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Tips for minimal interaction/story mode

GeekdogGeekdog Member Posts: 3
in Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
Hi everyone!

Long time lurker and first time poster here. I have a slightly unusual request. Back when BG2 first came out, I got into it. Unfortunately my saved game glitched partway through and I didn't have the heart to start all over again. With the revamped version I'd like to play through it and get to the end this time. For reasons of patience and health (RSI) I don't want to micro-manage my party in combat anymore. Essentially I just want to be able to play through the story, and have the characters take care of themselves during fights.

Does anyone have any advice on how I might best achieve that? Bear in mind that I haven't played through the game all the way before, so I'd like to keep the freedom to choose characters as I encounter them, and I'd prefer to avoid any spoilers in this thread. Setting the difficulty to easy is a no-brainer. I'm looking for advice about AI scripts, spell choices, formations, and other such tactical choices. My preference is to play a fighter/thief as the main character, but I'm flexible about that if it makes winning fights without interaction simpler.

If anyone's played through with a Steam controller I would be very interested to hear about their experiences with that too. I've got a Steam machine and controller all good to go, but I haven't had much chance to tinker with it yet.

Thank you all in advance for any tips. Apologies if I don't reply all that quickly to comments, I'm not on the message boards all that often (again, RSI).

Comments

  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,760
    The game now has a "Story mode" option among the game options, you can enable it, and your play will be much easier. Also, you can give your characters Advanced AI (character record screen - customize - scripts) and activate options available there (like Search for traps, Use spells etc).

    These two things will basically offer you a chance to concentrate only on the story, not the game mechanics.
  • GeekdogGeekdog Member Posts: 3
    Ah, thanks, I didn't realise that there was a story mode! I tried the pre-made AI scripts in the past but didn't have much luck with them, I'll take another look and see if they work better in the new version.

    Much appreciated! Further advice still welcome...
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • mf2112mf2112 Member, Moderator Posts: 1,919
    edited September 2016
    For the Advanced AI scripts, just click on your character record, then the Customize button, then Scripts. Click on Advanced AI on the left and then you will see various toggles on the right. For instance, you might want the fighter/thief to detect traps, attack and prefer melee weapons, while a druid or cleric or thief could attack but prefer ranged weapons, the bard could sing the bard song, and the mage could cast defensive/offensive spells.
    You can turn off the AI any time with the button in the lower right corner.

    For party formations, I change throughout the game but it mostly depends on location for me. If you right click on any of the formation icons you will get a bigger list to choose from. I don't like most of the default formations so I change them out.

    For that style of game, I would recommend not going offensive for magic, but defensive, at least to start with. Less chance of catastrophic problems with a mirror image going off prematurely as opposed to a fireball targeted in slightly the wrong place, or a fighter chasing down an enemy running into a fireball. Although you can resolve this somewhat by careful spell picking. You can't cast what you didn't memorize, so memorize party-friendly Slow instead of Fireball. Once you get more used to how things are working (or more importantly, NOT working) then you can change it up.
  • pixie359pixie359 Member Posts: 251
    There are also some alternative scripts knocking around that will do the job pretty well. I think the most full-functioning that I've come across is uScript, which support a really wide range of spells and a few items and is fairly clever. You don't need to intervene much at all with this on, if that's your bag.
  • GeekdogGeekdog Member Posts: 3
    Thanks for the suggestions! I'll check out uScript, and the advice about choosing defensive spells in particular is something that makes a lot of sense that I hadn't considered before. I do have a copy of the game on iPad as well as Steam, but the lack of updates doesn't fill me with much confidence, particularly as it's not possible to export a saved game on iPad. For now I'm going to try playing it with the Steam controller and see how I get on with that. Much obliged to you all!
  • RichMartelRichMartel Member Posts: 6
    https://github.com/RichMartel/uscript
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