Has Anyone Completed a No-Rest Game?

Giant2005

I imagine it would be pretty difficult.
Your spellcasters will generally suck due to only being able to cast from scrolls and your martial characters will generally suck due to fatigue and not being able to use Cromwell's services.
There is also the fact that you cannot heal as easily as clicking rest. Which I understand tends to be pressed almost after every encounter by many.

So has anyone actually completed the game in such a way? I have noticed that if you kick someone out of your team and send them to wherever it is they like to hang out, they seem to lose the Fatigue penalty when you pick them back up again. They might even memorize their spells too but I don't really know about that. Also, casting Restoration via a scroll doesn't give you Fatigue penalties as if you cast it via a spell slot.
Anyone else have any tips that might make it more manageable?

MrNooby

Ridiculous use of regen ring, constantly swapping it between characters to get their HP back. And lots of reloads :P

gorgonzola

There are also points of the game where an automatic rest is forced, make the best use of them choosing iourself when they will happen. Since they are unavoidable they shoud not be regarded as rests for our goal, otherway they preclude the chance to do a non rest run.

The real problems of fatigue are decreased attack capability for fighters and no memorization of spells for casters. And some penalities for everyone. the more they are fatigued the worst it become.

I would say that a sorcerer have a good chance.
He has only one or few uses for the items whith X charges per day, but there are items whith multiple charges like the staff that summons may be 10 or 20 elementals and the wands. He can have most of the wands in Chateau Irenicus. And wands and items can be recharged selling and buing, or stealing, them. He can recruit Jan for the task and then drop him so he takes all the xp from killing enemies.
Jan can steal also scrolls, potions and more. and all the precious equipment you find can be sold and stealed back. I regard selling and stealing multiple times the same item from a merchant as a very cheap tactic and never do it, but selling and stealing an item only one time to a merchant and then do the same to each of the 4 fences for me make sense, both from a RP prospective and in real life. if you have a suspencion of disbelief about stealing in BG2 at all. I mean you can sell your expensive golden clock to a merchant, steal it from him, doing the same to some fence in New york and then repeast in LA, the fences are not in communication between themselves and also they don't want that other know what appened, they have a reputation to defend....
There is no clue that the 4 fences in BG2 communicate between themselves.
If he puts his hands on a ring of regeneration and on the SoTM is even in better shape.
So the sorcerer can count on a lot of money to buy items from merchants that can no be stealed andto recharge items selling and buyng. And he can have a lot of scrolls and other expendable items.
Soloing he will level very fast and he can manage to reach level 9 casting capability yust before a forced rest. Then he will have wish to recharge his spellbook and items, PI, from spellbook and scrolls, to cast the wish and have a good chance to get the resting option.
Sorcerer don't have to wait the point in which wish scrolls are availlable, is the only one that can cast it in chapter 2, and when he begins to find them he can cast the scroll from his PI, as well as his memorized wish.
And he can easily finish the game soloing or he can recruit companions, that will be underlevelled related to him but not so much underlevelled for the game due to his super level when he recruits them.

Giant2005

gorgonzola said:

I would say that a sorcerer have a good chance.

Well you sold the Sorcerer incredibly well. I little too well.
You made it sound so easy that it feels like playing a Sorcerer (Or at least pseudo-resting via the Wish spell) would make the challenge so trivial that it would feel like I was cheating myself through the challenge.

gorgonzola

Don't get me wrong, sorcerers are powerfull, only few other classes match their power.
But a no rest run is not a breeze, is an extremely hard task even for experienced players that use all their knowledge.
I only say that for a sorcerer, with luck, reloads and flawlwss planification of strategy and use of resources MAYBE it is possible.
The reason that I have choosen a spelcaster is only because fatigue is very detrimental for fighters and casters can to some extent survive on expendable or rechargeable items. They don't have to rely on brute force.
The reason for sorc is wish, in chapter 2.
But maybe some fighter mage or rogue mage is also suited for the task, they loose an early wish but they gain from some other side.

semiticgoddess

I did it once with a mage dualed to thief, using scrolls rather than memorized spells. I avoided using quest-based rests, and chose not to use a sorcerer for Wish-resting, to make sure my resources were genuinely limited (Wish-resting eliminates the limitation, making it no different from any other run from then on out). The only rest was on the way to Brynnlaw, since I could not avoid it.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/37785/restless-run-of-baldurs-gate-2#latest
It's doable, though it requires a lot of resource management, and it's very balanced against spellcasters. If you really never rest, then the main character can never cast spells due to having none memorized at the start of the game, and NPCs only get to use the spells they have when they join the party, once.

It was an interesting experiment (you can remove fatigue by kicking people out of the party and immediately taking them back), but I honestly wouldn't recommend it. It's not so much fun.