Cloak of Balduran transfer?

Neo

I started a new solo monk (Dark Moon Monk) playthrough and wanted to go from BG1 to BG2. I went out of my way to fight some strong mobs that required many reloads but that boosted my XP faster and went on to get good items as much as I could so far (lvl 7 before even entering Nashkel mines, just completed them now).

I currently have Cloak of Displacement but I want to eventually try to get the Cloak of Balduran (seems like the best cloak overall but I could be wrong). The wiki says that the cloak can transfer over but I haven't seen it in anyone's list to make sure that it would be the one item selected to be transfered over.

I'm asking this because I think I might buy Claw of Kazgaroth to further reduce my armor by 1. I would get a death roll penalty which will suck (but my monk is already immune to disease so I think that would almost only affect poison for BG1?). There doesn't seem to be any other really good rings (I have ring of princes ATM) until maybe the free action one (and I'm still unsure about it but maybe it makes you immune to hold person as well which might be worth it?). If I stick to the claw, it'll give me bonuses to the other rolls, I have 19 constitution so I think it wouldn't change anything on that level and get -1 armor which is nice for my Monk.

I'm mostly asking because I wouldn't want to wake up in BG2 to realize that the claw transfered over instead of the cloak. The 25% magic resistance from the cloak could be cummulative to the Monk's high magic resistance at lvl 14+ right?

ConjurerDragon

http://www.forgottenwars.com/bg1/miscellany.htm

GhavGrim

Hmm. I had the Cloak of Balduran in my current run through. Haven't found it yet in BG2 and I'm up to Suldanessar and Lum the Mad...

...Don't remember having it in others runs either, but perhaps I've missed something...

http://www.forgottenwars.com/bg1/miscellany.htm

joluv

It doesn't transfer. (In general, the Wiki isn't very reliable.)

abacus

The cloak is in the game files for BG2, so you could use eeKeeper to acquire it, but it doesn't appear naturally at any point.

I think it was deemed to be too powerful for a very magic-heavy episode of the games.

Neo

Ok, I had seen that other link but I thought that it might have forgotten about the cloak or that the cloak may have been added with the EE and that the site didn't update that part. Thanks. As a side note, I've been trying to search up for what Save vs Death is useful.

1- The wiki (as some mentioned is unreliable) talks about Disease and Poison only. My Monk is already supposed to be immune to disease at lvl 7. I'm fairly certain that with BG2, the death spells (Finger of Death, disintegrate and such) are required a save vs death? For BG1, I don't remember any of these so I guess it would only hurt me vs occasional enemies that use poison?

2- I also read somewhere that some saving throws are linked to some stats (con, dex, wis, int). From what I remembered, I always thought that you could get a penalty to those if your stats were below a certain number (7-9 I think) but thought there was no benefit beyond that. If I equip Claw of Kazgaroth in-game, my constitution goes from 19 to 17 (I got the tome but Monk doesn't benifit from having more than 16 con I believe) but it does not seem to affect any saving throw in any way (it's just for certain races I guess?).

3- What are the benefits of Ring of Free Action (I think that's the name) on a lvl 7 Monk? My Monk is supposed to already be immune to slowing effects. I think that the ring would make me immune to Hold spells as well (I seem to not be immune to those and they are deadly)? Any other use beyond that that would make it a good pick over Claw of Kazgaroth as a 2nd ring (I use a ring of princes as my main ring and a shield amulet)?

Arunsun

Neo said:

Ok, I had seen that other link but I thought that it might have forgotten about the cloak or that the cloak may have been added with the EE and that the site didn't update that part. Thanks. As a side note, I've been trying to search up for what Save vs Death is useful.

1- The wiki (as some mentioned is unreliable) talks about Disease and Poison only. My Monk is already supposed to be immune to disease at lvl 7. I'm fairly certain that with BG2, the death spells (Finger of Death, disintegrate and such) are required a save vs death? For BG1, I don't remember any of these so I guess it would only hurt me vs occasional enemies that use poison?

2- I also read somewhere that some saving throws are linked to some stats (con, dex, wis, int). From what I remembered, I always thought that you could get a penalty to those if your stats were below a certain number (7-9 I think) but thought there was no benefit beyond that. If I equip Claw of Kazgaroth in-game, my constitution goes from 19 to 17 (I got the tome but Monk doesn't benifit from having more than 16 con I believe) but it does not seem to affect any saving throw in any way (it's just for certain races I guess?).

3- What are the benefits of Ring of Free Action (I think that's the name) on a lvl 7 Monk? My Monk is supposed to already be immune to slowing effects. I think that the ring would make me immune to Hold spells as well (I seem to not be immune to those and they are deadly)? Any other use beyond that that would make it a good pick over Claw of Kazgaroth as a 2nd ring (I use a ring of princes as my main ring and a shield amulet)?

1- Save vs Death/Poison/Paralysis is one type of save that's useful against specific spells, though Wail of the Banshee, Symbol Death are the only instant-death effect that take a save vs death. Finger of Death and Disintegrate require a save vs spell. However most poison effects depend on a save vs death (e.g. spider poison, dolorous decay, arrow of biting, etc...). Since monks are naturally immune to poison from level 11 on, Claw of Kazgaroth is an excellent item for a monk. Before that, well, just be careful with poison effects and have antidotes on you.

2- In BG2, only constitution affects your saving throws, and that's only if your are a shorty (Gnome Halfling or Dwarf), since they get bonuses based on their CON. Your monk is necessarily a human so his stats won't affect saving throws. I also believe Wisdom was supposed to affect your saves vs spells that affect mind (Chaos, domination, etc...) but I'm not sure this was ever implemented.

3- It grants Immunity to Web, Hold, Entangle as well. I'd rather use the claw as a ring I always have and ring of free action as a tech ring I swap with the ring of princes when a fight requires free action.

abacus

Generally speaking, the major downside of the Ring of Free Action is that it negates Haste effects... Monks can't be hasted anyway, so it works well for them.

Contemplative_Hamster

The CLOAK OF BALDURAN can be found in BG2:ee. I found it recently, and I've just gone back to an earlier save to check that it was not a random drop. It was not. The cloak may be found ...

Behind a door in the Docks District in Athkatla, X=1726 Y=530, also known as the door just north of where the crazy Priest of Cyric would like to have a word with you. Be aware that the cloak is not unguarded ....

joluv

@rrchristensen: I'm guessing that's coming from a mod. In an unmodded game, there's nothing interesting in that room.

dunbar

I've just checked, it's not there in my unmodded v.1.3 game.

Lord_Tansheron

@rrchristensen That particular encounter is part of the old Tactics mod, and is, I believe, included in various more recent compilations as well (SCS I think?). The Cloak was added there as a reward for the that fight, though imo it's not worth getting because it means looking at the godawful portrait picture they used...

Contemplative_Hamster

How very odd. This is my first time through the Enhanced Edition (v.2.2), and I'm only running a few core mods, so I assumed that this was a feature of the Enhanced game. I DID think the whole set-up was a bit silly -

the cloak is dropped by a lich guarded by a number of skeleton warriors in a junk-filled room in the Thieves' Guild building straight off a main road in a busy district, you'd have thought someone would've found them earlier

- but oh well.

My apologies for getting everyone's hopes up. I will look into the documentation of my mods and report back where this strange aberration came from.

Lord_Tansheron

rrchristensen said:

My apologies for getting everyone's hopes up. I will look into the documentation of my mods and report back where this strange aberration came from.

Don't worry, I make outrageous claims all the time only to find out that I'm not remembering default behavior but how it worked under one of the gazillion mods I had running at some point in the last 10 years.

Jarrakul

Yeah, I've done that once or twice myself, and I don't run that many mods.

magisensei

In the vanilla version the cloak does not exist in the game. There is of course one way of getting the cloak without using any mods or game editors to put it in the game.

Here is one way to get it legally:

Do the Black Pits 2 with your main character - go through the pits until you get the cloak and then import the pc into your game. Make sure to readjust your exp to the appropriate level as your pc will probably be too powerful for the main game if you import from BP2 - but yes beamdog gave a bunch of semi-legal ways to get so many of the amazing weapons without editing or mods. You can even get the Staff of Power if you want for a mere 3000 gp from the pit along with the best longsword in the game (meaning the one from ToB).