Soloing BG:EE

Space

Has anybody soloed BG:EE?

I soloed BG:TuTu with a half-elf mage/theif multiclass. I wanted to solo the same character in BG2:Soa however the character didn't have enough DPS.

Musigny

Welcome!

See https://forum.baldursgate.com/categories/challenges-and-playthroughs for instance
There are other excellent playthroughs which are not recorded there though. (see the general discussion forum too).

Space

Somebody in a different thread said that BG:EE can be soloed without a mage multiclass.

I personally find this difficult to believe as my strategy for increasing the level at the beginning is to kill all the basilisks and this can only be done with the protection from petrification lvl 1 spell.

I wouldn't want to waste time kiting enemies all the time either which is what any ranged solo character would have to do without sleep, blindness or web.

joluv

There are other ways to protect yourself from petrification: Potions of Mirrored Eyes and green Protection from Petrification scrolls.

SionIV

Space said:

Somebody in a different thread said that BG:EE can be soloed without a mage multiclass.

I personally find this difficult to believe as my strategy for increasing the level at the beginning is to kill all the basilisks and this can only be done with the protection from petrification lvl 1 spell.

I wouldn't want to waste time kiting enemies all the time either which is what any ranged solo character would have to do without sleep, blindness or web.

You can solo BG:EE and BG2:EE (without SCS) with any class, even a pure class thief. And you can do this without dying a single time (no-reload). You can get to level 3 with just fetch quests and avoiding combat, then you can buy the Scroll of Petrification from Nashkel Carnival, level up on basilisks. Then you pick up the Wand of Sleep from high hedge and you can clear all the Ankhegs. Everyone with a decent intelligence can use the wand of sleeping, and you can recharge it.

It is very easy to solo this game.

joluv

I agree that it's easy to solo in the sense that it doesn't require much in the way of tactics or (as we've discussed in a recent thread) luck. And SionIV is absolutely right in saying that every class is viable for soloing. It does require quite a bit of knowledge about the game, though, so I'd say it's only very easy if you've already played through a bunch of times.

Space

SionIV said:

Space said:

Somebody in a different thread said that BG:EE can be soloed without a mage multiclass.

I personally find this difficult to believe as my strategy for increasing the level at the beginning is to kill all the basilisks and this can only be done with the protection from petrification lvl 1 spell.

I wouldn't want to waste time kiting enemies all the time either which is what any ranged solo character would have to do without sleep, blindness or web.

You can solo BG:EE and BG2:EE (without SCS) with any class, even a pure class thief. And you can do this without dying a single time (no-reload). You can get to level 3 with just fetch quests and avoiding combat, then you can buy the Scroll of Petrification from Nashkel Carnival, level up on basilisks. Then you pick up the Wand of Sleep from high hedge and you can clear all the Ankhegs. Everyone with a decent intelligence can use the wand of sleeping, and you can recharge it.

It is very easy to solo this game.

Thanks for this. I think about soloing BG:EE with a cleric however all my solo runs of BG1 have relied on kiting at the beginning of the game and kiting with slings just doesn't work effectively because you only have one attack.

Gallowglass

SionIV said:

You can solo BG:EE and BG2:EE (without SCS) with any class, even a pure class thief. And you can do this without dying a single time (no-reload). You can get to level 3 with just fetch quests and avoiding combat, then you can buy the Scroll of Petrification from Nashkel Carnival, level up on basilisks. Then you pick up the Wand of Sleep from high hedge and you can clear all the Ankhegs. Everyone with a decent intelligence can use the wand of sleeping, and you can recharge it.

It is very easy to solo this game.

I'm not sure how possible it'd be with a Wild Mage, though. Occasionally you'd probably have no choice but to cast a spell, and eventually an unlucky wild surge would kill you.

Wowo

Korax on the basilisk map can solo all of the basilisks with some practice controlling him.

Even Mutamin is easy if you can manage to get Korax to force attack him before he initiates conversation with you.

If you are a wizard then skip prot from pet and just get your familiar to soak up the gazes as they are immune.

After this grab the necklace of missiles from Nashkel Carnival and go have fun.

SionIV

A wild mage can survive on recharging wands.

As a cleric you'll want to pick up the Ring of Protection +1 from the rock, sell the ring of Wizardry and buy yourself the fullplate in Beregost. Then next buy would be a large shield +1 and the claw from high hedge, make sure you have 18 constitution so the -2 won't lower your HP at all.

For quests you should talk marl out of attacking you, give the book to firebeard and then kill the peasants in the ankheg map and hand the bowl to the girl for 2500 experience and you'll be able to loot a nice flail +1 from the peasants. When you kill the peasants, you can follow the sea and you won't get attacked by any ankeghs, the peasants won't attack you either so this is a failproof way to gain 3700 experience (2500 bowl, 900 marl, 300 firebeard) and will put you to level 3. With 16 constitution you'll have 30 health and with the Full plate, Ring of Protection and Large Shield +1 you'll sit on -5 to -6 AC. You'll get all of this with no danger at all of dying.

mumumomo

All classes can solo bgee.
no need to beeline for basilisks or hidden items once you know how to do it.

The berserker us probably one of the easiest class to solo it with and does not require much knowledge of the game.

matrice

SionIV said:

For quests you should talk marl out of attacking you, give the book to firebeard and then kill the peasants in the ankheg map and hand the bowl to the girl for 2500 experience and you'll be able to loot a nice flail +1 from the peasants. When you kill the peasants, you can follow the sea and you won't get attacked by any ankeghs, the peasants won't attack you either so this is a failproof way to gain 3700 experience (2500 bowl, 900 marl, 300 firebeard) and will put you to level 3. With 16 constitution you'll have 30 health and with the Full plate, Ring of Protection and Large Shield +1 you'll sit on -5 to -6 AC. You'll get all of this with no danger at all of dying.

And to that i would add killing the sirine that kill a party member with a kiss, and then revive it before we fight the ogre (2 map on the left of beregost if i well remember) +5000 xp, and as long as you are ranged, you can kite her indefinitly


Edit: to those who didn't think it was possible, i made the solo bg (not ee) but with scs (and like 3-4 other mod that increase the difficulty) in insane as a wild mage, and it was freaking easy. Special mention to naskel inhabitants, who almost all died from a wildsurge that summoned a demon

Blackraven

SionIV said:

... and then kill the peasants in the ankheg map and hand the bowl to the girl for 2500 experience and you'll be able to loot a nice flail +1 from the peasants. When you kill the peasants, you can follow the sea and you won't get attacked by any ankeghs, the peasants won't attack you either so this is a failproof way to gain 3700 experience (2500 bowl, 900 marl, 300 firebeard) and will put you to level 3. With 16 constitution you'll have 30 health and with the Full plate, Ring of Protection and Large Shield +1 you'll sit on -5 to -6 AC. You'll get all of this with no danger at all of dying.

Well there is one danger in my (subjective) experience: when traveling north, i.e. to the FAI or the Ankheg area, the ambush with the ten bandit archers seems to occur quite often in my games. They can be quite deadly to a low level solo mage, even with Shield. I agree though that if that ambush does not trigger, there is no risk of dying.
That ambush never triggers when traveling inbetween areas more to the south. For that reason I consider @matrice's route to be even safer: travel to the High Hedge area from Gorion's Rest (the area east of Candlekeep), from there - hugging the map border to avoid running into Skeletons - go to the east to unlock Beregost and then to the west to unlock the Northern Sword Coast. Visit the latter area to meet Shoal. She can be force-attacked when she's still neutral without needing a NPC to talk to her with a ranged weapon. She's slower than Charname, so with some kiting you can safely pocket 5000 XP.

Wowo

Kind of easier to just perfect using Korax to kill all of the Basilisks.

It's trickier with SCS and best to have Stealth (thief or ranger), a familiar, immunity or invisibility (Jaheira has a pot) but still very doable.

mumumomo

Easiest way to powergame the start of the game is definetely the basilisk map using Korax.
Doing so will net you 20k+xp which should make you level 5-6 depending on your class.

It's not necessary though and I now avoid it: doing so you will just miss all the fun of the early game.
I prefer to play the game "normally" by doing easy quests in beregost, FAI, nashkel which net around 10kxp which will make you level 4-5 and also good money (no need to beeline for the "hidden items"). You can then proceed safely with the rest of the game.