Long-term Strategy
FrdNwsm
Member Posts: 1,069
At this point, I have to ask: How is the transition from SoA to ToB handled? Do we have to import MyChar, or is this handled automatically? What about NPCs from SoA? Do they follow over?
I ask this because the NPCs that followed me from BG1, though having the same names, were different. I had taken Imoen up to level 8 thief, for example, before dualing her over to mage; here she was only level 7 thief with a somewhat different spell selection. Jaheira and Minsc also had different skill sets, and even stats, from when I knew them in BG1.
So, do NPCs carry over from SoA to ToB unchanged, or are they "born again" so to speak? This is important because for the last few scenarios I have been using the evil group of NPCs in order to get them more experience before heading off to Chapter 4. I plan to take the good core group at that time, since we apparently can't rotate NPCs after this starts. I figured that I'd pump up the experience on these guys before I did so, in case I had need of their services later on in ToB; but if they don't carry over unchanged this is a waste of time.
Is there in fact any line of demarcation between SoA and ToB? People have stated that WK is actually considered a part of ToB, yet I can enter it now, even though I am still only in Ch 3 of SoA. What's up with that?
I chatted briefly with Dorn; I can see now why doing his quest will lose Keldorn's services. Trashing the Radiant Heart is not something he is likely to forget. I imagine that one could dismiss Dorn later on and appease the other good NPCs with temple donations to bring your rep back up to par, but that would still mean finding a stand-in for Keldorn and Carsomyr. Hard to do. This course of action would probably be best left to an evil party run-through.
I ask this because the NPCs that followed me from BG1, though having the same names, were different. I had taken Imoen up to level 8 thief, for example, before dualing her over to mage; here she was only level 7 thief with a somewhat different spell selection. Jaheira and Minsc also had different skill sets, and even stats, from when I knew them in BG1.
So, do NPCs carry over from SoA to ToB unchanged, or are they "born again" so to speak? This is important because for the last few scenarios I have been using the evil group of NPCs in order to get them more experience before heading off to Chapter 4. I plan to take the good core group at that time, since we apparently can't rotate NPCs after this starts. I figured that I'd pump up the experience on these guys before I did so, in case I had need of their services later on in ToB; but if they don't carry over unchanged this is a waste of time.
Is there in fact any line of demarcation between SoA and ToB? People have stated that WK is actually considered a part of ToB, yet I can enter it now, even though I am still only in Ch 3 of SoA. What's up with that?
I chatted briefly with Dorn; I can see now why doing his quest will lose Keldorn's services. Trashing the Radiant Heart is not something he is likely to forget. I imagine that one could dismiss Dorn later on and appease the other good NPCs with temple donations to bring your rep back up to par, but that would still mean finding a stand-in for Keldorn and Carsomyr. Hard to do. This course of action would probably be best left to an evil party run-through.
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That said, WK is the only TOB area that's accessible from BG2-proper, and no BG2-proper areas are accessible from TOB. So there is actually a very strong demarcation between the two. WK just happens to be the exception to the rule. I'm sure people will let you know when the boundary is approaching, so I'll just say you have a good while yet.
Regarding Dorn, it's possible you could keep Keldorn's services if you make sure he's not in the Order building when you recruit Dorn (or ever again, since Dorn's quest permanently changes the area). I'm not sure I'd count on it, though, as the devs may well have coded in something specific for that circumstance.
Interesting; so I am almost wasting my time doing this? The only benefit would be to control their training?
Also, even less reason to worry about Imoen then. Although she would probably be a bit better than Nalia, since Imoen has more thief levels. (Someone somewhere called Nalia "Imoen light", like she's a temporary stand-in)
Hey, why can't Wilson join in ToB? If I had been silly enough to take him on as a party member and taken the time to build him up, I'd be ticked off if all that effort were wasted.
And what? You didn't like my pun?
@FrdNwsm There're two ways you can "transfer" you party members into ToB:
Those who will be in your party at the moment SoA ends, will be transferred "just as they are", i.e. with all their items, abilities, hit-points and XP.
Those who won't be in your party at the moment SoA ends, can be summoned to ToB through a special creature - but you will summon characters that are base characters, not those whom you left in SoA. They will not have any of the items, experience points, or special abilities (such as Anomen's knighthood) that you might have given them before parting ways with them.
So, have all the NPCs you want for the duration of Throne of Bhaal in the party with you, have all the items you want to be able to access again in your inventory with you, and don't leave Amn until everything you wanted to do there is done.
"Those who won't be in your party at the moment SoA ends, can be summoned to ToB through a special creature - but you will summon characters that are base characters, not those whom you left in SoA. They will not have any of the items, experience points, or special abilities (such as Anomen's knighthood) that you might have given them before parting ways with them."
Ok, this REALLY SUCKS! We aren't supposed to use vile language here, but you can use your imaginations as to what I intend to say.
@#5&%5! ^^@)E&$E^@!!
OK, so doing anything with any of the characters other than MC and 5 others is a total waste of time and effort. Well, ok, aside from maybe gaining an item or two and a bit of experience from a different NPC's side quest.
Makes my RP of a schizophrenic Bhaalspawn fairly inane. Very poor game design; I'm disgusted. Gonna take a break from playing. Kiss my Nether region, Beamdog!
Personally, I don't think it should stop you from continuing your playthrough: to me, completing quests is interesting itself. You don't complete quests just for items or making NPCs powerful - you go through them to try an adventure, to see what lies ahead. So I don't see how going through NPCs's quests is a wast of time and effort.
Also, the game tells you that in ToB you continue with those NPCs who went through all the difficulties in SoA. If you see the ending of SoA, you'll understand what it means for an NPC to complete your adventure.
Overall, I think you should continue playing SoA not thinking much about ToB - the story is interesting and there will be interesting turns in it. Some players (or even many of them) don't even like ToB because find it a bit boring.
I, as a reader of your feelings toward the blind playthrough of BG, would very much like to read your story further. There're a lot of wonderful areas and quests still waiting for you in SoA.
It also, for all practical purposes (I.E. if you want the strongest party possible in ToB) rather limits you to a small selection of people to train effectively in SoA. Jaheira is the only decent druid, you would be hard pressed to find justification for not taking Imoen, Anomen is superior to Aerie, Keldorn is the only one who can wield Carsomyr, and of course you HAVE to take yourself. This leaves one slot open, and you will probably fill that with a specialty mage, unless MyChar is already one.
Now, you could always take a sub-optimal NPC selection as a sort of self-handicap, but I'm not going to try that on a first run-through. A second possibility would be an all evil-neutral party, in which case you would have something like Dorn, Viconia and Edwin, MyChar and Jaheira. Can we even fit Imoen into such a group? If not we end up with Yoshimo or Hexxat as our thief, making us light on the arcane magic, again unless your main is a mage type.
And you say that ToB may turn out to be boring? Even worse.
None of the BG2 NPCs are at all weak, but I admit BG1 has some (read 'both Bards') NPCs that are straight up mechanically suboptimal. Even those weak NPCs can be quite useful if you can figure out what they can contribute, and equip them accordingly. Actually, Rasaad is probably the least powerful BG1 npc, but he's much better in BG2.
For example, I am at the moment starting up with a group of Anomen, Aerie, Keldorn and Rasaad with the PC being a neutral good Cleric/Thief-multi. See what these guys have in common?
What? Alignment?
"You might be surprised by Cernd and Aerie, both are very strong."
You're really talking about ToB here. I'm interested in the best party for SoA right now. There's no point in taking Cernd and Aerie now, because they will be available in ToB with their levels pumped up, even if I never use them here for even one quest. That's one of my peeves here. If there were no such demarcation between SoA and ToB, and all characters were imported to ToB purely as we left them in SoA, we'd have to make a lot more hard decisions. We'd have to suffer with Cernd for a few expeditions now if we wanted him to be strong in ToB, for example. What we did with secondary NPCs would actually be meaningful.
As it is, it's pointless to do anything with such NPCs in SoA, because they will magically spring forth in ToB fully leveled, no matter how we treat them here.
Aerie is straight up better than Anomen, even at low levels. As soon as she can cast Polymorph self (sword spider) and minor sequencer a +3 DUHM and shocking grasp with Flail of Ages she kicks ass in melee (so 9 cleric).
There is many many good NPC choices for SoA and none of them are poor choices though some like Cernd and Haer'dalis take a little more work to see them shine.
Remember that it is easy to do a mixed alignment play through and the evil characters are incredibly powerful in their roles.
I will agree, though, that the game doesn't really support the idea of swapping your NPCs around a lot. Your main party is likely to be much more powerful than they would be if you just summoned them in TOB, but it's hard to get everyone in BG2 to that point in one playthrough.
there's simply no one best party for any alignment, there can't be a winner in each NPC X vs NPC Y duel.
Different people like different playing styles. Different people use the same NPCs differently. There're ways to make Keldorn look less dangerous and useful than, for e.g., Haer'Dalis. There're ways to win almost any hard fight with a spam of Cernd's 7th level spells when Jaheira hardly have an access to her first 6th level spells. There're ways to make Aerie literally unkillable tank even when fighting Dragons and Iron Golems one-on-one.
As soon as Aerie can cast 4th Arcane, she's a vastly better caster than Anomen. She's also a better tank at that point, better than Anomen will ever be. Aerie had better hit 4th lvl spells well before ToB, or you are really doing something wrong.
Cernd climbs evererest at 3m XP, vs 6m total for Jaheira. You can totally hit 3m XP in SoA. Cernd though has GWW, which despite lacking much firepower, is plenty durable. He also gets much earlier access to higher lvl spells, and Druid casting has most of its fun at high levels.
Jarrakul: "Your main party is likely to be much more powerful than they would be if you just summoned them in TOB, but it's hard to get everyone in BG2 to that point in one playthrough."
Confirming my point. The fact remains that, whomever you in fact decide to mentor for use in ToB, much of what you do with the remaining NPCs is wasted effort because the results vanish during the transition. Their quests are basically there to get your core group more experience and better equipment.
OK, yes, doing quests for Neera and Hexxat and Valygar is amusing, and one could certainly make the argument that this is all one can reasonably expect from a game simulation, but I'd really like to see more NPC continuity in this regard.
It's as though SoA and ToB were initially designed as two totally separate games, which they then decided to combine into one, but in the end only partially carried this concept through.
But okay, let's be fair to the devs. The entire point of TOB's NPC-summoning was to allow you to get a decently-levelled party for TOB if you wanted to either start a new game in TOB or just change up your party for the expansion. It's true that it's detrimental to NPC continuity, but without this mechanic they'd be too low-level to be worth swapping in. It's unfortunate that the game doesn't carry over items and such on summoned NPCs, but Baldur's Gate has never been very good with just giving NPCs experience instead of remaking higher-level versions of them. Of course, that tendency itself is largely indefensible, so I dunno.
All in all, I'd recommend throwing all their stuff in a bag of holding (you should find one later in the main quest) and then distributing it to them at the start of TOB. You can even console in any quest-specific modifications (such as Anomen's knighthood bonuses) without guilt, as far as I'm concerned. I'll agree that you shouldn't have to, but given that the game is what it is, it's not a hard problem to fix.
Perhaps, but the problem was at least partially addressed when they allowed you to import a specific party, along with their items and such. I had to see what everybody was talking about, so I fired up a ToB game, and used the "import" command. I could import any saved party, along with their items and skills, and they were then given extra experience to make them competitive. Why couldn't this be done for all the NPC's?
An even more preferable solution would be to make the two areas flow into one another; you could only access new areas of the game when ready for them. SoA already does this; most quest areas appear on the map or only become accessible after you get the necessary information. WK is already accessible on the SoA map, for those who want to pump up their experience level; the rest of ToB could have been made likewise.
Perhaps such a radical redesign would have required a greater commitment of programmer time than they felt was cost effective. Seems the likeliest explanation.
I guess in the long run it doesn't make that much difference; I just found it jarring from a continuity standpoint.
Heh, ok, maybe for a challenge. I have an early re-run where I decided that my core group would be the first 5 NPC's I met; I'd only rotate one of them out in order to do a specific NPC quest.
I'm stuck with MC, who is a swashbuckler this time around, Aerie, Yoshimo, Nalia, Minsc and Jaheira. Yeesh.
Plus, it's hard for me to imagine a playthrough where I try to max out (or even use at all) every NPC; it would be like trying to eat a whole cake in one sitting. Much of the fun of the game, and what makes the whole BG series so replayable, are the choices made about your team, especially in choosing them early on.
Cernd is a better caster until late ToB, even then he's got an edge. Druid multis are infamous for their stupidly long downtime, making them vastly worse casters very quickly in SoA. Cernd cleans house with those high level slots.
Heh, MC would have no problem there; that would be the upside to having done multiple quests with different groups. The only folks MC hasn't sojourned with are Mazzy, Dorn and Jan. It's unlikely he would resort to using them for any actual future adventures.
Summoning them, on the other hand, is another story. Apparently you get experience for each one you dredge up, so logically you should just grab everybody in existence, even if you don't plan to employ them at all. They can sit in my pocket dimension and have marathon poker sessions.
BTW, what happens to MC's abilities? I have something new, the slayer, but have lost all the old ones, even though the character I imported still had them. OK, if it's a spoiler type thing don't tell me, but I admit to being curious whether its just a side effect of the import process, or something happened to make MC lose them.
Oh dear; I do hope that wasn't my Last Hurrah.