Blow dat horn, Gabriel ... and, I conned Conter

FrdNwsm

Minor quibble first. The Horn of Blasting should come with a warning label. I assumed the sound waves emitted would travel in a directional manner. Apparently not. Well, we all know what happens when you ASSume things.

Now for the main topic. Firkraaag annoyed me no end with his arrogance. Unfortunately, it was arrogance well placed. He kicked my butt a fair number of times, despite my having the somewhat misnamed Dragonslayer with me. I got in a few good licks but just didn't have the firepower I needed to really clean his clock.

I was almost ready to take his deal about freeing the kid, just to shut up Anomen's continual whining, when I had an epiphany. This probably counts as a spoiler, and I still haven't figured out how to use the nifty spoiler button thingie, so I wont go into details here. Suffice it to say that I got the kid out without either fighting him or taking his deal. Afterwards, I sent a scout back hasted and invisible, and Firkraag's still there, but P.O.'d as heck; he's turned red now. No more chatting. That's fine with me; I'll be toting cannons when I come back to shut his arrogant gob for good.

Arunsun

If you wanna cheese him though, attack him with 5 members while some member of your team click on him, goes back before he reaches Firkraag (not to trigger the dialogue) click on him again, repeat this till he s dead (meanwhile 5members of your team hit him)

Gallowglass

Arghh, so cheesy, @Arunsun!

The thing about Firkraag, @FrdNwsm, is that he's designed to be a pretty tough enemy, so it's the natural strategy simply to wait until you're pretty tough too, and then come back and beat the cr@p out of him. I usually (although not always) wait until Chapter 6 to fight him, by which time I can roll right over him with no difficulty.

I generally tackle dragons by the simple charge-right-in-and-bash-it-until-it's-dead method ... if that's not working, or even if I need to bother with careful buffing, then (to my playing-style) that simply means that I'm trying to do it too soon. Every dragon in the game is beatable by a simple frontal charge, but Firkraag is the one which you can most easily meet before you're strong enough to do that.

There's even a situation in ToB where you can be fighting two dragons at once ... but by then you're very high-level yourself, so charging them head-on still works fine.

FrdNwsm

>>If you wanna cheese him though<<

Heh; ok, didn't know if it would be considered a spoiler or not, but that's basically what I did. I knew Conter had the key I needed, so I stayed out of sight of Firkraag and hit the area with fireballs to annoy Conter, ran in hasted so he saw me, and then ran back to the stairs where Nalia was waiting with a breach spell. Then we pounded him into the dirt.

Also, is there any point in hanging onto that ugly death mask?

Tresset

FrdNwsm said:

Also, is there any point in hanging onto that ugly death mask?

Anyone can wear it, including people who normally can't wear helmets. It will protect you from critical hits too.

FrdNwsm

>>Anyone can wear it, including people who normally can't wear helmets<<

Ooooh! That IS useful. Good to know; thanks.

Arunsun

@gallowglass : I personnally had to cheese (meaning running in, landing 2 blows, running back, etc...) the "situation" you mentioned every time I did that quest. This fight is really tough if you fight both at once, even properly buffed.
I would rank this fight 2nd in my "hardest BG2EE fights" ladder. The first one being the final BP2 fight (which quite often "beat the cr@p out of me" as you say) if you fight them without reducing their might through subquests.

FrdNwsm

>>beat the cr@p out of me"<<

I don't understand; they beat up your crops? What, your wheatfields got torched by orcs or something?

Oh wait, I get it now! Crip! You were a member of the Crips, and the rival Shadow Thief gang beat you until you renounced your gang association.

Arunsun

@FrdNwsm Mmhh you are still quite far from the ultimate truth, but you will understand in time, my ward, you will understand in time

Tresset

You guys know that you can easily separate the two of them by not fighting Firkraag right away... right?

Arunsun

@Tresset I believe everyone does, because if you really wanna fight Firkraag, you have to choose like 5 times the "I wanna fight you" option, to which he answers "I let you reconsider, do you really wanna fight me?"

joluv

Tresset said:

Anyone can wear it, including people who normally can't wear helmets. It will protect you from critical hits too.

Don't ioun stones still protect against critical hits too? I guess OP probably doesn't have enough ioun stones for all his unhelmetable characters yet anyway.

Here, I'll demonstrate a spoiler:

To see the syntax, click on "Quote"

FrdNwsm

>>I let you reconsider, do you really wanna fight me?"<<

Yes, I know that; and if you choose not to fight him you get to kill Conter to grab the key to free the kid. The problem here is that Firkraag then wanders off, thus removing the option of kicking his tailed posterior later on. Unless he reappears later on? I have no knowledge of that; didn't think to go back and look.

>>Don't ioun stones still protect against critical hits too<<
>> OP probably doesn't have enough ioun stones<<

Enough Ioun stones?? I haven't found ANY Ioun stones yet.

FrdNwsm

>>Here, I'll demonstrate a spoiler:<<

OK, what the heck did you do here? Now, whenever I try to click on quote I get this gibberish; do I have to clear it from memory somehow?

<blockquote class="UserQuote">

FrdNwsm said:

>>I let you reconsider, do you really wanna fight me?"<<

Yes, I know that; and if you choose not to fight him you get to kill Conter to grab the key to free the kid. The problem here is that Firkraag then wanders off, thus removing the option of kicking his tailed posterior later on. Unless he reappears later on? I have no knowledge of that; didn't think to go back and look.

>>Don't ioun stones still protect against critical hits too<<
>> OP probably doesn't have enough ioun stones<<

Enough Ioun stones?? I haven't found ANY Ioun stones yet. </p>

BelgarathMTH

You can complete the quest without killing Firkraag and still go back to kill him later when you're stronger. I've done it several times.

FrdNwsm

>>You can complete the quest without killing Firkraag and still go back to kill him later when you're stronger. I've done it several times.<<

Huh; so all that skulking about and playing with Conter was a waste of time? OK, but I had no idea at the time. Heh, now Firkraag is PO'd. Well, let him stew.

Gallowglass

FrdNwsm said:

The problem here is that Firkraag then wanders off, thus removing the option of kicking his tailed posterior later on.

Err, no, I don't think so; or at least, I've certainly never seen that happen - for me he always waits right where he is until I come back (to kill him) later. (Indeed, when your protagonist happens to be a Paladin, it's pretty necessary to do it this way, because coming back later to kill him will be one of your Stronghold quests.)

Hmm, you seem to be still struggling with how to use a spoiler tag, so ... open a spoiler by typing (without spaces) "[ s p o i l e r ]" and close it by typing (without spaces) "[ / s p o i l e r ]".

BTW, @FrdNwsm, your habit of quoting by using ">> ... <<" is confusing for those of us using the built-in quotation facility, since the control codes are bounded by "< ... >" and those concatenate awkwardly with your ">> ... <<". Just press Quote to copy the whole of the message-to-be-quoted into your editing box, and it'll be bounded by "<blockquote class="Quote" rel=(Username being quoted)>" at the start and "</ blockquote>" (without the space) at the end. Just leave those as they are, and delete from the body text (between the control codes) any parts which you don't wish to include in your quotation.

joluv said:

Don't ioun stones still protect against critical hits too?

I thought that was a bug in the original games which the EEs had now fixed ... but maybe not. Can anyone confirm whether or not this is still true? @Tresset?

joluv

@Gallowglass I know it was still an issue in version 1.2:

http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/29904/7498-core-ioun-stones-protect-from-criticals-inadequate-item-description

And a fix isn't mentioned in the 1.3 release notes.

Gallowglass

Arunsun said:

@gallowglass : I personnally had to cheese (meaning running in, landing 2 blows, running back, etc...) the "situation" you mentioned every time I did that quest. This fight is really tough if you fight both at once, even properly buffed.

Well, I guess it's a matter of just how high-level you are.

Being a completionist, I don't usually get to that point until my party is seriously tough ... I've just checked a couple of archived saves from completed runs, and I see that in one case my party went into that fight with around 5.5M XP each, and in the other case around 6M XP each (except that in the latter case the "relevant NPC" was not in my permanent party, so I'd temporarily swapped him in just to get this quest, and therefore he was much lower-level). With a party at those levels, this fight is no problem.

Obviously, if you tackle a pair of simultaneous dragons with a lower-level party (or without a full party), then it's likely to be more difficult.

FrdNwsm

Spoiler alert!

I warned you this was a spoiler, but you looked anyway!

Now lets see if I can quote something ...

Gallowglass said:

FrdNwsm said:

The problem here is that Firkraag then wanders off, thus removing the option of kicking his tailed posterior later on.

Err, no, I don't think so; or at least, I've certainly never seen that happen - for me he always waits right where he is until I come back (to kill him) later. (Indeed, when your protagonist happens to be a Paladin, it's pretty necessary to do it this way, because coming back later to kill him will be one of your Stronghold quests.)

Hmm, you seem to be still struggling with how to use a spoiler tag, so ... open a spoiler by typing (without spaces) "[ s p o i l e r ]" and close it by typing (without spaces) "[ / s p o i l e r ]".

BTW, @FrdNwsm, your habit of quoting by using ">> ... <<" is confusing for those of us using the built-in quotation facility, since the control codes are bounded by "< ... >" and those concatenate awkwardly with your ">> ... <<". Just press Quote to copy the whole of the message-to-be-quoted into your editing box, and it'll be bounded by "<blockquote class="Quote" rel=(Username being quoted)>" at the start and "</ blockquote>" (without the space) at the end. Just leave those as they are, and delete from the body text (between the control codes) any parts which you don't wish to include in your quotation.

joluv said:

Don't ioun stones still protect against critical hits too?

I thought that was a bug in the original games which the EEs had now fixed ... but maybe not. Can anyone confirm whether or not this is still true? @Tresset?

FrdNwsm

OK the spoiler thingie worked; the quote part still needs help. Can I just quote part of a paragraph? Highlighting the line I wanted didn't seem to work. I didn't really want to quote ALL of that nonsense.

joluv

Like @Gallowglass said, just delete the parts you don't want to quote.