@Tenrecc That's what I've been figuring out, the game does get easier as you go on. I picked up NPCs as they are a must when starting fresh. Mulahey and his minions are crazy at the start. His minions were the worst part, each of them (what like 14?) having ~110+ HP. That adds up to almost 2000HP of bad guys in one room. Not an easy thing for a low level party with few special items.
Yeah, I didn't bother with them. Loot the chest, drag Mula to the entrance, kill him, loot him, run for your life. And that's nothing compared to the bandit camp. I still have nightmares.
Question, do your summons get that outrageous HP added?
Player summons gets *2+20 hp. Not at all as strong as the *3+80 that enemies gets, but it's highly noticable, at least in SoA. They also seem to get the +12 level stat, because my summoned Sirens hit a lot of their hold person/hold animal/charm spells, a lot more than my toons does anyway.
It's really stupid to be honest, because it makes summons so strong that the game really isn't challenging anymore. BG1 had me reload every fight 20 times, in BG2 I am one-shotting the supposedly challenging stuff such as dragons.
And I don't even have access to the really strong summons... what will happen once you pick up Mordenkainens, Planetars, Elemental princes...?
I'm about to go to the bandit camp, I can only imagine the nightmare it's going to be with all those bows and a much higher thaco.
I'd really enjoy it if beamdog would program in SCS and make it an option in the settings. I can't get it to work, the install keeps crashing. SCS plus LoB would be awesome after a few tweaks (fixing the summons and reducing the 80+ HP). Anyway, I'm having a lot more fun than I thought I would on LoB so far.
I played a custom party, but one crafted with ToB in mind, so it was fairly weak in BG1. F/T/M, F/C/M, Inquis, Bard, Shaman, Sorcer. Very little fighting power, very much spell power. Probably still stronger than playing a regular party, but not by much, tanking with triple class fighters pre-mirror image and stoneskin really isn't that enjoyable.
Also, that playthrough you mentioned with SCS+LoB with few tweaks sounds pretty amazing tbh. If you get a running setup of that to work, I'd love to get a copy of that, or how to speak, since I'm not much of a tweaker myself.
Anyone did Legacy of Bhaal solo? I stuck with my sorcerer at coronation in ducal palace and I just don't have enough dps to kill those doppelgangers.
Any ideas what to do? I don't wan't to lower difficuly settings, I was hope to get both Flying Solo and Lord of Murder achievement simultanously.
Well, if you Web them they will stand still as nice little innocent commoners and not turn into Dobblegangers untill the spell wears off. It also has a 100% success rate against them, so tossing a single Web into the back end of the room splits up the fight into 3 and then 3 dobblegangers.
Basically, if you have enough Webs (and you should as a sorc) you should be able to take on the Dobblegangers 1 and 1, or possibly 2 and 2 untill they're all dead. You just need to be pretty accurate with the spell itself so it hits just as many commoners as intended.
My LoB party just arrived in Beregost in the same amount of time I would probably be in Cloakwood. I'm trying to clear each area (except for bears) and it is extremely difficult. The 7 hobgoblins around the Friendly Arm Inn took an hour to beat, using every trick in the book. I ended up luring them into the castle so the guards could help me. And they don't even have bows! I dread the bandit camp.
But I'm loving it. It makes me feel like the first time I played, 15 years ago, long before I memorized all the tricks and best solutions, long before CLUA or shadowkeeper. I'm like a scared little first level adventurer, desperately hoping my single magic missile does full damage before the gibberling gets close.
I beat Legacy of Bhaal with my full custom party. What a difference that makes to have 6 characters with around 80+ points to their attributes and placed according to class. I imagine I would have had a much harder time through the game with the typical NPCs. To beat Sarevok I cast greater malison and hit him fast with darts of stunning, I had a fighter with 4 points in darts. It was the first time I've ever held/stunned Sarevok. As nearly always, the stun was a death sentence.
Imo LoB takes a bit more knowledge and skipping stuff but I think it's pretty fun so far. Additional observations, the Hit Die for enemies is increased, so sleep, color spray, command, and turn undead are entirely useless.
This is quite upsetting for Enchanters especially. Sleep is the main draw for the spec early on and every enemy saves against it, even with the -2 penalty. I've tried to Doom a bandit, then cast Sleep. Still failed. So frustrating.
I started a LOB from SOD (4th SOD playthrough) and couldnt stand the cheese until I restarted with Drizzt as PC using EEkeeper and giving him some items like BG 2 Drizzt has (and poison proof amulet) and he's doing quite well with the canon party NPCs...until I ran head first to some spiders and forgot web tangle is not a spell and innate ability so my MR had no effect and got webbed and sword spiders chopped me up...anyways dont see myself ever wanting to do a full playthrough with LOB too much cheese...prefer smarter AI than tons of HP/stats....the only great AI tactic LB does is kiting but this just takes forever to chase these guys all day and my drizzt has boots of speed lol
I'll keep trying this mode, but it just feels like a long "kite-fest." I'm sure with the increased player THAC0, AC, and higher level spells, BG2 will provide more of an interesting challenge. But BG1, especially early on, is redundant.
I have been playing BGEE on LOB mode with a full install of SCS. I use all of the hardest options in SCS like the tactical battles and pre-buffs for mages.
The first few times I tried to play LOB I got tired of having to kite constantly and I refuse to wander off to the basilisk level right away because it makes no sense RP wise for me. Many spells would not work including sleep because of the high enemy saving throws and even with a -5 armor class my character was getting hit every round and killed instantly. After slowly beating all of the areas on the main path I got stuck and didn't have the power to go on.
I keep playing this mode though because I don't want to back down from a challenge!
This time I am starting to beat it. I have a six person party that is level 5 and we have finished the Nashkel Mines.
I like to clear the main path and then let the quest for Minsc push me off to the left side of the game world. I don't do the right side of the game world until after the mines when you find the round-about area of the bandit camp, Then I start searching the right side of the main path.
Here are some tips I have found really helped me survive. I haven't had to kite nearly as often and I have been able to adventure more naturally to my own play style.
SPOILIERS:
All Summons gain extra hit points in this mode and that includes a mage's familiar. A mage, Fighter mage, or Fighter Mage Thief can summon a familiar and gain half of the familiars HP so in this mode you gain a bunch of HP if you have magic capabilities and you use the "Find Familiar" spell. My FMT started the game with 32 HP at level one. Nearly triple the amount of other classes because I chose find familiar as one of my starting spells.
The spell "blind" still works and will give the enemy a major penalty to hit and will give you a major bonus to hit.
The priest spell, "doom" will help soften the enemies boosted stats early on and will allow your tank to stand up to a Ghast and other nasty enemies.
Use your familiar, it will soak up some damage and possibly interrupt spell casters.
Have a thief sneak into the Knoll stronghold and hand Dynaheir a potion of invisibility and you can sneak out of the stronghold without fighting at all. This will complete the quest for Minsc so that he won't leave your party and net you some XP rewards early on, even if you are a weak level one character.
Once you get to the lighthouse map you can use a theif to steal the treasure in the cave which will give the wand of paralyzation, making many powerful mages easy to kill.
If you use a scimitar or Katana you don't have to worry about the iron crisis breaking your swords.
The mage that is doing experiments on the Green slimes has a web spell that can be obtained easily if you have a wand of paralyzation.
Use stinking cloud on siren's to help split them up and to get some easy shots on them.
As a FMT I have focused my thief skills on lock picks at the start so I could steal the gem in the candle keep inn. This allows you to purchase the Katana if you want it or simply have an extra 1000 Gold for starting equipment. Since then I have focused entirely on trap finding. This has allowed Imoen to focus all of her thief points on Detect Illusion so that enemy mages can't use mirror image against me. In SCS mirror image automatically gets pre cast and spell casters usually have multiple casts of it so it helps to have 100% detect illusion early on.
I focused my weapon proficiencies to scimitar because it can't break and it's cheap. You also get a magical scimitar early on with the Dorn encounter. I put the rest in two weapon fighting style. I use the army scath crossbow and the guantlets that grant a +2 to missle weapons to keep up with the rest of the group from long range without putting any profeciances into a long range weapon. Before I can afford the army scythe I use throwing daggers for the strength bonus damage. My last two pips will go into Katana in preperation for BG2EE. I plan to drop my shield and long range weapons and focus on dual wield the rest of the game once I gain access to spirit armor and stoneskin. My two pips in BG2EE will be in hammers for Crom Frayer.
Use shields, They help with your armor class. Bently's Buckler gives a bonus to constitution and multiple +2 shields are available around the town of Bergost. In SOD some custom shields can be crafted that give major advantages to armor.
Outfit Minsc or one of your characters with the stupifier mace that can be found in the red sheaf inn.
For me, the biggest help was keeping my party at a size of 4 characters until I beat most of the central game path areas. This allowed me to level up one level higher than I was with a 6 person party and then when I took Minsc into the party his level automatically matches the party's so it's free XP for him.
I used to use Monty and Xzar because I wanted as many helpers as possible but this time I dropped them after I made it to the friendly arm inn and replaced them with Jahiera and Khalid. This 4 person team made the game easier for me. Gaining an extra level a little earlier can make a big difference. I can see a solo run being easier in some instances since you level up so fast and their are many quests that give XP that don't require much fighting at all.
I hope these tips help some players that are struggling to accept this difficulty set as I once did. This mode really does force you to try new approaches and it can be very rewarding at times. My opinion of it is starting to switch from negative to positive now that I have found a way to play the game that doesn't require constant cheese or to betray the role playing experience that this game has always delivered in spades.
EDIT:
A couple tips I forgot to mention.
Go to the farm area above the friendly arm inn and do the bowl quest for the priestess. It requires no fighting and gives major XP. Also the farmers son quest can be done if you use a thief to sneak into the underground area and then gulp a potion of invisibility once you have picked up the farmers son. This will get you a wand of fireballs as well. If you spot the farmer 100 gold you will receive an additional 1000XP bonus on top of the quest completion.
The chicken quest that ends in Highhedge is also pretty easy. If you are having problems killing skeletons you could always bomb them with your new wand of fireballs.
Instead of spending 15,000 Gold on the shadow armor for Imoen, sell your wand of paralyzation and buy it back with 100 charges for some serious beat down power.
Next to the mage that is experimenting on slimes you can go into a cave with three ghouls. This fight is hard but you could walk out of the cave and lead them out one at a time to gain access to a wand of monster summoning. This wand is super powerful in LOB mode because of the boosted summon stats.
whoa great advice @the_sextein and most of the above Im learning through trial and error. tons of spamming and kiting for sure but is getting easier....just took down morenthene and only safana got chunked...which is ok as was planning to dump her for glint soon anyways and was probably going to chunk her myself anyways before replacing her.
I'm planning on importing my party to SOD eventually. I plan to blow every gold piece I have maxing out every wand I can find and really taking full advantage of anything and everything on my way to SOD. I beat SOD on Insane difficulty with SCS installed and it was hard because of the large spawns of enemies. Facing them with crazy high hitpoints is going to be a nightmare.
I am getting closer to the bandit camp battle in BGEE. Kinda dreading it actually.
I just managed to beat the bandit camp with SCS tactics on LOB mode. Enemies doing double damage, the whole nine yards...
My party is level 6 but my FMT is level 4. I stood my ground until all of my AOF spells started to where out. I paced them the best I could but the enemies have so many hitpoints I just couldn't take them all out before my spells dried up. I took down about 18 enemies at the start of the fight. I then moved along the top of the map back pedaling and using the wand of paralysis until I hit the far left corner of the map and then I stood my ground and killed the remaining 15 enemies who were already heavily damaged. They would trickle in 1 or 2 at a time thanks to the many enemies that I stunned. In the end, none of my characters died but they were all on the verge of death when it was over. Two huge piles of bodies are on the map. One in front of the main tent and the other at the top left corner of the map.
I didn't attempt to sleep or leave the map during the fight. I killed everything other than the knolls in the cave in one go. I left the cave knolls for when I return. It took hours of replaying to get it correct. I used up almost all of my wands other than the paralysis wand. It still has about 60 charges left. I also used the cloud kill scroll that you find towards the bottom of the game world. This was the craziest fight I have ever had in this game. I almost gave up on it last night but I am glad I didn't.
Nice work on the bandit camp, just got through Morenthen and was tough but took her down with some careful planning and running around like crazy...only a couple tough fights...Belhifet wont go down easy
That's cool, are you planning on going into BG2EE all the way through TOB?
My plan is to play everything. I have Ascension installed for the end. I feel like I am starting to gain some ground now. I have beaten the cloakwood mines and have entered the city of Baldur's Gate. At this point gold and XP flow more easily and most of the fighting is smaller skirmishes so I think things are going to calm down until I get to the TOSC expansion and the end game. It's nice to have every wand you could possibly want available for purchase.
So far, the game has been very tough all the way up to now. The SCS druid encounters in the cloakwood areas were really tough and the big battles within the mines were amped up too. The assassin's guarding the mines are always a pain with SCS but the LOB HP and THAC0 increases make things even worse. Beating the cave fight with all of those waverns was impossible the way I used to play. I had to come up with a new creative way to play that fight in order to win. It's pretty fun now that I have got the hang of it.
Imoen is level 7 and Minsc and Khalid are getting close to hitting level 7. My FMT is a couple thousand XP away from hitting level 5-5-6. I have fully explored all areas in the game with a few exceptions. Firewine, Ulcaster, and Durlog's Tower I am saving for later on when I get out of the Candlekeep underground area. I still have the whole city of Baldur's Gate to explore so it's going to be a while.
not anytime soon @the_sextein as enough LOB for me after SOD but it is getting better but planning my first SCS run and maybe adding ascension if possible (play the end battle and a couple other on BP) so cant wait!!....a little worried from what I read on some battles like the druid battle and bandit camp but want smarter AI challenges (not tons of HP)
Did anyone managed to finish a LoB game iron-man mode?
I've done BG1 with a solo sorcerer. That was easy enough in principle and I'm pretty sure SoA would be no problem in principle either, though ToB I suspect would be a much harder challenge. Of course, playing no-reload things that are not a problem in principle tend to become a problem in practice , so I'm not confident I'll be getting to ToB anytime soon ...
I left Baldur's Gate and I am in the Candlekeep catacombs. The fight at the top of the iron throne tower was crazy. I would say that fight is just as bad as the bandit camp but for different reasons. The SCS versions of those characters have solid AI that utilize all of the skills that they have. This fight is pretty tough using standard tactics on insane difficulty. The LOB HP and THAC0 really makes these guys hard. The thieves will one shot just about anyone and the fighters can kill in 2 hits. The number of hitpoints they have makes this fight last a while so they can try to use all of the worst they can dish out at you.
SCS thief tactics are a serious pain on their own, but with LOB they can take a beating and keep on hitting you with insane THAC0.
I threw away all sense of holding back and abused the game as hard as I could... Even then I had to restart the fight quite a few times. I ended up burning through 6000+GP worth of arrows of detonation. Over 21 fireballs went off in a matter of a 3 rounds or so. That killed about half of them but the ones that rush you I had to use web, poison gas and detect invisibility all the while spamming everyone with two wands of paralysis. I had Jahiera using the wand of the heavens to interrupt any casters that would get out of the web and avoid AOE damage because of stoneskin. Stupid hard.
thats crazy, but alot of my SOD LOB battles are playing out like that too lol and thieves are a pain now or this one spectre chunking npcs on one hit. I'll be doing my first SCS run but just on insane and see if I can handle BG...more afraid of BG2 where cheese and magic rule
It wouldn't surprise me if SOD was harder than BGEE. On insane difficulty it felt harder to me. One thing that can make things more difficult in BGEE is how low of a level you are. Even my team at level 7 still doesn't have the stoneskin spell which is pretty much needed if you don't want your mages to get backstabbed in one shot. SCS places spells in limited quantity around the game world.
I think SOD AI is a lot closer to SCS than BGEE AI is. SCS makes the enemies act more human like which is fun. At high level you have to read the changes in the readme log and figure out how to strip enemy mages of their protections but once you get the hang of it, it's not that hard. I think the hardest elements of SCS are the optional battles and nerfs that you can choose. For example, choosing to have all of your gear taken away from you in spellhold during BG2EE is pretty tough.
If you have beaten SOD on LOB mode you will think BGEE on insane with SCS is easy. I tried to go back once and everything dies so fast that they can't even use their abilities against you. It almost felt like I could pretty much just click on the enemies and watch them die once you know what spell to start with. A few imbalanced fights will be hard on insane like the bandit camp and the iron throne fight but everything else is a walk in the park after playing LOB.
Yeah the big challenge is the amount of HP but dont like that as tends to be too much repetition and hack n slash so want smarter AI but not crazy amount of HP...doubling on insane is enough for me....i do agree the AI on LOB enemies are smarter though as they tend to kit emore, target certain PC/NPC, more potion use, beter buffs, etc and keeps me off balance which I like so hoping SCS matches this as will be playing on insane...maybe if I finish my first run I'll try on SCS LOB on my 2nd
Just curious, are there any pro's around here who might have some advice for dealing with SCS enemy thieves?
I just beat the four guardians on the first major basement level of Durlog's Tower and I had one heck of a time dealing with the theif. As it is, using my tactics, I will probably have to revert to cheese when I do the cult fights in Ugalath's Beard.
The problem is that they have infinite haste and they have infinite amounts of potions of invisibility. Casting invisibility purge will make them visiable for a few seconds before they chug another potion of invisibility and then chuck one of my characters with a backstab before I can cast again.
They are immune to the wand of paralysis and they appear to be resistant to just about all magic. I have tried using choke points and plugging them up with monster summoning but Beamdog's latest path finding allows enemies to push through a wall of summoned monsters and the enemy thief will always ignore the spawned monsters and come straight at me.
At high level I would just use stoneskin and mirror image on my FMT but in BG1EE my FMT is not high enough level to cast stoneskin and my mage with a potion of strength still doesn't get enough APR to take out the theif solo because it has so many hitpoints.
Slow, blind, sleep, ect doesn't work even with greater malison and that is nearly impossible to use anyway because the theif will have chunked someone before I can get the spell off most of the time.
Web hardly ever works and when it does it doesn't work long enough to prevent the enemy from backstabbing at least one of my party members.
The only way I have managed to kill these high level SCS thieves is to cast web into the fog of war and then spam fireballs from all party members for a few rounds until it kills them. They will come at you if you start dropping fireballs on them but for some reason they won't come at you if a web spell is cast and they are in the fog of war. It doesn't seem to matter if they are webbed or not. They will stand still if they are covered by the fog of war and a web spell is present. This is somewhat cheesy but I haven't had any luck with any other method.
Maybe I am overlooking some spells or something? On insane I could always stun them or surround them with summoned monsters or backpedal and launch fireballs at them. I might get backstabbed but I could usually spread out the damage between a few characters and take them down. Now with LOB's extra APR, higher THAC0 and massive HP combined with the current pathfinding and super high saving throws.... these enemies seem almost unstoppable without reverting to cheese. Casting web into the darkness and following it up with 20+ fireballs all because a single thief is hiding on the map seems a bit too crazy.
Next time I play I may leave the improved cult battles and durlog's tower out of my SCS install unless I am overlooking some tactic to get around the problem. SCS just wasn't designed for LOB mode and while it seems to work pretty well with it considering LOB wasn't around when SCS was balanced for the game, thief's appear to be an area that just feels wrong in the games current state. Of course I am not being forced to use SCS and LOB together and SCS allows these fights to be left out but I figured maybe someone out there has beaten all of this and figured it all out. Maybe a tactic exists that I haven't thought of yet.
Stacking at lest a couple of webs and GM. This should solve the cheesy ST problem and let you deal with them in better ways than bombing from the fog. Some possible tactics than can be haste your party and use your superior mobility to run around the webs having the thieves following you while they stay in the webs+GM, the better pathfinding is good, but it means only that you have to be smarter, not cheasy, to have tactical superiority. MMM has the better damage/level, and against webbed enemies 100% chance to hit. Spider helpers or party members polyphormed into spiders should also be really useful in that situation.
Thanks for the input, I already use haste and the thief saves against the webs far better than anyone in my party. I wouldnt say that the pathfinding is good in this case. Forming a defensive line should keep enemies at bay. Pushing a huge wall of orgres out of the way and going after my guy seems cheezy to me.
I will try some hasted spiders next time as you suggest. What is GM and MMM that you mention? I am not to good with abbreviations.
Comments
It's really stupid to be honest, because it makes summons so strong that the game really isn't challenging anymore. BG1 had me reload every fight 20 times, in BG2 I am one-shotting the supposedly challenging stuff such as dragons.
And I don't even have access to the really strong summons... what will happen once you pick up Mordenkainens, Planetars, Elemental princes...?
I'd really enjoy it if beamdog would program in SCS and make it an option in the settings. I can't get it to work, the install keeps crashing. SCS plus LoB would be awesome after a few tweaks (fixing the summons and reducing the 80+ HP). Anyway, I'm having a lot more fun than I thought I would on LoB so far.
@Tenrecc What class did you play in BG1?
I played a custom party, but one crafted with ToB in mind, so it was fairly weak in BG1. F/T/M, F/C/M, Inquis, Bard, Shaman, Sorcer. Very little fighting power, very much spell power. Probably still stronger than playing a regular party, but not by much, tanking with triple class fighters pre-mirror image and stoneskin really isn't that enjoyable.
Also, that playthrough you mentioned with SCS+LoB with few tweaks sounds pretty amazing tbh. If you get a running setup of that to work, I'd love to get a copy of that, or how to speak, since I'm not much of a tweaker myself.
Any ideas what to do? I don't wan't to lower difficuly settings, I was hope to get both Flying Solo and Lord of Murder achievement simultanously.
Basically, if you have enough Webs (and you should as a sorc) you should be able to take on the Dobblegangers 1 and 1, or possibly 2 and 2 untill they're all dead. You just need to be pretty accurate with the spell itself so it hits just as many commoners as intended.
But I'm loving it. It makes me feel like the first time I played, 15 years ago, long before I memorized all the tricks and best solutions, long before CLUA or shadowkeeper. I'm like a scared little first level adventurer, desperately hoping my single magic missile does full damage before the gibberling gets close.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/228280/discussions/3/364040166676601606/
What party builds have you used instead?
An interesting choice.
The first few times I tried to play LOB I got tired of having to kite constantly and I refuse to wander off to the basilisk level right away because it makes no sense RP wise for me. Many spells would not work including sleep because of the high enemy saving throws and even with a -5 armor class my character was getting hit every round and killed instantly. After slowly beating all of the areas on the main path I got stuck and didn't have the power to go on.
I keep playing this mode though because I don't want to back down from a challenge!
This time I am starting to beat it. I have a six person party that is level 5 and we have finished the Nashkel Mines.
I like to clear the main path and then let the quest for Minsc push me off to the left side of the game world. I don't do the right side of the game world until after the mines when you find the round-about area of the bandit camp, Then I start searching the right side of the main path.
Here are some tips I have found really helped me survive. I haven't had to kite nearly as often and I have been able to adventure more naturally to my own play style.
SPOILIERS:
All Summons gain extra hit points in this mode and that includes a mage's familiar. A mage, Fighter mage, or Fighter Mage Thief can summon a familiar and gain half of the familiars HP so in this mode you gain a bunch of HP if you have magic capabilities and you use the "Find Familiar" spell. My FMT started the game with 32 HP at level one. Nearly triple the amount of other classes because I chose find familiar as one of my starting spells.
The spell "blind" still works and will give the enemy a major penalty to hit and will give you a major bonus to hit.
The priest spell, "doom" will help soften the enemies boosted stats early on and will allow your tank to stand up to a Ghast and other nasty enemies.
Use your familiar, it will soak up some damage and possibly interrupt spell casters.
Have a thief sneak into the Knoll stronghold and hand Dynaheir a potion of invisibility and you can sneak out of the stronghold without fighting at all. This will complete the quest for Minsc so that he won't leave your party and net you some XP rewards early on, even if you are a weak level one character.
Once you get to the lighthouse map you can use a theif to steal the treasure in the cave which will give the wand of paralyzation, making many powerful mages easy to kill.
If you use a scimitar or Katana you don't have to worry about the iron crisis breaking your swords.
The mage that is doing experiments on the Green slimes has a web spell that can be obtained easily if you have a wand of paralyzation.
Use stinking cloud on siren's to help split them up and to get some easy shots on them.
As a FMT I have focused my thief skills on lock picks at the start so I could steal the gem in the candle keep inn. This allows you to purchase the Katana if you want it or simply have an extra 1000 Gold for starting equipment. Since then I have focused entirely on trap finding. This has allowed Imoen to focus all of her thief points on Detect Illusion so that enemy mages can't use mirror image against me. In SCS mirror image automatically gets pre cast and spell casters usually have multiple casts of it so it helps to have 100% detect illusion early on.
I focused my weapon proficiencies to scimitar because it can't break and it's cheap. You also get a magical scimitar early on with the Dorn encounter. I put the rest in two weapon fighting style. I use the army scath crossbow and the guantlets that grant a +2 to missle weapons to keep up with the rest of the group from long range without putting any profeciances into a long range weapon. Before I can afford the army scythe I use throwing daggers for the strength bonus damage. My last two pips will go into Katana in preperation for BG2EE. I plan to drop my shield and long range weapons and focus on dual wield the rest of the game once I gain access to spirit armor and stoneskin. My two pips in BG2EE will be in hammers for Crom Frayer.
Use shields, They help with your armor class. Bently's Buckler gives a bonus to constitution and multiple +2 shields are available around the town of Bergost. In SOD some custom shields can be crafted that give major advantages to armor.
Outfit Minsc or one of your characters with the stupifier mace that can be found in the red sheaf inn.
For me, the biggest help was keeping my party at a size of 4 characters until I beat most of the central game path areas. This allowed me to level up one level higher than I was with a 6 person party and then when I took Minsc into the party his level automatically matches the party's so it's free XP for him.
I used to use Monty and Xzar because I wanted as many helpers as possible but this time I dropped them after I made it to the friendly arm inn and replaced them with Jahiera and Khalid. This 4 person team made the game easier for me. Gaining an extra level a little earlier can make a big difference. I can see a solo run being easier in some instances since you level up so fast and their are many quests that give XP that don't require much fighting at all.
I hope these tips help some players that are struggling to accept this difficulty set as I once did. This mode really does force you to try new approaches and it can be very rewarding at times. My opinion of it is starting to switch from negative to positive now that I have found a way to play the game that doesn't require constant cheese or to betray the role playing experience that this game has always delivered in spades.
EDIT:
A couple tips I forgot to mention.
Go to the farm area above the friendly arm inn and do the bowl quest for the priestess. It requires no fighting and gives major XP. Also the farmers son quest can be done if you use a thief to sneak into the underground area and then gulp a potion of invisibility once you have picked up the farmers son. This will get you a wand of fireballs as well. If you spot the farmer 100 gold you will receive an additional 1000XP bonus on top of the quest completion.
The chicken quest that ends in Highhedge is also pretty easy. If you are having problems killing skeletons you could always bomb them with your new wand of fireballs.
Instead of spending 15,000 Gold on the shadow armor for Imoen, sell your wand of paralyzation and buy it back with 100 charges for some serious beat down power.
Next to the mage that is experimenting on slimes you can go into a cave with three ghouls. This fight is hard but you could walk out of the cave and lead them out one at a time to gain access to a wand of monster summoning. This wand is super powerful in LOB mode because of the boosted summon stats.
I am getting closer to the bandit camp battle in BGEE. Kinda dreading it actually.
My party is level 6 but my FMT is level 4. I stood my ground until all of my AOF spells started to where out. I paced them the best I could but the enemies have so many hitpoints I just couldn't take them all out before my spells dried up. I took down about 18 enemies at the start of the fight. I then moved along the top of the map back pedaling and using the wand of paralysis until I hit the far left corner of the map and then I stood my ground and killed the remaining 15 enemies who were already heavily damaged. They would trickle in 1 or 2 at a time thanks to the many enemies that I stunned. In the end, none of my characters died but they were all on the verge of death when it was over. Two huge piles of bodies are on the map. One in front of the main tent and the other at the top left corner of the map.
I didn't attempt to sleep or leave the map during the fight. I killed everything other than the knolls in the cave in one go. I left the cave knolls for when I return. It took hours of replaying to get it correct. I used up almost all of my wands other than the paralysis wand. It still has about 60 charges left. I also used the cloud kill scroll that you find towards the bottom of the game world. This was the craziest fight I have ever had in this game. I almost gave up on it last night but I am glad I didn't.
My plan is to play everything. I have Ascension installed for the end. I feel like I am starting to gain some ground now. I have beaten the cloakwood mines and have entered the city of Baldur's Gate. At this point gold and XP flow more easily and most of the fighting is smaller skirmishes so I think things are going to calm down until I get to the TOSC expansion and the end game. It's nice to have every wand you could possibly want available for purchase.
So far, the game has been very tough all the way up to now. The SCS druid encounters in the cloakwood areas were really tough and the big battles within the mines were amped up too. The assassin's guarding the mines are always a pain with SCS but the LOB HP and THAC0 increases make things even worse. Beating the cave fight with all of those waverns was impossible the way I used to play. I had to come up with a new creative way to play that fight in order to win. It's pretty fun now that I have got the hang of it.
Imoen is level 7 and Minsc and Khalid are getting close to hitting level 7. My FMT is a couple thousand XP away from hitting level 5-5-6. I have fully explored all areas in the game with a few exceptions. Firewine, Ulcaster, and Durlog's Tower I am saving for later on when I get out of the Candlekeep underground area. I still have the whole city of Baldur's Gate to explore so it's going to be a while.
SCS thief tactics are a serious pain on their own, but with LOB they can take a beating and keep on hitting you with insane THAC0.
I threw away all sense of holding back and abused the game as hard as I could... Even then I had to restart the fight quite a few times. I ended up burning through 6000+GP worth of arrows of detonation. Over 21 fireballs went off in a matter of a 3 rounds or so. That killed about half of them but the ones that rush you I had to use web, poison gas and detect invisibility all the while spamming everyone with two wands of paralysis. I had Jahiera using the wand of the heavens to interrupt any casters that would get out of the web and avoid AOE damage because of stoneskin. Stupid hard.
I think SOD AI is a lot closer to SCS than BGEE AI is. SCS makes the enemies act more human like which is fun. At high level you have to read the changes in the readme log and figure out how to strip enemy mages of their protections but once you get the hang of it, it's not that hard. I think the hardest elements of SCS are the optional battles and nerfs that you can choose. For example, choosing to have all of your gear taken away from you in spellhold during BG2EE is pretty tough.
If you have beaten SOD on LOB mode you will think BGEE on insane with SCS is easy. I tried to go back once and everything dies so fast that they can't even use their abilities against you. It almost felt like I could pretty much just click on the enemies and watch them die once you know what spell to start with. A few imbalanced fights will be hard on insane like the bandit camp and the iron throne fight but everything else is a walk in the park after playing LOB.
I just beat the four guardians on the first major basement level of Durlog's Tower and I had one heck of a time dealing with the theif. As it is, using my tactics, I will probably have to revert to cheese when I do the cult fights in Ugalath's Beard.
The problem is that they have infinite haste and they have infinite amounts of potions of invisibility. Casting invisibility purge will make them visiable for a few seconds before they chug another potion of invisibility and then chuck one of my characters with a backstab before I can cast again.
They are immune to the wand of paralysis and they appear to be resistant to just about all magic. I have tried using choke points and plugging them up with monster summoning but Beamdog's latest path finding allows enemies to push through a wall of summoned monsters and the enemy thief will always ignore the spawned monsters and come straight at me.
At high level I would just use stoneskin and mirror image on my FMT but in BG1EE my FMT is not high enough level to cast stoneskin and my mage with a potion of strength still doesn't get enough APR to take out the theif solo because it has so many hitpoints.
Slow, blind, sleep, ect doesn't work even with greater malison and that is nearly impossible to use anyway because the theif will have chunked someone before I can get the spell off most of the time.
Web hardly ever works and when it does it doesn't work long enough to prevent the enemy from backstabbing at least one of my party members.
The only way I have managed to kill these high level SCS thieves is to cast web into the fog of war and then spam fireballs from all party members for a few rounds until it kills them. They will come at you if you start dropping fireballs on them but for some reason they won't come at you if a web spell is cast and they are in the fog of war. It doesn't seem to matter if they are webbed or not. They will stand still if they are covered by the fog of war and a web spell is present. This is somewhat cheesy but I haven't had any luck with any other method.
Maybe I am overlooking some spells or something? On insane I could always stun them or surround them with summoned monsters or backpedal and launch fireballs at them. I might get backstabbed but I could usually spread out the damage between a few characters and take them down. Now with LOB's extra APR, higher THAC0 and massive HP combined with the current pathfinding and super high saving throws.... these enemies seem almost unstoppable without reverting to cheese. Casting web into the darkness and following it up with 20+ fireballs all because a single thief is hiding on the map seems a bit too crazy.
Next time I play I may leave the improved cult battles and durlog's tower out of my SCS install unless I am overlooking some tactic to get around the problem. SCS just wasn't designed for LOB mode and while it seems to work pretty well with it considering LOB wasn't around when SCS was balanced for the game, thief's appear to be an area that just feels wrong in the games current state. Of course I am not being forced to use SCS and LOB together and SCS allows these fights to be left out but I figured maybe someone out there has beaten all of this and figured it all out. Maybe a tactic exists that I haven't thought of yet.
Detect illusions with a thief.
Stacking at lest a couple of webs and GM. This should solve the cheesy ST problem and let you deal with them in better ways than bombing from the fog. Some possible tactics than can be haste your party and use your superior mobility to run around the webs having the thieves following you while they stay in the webs+GM, the better pathfinding is good, but it means only that you have to be smarter, not cheasy, to have tactical superiority. MMM has the better damage/level, and against webbed enemies 100% chance to hit. Spider helpers or party members polyphormed into spiders should also be really useful in that situation.
I will try some hasted spiders next time as you suggest. What is GM and MMM that you mention? I am not to good with abbreviations.