Baldur's Gate gameplay review - For optimise quests and game performance
kamuizin
Member Posts: 3,704
Well, first of all hello to everyone, this initial post gonna be HUGE, so feel free to follow it or not.
The intent of this post is to debate coherence, adds and fix needs in quests and other points inside the game. I just finshed my last playgame (i finshed it today) and i took care of take note in every important point (in my view) during the playthrough. I will give suggestions, point bugs and express what i feel that lack in the game (inside the devs possibilities of improvment of course).
I played BG with BGT installed, and taking the fact that BG EE will be done in BGII infinite engine maybe this biography give a help.
General Opinion (about not specific AR matters):
-More books with D&D lore, especially if they’re linked somehow to BG/BG2 saga and if possible with history of D&D gods, how they ascend to godhood (for the ones previously mortals for example).
-Ring of wizardry: when it double the 1° level spells many times (with Edwin for example) the amount of spell slots pass from 9 and therefore the player can’t access them, an scroll bar should be made on the wizard/priest spell interface to fix this problem (that happens too with priests late game with high wisdom).
-The game should check to see if you are alone or have companions, but it’s a minor issue.
-More different neutral Encounters, when you’re waylaid by enemies, that's should be the only enemy level balance in the game (a High level party should be surrounded by ogre mages, wyrms or other creatures besides bandits lvl1)
-Shouldn’t zombie hit’s cause disease?
-some bad stats could give new possibilities, as the example of Planescape: Torment, where a low wisdom nameless one had an option of ask fall from grace a kiss (and die, cos fall from grace is a succubus).
-We tend to finsh BG with a ton of items and gold that we simply can’t expend. So playing the game this last time i got an idea of what to do with all that too good to sell but 2° place to use items:
Some quests, banters and events could be item based, for example, a new quest where you had to kill an enchant for example, if at the end of the battle you’re under the effect of a potion of clarity, you get an extra xp for be smart. If you get 3 potions of explosion for a miner in Naskhel mines, he can open an alternative route to Mulahey and you get XP for that. If you have the right items (ingredients) when a random banter happen with Neera she could make a magical item of some short or a scroll with those items. Some items could be commissioned or funded instead of simply brought, and only accessible after a certain amounts of investment and/or after a fix point in the game.
The question is: most of the game items become trash, even if we sell them all, gold itself become trash, so a proper use must be made for both.
-Make bag items hard to get (cos they're too useful to be simply brought from a simple merchant).
-More random banter between non joinable NPCs (commoners, peasants noblemans…) and party members, if possible class and race special banters are needed also.
Now, specific questions:
- Girdle of gender (cursed) – some utility could be done with the girdle. Taking in fact that now one of the NPCs is bi, he could use the girdle (or main char) as an optional part of the romance. The girdle could be carried to BG2 also, and used during Edwin problem with nether scroll or in another situation. It's a troller item, too good to be wasted
!
- Surrey in friendly arms inn is nephew of ragefast, one of the Baldur’s Gate mages, some link between surrey encounter and ragefast could be made.
-Joia’s flamedance ring quest doesn’t fit well to any alignment as an evil character would not help her, a good character would take offense in her behavior, and a neutral character wouldn’t act out of a reward. Maybe some work in this quest could be done.
-Kagain mercenary quest is broken and need a repack.
-Prism the artist: when we meet him he ask us to protect him and his work in trade of everything else he has, if we chose to enforce the bounty hunt, we kill him for 34xp, no rep loss, 38 gold and 2 emeralds. If we help him, Graywolf appears, attack us and after we kill him prism walk away and die, in this patch we get the long sword+2 (+1 cold damage), graywolf xp, 1000 xp for protect prism, +1 reputation and 2 emeralds.
However there’s a problem, the emeralds should be fixed on the stone as prism last work, we should not drop them in death unless we enforce the bounty hunt. Another point that I believe is that by help an criminal against an famous bounty hunter we should lose and not gain reputation. The only way to get rep point in this quest should be by enforce the law, killing prism (or take him alive to Naskhel if Team BG or anyone add this option) and by deliver the emeralds back for the bounty.
-The vials of mysterious liquids in Naskhel mines could be used in some side quest.
-In the Xvart village (AR3498) the Xvart village leader, Nexlit the xvart, condemn the party for killing his people with no motivation, but the party is attacked by the village without warning, so something is very wrong there in roleplay terms.
-Captain Barge should become hostile if you attack her cousin, cos from what I saw in the banters, she’s there to calm him down after all. Many people abuse roleplay by saying they gonna kill Barge to her, just to kill her and get her shield +1, then they go to Barge and carry him to the temple of helm.
-Shoal de Nereid always kill the character that speak with her, solo game characters simply can’t pursue this quest. The questions here are why she kill with a kiss? She’s not a succubus from what I saw, and how to do this quest with a solo character? Another point here, is that any melee attack made in her automatic trigger the dialogue, what kill the npc talking to her.
-In peldvale, after convince Raiken to lemme join the bandits, Tazok ask me who am I, when I say that I’m a simple merchant he think I’m lying and attack me, after some damage he change his mind and trigger the banter to lemme run free in the bandit camp. The problem is that Tazok doesn’t Vanish, and we can still attack him (no one in the camp turn hostile if we attack tazok) and more than that, we can kill Tazok there. In his body there’s a gauntlet of weapon expertise (+1 thac0, +2 dmg). I don’t know if the game indented to lemme kill Tazok there but his death in the bandit camp means -1 person in the final battle? (I reloaded the game cos I feel it’s too cheese kill Tazok there).
-There’s no good reason to explore the Halfling village, Gullykin or the firewine ruins, neither there are a good reason to visit Carnival in BG (besides an NPC), new quests and a better use of those places are needed.
-In the bandit camp, if you pursue ender sai (the prisioner in Bandit Camp) banter faking yourself as one of the bandits at the start (even if you reveal yourself later) he doesn’t move, making difficult to access the chest behind him.
-who’s the hamadryad in the cloakmine 4? No history, and a dryad attack someone by no reason? Can at least we put a background there?
-In shandalar ice cave quest, I make a deal with a crazy gnome called tellan, I promise him a way out but I’m not able to fulfill it neither he turns on me, so…?
-Kill Shandalar shoudn’t make the party lose reputation, he’s not innocent by any standard as he normally force the party in the ice cave even against their wish.
-In this last solo game that I did, Kilinhale fight (the succubus in the 4° level of Durlag’s Tower) was pretty awersome, she always died fast, and I never noticed how uber she is, she cast level drain and dire charm with no time cast, she has special spells that I didn’t saw in the whole game (ethereal and teleport without error), so there is material there to be used in other characters to make the game different a bit without breaking the assignment copyright clause (or maybe it's just something added by BGT, i don't know).
-The chess game in Durlag’s Tower is a bit broken, we need better defined rules to work there. Besides I believe that the BGII engine change the correct patch in the floor.
-There’s a chest with flametongue and staff of striking in the last floor, if the trap on it isn’t disarmed it will make minor physical damage on whomever opened the chest until that character is killed, I tried everything in the past (as open that chest with my healthiest character and 2 priests curing him at the same way, he died no matter what).
-Shaella, a priest of Leira, lady of mist inside the Blade and Stars, give the main char a quest if the right answers are gave in her banter (you must ask, be confuse or mistake in all the banters, any “I see or I understand” will enrage her), but I never get the conclusion of this quest (she ask for a special book on candlekeep that can only be found if you don’t search for it).
-On Maerk and the geas quest, it’s too easy to fool the umbrella priest and keep the tome of understand, that item is too good to be easily get, if the player choose to fool the priest maybe some consequences should be taken (if you fool umbrelle high priest to keep the tome and even kill her high priest, a little curse isn’t so surprising, is it?) maybe umbrelle should take from the character 1 point of a random or set attribute, or 5 hit points from the max HP, an amount of XP maybe (permanent, and should be a huge amount to be fair as XP cap will make xp useless after a time).
-There’s an Drelik and a Jardak inside a house in the north district of Baldur’s Gate, I don’t know whom they are, but surely they’re not common people and the names sounds a bit drow to me (what would explain the absurd amount of magic resistance that the Drelik guy has). More insight in that maybe?
Well if anyone had patience to read all of this and want to debate those points, let's do it!
The intent of this post is to debate coherence, adds and fix needs in quests and other points inside the game. I just finshed my last playgame (i finshed it today) and i took care of take note in every important point (in my view) during the playthrough. I will give suggestions, point bugs and express what i feel that lack in the game (inside the devs possibilities of improvment of course).
I played BG with BGT installed, and taking the fact that BG EE will be done in BGII infinite engine maybe this biography give a help.
General Opinion (about not specific AR matters):
-More books with D&D lore, especially if they’re linked somehow to BG/BG2 saga and if possible with history of D&D gods, how they ascend to godhood (for the ones previously mortals for example).
-Ring of wizardry: when it double the 1° level spells many times (with Edwin for example) the amount of spell slots pass from 9 and therefore the player can’t access them, an scroll bar should be made on the wizard/priest spell interface to fix this problem (that happens too with priests late game with high wisdom).
-The game should check to see if you are alone or have companions, but it’s a minor issue.
-More different neutral Encounters, when you’re waylaid by enemies, that's should be the only enemy level balance in the game (a High level party should be surrounded by ogre mages, wyrms or other creatures besides bandits lvl1)
-Shouldn’t zombie hit’s cause disease?
-some bad stats could give new possibilities, as the example of Planescape: Torment, where a low wisdom nameless one had an option of ask fall from grace a kiss (and die, cos fall from grace is a succubus).
-We tend to finsh BG with a ton of items and gold that we simply can’t expend. So playing the game this last time i got an idea of what to do with all that too good to sell but 2° place to use items:
Some quests, banters and events could be item based, for example, a new quest where you had to kill an enchant for example, if at the end of the battle you’re under the effect of a potion of clarity, you get an extra xp for be smart. If you get 3 potions of explosion for a miner in Naskhel mines, he can open an alternative route to Mulahey and you get XP for that. If you have the right items (ingredients) when a random banter happen with Neera she could make a magical item of some short or a scroll with those items. Some items could be commissioned or funded instead of simply brought, and only accessible after a certain amounts of investment and/or after a fix point in the game.
The question is: most of the game items become trash, even if we sell them all, gold itself become trash, so a proper use must be made for both.
-Make bag items hard to get (cos they're too useful to be simply brought from a simple merchant).
-More random banter between non joinable NPCs (commoners, peasants noblemans…) and party members, if possible class and race special banters are needed also.
Now, specific questions:
- Girdle of gender (cursed) – some utility could be done with the girdle. Taking in fact that now one of the NPCs is bi, he could use the girdle (or main char) as an optional part of the romance. The girdle could be carried to BG2 also, and used during Edwin problem with nether scroll or in another situation. It's a troller item, too good to be wasted
!- Surrey in friendly arms inn is nephew of ragefast, one of the Baldur’s Gate mages, some link between surrey encounter and ragefast could be made.
-Joia’s flamedance ring quest doesn’t fit well to any alignment as an evil character would not help her, a good character would take offense in her behavior, and a neutral character wouldn’t act out of a reward. Maybe some work in this quest could be done.
-Kagain mercenary quest is broken and need a repack.
-Prism the artist: when we meet him he ask us to protect him and his work in trade of everything else he has, if we chose to enforce the bounty hunt, we kill him for 34xp, no rep loss, 38 gold and 2 emeralds. If we help him, Graywolf appears, attack us and after we kill him prism walk away and die, in this patch we get the long sword+2 (+1 cold damage), graywolf xp, 1000 xp for protect prism, +1 reputation and 2 emeralds.
However there’s a problem, the emeralds should be fixed on the stone as prism last work, we should not drop them in death unless we enforce the bounty hunt. Another point that I believe is that by help an criminal against an famous bounty hunter we should lose and not gain reputation. The only way to get rep point in this quest should be by enforce the law, killing prism (or take him alive to Naskhel if Team BG or anyone add this option) and by deliver the emeralds back for the bounty.
-The vials of mysterious liquids in Naskhel mines could be used in some side quest.
-In the Xvart village (AR3498) the Xvart village leader, Nexlit the xvart, condemn the party for killing his people with no motivation, but the party is attacked by the village without warning, so something is very wrong there in roleplay terms.
-Captain Barge should become hostile if you attack her cousin, cos from what I saw in the banters, she’s there to calm him down after all. Many people abuse roleplay by saying they gonna kill Barge to her, just to kill her and get her shield +1, then they go to Barge and carry him to the temple of helm.
-Shoal de Nereid always kill the character that speak with her, solo game characters simply can’t pursue this quest. The questions here are why she kill with a kiss? She’s not a succubus from what I saw, and how to do this quest with a solo character? Another point here, is that any melee attack made in her automatic trigger the dialogue, what kill the npc talking to her.
-In peldvale, after convince Raiken to lemme join the bandits, Tazok ask me who am I, when I say that I’m a simple merchant he think I’m lying and attack me, after some damage he change his mind and trigger the banter to lemme run free in the bandit camp. The problem is that Tazok doesn’t Vanish, and we can still attack him (no one in the camp turn hostile if we attack tazok) and more than that, we can kill Tazok there. In his body there’s a gauntlet of weapon expertise (+1 thac0, +2 dmg). I don’t know if the game indented to lemme kill Tazok there but his death in the bandit camp means -1 person in the final battle? (I reloaded the game cos I feel it’s too cheese kill Tazok there).
-There’s no good reason to explore the Halfling village, Gullykin or the firewine ruins, neither there are a good reason to visit Carnival in BG (besides an NPC), new quests and a better use of those places are needed.
-In the bandit camp, if you pursue ender sai (the prisioner in Bandit Camp) banter faking yourself as one of the bandits at the start (even if you reveal yourself later) he doesn’t move, making difficult to access the chest behind him.
-who’s the hamadryad in the cloakmine 4? No history, and a dryad attack someone by no reason? Can at least we put a background there?
-In shandalar ice cave quest, I make a deal with a crazy gnome called tellan, I promise him a way out but I’m not able to fulfill it neither he turns on me, so…?
-Kill Shandalar shoudn’t make the party lose reputation, he’s not innocent by any standard as he normally force the party in the ice cave even against their wish.
-In this last solo game that I did, Kilinhale fight (the succubus in the 4° level of Durlag’s Tower) was pretty awersome, she always died fast, and I never noticed how uber she is, she cast level drain and dire charm with no time cast, she has special spells that I didn’t saw in the whole game (ethereal and teleport without error), so there is material there to be used in other characters to make the game different a bit without breaking the assignment copyright clause (or maybe it's just something added by BGT, i don't know).
-The chess game in Durlag’s Tower is a bit broken, we need better defined rules to work there. Besides I believe that the BGII engine change the correct patch in the floor.
-There’s a chest with flametongue and staff of striking in the last floor, if the trap on it isn’t disarmed it will make minor physical damage on whomever opened the chest until that character is killed, I tried everything in the past (as open that chest with my healthiest character and 2 priests curing him at the same way, he died no matter what).
-Shaella, a priest of Leira, lady of mist inside the Blade and Stars, give the main char a quest if the right answers are gave in her banter (you must ask, be confuse or mistake in all the banters, any “I see or I understand” will enrage her), but I never get the conclusion of this quest (she ask for a special book on candlekeep that can only be found if you don’t search for it).
-On Maerk and the geas quest, it’s too easy to fool the umbrella priest and keep the tome of understand, that item is too good to be easily get, if the player choose to fool the priest maybe some consequences should be taken (if you fool umbrelle high priest to keep the tome and even kill her high priest, a little curse isn’t so surprising, is it?) maybe umbrelle should take from the character 1 point of a random or set attribute, or 5 hit points from the max HP, an amount of XP maybe (permanent, and should be a huge amount to be fair as XP cap will make xp useless after a time).
-There’s an Drelik and a Jardak inside a house in the north district of Baldur’s Gate, I don’t know whom they are, but surely they’re not common people and the names sounds a bit drow to me (what would explain the absurd amount of magic resistance that the Drelik guy has). More insight in that maybe?
Well if anyone had patience to read all of this and want to debate those points, let's do it
! 1
Comments
Tazok can't be killed,
Kagain quest,
firewine ruins (if I remember correctly there is now only 1 book for the ghost), so you go through the ruins to end the quest
and amount of spells in spellbook was already mentioned in feature request or bug report.
about Shaella quest you did understand too much so you won't get blessing of lady of mist:]
(maybe this quest is not for you, because in some crazy way this quest is reasonable)
In chess game rules are good enough: fight in terms of moving as a chess pieces do, sometimes difficult to put fighter in right place, but there could be much more fun if AI (computer's chess pieces) qould use the same pattern of moves, if I remember correctly they just charged through the whole board.
About the traps: It shouldn't be like the way it is now: you get fighter with max hp and charge through all the traps, traps kill, so you didn't disarmed it its your problem - you don't get the items inside the chest, there is one more instant kill trap in Durlag's (wall that smash you).
About Shandalar: he sends you without your choice only when you killed his daughters (or somekind other relatives) with quest in thieves guild, when you didn't kill them you have a choice to go to the island or not, I'm sure about it. So he is actually good and for sure he would be more justified to attack you than you to attack him.
And there is ton of items that other people will use during the game that you didn't use.
About enemies in ambushes I agree,
also very like the idea of more dialogs depended on the stats in any way.
And yes Zombies are real transmitters of diseases (but I thought that in BG2 it was already repaired)
In Gullykin is Pardue's sword quest!, isn't it?
About Marek and Brage really don't know, never exploited it.
-In the chees game some spots that should launch traps doesn't do it, others that doesn't launch them, the enemies rush toward the party in there also with no worries, the traps affect only the party.
-There are some wall traps in Durlag's tower that in fact can be disarmed, i believe the use of BGT and therefore BG II engine made some previous traps that shoudn't be able to disarm (like the wall trap) passible of disarm, but the complain isn't about the disarm or not of the trap, is about a chest trap that give 200+ point damage in small sequences of 3 to 8 physical points of damage.
-About Shandalar, no. He Send you if you're evil or have a low reputation also, i always do Ulgoth's Beard before enter Baldur's Gate, so i'm pretty sure of this. I don't even know if it's the same Shandalar in Baldur's Gate City and in Ulgoth's Beard, and if it is, some fix is in order cos he's appearing twice this way (in Ulgoth's Beard and in the 2 floor of his house in Baldur's Gate Central quarter).
-About the item question i have to answer: Not always and doesn't matter. There are 2° place items, for example the leather armor protector of the second that no one would use for example, but that's not the problem, what i meant there.
What i mean about the items, is that we finish the game with tons of non usable items, items that could be used in certain quests to adquire other items for example, for XP gain, for Reputation + or - quest rewards or other reasons, i let some examples in the first post. The main issue, is that if we sell everything we don't use, we get tons of gold with... no prupose, gold means absolutelly nothing in Baldur's Gate. You can buy the archmage robes in High Hedge in the mage tower, the claw and horn of Kasgaroth and some arrows of dispelling and explosion in the Sorcerous Sundries and with the thief merchant in the thief guild, beiond that money lost significance.
I finshed my last game with more or less 300.000, it was a solo game, so i sold almost everything except named items (want to see what could be transfered through BG/BG II), but i brought every named item in the game also just to spent money.
- Well, i don't remember of being hit with disease a single time from an Zombie hit.
- About Gullykin i don't remember, i never lost time with this quest, too minor issue to justify my visit to an entire area, and a halfling village could provide a lot more challenge than only this.
The chess game is pretty much fine IMO, maybe it could use some timers so you don't get 4 bolts for standing a split second on the wrong tile. Knights have 25% chance to trigger a bolt on any tile, so don't move them. Durlag never says he'd play fair, it's there to defend.
Gullykin is an easy entry into Firewine Ruins, a LoTR reference and an assassin group (unsure about the last one). I agree it could be expanded but that's true for many off-the-road areas.
Shandalar attacks on sight when reputation is below 4 (and then finds an excuse to take off before killing anyone). Reputation 4 or 5 (or all his daughters dead) you get sent to the island to prove your worth (or redeem yourself). Reputation 6 and above you get to choose if you want to go.
About those quests with items: They are really troublesome you end up with hundreds of items because you don't know what will come in handy (in witcher 2 it was really annoying especially when you have limited space). But if you can obtain item more easily in any time than I agree.
And my mistake Perdue's Sword is somewhere else, so there is only village, entrance into ruins and Molkar.
Why the hell that Hamadryad attack me? Even in druid play (when i'm a druid) or when i have a druid in the party that bitch still attack me.