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Advice for a new player?

Mysterious_TravelerMysterious_Traveler Member Posts: 9
My first time playing BG, and I intend to play BG2 and all of the dlc between the two.

I started as a Berserker. I'm a few hours into my playthrough and I realised that I wanna duel class into either a mage (so I can cast cool spells) or thief (so I can steal and sneak). Problem is, I'm level 2 right now and my stats are as follows:

STR 18
DEX 12
CON 18
INT 11
WIS 11
CHA 18

Am I screwed and unable to duel class unless I restart? From what I understand I can only do that if I have 17 in INT or DEX respectively.

I also sorta wanna solo the game or have a small party, any recommendations or advise for a new player? I know it may be better to have a big party, but I sorta am really chaotic when I play so I work better alone haha. That and from what I've read party members don't add too much. I just wanna experience the game so many people love and have a good time. I like being overpowered and tend to be evil sometimes too.

Thanks!
Post edited by NaturalBornKieler on
FenrirWolfganger

Comments

  • Allanon81Allanon81 Member Posts: 327
    edited April 2021
    @Mysterious_Traveler I do believe you’re screwed. INT and DEX need to be at max stat per class to dual-class into. As to playing, go with a evil party of six. You’ll be more powerful evil-aligned and I personally always play with six, but I’m thinking about going solo. More characters make for a richer experience imo. But there’s all kinds of ways to play really. I use this for a little monster insight :

    https://the-eye.eu/public/Books/rpg.rem.uz/Dungeons & Dragons/AD&D 2nd Edition/Core/
    Mysterious_TravelerJuliusBorisovFenrirWolfganger
  • @Allanon81 Dang it haha, well I started a new file today and got a 90 Ability Score instead of 88 so maybe it was a blessing in disguise. I also may be more evil this time... I already got a bounty on me BESIDES the one that's part of the story lol.

    Thanks for the advise too! I'm thinking a Berserker Mage for sure now. What evil characters do you recommend for the party?

    I sorta like playing as a lone wolf character but I like the idea of party interactions sometimes. But I want all the EXP to myself haha.
  • Allanon81Allanon81 Member Posts: 327
    edited April 2021
    @Mysterious_Traveler You can just pick-up characters along the way and if you run into a seemingly evil character, give a good guy the boot. I’d recommend stripping their loot. Hehehe. Be mindful of Reputation. If your party leader (top portrait) is evil, then good aligned members will attack or leave if it gets too low. Also Nashkel can be real tough if everybody there wants to kill you because your Rep is so low.
    Mysterious_Traveler
  • @Allanon81 Sounds good! Right now I'm traveling with Nessa and she is nice (had a conversation with her- didn't know I could until now!) but I dunno if she is evil enough haha. I took her bag to hold my gems though that is super handy. I wanna get Dorn to join me but he won't just yet. I think I'm in Nashkel now so I hope I'm not despised too much. I think my reputation is -2? Do I need to worry about it affecting my ability to talk to townsfolk and get sidequests and all that?
  • jmerryjmerry Member Posts: 3,822
    The rules for dual-classing:
    - You must be human.
    - Your primary stat for the original class must be at least 15.
    - Your primary stat for the new class must be at least 17.
    - Only "natural" stats suffice. Temporary boosts from equipment and spells don't help you qualify.
    - Some kits are not allowed to dual-class, and only class combinations that exist as a multiclass for some race can be done as dual classes.
    - Other requirements such as alignment for the new class must be met.

    So, for a human fighter (berserker) to dual-class:
    - You would need at least 15 strength. You're good on this.
    - To dual-class into Thief, you would need at least 17 dexterity and an alignment that isn't Lawful Good. There's one Dex-increasing tome out there, so you could get away with 16 Dex to start with.
    - To dual-class into Mage, you would need at least 17 intelligence. There's one Int-increasing tome out there, so you could get away with 16 Int to start with.
    - To dual-class into Cleric, you would need at least 17 wisdom. There are three Wis-increasing tomes out there, so you could get away with 14 Wis to start with.
    - To dual-class into Druid, you would need at least 17 wisdom, 17 Charisma, and a True Neutral alignment. There are three Wis-increasing tomes and one Cha-increasing tome out there, so you could get away with 14 Wis and 16 Cha to start with.

    With 12 Dex, 11 Int, and 11 Wis, no dual class is possible with that character or ever will be.

    On aligning your party ... the game is easier, on the whole, with a party of neutral and/or good characters. Evil options aren't really implemented well; if you want to play evil, you have to go out of your way to do things like kill innocent bystanders. There are a few special characters out there that you can get good stuff from that way, but mostly you'll just make things harder on yourself. Including shopping - high-reputation parties get substantial discounts.

    Good characters, with the exception of Imoen, will abandon you if your reputation drops down to 2 or less. Paladins and rangers will fall and lose their special abilities before that.
    Neutral characters will abandon you if your reputation drops down to 1.
    Evil characters will abandon you if your reputation goes up to 19 or more. And there are a lot of quests that reward you with reputation gains; managing your reputation is always a concern if you're trying to keep evil party members around.

    Some characters have interpersonal conflicts, but it's pretty much always a case of evil characters and non-evil characters not getting along. The blackguard Dorn won't work with paladin Ajantis or lawful good fighter/cleric Yeslick. Minsc wants to save Dynaheir and Edwin wants to kill Dynaheir. That sort of thing.

    On getting Dorn to join you ... if you've talked to him in the Friendly Arm, he'll show up when you travel to the Nashkel mines. You can have him join then if you have an open party slot, or you can let him head back to the Friendly Arm where he will be open to joining later. Having Dorn in your party is a 2-point reputation penalty, which is refunded when he leaves.

    One tip on a hybrid style - if you go solo at first, then recruit a party later, new characters will join you at higher XP values. This goes up to 32000 XP; if your protagonist has 32K or more XP, any newly recruited character will join with 32K XP. On the other hand, the game is a lot deadlier when you're alone - failing a save against a simple Charm spell is game over when you're playing solo. A full party can reach the experience cap in this game without too much trouble if you just do all the content, so it's not like your solo character even ends up more powerful than the character in a party.
    Grond0jsavingMysterious_TravelerJuliusBorisov
  • Allanon81Allanon81 Member Posts: 327
    edited April 2021
    @Mysterious_Traveler I actually find the game easier as an evil party except for that Nashkel bit. Just my opinion. Edwin, Dorn, Viconia are three very powerful members if you can absorb the reputation hits. Also you can pay at temples to increase your Rep. Personally I don’t like revealing every single detail to new players because part of the fun is discovering on your own.
    Mysterious_Traveler
  • jsavingjsaving Member Posts: 1,083
    edited April 2021
    Great advice above. I'd add that if you are doing a saga run-through with your new 90-point character, you'll have to decide when to dual. That will be based almost solely on the amount of patience you have as a player. The longer you wait, the more melee DPS and hit points you'll have, but the longer it will take to be a fully functioning character.

    Fighters receive permanent increases in their attacks-per-round at levels 7 and 13. For that reason, those are common dualing points for the impatient (7) or patient (13) player. For a middle ground you can dual at 9, when you are first able to put five pips in your preferred weapon.

    As an alternative, you could go with a multiclass fighter/mage, fighter/thief, or fighter/mage/thief. There are two main reasons to consider this route. The first is that you can use all of your abilities from the start instead of having to patiently wait for them. The second is that there comes a point in BG2 when you begin receiving high-level abilities for your active classes. The fighter selections are quite strong but you're not eligible to select them as a dual-class character, because you've chosen to forever stop learning new things as a fighter.

    But the bottom line is that any mix of fighter, mage, and thief is really strong in BG/SoD/BG2. You won't go wrong no matter what you choose. Best wishes and good luck!
    Mysterious_TravelerJuliusBorisovFenrirWolfganger
  • @jmerry Thanks so much for all the advice! With my new character I'll be able to duel class! And knowing I can still reach the EXP cap wth a party makes me more likely to use one so thank you! I may end up being a good and bad character, that adjusts reputation as I see fit. Maybe that would work? What characters for my party would you recommend?

    @Allanon81 Oh that's cool to hear! One thing I've noticed is sometimes I get a lot of EXP for killing some guards sent to kill me so that's neat. I'm for sure thinking Dorn and Viconia from what I've heard. I don't know Edwin but if I see him in my travels I'll check him out :D Yeah I agree, I love discovering things. Every so often I need to ask a few questions so I don't get stuck resetting the game and actually get to playing it haha XD
  • @jsaving Thank you for this advise as well, I was wondering about that. Based on what you said I think I could wait until level 13 to duel-class. Only problem with that is that I have a TON of spell scrolls in my inventory that I;m saving for when I duel-class and it's getting hard with inventory management haha.

    That multiclass idea is tempting, and I like the idea of having both abilities, but I think for my first playthrough I'll stay as a human just from a role-playing perspective as my character. I will remember multi classing for repeat playthroughs though- thanks!

    Hmm- what if I wait to duel class until I get the advanced fighter skills in BG2? You think that would be worth it or viable?
  • Allanon81Allanon81 Member Posts: 327
    edited April 2021
    @Mysterious_Traveler I’ve played these games for almost d&mn near 20 years and still find new stuff here and there. Just wait till you try mods and there’s a whole boatload of extra content.
    Mysterious_TravelerFenrirWolfganger
  • @Allanon81 That's so awesome. Looking forward to checking all that out eventually too! I love when you find new stuff in games even after years of playing.
  • LelandGauntLelandGaunt Member Posts: 83
    edited April 2021
    As for your scroll problem: in the city of Bereghost you can finish a really easy quest for a guy named Firebead (I think his house should be marked on the map) and he'll reward you with a scroll case. That's a container in which you can store up to 100 scrolls, that should help with inventory management ;)
    As for evil companions: I enjoyed the duo of Xzar and Montaron pretty much, that's the two guys you can meet right in the first forest map. Xzar is a necromancer, not quite as powerful a mage as Edwin, but he's just hilarious. Montaron is a multiclass fighter/thief, so he can deal with picking locks and disarming traps and is better at fighting than a singleclass thief. The dwarf Kagain can also be found in Bereghost and is an awesome tank. Viconia is a great cleric, so good for healing and buffs (can find her in the area east of the Friendly Arm Inn). Dorn in BG1 is indeed very strong and can deal lots of damage. You should speak to him first at the Friendly Arm Inn and then you'll meet him later when traveling from Nashkel to the mines. That's the party I used on my evil playthrough and I enjoyed it very much. There are of course lots of other companions out there, you can just check out a list online (like here https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Companions ) to see who's available and where to find them.
    Grond0Mysterious_TravelerJuliusBorisovFenrirWolfganger
  • jsavingjsaving Member Posts: 1,083
    edited April 2021
    Hmm- what if I wait to dual class until I get the advanced fighter skills in BG2? You think that would be worth it or viable?
    Generally, you dual because you are wanting to have a high caster level toward the end of the game. If you don't care all that much about caster level then you are probably better off multiclassing instead.

    If you dual at 7 or 9, you're making a minimal caster-level sacrifice in exchange for substantial melee power. Waiting until 13 imposes a substantially larger caster-level sacrifice in exchange for somewhat more melee power. But waiting all the way until 3 million XP imposes such a large caster-level sacrifice for such a small melee gain that it would almost never be worthwhile.
    Post edited by jsaving on
    Mysterious_Traveler
  • NoonNoon Member Posts: 202
    Based on what you said I think I could wait until level 13 to duel-class. Only problem with that is that I have a TON of spell scrolls in my inventory that I;m saving for when I duel-class and it's getting hard with inventory management haha.

    You can reach lvl 13 only in BG2, and for plot reasons, you won't be able to keep your scrolls between each game (but you can get plenty of scrolls in early BG2 anyway).
    So either you dual at lvl7/9 in BG1/sod and you keep your scrolls, or you use them for Edwin or sell them and get a good gold boost.



    Mysterious_TravelerJuliusBorisovFenrirWolfganger
  • @LelandGaunt Thanks for the tip! That's super helpful!

    @jsaving Ah I see, in that case I may go for Duel Classing at lvl 7, just so I don't have to worry about it later.

    @Noon Oh I appreciate you letting me know about that!

    I have one final question for now. As much as I wanna do an small party evil playthrough, should I do a full party good playthrough first to get the more genuine story the first time? Man this game makes me wanna restart and try different things all the time haha
  • Skatan wrote: »
    Man this game makes me wanna restart and try different things all the time haha

    Ah I see Restartitis Anonymous will get a new member soon. We meet every Tuesday in the cellar below your local comic book store where we discuss new characters, min-maxing and the ever crushing desire to start over again. And again.

    Welp. Hope I see you there!
  • LelandGauntLelandGaunt Member Posts: 83
    Haha yeah welcome to the club @Mysterious_Traveler ! As you might have noticed there's even an extra term for that terrible affliction around these parts: "restartitis". Know that feeling of 1000 ants crawling in your skin, where each of the ants represents a different mix of character class, party composition or alignment ideas? That's the stuff. Great stuff. Better than meth. I guess^^
    To your final (or not ;) ) question: yes you're right, if you're not absolutely dead set on playing evil, then taking a rather good or at least neutral approach might be favorable for a very first playthrough to see most of the story. It's more rewarding that way most of the time, the story and most of the side quests make a bit more sense if you're more of a hero kinda guy instead of a villain. And it's often even plain and simple easier, for example if you're good with a high reputation you get discounts at stores, but if you're evil with low reputation you have to pay extra for your items...
    To be honest for a first playthrough I'd personally even advise against dual-classing and maybe rather go for multiclassing because it's not so complicated and you can enjoy the abilities of your class combination right from the start. But if you're absolutely willing to go dual and/or human then of course go for it, it's not like you haven't gotten a lot of great advice on that yet ;)
    And one last thing concerning containers: yes these things are absolutely great when it comes to inventory management. With the scroll case mentioned above and the gem bag you already found in Neera's inventory, just to complete the list: in High Hedge, the area west of Bereghost, there's a big building with a guy named Thalantyr inside. He sells a potion case that can store 100 potions. I think these 3 containers should be all in BG1EE (anyone correct me if I'm wrong here?) and should spare you a lot of item juggling hassle.
    NoonFenrirWolfgangerMysterious_Traveler
  • SkatanSkatan Member, Moderator Posts: 5,352
    Skatan wrote: »
    Man this game makes me wanna restart and try different things all the time haha

    Ah I see Restartitis Anonymous will get a new member soon. We meet every Tuesday in the cellar below your local comic book store where we discuss new characters, min-maxing and the ever crushing desire to start over again. And again.

    Welp. Hope I see you there!

    I will be there. I've waited 700 years for someone to come and find the holy grail perfect combination of race/class/kit/stats
    FenrirWolfgangerMysterious_Traveler
  • @LelandGaunt Lol thanks for the warm welcome! And thanks again for the helpful answer, I decided to start a good playthrough and see where that leads, I still want a smallish party, but I'm going with Imoen cause she seems at least somewhat story important. Plus she always says "good on you for doing good deeds" or whatever whenever I finish a quest haha. I didn't realise low rep cause price spikes- that's sorta hilarious. You'd think they would lower them for low reps as well, lest they get killed... If ONLY you could loot shopkeepers bodies and get their full inventory!
    That extra container is helping a ton as well so I appreciate the tip!

    @Skatan Your goal is admirable, I hope I can help put your quest to rest after such a long trial of patience
    FenrirWolfganger
  • BroninBronin Member Posts: 29
    edited April 2021
    @Mysterious_Traveler
    You could edit your character's stats using EEKeeper so you can have the dual-class you want.
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