@Jarrakul: Or just spam them with Fireballs. It has been noted that Beholders have no real defenses. Between a mage and an Efreeti, you can slay a pack of Beholders in a couple rounds or so. Still not foolproof, but fairly reliable.
@subtledoctor. Exactly. There are times in the game when I come up against something I can't deal with but want to proceed further, so I will use cheese. But then, with that save in the bag, I'll go back and replay that encounter until I work out how to deal with it (or realise that I'm just not up to it yet) - which for me is much more satisfying. But as you say, when faced with a whole horde of Beholders it's just so much quicker to grab the Shield of Contention (even though you know you could do it the hard way).
Basically I think we're all saying pretty much the same thing: There are all kinds of different cheeses; hard cheese, soft cheese, smelly cheese (you name it) and some people don't like cheese at all, but at the end of the day it's all down to personal taste.
@Arunson, I've used that tactic. It doesn't really strike me as any less cheesy than the Shield of Balduran. That's subjective, obviously, but it renders them just as defenseless with a similarly low investment of resources.
@semiticgod, I'm very used to killing beholders quickly. But given that they fire off their eye rays upwards of 1/second, killing them in a couple rounds isn't really sufficient to overcome the massive RNG issues. Especially over the course of an entire dungeon, like the one in the underdark.
@subtledoctor, I basically agree with your assessment, but I should note that if the original devs had instead implemented the antimagic eye the way it works in PnP, they could have avoided the problem. The eye is supposed to suppress, not dispel, all magic in the area (including magic items and summoned creatures), and it's supposed to render the targets immune to magic as well. It's also supposed to be a cone instead of single-target, but that's not the really important difference, imo. Implement the antimagic eye as in PnP, then add in some weaker monsters as slaves to the beholders, and we could end up with some very interesting fights. Instead we're stuck with either cheese or RNG.
Anyway, my issue here isn't with being judged or anything. It's with my dissatisfaction with how beholder fights go. There's nothing interesting. Either you hit them with everything you have and hope they die before they petrify someone important, or you send one character forward with the Shield of Balduran (or do something else functionally equivalent) and they're totally pointless.
@subtledoctor: "So now the devs say to themselves, "well we've made beholders easy, I guess the thing to do is add lots and lots and lots of them.""
Those hordes of Beholders existed before the Shield of Balduran was added to the game. The latter couldn't have caused the former, because the former predated the latter.
I think the reason they added so many Beholders was because adding the classic DnD monsters--dragons, orcs, beholders, vampires, etc.--was one of the goals of BG2, since BG1 didn't have any (somebody posted a link where a dev was explaining their plans for BG2, but I don't have it on me). I also saw some preliminary screenshots of BG2 as it was in progress, and many of them had Beholders all over the place, even in the graveyard. The Beholders are there in big numbers because the devs thought they were cool and new. The SOB was added later to fix (or eliminate) the difficulty problem.
EDIT: @Jarrakul, have you tried having Arkanis Gath join your party? I'm sure he could take care of your Beholder problems.
.@subtledoctor makes a great point: you don't actually have to fight any beholders to beat the game (except possibly in the final battle?), and you get an autokill button for the only one you need to fight in the Unseeing Eye quest. Since such fearsome monsters can't see through invisibility, sneaking past them is really the only reasonable solution until you're at a super high level.
the only beholder that really makes me go crazy is gauth with its infinite heavy wound/hold spam,all the otheres are just average mages who die rapidly to invisible wiltering/deathcloud or just invisible Berserker mage clobbering them
The best beholder has to be the spectator in the sahuagin city. he's the one that makes beholders come alive in the game for me.
thats hard to argue against since he is the only beholder in the game that actually bothers talking to you before going spellspam mode XD edit:i dont Count unseeing eye cuz no choosable Response possible
.@subtledoctor makes a great point: you don't actually have to fight any beholders to beat the game (except possibly in the final battle?), and you get an autokill button for the only one you need to fight in the Unseeing Eye quest. Since such fearsome monsters can't see through invisibility, sneaking past them is really the only reasonable solution until you're at a super high level.
The one in the final battle is from a mod, I'm pretty sure. You do have to kill a beholder as part of the drow city questline, though. Not the elder orb, but the one Phaere thinks is an elder orb. Technically that's still avoidable, and there's only one of it anyway, so it's not such a big deal.
.@subtledoctor makes a great point: you don't actually have to fight any beholders to beat the game (except possibly in the final battle?), and you get an autokill button for the only one you need to fight in the Unseeing Eye quest. Since such fearsome monsters can't see through invisibility, sneaking past them is really the only reasonable solution until you're at a super high level.
The one in the final battle is from a mod, I'm pretty sure. You do have to kill a beholder as part of the drow city questline, though. Not the elder orb, but the one Phaere thinks is an elder orb. Technically that's still avoidable, and there's only one of it anyway, so it's not such a big deal.
original bg2 soa end fight only had irenicus and 4pit fiends,it actually felt harder than ee cuz irenicus as slayer would actually melee and hit pretty hard(or i just had luck that he kept spamming spells)
Really? I very clearly remember 2 balors and 2 glabrezu in that fight, same as in EE. It was weird because the balors looked like pit fiends and the glabrezu looked like balors, but I don't think the glabrezu model was added to BG2 until TOB.
@wraith5641 There is an exploit in the old game that allows you to summon more than one by abusing Project Image. I think this has been fixed in the EE versions.
Really? I very clearly remember 2 balors and 2 glabrezu in that fight, same as in EE. It was weird because the balors looked like pit fiends and the glabrezu looked like balors, but I don't think the glabrezu model was added to BG2 until TOB.
in the Version that i have they didnt include different models for balor baatezu and glabrezu,so they all looked the same,except in ToB,maybe they added them on a patch that i never got (i didnt have a Network Connection back then) was pretty funny tho to call a pack of pit fiends and buffing them with protect from evil before letting irenicus in demonic all out brawl start
Guys, I'm not telling you how you should play the game, I'm just trying to open some folks' eyes because it seems there are many players who don't even realize that some things in this game are not sensible (ie. Project Image); the post was not meant for cheese connoisseurs. Also, self-gimping can at times be a bit of a tough pill to swallow, and knowing there are many like-minded individuals out there makes it easier.
@aj_, you might have changed your mind since beginning this post, and that's fine, but your two posts in this thread aren't remotely related. You say in your second post:
--"Guys, I'm not telling you how you should play the game, I'm just trying to open some folks' eyes because it seems there are many players who don't even realize that some things in this game are not sensible (ie. Project Image); the post was not meant for cheese connoisseurs."--
In other words, you're offering no judgment. But that's not the message you sent in your opening post:
--"Spells like Project Image and Simulacrum are hilariously broken and remove all semblance of challenge from the game. CE items such as the Robe of Vecna and the Shield of Balduran are insanely OP and trivial to obtain... And yet, most everyone seems to be fine with this extreme cheese.
Am I alone in my hate of game-breaking cheese?"--
In other words, you "hate" cheese, object to the notion of people being "fine" with it, and wanted to know if you weren't the only one who felt this way. The reason I reacted to your first post so strongly was because, in your second to last sentence, you implied that people should not be "fine with this extreme cheese." That would be the judgment I was seeing in your post. If you don't want to send that message, then great--I'm just explaining where we're coming from when we reacted to your post.
I'm not sure if you're aware, but you've tapped into a pretty big and long-running discourse in the community, and at times it can be pretty acrimonious. As I mentioned before, you're not alone--you are not the only person to complain about cheese. And some people actually do level judgment and take a moral stance against it. I've heard one person even say that if somebody uses cheats or cheese in BG2, then that says something bad about their moral character, that they have little self-control and are more likely to cheat in real life (this is a real opinion I've seen before; it's not a straw man). And Sikret adds lengthy scripts into his Improved Anvil mod specifically to prevent the player from using cheats or cheese or cheap tactics, and playing the game the wrong way can result in game-breaking bugs. He even puts a nonbinding contract in the mod materials saying that by downloading his mod, you agree to "play the game the way it was meant to be played"--that is, you will use the tactics that Sikret favors, but no others.
Some people are very picky about how other people play the game, and will in fact look down upon those who use cheese. For some, it's a Lawful Neutral thing: these are the rules, and you should abide by them. For others, it's an elitism thing: you're not really good at the game, a truly skilled player, unless you refrain from using cheese. Naturally, some anti-cheese people just don't like cheese, and don't lay judgment on those who use it, but others do lay a moral judgment on it, and your first post gave the impression that you were both. We can't expect you to know this, if you haven't come across this discourse before, but in the future, you may want to draw a line between these voices and your own, if you're worried about getting lumped in with people with more extreme or condemnatory viewpoints. You might not have known this coming in, but you've stumbled upon something of a mine field.
@semiticgod, I didn't change my mind. Maybe I worded it wrong, but when I said that everyone seems to be fine with the extreme cheese, I didn't mean that I thought they were all purposely cheesing the game. I have recently returned to BG2 after many years because of the EE, and I'm amazed at how matter-of-factly these tactics are discussed, leading me to think that many players don't even realize that many illusion spells (for instance) make the game artificially easy. That's why I made this post.
@subtledoctor: I think it's worked out okay. @aj_ and I made some statements and then softened or clarified them in later posts, which I feel is appropriate and maintains a respectful environment (and I think it's worth pointing out that @aj_ did so before I did). I've seen good conversations turn into pointless arguments, but we've avoided that.
Still. My apologies for being less gentle than I could have been. I don't want to poison the atmosphere. Thank you for pointing this out--these reminders are always constructive.
Looking back at my second post, and @subtledoctor's, I think my quoting @aj_ was a little aggressive, unlike your quoting. Maybe it's best to only quote somebody if you're defending them--from what I've seen, quoting in order to criticize marks the descent of a discussion into a rhetorical fight. I'll back out of this and let the thread continue uninterrupted.
Installing SCS2 will ameliorate some "cheese" problems by improving enemy AI. SCS2 lets Beholders eventually try to snatch the Shield of Balduran or Cloak of Mirroring from your possession when they notice their rays aren't working, Liches will dispel Protection from Undead, mages will dispel Protection from Magic with Spellstrike, and in general prevents simple strategies from working reliably.
I'm interested in hearing thoughts of what you guys find cheesy in this context. For those of you that are playing with SCS, what do you find cheesy?
Guys, can we not? It's clear we all agree that being judgmental about other people's playstyles is bad, and both sides have admitted to saying things that came across as stronger than they had intended. Let's not beat the dead horse.
Comments
Basically I think we're all saying pretty much the same thing:
There are all kinds of different cheeses; hard cheese, soft cheese, smelly cheese (you name it) and some people don't like cheese at all, but at the end of the day it's all down to personal taste.
@semiticgod, I'm very used to killing beholders quickly. But given that they fire off their eye rays upwards of 1/second, killing them in a couple rounds isn't really sufficient to overcome the massive RNG issues. Especially over the course of an entire dungeon, like the one in the underdark.
@subtledoctor, I basically agree with your assessment, but I should note that if the original devs had instead implemented the antimagic eye the way it works in PnP, they could have avoided the problem. The eye is supposed to suppress, not dispel, all magic in the area (including magic items and summoned creatures), and it's supposed to render the targets immune to magic as well. It's also supposed to be a cone instead of single-target, but that's not the really important difference, imo. Implement the antimagic eye as in PnP, then add in some weaker monsters as slaves to the beholders, and we could end up with some very interesting fights. Instead we're stuck with either cheese or RNG.
Anyway, my issue here isn't with being judged or anything. It's with my dissatisfaction with how beholder fights go. There's nothing interesting. Either you hit them with everything you have and hope they die before they petrify someone important, or you send one character forward with the Shield of Balduran (or do something else functionally equivalent) and they're totally pointless.
Those hordes of Beholders existed before the Shield of Balduran was added to the game. The latter couldn't have caused the former, because the former predated the latter.
I think the reason they added so many Beholders was because adding the classic DnD monsters--dragons, orcs, beholders, vampires, etc.--was one of the goals of BG2, since BG1 didn't have any (somebody posted a link where a dev was explaining their plans for BG2, but I don't have it on me). I also saw some preliminary screenshots of BG2 as it was in progress, and many of them had Beholders all over the place, even in the graveyard. The Beholders are there in big numbers because the devs thought they were cool and new. The SOB was added later to fix (or eliminate) the difficulty problem.
EDIT: @Jarrakul, have you tried having Arkanis Gath join your party? I'm sure he could take care of your Beholder problems.
edit:i dont Count unseeing eye cuz no choosable Response possible
was pretty funny tho to call a pack of pit fiends and buffing them with protect from evil before letting irenicus in
demonic all out brawl start
--"Guys, I'm not telling you how you should play the game, I'm just trying to open some folks' eyes because it seems there are many players who don't even realize that some things in this game are not sensible (ie. Project Image); the post was not meant for cheese connoisseurs."--
In other words, you're offering no judgment. But that's not the message you sent in your opening post:
--"Spells like Project Image and Simulacrum are hilariously broken and remove all semblance of challenge from the game. CE items such as the Robe of Vecna and the Shield of Balduran are insanely OP and trivial to obtain... And yet, most everyone seems to be fine with this extreme cheese.
Am I alone in my hate of game-breaking cheese?"--
In other words, you "hate" cheese, object to the notion of people being "fine" with it, and wanted to know if you weren't the only one who felt this way. The reason I reacted to your first post so strongly was because, in your second to last sentence, you implied that people should not be "fine with this extreme cheese." That would be the judgment I was seeing in your post. If you don't want to send that message, then great--I'm just explaining where we're coming from when we reacted to your post.
I'm not sure if you're aware, but you've tapped into a pretty big and long-running discourse in the community, and at times it can be pretty acrimonious. As I mentioned before, you're not alone--you are not the only person to complain about cheese. And some people actually do level judgment and take a moral stance against it. I've heard one person even say that if somebody uses cheats or cheese in BG2, then that says something bad about their moral character, that they have little self-control and are more likely to cheat in real life (this is a real opinion I've seen before; it's not a straw man). And Sikret adds lengthy scripts into his Improved Anvil mod specifically to prevent the player from using cheats or cheese or cheap tactics, and playing the game the wrong way can result in game-breaking bugs. He even puts a nonbinding contract in the mod materials saying that by downloading his mod, you agree to "play the game the way it was meant to be played"--that is, you will use the tactics that Sikret favors, but no others.
Some people are very picky about how other people play the game, and will in fact look down upon those who use cheese. For some, it's a Lawful Neutral thing: these are the rules, and you should abide by them. For others, it's an elitism thing: you're not really good at the game, a truly skilled player, unless you refrain from using cheese. Naturally, some anti-cheese people just don't like cheese, and don't lay judgment on those who use it, but others do lay a moral judgment on it, and your first post gave the impression that you were both. We can't expect you to know this, if you haven't come across this discourse before, but in the future, you may want to draw a line between these voices and your own, if you're worried about getting lumped in with people with more extreme or condemnatory viewpoints. You might not have known this coming in, but you've stumbled upon something of a mine field.
I'll be more careful in future.
Still. My apologies for being less gentle than I could have been. I don't want to poison the atmosphere. Thank you for pointing this out--these reminders are always constructive.
Looking back at my second post, and @subtledoctor's, I think my quoting @aj_ was a little aggressive, unlike your quoting. Maybe it's best to only quote somebody if you're defending them--from what I've seen, quoting in order to criticize marks the descent of a discussion into a rhetorical fight. I'll back out of this and let the thread continue uninterrupted.