Some quest-tions

messy

1. What nonmagical weapons are safe from breakage during the iron crisis?

2. Is there a way to finish the druid grove without a druid in your group (Cernd or otherwise)?

3. Is there a way into the planar sphere without Valygar (alive or dead)?

4. Between Ashideena, Dwarven Thrower, Crom Faeyr, and Runehammer, what reason is there to use anything other than warhammers?

sarevok57

1. katanas will never break, plus high quality weapons ( you can get the black smith in beregost to sell these after giving him a vial of the mysterious liquid from the nashkiel mines )

in bg2, normal weapons never break

3. to finish the druid grove, you do not need cernd in your party to do so, but if you do not have a druid in your party ( either charname or jaheira ) then you need to use cernd to finish it for you, again, he doesn't have to be the in the party, all you need to do is tell him that faldorn is behind all the chaos and you are good to go

3. the cheat console is the only other way, if you don't want to use that, then you either need him in your party or you need to use his dead body

4. depending on how you know where, when and how to get those hammers, plus to be honest, ashideena is not even all that great only dealing 1d4+3 damage with +1 electrical damage, dwarven thrower can only be used by dwarves, crom faeyr cannot be completed until chapter 6 and that is IF you want to sacrifice the gauntlets of ogre power AND the belt of frost giant STR and also you basically need to finish firkraag's dungeon to get access to the area where HoTB is and then on top of that kill a whole bunch of mind flayers, so pretty slim chance you are doing that at low level, and runehammer cannot be obtained until ToB

unless, the question is; is there better weapons than those hammers in the meantime? most certainly, especially for the reasons i share above, celestial fury is an amazing katana, flail of the ages is also an amazing crushing weapon, there's x2 +3 battle axes that can also be found early and also a +3 longsword that gives +2 CHA which helps with store prices, and the best part of those weapons is that they are not race restricted and they are all available in chapter 2

jmerry

There are four groups of nonmagical weapons that are safe from breakage in BGEE:
1. Exotic weapons: katana, wakizashi, ninjato. Presumably, these were made elsewhere from good iron and imported.
2. Wooden weapons: club, quarterstaff. Obviously, no iron involved.
3. Ranged weapons: bow and arrow, crossbow and bolt, sling and bullet, dart, throwing dagger, throwing axe.
4. Quality weapons, sold by Taerom after completing the vial quest in chapter 3. Not all breakable weapons have a quality version, though.

One nonintuitive bit here? Throwing axes can be used in melee, and they won't break if you do that. Or deplete, for that matter.

For the druid grove finale ... when you confront Faldorn, you have the option for any druid in the party to duel her. Alternately, if you let Cernd out of jail (even if he was never in the party) and he's not dead, he'll show up and have the option to duel her. If you don't have any druids and you either killed Cernd or left him in jail, the far less rewarding evil path is the only remaining option.
Incidentally, the game doesn't check Cernd and Jaheira's classes. If for some reason they aren't druids, they can still duel Faldorn.