Speed Things Up!

semiticgoddess

Time-saving thread. What do you do to save time in your games? I've developed a few habits over the course of playing BG2, without which the game would be unbearably slow:

1: Bathroom breaks during cutscenes, or pressing enter at the exact moment Irenicus starts talking

2: Custom auto-buffing spells, mapped to hotkeys

3: Memorizing dialogue pathways (3, 2, 1, 1)

4: CTRL-4 to check for traps

5: CTRL-Y on low-level enemies

6: CTRL-R instead of Raise Dead

7: CTRL-J, everywhere

Gotural

I do a CTRL-J sometime to navigate quicker in the city of Baldur's Gate but it is still rare enough.

The most important thing for me is playing at 45 FPS (60 was a bit too fast and buggy for me).

Jarrakul

I definitely spam enter through dialogues, and I have been known to memorize dialog pathways. Lord knows I don't read all the text anymore. I don't do any of the more console-based things, though, which is why I'd really like all games to feature PoE's fast mode. Sadly, that's probably not feasible for the average mod, but I can dream.

lunar

I feel like being disrespectful to the game when I skip reading dialogues, even though ı know most of them by heart by now. Luckily, I am a pretty fast reader.
Also, if there is voice acting, I wait for it to finish before clicking continue on dialogue. Almost always. I feel guilty if I do otherwise. One exception is Gaal's preaching to the commoner crowd in the Temple district. It takesjust too long, and I really don't think that all lines should have been voiced in that encounter as it is.

Playing on Ipad I can not utilise any ctrl cheats either.

Grum

BG1, I always buy a crossbow bolt, walk right and turn it in. Then go to the gate warden for the practice. I drink a potion of swiftness from Deder the halfling, and the effect stays. I then get to be hasted while doing the Candlekeep quests. A real time saver!

lroumen

I played one game (of hundreds) with cheat keys and it was super boring. I am never ever ever doing that again! Oh I was younger then... thinking it would be easier....

I stick to the road and don't do all side quests. Huge time saver.

Text I pretty much always read. It is just too valuable for immersion (which is what I play the game for). Also why would you skip text in PoE? I heard it is one big wall of text and if you skip you might miss the parts that are actually remotely related to the main storyline (I should get it at some point).

In combat I sometimes just run away when ambushed or when my summons are killing the last few kobolds or wolves.

JuliusBorisov

semiticgod said:

Time-saving thread. What do you do to save time in your games? I've developed a few habits over the course of playing BG2, without which the game would be unbearably slow:

1: Bathroom breaks during cutscenes, or pressing enter at the exact moment Irenicus starts talking

2: Custom auto-buffing spells, mapped to hotkeys

3: Memorizing dialogue pathways (3, 2, 1, 1)

4: CTRL-4 to check for traps

5: CTRL-Y on low-level enemies

6: CTRL-R instead of Raise Dead

7: CTRL-J, everywhere

I... don't know. Although my mind understands that these things don't change anything and only help to ease the process, something deep inside me is against it.

After all these years, I still don't speed things up.

Shin

Agree with @lunar and @bengoshi. I only tend to replay the trilogy once a year, and when I do I really kind of miss it and wouldn't want to skip any content. These days that playthrough tends to stretch out over several months too, so it's not like there's any kind of rush to get stuff over with.

With the historically poor pathfinding of the games I've often been tempted to use ctrl+J in some places though (docks district run to Cromwell, firewine ruins, etc), but I generally find that once I start doing so it's very easy to just keep going and nearly eliminate normal movement altogether - and in the long run, that kind of behaviour tends to drastically reduce my immersion.

Tinter

Framerate speed up is the main thing, really, it makes every element faster. I use ctrl-J heartily, but with the rule that it can only be used in already explored non-combat areas; this tends to satisfy my sense of realism while still saving a lot of time.

jesterdesu

I never use any of the console keys either, have experimented with ctrl J but found that it detracts from the experience for me. Kinda like it's the journey I enjoy, rather than just the desination... that's what truly keeps me playing Baldurs Gate for nearly 20 years now!

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

joluv

I've started using ExploreArea() a lot, especially in BG1, just to take all the clicking out of walking across a map. It doesn't actually speed anything up, but it reduces the tedium and makes it so I can pay attention to something else for a few seconds while my party walks.

procco

Similar to what @Grum said, I always go counter-clockwise through Candlekeep. Not a huge timesaver in the grand scheme of things, but at least it gets things started a little quicker.

drawnacrol

Ctrl J because constantly walking around multi-level dungeons gets tedious.

I cheat in a bag of holding because "Inventory Management" is one of the most annoying things in vanilla RPGs.

I use ctrl heal when I don't want to rest.

JoshBG

lunar said:

I feel like being disrespectful to the game when I skip reading dialogues, even though ı know most of them by heart by now. Luckily, I am a pretty fast reader.
Also, if there is voice acting, I wait for it to finish before clicking continue on dialogue. Almost always. I feel guilty if I do otherwise. One exception is Gaal's preaching to the commoner crowd in the Temple district. It takesjust too long, and I really don't think that all lines should have been voiced in that encounter as it is.

Playing on Ipad I can not utilise any ctrl cheats either.

I think I have an amnesia... Because I don't remember creating an account named "lunar" and writing the post above.



At least, when I'm playing vanilla. I may skip dialogues, etc, when I'm playing SCS though, because the required meta-gaming destroys all the immersion anyway.