Remembering how rubbish I was first time I played BG....
Heckler
Member Posts: 7
South of Beregost there's a group of Hobgoblins round a campfire , seems daft now but first time I played I couldn't get past them . I had to go to PlanetBaldursGate for help where some helpful soul introduced me to the concept of ranged and melee , none of my party had bows or whatever . And Mulahey , boy he was tuff .
Since then I've solo'ed it to Baldurs Gate( didn't complete it solo , missed the party feel ) and with a party you can get thru the Nashkel mines PDQ , but those early experiences are etched indelibly on my mind .
Now I think ranged can be a bit overpowered , I sometimes have to decide to let enemies close in to give them a 'good' death by the sword . Stupid , I know .
Lets hear your first time experiences .
Since then I've solo'ed it to Baldurs Gate( didn't complete it solo , missed the party feel ) and with a party you can get thru the Nashkel mines PDQ , but those early experiences are etched indelibly on my mind .
Now I think ranged can be a bit overpowered , I sometimes have to decide to let enemies close in to give them a 'good' death by the sword . Stupid , I know .
Lets hear your first time experiences .
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I remember that fight! I was a nightmare winning it in my 1st playthrough. Now every time I replay the game I find it very rewarding butchering those hobgoblins without a scratch.
The one that drove me nuts the most though wasn't my first playthrough but my last one. I was playing a Blade (Normally I play a paladin, ranger or fighter) and using Tutu. Packs of 6 gibberlings on the map inbetween Beregost and Friendly Arm Inn were destroying my party of myself, imoen, xzar and mataron before we could do anything. ><
I'm looking forward to EE because maybe you won't get packs of 6 of those anymore in EE. In the regular game you'd get like 1, maybe 2 or 3. Eventually if you were a high enough level you'd get 6 but by that time you had the equipment and magic to spare.
Recently, I got to visit the terror of the ahnkeg on my pen & paper players. The Bard was grabbed by an ahnkeg and dragged into the darkness of the Underdark while the party got their asses stomped by an animated statue of an unarmored, unarmed human. Literally, the animated statue stomped the party's tank, a minotaur, to death.
That ranger's career ended on the way to the Gnoll Fortress when Garrick identified the Gauntlets of Dexterity - I found them so overpowered I decided to reroll and settle for minimum dexterity as I could raise it later with the gauntlets.
I figured well, okay, no armor or shield... just a robe, quarterstaff, and a sling, lol. So sad for Imoen to watch me take a dirt nap so soon. Onto plan B. Let me try equipping my hero instead with some armor, helmet, sword, and sturdy shield.
So I made a human fighter. This fellow got waxed in the second map outside Candlekeep by bandits. It was immediately clear to me that bows and arrows were some powerful shit in this game.
So for my third go (third time's the charm, right?) I made a half-elven Fighter-Mage (named Lemernis) and I equipped him with some armor and a composite long bow.
And... after reading about how to do it on a fan site... I also created a full custom party of six in MP mode, IWD style. I knew absolutely nothing about how great the game's NPCs are, mind you. But in all events, starting out with a party of six gave me a definite edge for survival, even if the party had 0 XP.
So I was able to keep the PC alive from there, of course. I just wandered the countryside and side-quested. I completely blew off Gorion's impassioned direction to seek out Khalid and Jaheira and the Friendly Arm Inn. I did eventually stumble onto them quite a bit later, and of course I got the Nashkel Mines quest. But I left them there in the inn.
In an odd way, not knowing what I was missing out on with NPCs, I nevertheless had a grand time with the party I had created. The five other party members I created had portraits that matched them well, and I had found some good custom voice sets for them. They really did take their own kind of personality via those elements and their skills, weapons, etc. So all in all, it was still a great gaming experience.
But now, third time's the charm, right?
I never did, and still don't, really read directions well.
- Equipping non magic rings and amulets thinking that maybe they were making me more powerful somehow
- Limitless despair when kobolds respawned out of nowhere and multiplied with each reload in Nashkell mines and in Firewine ruins.
- Finishing the game with Imoen still wearing a regular studded leather armor (I probably thought armor wasn't that important for an archer and sold magic armors to finance crappy purchases)
This series of unfortunate events eventually convinced me not to play as a simple fighter anymore, but to explore what the game had to offer. Then I started to understand what kind of game I was actually playing. Such huge potential we can only dream nowadays. Not to mention the characters' depth that BG2 improved even further! Eventually, all these elements fed my desire to know more about this game and develop my knowledge about the Forgotten Realms in the future.
Then some years later, I read the game's novelization and got to know this Abdel fellow, yet another human fighter. You cannot imagine my face while recalling the good days of my complete n00bishness.
1) I remember thinking that Imoen could fight in combat with a short sword and leather armor. I heard her say "(gasp) I'm...so...cold" so many times, I thought that was the main thing she ever said.
2) I remember thinking that Imoen should rob houses and steal stuff despite my character's disapproval, and then getting blamed for what she did, and I thought I was only having her roleplay what I thought a thief was supposed to be. My reward? One of my most vivid memories of my first time is hearing Jaheira shout "Better leadership! Come on, Khalid!", and abandoning Imoen and me in Beregost. I had no idea what "reputation" was or how you control it. LOL
3) I remember Minsc's lines - all of them. And thinking, aw, what a great guy! Didn't most of us?
4) I remember hunting the ogre south of FAI after getting the quest from the dwarf woman. I remember getting a one-shot, down-to-one-hitpoint on somebody and knowing that we should run. And then, we ran all right, right into two wolves and about six xvarts! LOL. I got my first experience with realizing that I was going to be reloading more than I ever had before in my gaming life!
5) I remember the dreaded "you have been waylaid by enemies, and must defend yourself!" And we got that in a mountain pass trying to get to Dynaheir, and it had an ogre mage! We tried to run, but couldn't because there were too many smaller enemies supporting the ogre mage and blocking our way. Sigh, reload number 1001.
6) I remember us stumbling all over ourselves trying to conduct melee combat on the stairs leading to Dynaheir's prison pit in the gnoll lair, and getting our butts handed to us by the gnoll captain, because I had no idea as a party leader about how to manage narrow areas and passageways and of the importance of ranged fire.
7) I remember setting off every darn trap in the Nashkel mines, especially the three magic missile traps in front of the slope down to the final level. And then, getting reload numbers 1002-1010 against the kobold fire archers. And then, learning about Hold Person, and "calls for help" for skeleton and kobold armies against Mulahey. Reloads number 1011-1020.
8) I remember *finally* getting to the final battle, after reload 2001 or so. And then, because I had been using puny AC (meh, surely AC doesn't matter *that* much, and our avatars look so much more attractive in leather and chain), and *still* didn't understand the magic system and the ranged tactics system enough to be effective in my tactical leadership, I could NOT defeat Sarevok and company. I think I wound up setting the difficulty slider to "easy" and going to about reload number 3001. Yup, believe it or not, I gave up on it and did not finish the end of the game. I just decided to "pretend" that I had won at the end.
9) EDIT, and backtracking a bit: I remember getting creamed by the mage on the steps of the FAI, with his mirror image, horror, and magic missiles. I remember thinking "huh, how is *anybody* supposed to win this encounter"?
It took years and playing SoA before I *started* to get the hang of the guerilla tactics you need to play this kind of game. And even then, I gave up on ToB when it came out. I only just last summer defeated ToB for the first time.
Ah, gods, I *love* this game!
Then, uhh...there was some horrible "uninst.isu" issue with my discs, which, combined with my inability to comprehend Windows, prevented me from playing the game for years.
In any case, that aside, there was: the armor class confusion, not knowing how to properly roll ability scores, and a problem with the Gnoll Stronghold.
My solution to all of these problems is an understanding of AD&D mechanics and/or Shar-Teel. Oh, and having characters steal from stores.
They caused many deaths. And re-loads.
Days later, after being taught very painfully that vampiric wolves are to be feared, running away from them with my high lvl party with nice shiny +2 weapons. That wolf is a bug, unbeatable or has troll in it. Run Away, Run Away, RUN AWAY!!!!!
Edit: also wondering why you can't cast raise dead on random dead people not in your party, and why it has no effect on skellies. Heck, a pheonix down can even kill a train if it's undead.
I always had problems with Silke. It might have to do with the fact that I believed giving Imoen a long sword and sending her into melee was a good idea... basically all the encounters at a low level are damn hard because they are so swingy, and combined with an opaque ruleset (to this day, I don't understand how I ever came to grasps with it) the arena is set for defeat upon defeat.
Without all those internet spell guides, I'd still be rubbish at the game. I just can't tell good spells from worthless ones, I'd be like "oohh shiny, ooohh cool, oohhh insects" and leave stuff like Stoneskin out simply because its icon looked so weird and I couldn't understand what it really did.
You can also try to disrupt his spellcasting with Immy's wand of Magic Missiles. If your PC is a spellcaster cast Blind on him and pepper him with arrows. If you have Xzar along you're pretty much stuck with Larloch''s Minor Drain and Chill Touch, though, IIRC.
In the original game he's a joke if the PC is melee based with a decent thac0 -- your guy hits him once and he drops.
I'm kinda hoping BG:EE has this kind of 'smarter' AI.