well now adays for me, its just trying to finish the game without rerolling a new character or party, I am pretty guilty for the rerollitis that some of us are infected with, but back in the vanilla days I would say my biggest achievement was doing the windspear hills quest right away killing firkraag right away and having the holy avenger legitimately at level 9 was awesome, doing the copper cohornet quest with carsomyr was just so many lolz
Playing through BG1 without thief until chapter 5, while the party was: PC bard, Arkanis, Jaheira and Garrick, then joined by Skie and Alora. That playthrough is still not finished and it will probably end up my most difficult one so far.
You know, I'm not the greatest player, neither will I ever brag (seriously anyway) to be one. I'm not the best tactician and certainly not a good roleplayer.
However, without a doubt in my mind, I can brag about knowing pretty much everything there is to know, mechanically, quest or otherwise, about Baldur's Gate 1 - and there's likely a couple hundreds of people that can brag about the same thing. The biggest advantage about this is that I can plan a route that is mostly safe and makes a solo character strong enough to face off 95% of the game without issues when you encounter them. I can also complete any quest or sidequest in a rather short time - I'm certainly not speedrun material, but I can finish everything there is to the game in one sitting, if I am that resolute.
The downside of course is simple - there's nothing new to discover. The novelty of going like "OH MY GOOOOD" is there no more. If I don't know a thing, I may simply have forgotten it - to the point that if I search an answer on google, I will likely be brought to a thread I replied here on these forums. My mind is *not* the greatest
I wish I could say the same about Baldur's Gate 2 or Icewind Dale, but I certainly don't have nearly as much knowledge in those games than I do for Baldur's Gate 1. If someone goes "what's the beggar in the bridge district good for?" I'll be like "There's a beggar?"
Killing the vampiric wolf in the first area with just imoen and myself (bard) at level one.
WTF? Certainly there are wolves in that area, but a vampiric wolf? Are you certain?
I say a vampiric wolf in the are north of nashkiel that has the 6 hobgoblins in it, and the bloodstone amulet, so I guess every once in a while they can appear in low level maps
@Cheesebelly reading your post made me feel like someone was describing my experience.
I suppose my greatest achievement so far was my Dwarven Defender, with whom I completed the whole EE saga for the second time. He was frankly ridiculous.
With him, I beat Sarevok on a one-on-one fight. I beat Firkraag, the shadow dragon and Draconis without needing to reload a single time. In fact, that was the case on most boss fights (except for Abazigal and Sendai, which gave me some trouble).
Killing the vampiric wolf in the first area with just imoen and myself (bard) at level one.
WTF? Certainly there are wolves in that area, but a vampiric wolf? Are you certain?
I say a vampiric wolf in the are north of nashkiel that has the 6 hobgoblins in it, and the bloodstone amulet, so I guess every once in a while they can appear in low level maps
Yes, I've met a vampiric wolf in that location, a couple of times - if it appears at all, it's just to the north of where Mr Colquetle's family amulet is found.
But I've never seen one in the first area outside Candlekeep, so I'm quite surprised by that report.
Killing the vampiric wolf in the first area with just imoen and myself (bard) at level one.
WTF? Certainly there are wolves in that area, but a vampiric wolf? Are you certain?
I say a vampiric wolf in the are north of nashkiel that has the 6 hobgoblins in it, and the bloodstone amulet, so I guess every once in a while they can appear in low level maps
Yes, I've met a vampiric wolf in that location, a couple of times - if it appears at all, it's just to the north of where Mr Colquetle's family amulet is found.
But I've never seen one in the first area outside Candlekeep, so I'm quite surprised by that report.
I can only assume that @deltago meant a dread wolf. There are no vampiric wolves in that area and the only magic weapon he could have possibly possessed at the time would have been the +1 dagger.
My own brag is that I took down 3 ankhegs with just my level 1 Ranger/Cleric and level 1 Imoen. Then later in the same run my Ranger/Cleric took out a vampiric wolf in the map north of Nashkel all by himself. He had to fight it alone since only he had magical weapons that were needed to harm it.
Another boast I have (really nothing special to me) is that I always go to complete Durlag's tower as soon as my characters start to reach level 7. Apparently most people wait till much later...
I also went to Watcher's Keep really early once and did quite a lot of it at a relatively low level.
I don't have much to brag about, compared to many others in here, I'm probably more of a casual player. I still manage to forget about certain traps all the time, hehe..
But I am quite proud that I actually finished a full run through BG recently without rerolling a new char. Haven't done that in years. Took some godly discipline, something I'm not known to possess normally.
Another boast I have (really nothing special to me) is that I always go to complete Durlag's tower as soon as my characters start to reach level 7. Apparently most people wait till much later...
I've sometimes cleared the tower (above-ground) part of Durlag's at that stage (such as my last completed run through BG1ee, when I needed that Tome of WIS early to dual-class my Berserker into a Druid), but I'm assuming you mean the labyrinth below as well. In which case, that's pretty good going, I always leave the underground section until nearer the end.
Another boast I have (really nothing special to me) is that I always go to complete Durlag's tower as soon as my characters start to reach level 7. Apparently most people wait till much later...
I've sometimes cleared the tower (above-ground) part of Durlag's at that stage (such as my last completed run through BG1ee, when I needed that Tome of WIS early to dual-class my Berserker into a Druid), but I'm assuming you mean the labyrinth below as well. In which case, that's pretty good going, I always leave the underground section until nearer the end.
@Gallowglass Yeah, I mean everything; including the demonknight and Aec. Of course, by the time I am done my characters are no longer level 7. I usually grind on the skeleton warrior trap until my characters are max level before moving on in the tor, which I guess is pretty hardcore too. (note: I disagree with the devs making it a 1 time only trap so I have changed it back to a repeating trap in my game.)
@Tresset - I disarm all the traps rather than walking into them, so I don't know much about what effects each trap has. Which trap is the skeleton warrior trap?
@Gallowglass it is the one on the fake stairway on the trapdoor and doppelganger level of the tor. When triggered it creates 3 skeleton warriors (one of them is an archer) and throws a stinking cloud in the room.
Killing the vampiric wolf in the first area with just imoen and myself (bard) at level one.
WTF? Certainly there are wolves in that area, but a vampiric wolf? Are you certain?
I say a vampiric wolf in the are north of nashkiel that has the 6 hobgoblins in it, and the bloodstone amulet, so I guess every once in a while they can appear in low level maps
That vamp wolf comes from a mod. I think it's NPC Project, but it might be part of the SCS main components, which will put it there even if you just install it for the convenience tweaks. I'm pretty sure there's no vamp wolf there in the vanilla game.
Only to run into a VAMPIRIC wolf. [Spoiler] [/spoiler] I had to use my potions of speed on Montaron and Kagain and have them flee from it as Valkalyn ran stealthed down to Nashkel. We arrived in Nashkel still alive. [Spoiler] [/spoiler]
Heres a quote of a screenshot about the one North of Nashkel on vanilla. Ya, its a spawn that can quickly end your run.
@GemHound, okay I stand corrected, then. I've never seen it in a game that wasn't modded, but I'll take your word for it.
Yes, @GemHound is right. I was indeed describing a totally unmodded game, and I've met the Vampiric Wolf twice in that location, but that's twice out of numerous runs, so it's a fairly rare random. It may be the case (although I'm not sure about this) that the times when I met it were times when I hadn't explored that area at low level, and only went back there later with a relatively high-level party, so perhaps it's a scaling effect ... but in any case, it's definitely possible in unmodded.
Solo no-reload run as a dwarven defender (bgee), which included a fight atop the irons throne building that I still can't believe was won.
After reading this post, I returned to BG1 and loaded up my Dwarven Defender save, which was just after reaching Baldur's Gate after Candlekeep.
My first solo run ever.
Also my first time fighting SCS Improved Sarevok. (Not made it this far with my totemic druid yet. I usually have a few runs going at any one time and switch between them ,to prevent things from getting stale).
So close to being a no-reload run as well. But Helena died twice trying to figure out the best way to defeat SCS Sarevok. She was victorious in the end, and I'm pretty sure she owes almost all of it to being a Dwarven Defender. She had only Ashideena and 30 darts of stunning at her disposal, due to poor planning by yours truly.
After blasting through the whole of SCS BG1, I jumped the gun a little bit at the end. Ashideena had proven capable through the whole game, and for much of it I forgot that ranged combat even existed. This eventually resulted in Helena standing before Black Lily with little more than a warhammer and a potion bag filled with a hodgepodge of battlefield salvage. Helena would not even consider talking a pause to go shopping or find more equipment (This was the final chase scene, time is of the essence!).
Black Lily had 30 darts of stunning, but otherwise no ranged weapons that jumped out at me as being helpful. I didn't know anything about the fight, other than that I had always found killing Semaj quickly to be crucial in the vanilla version. I expected him to be only harder in SCS. The darts of stunning were for him.
Helena had no proficiencies in anything other than Warhammer and Sword+Shield. Still, I bought the darts and used a potion of invisibility to race through the maze and the under-city unmolested, only stopping to talk with Tamoko. Turns out you can talk her out of fighting you--I did not know this. And here I thought I was going to get some good full plate out of it...
I looked through my potion case to see what Helena possessed and chugged everything I thought might be helpful, then entered Bhaal's temple.
A working strategy soon became evident after a few tries. Helena used her darts sparingly, and even without a proficiency in darts she had a ranged THAC0 of 3 (thanks to potions of mind focusing). Her only other weapons were Ashideena and 4 long forgotten potions of explosion found at the bottom of the potion case. For healing we had 7 potions of healing, 1 potion of extra healing, 1 potion of regeneration. I cursed my lack of planning, wondering if it would be enough.
Helena rushed Sarevok and his goons, using her enhanced speed to even outpace the hasted Sarevok. The plan was simple. Run around in circles!
It was actually more heroic than that.
Helena opened up with potions of explosion to disrupt Semaj and Angelo from casting, running from corner to corner to draw her pursuers into tight groupings. After the grenades were used up (vital for disrupting Semaj and Angelo's powerful remove magic spells), Helena switched between darts and Ashideena. Diarmid was the first to fall in a straight toe-to-toe engagement. Not even Sarevok could help him; Helena hammered the henchman into the ground, though received great wounds. Her 132 hitpoints saved her, along with the potion of regeneration. Tazok had his annoying Berserk, and I wasted almost 10 darts on him before realizing he was enraged (when the message popped up about the berserk state ending). He also had to be taken toe-to-toe. Semaj was stunned by this point in the middle of the room, but always too close to his friends to suffer an effective attack from Helena.
Helena had only one hope to deal with Sarevok's goons. 1. Stun them with darts. 2. Run a wide circle around the room to draw the rest of the enemies away. 3. Use blinding speed to leave the enemies behind and bee-line for the stunned target.
Not even stoneskins were effective. Helena had 3 attacks per round and a THAC0 of -2 with Ashideena. She could get at least 2-3 attacks on a stunned opponent before Sarevok caught up. Round and round we all went, Helena taking them down one by one. Eventually only Angelo and Sarevok remained, and Helena used the last of her darts to stun the archer. From his corpse she salvaged acid arrows and a bow. She used them to weaken Sarevok, but it was not enough. The would-be Lord of Murder was only barely injured.
I must admit to panicking slightly at this point. The last thing I wanted was to put Helena within reach of Sarevok's sword. But with no ranged weapons, no healing potions, no ability to save, Helena decided to pull out all the stops and swallow her fear.
She engaged Defensive Stance. Speed was no longer needed.
Sarevok charged her. They swung wildly at each other. Helena survived the battering without much trouble, her AC so slow that defensive stance was actually applying a penalty. With her damage resistance, Sarevok was dealing between 8-12 damage a hit.
Helena was dealing in excess of 20 on every hit. Sarevok soon fell.
If there were 1000 threads on this forum praising the Dwarven Defender, it would not be enough.
Xeroshi
Member Posts: 182
Comments
However, without a doubt in my mind, I can brag about knowing pretty much everything there is to know, mechanically, quest or otherwise, about Baldur's Gate 1 - and there's likely a couple hundreds of people that can brag about the same thing.
The biggest advantage about this is that I can plan a route that is mostly safe and makes a solo character strong enough to face off 95% of the game without issues when you encounter them. I can also complete any quest or sidequest in a rather short time - I'm certainly not speedrun material, but I can finish everything there is to the game in one sitting, if I am that resolute.
The downside of course is simple - there's nothing new to discover. The novelty of going like "OH MY GOOOOD" is there no more. If I don't know a thing, I may simply have forgotten it - to the point that if I search an answer on google, I will likely be brought to a thread I replied here on these forums. My mind is *not* the greatest
I wish I could say the same about Baldur's Gate 2 or Icewind Dale, but I certainly don't have nearly as much knowledge in those games than I do for Baldur's Gate 1. If someone goes "what's the beggar in the bridge district good for?" I'll be like "There's a beggar?"
Far more difficult than any bg2 challenge as far as I am concerned.
It was short lived as a diseased gibberling got lucky on the next encounter.
I suppose my greatest achievement so far was my Dwarven Defender, with whom I completed the whole EE saga for the second time. He was frankly ridiculous.
With him, I beat Sarevok on a one-on-one fight. I beat Firkraag, the shadow dragon and Draconis without needing to reload a single time. In fact, that was the case on most boss fights (except for Abazigal and Sendai, which gave me some trouble).
But I've never seen one in the first area outside Candlekeep, so I'm quite surprised by that report.
My own brag is that I took down 3 ankhegs with just my level 1 Ranger/Cleric and level 1 Imoen. Then later in the same run my Ranger/Cleric took out a vampiric wolf in the map north of Nashkel all by himself. He had to fight it alone since only he had magical weapons that were needed to harm it.
Another boast I have (really nothing special to me) is that I always go to complete Durlag's tower as soon as my characters start to reach level 7. Apparently most people wait till much later...
I also went to Watcher's Keep really early once and did quite a lot of it at a relatively low level.
But I am quite proud that I actually finished a full run through BG recently without rerolling a new char. Haven't done that in years. Took some godly discipline, something I'm not known to possess normally.
I just had a big moment. After reading this post, I returned to BG1 and loaded up my Dwarven Defender save, which was just after reaching Baldur's Gate after Candlekeep.
My first solo run ever.
Also my first time fighting SCS Improved Sarevok. (Not made it this far with my totemic druid yet. I usually have a few runs going at any one time and switch between them ,to prevent things from getting stale).
So close to being a no-reload run as well. But Helena died twice trying to figure out the best way to defeat SCS Sarevok. She was victorious in the end, and I'm pretty sure she owes almost all of it to being a Dwarven Defender. She had only Ashideena and 30 darts of stunning at her disposal, due to poor planning by yours truly.
After blasting through the whole of SCS BG1, I jumped the gun a little bit at the end. Ashideena had proven capable through the whole game, and for much of it I forgot that ranged combat even existed. This eventually resulted in Helena standing before Black Lily with little more than a warhammer and a potion bag filled with a hodgepodge of battlefield salvage. Helena would not even consider talking a pause to go shopping or find more equipment (This was the final chase scene, time is of the essence!).
Black Lily had 30 darts of stunning, but otherwise no ranged weapons that jumped out at me as being helpful. I didn't know anything about the fight, other than that I had always found killing Semaj quickly to be crucial in the vanilla version. I expected him to be only harder in SCS. The darts of stunning were for him.
Helena had no proficiencies in anything other than Warhammer and Sword+Shield. Still, I bought the darts and used a potion of invisibility to race through the maze and the under-city unmolested, only stopping to talk with Tamoko. Turns out you can talk her out of fighting you--I did not know this. And here I thought I was going to get some good full plate out of it...
I looked through my potion case to see what Helena possessed and chugged everything I thought might be helpful, then entered Bhaal's temple.
A working strategy soon became evident after a few tries. Helena used her darts sparingly, and even without a proficiency in darts she had a ranged THAC0 of 3 (thanks to potions of mind focusing). Her only other weapons were Ashideena and 4 long forgotten potions of explosion found at the bottom of the potion case. For healing we had 7 potions of healing, 1 potion of extra healing, 1 potion of regeneration. I cursed my lack of planning, wondering if it would be enough.
Helena rushed Sarevok and his goons, using her enhanced speed to even outpace the hasted Sarevok. The plan was simple. Run around in circles!
It was actually more heroic than that.
Helena opened up with potions of explosion to disrupt Semaj and Angelo from casting, running from corner to corner to draw her pursuers into tight groupings. After the grenades were used up (vital for disrupting Semaj and Angelo's powerful remove magic spells), Helena switched between darts and Ashideena. Diarmid was the first to fall in a straight toe-to-toe engagement. Not even Sarevok could help him; Helena hammered the henchman into the ground, though received great wounds. Her 132 hitpoints saved her, along with the potion of regeneration. Tazok had his annoying Berserk, and I wasted almost 10 darts on him before realizing he was enraged (when the message popped up about the berserk state ending). He also had to be taken toe-to-toe. Semaj was stunned by this point in the middle of the room, but always too close to his friends to suffer an effective attack from Helena.
Helena had only one hope to deal with Sarevok's goons. 1. Stun them with darts. 2. Run a wide circle around the room to draw the rest of the enemies away. 3. Use blinding speed to leave the enemies behind and bee-line for the stunned target.
Not even stoneskins were effective. Helena had 3 attacks per round and a THAC0 of -2 with Ashideena. She could get at least 2-3 attacks on a stunned opponent before Sarevok caught up. Round and round we all went, Helena taking them down one by one. Eventually only Angelo and Sarevok remained, and Helena used the last of her darts to stun the archer. From his corpse she salvaged acid arrows and a bow. She used them to weaken Sarevok, but it was not enough. The would-be Lord of Murder was only barely injured.
I must admit to panicking slightly at this point. The last thing I wanted was to put Helena within reach of Sarevok's sword. But with no ranged weapons, no healing potions, no ability to save, Helena decided to pull out all the stops and swallow her fear.
She engaged Defensive Stance. Speed was no longer needed.
Sarevok charged her. They swung wildly at each other. Helena survived the battering without much trouble, her AC so slow that defensive stance was actually applying a penalty. With her damage resistance, Sarevok was dealing between 8-12 damage a hit.
Helena was dealing in excess of 20 on every hit. Sarevok soon fell.
If there were 1000 threads on this forum praising the Dwarven Defender, it would not be enough.