I could imagine trying for BG2 maybe. But they all seem to go with the highest difficulty setting and at least SCS and Ascension installed. I could try higher than core rules I suppose, but when I accidentally played with Ascension around 15 years ago (because my roommate had installed it) I remember Abazigal's lair took a whole weekend of endless reloading.
@Arvia: I actually play Core most of the time, and I only really play on LoB mode for the special solo challenge. SCS is recommended because it improves the AI and makes combat a little more complex, but SCS and especially Ascension are not required for the no-reload challenge. It only looks standard because some of the oldest players happen to be fond of it. @Grond0, notably, has used both SCS+Ascension and the unmodded game for his runs, whichever is most appropriate.
A basic principle in this community is that people set their own standards for their runs. Mods are entirely optional, and there's no stigma attached to mods that make the game easier instead of harder.
@semiticgod thank you for the explanation, I had no idea that SCS had any influence on the AI as well, I thought it's all just to make it more difficult. Hm, now I'm actually tempted to try at least for BG2. Next time. Right now I'm trying the Alternatives mod and I have no idea what to expect there. But I might try to reload as little as possible to get used to the idea. I already try to avoid things like spam resting of course, or reloading for failing to learn a spell and stuff like that. Thank you for keeping my fear in check
My pleasure! Don't forget to buff with Remove Fear or Resist Fear, and keep some Potions of Clarity on hand just in case.
In general, using long-duration cleric buffs and hoarding potions is a good idea. I have no idea how many times I've survived a fight solely because I managed to drink the right potion before a deadly spell hit!
I had no idea that SCS had any influence on the AI as well, I thought it's all just to make it more difficult.
it is all to make it more difficult, but try to do it mainly trough a better scripted ai, while the tactics mod, the old school alternative, rely more in the ai cheating, mages that can be not disrupted and so on.
scs is highly configurable as you can chose to install or not install most of his components, so you can find the enemy mages pre buffed or not and so on.
be aware that it changes some of the game mechanics, ie some spells work differently, so maybe to do the first no reload and at the same time familiarize with a more difficult and different game from the one you are used can be hard, but certainly not impossible.
Some SCS components are distinctly more difficult than the vanilla game. If you enable pre-buffing for enemy mages, enemy mages are going to be extremely difficult to kill; if you install the improved vampires component, vampires will be able to deal Constitution drain against characters with Negative Plane Protection, and CON drain can kill you with remarkable speed (though Protection from Undead scrolls and Potions of Absorption will still be great at thwarting their melee attacks).
Tactics was very crazy, with lots of bizarre, hyper-powered enemies. Ascension has a bit of that, in the sense that it involves making enemies much tougher than they otherwise would be, but it's not as extreme.
hehehe the orc inside me loves that extreme...
but the wise man in me knows that i should give a try to scs, sadly the lazy man in me don't want to put the effort in learning the differences between vanilla mechanics and scs mechanics.
then the fatalist in me kicks in and tells: "don't worry, it will happen when the time is appropriate, if it has to happen...".
sometimes i can not see myself as a person but only as a container of different and sometimes incompatible personalities. i really envy those "all of one piece" paladins like @marion...
@Arvia It looks intimidating, but its not that bad. You will fail, so sure, but that's jsut part of the run. I managed to accidentally do a no reload run of BG1 once, its just a matter of practice, absolutely, being careful.
@Arvia, I strongly suggest trying the minimal reload concept. I just made a thread for doing it in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and @semiticgod already linked my very old thread trying to get it started for BG players.
The bottom line spirit of a minimal reload is that you only reload in the event of a main character death or a total party wipe. You *never* save scum for better dice rolls or dialogue outcomes. You give full disclosure about your difficulty setting, any mods you're using, and any time you've reloaded. And, you keep a counter at the bottom of your post of how many times you've reloaded during the run, and why.
Sharing screenshots of your progress increases the fun. Even if you don't get a lot of views or "likes", you leave a record for yourself of runs that you might very much enjoy reviewing or going back over later.
A lot of people, like @CharlestonianTemplar , and even me in the past, both on this forum and in the ancient old Bioware forums, enjoy writing short stories detailing our roleplayed adventures to go along with our minimal and no reload posts. Before @SapphireIce101 first started the minimal reload concept on the Bioware boards around 2012 or so, there was a thread there called "Campfire Stories" where the basic thing was often done. Here on this forum, there's a far too-little used subforum called "Challenges and Playthroughs" where a lot of this kind of thing was often done. Sadly, nowadays, there is very little traffic there, so a lot of us who like "Challenges and Playthroughs" are finding a way to do it through either General Discussion or Off-Topic.
I joined this forum when it was first created. There were about three subforums, total. When manifold subforums first got suggested, I strongly advised against it, arguing that splitting the forum into dozens of subforums would split traffic in a way that would be confusing, and cause many posts to remain unnoticed. Sadly, I was outvoted. Now, we have two dozen or so subforums, and only three or four with any significant viewer traffic where you can post and hope to have your post read by more than a handful of people.
TLDR: I think you might enjoy trying a BG minimal reload and posting about it. I'd love to see @Arvia in screenshots, with stories about her adventures.
Minimal reloads can be quite characterful with consequences as well. For example you can play a CE Necromancer whose Power Word Reload requires the lifeforce of one of their NPC companions. So if you die you lose a companion, which gives a finite number of available reloads.
I like the solo challenge but never did an solo no realod. The unique game that i can play "no reload" is NWN, IWD/BG i failed every time that i've tried. But here is a insane no reload solo sorcerer for BG.
TLDR: I think you might enjoy trying a BG minimal reload and posting about it. I'd love to see @Arvia in screenshots, with stories about her adventures.
I'm sorry I don't know what TLDR means. Google says "too long, didn't read" but it doesn't make sense to me.
I will try minimal reload in the not so distant future. I don't reload many times anyway other than for the obvious (and frequent, in BG1) reason that I get killed or party members die permanently. OK, sometimes if I didn't pay attention and walked into a nasty trap, or if 3 people are dead and I have to carry 3 bodies to a temple 56 hours away (those BG1 traveling times!) But these habits can be changed I think.
I have several more questions before I can start, but I have to organize them a bit before I ask.
BTW @BelgarathMTH reading your old thread from the link above wasn't helpful, got sidetracked reading "order of the stick" after clicking on it in some post ?
TL;DR is just a way of presenting a summary. If you write a post and then decide you can summarize the point a little more succinctly, you say "TL;DR" and then write the summary.
It actually originated as a way of saying "Your post is too long, so I didn't read it," but these days it's more a self-effacing "Okay, I might be talking too much." It used to be impolite, but now it's usually not.
I realize that I should have phrased that in a different way. "not helpful" because I got sidetracked, not because it was useless and therefore I chose to get sidetracked. Sorry.
@Arvia , I highly recommend reading "Order of the Stick" from comic number 1 until you finally catch up with the present strips. With all of it put together, it is an amazing D&D graphic novel, with some of the best D&D storytelling and characters I've ever had the pleasure of reading.
The characters started out as simple stick figures, cracking 3rd edition D&D jokes while on a generic adventure. Over time, the art was upgraded, and the story arcs and characters began to evolve and complexify in an amazing way. It's also side-splittingly hilarious when it's not being serious.
@BelgarathMTH thank you, I will do that. I should probably do something more useful with my free time, but since I'm lying in bed with a nasty bronchitis this is perfect. Also started to read that Carl Sagan book after you quoted it several times in that other thread, but I think that's for a time when I can concentrate better.
@Arvia , I hope you feel better soon. "Order of the Stick" is great sick day reading. You can doze off or drift in and out of it without getting lost as to what's going on.
OOTS truly developed a life of its own; it's fascinating to note how it became a real story rather than a mere parody.
This is such an interesting thread; thank you for the idea. I think my usual approach is more that of a spectator, but in an involved way. At least in games with full party control such as BG (NWN is a different story), which doesn't have anything to do with the graphics for me. I basically try to treat my Charname similarly to their companions. It's a bit like playing a chess game against yourself. I remember doing this as a kid and physically changing seats so as to get into the mindset of each fictional player. Only that in this case, it's not chess but D&D, and I take the role of both players and GM. I tend to plan the story ahead a bit like I would as a GM (e.g. map out which companions to take along for which quests and in what order to complete them), but then I get into my characters heads a bit when it comes to making the actual decisions. I'm also quite pedantic when it comes to expressing the characters mechanically, which incidentally helps keeping repeat playthroughs tactically challenging. I enjoy strategy and tactics, but only within the bounds of what is plausible for the characters, which admittedly turns me into a very slow player. I concentrate on the right spell schools for specialist mages, limit each cleric to spells fitting to their deity and consider which equipment a character would prefer rather than which would make them most effective. After some sessions I get into Charname's head and write down their thoughts on the developments into the in-game journal, but those are the only times I really "identify" with them. Otherwise I consider them more like a character in a story in a story I'm writing, based on the adventure module the game provides. I do tend to gravitate towards playing women of the more intellectual classes and of rather grey/complex moral character, but I see this less as me expressing myself and more as wanting to explore protagonists less commonly explored in myths and stories. I always preferred the part of the GM when I used to play PnP, so I guess that's still the framework I'm following. It's interesting to conceptualise it, actually. Probably wouldn't have done so if it weren't for this thread.
Comments
A basic principle in this community is that people set their own standards for their runs. Mods are entirely optional, and there's no stigma attached to mods that make the game easier instead of harder.
In general, using long-duration cleric buffs and hoarding potions is a good idea. I have no idea how many times I've survived a fight solely because I managed to drink the right potion before a deadly spell hit!
scs is highly configurable as you can chose to install or not install most of his components, so you can find the enemy mages pre buffed or not and so on.
be aware that it changes some of the game mechanics, ie some spells work differently, so maybe to do the first no reload and at the same time familiarize with a more difficult and different game from the one you are used can be hard, but certainly not impossible.
Tactics was very crazy, with lots of bizarre, hyper-powered enemies. Ascension has a bit of that, in the sense that it involves making enemies much tougher than they otherwise would be, but it's not as extreme.
but the wise man in me knows that i should give a try to scs, sadly the lazy man in me don't want to put the effort in learning the differences between vanilla mechanics and scs mechanics.
then the fatalist in me kicks in and tells: "don't worry, it will happen when the time is appropriate, if it has to happen...".
sometimes i can not see myself as a person but only as a container of different and sometimes incompatible personalities. i really envy those "all of one piece" paladins like @marion...
@Arvia, I strongly suggest trying the minimal reload concept. I just made a thread for doing it in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and @semiticgod already linked my very old thread trying to get it started for BG players.
The bottom line spirit of a minimal reload is that you only reload in the event of a main character death or a total party wipe. You *never* save scum for better dice rolls or dialogue outcomes. You give full disclosure about your difficulty setting, any mods you're using, and any time you've reloaded. And, you keep a counter at the bottom of your post of how many times you've reloaded during the run, and why.
Sharing screenshots of your progress increases the fun. Even if you don't get a lot of views or "likes", you leave a record for yourself of runs that you might very much enjoy reviewing or going back over later.
A lot of people, like @CharlestonianTemplar , and even me in the past, both on this forum and in the ancient old Bioware forums, enjoy writing short stories detailing our roleplayed adventures to go along with our minimal and no reload posts. Before @SapphireIce101 first started the minimal reload concept on the Bioware boards around 2012 or so, there was a thread there called "Campfire Stories" where the basic thing was often done. Here on this forum, there's a far too-little used subforum called "Challenges and Playthroughs" where a lot of this kind of thing was often done. Sadly, nowadays, there is very little traffic there, so a lot of us who like "Challenges and Playthroughs" are finding a way to do it through either General Discussion or Off-Topic.
I joined this forum when it was first created. There were about three subforums, total. When manifold subforums first got suggested, I strongly advised against it, arguing that splitting the forum into dozens of subforums would split traffic in a way that would be confusing, and cause many posts to remain unnoticed. Sadly, I was outvoted. Now, we have two dozen or so subforums, and only three or four with any significant viewer traffic where you can post and hope to have your post read by more than a handful of people.
TLDR: I think you might enjoy trying a BG minimal reload and posting about it. I'd love to see @Arvia in screenshots, with stories about her adventures.
I'm sorry I don't know what TLDR means. Google says "too long, didn't read" but it doesn't make sense to me.
I will try minimal reload in the not so distant future. I don't reload many times anyway other than for the obvious (and frequent, in BG1) reason that I get killed or party members die permanently. OK, sometimes if I didn't pay attention and walked into a nasty trap, or if 3 people are dead and I have to carry 3 bodies to a temple 56 hours away (those BG1 traveling times!) But these habits can be changed I think.
I have several more questions before I can start, but I have to organize them a bit before I ask.
BTW @BelgarathMTH reading your old thread from the link above wasn't helpful, got sidetracked reading "order of the stick" after clicking on it in some post ?
It actually originated as a way of saying "Your post is too long, so I didn't read it," but these days it's more a self-effacing "Okay, I might be talking too much." It used to be impolite, but now it's usually not.
The characters started out as simple stick figures, cracking 3rd edition D&D jokes while on a generic adventure. Over time, the art was upgraded, and the story arcs and characters began to evolve and complexify in an amazing way. It's also side-splittingly hilarious when it's not being serious.
This is such an interesting thread; thank you for the idea. I think my usual approach is more that of a spectator, but in an involved way. At least in games with full party control such as BG (NWN is a different story), which doesn't have anything to do with the graphics for me. I basically try to treat my Charname similarly to their companions. It's a bit like playing a chess game against yourself. I remember doing this as a kid and physically changing seats so as to get into the mindset of each fictional player. Only that in this case, it's not chess but D&D, and I take the role of both players and GM. I tend to plan the story ahead a bit like I would as a GM (e.g. map out which companions to take along for which quests and in what order to complete them), but then I get into my characters heads a bit when it comes to making the actual decisions. I'm also quite pedantic when it comes to expressing the characters mechanically, which incidentally helps keeping repeat playthroughs tactically challenging. I enjoy strategy and tactics, but only within the bounds of what is plausible for the characters, which admittedly turns me into a very slow player. I concentrate on the right spell schools for specialist mages, limit each cleric to spells fitting to their deity and consider which equipment a character would prefer rather than which would make them most effective. After some sessions I get into Charname's head and write down their thoughts on the developments into the in-game journal, but those are the only times I really "identify" with them. Otherwise I consider them more like a character in a story in a story I'm writing, based on the adventure module the game provides. I do tend to gravitate towards playing women of the more intellectual classes and of rather grey/complex moral character, but I see this less as me expressing myself and more as wanting to explore protagonists less commonly explored in myths and stories. I always preferred the part of the GM when I used to play PnP, so I guess that's still the framework I'm following. It's interesting to conceptualise it, actually. Probably wouldn't have done so if it weren't for this thread.