I leave only scorched earth in my wake
chimeric
Member Posts: 1,163
Before my character came out of Candlekeep, there were many wonderful things, places and people on the Sword Coast. A few months later this entire stretch of Faerun's shoreline lies as a smoking ruin, with footprints all over it. The least article of damage is the loss of mysteries: I have solved the secret of Durlag's Tower, mapped the mazes of Firewine Bridge and Ulcaster's School, looted the tomb of Alaundo the Seer and the ship of Balduran, stole from the Hall of Wonders and so on... Yet mysteries renew themselves, and gold and magic will in time pass into new hands. The loss of life, however, and the murder of almost every significant individual in the region cannot be made up for. I leave Baldur's Gate a beheaded city. Its wizards are gone: Ramazith, Ragefast, Degrodel. The house with the telescope and the pagoda stand empty. The Water Queen's house only hears the trickling of water, the priestesses of Umberlee slaughtered. The Halruaa ambassador is dead, too, as, naturally, are the Sembians of the Iron Throne, the Chill and the Black Talons. The mines of Cloakwood are just a flooded hole, and the Shadow Druids feed the roots of that same forest.
This is just what can be immediately named. There are also nameless nymphs, priests, experimenting necromancers, talented doppleganger assassins, Amnish nobles, xvarts, rude Flaming Fist patrolmen. Gone, all gone. My half-brother Sarevok is simply ridiculous with his laughable attempt to start a war. Too little, too late. Who is left to pick up the sword, anyway? I know that no war could do more damage than this savior.
This is just what can be immediately named. There are also nameless nymphs, priests, experimenting necromancers, talented doppleganger assassins, Amnish nobles, xvarts, rude Flaming Fist patrolmen. Gone, all gone. My half-brother Sarevok is simply ridiculous with his laughable attempt to start a war. Too little, too late. Who is left to pick up the sword, anyway? I know that no war could do more damage than this savior.
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Comments
Which means Skie is secretely a necromancer!!!
I fear it's in the blood though because all the children of Bhaal we read about here, however they have been brought up in Candlekeep, from being a balance keen Druid through to the most righteous Paladin, leave the same trail of destruction.
Apparently the others would be worse we are told, how exactly, there's nobody left.
Even with maxed-out REP and CHA, I find that if you buy your equipment (rather than stealing it from shops) and re-charge your wands (and other rechargeable items) when they run down to 1 charge, then money is perpetually short right from the start of the BG1 until half-way through BG2:ToB (when you finally reach the infinite-money cave in Amkethran).
Nevertheless, I reckon the majority of money goes on recharging wands etc. That's a very expensive business!
The problem with money is twofold. One half is that the best items must, of course, be rewards for adventuring, with a few exceptions Bioware allowed like the Shadow Thief armor, so on the whole there must be nowhere to spend so much money. The other half and the real cause is that it's impossible to put weapons +3 in every chest, but there must be something in those chests and on those corpses, hence weapons +1, darts, wands and potions, the sort of smaller-caliber loot that brings in the bulk of the money over time. I don't believe there is a cure for this, because a computer adaptation of D&D can't very well provide those "other" rewards of the tabletop version - immersion, mystery, surprise, description, personal quests etc. Torment did it, but at the price of becoming a novel.
What could be done, now that I think of it, is a splintering of XP and gold rewards. Let modders make small quests that involve dialogue and running around for moderate payouts. Then it may be possible to take away those Laeral's Tear necklaces worth 3000 a piece and put quest notes instead, and still keep the game satisfying.
You forgot to mention the culture void you probably left the sword coast with.
You killed the thespian extraordinaire Silke, The poetic Nimbul, The sculptor Prism, and of course as mentioned Oompah, the best act this side of the dales.
But IWD is a dungeon crawler, so I'm more forgiving.
But more importantly than being a reward even, treasure is something that happens in the games. It's a materialized event. It marks time: here is you before you found these things, and here is you now after. You have a potion that lets you breath fire at someone or a sword that can kill a golem, and that advances you from where you were when you came out of Candlekeep a poor helpless worm. It opens up possibilities, marks a new chapter in your career, if you will, or at least it should.
All treasure must be taken, of course, the problem is that it shouldn't accumulate but do its job - buy a kingdom, slay me a dragon. You expend it and move on. In the computer games everything is on a smaller scale, but also our options are limited. We still have to go on inside those dungeons and bandit chests, and we will take the loot if we want any kind of satisfaction at all. (In fact leaving smaller stuff on the ground and just keeping weapons +3 leads to a worse thing, munchkinism.) Since we can't really choose poverty here, and don't want to, a regular kick in the rump from the game mechanics - like a 1000 gp tax - is just the ticket, at least for some stretch of the road. That's true, too. Biff the Understudy remains, though.
I at least enjoy it + you always end up having tons of random oddities wherever you stash items, and it makes it *feel* like a treasure trove lol. Every good hoard has bunches of random stuff! lol.
I see no logic in that, and also it pushes towards limiting the resting, abusing of the stacking of thieving potions, building parties less rest dependent (high con and less magic) and other things that really are not in my style.
And there is a perfect RP reason to not collect and sell every enchanted armor and weapon you find/loot, the dimension of your backpack, I find silly that you can stuff there 5 complete sets of armor, even if you have the strength to lift it. And that is true both for what you collect to sell and for what you bring around because you may need it. At least until you have some bag of holding.
In a real RP run I would probably limit the use of the backpack/inventory, no full armors there, only few weapons, a couple of swords and a bow is fine, 5 2handers in a single backpack no. And so on.
I never did it, may be I will try it sometimes, but imo is an enough good reason to not collect every thing that costs more than few GPs, even if you are dungeon crawling.
Talking only of SoA and probably forgetting some items here is my list of "essential" early game expenses.
- Charging all the wands of the first dungeon.
- RoV
- Everard sling
- Mercykiller Ring
- Helm of Vahilor
- DoE
- STR belt
- Sword, belt and cloak from the Trademeet merchant
- Staff of Ryn
Those alone are a lot of money, and many of them are really useful in early game, I can delay the DoE and Ras, and I never use the shield of Balduran, that for others is essential.
Sure the play style has a big part in it, if you don't want to fight a certain demilich early, you don't really need +4/5 weapons early, if you import a single class thief from bg1/SoD, use Jan or use your thief only as traps remover and lock opener you don't need the Mercykiller to make good use of your FMT, if you go with less arcane casters than me (in many parties I have 4-5 of them), the scrolls that you loot are probably enough and you don't have to buy/steal scrolls, and so on.
But in my BG2 games, unless I steal, the money is never enough, if I want to be well equipped early game.
Even if some of those "essential" items will be later obsolete or not really needed, I will have Ram instead of Ryn, the mordy spell instead of Ras and plenty of thieving points once the FMT levels up enough.
In addition, I forgot to mention in my previous answer that I also like to give the Mage(s) (or part-Mages or Bards as applicable) in my (permanent) party a full spellbook for maximum versatilty, and buying a heap of spell scrolls can also chew up a lot of gold.
It's a matter of playing style. You evidently play in a quite parsimonious style, but some others of us find it easy to spend all the gold we get and still be unable to buy some items which would be useful.
And even if I never sell the same item to a fence more than once, that is the easier infinite money trick, in BG2 there are 4 different fences, I never had money problems also with Item Upgrade mod and BoM item pack mod installed, and there is a staff that costs like 100K gp in the latter.
Also:
I can deal with demiliches even without ryn and everard, at lower levels, not only in vanilla, but in settings like Tactics mod, where it is not as easy as in vanilla, thanks to intelligent targeting, good spellcasting, a field that teleports your party members randomly, a trick that prevents the use of traps and the rest. And I never use that rare scrolls to do it. (but less experienced players have problem with the vanilla one, and if they want to buy weapons that can hit him and try before Underdark I see no reasons why they should not do it, if that give them fun).
I have other ways to tank against hard hitters than Ras/Mordy, I have other ways to make my people resilient to spells and ranged without the belt and cloak.
And I have enough metaknowledge and means to deal with traps and locks without boosting early trap detection and lock opening, as I anyway love to explore hidden and to backstab. I don't depend on the ring.
And in some runs I make great use of wands, in others I don't even touch them.
But I like to equip my party well the earlier than I can because is my style, what is funny for me, even if often in real gaming I reload and fight the same hard battle in many ways, using powerful items and tactics and then don't using them and giving me other limitations, like sending each character solo, don't use magic at all, don't use mlee at all and so on. My approach is never "I fail, then I need a bigger sword", but is "I fail, then I must improve as player, I must explore different roads". The fact that I like that big swords and I prefer to have them in my inventory instead of letting rust on a shop shelf means only that than I have to drive with the throttle at half way, other way the game with the mods I use gets too easy.
But there is people less experienced than me (and a lot more experienced than me, don't get me wrong
For them what for you and me is only a possible option is a necessity.
You had a question, I gave a possible answer, according to my taste and style.
And as your question was "what you're buying" I think that my answer is a good one, the fact that in your own style you don't buy those things does not make it less good.