LoB players, how far are you and what do you think?
Tenrecc
Member Posts: 265
So with LoB finally being fixed and playable, I thought it'd be neat if we have a thread where we can gather and discuss things, keep up with each other, and so on. So, for all of you who are currently playing through this mode, a little about what you play, how far you are, and what you think so far if you wouldn't mind!
Personally I'm playing a custom party, F/T/M, F/C/M, Inquisitor, Bard, Shaman, Sorcerer. My thoughts are that normal tanking will be close to impossible, so I'm going for a dual F/M frontline, who are sort of my core characters. The party is optimized for a full playthrough and will only shine once HLAs sets in, but the plan is F/M prowess+mass summons by sorc and shaman, all boosted by a dual bard song. The downside to the setup, and I've noticed right now, is that it's shit in BG1.
I havn't gotten so far yet, because due to my party setup it's kind of hard to get going. I'm at 3k exp per char. My idea of farming ankhegs with "command" proved near impossible since you need it to hit three times in a row, and they resist it about 70% of the times. So right now I've been doing the "equip all with bows and kite things that can't shoot or cast spells" strategy, killing wolves and bears and stuffs.
I've managed to down Bassilus, Greywolf and that ogre with the +1 2H-sword for some nice equipment, but I don't dare enter the mines yet since the kobolds have arrows, and my triple class chars still have around 10 HP. I imagine I'll level a bit first, so I don't instadie to an arrow.
Thoughts about the mode is that so far, it's a boring kind of challenge, and a bit overtuned. Kiting is really the only option so far, since everything takes years to kill and one-shots you. I imagine it will even out later on, and that BG2+ToB is really fun in this mode, but right now, with the limited tools you have on the early levels, there's not much skill involved, just kiting, luck and reloading so far. And it's a bit boring that things with melee attacks = auto win, things with range attacks = auto death.
But then again, it has definitely forced me to reconsider how I can play the game, and forced me to abandon cheesier strategies, such as ankheg-farming. I've actually had to run around and do quests now, which I havn't done in a decade at least. It's a fresh breath of air and definitely something different so far.
Personally I'm playing a custom party, F/T/M, F/C/M, Inquisitor, Bard, Shaman, Sorcerer. My thoughts are that normal tanking will be close to impossible, so I'm going for a dual F/M frontline, who are sort of my core characters. The party is optimized for a full playthrough and will only shine once HLAs sets in, but the plan is F/M prowess+mass summons by sorc and shaman, all boosted by a dual bard song. The downside to the setup, and I've noticed right now, is that it's shit in BG1.
I havn't gotten so far yet, because due to my party setup it's kind of hard to get going. I'm at 3k exp per char. My idea of farming ankhegs with "command" proved near impossible since you need it to hit three times in a row, and they resist it about 70% of the times. So right now I've been doing the "equip all with bows and kite things that can't shoot or cast spells" strategy, killing wolves and bears and stuffs.
I've managed to down Bassilus, Greywolf and that ogre with the +1 2H-sword for some nice equipment, but I don't dare enter the mines yet since the kobolds have arrows, and my triple class chars still have around 10 HP. I imagine I'll level a bit first, so I don't instadie to an arrow.
Thoughts about the mode is that so far, it's a boring kind of challenge, and a bit overtuned. Kiting is really the only option so far, since everything takes years to kill and one-shots you. I imagine it will even out later on, and that BG2+ToB is really fun in this mode, but right now, with the limited tools you have on the early levels, there's not much skill involved, just kiting, luck and reloading so far. And it's a bit boring that things with melee attacks = auto win, things with range attacks = auto death.
But then again, it has definitely forced me to reconsider how I can play the game, and forced me to abandon cheesier strategies, such as ankheg-farming. I've actually had to run around and do quests now, which I havn't done in a decade at least. It's a fresh breath of air and definitely something different so far.
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My dirty early game tactic:
After few days playing this difficulty aint so hard when u have access to spells, it will get easier with hla. So i will not post my progress cuz its like playing on insane or core just with little more reloads and more spohisticated tactics.
I will start new thread with hints how to solo it.
My first big victory - party lvl 11-12 and shadow dragon gone. Used tactic I invented during my first playthrough many years ago, looks im getting nostalgic. Dragons are very hard to hit at that lvl on LoB setting heh. Guess who is next.
Lvl 12 Edwin took care of Firkraag. Korgan did killing so he wouldnt feel bad. Skeletons cheered for him.
I was right that the game got easier the further you got though, but the last chapter was quite challenging too. Slythe, dobblegangers and Sarevok all required some neat tinkering. Really love the mode right now, it forced me to use potions and scrolls and wands that I wouldn't normally bother with, and I have to dig reallllly deep into my bag of tricks to beat things.
So, starting up BG2 soon enough. Thinking it'll be a whole different challenge tbh.
At the beginning the game requires insane ammount of cheese to progress. At first there is no way to tank anything - you have either to kite enemies, or render them useless. Fortunately, I had enchanter as CHARNAME, so it worked quite well for me. I suspect that things are going to only get easier (or - less hard) as I progress and level up. The mode definitely makes me question my decisions and to go to various areas (for example, I've killed ogre mage and wizard in the under Firewine Bridge Ruins at level 1, using the halfling village entrance) in different order than usually do (and often, I tend to avoid unecessary fights).
The mode can be fun to play, but not to roleplay. For majority of playthrought, I would always pick SCS over LoB.
While I'm at it, I have a question. LoB is like a HoF for Icewind Dale, right? And so, do summoned creatures are boosted in similar way to the enemies?
Worth to notice is that Belm and that girl does have the improved HP though. Otherwise I fear the dobbleganger encounter would've been close to impossible.
As for the LoB stats:
player summons get *2+20 hp
max rest encounters increases by 1
+75 gold per pickup
creature levels are treated as level + 12 for some checks
non controlled sprites cannot fail morale checks
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/717207/#Comment_717207
What does "max rest encounters" and "gold per per pickup" mean though? Never heard that before.
For the most part, SCS enables you to face SMARTER and more logically designed creatures, that can call for help (no ktting one by one). There are some components that I don't recommend for BG1, like mages and priests pre-buffing. It's not fair when you are facing mage with lot of protective spells on him that you can't do anything about, given your lack of resources and low levels in BG1.
As a result, I can't level up or even back out of the level up screen. I can't do anything but close the window and restart. This appears to be an engine limitation, so there may not be an easy way to fix it with a mod. Enhanced Edition Trilogy (EET) may solve it, since it uses the BG2 engine. However, EET won't be ready for quite some time.
BTW, I have a work around for the level-up issue that occurs when you're eligible for HLAs. I simply removed the entries in LUABBR.2DA, which indicates the LU file to use for HLAs. This keeps the game from knowing about HLAs, so it activates the Done button when you finish assigning weapon proficiencies and skill points. This allows the level-up process to complete normally and do everything except HLAs. My next step was to use a mod to copy all the SPL files for the HLAs into override. I still have to manually assign my HLA after each level up with an IE editor, but at least I can move forward now.
Even with the immunity to normal weapons that I got at 20th level and the other abilities of a high level monk, I'm still having to work hard on most encounters. The main problem for me is that most mob type monsters in SOD swarm around me forever even if I'm hidden, which defeats my usual tactic of luring them away from the mob one at a time. However, I have noticed that monsters don't follow you into another area the way they do in regular BGEE. That means the best tactic against a mob is to enter the area while hidden, attack for a short period, exit, hide in shadows, and repeat. I'm also playing a no damage game, meaning I reload if any party member takes any damage. I have to reload a lot, especially when I'm fighting an army in a phone booth.
The start was slow since I didn't allow myself to go farm easy exp/loot before doing the nashkel mines, and I had a low reload challenge built in due to the old LoB bug but after that things moved forward much faster with only a few hiccups. I don't mind kiting at all really, so the early game was fun.
I'm not letting myself use summons because increasing the power of your own abilities defeats the entire point of a hardmode, and makes an already ludicrously unbalanced tactic even more powerful instead of less. I did the same thing in my heart of fury run, and it leads to actually needing to understand how tanking works in these games to survive.
My protagonist has a passive -17 slashing AC, -13 piercing, and -14 blunt (not at the same time, but you can flip whenever you want). My piercing is terrible because I don't have the girdle (it doesn't belong to me)and you can't steal the girdle of piercing back, you get another girdle of gender bending for some reason). Spiders, wolves, and a few other key enemy types have really been making my life miserable with their 17's.
The thaco bonus enemies have is really painful for certain creatures, but if you stack your ac bonuses appropriately almost everything is tankable with only 20's hitting. Granted, with stronger enemies having upward of 300 hp they're still reasonably likely to get a hit or two in. I love how enemies being able to hit on a 19 means they're almost guaranteed to deal massive damage and hitting the magic 20 threshold is so critical, whereas in vanilla it's pretty easy to cheese things with minimal reloading due to tiny hp pools (if an enemy only attacks 4 times in a fight you can easily get by with them hitting on a 15-16 with minimal reloading).
Blind is probably the MVP of my run so far, and it's the only 1st level spell my mages bother with aside from a few identifies. 2 hour duration means it's a better save or die effect than even hold spells under some circumstances, and having 9 per day means i can nearly guarantee it lands on 2-3 strong enemies.
I avoid resting more than absolutely necessary, and the longest I went without was over a week tromping through the entire cloakwood and back. Overall it's been a good challenge, and makes BG1 more similar to BG2 in that enemies have enough hp that you can't just reload cheese 2 lucky hits to chunk them.
I've found myself actually using backstab. I've also been Kiting where necessary (flesh golems have ludicrous thacos and are immune to CC/debuffs), and utilizing spellcasters to incapacitate particularly strong enemies rather than just nuke for the heck of it. For Kahrk I needed to use instant cast nukes to interrupt mirror image, invis interrupts for the 3rd level spells, shield for magic missile, and arrows of biting to help interrupt the acid arrows i had no answer for. It was the most tactically satisfying fight I've ever had in an infinity engine game finding ways to consistently counterspell 70% of his abilities so i only needed to rely on unreliable damage interrupts for the acid arrows.
So uh...Big fan of LoB mode. I do think the +12 level modifier unduly restricts strategic choices since it eliminates several mechanics from the game, and obviously your own summons shouldn't get any bonus at all. Aside from those things and not fixing rat damage resistance (last I checked) I've been very happy with my run. It's been dramatically more fun that Heart of Fury ever was, since BG has more powerful enemies and fewer swarms to slog through.