Valygar or Cernd
Goresha
Member Posts: 4
Trying to decide between Valygar or Cernd for my next play through. My party thus far is:
Charname, cavalier paladin
Jan Janssen
Anomen
Neera
Mazzy Fentan
Not sure if Valygar would be better for bows, or Cernd for druid spells and werewolf form.
Charname, cavalier paladin
Jan Janssen
Anomen
Neera
Mazzy Fentan
Not sure if Valygar would be better for bows, or Cernd for druid spells and werewolf form.
0
Comments
so unless you really REALLY want druid spells, go with valygar
Personally I don't like Cernd because he was simply too boring and monotonous, with a very dull npc quest. While Valygar has some fun involvement with the planar sphere and so on.
Valygar has an interesting back story, a great quest, is a good ranged attacker and backstabber, can use one of the top weapons in the game without in estment, gets a smattering of spells, has interesting interactions with Mazzy, and a personality which rather matches my own.
In early-SoA he's not much good (and that's why he has a reputation as "weak", because most players don't persist with him and find out how good he is later).
From mid-SoA (level 13) onwards, he has Greater Werewolf form available, and you just leave him in GW form for most of the rest of SoA and use him for front-row melee ... and you'll probably find during that phase that he's your leading killer - he'll probably out-perform even your Cavalier protagonist.
Then towards the end of SoA, he hits level 15 and instantly has far more high-level spells available, and there are some really good Druid spells at high levels (unlike their weaker low-level spells), but as you go into ToB the melee effectiveness of the GW form is no longer very good. Thus for ToB you move him from the front row (and push Mazzy forward instead, because by then she'll have enough melee proficiencies to be very good up front) and mostly keep Cernd in human form as a caster. In particular, he's the best Summoner in the game, but he has other solid spells too.
Not that there's anything wrong with Valygar, he's a useful character and I often take him along. However, given the rest of your party, Valygar wouldn't be bringing so much that others can't already do, whereas Cernd would add more value to this line-up.
Cernd is, by far, the more powerful NPC, but as ThacoBell so bluntly put it as a character he badly needs more points in INT.
In BG2 druids remain powerful throughout the game, starting as early as Irenicus Dungeon with access to Call Woodland Beings. The whole "druids are weak" thing is just a carryover from the old BG1, and even in that game you could argue that a PC druid could potentially be broken because of druid XP progression at low levels (they gain levels so fast you could force higher level BG1 NPCs to spawn much earlier - by the time you get Dynaheir she'll already have Fireball, for example).
Cernd's werewolf forms are there mostly so he has some melee presence at early-mid game. At higher levels druid spells become so powerful you shouldn't be using the werewolf forms at all except perhaps for specific functions, like to regen HP.
Valygar is best played as a forward scout/assassin-type character/damage-dealer. He's a good character from the outset because of dual-wield, and he scales pretty well into end-game thanks to warrior HLAs/priest spells.
As a character he can be pretty meh in some party comps, but in a party with NPCs like Mazzy he actually gets a few interesting dialogue. People who like playing an interesting mix of characters (like Mazzy/Korgan/Valygar/Viconia) will like having him around.
You should only have Valygar use bows for special ammo (like fire arrows vs trolls or arrows of biting vs mages), he should be melee-ing otherwise. Besides, Mazzy is the superior archer.