First Time playing Aielund, tough?

Baldgeek

So playing through for the first time after all these years now that's it's right there in the launcher .... playing a Paladin ... currently 5th level and gotten to the brigands in the woods and attempted the cave ... so far lost both party members and died several times ..the wyverns seemingly impossible ... I'm taking precautions .... is it just me or is the combat just tough??

sarevok57

so because of this post i finally started playing aielund, and while not impossible, definitely a brutal battle

i was going solo and during this fight i hit level 6 ( i was able to get the 2 younger ones to come "upstairs" while the older one stayed downstairs ) and after i killed to the 2 younger ones i grew up to level 6 but even then, i had to save/reload scum to win against the main wyvern

also i noticed that back in the cave there is a big crossbow looking thingy which i assume is supposed to be used on the wyverns to make the battle easier, and interestingly enough, this isn't even the hardest battle for act 1

there was another battle which i had to save scum so hard for because the creature's AC was just out of this world;

there will come a point near the end of act 1 where you will have to fight a dude who is on horse back, and his AC is nuts, probably around 28 or so, and he hits like a freight train and has gobs of HP, but there is also a crossbow thingy that you can shoot at him and some of his goons for minimal damage, but holy smokes that battle was tough, even with save/load scumming

granted also, i don't know if it matters at all, but i also play on the hardest difficulty as well

Zaxares

I actually tried to use the ballista versus the wyverns, but I found it to be barely effective at all. I managed to get through that fight as a Wizard using a combination of the henchmen plus summoned monsters to tank the wyverns into spells like Web and Grease, but bear in mind that this was on Normal difficulty so my party members weren't affected by my AoE spells (without direct party control, I find it too difficult/frustrating to play as a spellcaster in NWN1).

sarevok57

Zaxares wrote: »

I actually tried to use the ballista versus the wyverns, but I found it to be barely effective at all. I managed to get through that fight as a Wizard using a combination of the henchmen plus summoned monsters to tank the wyverns into spells like Web and Grease, but bear in mind that this was on Normal difficulty so my party members weren't affected by my AoE spells (without direct party control, I find it too difficult/frustrating to play as a spellcaster in NWN1).

this is why i always play solo in NWN

ithildurnew

*headscratch*
I've always found that Aielund is a cakewalk as far as difficulty (without min/maxing), especially compared to Swordflight... though to be fair you have a full party at your disposal with Aielund for most of the combat, vs Swordflight which has long stretches where you're solo or have a companion to babysit who by intention/design is not all that helpful.

sarevok57

ithildurnew wrote: »

*headscratch*
I've always found that Aielund is a cakewalk as far as difficulty (without min/maxing), especially compared to Swordflight... though to be fair you have a full party at your disposal with Aielund for most of the combat, vs Swordflight which has long stretches where you're solo or have a companion to babysit who by intention/design is not all that helpful.

did you play aielund on the hardest difficulty? although i do agree the game gets easier the higher level you get, but there are some parts where the "difficult" part is that the amount of natural 20s enemies get is just obscene

my AC was around 45 or so around level 20ish where enemies could only hit me with 20s and yet they were hitting me like i was a broad side of a barn

never, ever have i seen enemies roll as many nat 20s as they do in aielund

ithildurnew

I normally don't crank up the difficulty artificially higher than core; if a module is easy it's easy. If it's EXTREMELY easy to the point of ruining what otherwise might be a good solid module (my experience with AL2: Crimson Tides of Tethyr) I would consider playing on a higher difficulty, but you shouldn't need to jack up the difficulty to make up for content that doesn't present a sufficient challenge.

Higher/insane difficulty for most RPG's imo is an artificially distorted environment/ruleset that doesn't make up for content that inherently poses an insufficient challenge; it's like ordering steak at a restaurant and finding it's underseasoned, and the manager says 'well just put a lot of extra pepper on it, what's the problem?'.

To be fair I've been playing these sorts of games for a long time; I don't consider myself an elite player/powergamer, just old school enough to believe RPGs (especially DnD based ones) fundamentally should be fairly challenging and require a learning curve. I love Swordflight and always install SCS for BG/IE games, but seldom play on insane difficulty's bloated numbers, etc.

BelgarathMTH

@sarevok57 , Just a heads up, the NPC's in Aielund have a lot of dialogue, and they're all plot-critical characters who are integrated into the story. The author, Savant, has actually written a novel series using those characters and lore, and gotten it published. So playing your first time through Aielund solo, while okay if that's how you roll, is going to be like playing Baldur's Gate 2 for the first time with no party. You'll be missing a big part of the content.

sarevok57

BelgarathMTH wrote: »

@sarevok57 , Just a heads up, the NPC's in Aielund have a lot of dialogue, and they're all plot-critical characters who are integrated into the story. The author, Savant, has actually written a novel series using those characters and lore, and gotten it published. So playing your first time through Aielund solo, while okay if that's how you roll, is going to be like playing Baldur's Gate 2 for the first time with no party. You'll be missing a big part of the content.

thats alright, i was playing it more for the adventure than the story, but then i got to a part in part 4 where i came upon a bug where the game won't continue so i stopped playing, it was a decent playing experience until i got up to that point

BelgarathMTH

@sarevok57 , Yeah, unfortunately, Aielund is pretty notorious for scripting errors, because Savant pushed the envelope of what the engine is capable of in creating complex story and combat events. That's both a good and a bad thing, and there are workarounds that people have found when the scripts crash and/or area transitions fail to open up when they're supposed to. However, a lot of people will just stop playing user-created content as soon as they hit a problem like that.

I finished Aielund once, long ago, and I remember hitting several problems in the later chapters that I had to go online to find ways to get past, but nowadays, I have a very low tolerance for technical issues coming up during my gaming time, so I tend to stay away from mods in general.