Best fight in the game!

Hegemon

If I close my eyes and think at the best fight in bg1 the first that comes to mind is the bandit camp! For me that one is... perfection. Of course now i just web and fireball like a mad man laughing all the way. But the first time?, the first five times or 10 times I was like what the hell? Is a huge camp FULL of bandits and a couple of them felt like master swordsman! It was a great feeling to win such o big fight (after so many tries) trying all spells, wands and options my meager party had then.

Strangely I find the best/memorable fights in bg1 are the ones when you take on a small army or a big party. Probably one vs the party dosen't realy work well for mages or creatures like it does in bg2.

What are your most found memories of battles past?

jsaving

My favorite: "hello, friend." My very first TPK in BG1.

RedRodent

The first one that came to mind was Mulahey, but that might have more to do with him being the first true boss fight in the game. Still, I love the layout of the fight: him luring you into his room before summoning his minion at your rear a second later, doing the good old K Rool fake-out if you attempt to show him mercy, all the while a numb Xan is just standing around completely oblivious in the other room.

Ultimately though, it's between Nimbul and Davaeorn for me. "I am death, come for thee" still haunts my dreams; the damn bravado of taking you on right in front of the guards and everything, just as you are about to get some rest. Perfection. Meanwhile, Davaeorn dimension dooring around his thoroughly-trapped lair while emptying out his spellbook is a fight that never disappoints. It's also one of the most satisfying to beat in the entire game, if not only because you finally get to go to the titular city afterwards.

ThacoBell

The battles with random assassins always stand out to me. Even if they aren't the most powerful opponents, they are placed in a way that you are pretty likely to run into them at low levels if you do any explortation. I really like the feeling of early BG, it catches the feeling of being on the run and in over your head very well.

ilduderino

Davaeorn was tough and showed how powerful magic could be, like a proper boss - the random fights are also great including Nimbul (unexpected) and the ladies you fight after exiting Nashkel Mines (as already on your knees after Mulahey)

Zaxares

For me, the BG battle that always stands out in my memory is the final fight with Sarevok. That was probably the only fight in the original game (before TotSC was released anyway) where I really had to pull out all the stops and use all of my hoarded potions to achieve victory. Well... victory by my standards, which is that I must beat the battle without suffering any party member deaths.

DinoDin

Will double down on the finale. It's one of the most satisfying RPG finales imo. And it's the best of the three finale fights in the series.

It works as a kind of final exam for all the lessons you've had up to this point. Very much resembles a souped-up version of some of the bounty hunter fights you've had. Needing to engage with traps, needing to face a very diverse set of baddies. And there's no obvious way to cheese it or some kind of special workaround that unfortunately taints some other RPG end battles.

dunbar

The Tarnesh encounter, simply because it really sets the tone of the game early on and confirms that yes, you really are playing D&D and there is a Sadistic Evil DM behind it all.

ThacoBell

DinoDin wrote: »

Will double down on the finale. It's one of the most satisfying RPG finales imo. And it's the best of the three finale fights in the series.

It works as a kind of final exam for all the lessons you've had up to this point. Very much resembles a souped-up version of some of the bounty hunter fights you've had. Needing to engage with traps, needing to face a very diverse set of baddies. And there's no obvious way to cheese it or some kind of special workaround that unfortunately taints some other RPG end battles.

Unless you get lucky and land a charm on Sarevok!

VanDerBerg

The battle with invisible stalkers and battle horrors in that house in Baldur's Gate, where the mage who gives you the Balduran's Helm quest lives. I still consider it the hardest battle in BG1 for a lowish level party. Don't think I came even close to winning it the first time I played.

VanDerBerg

Davaeorn was tough and showed how powerful magic could be, like a proper boss

Odd, I have always found non-SCS Davaeron pretty trivial to beat. He looked like a potentially very powerful mage who could obliterate my party if he wanted, but who is armed with completely useless spells. So I would send Minsc or Ajantis upfront and just wait until he unloads his while spelbook of pointless spells on them (regardless of their immunities) and starts fighting them melee, at which point Minsc/Ajantis would kill him with two swings of a sword. He barely used any offensive spells and would just walk around the dungeon aimlessly using dimension door. SCS Davaeron was much more offensive and much more powerful, but again...fighting him 6-on-1 makes for quite an easy fight.

BelgarathMTH

VanDerBerg wrote: »

Davaeorn was tough and showed how powerful magic could be, like a proper boss

Odd, I have always found non-SCS Davaeron pretty trivial to beat. He looked like a potentially very powerful mage who could obliterate my party if he wanted, but who is armed with completely useless spells. So I would send Minsc or Ajantis upfront and just wait until he unloads his while spelbook of pointless spells on them (regardless of their immunities) and starts fighting them melee, at which point Minsc/Ajantis would kill him with two swings of a sword. He barely used any offensive spells and would just walk around the dungeon aimlessly using dimension door. SCS Davaeron was much more offensive and much more powerful, but again...fighting him 6-on-1 makes for quite an easy fight.

Davaeorn is tough if you don't know you need to be protected from fire and lightning. Or if you don't have a thief to take care of the battle horrors trap. Or if you can't protect every party member and get unlucky or make a mistake with positioning. Sure, he's easy to beat if you know ahead of time exactly what to expect and how to counter it. That's true of pretty much every fight in the game, including SCS fights.

VanDerBerg

Sure, almost every major fight is quite hard when you do it the first time. The difference is that I found/am finding that some SCS fights, especially in BG1, are hard even when you know what to expect. One example being the one I just did, in the Chapter 7 at the top of the Iron Throne building with the chick mage who spawns two ogres. I couldn't find any way to defeat her other than spamming her with wands of fire/heavens and oils of fire to kill her in the first round or two. Otherwise, she casts what seems to be infinite supply of invisibility spells together with stoneskin/minor globe of invulnerability/protection from normal missiles/spell turning/fireshield, and I have no way of hurting her while she throws fireballs around.

The letdown in non-SCS Davaeron fight is that I literally only need to cast protection from fire on one of my characters and send him there to stand while supposedly very powerful mage just pointlessly hovers around the rooms using shadow doors and throwing useless spells until he runs out of them (which happens quite quickly). The difference between that and other fights that I will win that fight 100 out of 100 times now, and many others I won't (I've never been even close to attempting no-reload setting).

ilduderino

My first memory of the Davaeron fight over twenty years ago was him zipping around blasting my party and being unable to hurt him due to his spell protections - this was on a first playthrough, I have since managed to git gud, don’t worry, thanks

Maurvir

The key to these battles is to have your party lay low, send in a thief as a D&D version of an AWACS, then use summons to bleed off the worst of the spells. Once a mage is reduced to crappy 1st and 2nd level spells, it's time to send in the party.

Yeah, it's kind of a cowardly approach, but I'd rather a bunch of skeletons or other summons soak up those high-level spells than my party.

sarevok57

i think my favourite fight was fighting drizzt back in the vanilla days, using exploits of coarse, but it was so much more fun;

first i would gather my whole party on to the island in the middle of the map

next i would make sure the path finding was set to 4000 so then drizzt wouldn't be smart enough to go around the island to attack my chums

then i would summon some skellies at the edge of the lake just in eye shot of the island

then i would bring a party member down to get drizzt hostile and bring him into the skellies

if all worked out, drizzt would just go to the shore of the lake not being able to move through the water and just stand there while the rest of my team just hurled gratuitous amount of ammunition at him until he fell, i even remember sometimes throwing out webs and hold persons to see if they would stick, and every once in a while i he would get stuck in a web which would be awesome, and one time, out of the 1000s of battles i did at that island i got a hold person to land, now THAT was amazing i wonder if i still have some screenshots of this....?

so this is where i would lure drizzt



and it seems that this was the game where hold person connected



and these are just other shots of my trying to get spells to connect






even the gnolls would help out every once in awhile

Blackbɨrd

I love the fight at the end of Irenicus's dungeon in the sewers, against the Shadow Thieves on that bridge. I don't know why but I just love that bridge, it's design, how it looks etc. I don't think there's anything else that looks like that in the game.

sarevok57

Blackbɨrd wrote: »

I love the fight at the end of Irenicus's dungeon in the sewers, against the Shadow Thieves on that bridge. I don't know why but I just love that bridge, it's design, how it looks etc. I don't think there's anything else that looks like that in the game.

to be honest i actually love the entirety of irenicus' first dungeon, so many people hate the first dungeon because they've done it so much, but even after ALL this time, i still love going through it,

for me it kind of feels like a blissful warm up for what is to come in the big bad world of BG 2

Maurvir

sarevok57 wrote: »

Blackbɨrd wrote: »

I love the fight at the end of Irenicus's dungeon in the sewers, against the Shadow Thieves on that bridge. I don't know why but I just love that bridge, it's design, how it looks etc. I don't think there's anything else that looks like that in the game.

to be honest i actually love the entirety of irenicus' first dungeon, so many people hate the first dungeon because they've done it so much, but even after ALL this time, i still love going through it,

for me it kind of feels like a blissful warm up for what is to come in the big bad world of BG 2

It's a fairly well done dungeon. Sure, you see it a lot, and eventually memorize it, but it's definitely one of the better ones in the game.

Zaxares

sarevok57 wrote: »

i think my favourite fight was fighting drizzt back in the vanilla days, using exploits of coarse, but it was so much more fun

I love how your screenshots slowly go from day to night, implying that Drizzt essentially just stood at the lakeshore the entire day while people fired arrows at him. XD

sarevok57

Zaxares wrote: »

sarevok57 wrote: »

i think my favourite fight was fighting drizzt back in the vanilla days, using exploits of coarse, but it was so much more fun

I love how your screenshots slowly go from day to night, implying that Drizzt essentially just stood at the lakeshore the entire day while people fired arrows at him. XD

hahhaha, actually most of those pics are different play throughs, you can tell by the portraits

Blackbɨrd

sarevok57 wrote: »

Blackbɨrd wrote: »

I love the fight at the end of Irenicus's dungeon in the sewers, against the Shadow Thieves on that bridge. I don't know why but I just love that bridge, it's design, how it looks etc. I don't think there's anything else that looks like that in the game.

to be honest i actually love the entirety of irenicus' first dungeon, so many people hate the first dungeon because they've done it so much, but even after ALL this time, i still love going through it,

for me it kind of feels like a blissful warm up for what is to come in the big bad world of BG 2

Yeah I find that funny how some people hate it to the point where they have to completely skip it, no matter how many times I do it I love how mysterious the dungeon and the villain keeping you captive is. The whole setup, people (former servants/friends I think?) in jars and monsters is just so good. Especially the people in the jars and the clone.

I think the most important part is moderation. If you do the Windspear hills quest for example and then shortly after do it again then you will get sick of it because you've just done it and it becomes a little repetitive. I think some people can't just help restarting and get quickly get sick of doing the same dungeon (no matter how great it is) over and over.

ilduderino

I enjoy it but it is hard to do it very fast even when you know it well, which makes it much more potentially annoying than Candlekeep. There are also some unnecessary sections eg the djinn dialogue about whether you press the button, which was really interesting the first time but turned out to be pointless

ThacoBell

Zaxares wrote: »

sarevok57 wrote: »

i think my favourite fight was fighting drizzt back in the vanilla days, using exploits of coarse, but it was so much more fun

I love how your screenshots slowly go from day to night, implying that Drizzt essentially just stood at the lakeshore the entire day while people fired arrows at him. XD

He takes his dodgeball game VERY seriously.

Skatan

I like the 'random' (not very random after multiple playthrough, but you know what i mean) mixed assassin groups. The coolest battles are adventure group vs adventure group where each team have a mix of classes and items. My personal favorite is Molkar and his crew which can probe [Edit; Ahem.. I don't mean Molkar is into probing, I meant prove of course ] a bit troublesome if unprepared. The second favorite one is the group you meet outside the nashkel mines exit who also can prove quite challenging if not metagaming and exiting the mines with empty spellbooks.

ThacoBell

One of my favorite SCS components is the one that makes two of the bounty hunter groups random ambushes when traveling. You never know when they will come for you. Once you hit level 3, at elast.

Maurvir

ThacoBell wrote: »

One of my favorite SCS components is the one that makes two of the bounty hunter groups random ambushes when traveling. You never know when they will come for you. Once you hit level 3, at elast.

Except that it is possible to have them never ambush you. My last BG1 party (with Eilrie) never encountered them. I'm not sure why, or whether it was a bug, but the only assassins they ran into were in Nashkel. The other group near the alternate mine exit never materialized, nor did the group near the gullykin village. It was a touch disappointing.

ThacoBell

Weird, I've always run into them, though I haven't done many SCS runs yet. At least one of them seems to always hit me as soon as I hit the level threshold.

Dharius

For me, having completed a run recently, I’d say the most challenging fights included:

*Drizzt (obviously, but strangely satisfying)
* Shandalar (obviously, but strangely satisfying, also)
* Aec’Letec and his cultist pals (Death Gaze, resurrection and magic resistance, yowzah!)
* Dwarven Doomguards in Durlag’s Tower (they really pack a punch)
* The final fight (Sarevok, undisarmable traps, and bandit chums, yuk!)

Loved those fights though, despite the hundreds of reloads...

I also have a soft spot for Irenicus’ Athkatla labs/dungeons...they’re suitably mysterious and creepy. I never skip them.

jmerry

Those bounty hunter groups in SCS ... it's a progression threshold, not a level threshold. They show up starting in chapter 3.

On the dwarven doom guards - they're exactly the same as regular doom guards, except they attack twice as often. The best solution, of course, is to not let them close to melee range and attack you. I find a Wand of Lightning works wonders - they aren't resistant at all, and you can get some good bounces in those corridors.

Dharius

Ah, never thought of lighting bolt, usually it just fries my own party...

I forgot Kahrk, how could I forget him? He’s a mean mother...Dunno why, but Remove Magic didn’t work on him...maybe he has a globe of invulnerability active which prevents it? On a side note, I’ve found Remove Magic to behave oddly in BG1 (as it wasn’t originally part of it, and just never seems to take effect for me) and suspect some kind of bug...but I’ll have to investigate further on my next run through