and 6v1 and ez him.
Discuss
Couple this with there is literally no information within the game as to what thac0, ac and many other things are or do, it's stupidly hard to start off. The only way to actually start and get going is to look up elsewhere which stats matter and what all the terms mean in the game. On the iphone, there is no way to see the specific stats of abilities (unless it's an ability that you happened to read about in character creation. But you wont remember numbers). You have to google what they even do.
Then... you get fireball and realize how bad the AI is.
As soon as you get fireball the entire game is a joke easy. The solution to every fight is take advantage of the bad AI and hit them with fireball splash when they cant see you. Or if one sees you, hit them with fireball, they walk up and you 6v1 them, then pick off another.
SPOILER FIGHT SPECIFIC STUFF
I beat the chess board in durlags tower without the enemy moving from their squares. 2 mages with 3 fireballs each and 2 people with bows with 2 explody arrows each. Then after cleaning up the tower, that group of 6 or so people guarding the room with the last boss took just a similar amount of fireballs. They don't even get to attack.
The last boss is also just a mash of AI breaking strategies. I beat it so ez.. Boots of speed coupled with a haste spell makes your character fast enough that after initiating the conversation with saverok, you can run out of sight and he won't attack you. You can kill the mage and battle horrors and even save and rest!! Then just get saverok to charge and 6v1 and ez him.
Discuss
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Comments
D&D was always the hardest in the start when you had no levels, gear or anything else. Then as you gained a few levels and picked up a good weapon or two, it became easier.
Once you get to BG2 you're in for a surprise, so enjoy this while it lasts.
I guess what I am trying to say is that when you are low level you should likely stick to the main road and clear that area later. Ambushes will still be awful to you but if you are lucky you can outrun them.
As for cheesy tactics. It is up to you to decide to use them or not. If you think AI is unrealistic then there are mods for that.
I mean it's D&D that's kind of part of the experience. Especially if you're playing a Wizard
I want to link to that "Always the First to Die" song but I'm not sure if it's PG enough for this site's rules. The MPAA would call it PG-13 but I'm not sure if that's good enough.
But as a mage your THAC0 isn't going to be great. The two manuals explain it really well (and it wouldn't be D&D without multiple manuals, would it?). The thing is this is a pretty old game, the sensibilities were very different back then. The PC version of EE came with a super in depth tutorial but I don't know about the other ones.
Basically you want your AC and THAC0 to be as low as possible. I'm probably about to misspeak here because I always get this wrong but here goes:
Take the attacker's THAC0 and subtract the targets AC. Say 20 and 10 respectively. So take 10 from 20 the result is 10. The game generates a random number from 1-20. If you get a 1 you'll miss no matter what the rest of the numbers are if 20 you'll hit no matter what. Otherwise you need to roll a 10 or higher to hit that target. If the AC is 0 and THAC0 is 15 they need to roll a 15 (because it stands for To Hit Armor Class 0). If it's -2 and their THAC0 is 20 they need to roll a 20 for the critical success. "You might suck at level one but you'll rip at level 9"
See also "Liner Warrior, Quadratic Wizard".
Although I will say the way to win at Wizard early game isn't your one cast of magic missile. You're not going to carry the day with 1d4+1 damage.
It's Sleep. Or grease. Or color spray.
Nothing takes the danger out of a fight quicker than all the minions passing out on the floor.
Also, apropos of nothing, if you've ever seen a four sided dice you'd know you'd cause more damage using them as caltrops than you would using anything that does 1d4 damage. :P
Edit: Oh, and if you're looking for something a bit easier, a bit more balanced I hear Troika did a videogame version of the Temple of Elemental Evil. That might be the way to go.
>:D
The thing with wizards is that they ARE very powerful, but have limited uses. If you sleep after every combat, you are going to have an easy(ish) time of it. Try not doing that. Use your spells tactically and go as long as you can without resting. You might find more of a challenge.
Also, look into SCS mod for the game. You might find that a challenge as well. At the end of the day, the early parts don't have to be as hard as they are for you now once you learn some more of the mechanics. And the upper levels (into BG2) can be really challenging.
If you're feeling experimental, try a solo.
BG2 imo is harder, but DnD has always been terrible at balancing casters, moreso arcane in earlier, but all casters in 3.x are silly. 2nd ed just had ridiculous arcane and dead weight thieves. Meh, its a nice system overall.
If you ever want to look up a really solid alternative, Thieves' World d20 by Green Ronin
Seriously though, there sre almost no trickey enemies in BG1, I can think of maybe 2, both optional, and 1 is downright easy with a decent party. BG2 has more variety.
Also there are numerous ways to make the game more difficult for yourself, you just need a bit of imagination and the willingness to face a challenge (or have a penchant for masochism).
I just don't think BG is designed to spoon-feed instant gratification.
However you do raise a good point about lack of termology in he actual game. Perhaps a geature request with a journal entry explaining things is in order.
In my opinion, even Planescape Torment had better combat than BG1. At least the companions in PST were fun to use and the combat had a lot of interesting aspects, even if it wasn't very hard.
If you go into BG with the mindset of other games you will lose. It was made back in a time where games were made without expecting to hold someone's hand through every set piece, and players were expected to learn the rules of the game and think critically about the problems before them. If the game randomly spawns a vampire wolf before you have magic weapons, walk away........ I commend games that have the balls to have encounters dynamic enough that players will need to know when to just walk away.
If you don't know the games rules, and you're too lazy to learn them, you're going to have a bad time.
And to echo what others have said, you will not get through BG2........
spiders phase and are unaffected by web traps, dryads charm, basilisks petrify, ankhegs come out of nowhere etc.
in PS:T 98% of enemies do mindless melee and the other 2% cast the simplest of spells.
Right, you quite often get surprised by what you meet in the wilderness, getting caught unprepared. Guess this too can be explained by BG being one of the very first computer RPGs. In the beginning it is often wise to run away from some fights -if you can.
As someone said, read the manuals. In short:
AC=Armour Class. A number that tells how hard someone is to hit, get as low number as possible, even a negative one.
TACHO=To Hit Armour Class 0 (zero). The minimum number someone needs to hit an enemy with AC 0. As with AC, the lower TACHO the better.
Hitting something in this DnD 2ed game works like this: The game generates a number between 1 and 20 (simulating a D20 die), it then adds any bonuses from the strenght ability score the attacker has (dexterity ability score for missile weapons), and any other bonuses that might apply, such as from a magical weapon, generating a "to hit score". The computer then compares this "to hit score" with a table containing all "to hit scores" needed to hit the various ACs. The number needed to hit a certain AC on this table is lower for a fighter than for a wizard and it gets lower as the character increases in levels. Yeah, 2ed rules in this matter are more complicated than 3.x ed. In a PnP game the DM has a screen showing all these "to hit scores".
Yeah, you can easilly fool the AI. The mod SCS (Sword Coast Stratagems) has several components that enhanches the AI, try it out. You need not install many of them to make the bandit camp difficult -even with fireball.
http://www.gibberlings3.net/scs/
Also i dont care about reading about how a complicated game works. I care about having to save, exit, open a web browser and google how something works. It's inconvient. The game is not stand alone with all information you need within the game. At least on the iphone. You cant even open up a sheet exaining the specifics of special abilities.
I did read threads and manuals.
I'm complaining that every time I needed to do this, I needed to save, quit, google, read and re open the game. I can't just alt-tab on my iphone. Not to mention if I didn't want to use data and couldn't go on the internet, i just had to wait.
Why are these manuals or at least a summary in-game?? It's incredibly inconvenient for iphone users.
The next complaint is that after I did this and actually go going in the game, it was just grinding it out. There were no further difficulties.
Why is it ridiculously hard to start this game, and then you get no more puzzles or tough fights?? And the starting difficulties are not "fun" hard. They are
"Did my mage get hit ONCE while desperately trying to get to Lv2 with imoen".
"Did my weapon break at random."
"Did I encounter an enemy that it is mathematically impossible to beat."
"Did the mage use horror and hit my entire party, or did he use magic missile on my fighter."
These are random chance problems that cannot be solved by PLAYING BETTER. That makes them very frustrating.
Was I using a weapon that was immune to breakage?
Did I attempt to use other tactics instead of swing and miss to beat the enemy? Or did I venture to far off the beaten path for my character level?
Could I have used other items that I found or spells to block horror effect spell?
Don't get hit. Consider positioning. Consider fleeing.
Carry an extra weapon. This game vomits gold just everywhere you can afford two Long Swords for Khalid
Run away. You'll not encounter flesh golems or anything that can't be killed before you've had a chance to find enchanted weapons. If you wandered off and found them anyway then it's not unreasonable to run away.
You don't find many mages early on and by the time you do you'll be bristling with wands of magic missiles and similar. Have Imoen use hers to interrupt the mage's first spell then keep hammering him until he's dead.
There is one immutable law of the multiverse. Geek the mage first.
...and there's no such thing as a milk run.
But I think you're looking for the wrong thing if you don't want random chance to be involved in a D&D based game. I mean you are rolling to hit for one thing.
"...In the Beginning, there was Temple of Aphshai, and it was good, and Wizardry was upon the land..."
Start the game again. You'll do better. Some folks have been playing this game with pleasure for 20 years, off and on.
It follows therefore that the game IS the mechanics, and how you use them within the confines of your imagination.
Nobody struggles with most of the fights. Fireball kills stuff, that's why it's there. For around 3 grand you can by a necklace that allows any character to cast fireball like a 6th level mage for the entire game. If you use stealth and fireball, you will do well in a lot of fights but not all of them. Being a one trick pony eventually will catch up to you (mustard jellies, etc.).
If the game is too easy and you're so anti super powerful magic, take an inquisitor or a wizard slayer. Challenge yourself.
*sigh*