The Basilisk XP loop doesn't work in vanilla BG1, since petrifying an opponent doesn't provide XP. Worse, shattering a petrified monster also provides no XP.
However during my attempts to make it work with a solo Bard, I realised that the method lends itself to an easy approach to killing the Basilisks straight up. Not exactly cheesy, but certainly a non-standard tactic that can especially help characters with a poor thac0 who would otherwise struggle to kill many lizards before their Protection spells run out.
1. Buy 5-6 Stone to Flesh scrolls from, e.g., FAI.
2. Charm your favourite Basilisk using Algernon's cloak.
3. Use it to petrify another lizard, and quickly move your pet away before it shatters the statue.
4. Unpetrify the lizard. Voilà: you've reduced it to 1HP, making it an easy kill!
5. Repeat on all the other lizards, as well as anybody else you feel like (hint, hint, a certain arrogant adventuring party).
In fact this tactic is essentially a non-Cleric ranged (slightly more laborious) version of Harm. If you don't have a friendly Basilisk to hand then the 10th-caster-level Chromatic Orb petrifies at a +6 save, or you could use the standard spell-level 6 Flesh to Stone scroll/spell. Then undo either with a S2F.
Just be careful not to shatter the critter, or simply turn gore off, else you will destroy all its equipment*!
as we know the haste spell can haste all the people in its 30 ft radius aoe, and it also adds 4 to the fatigue status of the recipient. it has no save.
so there is a potential to use this spell to damage the enemy instead of boost your party, as long as you cast it on enemies and then run away waiting for the haste effect to expire, but the fatigue remain.
the number of spells needed to get an enemy fatigued depend on his con, for enemies with really high con even 2 spells stacked are not enough, but as an enemy start to feel fatigued he looses a luck point for every fatigue point over the 6 threshold.
so staff of command, domination with no save, then all the mages dropping multiple haste on the single strong but dominated enemy should lead to a fun battle after hastes and domination expire.
the dragon or whatever will roll every time the minimum damage for his attacks and so on...
i am not completely sure of it, but i think that even the final wk boss is not immune to the domination from the staff.
I was looking at how the engine stops Mislead and non-held Otiluke targets (e.g. Barbarian Rage) from attacking. It seems like they just set the char APR to 0. So it should be possible to grant them APR to allow them to attack again.
Turns out most of the +APR items work! E.g. Belm, Kundane, Boomerang dagger, Firetooth dagger, Gaunt of Extra Spec. Unfortunately, missile weapons like Tuigan don't.
Still, neat little trick if you equip Boomerang/Firetooth dagger and combine Mislead + WoL trick to create 6 dagger chucking magelings.
(Nahls hotkey still seems to work with Mislead too. Clicking it twice on the clone or main for aura cleansing surprisingly hasn't been patched either.)
Speaking about the WoL + Spellbook self-target spells that Gorgon and Semitic were talking about on page 4, it opens up some unique mid-game SOA builds. For mages, Mord Sword, Sunfire, Wraithform were some already mentioned.
If you dual from Lathander (around lvl 11 for 2 usages of Boon) -> Mage, you can play as a strong fighter using 6x Boon (+5APR, +6dmg/thac0/saves). Add Imp Haste for nearly 2 mins of 10 APR.
Dualing from Tyr (lvl 12) -> Mage gives you a Spellslinger build with Melf's Meteor (5 APR) + Divine favor (+24dmg/24thac0) for 2 rounds.
Add in a few self-target cleric spells with WoL trick such as Mass Heal, Wonderous Recall, Cloak of Fear, False Dawn, Sunray to round yourself out as a support char too.
In the late game, Greater Evasion is also strong with WoL, granting 36AC, 18 saves and movement speed.
An oldie but goodie that still works in bg2ee is cheesing Kangaxx for XP. It's a bit similar to the Basilisk XP loop. The Wand of Wonder (from Illithid Temple Sewers) petrifies 1/8 of the time without save. For some overlooked reason you can petrify Kangaxx in skull form for XP. Cast Flesh to Stone. Repeat.
Kangaxx has resistance vs the wiz Flesh to Stone spell, but not to the scroll purchased from temples. Putting both scroll and wand on a clone, using say Helm of Vhailor, let's you repeat infinite.
Others claim it works on ToB bosses as well, but I haven't tested it.
[BG2EE, version 2.5]
Quest item duplication, or how to get two Flails of Ages in a completely reliable way.
First, assemble the flail in de'Arnise Keep. Next, recruit Rasaad and do his quest. For the final battle outside the temple, place the flail in Rasaad's inventory. After the battle, choose dialogue options so that Rasaad leaves the party to stay with the temple. Your party will now have two Flails of Ages, so you can dual-wield them if you like.
What's going on? When a character leaves the party for any reason, certain critical items they had such as bags and quest items are transferred to the protagonist. When a character is removed "permanently" from the party as part of a quest, all of their items are transferred to the party. In the case of Rasaad leaving at the end of his quest, both of these scripts run - which leaves you with two copies of any critical items he was carrying. There's not much use for duplicate bags or plot tokens, but the Flail of Ages is a powerful weapon that's flagged as a quest item.
Checking... yes, the Ring of Gaxx is a quest item. (I loaded up a ToB save, handed it to a non-protag, and dropped that character. The Ring was sent back to my protagonist)
So, there's another powerful item that can be duplicated this way.
@jmerry: I'm a little unclear on how that works. If Rasaad is in fact leaving the party permanently, wouldn't that just leave you with one copy of the flail? Or do you collect the second one by recruiting him again and taking it from his inventory? This is odd behavior, since normally that would remove the quest item from Rasaad in the process.
I have doubts that it will remain, since Beamdog typically removes EE-introduced exploits.
If this applies to all items flagged as critical, then it could also duplicate the Rift Device, Control Circlets, Blackrazor, Sword of Balduran, Silver Sword, and maybe some useful EE quest items from other EE NPC questlines. Duplicating certain plot tokens may also allow you to complete certain quests twice for extra XP or maybe some other rewards, but that really depends on how a given quest is scripted.
@semiticgod: How this works - the critical items being moved happens whenever a character leaves the party without dying outright, for any reason. Whether that's you dropping them from the party, petrification, imprisonment, or abduction, whatever critical items they have are transferred to the protagonist. If there isn't room in the protagonist's inventory, room will be made by dropping stuff. When you get that character back in the party, they won't have the critical items.
The other half of this is that a few plot events remove a character from the party and dump all of their stuff into the inventory of the rest of the party. Imoen being taken from you on exiting Irenicus' dungeon, Nalia being abducted in her personal quest, and Rasaad leaving at the end of his quest are the examples I can think of. This is generally done when the leaving is or could be permanent.
Both of these scripts remove the items in question from the party member being removed and give them to other party members. The bug here is that both scripts run in the Rasaad situation, which gives you two copies of the critical items; one copy dumped into the protagonist's inventory and another dumped into the inventory of a party member wherever there's room. I think I first noticed it when I had him holding the note from Hammerhelm, but I also have the habit of spreading scroll cases and gem bags around. I don't think this happens at the other points characters are removed; I'm pretty sure I've had Nalia carrying containers when she's abducted, and not gotten dupes out of that.
This definitely applies to all items flagged as critical. Some of that list you gave are difficult for other reasons; you'd have to smuggle the Rift Device out of the sewers using another exploit, Blackrazor can't be obtained yet when you're roaming Amn, and the Sword of Balduran (gold version) would require mods in order to bring it over from BG1.
I see. So Rasaad handing over critical items is intrinsic to him leaving the party, just like a petrified character will toss their bag of holding over to you when they leave the group. Then there's a separate command that hands over all of Rasaad's gear, which adds another copy of any critical items.
Good point about Blackrazor and the Sword of Balduran. I was thinking of the Sword of Balduran from Deidre rather than the gold sword from BG1, but looking at the BG2 files, only the gold sword is flagged as critical.
@jmerry is now the author of the Quest Item Duplication trick and Ammunition Duplication trick (note that future still-functional tricks will be on the page 3 list). @histamiini has been added as co-author to the Ferret Smuggling trick (the Roger the Fence alternative) and the basilisk XP loop (the Wand of Wonder+Firkraag version for BG2).
- Put SI on a hotkey (any)
- memorize 2 spell immunity spells
- instead of pressing a SI hotkey and picking a school you want to be immune to, press hotkey 2 times in row
- now you may think you wasted 1 SI spell for no reason. But you are not. Now after clicking a school which you want to be immune to, that small window on the bottom of the screen will not dissapear. You can literally click every school one after other and be immune to everything.
It's an engine bug - it happens when any "sub-menu" spell is cast while such a "sub-menu" is still active.
Nahal's Reckless Dwoemer can result in the same issue - with far more valuable results.
credits to @BrightL1ghts and @kjeron , i just quote them, but those exploits could not miss from this thread.
SI in the @BrightL1ghts quote is obviously spell immunity.
Added to the list on page 2. I didn't think that type of exploit was possible anymore since it didn't seem to work via the Wand of Lightning trick anymore, which also would have cast the initial spell multiple times simultaneously.
Silence can completely neutralize NPCs that turn hostile after starting dialogue with you. Before encountering them, cast Silence near them so they cannot speak at all. Now you can attack them without fear of retaliation because they will not respond to it.
I have safely killed Mutamin, Bassilus, Nimbul, Tranzig, and Mulahey this way so far. I assume this will work for other BG1 enemies that do this too.
This may have been mentioned already, but if you cast charm person on a person in their house, you can rob them blind, right in front of their face, without the guard getting called. When the spell wears off, they'll be hostile, but then you can just leave. They don't follow.
This may have been mentioned already, but if you cast charm person on a person in their house, you can rob them blind, right in front of their face, without the guard getting called. When the spell wears off, they'll be hostile, but then you can just leave. They don't follow.
If you don't want to do that you can just punch them unconscious.
Neither of those methods works well if you have SCS installed, but you can still use Algernon's cloak (attempting that doesn't turn victims hostile even if the attempt fails).
The EE Shapechange Trick has been moved to the list of no longer functional tricks, as one of the updates (I think around v2.5) closed the exploit. The game now forcibly removes shapeshifting spells through two different methods, and one of them involves forcing the character to cast a Shapeshift Natural Form spell that interrupts any other spells he or she was casting at the time. Even stretching out the casting time of the shapeshifting spell using a Time Stop or Shadowstep spell is unlikely to work; the spell should still get interrupted.
@histamiini: It does still work! But it requires more work for Polymorph Self now. Polymorph Self removes the shapeshifting spells twice, once at the intended end of the spell and again 4 seconds later. You have to use either Improved Alacrity or the quick save trick to have your aura clear for both periods. The quick save trick in general would be great for ensuring the trick was reliable, since you could spam the spell constantly.
This may be old hat to many of you but I have just discovered a way for non-stealthed characters to make 'surprise' attacks. You send an invisible or stealthed member of the party to scout ahead until they find a hostile creature. Characters who can't actually see the enemy are then able to click on them to attack. As often as not the enemy creature won't react when you walk up to them and whack them.
This has the advantage that your invisible scout stays invisible while your fighters can sneak up on targets. It doesn't always work but it is fun when it does and it also feels right tactically because you are able to ambush opponents rather than just blunder into them.
so i've found out an exploit that someone started but didn't make it all the way through, and this exploit is halarious because it makes you invincible to ALL damage, so here is how you do it;
first, make a human mage or sorcerer and have 3 CON, i prefer enchanter for the the +2 save bonus vs enchantments
next you have 2 choices, either;
A) equip the claw of kazgaroth
or ( the better option in my opinion )
in the nashkiel mines, you will find x2 vials of mysterious liquid on 2 kobolds, these vials poison and PERMANENTLY reduce your CON by 1, so what you do is; have your mage drink one of the vials, and then cast slow poison on them right away ( using an antidote is not fast enough ) do this for the 2nd vial and voila, you have 1 CON, and 1 HP, and this is where the cheese comes in;
as stated before if you have less than 12 HP you cannot die in one hit regardless, but better yet, if you have 1 HP then you are immune to all damage REGARDLESS of difficulty setting
but there is a small caveat with this exploit; you can never grow up levels again because you will either; gain 1 HP and now you are no longer invincible, or you will roll "negative" HP and actually die ( this is the only way you can die by "taking damage"
here are some screens of this halarious exploit:
who would have thought that a level 1 mage was by far the best defensive unit in all the realms
and better yet, my mage can actually hit things every once in a while with that 18 STR and gauntlets of weapon specialization haha
@sarevok57: The trick is in fact documented, but testing in IWD2 found that it was fairly unreliable, and it's not well-tested in EE.
my run was in BG EE and it was working like a hot damn, so far, nothing has been able to kill me damage wise ( or even kill me period for that matter )
Comments
However during my attempts to make it work with a solo Bard, I realised that the method lends itself to an easy approach to killing the Basilisks straight up. Not exactly cheesy, but certainly a non-standard tactic that can especially help characters with a poor thac0 who would otherwise struggle to kill many lizards before their Protection spells run out.
1. Buy 5-6 Stone to Flesh scrolls from, e.g., FAI.
2. Charm your favourite Basilisk using Algernon's cloak.
3. Use it to petrify another lizard, and quickly move your pet away before it shatters the statue.
4. Unpetrify the lizard. Voilà: you've reduced it to 1HP, making it an easy kill!
5. Repeat on all the other lizards, as well as anybody else you feel like (hint, hint, a certain arrogant adventuring party).
In fact this tactic is essentially a non-Cleric ranged (slightly more laborious) version of Harm. If you don't have a friendly Basilisk to hand then the 10th-caster-level Chromatic Orb petrifies at a +6 save, or you could use the standard spell-level 6 Flesh to Stone scroll/spell. Then undo either with a S2F.
Just be careful not to shatter the critter, or simply turn gore off, else you will destroy all its equipment*!
[*Except quest items.]
so there is a potential to use this spell to damage the enemy instead of boost your party, as long as you cast it on enemies and then run away waiting for the haste effect to expire, but the fatigue remain.
the number of spells needed to get an enemy fatigued depend on his con, for enemies with really high con even 2 spells stacked are not enough, but as an enemy start to feel fatigued he looses a luck point for every fatigue point over the 6 threshold.
the dragon or whatever will roll every time the minimum damage for his attacks and so on...
i am not completely sure of it, but i think that even the final wk boss is not immune to the domination from the staff.
Turns out most of the +APR items work! E.g. Belm, Kundane, Boomerang dagger, Firetooth dagger, Gaunt of Extra Spec. Unfortunately, missile weapons like Tuigan don't.
Still, neat little trick if you equip Boomerang/Firetooth dagger and combine Mislead + WoL trick to create 6 dagger chucking magelings.
(Nahls hotkey still seems to work with Mislead too. Clicking it twice on the clone or main for aura cleansing surprisingly hasn't been patched either.)
If you dual from Lathander (around lvl 11 for 2 usages of Boon) -> Mage, you can play as a strong fighter using 6x Boon (+5APR, +6dmg/thac0/saves). Add Imp Haste for nearly 2 mins of 10 APR.
Dualing from Tyr (lvl 12) -> Mage gives you a Spellslinger build with Melf's Meteor (5 APR) + Divine favor (+24dmg/24thac0) for 2 rounds.
Add in a few self-target cleric spells with WoL trick such as Mass Heal, Wonderous Recall, Cloak of Fear, False Dawn, Sunray to round yourself out as a support char too.
In the late game, Greater Evasion is also strong with WoL, granting 36AC, 18 saves and movement speed.
Kangaxx has resistance vs the wiz Flesh to Stone spell, but not to the scroll purchased from temples. Putting both scroll and wand on a clone, using say Helm of Vhailor, let's you repeat infinite.
Others claim it works on ToB bosses as well, but I haven't tested it.
Quest item duplication, or how to get two Flails of Ages in a completely reliable way.
First, assemble the flail in de'Arnise Keep. Next, recruit Rasaad and do his quest. For the final battle outside the temple, place the flail in Rasaad's inventory. After the battle, choose dialogue options so that Rasaad leaves the party to stay with the temple. Your party will now have two Flails of Ages, so you can dual-wield them if you like.
What's going on? When a character leaves the party for any reason, certain critical items they had such as bags and quest items are transferred to the protagonist. When a character is removed "permanently" from the party as part of a quest, all of their items are transferred to the party. In the case of Rasaad leaving at the end of his quest, both of these scripts run - which leaves you with two copies of any critical items he was carrying. There's not much use for duplicate bags or plot tokens, but the Flail of Ages is a powerful weapon that's flagged as a quest item.
Excellent find.
Just wondering.... the ring of gaxx is that flagged as a quest item?
It is treated in a similar manner as the flail in stores?
Fingers crossed it is and that Beamdog doesnt fix that one
So, there's another powerful item that can be duplicated this way.
I have doubts that it will remain, since Beamdog typically removes EE-introduced exploits.
If this applies to all items flagged as critical, then it could also duplicate the Rift Device, Control Circlets, Blackrazor, Sword of Balduran, Silver Sword, and maybe some useful EE quest items from other EE NPC questlines. Duplicating certain plot tokens may also allow you to complete certain quests twice for extra XP or maybe some other rewards, but that really depends on how a given quest is scripted.
The same would happen if they were in a script block, or if the order were reversed. The actions needs to split into two separate responses.
The other half of this is that a few plot events remove a character from the party and dump all of their stuff into the inventory of the rest of the party. Imoen being taken from you on exiting Irenicus' dungeon, Nalia being abducted in her personal quest, and Rasaad leaving at the end of his quest are the examples I can think of. This is generally done when the leaving is or could be permanent.
Both of these scripts remove the items in question from the party member being removed and give them to other party members. The bug here is that both scripts run in the Rasaad situation, which gives you two copies of the critical items; one copy dumped into the protagonist's inventory and another dumped into the inventory of a party member wherever there's room. I think I first noticed it when I had him holding the note from Hammerhelm, but I also have the habit of spreading scroll cases and gem bags around. I don't think this happens at the other points characters are removed; I'm pretty sure I've had Nalia carrying containers when she's abducted, and not gotten dupes out of that.
This definitely applies to all items flagged as critical. Some of that list you gave are difficult for other reasons; you'd have to smuggle the Rift Device out of the sewers using another exploit, Blackrazor can't be obtained yet when you're roaming Amn, and the Sword of Balduran (gold version) would require mods in order to bring it over from BG1.
Good point about Blackrazor and the Sword of Balduran. I was thinking of the Sword of Balduran from Deidre rather than the gold sword from BG1, but looking at the BG2 files, only the gold sword is flagged as critical.
credits to @BrightL1ghts and @kjeron , i just quote them, but those exploits could not miss from this thread.
SI in the @BrightL1ghts quote is obviously spell immunity.
I have safely killed Mutamin, Bassilus, Nimbul, Tranzig, and Mulahey this way so far. I assume this will work for other BG1 enemies that do this too.
If you don't want to do that you can just punch them unconscious.
Neither of those methods works well if you have SCS installed, but you can still use Algernon's cloak (attempting that doesn't turn victims hostile even if the attempt fails).
This has the advantage that your invisible scout stays invisible while your fighters can sneak up on targets. It doesn't always work but it is fun when it does and it also feels right tactically because you are able to ambush opponents rather than just blunder into them.
first, make a human mage or sorcerer and have 3 CON, i prefer enchanter for the the +2 save bonus vs enchantments
next you have 2 choices, either;
A) equip the claw of kazgaroth
or ( the better option in my opinion )
as stated before if you have less than 12 HP you cannot die in one hit regardless, but better yet, if you have 1 HP then you are immune to all damage REGARDLESS of difficulty setting
but there is a small caveat with this exploit; you can never grow up levels again because you will either; gain 1 HP and now you are no longer invincible, or you will roll "negative" HP and actually die ( this is the only way you can die by "taking damage"
here are some screens of this halarious exploit:
who would have thought that a level 1 mage was by far the best defensive unit in all the realms
and better yet, my mage can actually hit things every once in a while with that 18 STR and gauntlets of weapon specialization haha
my run was in BG EE and it was working like a hot damn, so far, nothing has been able to kill me damage wise ( or even kill me period for that matter )
do you have 1 HP? you must have 1 HP for it to work and as i said you have to stay at level 1 or else you will have more than 1 HP
when i get back from track practice today, i will continue that run and import of to bg2 and see if this amazing tactic still works