Jaheira Level 2/2 - Bug or feature?

BelgarathMTH

Well, rats! I just decided to switch out Safana for Jaheira, and let Glint take over my thief needs.

Lo and behold, Jaheira is bugged or "featured" back to level 2/2.

This was a run where I had used her briefly in BG1 and then switched her out with Branwen. It looks like she kept her level that she was in BG1 when I detached her.

If this is intentional, then I guess I have to be careful from now on never to recruit and then detach a BG character that is also in SoD.

I don't like this, especially since I invested heavily in Branwen to get through BG, and she is not playable in SoD. I suppose you could argue for it as being an extension of how things work in BG1. But I am not pleased with the discovery.

I certainly did not intentionally create a situation where Jaheira would be unuseable in SoD.

Fardragon

Yes, characters are intentionaly the same as when you last saw them in Baldur's Gate. You can gain levels very quickly in SoD though.

rapsam2003

If you didn't advance Jaheira in BG, then she'll have the same level as when you pick her up in BG.

Noon

But these characters are supposed to immediately adjust to your level, i recruted Khalid as a lvl3 fighter at Bridgeford and the next second he gained enough xp to be lvl 8 or 9.
So BelgarathMTH's problem could be due to a bug.

Rathenau

I would like to hear what any of the developers think of this. Personally, I cannot imagine letting you have an extremely low level companion was an intended feature.

booinyoureyes

0.0

Me no like. EEKeeper use is justified.

Vakarian

This seems to be the case with all of the joinable NPCs from BG1. Really annoying. In BG1, I usually travel with a bunch of different party members early on, then settle on a group sometime around Cloakwood, so I leave a lot of party members around levels 3 or 4. That resulted in Minsc and Dynaheir joining me at level 3 in SoD, Safana at level 4, Khalid at level 3. New NPCs (or those that never joined my party in BG1) would gain extra XP and start at a level comparable to charname.

I have to say that if this is intentional, it is a terrible design choice. It's not that bad for party members you can recruit at the beginning of SoD, but for characters you find later, they can be practically unusable. This is one of my biggest complaints about an otherwise very enjoyable game.

mf2112

I would like for NPCs to continue to advance after leaving the group, but I can completely understand why this wouldn't have been done. It isn't a common case for most people I think to pick up NPC's, then drop them for an extended time, then pick them up again. I suspect mostly they get dropped for a short time, situationally.

For instance, I might drop Minsc to pick up Valygar just long enough to open the sphere door, then Valygar gets the boot and I go back to the Copper Coronet to pick Minsc up. Usually though once I drop an NPC I don't ever intend to pick them up again. Sometimes I run a party of 5, and then pick up NPC's for their quest only, like Rasaad, then I drop them once it is finished.

I guess they do get advanced in a brute force way from SOA to ToB, if you conjure up an old companion in ToB then they start off with 2.5m XP. I haven't tried that with someone I had picked up and dropped but I suspect that ToB would override whatever they had left off with in SOA.

Fardragon

Yes, sorry, my bad. NPCs who you have met before should have the same stats and gear as when you last saw them, but be awarded a big sack of xp commensurate with CHARNAME's current level.

This is how things work in 2.0 generally now: if you leave an NPC and come back to them later with more xp yourself they should be given a sack of xp to match.

Clearly, it failed to detect CHARNAME's new level here. Assuming the character hadn't been eekeepered, I wonder if there is an issue with final saves made with pre-2.0 Baldur's Gate?

I didn't encounter any issues, but I played through the end of BG1 in 2.0 rather than importing an old final save file.

Noon

All my BG1 saves are old and pre 2.0, and all the npc i recruit gain levels according to my pc (i played with 2 different BG1 saves but not "final saves").

Fardragon

I thought that might be the case. Until Beamdog can get this old save game issue fully sorted, If you start a new game, may I suggest loading a save into BG1 2.1.63.2 and either playing through to the end, or making a fresh save in that version.

mf2112

I think the characters you brought into the group have already auto-adjusted so they won't auto-adjust again. Perhaps without charname driving them they just sat around and enjoyed the good life from the profits of the last dungeon.

Fardragon

@mf2112, that cannot be the case. Since @Noon imported an old save, this is the first time they have met Jalhera since the rules where updated.

I'm not sure there is a "once only" limit on receiving an XP update anyway.

mf2112

Fardragon said:

@mf2112, that cannot be the case. Since @Noon imported an old save, this is the first time they have met Jalhera since the rules where updated.

If she wasn't ever in the group then she definitely should be adjusted up to match. If she was in the group though I can see why an adjustment would not have been done, not a common use case to include in the conditions for the XP adjustment since tracking game versions across save games is not done now.

BelgarathMTH

I would only agree with intentionally leaving NPC's at the level you left them in BG if ALL of the NPC's were available and playable, new dialogues or not.

Since Jaheira, Khalid, Minsc, Dynaheir, and Safana are the only playable characters from BG1, you either have to use them all the way through BG1 and into SoD, or don't use them at all in BG1, or you have to use only new characters when you get past the prologue in SoD. Or you can give up all your equipment and export/import Charname only into SoD.

(BTW, there are some really *hard* battles before you can get to Jaheira, and then Khalid, and they will have walked off with a lot of your best equipment if you didn't strip them before leaving the prologue dungeon. I shudder to think if I had built Khalid to wield two-handed swords and he had left the party with Spider's Bane.)

If that's a design choice, I don't agree with it at all.

It forces you to use either all of the SoD party characters all the way through BG1, or none of them, if you want them to be leveled appropriately in SoD.

I know that they will be leveled appropriately if you export/import only Charname and not your save file, and Dynaheir will have a spellbook including Stoneskin, and some other hard-to-get spells in BG1. But, you will not have any of your equipment from BG1. (Ahem, Spider's Bane Greatsword, cough.)

So this is mainly a problem for people who want to use the smooth transition feature from BG1 directly into SoD.

rapsam2003

Rathenau said:

I would like to hear what any of the developers think of this. Personally, I cannot imagine letting you have an extremely low level companion was an intended feature.

Why not? It's not their fault if you were too lazy to level up, Safana for instance, and then end up with a level 4 Safana.

BelgarathMTH

@rapsam2003 , You don't get it. The issue is being forced to have the SoD companions in BG1, and not being able to use any of the other myriad of NPC's in BG1. It has nothing to do with "laziness" or diligence.

It changes the whole nature of choices the player should have in the game. We've been playing a game for 18 years where we could use any NPC's in BG1 we wanted, for as long or as short a time as we wanted.

Why should I need to use Safana in BG1? (And I actually *don't* use her, so she comes leveled up in SoD anyway.) I'm more concerned about Jaheira, Khalid, Minsc, and Dynaheir, as using them temporarily while waiting to gain access to late game characters like Yeslick, Alora, Eldoth, Coran, and Tiax is very common.

rapsam2003

BelgarathMTH said:

@rapsam2003 , You don't get it. The issue is being forced to have the SoD companions in BG1, and not being able to use any of the other myriad of NPC's in BG1. It has nothing to do with "laziness" or diligence.

No, it's a non-issue, because it takes very little time to actually level up low level companions in SoD.

And being forced to use certain companions, because that's how they wrote the story...also a non-issue.

JuliusBorisov

Moved this to the troubleshooting area, as any thread about a potential bug shoud go here.

@BelgarathMTH Can you attach a save prior to getting Jaheira in SoD?

BelgarathMTH

@bengoshi , sorry, no, that point in my game is long gone.

Also, I'm not so sure it's a bug. I'm pretty sure it was designed that way.

Dee

If it looks like a bug, it's worth reporting.

That being said, I think this has already been reported, so it'll at least get a look.

Fardragon

I encountered a similar bug in BG2 2.0. When I first encountered Keldorn I was surprised to find he was level 8 with no additional xp. I reloaded a savegame from just before I met him and played through the sequence again and he was level 8 with enough xp to level up to 10. I wasn't aware that I did anything differently, so this bug seems pretty random.

Stevevdl

rapsam2003 said:

BelgarathMTH said:

@rapsam2003 , You don't get it. The issue is being forced to have the SoD companions in BG1, and not being able to use any of the other myriad of NPC's in BG1. It has nothing to do with "laziness" or diligence.

No, it's a non-issue, because it takes very little time to actually level up low level companions in SoD.

And being forced to use certain companions, because that's how they wrote the story...also a non-issue.

And what exactly is the point of bringing in BG characters into SoD at first level when everyone else is 6+, yes they can probably level quickly, but a character that small is worthless at this point of the game, and lets not forget that depending on what level you were when you met them they matched your level and experience. If you were 5th level when you spoke to Jaheria she was around your level and not first.

With the characters being that small just means that they are useless in SoD when their is much bigger characters to get and more useful.

Also being forced to use certain bg characters so they are useful in SoD is an issue, why only have bg characters at 1st level, how about ALL npc's in SoD start at !st level instead of just some

rapsam2003

Stevevdl said:

And what exactly is the point of bringing in BG characters into SoD at first level when everyone else is 6+, yes they can probably level quickly

@Stevevdl, you already answered your own post. See the bolded.

Stevevdl

rapsam2003 said:

Stevevdl said:

And what exactly is the point of bringing in BG characters into SoD at first level when everyone else is 6+, yes they can probably level quickly

@Stevevdl, you already answered your own post. See the bolded.

And they are still 361000 xp behind everyone else until you max out your other characters and then they get to catchup properly. If I am the only big character and the rest are tiny 1st levels, they are going to be one shotted all over the place and spend more time dead than alive. SoD is not really an expansion like TotSC but a new game like BG2 and in BG2 they don't start at 1st level if that is what they were in BG1. If the characters are not in your party then they should at least be set at the same xp as you are when you meet them, like they do in BG1 now