Some Tips for a first time player
Daywalker
Member Posts: 37
Hello everybody!
I preordered Baldurs Gate yesterday and i would like to ask some questions about it and hopefully get some tips for my first playthrough. I never played the original Baldurs Gate, but i kept hearing about how great it was, so i decided to get the Enhanced Edition and try it out myself. I read the article with the basic tips for beginners, for example about the armor classes and the races you can play, but there are a couple of things i would like to know:
1) Can i expect that this game plays like for example Gothic 1 or Drakensang but with a bigger NPC party?
should i constantly look for side quests and collectable stuff that is in chests or on the ground?
2) How should i begin when i started my first game? I'm not asking about a specific skill for a character or a "walkthrough" for the game, but rather how to get started. Should i try to have a party with as many different characters as possible, or rather try to make something specific like 2 fighters and 3 mages?
3) Can i select a difficulty at start or is it set? If i can set it, what would you suggest? I don't want the game to be super easy at the first try because i think a lot of the fun is gone when you replay a game, so i want to be my first game challanging but not having to fight a certain enemy 100 times before i can finally kill him.
Thank you for your help everybody, i might have some more questions but this 3 are all i can think of at the moment!
I preordered Baldurs Gate yesterday and i would like to ask some questions about it and hopefully get some tips for my first playthrough. I never played the original Baldurs Gate, but i kept hearing about how great it was, so i decided to get the Enhanced Edition and try it out myself. I read the article with the basic tips for beginners, for example about the armor classes and the races you can play, but there are a couple of things i would like to know:
1) Can i expect that this game plays like for example Gothic 1 or Drakensang but with a bigger NPC party?
should i constantly look for side quests and collectable stuff that is in chests or on the ground?
2) How should i begin when i started my first game? I'm not asking about a specific skill for a character or a "walkthrough" for the game, but rather how to get started. Should i try to have a party with as many different characters as possible, or rather try to make something specific like 2 fighters and 3 mages?
3) Can i select a difficulty at start or is it set? If i can set it, what would you suggest? I don't want the game to be super easy at the first try because i think a lot of the fun is gone when you replay a game, so i want to be my first game challanging but not having to fight a certain enemy 100 times before i can finally kill him.
Thank you for your help everybody, i might have some more questions but this 3 are all i can think of at the moment!
2
Comments
I'll do my best at answering:
1) BG is more tactically based - you will be pressing the space key a lot to pause the game to figure out what to do in situations. Always go on side quests and search for goodies, holding down the ALT key highlights any item that you can pickup or can action with (I didn't know this for ages and wasted lots of time hovering my mouse around!).
2) There are so many combinations of characters it really is just up to you. As a 'core' there is usually a figher, thief, cleric/druid and a mage. Mix and match as you please, and see what personalities you like!
3) I think there is a difficulty setting but I can't remember off hand. Just set it to normal and you should be fine.
Enjoy
1) BG isn't really like Drakensang, partly because the game engine is different and partly because the rule set is different. Drakensang is more in the Neverwinter Nights 2 vein.
What you won't see is:
a) skills
b) crafting
c) ability points (this is handled by character level)
What you will see:
a) a lot more dialogue with characters. In Drak', your characters don't have a lot to say after they join, while, in BG, they react to what happens
Additionally, you will be looking to loot everything - this is pretty standard in RPG's. Quests are everywhere, so talk to anybody with a name! And some people have ulterior motives and are up to no good, making it fun to see what happens.
2) Like @ginger_hammer says, you want a cross-set of skills. You can have up to six party members, but the important thing is to have four things:
a) Tank/damage dealer (I like to have 3 of these, but the bigger party levels up slower)
b) Thief - just like Drakensang, you need to disarm traps and open locked things
c) Mage - they allow crowd control and 'buffs' - things that strengthen other players or make them more difficult to attack
d) Healer - Druid or Cleric. It's not ALL that they can do - they have great buffs and some offensive spells that are worthwhile
So, I'd recommend that you figure out what you want your hero to be. Perhaps you want to be an elven mage, for instance. Make that character and choose NPC's to join your party that fill the roles. There is no 'best' class to pick, though some are easier to learn and are more straightforward. Also, it depends on what you like - don't be a mage if you only have fun pounding evildoers with a morning star behind a huge (tower) shield and in full plate armor. Likewise, if you hate close and personal fighting, then go a route that lets you do that (archer, or whatnot).
3) There is a difficulty slider. Normal is pretty good to begin. Core is harder and follows the pen and paper rules closer.
Anyway, glad to have you with us. This is a great game with a steep learning curve. Not an impossible learning curve, though - and you'll learn by doing. Try different spells (your character or an NPC mage) and different approaches. You will find what works for you. Also realize that the forums can be a great help!
What is nice about the game is you can won't ruin your game by poor skill choices or anything like that. You can use your party to make up for your character's shortcomings.
Nice to see that so many answered, really looking forward to this game and asking in the forums
About the party members: Do you recommend playing with the full 6 memebrs or for example only use 4 or 5 to level up some characters and then add the rest of the party? When i can choose if a NPC joins my party, can i exchange him for another NPC later on and then swap between some characters, or do i "delete" them by kicking them out of my party?
Once again thanks for the help, you been really helping me out!
You can chop and change NPCs as you wish. If you ditch one you can come back to them later on and re-recruit them.
Some NPCs are paired though, meaning if you boot one then their partner will leave too. I'll leave you to find out the behaviours of the individual NPCs
its good to leave to it me, else there would be no fun if you told me everything now
I guess i will need some time to get into the game but i heard a lot of good things about it, really looking forward to playing it. Hopefully they wont reschedule to next year!
1. The game is kinda line Drakensang but nothing like the Gothic games in terms of how it plays. It is a game that rewards exploration, lockpicking, stealing, doing side quests, etc.
2. Unless you play multiplayer you can only create one character and have to pick up the rest of your party from NPCs. BG1 rewards diverse parties, you will NEED a thief to disarm traps especially in optional high level content because they are often deadly. Similarly you'll also want a cleric to heal and buff your party, a mage to debuff and do damage, archers to shoot people, etc
Having all melee fighters is a surefire way to get used as target practice by local bandits and monsters, so have a diverse party and learn to use their strengths effectively or you'll quickly get frustrated. A mage casting sleep can be downright overpowered at the start of BG1 but they'll be absolutely useless if you try to charge a group of bandits with a dagger.
A "typical" party is 2 melee fighters, 1 archer, 1 cleric, 1 mage, 1 thief. This is by no means set in stone and once you get a good understanding of the game you can finish it with any and everything, some things are just much harder than others. I personally like to have parties with more magic, but that comes at a big price because the party is much less durable overall and relies on having to rest a lot in between fights.
Choice is a big thing in BG1, you can make good choices and you can make a lot of really bad choices and more often than not it's impossible to tell what consequences something will have unless you have a full understanding of the game which takes many playthroughs to get.
3. You can select a difficulty at the start and change it at any time during the game. I recommend leaving it on the default "Core Rules" difficulty and going lower if you just can't win a fight, the higher difficulty levels are very uninspiring in my opinion and they just cause enemies to do more damage.
People have all sorts of opinions when it comes to best classes. That said, the mage killer fighter kit is seriously underpowered (most would say broken) and will probably leave you very frustrated; if you want to be the bane of mages, be an Inquisitor!
Hope you really enjoy the game when it comes out (3 weeks to go...)
Some really nice tips here and i love the fact that you got a lot of side quests. i really enjoy RPG's and a nice amount of well done side quests can make such a difference in how the game plays out. I Ugess im gonna take a look at the character creation screen and then decide what kind of character i want to play
It's nice to hear that you can actually play with any party you want, that can make some really interesting games. Probably gonna take me some time to get used to the game ( i never played D&D or Icewind Dale or any games like that) but i guess its do-able
I would love to finally play a RPG again that has a good depth in the game, I'm really bored of today's RPG's since they are all about graphics and don't really care for their story line
By the way, is playing Multiplayer actually helping you out in your own offline game? I don't really like playing online that much, i rather have my RPG offline
SP and MP would be two different games, not linked in any way.
As i already said, im not really a fan of online RPG's.
By the way, can someone try to explain the difference between dual-class and multi-class?
As far as i understood it, if you want to go multi-class you choose two classes and therefor level up slowly because BOTH classes of your character split the experience. Dual-class means that you can choose another class later in the game? Is that correct? And what would you recommend for your first try of BG? Can i also go "only" one class or do i have to choose a second class later on?
I recommend a single class for your first run, then test some classes out what you think is cool to play.
Multi Class means you're leveling up two or three classes at the same time. Like, a Fighter/Druid will level up half as fast because they're leveling up fighter and druid. So, say the level cap is 40, they might hit lvl 20 druid lvl 20 fighter. It doesn't work out quite like that but it suffices for a quick and dirty explanation.
Dual class is essentially ditching one class to start another. You can only do this once per character and only the human race can do it. If you have enough experience points to outlevel your old class with the new class that you dual classed into, then you can use the skills of both classes. However you will never be able to advance the first class past the point where you dual classed.
There is a big problem with this. If you don't plan dual classing out properly you will be stuck with a very broken character. If we assume that the level cap for a mage is level 9 and at level 8 we dual class into a fighter, we won't have enough experience to recover the mage levels before the experience point cap. So you'll basically be stuck with what is effectively a level 2-3 fighter that can't cast any spells. There's also another problem with the choice in that, you always want to dual class into spellcasters not out of a spellcasting class. While fighters don't really get anything special at higher levels, spellcasters continue to get spells per day and unlock higher levels of spells as they get stronger.
I would strongly suggest that you don't dual class the first time around unless you follow a persons guide that gives clear level/experience point breakdowns and advantages to doing so because the first time I dual classed I basically ruined my character and had no way of knowing that I did until basically the end of the game when I hit the experience cap.
Multi class is a lot simpler to explain. It is limited to non human races an allows you to have 2 or 3 classes at the same time. This is balanced by having to split your earned experience between the classes. This means that your total level for each class will be lower than a single class characters but of course, you have multiple classes to make up for that.
For example, if a party of 6 gains 6000xp, every single class character in the party gets 1000, every 2 class multi class gets 1000 which is then divided half to one class and half to another, and if you have a 3 class multi they get 1000 of which 1/3 is given to every class. So from this encounter each character gets the same amount of experience but single class characters progress a lot faster towards their next level.
Multi class is limited by alignment, race and class, some classes cannot be multi or dual classed and alignment is a limiting factor for some combinations. Multi class is a good way to add flavor to otherwise boring characters like fighters. A fighter/mage becomes incredibly versatile and useful later on but will suffer quite a bit early on from lack of spells, etc.
Hope that helps out a bit.
Any way carry on
Except for multi-class which is the very essence in versatility, especially when you look at triple M/C combos.
Multi class is not a class, it's a class combination. Humans CAN be any class, they can also be any class without any level restriction whereas in PNP 2ED an elven warrior would be limited to a lower level than a human one for example. Versatility in this case isn't what you'd expect it to be in that sense.
This is not something that's implemented in the BG series and it's going off topic from the original post so lets stop arguing about it.
There's no arguing going on, more musing from my side. But thanks anyway mum.
I guess im going to pick only one class in my first game then, sounds much more realisitc to me if my character is "just" a fighter and not some fighter/mage/thief superhero
Also, if you got any other tips for me, keep telling them please
I dont wan't to end my first game after i'm half done with it just because i fucked up my character
Bard, Monk, Paladin.
Of them Monk is really hard (prolly be adjusted in EE but since we can't know how we'll mark it as "hard" for now).
Bard and Paladin are both great. Paladin has some great kits that really help with the more annoying enemies. Bards are a Jack of All Trades Master of None sort of class. Their kits adjust their role or how the perform in that role/