Obe's training companions
__Q__
Member Posts: 29
During the BG1 prologue, the Gatewarden offers to let you train with Obe the Illusionist. Obe sets you up with five temporary companions: Arkanis, Canderous, Osprey, Mordaine, and Deder. I thought it might be an interesting challenge to play through BG1 with these characters, so I looked around for a method for keeping them in my party. I found this old website, which explains an exploit for doing so in the original version of BG1. I vaguely remember using this trick back in the day, although I never played through the game with these characters, I just messed around with them, if anything.
As it turns out, beating the game with them probably wouldn't be much of a challenge. As the website explains, the training companions all have impossibly high stats and/or unique special abilities, and some of them are better than the companions you can normally recruit during the game:
Deder (the Fighter/Thief), with his insane amount of extra thief-skill points, is easily the best of the bunch. His only real weakness is his 11 Strength score, which limits his backstab potential, but this can easily be worked around by giving him potions or the Gauntlets of Ogre Power. He also has two proficiency points invested in Short Sword, which isn't ideal but isn't the worst thing in the world either (at least they're not in dagger).
Canderous (the Cleric) is probably the best healer in the game since he has 18 Wisdom, two extra 1st level spells, and the Lay on Hands ability.
The only character who isn't that great is Osprey (the Cleric/Mage). Her extra 1st level wizard spell and Invisibility skill are pretty awesome, but her ability scores suck, especially her 10 Wisdom. She gets no extra priest spells, and even if you give her all three Tomes of Understanding (one of which you don't get until chapter 6), she only gets a single bonus 1st level spell. You'd be much better off using them to get Canderous's Wisdom up to 21, which would net him six extra spells of varying levels.
The exploit detailed on that website doesn't work in the Enhanced Edition (I couldn't get it to work, anyway). However, I did find a fairly easy method for keeping the companions using the console. After you recruit them, select all of your characters, bring up the console, and type C:MoveToArea("AR2600"). This will warp you back to the Candlekeep map, although you'll be outside the walls. If you select all your characters, move your cursor inside the walls, then hit CTRL+J, you will be teleported back inside. You can probably also recruit them by using the CreateCreature command, although I haven't tried it.
You actually run into Arkanis and Deder again in chapter 6 (in the Candlekeep Catacombs). I used the console to teleport there with them in my party, and they were still there. You can accuse them of being dopplegangers, which is kind of perfect.
Anyway, I was curious if anyone has played through the entire game with any of these companions. Which is your favorite, and why?
Edit: I just noticed that in the Enhanced Edition, Arkanis doesn't have his extra Hit Points. He has 29 HP, which is actually one less than if he started at level 1 and you leveled him up with "Max HP on Level Up" enabled. Canderous and Osprey don't have their extra spell slots, either. But Deder still has his crazy thief skills and all the characters have their special abilities.
As it turns out, beating the game with them probably wouldn't be much of a challenge. As the website explains, the training companions all have impossibly high stats and/or unique special abilities, and some of them are better than the companions you can normally recruit during the game:
The folks at BioWare also decided to play with the Candlekeep NPCs a bit, and "cheated" each of them some benefits: For instance, Arkanis is Level 2, and the maximum number of hitpoints for a Level 2 Fighter with 19 CON is 30—Arkanis has 39. This isn't much of a benefit in the long run, but 9 extra hitpoints could really save your butt in the early stages. Canderous has his already formidable spellcasting abilities enhanced with 2 more 1st-level spells than is legal, and also has the Special Ability of Lay On Hands. Again, not that much difference in the long term, but 2 extra Cure Light Wounds and a Lay On Hands per day will be a huge bonus to a low-level party. Next comes Deder, who's been hacked an extra 120 Thieving points, making him the equivalent of a Level 8 Thief when he's only Level 2. I wouldn't use Deder, personally—too much like cheating for my tastes. Too bad, really, as he's otherwise a good character. Mordaine has only a tiny augment—she has the Special Ability of Slow Poison, once per day. And Osprey? Well, despite her unique skill of making the PC want to feed her to the bears, she has 1 extra Level 1 Wizard spell slot, and has the Special Ability of being able to cast Invisibility, once per day. So Arkanis and Mordaine are almost entirely non-hacked, Canderous and Osprey are sort-of legit, and Deder is cheated beyond reason.
Deder (the Fighter/Thief), with his insane amount of extra thief-skill points, is easily the best of the bunch. His only real weakness is his 11 Strength score, which limits his backstab potential, but this can easily be worked around by giving him potions or the Gauntlets of Ogre Power. He also has two proficiency points invested in Short Sword, which isn't ideal but isn't the worst thing in the world either (at least they're not in dagger).
Canderous (the Cleric) is probably the best healer in the game since he has 18 Wisdom, two extra 1st level spells, and the Lay on Hands ability.
The only character who isn't that great is Osprey (the Cleric/Mage). Her extra 1st level wizard spell and Invisibility skill are pretty awesome, but her ability scores suck, especially her 10 Wisdom. She gets no extra priest spells, and even if you give her all three Tomes of Understanding (one of which you don't get until chapter 6), she only gets a single bonus 1st level spell. You'd be much better off using them to get Canderous's Wisdom up to 21, which would net him six extra spells of varying levels.
The exploit detailed on that website doesn't work in the Enhanced Edition (I couldn't get it to work, anyway). However, I did find a fairly easy method for keeping the companions using the console. After you recruit them, select all of your characters, bring up the console, and type C:MoveToArea("AR2600"). This will warp you back to the Candlekeep map, although you'll be outside the walls. If you select all your characters, move your cursor inside the walls, then hit CTRL+J, you will be teleported back inside. You can probably also recruit them by using the CreateCreature command, although I haven't tried it.
You actually run into Arkanis and Deder again in chapter 6 (in the Candlekeep Catacombs). I used the console to teleport there with them in my party, and they were still there. You can accuse them of being dopplegangers, which is kind of perfect.
Anyway, I was curious if anyone has played through the entire game with any of these companions. Which is your favorite, and why?
Edit: I just noticed that in the Enhanced Edition, Arkanis doesn't have his extra Hit Points. He has 29 HP, which is actually one less than if he started at level 1 and you leveled him up with "Max HP on Level Up" enabled. Canderous and Osprey don't have their extra spell slots, either. But Deder still has his crazy thief skills and all the characters have their special abilities.
Post edited by __Q__ on
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now to be honest, if you want you can just make that team with the "create party" option that the EEs come with, but to be honest again, they were kind of boring to use, at least for me they were
Getting the Tutorial Companions If You Decide Later - In Vanilla BG+TOTSC Patched
You'll have to cheat.
Trying to save the game (whether auto, quick, or archive) after spawning them in via CluaConsole:CreateCreature("Cander"), froze my game every time! And with an archive save, the file disappeared! Quicksaves and autosaves don't seem to get deleted, but it just won't make any changes (like actually saving).
Clarification: I think you can save if the spawns are fresh and circles still cyan.
Trying to CluaConsole:MoveToArea("XXX") with a Ctrl+Q'd spawned party, even if you consciously make sure you select all, only Charname gets teleported. The rest are blocked.
You have to go back to Prologue Candlekeep AR2600 and recreate the exact events of the exploit.
-Ditch your party where you normally would; go solo. (I do everything from Beregost.)
-Tele to Candlekeep
Maybe spawn in an Obe to do it, but you'll have to Ctrl+Y him afterwards.
CluaConsole:MoveToArea("AR2600")
-Go to the stairs. (For tradition's sake)
CluaConsole:EnableCheatKeys()
Ctrl+J
-Spawn a Gorion on the stairs.
CluaConsole:CreateCreature("Gorion")
-Tele into Obe's Training Building
CluaConsole:MoveToArea("AR2643")
-Ctrl+Y the Obe already in there.
-Spawn in a fresh Obe.
CluaConsole:CreateCreature("Obe")
-Do the rest of the old exploit.**
It'll be weird having the Gorion fight again, but it's the only way - besides starting over - I've had work. A tell tale sign that it worked is if the green highlight of the parties' portraits are just as bright as Charname (unlike dimmed and therefor stuck in a building somewhere).
Save the game. Breathe!
Yes, I know, they're boring, even compared to extra party members I've made (moving the save file to MPSave and back), and possessing iffy stats, but I saw it as a challenge.
A benefit of getting the Trainees later is not having their lvls scale up the lvls of normal party members you meet, letting you mold the 2nd lvl of party members how you want them. Example: doing the classic early exploit, you wind up with a L2 Imoen which doesn't have a Wand of Magic Missiles, has 2 hp less than if you went for the max, and 10 thief points put in Stealth that I wouldn't have (that's what the Boots of Stealth are for).
**Warning! Doing the exploit will advance the Chapter by 1. If you choose to go through with all of THIS, fix it immediately so you don't forget. It'll mess up major chapter checks along the way and journal entries.
Set the Chapter to what # was before the exploit:
CLUAConsole:SetGlobal("CHAPTER", "GLOBAL", #)
But, yeah. Cheesing the Candlekeep NPCs into your party was only barely "worth it" then, and certainly isn't now. They just aren't appealing enough to make me tolerate their lack of soundsets: Arkanis is a dollar-store Kagain, a single Slow Poison isn't going to make me want Mordaine instead of Dynaheir, Viconia beats Canderous, etc. The only one good enough to exert myself for is Deder, and of course he's far too good. So what's the point. What surprises me is that nobody's mentioned using the old exploit not to get the NPCs themselves, but rather their items: Plate armor, a Small Shield+1, Wand of the Heavens, these things make a lot of difference when you're Level 1 with barely any money.
No, the only "exploits" that are even possible now (without actually cheating) are the only ones that made sense then: Using the NPCs' items & abilities during the training session. Did Shank or Carbos land a hit on you? Deder's got a free Potion of Healing. Want to speed-run through the tutorial, enjoy a temporary +1 ApR, or get the most out of a Friends spell? He's got an Oil of Speed, too. Is your Lore too low to ID that Dagger+1? Mordaine's isn't. Are you playing with the mod component that makes all potions start Unidentified, and that un-IDd Potion of Clarity you stole is bugging you? Osprey's got an ID memorized. Stuff like that. My favorite one: In the pre-Enhanced Edition days, the free Cure Light Wounds right before leaving Candlekeep was applied not by a Priest of Oghma, but by Gorion himself. If you were still under the effects of Deder's Oil of Speed, you would run out of the cutscene before Gorion finished casting that healing spell, meaning you could leave Candlekeep with less than 9 hitpoints. So, if you let Shank/Carbos whittle you down to just 1 hp, drank the Oil of Speed, and then told Gorion you were ready to leave, you could actually die, during Gorion's fight with the Armored Figure. "Run, child! Get out of here! . . . oh crap!"
There's a different trick you can use to smuggle out the gear in the EE, though. If your protagonist is an arcane caster class, neutral on the good/evil axis, with Find Familiar among their starting spells, they can summon a familiar with the Pick Pockets ability. Unequip everything you want, have the familiar steal it all from their inventories, and leave (with the familiar still out). Since the items aren't in any party member's inventory, the leaving script doesn't catch them and you keep the goods. Reclaim them from your familiar, and sell or use them at your leisure.
Even the cheap stuff like weapons have their uses; that axe, hammer, mace, and short sword are unbreakable.