After 4 years of Restartits, I've finally managed to finish the whole saga. (Now I'm sad) *spoilers*

DJKajuru

Hey ya!

I was hoping you could share your nostalgic moments like I'm doing right now.

The character was a human, chaotic good single class mage. Basically a young wizard who dreamed of traveling across the planes and shaping reality. BG1 was quite nice, as usual , and NPC Project gave it all the npc interaction I could wish for.

It is usually in SoA where restartitis takes place, not this time. I had Ding0's experience fixer installed, which I used to substantialy decrease quest XP . What I remember tha most from the whole BG2 experience was:

1-"Viconia, just leave me alone" (she didn't , and my character loved her)

2- "I'm not going to cast imprisonment on anyone. Keep the damn sphere , cowled ones!" (had to roleplay chaotic good!)

3-"I made Gorion a promise" quote from Jaheira before facing Irenicus.

I ended SoA at level 15 , thanks to experience fixer, it was neither too weak nor excessively powerful.

ToB was like a rollercoaster, SCS made enemies far tougher than usual, but it was part of the fun. Strong points:

1-I didn't have enough healing potions at Sendai's Enclave, but I had tons of invisibility ones, so I had Valygar and Sarevok "backstab" dozens of Drow warriors.

2-At the final battle, I've cast timestop, which Amely was immune to, so we fought each other while everyone else was paralised , as if in a duel.

3-Viconia's romance ending. I've done it a hundred times, but it always makes me quite sad.

By the way, I ended the game at level 19. And I beat the final boss marvelously with an underleveled party ;D

So , what about you guys? How was the last time you've cured yourselves from restartitis?

semiticgoddess

I remember several things curing restartitis, one of which actually let me see it through to the end of ToB.

Speaking in purely general terms, SCS is easily the biggest cure for restartitis I know. It keeps the game much more fresh than it otherwise would be.

Discovering new tricks is another nice cure. It motivated my Archer runs and started the Party of Spiders run, when I took an interest in Called Shot, Polymorph Self, Shocking Grasp, and Jan's flashers. The Wand of Lightning trick inspired my restless run of SoA, song stacking inspired a run that lasted until the Marching Mountains, and the Nahal's Reckless Dweomer hotkey trick inspired an insane solo poverty run of Throne of Bhaal.

Unique challenges also help a lot. The insane solo poverty challenge got me through a full SoA run, and 90% of the way through SoA again (a Conjurer->Cleric, then a Kensai->Druid, which by the late game played exactly the same as the Conjurer->Cleric).

Likewise, I've seen multiple no-reload runs go very far. My first no-reload runs were with IWD and IWD2, though I think only the IWD run saw both normal mode and Heart of Fury mode.

Creating my Phase Spider kit cured my restartitis for a whole stretch of SoA. Tweaking and balancing the Phase Spider kit allowed me to keep the game fresh indefinitely. It didn't hurt that the kit is the most unique kit ever made for an IE game (not to pat myself on the back), and plays far differently from any other class.

Creating other custom kits could stave off restartitis, but if the kit wasn't really unique and really novel, restartitis would crop up again. A Spell Revisions+Item Revisions run with custom kits was interesting for a while, but I didn't feel invested in the characters, as only two of them were of good alignment.

Starting a new no-reload run in IWD:EE helped me a lot when I got tired of the no-reload SoA and Tutu runs I had started. The IWD:EE run is currently in Dorn's Deep.

But the one cure for restartitis I would point to is when I looked back at the old Party of Spiders thread, two months after I had left it in the middle of ToB. I remembered what a great ride it had been, and decided it was time to finish it. I remember somebody complaining about when I first mentioned I was leaving it--it made me realize there were people who really wanted to see it end in success.

Skatan

I haven't finished a full run in EE yet actually. I keep creating new chars, so I can't really say I have cured my restartitis, but I think I've found the cure that works for me:

I finally created a char which was interresting and diversive enough to never get bored of. I've played through BG1 with him and will save him for SoD/BG2, while in the meantime I will play various other chars (currently a dwarf/paladin just to see how low saves I can reach). I've prolly mentioned that one character in other threads, but it's an assassin/mage keepered MC elf. He's created with a full backstory and it's like I am playing "me" rather than playing yet another "charname".

Spoiler explains why I think this char is interresting and diversive, if anyone is interrested. It's not made for being ûberpowerful, mainly it's for RP reasons.

* shortbow prof + poison and different arrows can tackle most situations
* cheated dual wield (not using rogue rebalancing, will do it manually for RP reasons as I level him up in SoD/BG2), selfimposed restriction of not using two large weapons
* backstab as an assassin ofc, mislead etc from mage complements
* decent THAC0 from being assassin and elf, meaning swords and bows are preffered weapons
* being mage compliments lacking thief skill points, can use knock and invisibility instead
* self-imposed mage, no offensive powers, just "blue" and "white" spells.

So that is my cure, finding "one char to rule them all", not in means of power, but in means of personality and amount of "roleplayability". Immerse yourself into him/her and you will never get bored.

Glad to see you find your cures, @DJKajuru and @semiticgod. I guess the cure differs between every player though of course.

JuliusBorisov

Don't be sad, be proud of yourself!

"You know you have to be proud when... #1998. you've finally beaten all the BG trilogy."

Kilivitz

This thread might be the best place for me to proudly announce, as demanded by absolutely no one, that I have finally completed BG2:EE.

RAMBLING/SPOILER ALERT, but read on if you're bored:

So far I've completed BG:EE three times.

The first one was with a Bard, whom I considered to be my "canon" Gorion's ward (so much so that I've only completed the original ToB twice, both with this character). I did, however, resort to enormous amounts of cheese while playing, so much that upon starting SoA, I felt burned out and lost interest before even leaving Chateau Irenicus.

Then, I decided I wanted to experience all the new NPCs all at once, as a way of making the new content feel like it's more seamlessly integrated to the original game. You see, the fact that Neera, Dorn and Rasaad have way more banters and more complex quests than the classic NPCs always seemed a bit iffy to me.

Such a party needed a bit of reputation micromanagement, and lacked a priest and Thief, so I rolled a True Neutral Cleric and took Imoen along (there was still a free spot and she's so integral to the storyline that it feels weird not taking her along).

That game went well. I continued on to SoA and recruited everyone (Hexxat included), but guess what? Yeah... lost interest. Though this one I kinda blame on the Wild Forest being a bit frustrating to a low-level party and Dorn being a bit of a disappointment in BG2 (he's by far my favorite new NPC in BG1).

I resent that it makes sense for a good or neutral NPC having Dorn around during BG1 (if anything to keep an eye on him) and then in BG2 the very first thing you must do is attack the Order of the Radiant Heart. I can't remember any evil NPC which requires you to take such a heavy-handed stance on the side of Evil so soon.

Anyway, then I imported a Mage (from a third finished BG:EE game), thinking this time I would finish it. But... no. It seemed to me that finishing BG2:EE for the first time with anything other than my Bard wouldn't be adequate. For some reason I felt compelled to mirror my experience with the original games before I would explore other characters and NPCs. It's probably some sort of OCD, I know.

So I finally sucked it up and brought back my Bard from that first cheesy BG:EE playthrough. Since that one used the canon BG1 party, I decided I would follow suit and not only use as many "canon" (I know that very debatable) NPCs as possible, but that I also wouldn't be ashamed at all about being cheesy.

Yes, that includes using meta-knowledge to send a lonely warrior under a Protection from Undead scroll to fight Liches.



In case you're curious, my party was Minsc, Jaheira, Aerie, Yoshimo/Imoen and a rotating 6th slot, reserved for Sarevok. I went along with both Aerie's and Jaheira's romances until being forced to decide between them. I soon figured that this was the Kobayashi Maru of BG2 romances.

Jaheira prevailed, though. I'm on board with everyone that feels that she was a poor choice for a romance in the first place, but the completionist in me had to play it eventually (on previous playthroughs I always romanced Viconia - eventually I'll do 'em all. Yes, even Anomen).

It was okay, I guess. But I can't see myself playing that romance again, considering it's not a requirement to playing pretty much every Jaheira subquest/plot (which are admittedly awesome).

Anyway, tonight I finally ended that playthrough. Just wanted to get that out of my chest. Thanks if you read this far.

DJKajuru

@semiticgod , I've tried your strategy for a couple of years : by increasing difficulty/AI you can actually make use of powerful character class combinations in a smart way. I remember having fun with it and actually completing the game several times (I've had restartitis for the last 4 years, but I've been playing it for over 15 ). Kensai/mage, bersenker/thief , fighter-archer/mage , they all seemed quite fun as long as the the challenge was tough. As for no reload challenges, I must confess that I'm not the kind of person who could do it, since I'm too attached to my characters to accept their deaths . Cool story!

@Skatan , your "one char to rule them all" explains it well - what makes me go on with the game is the feeling the my character and my party are as alive as Drizzt and Wulfgar . I wish to feel that charname could actually be part of the forgotten realms. I've done the "self imposed image" once, playing an Illusionist . It was quite fun!

@bengoshi ,I agree that it also made me proud. When we're teenagers all we want is a "powerful cool character" , and as I grew up I became more demading of my characters' personality and interaction with other npc's. It feels sad because I really liked my character and party, and now it's the end of his story. Perhaps I could make a fanfic , hmm?

@Kilivitz , I did read that far and I totally agree with you. Sometimes we create and recreate the same character, because we just can't live without them. I've already tried all the female romances, but Viconia is the one who I've enjoyed the most. It's cool that we can play all of Jaheira's quests without actually having a romance, though - it feels like she's your friend, and will be loyal to you till the very end, just like Imoen. Now and then I tend go back on creating a charname bard, because they're just too cool (and useful , no matter what others say about it.)