Too Many Quests
FredN
Member Posts: 243
....I posted about this a while back in a different forum, but I am re-opening the discussion because right now, I am feeling overwhelmed. ToB is pretty linear. Yes, there are a few decisions, like which Bhaalspawn to go after first, but in general all choices lead to the same end. SoA is totally chaotic by comparison.
....In order to at least try to manage this, I have made a list of quests and in what order to do them. Jahera's Harper quest is massive and yields a ton of Experience, but it also means being ambushed by Harpers everywhere we go. Hence, I am putting this off for a long while, no matter how much she whines about going back to Harper Hold.
.....Likewise, much to Yoshiro's chagrin, I am delaying talking to Bloodscalp, since this means allying with the Shadow Thieves, which results in being ambushed periodically by Vampires. I have resolved never to talk to anyone, no matter how much they insist on bothering me. Firkraag, for example, can wait, in spite of the fact that I have to talk to him to resolve the Dryad quest.
.....However, despite my best efforts, more quests pile up no matter what I do. I went to the Umar hills to solve the disappearances, and WHAM! A bunch of other quests popped up.
1) Someone named Mazzy has vanished, in addition to the others.
2) Some incompetent Cowled Wizard wants Mimic Blood
3) Bands of Shadow Fiends are roaming the area
4) I need to find Valygar, who has a cabin somewhere in the area
5) Diplomatic negotiations with Ogres and their friends
6) Various silly things that are readily resolved, like chickens who lay odd eggs, or kiddies who want me to buy them stuff they shouldn't have. Minor distractions, but still ... sheesh!
....In order to at least try to manage this, I have made a list of quests and in what order to do them. Jahera's Harper quest is massive and yields a ton of Experience, but it also means being ambushed by Harpers everywhere we go. Hence, I am putting this off for a long while, no matter how much she whines about going back to Harper Hold.
.....Likewise, much to Yoshiro's chagrin, I am delaying talking to Bloodscalp, since this means allying with the Shadow Thieves, which results in being ambushed periodically by Vampires. I have resolved never to talk to anyone, no matter how much they insist on bothering me. Firkraag, for example, can wait, in spite of the fact that I have to talk to him to resolve the Dryad quest.
.....However, despite my best efforts, more quests pile up no matter what I do. I went to the Umar hills to solve the disappearances, and WHAM! A bunch of other quests popped up.
1) Someone named Mazzy has vanished, in addition to the others.
2) Some incompetent Cowled Wizard wants Mimic Blood
3) Bands of Shadow Fiends are roaming the area
4) I need to find Valygar, who has a cabin somewhere in the area
5) Diplomatic negotiations with Ogres and their friends
6) Various silly things that are readily resolved, like chickens who lay odd eggs, or kiddies who want me to buy them stuff they shouldn't have. Minor distractions, but still ... sheesh!
0
Comments
Only a few things have absolute timers, like Jaheira’s Harper quest line, or Nalia’s family related story. And these all come to you, so there can be little doubt you need to get to them *now*.
I’m usually eager to get those quest lines going fast, those are the ones I resolve before going for Imoen. But I’m actually in a minority on going for Imoen quickly, I think most gamers prefer to put her rescue off until all the sub-adventures are done. No doubt this would make the Spellhold story very easy.
But however you approach it, just remember the length of your “to do” list is not a big deal to the game. All those urgent calls for help will in fact, wait until you get to them. And personally, I like the game play enough that I find it a good thing to know I have a lot of game yet ahead of me.
.....Consequently, I reloaded to a prior save, and put off aligning myself with any group for the moment. Makes it a lot easier to go places and do things. Eventually I will go to Bloodscalp and start the campaign against the Vampires. Once they are exterminated, then, and only then, will I start the Harper quest line. One group of implacable enemies at a time is my limit.
Don't we all! But I am waiting for that particular quest until I can recruit Hexxat. Not only is she the best pure thief in the game (the only pure thief, actually, unless the MC is playing a thief variant), but she has Vampiric abilities. Without her shroud she has ridiculous stats, can summon allies, use Domination, and, a rather important attribute when fighting other vampires, cannot be level drained. Nor can she be permanently killed, since no enemy in the game carries wooden stakes around. The worst that can happen if she goes down is that I have to recover her gear. She will be back 24 hours later. Oh, and her coffin functions as a bag of holding. Sweet.
I also use argent77’s mod that lets me disable any or all EE NPCs.
Oh dear; I fear I am quite the opposite. My Dream Team is MC, Dorn, Korgan, Hexxat, Edwin and Viconia. In ToB, Korgan is replaced by Sarevok.
Also I was a wee bit in error in the prior post. Yoshimo is also a pure thief variant, however I think we all know what happens to him. He cannot be in the party after Spellhold.
I’ll normally use Jaheira, Minsc (until I replace him with Keldorn), Aerie, Nalia (temporarily), Valygar (temporarily). I have used Mazzy and Nalia. Obviously Imoen. And I’ve been recruiting Skie when I can use her.
.....Valygar is decent, but serves no real purpose after the Planar Sphere quest is over. I usually replace him with Korgan as the occasion arises. Note that I do not go for the all evil dream team right away. I do it gradually, in stages. There are a lot of other NPCs who have personal quests that I want to do, and some of the NPCs are not compatible with each other. For example, Neera and Edwin (best mage in the game BTW), cannot co-exist in the same party, Anomen will not tolerate Hexxat, and let's not even talk about Keldorn and Dorn interacting. So, I do Neera's Forest campaign before trying to recruit Edwin. No rush, he will wait.
I love playing around with multi-class characters. The slowness is part of the fun of it. It takes patience, but they often become very powerful. Notice Jaheira is on my list too, she’s more problematic as a multi-class. But she can be a potent team-mate too.
For the others, well Minsc makes me laugh. Even after 25 years of playing! Neera’s funny too, I’ve often used her, at least for a while in BG1. But I never have room for her in BG2.
Ultimately, that’s the fun of it to me, building a strong character and strong team regardless of the challenge. My current run is posted as “Gerold and Louisa”. I created two characters that are not particularly optimized. They’re good, but well short of my best characters. It’s fun first of all, to actually roleplay the characters based on their personality and backstory. And secondly to build an effective team based on characters that would really get along. Their weaknesses add to the challenge and interest.
I like this. The idea of friendships, family and love are what keep me coming back to the game. Making them effective is fun too. But the *best* or *most* of anything doesn’t interest me so much.
....And before you ask, I went back to check the chapter 1 quest log, and yes the Dryad quest is mentioned, along with the Windspear Hills location. That didn't appear on the map, though, until I actually spoke to Jierdan.
But it's not the first time you met different behaviors in your game.
Indeed, I have mentioned a half dozen oddities in my gameplay. How can I check what version I am running? I logged into Steam, and it almost looks like I am running ... version 1.3?? Could that even be possible?
Oh, I know that. I was just commenting that I had been using a waaaay outdated version of the game (installed back in 2017 if I recall), which was probably what had been causing certain quirks in my game play. Like the WIndspear Hills not showing up on the world map.
I see. I had wondered how that would work. That does make sense. At this point, I have no intention of restarting the game from scratch, so I will just have to work with whatever persistent quirks remain.
.....Going to head to Trademeet. Hopefully after mucking around a bit there,the finale to Jan's quest line will kick in, and I can then go to the Wild Forest and replace him with Neera. Her quest line is pretty long; also she looks a lot hotter than Jan does. I've been saving up a bunch of wands to give her, so she can use mostly those in combat, and thereby avoid those unpredictable Wild Magic surges.
you know how to solve them, you can be pretty fast about it.
You probably refer to vanilla game? There are so many more mods that can be installed.
My favourite combination is to use Lava's mods. His mods are mostly small-ish (usually)
and many quests are fairly easy (typically). I tend to rush to the southern district, solve
most quests there, then visit the bridge block and go from there. I visit the main copper
coronet at a much later time.
Having a todo-list which steps you want to do first, often helps. It may be easier to
focus on easier quests and finish them, and not start too many quests, as that can
be super-confusing. So in this regard I concur.
Many quests are very easy to solve though. For instance, the mimic's blood - you
only have to go to another area on the same map, fight one enemy, and that's
it (and then of course, lateron, another enemy, but then the quest is kind of
finished). But triggering this quest can be avoided by not visiting his house in
the first place.
> I want to get as many of the Athkatla quests as possible done before grtting into all that stuff.
Yes, I usually do this too. If you install more mods, you will even have more quests
to solve.
Region of Terror is one of the biggest in this regard. I kind of solve all the things
in it before going to the Underdark, though Drizzt is not my most favourite
melee fighter (I like Korgan and Dusk more).
Jaheira’s Harper quest is a bit annoying. I tend to not solve it usually, since it
takes so long. I usually have the Paina NPC mod and take Paina; or Viconia, which
for some reason I like a lot. Only a few NPCs are greater, such as Jan. Some NPCs
just are more fun than others.
> Consequently, I reloaded to a prior save, and put off aligning myself with any group for the moment.
Yes, this is the better choice usually. If you do not yet commit, nobody wants to
attack you; whereas if you commit e. g. "I help the shadow thieves", the vampires
want to beat you down. (But this can be fun - more fights too. See also morpheus'
tactic remix, although I recommend to start with as few modifications, as some
options can make fights a lot more difficult. Though probably people should know the
vanilla game fairly well before trying it. One component I like quite a lot are the
nightly bandit raids - so when you travel at night during Amn, you can have more
small skirmishes.)
> Eventually I will go to Bloodscalp and start the campaign against the Vampires. Once they are exterminated, then, and only then, will I start the Harper quest line.
I usually try to solve Jaheira's quest as quickly as possible. But it is still a bit annoying.
For instance, if I have the mod installed with Boo being kidnapped, then Minsc will
complain at the area where Jaheira may get weakened by the Baron guy, so now I
have two timers running. Some things can become quite complicated, so keeping
the game simple is a useful strategy. Some quests are easier than others so it often
helps solving these first.
> You actually use Aerie? OK, first of all, I try to avoid any and all Muulti-class NPCs, since they level so slowly.
I kind of like Aerie, but admittedly she is weak. Vicona is better as pure cleric and
Edwin as pure mage etc...
Some people also hate her being whiney, but then there is the wings mod Skitia
maintains, which I kind of like. That one I can recommend - if you don't know it,
play it through with Aerie once. There is also that mod by Acifer - I have not tested
it yet but it would be kind of fun to put the evil wings from the demon city onto
Aerie and corrupt her.
The only thing Aerie brings to the table is versatility really. A mage and cleric in
one character can be nice, in particular when her skeletons are big and strong.
She can be remote and do e. g. haste or slow or various buffs. While I favour
Viconia or Edwin, I think Aerie is not totally useless. It may depend on party
composition.
> Secondly, while a cleric/mage sounds decent, Aerie is pretty fragile; you need to keep her well away from anything that can damage her.
Yeah that is also my big problem with her, especially on max or almost max difficulties.
Aerie often gets one-shotted by e. g. Demon Knights or others; or wounded once
and then has to run away. While things such as stoneskin etc... help, the problem
is that there are many situations where she is the weakest link, e. g. spell damage.
She often died whereas my big fighters just drank a healing potion and shrugged
off most damage. Jan unfortunately also has that problem though he is a bit more
resilient than Aerie IMO (and he can in principle hide; Jan is cool).
> Valygar is decent, but serves no real purpose after the Planar Sphere quest is over. I usually replace him with Korgan as the occasion arises.
Yeah I dump him too. I'd wish he would be more interesting. I never did his quest
with Sunna or what's her name either. He could need a few more content-related
changes, perhaps also a few more useful items in another mod. Nobody seems to
really like him though so no mod for him.
> I actually prefer the graphics on the earlier version.
I don't know the steam version, but perhaps if you are fine installing mods, check
out the lighting related mod. It was a fairly big download (for desktop computer
at the least; no clue what platform you use), but I liked the visual changes. Some mods
focus on visual aspects, and among those mods, some are really neat. The lighting
related one I can recommend, e. g. it improves fire places and I think also lanterns
at night. Overall my impression was that this led to visual improvements.
> .And here is another reason to postpone the finish to the Dryad Quest. The instant we reached the WIndspear Hills, we were attacked by the altered followers of Helm. There is no chance whatsoever to avoid this fight
I think there may be one or two mods that change the options here. I never tested it, but I am pretty
certain there was a mod where you had more choices. I always ended up killing them. :P
> .Going to head to Trademeet.
I always try to avoid triggering Rasaad's quest there. I like his quests, but Rasaad is annoying (haste does not work on him
so he slows down my party).
> Hopefully after mucking around a bit there,the finale to Jan's quest line will kick in, and I can then go to the Wild Forest and replace him with Neera. Her quest line is pretty long; also she looks a lot hotter than Jan does
Debatable. :P
I like Jan because I use him as thief-replacement and spell-helper. He can do breach lateron also mass
illusion. Neera may be more powerful, but then I miss thief-related stuff, so I kind of keep him around.
Sometimes I try the main character as triple class mage cleric thief or something was it ... mage
fighter thief, but triple class always kicks back by having so low levels, which really hurts. The game is
not super-well balanced, high abilities are too powerful IMO. I understand why they did it, but in
particular whirlwind is sooo overpowered with two +5 weapons on hasted buffed chars.
> I've been saving up a bunch of wands to give her, so she can use mostly those in combat, and thereby avoid those unpredictable Wild Magic surges.
Understandable. I am lazy so I avoid wands; Edwin usually seems more powerful and useful. My
party is not the most holy party ever!
Oh, you have no idea. My plan is to min/max MC's experience, while slowly working towards my ideal party. I'll do the main side quest for each NPC, then dump them. My goal, my eventual "dream team" if you will, consists of Edwin (best pure mage), Hexxat (best pure thief since Yoshimo eventually vanishes), Dorn (Best and only Blackguard), Korgan (Best berserker) and Viconia (better than Anomen due to innate Drow magic resistance). And in ToB, I usually replace Korgan with Saravok, since I can pump his Halberd skill up to use Ravager +6, while Korgan is into axes. (Yeah, I know, the Axe of the Unyielding is pretty nasty also, but it takes just as long to get it, and Ravager is just cooler IMO.) A mean crew indeed!