In Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, where my entire party apparently gains experience whenever my thief disarms a trap, picks a lock, or my Mage learns a new spell. I had no idea that my Mage's literacy can directly translate to my characters becoming permanently physically stronger.
When I played Baldur´s Gate for the first time I was like 14/15 years old and I had never played D&D before. So I would kick everyone from my party and go to Beregost´s Inn, I think. There I would talk to someone that would give me like 3000xp if I chose the correct answers. Then, of course, I would import my character and repeat till like lvl 3. After that I would keep doing the beregost thing but also go to High Hedge (again, I think it was there) and kill a mage with a golem guard. That lasted till like lvl 5 or 6, maybe. Finally I would import once more and play the game solo, haha.
PS: Yes everytime I would watch the whole cinematic of gorion dying and that stuff. Probably leveling was faster while playing the game in a normal fashion, haha.
@immagikman for the golems in de'arsine keep, i would use the siricum helm on my fighter/cleric/mage, and then my copy would cast a bunch of summons and spells and go fight him. Then once they all died out, i would summon a lot of skellies and monsters and they would go fight. Then i would summon another wave or two and then they would have done a decent about of damage, so i would move my fighters in to position, do what damage i could, move back, heal up, and repeat. It always worked in the long run.
Cloudkill just seemed cheap unless using it on the red dragon (firekraig?)
@Amardarial I wasn't that good . I left candlekeep without doing any quests, most of the time. I was a really really bad player back in the day, hahaha.
@Bjjorick Cloudkill was hardly cheap and it would not affect the iron golem so you still had to find a way to beat that thing into dust. Basically if you found anyway other than the console or keeper program to help you kill them you were doing great in my book
I took that scribing scrolls things to whole new levels. I bought nearly 600 freedom scrolls from the advance adventurers mart. They only cost 300 GP or so each, he had an infinate supply, and Freedom is still a 9th level spell so you get 9K EXP out of it. While I kept writing and erasing and writing and erasing, I would sing this little song.
Freedom Scrolls man. I just can't resist buying them, writing them, erasing them, and then writing them again.
@immagikman btw, i'm not saying it's bad to use cloudkill, but my first play though, i kinda abused it, and if you cast 5 or 6 of them, yeah, it's going to get past magic resistance and cause at least one hit per turn, and yeah you can easily kill him that way.
But i tell myself it's cheap now because it honestly does take away from alot of the challenge.
Several wands of cloudkill actually. It was pretty much my most used wand thanks to the obnoxiousness of Mind Flayers. (Thus how I know it get's through magic resistance) You can even get one in Irenicus' dungeon that has 1 charge. But if you just sell it and then buy it back it will have something like 50.
According to the rules wands can have a maximum of 50 charges I believe....I cannot believe I missed the cloudkill wand......not once but multiple play throughs.
@immagikman wand of cloud kill is a blue wand and it's kinda fat, looks like ummmmmmmm (===j at the end of the wand, there's a part taht goes downward right before the end of the pic. it's very unique. for me, the wand of fear and wand of magic summon looked the same, and would descripe it as a red skinny wand with a 3 prong claw at the head. it's just hard to describe the WoCK
Edit: @MooseChangerPat just saw your post about freedom hehe, awesome. Sadly i use BGT and they nerf the xp down to 10 xp for level of spell (10 for 1st, 40 for 4th, 90 for 9th) it might be 100 per level of spell
I can think of the location of three off the top of my head.
SPOILERS ALERT
One is in Irenicus' Dungeon and has 1 charge. It's on one of the pedastals. Another is in the city gate district's inn, in a secret door back room guarded by a lich that also has the Daystar sword. Lastly, I think Merkath the mage that kidnapped Haer'Dalis also has one in his tower connected to the temple district sewers. The latter two have 10 charges. Of course... I may be thinking of the rod of resurrection with Merkath, but that's because I found that wand to be the second most useful if not the most useful.
End Spoilers.
I've never actually bothered trying to stack cloudkills before, but perhaps I should give that a try sometime. I almost always carry around a few zone of sweet air spells though, as putting up with the cloudkills once everything is dead can be a pain. And I really only tend to use them for the most desperate of situations like against the Mindflayers.
@moosechangerpat well, as i said, i was cheap my first time playing through, memorized the spell, and equipped the wand, used the helm that cast siricurm, and your clone uses the wands, it doesn't take away from your charges. i also used to keep an extra scroll of wish/limited wish for that purpose, and it freed up a spell that i didn't have to memorize.
as i said, i was quite cheap. I do use death cloud a bit, but i find that the death spell is alot more fun. i never thought it would hit multiple people (again, had final fantasy in mind, not dnd :P)
Oh god I can totally relate with the abuse of Simulacrum there. I would almost always do that with restoration because I hated getting my own guys fatigued xD It was also great for things like rod or resurrection and later on in TOB the improved bard song. I'll have to remember the limited wish one though... that's pretty clever.
And yeah, the first time I found out the Death Spell hit multiple targets I was like O_O Gimme more!
lol, plus i love the little soul escape when you kill them. here lately in my bg2 run, i've been hunting down the random encounters just to cast it and see how many i can get.
Oh, and for the limited wish, don't wish for a magic item/quest, things that goes into that char's inv, because you'll lose the item as you cann't go into their inv screen.
Best cheese moment for me though, i had been using the scroll of wish i had gotten recently for a party boost (rest like a whole night and then you can recast simulacrum (no wonder i can't spell it)). anyways, i took the double time stop wish, and after my first spell, the simulacrum wore off, so we were all just sitting around waiting for spell to wear off since NO ONE COULD DO ANYTHING. Lol, that was the longest time stop ever
Death Spell if I recall properly from Pen and Paper kills anything below a certain level outright and has percentages for higher levels...and it is an "Area of Affect" spell Ithink it also gets rid of summons...
Death Spell if I recall properly from Pen and Paper kills anything below a certain level outright and has percentages for higher levels...and it is an "Area of Affect" spell Ithink it also gets rid of summons...
Yeah, the first time I figured out it has an area of effect and killed summons was when I was up against a lich... and the bastard used death spell to kill my skelly warriors and my wishing genie that royally sucked.
Also that is one of the cheapest ways I have ever heard Simulacrum used xD And I thought I was bad, but wish scrolls? That's just cruel and ingenious xD
Standing at the machine in Watcher's Keep and loading/saving to keep getting 100,000 XP. I only did that once because I dual-classed my cleric at level 17 and needed to get my fighter levels up before I finished the game. That character was THE most powerful one I've had yet.
if you time it right (not easy to do) so that the simulacrum wears during the djinn appearing, it will switch over to your main char. Thus, you could actually cause a fighter to get the time stop (since it's still based off the summoner's wisdom). So in that regard, assuming you have HLA, you can use a greater whirlwind, and clear a room quite easily. I know this is beyond cheap, but i like to figure out what happens when you do stuff wrong, so i typically have fun finding out what other people don't always think of. The double cast i mentioned in my earlier post was to see what would happen, but lol, i didn't expect to have to suffer and sit through it :P
Edit: btw, you can't spam the deck of many things like this, sadly. it seems to trigger it in the game memory, and if i'm not mistaken, it either goes straight to the 3rd (and final) draw, or it.......disappears when you try to use it. Will have to try it again.
I actually have tried the deck of many things before xD I sort of had the same line of thinking of wanting to use it multiple, multiple times. Also another thing you can do is with limited wish, you can have one of your other party members talk to the Djinn. It's great for using things like the one shot chain contingency on someone like Jaheria and having her cast a whole bunch of 7th level druid spells of doom. I never thought of your strategy with the wish though because you can't actually physically talk to the djinn. Also, talking to the djinn is great for spell casters with terrible wisdoms, that way the cleric can do it instead, and get better results.
Have the party's thief/bard drink 2-3 potions of master thievery. Go to Waukeen's Promenade. Steel all spells from Galoomp the Bookkeeper (or whatever his name is). You get like 3-4 scrolls of every spell. Learn all the spells. Delete them from your spellbook. Learn them again just for the XP.
Haha nice.
I kinda did the same but didnt pick pocket anyone. I had a thief I duel classed to a wizard around level 14.But saved ALL the scrolls I found on the way , took like 30 mins of learning spells and got a few levels just from that.When I had a few of the same ones I did like you did delete them and relearn for more Exp.
The worst I have done is abusing the XP from discussion with the tanner quest. You can surround the evil tanner and/or the girl you save in trademeet and repeat the conversation over and over to get unlimited XP. The end of the conversation seems to be triggered by the person walking away and if they can't walk away you can have the same conversation over and over and quickly rack up the XP.
The basilisk area in BG1 is not that kind of cheap. The creators did make a first level spell specifically to prevent you from being turned to stone, after all. It couldn't have been unforeseen.
lol, here's to hoping that they leave all the evil xp exploits alone *raises his mug*
after all, part of the fun i've had is not giving into temptation and taking the easy way out. and at the end of the journey, knowing the path i could have taken, and not giving in, i know i've earned my lawful good title.
Although when i'm evil, i say screw it and do much worse then i've mentioned here.
Comments
PS: Yes everytime I would watch the whole cinematic of gorion dying and that stuff. Probably leveling was faster while playing the game in a normal fashion, haha.
Cloudkill just seemed cheap unless using it on the red dragon (firekraig?)
Cloudkill was hardly cheap and it would not affect the iron golem so you still had to find a way to beat that thing into dust. Basically if you found anyway other than the console or keeper program to help you kill them you were doing great in my book
Freedom Scrolls man. I just can't resist buying them, writing them, erasing them, and then writing them again.
But i tell myself it's cheap now because it honestly does take away from alot of the challenge.
(===j at the end of the wand, there's a part taht goes downward right before the end of the pic. it's very unique. for me, the wand of fear and wand of magic summon looked the same, and would descripe it as a red skinny wand with a 3 prong claw at the head. it's just hard to describe the WoCK
Edit: @MooseChangerPat just saw your post about freedom hehe, awesome. Sadly i use BGT and they nerf the xp down to 10 xp for level of spell (10 for 1st, 40 for 4th, 90 for 9th) it might be 100 per level of spell
either way, can't do it anymore lol :P
SPOILERS ALERT
End Spoilers.
I've never actually bothered trying to stack cloudkills before, but perhaps I should give that a try sometime. I almost always carry around a few zone of sweet air spells though, as putting up with the cloudkills once everything is dead can be a pain. And I really only tend to use them for the most desperate of situations like against the Mindflayers.
well, as i said, i was cheap my first time playing through, memorized the spell, and equipped the wand, used the helm that cast siricurm, and your clone uses the wands, it doesn't take away from your charges. i also used to keep an extra scroll of wish/limited wish for that purpose, and it freed up a spell that i didn't have to memorize.
as i said, i was quite cheap. I do use death cloud a bit, but i find that the death spell is alot more fun. i never thought it would hit multiple people (again, had final fantasy in mind, not dnd :P)
And yeah, the first time I found out the Death Spell hit multiple targets I was like O_O Gimme more!
When you say siricurm do you mean Simulacrum?
Oh, and for the limited wish, don't wish for a magic item/quest, things that goes into that char's inv, because you'll lose the item as you cann't go into their inv screen.
Best cheese moment for me though, i had been using the scroll of wish i had gotten recently for a party boost (rest like a whole night and then you can recast simulacrum (no wonder i can't spell it)). anyways, i took the double time stop wish, and after my first spell, the simulacrum wore off, so we were all just sitting around waiting for spell to wear off since NO ONE COULD DO ANYTHING. Lol, that was the longest time stop ever
@immagikman yep, i'm jurt a horrable spellar.
Also that is one of the cheapest ways I have ever heard Simulacrum used xD And I thought I was bad, but wish scrolls? That's just cruel and ingenious xD
Edit: btw, you can't spam the deck of many things like this, sadly. it seems to trigger it in the game memory, and if i'm not mistaken, it either goes straight to the 3rd (and final) draw, or it.......disappears when you try to use it. Will have to try it again.
I kinda did the same but didnt pick pocket anyone.
I had a thief I duel classed to a wizard around level 14.But saved ALL the scrolls I found on the way , took like 30 mins of learning spells and got a few levels just from that.When I had a few of the same ones I did like you did delete them and relearn for more Exp.
The basilisk area in BG1 is not that kind of cheap. The creators did make a first level spell specifically to prevent you from being turned to stone, after all. It couldn't have been unforeseen.
after all, part of the fun i've had is not giving into temptation and taking the easy way out. and at the end of the journey, knowing the path i could have taken, and not giving in, i know i've earned my lawful good title.
Although when i'm evil, i say screw it and do much worse then i've mentioned here.