New SoD Campaign, Getting Frustrated.

Benjin

So I just finished my play through of BG1 and had all my favorite party members decked out in top tier gear, ton of gold, my PC is a Level 9 elite assassin taking on the biggest baddies, solo backstabbing them to exploding pieces. Sarevok was a joke by the time I got there. The start of SoD when I take on the rest of Sarevoks followers was more of the same. Cut to leaving Baldur's Gate, none of my original party is an option to choose from, suddenly my PC sucks at hiding in shadows, I have no gold and my party is getting owned because they're level 9 with no spells and have only low level trash gear. I beat BG1 and got the "Leave No Friend Behind" achievement because if any party member dies, I would reload my save, maybe I'm being a little to anal about that but I'm really getting frustrated. I'm not going to lower the difficulty. In BG1 I was able to leave the main quest for later and go off to wherever to gain the EXP and gold I needed to tackle more challenging enemies, I feel like SoD is much more linear so that isn't as much of an option. Any advice? Should I just leave solo, hide in shadows/invis potions until I find all of my old party? Is that even possible? Whats up with my hide in shadows being at 100 and failing 50% of the time? I expected a difficulty jump, BG is a challenging game but it feels like things are out of balance.

This isn't me trying to criticize the game, I got all of the BG saga on sale recently and I've been loving it, it really has brought me back to when I was 10 years old playing these games back on my old iMac. I'm really interested to see where Beamdog brings the story in SoD but I'm ragequitting every 30 mins due to these difficulties.

Grond0

You would have found the same situation going from BG1 to BG2 in the past. It makes for better progression within a game if you don't make things too easy at the start, but I agree it comes as a bit of a shock to the system after completing the previous game .

If you want to make things easier for yourself you can:
- make sure you carry through lots of things to sell from BG1 on the PC. I normally play solo, but it's easy to hold say 60k worth of gems and jewelry in your gem bag to give you an instant boost when you get to Baldur's Gate in SoD.
- strip the equipment from the various PCs in Baldur's Gate, even if you don't intend to use them. They have some pretty good stuff between them.

As for stealth, you need both hide in shadows and move silently to be at 100 for stealth to reliably work in unlighted areas. However, the penalty for light means you will need considerably higher scores for stealth to work reliably in lighted areas. While for most thief abilities there's no advantage to having a score above 100, that's not the case with stealth.

If none of your original party was available in Baldur's Gate, it's doubtful you will find them all in SoD. Some characters from BG1 can be picked up, but many can't. However, there are some new potential companions that you might want to try out.

ThacoBell

Low level trash gear? The game gives you free end-game BG1 stuff to start with. Its not top tier, but its perfectly fine for fighting Sarevok with.

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Benjin

Thanks for the responses, I managed to make it through the beginning and I'm not having too much trouble now. I found Jaheira, Khalid and Neera so that has made things much easier. My main problem was with the bridge that gets blown up. I couldn't get through it without party members being killed, so I tried to solo it and right before my character was about to die it went to a cut scene and the fighting stopped.

ThacoBell wrote: »

Low level trash gear? The game gives you free end-game BG1 stuff to start with. Its not top tier, but its perfectly fine for fighting Sarevok with.

I don't know what you are talking about, Minsc came with a basic two handed sword and base leather armor, Dynaheir had zero equipment and had no spells over level 1 in her mage book. I was able to give Safana Imoen's leftover gear, or I had some decent stuff for her moved over from peoples inventory I can't remember off the top of my head. Maybe its because I had Minsc and Dynaheir in my party for a very short time in BG1 when I was low level and they were just transferred as they were? Maybe if I never had them in my party at any time the would be given gear.

Rik_Kirtaniya

Benjin wrote: »

Maybe its because I had Minsc and Dynaheir in my party for a very short time in BG1 when I was low level and they were just transferred as they were? Maybe if I never had them in my party at any time the would be given gear.

That's exactly the case. I played a fresh SoD game without importing, and they started with a good selection of arms and armour. Also, Dynaheir had spells upto level 3 or 4, as far as I remember.

By the way, I think all your original gear from BG1, that were in the inventory of your original party members, should be in a chest in your room in the Ducal Palace. Have you tried checking there?

Also, if you want to retain some part of your money...

Try spending all of it on gems and such things, either in BG1 or within the span of the initial SoD dungeon, and they will move to that chest when you finish that dungeon. Now you can sell them, and get a substantial portion of the money back (which is better than nothing). It's somewhat of an exploit (since you had no way of knowing your money would get lost), but one can always think of RP reasons to do that.

ThacoBell

@Benjin "I don't know what you are talking about, Minsc came with a basic two handed sword and base leather armor, Dynaheir had zero equipment and had no spells over level 1 in her mage book. I was able to give Safana Imoen's leftover gear, or I had some decent stuff for her moved over from peoples inventory I can't remember off the top of my head. Maybe its because I had Minsc and Dynaheir in my party for a very short time in BG1 when I was low level and they were just transferred as they were? Maybe if I never had them in my party at any time the would be given gear."

Okay, yup. That's exactly the problem. If you never put an npc in your party, they are levelled and given appropriate gear for SoD. If they were in your party at any time, they are transferred as is to prevent scripts from mucking with your party.

Check your chest as well (Its labelled "charname's chest") your equipement from the npcs that left after the prologue should be in there. Its in the ducal palace, as well as every camp the army makes on its way north.