As far I am concerned, if the narrative didn't attempt to force me to care about her, she would only leave me apathetic. In BG1 her relative blandness sticks up a bit amongst the very colorful cast of crazies, but not enough to outright hate her. That's definitely BG2's doing.
The EE made me hate her a bit less, primarily because they gave me Neera, who is so loathsome she made Imoen look good in comparison.
As far I am concerned, if the narrative didn't attempt to force me to care about her, she would only leave me apathetic. In BG1 her relative blandness sticks up a bit amongst the very colorful cast of crazies, but not enough to outright hate her. That's definitely BG2's doing.
The EE made me hate her a bit less, primarily because they gave me Neera, who is so loathsome she made Imoen look good in comparison.
I am the older of two brothers. Got 3 sons. I really like Imoen. I have never understood how anyone can hate her... Hating someone for being cheerful? Bonkers I say. She's practically your sibling, get your act together people!
But then I've never understood the bashing of Aerie either. She's been the first name on the teamsheet for me from the first time I encountered her all those years ago, and she has grown even more precious to me since then. And I am talking personality, not her unrivaled power.
You did a good job here, because I completely disagree. There's just 2 fights in Durlag's Tower worth mentionning : the 4 warders and the chess fight (at least in SCS). The demon ? Protect yourself from fire and kite him. Easy.
In Watcher's Keep, the maze level in itself is a lot harder that the whole Durlag's Tower.
with imoen in BG1, i understand shes a last minute companion so she isnt as fleshed out as she could be and her cheerfulness isnt too bad.
what ruined her for me, as mentioned above, was BG2. in the prolouge she annoys me, then i lost IMO a competent thief for her which sucked and then the little imoenisms annoyed me through TOB.
i still generally take her in BG1 but BG2 is an internal debate as she annoys me that much.
i did like the idea about getting to choose her class. that would annoy me less if i could choose to keep her a pure thief as ive never dual classed anything in my life and would prefer to never have to ...
I could rush trough Durlag's tower with some thinking and reload. Now in Watcher's Keep the torches at Carston's level gave me a headache.
But i think @DJKajuru is thinking about how hard is to kill all those nasty dopplegangers wearing noble dwarven comrades faces In comparison Watcher's keep biggest challenge is the succubus with her alu-fiend sisters, which is an optional fight anyway.
They can be nasty, but, if you either protect yourself with death ward (it's very reasonable to have a level 7+ cleric at this point) or stay full health (aka over 60), it should not be a problem.
Approach him with a character with undispellable fire protection (2 fire rings, etc...), take his initial dispel + fireball, then summon lots of anything (skeletons, hobgoblins, etc...) and have the rest of your decent range attackers have a go at him and he'll eventually fall. Surrounded by many summons, he usually doesn't bother casting spells and goes melee. Renew the summons once in a while and he'll fall.
It does take some preparation, but, all in all, it is not a very hard fight. I never had problem with this dude. It's true though that, with the same level of preparation, the 4 warders and the chess match are not much harder...
I feel like we're not playing the same game here. For one, the Demon Knight has Power Word: Stun as well as Power Word: Kill, so no, Death Ward shouldn't be good enough. More importantly, he seems to use some bastardized modification of Power Word: Kill that does 45 damage with no save (IIRC) even if you're above 60 hit points, so without Kiel's Goblet to restore health, that will wear down even strong tanks when it's used twice. I'll agree that once he wears through said power words and starts meleeing, he's a lot more manageable, but it's hard to get through without losing a character.
That said, I think only the set of guardians with a Hive Mother are comparably hard in Watcher's Keep, simply because a TOB party going all out is just way too hard to stop. If you're having trouble, there's probably more and more efficient work you could be doing to improve your odds. In Durlag's Tower, there's only so much you can do to up your game.
Power Word : Stun is not a problem. Since I'm not meleeing the guy, if someone gets hit by that, I just... wait it out. If I lose some hp to PW: Kill, well, that's what healing potions are for. I never seen him cast multiple PW:Kill in a row to take down someone. That's why, yes, you only need Death Ward.
Plus, the guy is all alone, in the middle of a room where you can surround him from many angles. He's at a big disadvantage.
I'm just speaking from experience here : I never had problem with him. The only time he really hurted me was the first time I encountered him. He threw one of those heavy-damage fireball right into my party and killed like 4 characters. I adapted, seen that it is useless to melee him, so I threw a lot of summons his way and took him down at range. Since, this strategy never failed me.
On the contrary, in WK maze, if you have a caster heavy party in one of those dead-magic/wild-magic zones surrounded by demons for example, a lot of your options just vanished. WK maze is not impossible, I just think it's harder than Durlag's Tower.
Well, I maintain that it's silly to try and go through TOB without a fighter, since they get so powerful late-game with whirlwind and, more importantly, the ability to get through magic resistance which becomes ubiquitous by then. As for an all-caster party, they'd be just as screwed by the 85 percent magic resistance the demon knight has, so it's not like they could readily get through either the Keep or the Tower. If magic won't work and summons won't work, a caster party just can't get past things. Ironically, they may be less versatile than fighters in this game, in a way.
While I totally agree with everything said, for instance that it complicates your life to go without a fighter past a certain point in the game, you don't have to carry an all-wizards party for the maze to be harsh. If you have only one or two fighters, it can get complicated to have "sitting ducks" (aka mages in dead-magic zone) for these rooms.
I also think that playing styles has something to do with our disagreement. I usually like to rely on lots of summon to take down enemies. Something you can't use in dead-magic zones, but on the other hand really shines against the Demon Knight. Plus, I play with SCS and ATweaks. These two makes for some nasty, nasty demons. This combination makes the WK a lot harder.
I don't know how popular this is or not, but I don't think we ever heard the entirety of Alaundo's prophecy, and we needed to. I mean, all we really know was in it from the beginning was, well, "The Lord of Murder shall perish, but in his doom he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny. Chaos shall be sown in their passage," plus some more stuff about "Their deaths shall feed the father" and maybe one or two other snippets, but never all of this at once that I can remember. If we had, I highly doubt the original plan would have included talking about one exceptional Bhaalspawn rising above the others to put an end to the "chaos", which is what TOB tells us is also there. But since I don't think we'd ever heard about the prophecy singling out any one scion before, it feels like an Ass pull.
Maybe. All I know is that we should have kept "mage" and "thief" instead of switching to "wizard" and "rogue", especially given the latter's propensity to get spelled wrong.
Comments
The EE made me hate her a bit less, primarily because they gave me Neera, who is so loathsome she made Imoen look good in comparison.
Not at all, that's me as well
Though we are three sisters, perhaps that's why I would have preferred a "brother" companion?
But then I've never understood the bashing of Aerie either. She's been the first name on the teamsheet for me from the first time I encountered her all those years ago, and she has grown even more precious to me since then. And I am talking personality, not her unrivaled power.
In Watcher's Keep, the maze level in itself is a lot harder that the whole Durlag's Tower.
what ruined her for me, as mentioned above, was BG2. in the prolouge she annoys me, then i lost IMO a competent thief for her which sucked and then the little imoenisms annoyed me through TOB.
i still generally take her in BG1 but BG2 is an internal debate as she annoys me that much.
i did like the idea about getting to choose her class. that would annoy me less if i could choose to keep her a pure thief as ive never dual classed anything in my life and would prefer to never have to ...
But i think @DJKajuru is thinking about how hard is to kill all those nasty dopplegangers wearing noble dwarven comrades faces
Approach him with a character with undispellable fire protection (2 fire rings, etc...), take his initial dispel + fireball, then summon lots of anything (skeletons, hobgoblins, etc...) and have the rest of your decent range attackers have a go at him and he'll eventually fall. Surrounded by many summons, he usually doesn't bother casting spells and goes melee. Renew the summons once in a while and he'll fall.
It does take some preparation, but, all in all, it is not a very hard fight. I never had problem with this dude. It's true though that, with the same level of preparation, the 4 warders and the chess match are not much harder...
That said, I think only the set of guardians with a Hive Mother are comparably hard in Watcher's Keep, simply because a TOB party going all out is just way too hard to stop. If you're having trouble, there's probably more and more efficient work you could be doing to improve your odds. In Durlag's Tower, there's only so much you can do to up your game.
Plus, the guy is all alone, in the middle of a room where you can surround him from many angles. He's at a big disadvantage.
I'm just speaking from experience here : I never had problem with him. The only time he really hurted me was the first time I encountered him. He threw one of those heavy-damage fireball right into my party and killed like 4 characters. I adapted, seen that it is useless to melee him, so I threw a lot of summons his way and took him down at range. Since, this strategy never failed me.
On the contrary, in WK maze, if you have a caster heavy party in one of those dead-magic/wild-magic zones surrounded by demons for example, a lot of your options just vanished. WK maze is not impossible, I just think it's harder than Durlag's Tower.
I also think that playing styles has something to do with our disagreement. I usually like to rely on lots of summon to take down enemies. Something you can't use in dead-magic zones, but on the other hand really shines against the Demon Knight. Plus, I play with SCS and ATweaks. These two makes for some nasty, nasty demons. This combination makes the WK a lot harder.
please tell me I wasn't wrong