Can this game be beat in the Legacy of Bhaal difficulty mode without cheese or exploits?
enhancedgamerx
Member Posts: 90
Assuming you are starting out with a single level 1 character, recruiting npc companions to bolster your ranks, like you normally do, and not by making a full custom made party of level 8 killing machines right from the get go. Or is LOB itself so noncanon and cheesy that you are kinda "supposed" to cheese through it?
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starting at level 1?
no
this difficulty was never intended on being in the BG series, since there is no "new game plus" type stuff that IWD has
on core difficulty there should not be a single fight that you can win requiring cheese tactics
on insane difficulty, there a very few fights that still require some cheese to do so
in my opinion, a fight that isn't considered cheese is;
you had a scout to look ahead for you to see what is coming up next
you cast preparation buff spells as need be
and then you fight said fight casting more spells and using items as need be
and at the end of the fight, whatever the result, that is what you get
exploiting AI, exploiting game mechanics that aren't intentional ( aka blinding a thief so you can use traps in battle ), meta gaming hard, save/reload scumming are all cheese type tactics
with LoB the main killer in that scenario is the arduous amount of HP that enemies have, i believe the formula is x3+80 which is just obtuse, back can make the game harder because hard hitting enemies will live longer, but by the end of the day i find it so boring, especially when you are a massive warrior swinging a mighty sword and the lowliest of kobolds it taking hits to the face like a champ.... lol?
but with that said, from as far as i can tell, through out the whole BG series ( not including SoD because i haven't played that game enough to know ) on insane difficulty, there is perhaps only a small handful of battles that require cheese tactics to win ( the abizigal fight in ToB for instance ) and perhaps the kangaxx fight as well ( once you become immune to imprisonment that battle is laughable, but if you aren't immune to imprisonment then that battle can be nigh impossible )
my thinking is that the bg series was made to be "no reload" type runs, just like in PnP, although the game does autosave in case you get a total party wipe out and you really like that team, so then you can just load back, because even the game knows it can be unfair sometimes with just a few bad rolls of the dice
i remember the first time i ever played BG1 back in '99 the only time i saved the game was when i was ready to quit ( which i never wanted to do, because i was so obsessed heh ) and the only time i reloaded the game was when my top character got killed, other than that it was complete blind runnin whatever happened is what happened, best part was, the game was set to the highest difficulty and even that didn't slow me down from liking the game so much back in those days
marble cheese is my favourite
That seems to be a rather narrow view of the 'correct' way to play the game. I know for instance some people dislike kiting of enemies on the grounds it's too boring or time-consuming, but it's not in the least cheesy in the sense of exploiting game mechanics (you're just sensibly exploiting the weaknesses of particular enemies).
The idea of not exploiting meta-knowledge also seems a bit questionable to me. A lot of encounters in the game are staged, non-random ones and the presence of those people would be well known in surrounding areas (in a few cases the game actually signals this, e.g. for Bassilus). Is it really so unreasonable that a party of adventurers would have been asking around for information about what to expect?
I agree with your other point about meta knowledge. But it is muddy water, trying to discern for yourself what information your character ought to have and what information you really want them to have.
I think that when Black Isle made Icewind Dale 1's Heart of Fury mode (the predecessor to BGEE's Legacy of Bhaal mode), they did not intend the party to start at level 1. The config description says this:
The equivalent description for Icewind Dale 2's Heart of Fury mode says the same thing, except that your party should be levels 15+. Black Isle most likely intended you to import a party of high-level killing machines to Heart of Fury mode, as even with such a party, Icewind Dale 2's Heart of Fury mode is far from easy.
So I don't think that starting Legacy of Bhaal with level 8 characters would be cheesy.
As for Rasaad, I wouldn't call him a liability like Neera, but I would call him next to useless. His lousy AC and inability to wear a helmet mean he is going to get hit constantly. The only way to get *some* use out of a low-level monk that I know, is to use his movement speed to have him rush in for one hit, then run back out again before he gets clobbered in the head. If enemy archers target him, then, goodbye Rasaad, we hardly knew ye.
I've always thought Beamdog made a terrible decision with Neera's and Rasaad's classes, and I almost never use them.
For Neera I would recommend BG Enhanced NPC mod "change Neera to sorcerer" component. For me it solved ALL problems with her.