Doubts with companions in SoA/ToB
Wisterias
Member Posts: 141
Hi.
I have a question... I want to play it with a group entirely mine, because I prefer to play my own characters and I'm not into romances, discussions or interactions between them or any of that mess, because honestly it bores me and I just skip the constant babbling. But I would like to do the quests of Dorn, Neera, Hexxat etc just because yes and for the XP, reward, items... Is it feasible? I mean, temporarily putting them in my group to complete their quests and then kicking them out. That's what I did in BG1EE, I wonder if I can do the same here or it equires that they actually travel with the group.
I have a question... I want to play it with a group entirely mine, because I prefer to play my own characters and I'm not into romances, discussions or interactions between them or any of that mess, because honestly it bores me and I just skip the constant babbling. But I would like to do the quests of Dorn, Neera, Hexxat etc just because yes and for the XP, reward, items... Is it feasible? I mean, temporarily putting them in my group to complete their quests and then kicking them out. That's what I did in BG1EE, I wonder if I can do the same here or it equires that they actually travel with the group.
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Once you know the story and setting more thoroughly, well you can play however you want. Well obviously, you always can. But you will miss a ton of the game if you do so.
I try to get interested, but I can't. Anyway, I play tabletop roleplaying with people, so I don't need that in a video game; my main character's story and the events of the adventure are enough for me, without the party members constantly nagging about this and that.
.....There is a workaround for this, however. Namely, removing her from the party while everyone else is out of her sight range. I usually do this in the Copper Coronet; I have her go upstairs to an empty room, and shut the door. I can then reform the party and recruit whomever I wish. Once I want her to return, I remove someone, then go to her room and speak to her. I assure her that her contibution is valuable and ask her to rejoin.
.....A couple of NPCS raise mild objections when discharged. Korgan for example, will require you to pay him a hiring fee before he consents to rejoin, but that's fine. Money is usually not a problem.
.....Also, you will need to reform parties to prevent NPC conflicts. You cannot have Edwin and Neera in the same party, for example. Edin hates the chaotic nature of Wild Magic, and will stomp off in disgust ... permanently... if Neera is in the party. Keldorn and Mazzy will attack Hexxat, Keldorn will eventually attack Viconia, and, needlesss to say, having Keldorn and Dorn in the same party is right out.
.....And of course, only those companions who are with you when you do the actual transition from SoA to ToB appear there with full levels, gear etc. that they earned in SoA. This means that if, for example, you want Dorn to have the Abyssal Blade and The Visage, he has to be in your party when you transition. So, choose wisely.
Well, this is exactly my problem. Too much trouble and I have no patience for all this 🤷🏻♂️. But yes still want to make the quests.
Yes I always avoided Jaheira, gives me headache, his quest and romance is messy.
.....jaheira is female, BTW. She has some silly dialogue, but isn't nearly as annoying as, say, Anomen. But she is very useful as an NPC. She has healing spells like a cleric; she can even raise the dead with Harper's Call, which Valygar and Cernd cannot do.
.....But she also has some very useful combat spells. Unlke mages, who have to engage in a mental battle to comtrol any elementals they summon, Jaheira can just pop out Fire and Earth elementals, who automatically obey. And her Insect plague is very useful against enemy spell casters.
.....As a Druid, she is neutral, which means she can work together with any party of varied alignments. Yes, she is limited to weapons usable by Druids, but there are enough decent ones that this hasn't been a problem for me. Currently she has Belm, the Spear of the Unicorn and the Staff of Thunder and Lightning. There are also some +3 and +4 Quarterstaves around, although I haven't bothered picking up any of those yet.
Yes, she is fine in combat. I mean her romance, quests, etc.
The Harper Quest is epic; I loved it!
As for romance, a lot of the NPCs have such in their scripts. Anomen, for exmple, is a total horndog, while Dorn is bisexual, Hexxat is lesbian, etc. I never get involved in such nonsense. These entanglements are completely optional, so I just ignore them.
Every other romanceable character in the unmodded game will only go for one gender. And most of them only care for some races. If you're playing a male dwarf, your choices are Dorn, Neera or nothing.
This is all so creepy.
I know, but the process to get it is too tedious for my taste.
Clearly a matter of taste. I love epic quests!
I never really do that myself, i enjoy the companions and some of the crazy banter.. especially between Edwin and Korgan who are absolutely hilarious.
In any case, you don't really miss any content.
Many of their quests can be done without them and the ones that can't are usually quite short and forgettable anyway.
Neera, Hexxat, Rasaad and Dorn have never really interested me in BG2 and i don't know much about them.
I guess at least Neera's quest in BG2 is somewhat long and unique, i remember doing it once.
Never touched the others in BG2.
It seems to me though, that you'd enjoy Icewind Dale a lot more than BG
I had good times playing IWD1 and 2. I prefer IWD2 actually.
Well for me BG1,TOTSC,SOD,SOA,TOB... already have lot of dense content without the romances, conflicts, banters and stuff.
Frankly, I just think it's a bad idea to try and juggle party members in SoA just to complete their sidequests. It's tedious, it's immersion breaking. I would recommend against it.
Thread is about BG2
As someone who did an almost full completionist run, years and years ago, I can say it's not worth it in BG2. It's a little different than BG1, in that I think swapping companions just doesn't work out as well. Whereas BG1 you can experiment a little more.
I think it can be fine a bit early in SoA, such as if you want to knock out certain companion quests or do stronghold quests with specific folks present. The Harper/Jaheira quests might be an example here or Valygar and the sphere. But these are all quests you can trigger yourself and don't have to artificially kill time to activate.
Trying to do the EE companion quests or stuff like Nalia, Jan or Mazzy's secondary quests is just a chore, and ultimately not worth it imo. The XP/gear rewards are especially meager on any non-EE companion quests, aside from Jaheira, just fyi. I'd compare it to raiding every house in Beregost in BG1. Sure you can do it but there's little reward and you've subjected yourself to a bunch of tedium to achieve it.
You can get part of what you are looking for by using @argent77's Convenient EE NPCs mod https://argent77.github.io/A7-NoEENPCs/index.html This will allow you to disable the EE NPCs which means the characters don't appear so you won't be able to do their quests but there is an option to make the items tied to their quests available elsewhere in the game. This is the option I always use.
There is also an option in the Tweaks Anthology that allows you to disable all Bioware/Beamdog romances. https://www.gibberlings3.net/files/file/973-the-tweaks-anthology/ Personally I can't stand the romances so I always use this one as well.