Random spawns in EE, why so weak?
blackchimes
Member Posts: 323
So roughly half an hour ago I reinstalled Baldur's Gate: The Original Saga for a quick check how AI pathfinding works in the original game. For this I needed enemies in open areas, so I just rushed to Gorion to get out of Candlekeep. Sorry Shank and that other guy.
After kicking Imoen out(who wasn't terribly upset by this - apparently she has a different kick-out dialogue if you roll a low reaction! Never knew that) I then rushed into the darkness of fog of war in search of enemies, and sure enough, here are two Gibberlings.
Wait. TWO Gibberlings?! And not even Diseased ones?! What is this madness?
Last weekend I've been hammering the EE to death and in the ~20 hours played I've never seen spawns so high. It's almost like EE is hardcoded to give you lowest possible spawns only. One regular Hobgoblin, one normal Wolf, one Black Bear, one Bandit... the only time when I've seen two enemies randomly spawn was when they were Kobolds. And that was on Insane difficulty, which supposedly should give you more HD in random spawns.
Hell, I remember back when TuTu was a thing, that one of the versions "accidentally" maximized random spawns in the game. Instead of one Black Bear, you got three. Bandits spawned in clumps of 5(all with bows. FML) Regular Wolf spawn was a Worg, and if you got unlucky(or lucky, depends on how you want to look at it) you got a Dread Wolf. Yeah, a Dread Wolf straight out of Candlekeep! So if you want to know how "Insane" spawns should look like, here you go.
tl;dr: there seems to be something wrong with random spawns in EE. They just don't deliver. Obviously I'm not talking the crazy spawns from TuTu should be back(unless on Insane, then why not) but if the regular, vanilla Baldur's Gate spawned 2-3x more HD of monsters than EE, then this goes beyond whining of an old fanboy and into not accurately representing the original game.
And don't give me that crap about it being "too hard". This is the game which puts an Ogre in second area of the game. Tarnesh the Terrible in FAI. Spiders in Beregost. And so on. Surely anyone playing this game can handle two non-diseased Gibberlings.
After kicking Imoen out(who wasn't terribly upset by this - apparently she has a different kick-out dialogue if you roll a low reaction! Never knew that) I then rushed into the darkness of fog of war in search of enemies, and sure enough, here are two Gibberlings.
Wait. TWO Gibberlings?! And not even Diseased ones?! What is this madness?
Last weekend I've been hammering the EE to death and in the ~20 hours played I've never seen spawns so high. It's almost like EE is hardcoded to give you lowest possible spawns only. One regular Hobgoblin, one normal Wolf, one Black Bear, one Bandit... the only time when I've seen two enemies randomly spawn was when they were Kobolds. And that was on Insane difficulty, which supposedly should give you more HD in random spawns.
Hell, I remember back when TuTu was a thing, that one of the versions "accidentally" maximized random spawns in the game. Instead of one Black Bear, you got three. Bandits spawned in clumps of 5(all with bows. FML) Regular Wolf spawn was a Worg, and if you got unlucky(or lucky, depends on how you want to look at it) you got a Dread Wolf. Yeah, a Dread Wolf straight out of Candlekeep! So if you want to know how "Insane" spawns should look like, here you go.
tl;dr: there seems to be something wrong with random spawns in EE. They just don't deliver. Obviously I'm not talking the crazy spawns from TuTu should be back(unless on Insane, then why not) but if the regular, vanilla Baldur's Gate spawned 2-3x more HD of monsters than EE, then this goes beyond whining of an old fanboy and into not accurately representing the original game.
And don't give me that crap about it being "too hard". This is the game which puts an Ogre in second area of the game. Tarnesh the Terrible in FAI. Spiders in Beregost. And so on. Surely anyone playing this game can handle two non-diseased Gibberlings.
Post edited by blackchimes on
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I got the vampire wolf once, mentioned in the second post, and there are large groups of gibberlings at the FAI/Coast Way crossroads.
On the other hand, last couple of playthroughs solo dismissing Imoen, I haven't encountered the wolf who always used to turn up where Gorion was killed.
So looks like @Grond0 has got it right.
Either way, I expected the Insane difficulty to override any such variation - isn't that what it's for?
Got a random pack of like 7 skeleton slingers/melees in the high hedge area.
Beregost temple map I ran into a massive 8+ pack of mixed wolves.
That's without any mods installed. And yes I believe random spawns on normal maps (not the random encounters while traveling) check for your party size and possibly power, as I roll with a full group most of the time.
I think the traveling ones can be ridiculous either way because I got sucked into a "bandit archer circle death sentence" encounter while traveling to the friendly arm solo. -_-
I agree that you might reasonably expect insane difficulty to affect the numbers and levels of creatures - but with the odd minor exception that's never been done in unmodded BG or BG2 (either in vanilla or EE). However, the game difficulty level does considerably affect the spawns you find in SoD - so if you like that idea you might want to give that game a go.