This was a "best of"-topic, it's kinda expected to go off topic, since it's the nature of these kinds of topics. That make sense? Every time somebody asks what the best armor/weapon/ring/whatever is, out come the fanboys (...and -girls) for any whatever given item.
The fact is there are no best weapons, just a lot of good ones. Even longbows are viable, since you can buy +4 arrows in Amkethran nowadays. Noticed this on my last run..
@Yannir Even with that, why would one bother taking longbows proficiencies when the only good longbow is Taralash and it s still less good than Gesen or Darkfire or Tuigan since its bonus stat, movement speed, is already capped up by boots of speed which as that point everyone has. Well, there is one other good longbow that is available early as well, that's Strongarm, but until you get HLA Tuigan will always be a better choice in the end, and when you get HLA, you will certainly have either Firetooth or Gesen. Not to mention that you have to buy tons of +4 arrows.
Even longbows are viable, since you can buy +4 arrows in Amkethran nowadays. Noticed this on my last run..
Well, there are Arrows of Piercing, but those are available throughout the game, and even in BG1.
The Arrows of Piercing are +4 THAC0, but are only ... erm, something less ... IIRC +2 enchantment. It's +4 enchantment which is needed to be useful against key ToB enemies, not +4 THAC0.
Unless the devs have now changed the enchantment on the Arrows of Piercing to +4 (without drawing our attention to it), or unless you're talking about a modded game ... then no, I don't think there are any truly +4 arrows in Amkethran (or anywhere else).
On the other hand, if they've changed the enchantment on the quiet ... then that'd be very interesting news, and would indeed make Longbows more useful.
@Gallowglass I know the difference between +4 enchantment and +4 Thac0 and that comment is a bit condescending. I'm talking about +4 arrows, the very same ones sold in BP2 as well. The smugglers in Amkethran sell them. Unless I was dreaming it. Or am I the only one that has +4 arrows in their game?
I did actually take the trouble to check whether I'd missed something before I replied before ... and no, they don't sell true +4 arrows, they just sell Arrows of Piercing. That why I assumed that I needed to explain about Arrows of Piercing, because there's nothing else there which could be called a "+4 arrow". Sorry if you already knew about that, but maybe the explanation will be useful to someone else anyway.
Unless I was dreaming it. Or am I the only one that has +4 arrows in their game?
I'm forced to the conclusion that it must be one or the other, since there's no such thing in my game. Or there's some bug in my game preventing the appearance of these items which everyone else has (yet no-one has previously mentioned). Or is it possible that you have a mod installed which you forgot about?
@Yannir : I just doublechecked and could not find those +4 arrows you were talking about in any Amkethran shop I checked other major shops, namely Arcana archives and Karthis Al hezzar or whatever is the name of the north forest guy, and nothing either, except +4 bullets but these have always been there.
Use flails, blunt weapons are better than slashing weapon, because less things are resistant to blunt or bludgeoning damage. You get a really good flail early on, which scales into ToB better that most weapons. It does end up getting free action applied to it, but there are mods to remove or fix that crappy movement speed impairing spell. I am speaking of course of the Flail of Ages, if you dual wield this thing with Crom Faeyr it's one of the most damaging combinations in the game. Crom Faeyr is a hammer so stack pips in hammers after flails and your 3 pips in duel wielding.
Also duel wielding or two weapon style is the most effective fighting style there is. The bonuses of other styles just plain suck when compared to the extra attack you get when duel wielding.
if you dual wield this thing with Crom Faeyr it's one of the most damaging combinations in the game. Crom Faeyr is a hammer so stack pips in hammers after flails and your 3 pips in duel wielding.
Note that you don't always want Crom Faeyr in the offhand. It does a lot of damage in its own right (2d4+3+5) which is largely wasted in the offhand. Of course the 25 STR is very good for sure, but depending on party setup you may be better served to give it to someone else in the MH and use a different OH - like, for example, one of the +1 APR offhands (Belm, Kundane, Scarlet Ninja-tô).
Also note that offhand proficiency pips are not very valuable. The OH is hard-capped at 1 APR (2 under IH) and a lot of the bonus from getting ** and ***** in a weapon proficiency comes from the added APR - which doesn't apply AT ALL for the offhand. That's not to say it's entirely useless (you do get dmg/thac0) but you may want to consider putting those points somewhere else if you think they're more useful there (e.g. in a secondary situational weapon like Mace of Disruption etc.).
Also duel wielding or two weapon style is the most effective fighting style there is. The bonuses of other styles just plain suck when compared to the extra attack you get when duel wielding.
The offhand attack is alright, but it isn't phenomenal. The biggest argument for dual-wielding are the +APR weapons (see above), as due to the OH hard-cap the extra APR will be added to the main hand. If you cannot dual-wield with a +APR weapon, the gap between DW and 2H is not that large. If you plan on using GWW later on, 2H is likely better. Of course, dual-wield is probably just straight better than single style, you are right about that (save the backstab interaction). Shields are alright, but often overkill, and there are good defensive OHs as well.
It is important to keep in mind that there are rarely absolutes in this game. There are so many variables and contingencies involved that you really do need to think carefully about what is best for YOU and YOUR setup in any given situation. Assuming of course you actually want to min/max Most of the time for most of the people you'll be perfectly fine just going with what you like best, or what seems cool to you. The game isn't nearly difficult enough in its vanilla version to demand specific strategies, though of course if you're into optimization there is a lot of room to improve
This is very odd. I wonder if there could be a weird bug which (sometimes) causes BP2 equipment to "leak" into BG2?
Have you at any time imported a party from BP to BG? (I haven't.) It occurs to me that perhaps BP characters come with some flags set which cause level-dependent BP-only equipment to become available in stores, even if the character is no longer in BP.
I do have some imported characters from BP2 but I've never actually played with any of them in BG2. I'm running a ToB-party to double-check my claims but that will take some time since I'm starting from scratch.
This was a "best of"-topic, it's kinda expected to go off topic, since it's the nature of these kinds of topics. That make sense? Every time somebody asks what the best armor/weapon/ring/whatever is, out come the fanboys (...and -girls) for any whatever given item.
The fact is there are no best weapons, just a lot of good ones. Even longbows are viable, since you can buy +4 arrows in Amkethran nowadays. Noticed this on my last run..
I dont mind. I can either read this post or play the game 100 times... well that doesn't sound to bad actually.
For the spear, Ixil's spike is definitely decent, although I've never used it, I can see the knockback being a huge pain... If you're going to use spears, I suggest getting the impaler, it's literally one of the highest damage weapons because it gets a +10 damage on top of it's +3 enchantment. When you can't hit something though, switch to ixil's.
For the spear, Ixil's spike is definitely decent, although I've never used it, I can see the knockback being a huge pain... If you're going to use spears, I suggest getting the impaler, it's literally one of the highest damage weapons because it gets a +10 damage on top of it's +3 enchantment. When you can't hit something though, switch to ixil's.
Ixil's Spike is great for an archer. If an enemy gets too close, equip Ixil, knock them right back, then switch to ranged again for better damage.
Comments
The fact is there are no best weapons, just a lot of good ones. Even longbows are viable, since you can buy +4 arrows in Amkethran nowadays. Noticed this on my last run..
Except if you're running with Item Revisions (which I can only repeatedly recommend), in which case longbows are very competitive with short bows.
The Arrows of Piercing are +4 THAC0, but are only ... erm, something less ... IIRC +2 enchantment. It's +4 enchantment which is needed to be useful against key ToB enemies, not +4 THAC0.
Unless the devs have now changed the enchantment on the Arrows of Piercing to +4 (without drawing our attention to it), or unless you're talking about a modded game ... then no, I don't think there are any truly +4 arrows in Amkethran (or anywhere else).
On the other hand, if they've changed the enchantment on the quiet ... then that'd be very interesting news, and would indeed make Longbows more useful.
I checked other major shops, namely Arcana archives and Karthis Al hezzar or whatever is the name of the north forest guy, and nothing either, except +4 bullets but these have always been there.
Also duel wielding or two weapon style is the most effective fighting style there is. The bonuses of other styles just plain suck when compared to the extra attack you get when duel wielding.
Also note that offhand proficiency pips are not very valuable. The OH is hard-capped at 1 APR (2 under IH) and a lot of the bonus from getting ** and ***** in a weapon proficiency comes from the added APR - which doesn't apply AT ALL for the offhand. That's not to say it's entirely useless (you do get dmg/thac0) but you may want to consider putting those points somewhere else if you think they're more useful there (e.g. in a secondary situational weapon like Mace of Disruption etc.). The offhand attack is alright, but it isn't phenomenal. The biggest argument for dual-wielding are the +APR weapons (see above), as due to the OH hard-cap the extra APR will be added to the main hand. If you cannot dual-wield with a +APR weapon, the gap between DW and 2H is not that large. If you plan on using GWW later on, 2H is likely better. Of course, dual-wield is probably just straight better than single style, you are right about that (save the backstab interaction). Shields are alright, but often overkill, and there are good defensive OHs as well.
It is important to keep in mind that there are rarely absolutes in this game. There are so many variables and contingencies involved that you really do need to think carefully about what is best for YOU and YOUR setup in any given situation. Assuming of course you actually want to min/max
This is very odd. I wonder if there could be a weird bug which (sometimes) causes BP2 equipment to "leak" into BG2?
Have you at any time imported a party from BP to BG? (I haven't.) It occurs to me that perhaps BP characters come with some flags set which cause level-dependent BP-only equipment to become available in stores, even if the character is no longer in BP.