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Them prices!

Whats up with the ridiculous prices for magic items in this game? I just reached Kuldahar and Conlan is basically insane if he thinks people living in some backwater town in the middle of a place that no one visits ever can afford his stuff. I'm seeing stuff in the range of 30k - 50k, and I barely have 3500 bucks. Are those items supposed to be for HoF mode? because I remember that in IWD2 items in that mode were much more expensive (and powerful). In my last playthrough of BG1 I accumulated something like 160k and even that wouldn't be enough to outfit a party of 6 with the best stuff here.
Anyways, just wanted to know if this is regular to the game or if I screwed something up, as I have installed tweaks anthology and a couple other mods.

Comments

  • Rik_KirtaniyaRik_Kirtaniya Member Posts: 1,742
    edited April 2018
    Those are the normal prices. It's too much, of course, but thankfully you wouldn't actually need to buy anything from Conlan. The weapons and armours that you get from the various dungeons are enough to see you through the game. There's never enough money when playing with a party, but when you reach upto somewhere like Dorn's Deep, you will start getting much better weapons and other items than you can get in Conlan's shop. I haven't played HoF, so I can't tell about that, but in the normal mode, those magic items are practically just for display. :D

    Edit: In fact, the most important thing that you should buy as soon as possible is a Bag of Holding from Orrick's shop. You'll run out of space very soon without it. ;)
    QuartztoolarglolienSCARY_WIZARD
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,367
    Well there aren't any Wal-Marts or Dollar Stores in Faerún (yet).
    ThacoBellSCARY_WIZARD
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @SomeSort the scarcity of scrolls and the unreliable random drops are one of the big factors why I find IWD inferior to BG.
  • SomeSortSomeSort Member Posts: 859
    ThacoBell said:

    @SomeSort the scarcity of scrolls and the unreliable random drops are one of the big factors why I find IWD inferior to BG.

    Different strokes for different folks. Some people like FPS games with ammo drops as far as the eye can see to support non-stop firing. Others prefer survival horror games where they're finishing enemies off with knives to preserve every precious handgun bullet. It's not that one is inherently better than the other, it's that they're meant to scratch different itches, and criticizing a FPS for having too much ammo or a survival horror for having too little misses the point.

    I find that IWD playthroughs are a lot less formulaic than BG playthroughs, though, especially if you don't cheat on the 100% chance to scribe scrolls and you gratefully accept whatever the RNG gods deign to give you gear-wise.
    toolargThacoBellRik_KirtaniyaQuartz
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @SomeSort I agree with all that except the formulaic part. There are FAR MORE weapons available in BG than IWD. If you find yourself using the same ones then, thats on you the player, and not the game offering alternatives. IWD is far more formulaic with its entirely linear progression and lack of weapon variety. Fights are solved in only a few different ways as well, due to the abundance of enemy immunities that discourage class experimentation.
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @SomeSort You do know you can roll six player made characters in BG as well, right? Experimentation is discouraged because the game is skewed HEAVILY against magic users, because again, you have required bosses in IWD that are immune to magic.
    Balrog99
  • Rik_KirtaniyaRik_Kirtaniya Member Posts: 1,742
    edited April 2018
    It's remarkable how spells like Breach and True Sight (that are must-have spells in BG2) are made almost useless in IWD. On the other hand, spells which we rarely use in BG2 (like for example, Protection from Normal Missiles and Shield, because everyone is using magical weapons and arrows there) become highly useful here.
    (like PFNM against Shadowed Archers in Severed Hand, and Shield against Imbued Wights and Drow Sorcerers)
    Although surviving in IWD is hard for magic users, or to be more precise, for mages, there is still a lot of scope for experimentation and creative battle tactics. ;)

    It's simply a different experience. There are tricks here too... ;) It's only easy if you have a Fighter type character. :)
    Quartzlolien
  • SomeSortSomeSort Member Posts: 859
    ThacoBell said:

    @SomeSort You do know you can roll six player made characters in BG as well, right? Experimentation is discouraged because the game is skewed HEAVILY against magic users, because again, you have required bosses in IWD that are immune to magic.

    There's no boss in IWD that is immune to magic. (At least, this was true pre-HoW; I'm unsure how the expansion changed Belhifet's resistances.)

    Again, I *soloed the original release with a conjurer*. How does one complete a solo game? By defeating all required bosses. How does a Conjurer defeat enemies? Spoilers: with magic.

    For starters, Belhifet wasn't *immune* to magic, he was *highly resistant* to magic. (I believe the original percentage was 80-90%.) If you cast magic missile on him, one or two usually got through to deal damage. There were stories early on of people trying Chromatic Orb on him, bypassing his magic resistance and getting a lucky roll on the saving throw, and leaving him stunned for over a turn / easy pickings.

    Second, he wasn't even properly highly resistant to magic, he was highly resistant to *directly targeted magic*, which is a subset of all magic. Belhifet was not resistant to, say, casting haste on your entire party to double your murderspeed. (And, indeed, few adventurers back then would dare face Belhifet without Haste handy.)

    Nor was he, or any enemy in the entire game, resistant to monster summoning (unlike BG2, where every hedge mage on every street corner has at least three Death Spells memorized), or to Tenser's Transformation, which was the method I used to take him down in my attempt. (Icewind Dale Tenser's was *baller* because it granted an extra APR.) The metaknowledge I needed for my solo was how to manipulate RNG to make sure my mage had a weapon with a high-enough enchantment to hit him in the first place, because the only +4 weapon a mage could equip was random loot.

    Again, let me stress this. I killed Belhifit with a magic user using magic, which seems odd given that apparently Belhifet was immune to magic and the game forced you to use non-magic to kill him. Indeed, if we're going to call Belhifet "immune to magic", then we're going to have to call Firkraag and all of the BG2 liches "immune to magic", because they have comparable resistance to direct magic effects.

    Icewind Dale wasn't skewed heavily against magic users. It was skewed heavily against having two full arcane casters because of limited scrolls, (though Mage + Bard or Mage + Fighter/Mage were both popular). And it was definitely skewed heavily against single-target damage spells and in favor of buffs / debuffs / area-of-effect spells. But buffs / debuffs / AoE spells are... still magic. As is divine spellcasting, which was *much* more effective in IWD than in BG2 (see: Druid's non-sucky spell selection, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful, and hordes of undead).
    Rik_KirtaniyatoolargSCARY_WIZARD
  • joluvjoluv Member Posts: 2,137
    I don't know about original IWD, but in IWDEE Belhifet wears a ring that makes him immune to spell levels 1-9 and has dozens of specific spell protections to take care of area-effect spells. Summons and buffs help against him, of course, but I'd still say he's legitimately immune to magic.
    ThacoBellSomeSortRik_Kirtaniya
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @SomeSort Yes, but you also stated that you had to rely on metaknowledge to succeed in your solo. A balanced only for expert players, isn't really balanced at all.

    I'm not saying IWD is BAD. I'm saying its balance isn't that great. But it scratches a specific game itch VERY well. It does what it does very well. I'm gonna stop derailing this thread now.
  • SomeSortSomeSort Member Posts: 859
    ThacoBell said:

    @SomeSort Yes, but you also stated that you had to rely on metaknowledge to succeed in your solo. A balanced only for expert players, isn't really balanced at all.

    I'm not saying IWD is BAD. I'm saying its balance isn't that great. But it scratches a specific game itch VERY well. It does what it does very well. I'm gonna stop derailing this thread now.

    I needed metaknowledge for my solo not because IWD was balanced for expert players, but because IWD was not balanced for solo.

    The reason I tried the solo was because I was on an IWD message board and there was a debate as to whether a solo mage was even possible. This was just a month or two after the game came out, mind. A few other classes had been soloed, but mages were especially gimped in the attempt because the scroll scarcity meant they couldn't even "overlevel" for each challenge properly; you might have level 7 spell slots, but if the highest level scroll you found was level 5, they weren't doing you much good.

    (Yes, this was unbalanced. But like I said, IWD was never balanced for solo, and especially not for a solo mage. It was balanced so that mages were getting useful spells in a timely manner during a full party-of-6 run-through.)

    And as I mentioned, the bulk of the metaknowledge I needed was the random item loot tables, because soloing a mage required rather specific gear, some of which was not guaranteed to drop in a given playthrough.
    Rik_KirtaniyaRaduzielElrandir
  • toolargtoolarg Member Posts: 179
    edited April 2018
    ThacoBell said:

    @SomeSort Yes, but you also stated that you had to rely on metaknowledge to succeed in your solo. A balanced only for expert players, isn't really balanced at all.

    @ThacoBell I'll have to heavily disagree on that point. Saying that any of the IE games is unbalanced because you require metaknowledge to succeed in a solo run is silly, because ALL of the games were designed with a party in mind. Yes, you can go solo, but it's clearly not what the developers envisioned and the game is not built around or balanced for it. The most obvious example are the many insta kill traps in BG2. You either have a thief, cast detect traps with a spellcaster or use meta knowledge to go around them/use summons to trigger them. But if you dont use metaknowledge to know exactly where they are your solo run is gonna turn into a reload fest. Same with many status conditions, if that single character doesnt save, bam, dead. But in a party, someone may save and deal with the situation.
    Going solo is an exercise on fooling the system, its a fun experience, but you cant rate the games based on that style of playthrough. Maybe a mage cant beat the whole game by himself, I dont know, but Im sure he can do a heck of a lot for his party.
    Rik_KirtaniyaQuartzElrandir
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @toolarg Roll aparty of nothing but mages. Metaknowledge still required. I don't bkame it for solo shenanigans, I blame it for blatantly favoring certain classes over others.
  • RaduzielRaduziel Member Posts: 4,714
    I play IWD for many years and way more than I play BG(2) and I still don't know what's the optimal proficiency/items/party composition. No amount of metagame knowledge help me in that game - that's why it's awesome. All I know is that every single class matters - as an example: a fighter in IWD is nothing without the support of a cleric.

    The dialogues variation gives this game even more reasons to be played over and over again.

    For BG(2) I know how to optimize several classes and party compositions, from Candlekeep to Suldanesselar (I never finished ToB as I find it absolutely boring). To make this trilogy something close to be challenging I have to use things like crippled stats and anti-RP decisions like letting Carsomyr behind.

    Never fully played PST as I also find it absolutely boring, but IMHO IWD is by far the best IE game.
    SomeSortQuartz
  • SomeSortSomeSort Member Posts: 859
    ThacoBell said:

    @toolarg Roll aparty of nothing but mages. Metaknowledge still required. I don't bkame it for solo shenanigans, I blame it for blatantly favoring certain classes over others.

    Sure. And a party of nothing but fighters wouldn't need any metaknowledge. Or a party of nothing but thieves. Or a party of nothing but clerics.
  • QuartzQuartz Member Posts: 3,853
    ThacoBell said:

    @toolarg Roll aparty of nothing but mages. Metaknowledge still required. I don't bkame it for solo shenanigans, I blame it for blatantly favoring certain classes over others.

    Isn't that more 2nd edition D&D's fault than IWD's fault? Mages inherently require more know-how than many other classes.
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