I played on insane and thought the green dragon was kind of a letdown, even without using a thrown dagger But then again, how could you possibly portray an epic dragon fight with the level in SoD? Especially compared with SCS dragons. Personally, I think that it wasn't such a good idea to include a dragon encounter; still I enjoyed the reactivity from other encounters later.
Same line of thought with the Neothelid. It might be one of the best drawn and animated enemies in the game, but if you look at it's stats it's surprisingly weak.
In both cases I just needed a tank, prot. from fear, potion of heroity, storm giant strength, haste, and some other minor buffs and charge on the enemy. Nothing extraordinary.
On a more general note, I like that finally the difficulty slider is more meaningful and it's not just applying an handicap to the player.
Interestingly enough, I seem to remember, that somewhere there was a post explaining the thrown dagger easter egg. But it seems, the mystery shall not be made too public
Edit: What do you mean here?
The wand of frost was changed in Baldur's Gate 2 so that it worked on groups rather than deal massive damage to singular enemies.
I'm quite sure that in vanilla BG that wand used the "cone of cold" spell. Now it's using some Aganazzar scorcher type of spell. Which was somewhat surprising to me. Can someone elaborate on that how and why that changed?
Imo, that kind of little details are found pretty much everywhere in SoD and are what makes it worth playing regardless of any flaw the story might have.
Imo, that kind of little details are found pretty much everywhere in SoD and are what makes it worth playing regardless of any flaw the story might have.
Care to elaborate? Is it a roleplaying option like a stat check in POE? Does it require a special weapon? Is it a Joke? Maybe a "story mode" type option that allows the game to beat itself so you can collect achievements on steam? I am not trying to be dense but it sounds kinda silly to me.
Imo, that kind of little details are found pretty much everywhere in SoD and are what makes it worth playing regardless of any flaw the story might have.
Care to elaborate? Is it a roleplaying option like a stat check in POE? Does it require a special weapon? Is it a Joke? Maybe a "story mode" type option that allows the game to beat itself so you can collect achievements on steam? I am not trying to be dense but it sounds kinda silly to me.
I'm merely saying that finding stuff, whether loot, easter eggs or alternative pathways/resolutions to quests and encounters is one of the joys of dungeon crawls and that SoD delivers quite competently in that regard.
Also I'm a rabid Steam hater and the word "achievements" is a trigger for me. When I'll rule the world, you'll pay for this.
Even if the hooded man explicitely casted Dreamwalk (which he doesn't) this spell doesn't appear once in the entire saga. BG may be based on PnP but it isn't PnP. Internal consistency matters.
There are loads of things that are still assumed to exist, even though they "don't appear in the entire saga" - The Moons, Thay, Calimsham, Create Food and Drink spells - these are the things that give the world depth, rather than feeling like something constructed solely to serve the story, with no existence beyond that. As for spells that the PC can't cast that NPCs can, there are a whole raft of Teleport type spells for a start.
And there is no way the Dreamer should see Dreamwalk being cast - they are asleep and in a different location.
Bhaalspawns who succumb to the taint tend to die faster. Ergo, Bhaal influences them in their dreams thanks to the taint by picking in their memories what he thinks can be useful. He does this to everyone: to Charname, to Sarevok, to Imoen and to that unnamed Fat Man Bhaalspawn who appear in the Pocketplane.
That is what I would call a highly personal interpretation of the dreams!
Bhaal is dead. He has no agency. The portions of his essence in each of his spawn are trying to exert control and grow stronger, in part through dreams. But there is no overarching plan to get the Bhaalspawn killed faster. They will all die eventually whatever happens, as Bhaal knew when he originated his plan. There is no hurry.
It may be a poke at the arrow to the knee thing in skyrim. I suppose an easter egg type joke?
It's a poke at genre tropes in general. Read Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards!
Thanks for that bit of info. I think your line of thinking is pretty well established and I don't disagree with you. On the other hand it could just as well be that Beambog overlooked some things in order to stuff more David Warner into the game. Either way I don't consider it a big deal. Every movie and game that I play will always have little things that would satisify me more on a personal level if it had been done MY way. I gave the game a good score because I believe they did a good job with it overall. I will openly criticize what I consider to be it's flaws but I mean no disrespect to Beamdog. I would love for them to make another expansion for BG2. Being criticized by critics is part of the process in my opinion.
I played on insane and thought the green dragon was kind of a letdown, even without using a thrown dagger But then again, how could you possibly portray an epic dragon fight with the level in SoD? Especially compared with SCS dragons. Personally, I think that it wasn't such a good idea to include a dragon encounter; still I enjoyed the reactivity from other encounters later.
Same line of thought with the Neothelid. It might be one of the best drawn and animated enemies in the game, but if you look at it's stats it's surprisingly weak.
In both cases I just needed a tank, prot. from fear, potion of heroity, storm giant strength, haste, and some other minor buffs and charge on the enemy. Nothing extraordinary.
On a more general note, I like that finally the difficulty slider is more meaningful and it's not just applying an handicap to the player.
Interestingly enough, I seem to remember, that somewhere there was a post explaining the thrown dagger easter egg. But it seems, the mystery shall not be made too public
Edit: What do you mean here?
The wand of frost was changed in Baldur's Gate 2 so that it worked on groups rather than deal massive damage to singular enemies.
I'm quite sure that in vanilla BG that wand used the "cone of cold" spell. Now it's using some Aganazzar scorcher type of spell. Which was somewhat surprising to me. Can someone elaborate on that how and why that changed?
I am not 100% certain but I thought the wand of frost always acted like aganazzar's scorcher that did more damage than a fireball and is concentrated on a single unit. In BG2 they changed it to be like cone of cold. It would do similar damage but it would be spread out and damage a group of enemies. I figured they changed it in BG2 because it was a little OP in the first game. Being that SOD is an expansion to the first game, it still uses the old version of the wand of frost. So you can use multiple wands of frost against powerful enemies like a dragon and still win even with a low level party.
Even if the hooded man explicitely casted Dreamwalk (which he doesn't) this spell doesn't appear once in the entire saga. BG may be based on PnP but it isn't PnP. Internal consistency matters.
There are loads of things that are still assumed to exist, even though they "don't appear in the entire saga" - The Moons, Thay, Calimsham, Create Food and Drink spells - these are the things that give the world depth, rather than feeling like something constructed solely to serve the story, with no existence beyond that. As for spells that the PC can't cast that NPCs can, there are a whole raft of Teleport type spells for a start.
And there is no way the Dreamer should see Dreamwalk being cast - they are asleep and in a different location.
You're missing the point. Whether Charname can see if Dreamwalk is cast or not is irrelevant. The player doesn't see it, despite being able to see pretty much every spell casted in cutscenes, so for all intent and purposes, saying "Irenicus casted Dreamwalk" is nothing but fanwank. As the game is, Dreamwalk doesn't exist. Introducing new spells from PnP out of the blue as pure plot device can not only be dangerous (if a situation already arose or arises later where such a spell would have a use) but also need a reason in order to not break the game's consistency.
Bhaalspawns who succumb to the taint tend to die faster. Ergo, Bhaal influences them in their dreams thanks to the taint by picking in their memories what he thinks can be useful. He does this to everyone: to Charname, to Sarevok, to Imoen and to that unnamed Fat Man Bhaalspawn who appear in the Pocketplane.
That is what I would call a highly personal interpretation of the dreams!
Bhaal is dead. He has no agency. The portions of his essence in each of his spawn are trying to exert control and grow stronger, in part through dreams. But there is no overarching plan to get the Bhaalspawn killed faster. They will all die eventually whatever happens, as Bhaal knew when he originated his plan. There is no hurry.
The essence growing stronger ultimately means death for the Bhaalspawn. It's not a highly personal interpretation it's what is said in the game itself particularly the two Spellhold dreams.
Even if the hooded man explicitely casted Dreamwalk (which he doesn't) this spell doesn't appear once in the entire saga. BG may be based on PnP but it isn't PnP. Internal consistency matters.
There are loads of things that are still assumed to exist, even though they "don't appear in the entire saga" - The Moons, Thay, Calimsham, Create Food and Drink spells - these are the things that give the world depth, rather than feeling like something constructed solely to serve the story, with no existence beyond that. As for spells that the PC can't cast that NPCs can, there are a whole raft of Teleport type spells for a start.
And there is no way the Dreamer should see Dreamwalk being cast - they are asleep and in a different location.
Resorting to insults is a sure sign that someone has run out of legitimate arguments.
But Thay and Calimsham are referenced in the game. They are acknowledged as being in existence in the game world. I do think the proof of burden is on you to justify your theory, since it's purely speculative and has no evidence in any of the games.
You can't just say "well it's possible" and consider the argument won. Yes it's possible, but is it probable or reasonable? It basically requires an entire retcon of BG2 in order to make the theory work for this specific instance of SoD.
Wand of Frost: For now, I have to admit, that it was a single target spell in vanilla BG, after watching some LP videos. But also BG2 item lists have them as a single target spell. Im quite confused, why you and me know the "cone of cold" wand of frost. Because, that's exactly why I never used them for years.
In the games it could be assumed that Amelyssan is the force behind Bhaal's essence, no?
How would that work? Amelyssan is just another powerful bhaalspawn. As Kurona mentioned, especially the spellhold dreams establish that Bhaal is not "dead". It's also established that Bhaal grows stronger by every death of his offspring. It's infact quite often mentioned, that Bhaal had this sort of backup plan, because he knew he would be slain.
And as it seems, he comes back later, after the last surviving bhaalspawn, aka Abdel, dies.
Wand of Frost: For now, I have to admit, that it was a single target spell in vanilla BG, after watching some LP videos. But also BG2 item lists have them as a single target spell. Im quite confused, why you and me know the "cone of cold" wand of frost. Because, that's exactly why I never used them for years.
In the games it could be assumed that Amelyssan is the force behind Bhaal's essence, no?
How would that work? Amelyssan is just another powerful bhaalspawn. As Kurona mentioned, especially the spellhold dreams establish that Bhaal is not "dead". It's also established that Bhaal grows stronger by every death of his offspring. It's infact quite often mentioned, that Bhaal had this sort of backup plan, because he knew he would be slain.
And as it seems, he comes back later, after the last surviving bhaalspawn, aka Abdel, dies.
Amelyssan is not a Bhaalspawn. She is the last High Priestess and she is the only one at this point in time who has access to the throne of Bhaal and the largest single supply of the essence. She is also planning on betraying Bhaal although I guess we don't know if she planned it from the beginning or decided later to turn on him.
Sorry, my bad it seems, I kind of assumed from my hazy memory she was both actually (because you have to kill her) and just like CHARNAME she could/would decide to "betray" Bhaal as well. But according to the wikki I've been mistaken once again.
Still, the points Kurona raised are still valid, just ignore what I said about Melissan, it makes actually not much difference.
In the games it could be assumed that Amelyssan is the force behind Bhaal's essence, no?
I don't see any reason to suppose there is anything "behind" Bhaal's essence. Part of Bhaal's essence is a part of the protagonist's soul. And is, therefore, part of the protagonist's subconscious. Just as with anyone else, the subconscious speaks through dreams. The "voice" you hear in your dreams is just one part of you speaking to another part of you (apart from when Irenicus interferes).
The same is true for each of the Bhaalspawn. So the piece of Bhaal that speaks to Imoen in her dreams is a different piece of Bhaal to that which speaks to the protagonist.
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But then again, how could you possibly portray an epic dragon fight with the level in SoD? Especially compared with SCS dragons. Personally, I think that it wasn't such a good idea to include a dragon encounter; still I enjoyed the reactivity from other encounters later.
Same line of thought with the Neothelid. It might be one of the best drawn and animated enemies in the game, but if you look at it's stats it's surprisingly weak.
In both cases I just needed a tank, prot. from fear, potion of heroity, storm giant strength, haste, and some other minor buffs and charge on the enemy. Nothing extraordinary.
On a more general note, I like that finally the difficulty slider is more meaningful and it's not just applying an handicap to the player.
Interestingly enough, I seem to remember, that somewhere there was a post explaining the thrown dagger easter egg. But it seems, the mystery shall not be made too public
Edit: What do you mean here?
I'm quite sure that in vanilla BG that wand used the "cone of cold" spell. Now it's using some Aganazzar scorcher type of spell. Which was somewhat surprising to me. Can someone elaborate on that how and why that changed?
Care to elaborate? Is it a roleplaying option like a stat check in POE? Does it require a special weapon? Is it a Joke? Maybe a "story mode" type option that allows the game to beat itself so you can collect achievements on steam? I am not trying to be dense but it sounds kinda silly to me.
Also I'm a rabid Steam hater and the word "achievements" is a trigger for me. When I'll rule the world, you'll pay for this.
And there is no way the Dreamer should see Dreamwalk being cast - they are asleep and in a different location.
That is what I would call a highly personal interpretation of the dreams!
Bhaal is dead. He has no agency. The portions of his essence in each of his spawn are trying to exert control and grow stronger, in part through dreams. But there is no overarching plan to get the Bhaalspawn killed faster. They will all die eventually whatever happens, as Bhaal knew when he originated his plan. There is no hurry. Resorting to insults is a sure sign that someone has run out of legitimate arguments.
This isn't what the word "insult" refers to.
You can't just say "well it's possible" and consider the argument won. Yes it's possible, but is it probable or reasonable? It basically requires an entire retcon of BG2 in order to make the theory work for this specific instance of SoD.
As Kurona mentioned, especially the spellhold dreams establish that Bhaal is not "dead". It's also established that Bhaal grows stronger by every death of his offspring.
It's infact quite often mentioned, that Bhaal had this sort of backup plan, because he knew he would be slain.
And as it seems, he comes back later, after the last surviving bhaalspawn, aka Abdel, dies.
Still, the points Kurona raised are still valid, just ignore what I said about Melissan, it makes actually not much difference.
The same is true for each of the Bhaalspawn. So the piece of Bhaal that speaks to Imoen in her dreams is a different piece of Bhaal to that which speaks to the protagonist.