Favorite class and noobish questions

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The real fun is when starting with a race that can have 19 con to start with, like dwarves or Half-Orcs (if you have BGTutu installed), because once you hit 20 con, you start regenerating health.

And yeah, when running through both BG and BG2, it's possible to end the game with 24 wis if your character is a cleric or druid(-multiclass) (23 if not).

Getting 19 int is nice for wizards and bards too, because then you can learn all spells at each level without needing to resort potions.

 

Oh yeah - should have mentioned that. The tombs under Candlekeep are inaccessible when you start the game. It's the return to Candlekeep in Chapter 6 where you'll be able to get the tomes. My bad.

Completely agree. Especially considering he's only hit if you score a critical hit (which has a 5% chance of happening). So most rounds he's not going to take any damage at all. I have heard of three different ways of beating him - there may be more, but all are cheesy.

Yep - the differences between 18 and 19 can be significant, as can the distinction between 19 and 20 if you're playing a race of demi-human that can start with 19.

A quick Cliff Notes version:

Strength: Unless you were really lucky or really patient and had a character with 18(00) exceptional strength to start, the difference you get by going to 19 is significant. If you did have 18(00), it's not much - you go from +3 to hit, +6 damage, to +3 to hit, +7 damage. But for all other exceptional strength scores, you're getting at least +1 to hit, and +2 damage.

Dexterity: The only meaningful difference between an 18 and 19 dexterity is if you are a thief. The chance of success of all your thief skills are somewhat affected by dexterity. It's not a linear increase for each skill, so I don't know the exact breakdown, but you might get 5% more to lock picking or stealth if you have a 19. The AC bonus is still 4 regardless of whether it's 18 or 19, so for non-thieves, it's not a biggie. Elves can start with a 19, and so can get their dexterity to 20. You also get a slight boost to your thieving abilities as before, but it's still only a bonus of 4 to your AC.

Constitution: As henkie already mentioned, if you're a dwarf you can get your constitution to 20, which will give you a low level regeneration which is definitely handy. There is a bonus for fighters, rangers, and paladins by going from 18 to 19 - you get +5 hp on each level up as opposed to +4 at 18. For the non-fighter types, you don't get any bonuses beyond 16, although it does mean that you can drop constitution to 15 and still end up with the maximum useful constitution score.

Intelligence: As henkie mentioned you have an unlimited number of spells you can write to your spell book for each level at 19, and it also improves the chance of successfully writing a spell into your spell book. Gnomes can start with 19 and therefore can raise their intelligence to 20, but I'm unaware of anything that you can do with a 20 that you couldn't do with a 19.

Wisdom: Even though you get three of these, I am unaware of any impact your wisdom score has in game if you aren't a cleric or druid. In the case of clerics and druids though, the difference is significant, as every point in wisdom from 13 on gives a bonus of one or more additional spells that can be memorized. In going all the way to 21, you even get a bonus 5th level spell. (Although you have to be at a level to cast that spell. A starting cleric with an 18 in wisdom gets +2 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level spells, but since you're only level 1, you only benefit from the +2 1st level spells. Once you hit level 3, you'll get the +2 2nd level, and so on.)

Charisma: Charisma does affect the prices you get charged by shop owners, although I do not think there is a difference between 18 and 19. While some actions and game events can only be triggered with a high charisma, I'm unaware of any that having 18 would not be as effective as 19.

 

If you wanted to powergame it a bit, the wisdom tomes could be used to boost a character with 10 wisdom to 13, thus opening up some quests that require slighter higher wisdom. This would allow you to invest your points in other, more useful, abilities. Obviously this only makes sense if you arent a druid or cleric.

 

Proteus, I think some of the specialist wizard classes I referred to earlier may require a decently high wisdom. I'd have to double check to be sure but I suspect so.

 

Okay, this one is really starting to annoy me. Where is Dynahier in the Gnoll stronghold? I've literally been all over the map and I can't find a single door that leads to her, all I found were two caves that had nothing.

 

Are you sure there was nothing in those caves? There should be around 4 caves, and in one of them you should be able to find the tome that increases your CHA.

As BTA says, she's in one of the pits, being guarded by a group of some tougher Gnolls

 

3 caves:
http://www.forgottenwars.com/bg1/ar5100.htm

 

There are certainly 3 caves, and in one of them is the tome of charisma.

I missed Dynaheir my first time through too. Once you fight the gnoll chieftain at the top of the stronghold you will notice two pits. Dynaheir is in the pit that is further to the east. Here's the thing - even though she's standing right in the middle of the pit, for some reason you cannot see her unless you actually enter the pit. It's dumb, but for some reason she is not visible until you send at least one character down into the pit.

EDIT: I have made very little progress in my latest game. None in fact since last weekend. I just got to Baldur's Gate, which is usually my plan in every game, simply because the quests are all quite easy, and there's way more experience there than you'll get anywhere else in the game except Durlag's Tower. So I don't do many side quests in the first few chapters, and I only go to areas where I really want something.

For example, I want all the tomes, so I'm doing those areas. I want those nice +2 magic weapons, so I'm definitely going to take out Graywolf and Bassilus. But all those kill things just to get experience points? No need. I'll get more XPs out of Baldur's Gate just for doing run and fetch missions than I'll ever get for those other things.

 

Finally found her, and the charisma tome to boot.

By the way, what is up with that gender changing belt thing? I had it stuck on Jahiera and had to reload a while ago. I thought it was kind of funny.

 

Maybe it isn't just your typical run-of-the-mill cursed item, but it is cursed, and can only be removed with a remove curse spell form a temple. It just doesn't have the same deleterious affects in combat situations that most other cursed items have, like bracers of binding, sword of berserking, etc.

 

Okay, sorry for the constant questions, but I need help again. I have tutu installed, but I can't seem to get the npc dialogue mod to work. When I try to install it it says something about a dialoug.tlk or something.

 

I think I had that problem, I was trying to install it in or from the wrong directory.

 

Which one is the right one?

 

Just one word:
Sirens.

 

I think I put the executable file in the file with the dialog file -- or expanded it to the dialog file. One of the mod expanded into its own file in the right place but then I had to transfer all files out of the mod file in order for it to work ... for the most part the readme's did a good job but some interpretation was needed.

 

Oh, they're long dead. I have Safana in my party, so we killed a whole bunch of them in that area. There's a few more over in werewolf island, but nothing like the area by the lighthouse.

There's also a few sirens in the area with the Surgeon and Mad Arcand (or something like that - the goofy gnome that asks you to fetch him his Ring of Folly). There's also some dread wolves, and of course ogres in that area - not a bad place for XPs at all.

The larger point is that you can easily get to BG with around 20,000 XP per character, and leave with well in excess of 50,000 XP per character.

I was not even aware that tutu added dialogue to the existing dialogue in game. Granted, I haven't played tutu in years, as I feel the vanilla game is good enough as is, especially when there are so many multi-classed NPCs who couldn't have kits anyway.

Finished BG over the weekend - at least kind of. I beat Sarevok - didn't do all the TotSC missions. In fact, I didnt' do any of them, and only went as far into Durlag's Tower as was required to get the Tome of Understanding.

Not sure if I'll go through BG1 again, or proceed to BG2 - leaning towards the latter.

 

Take some month-long vacations at the place where you met Sil. Sirens come around from time to time. Maybe because Sil stopped writing they want to find out what's up. Anyway, this is an easy, accessible early and extremely fast way of getting exp. And while it's quite boring, running around is even worse IMO once you know all these quests alredy.

 

Man, this game is complicated. I wanted to get Easytutu working and the Npc dialog mod, but neither of them work. When I try to do a custom install and install everything I never have a big enough cache size to fit everything, which is my first problem. My second one is that I seem to be incompetent when it comes to installing anything extra onto the vanilla game. Help a desperate noob?

 

Damedog, I'll try and help you step-by-step into making a BGTutu-install and modding it.

Please elaborate on what version of the game you have and what Operating System your running.

Most common disc set nowadays is the 4-in-1-boxset (Baldur's Gate 1 on 1 DVD, Tales of the Sword Coast on 1 CD, Baldur's Gate II on 1 DVD, Throne of Bhaal on 1 CD). Most common Operating System nowadays is Windows, either XP, Vista or 7. For now I'll assume this is what you have, please reply if it's otherwise.

Step 1: making a full and patched install of Baldur's Gate 1 + Tales of the Sword Coast:

1a. if you insert the disc and choose to install, after some initial screens to click through you'll see the option for either 'custom, minimum or recommended' install. CHOOSE CUSTOM, it's the only way to get all of the content installed on your harddrive, which is necessary to install Tutu.

1b. Next is the choice for the installation path. This is important for Windows Vista or 7: DON'T choose the default path in Program Files or you'll lose total control of your install with Windows choosing folders of it's own to place files 'User Data'. Instead, click Browse and change the path to CGames\Black Isle\Baldur's Gate (or any other name of your choosing other than Games, as long as it's not in Program Files). Confirm you want this folder to be created.

1c. Next you are asked to select Cache Size and CPU speed, click highest numbers, in the next screen place checks with all the parts. That's when you'll probably be told there's not enough space on the drive, confirm to continue anyway. You might also see remarks your system doesn't have enough memory or other failures to meet recommendations. Ignore and continue anyway. The checks the setup makes doesn't recognize the huge improvements in speed, memory, disk space that are made since the turn of the century, but the game should run fine nonetheless.

1c: Decline to install Adobe Reader (it would install a very old version, Adobe 6, maybe even earlier), then watch the movie about a new game that by now is very old (but can be bought on GOG.com) or use the Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL on Windows XP) to end the program Windows 95 Interplay File Player.

1e. Now insert the Tales of the Sword Coast-CD, again choose custom and check all the boxes. For single player you don't need Roger Wilco, decline, do have your save-games converted and watch a movie about a highly reverred game in the community of old CRPG-players. You don't need the DirectX 6.1 drivers, your modern DirectX drivers will handle the game.

1f. Get the Tales of the Sword Coast US patch from this page if your from the US, UK for European English versions, International for Non-English versions. Just open the file and click Yes and Next a few times and your done.

Note: if instead you have the downloadable GOG-version, install is very much easier, the only thing you need to do is open the setup-file, click 'Options' to choose a different installation path (default even with GOG is in Program Files, though they could have known better) and install. The GOG version comes fully patched.

Step 2: Installing Baldur's Gate II and TOB. It's very similar to step 1, just a bit easier: first you'll need to insert your Baldur's Gate II Shadows Of Amn DVD, name your install path CGames\Black Isle\BGII - SoA. No need to check boxes, just choose FULL INSTALL. Next is the Throne of Bhaal CD - again, click FULL INSTALL - and finally the Throne of Bhaal official English patch found on this page (or the European patch for non-english languages). Demo movie is for Icewind Dale, another grand old game, but this time just clicking Escape will end the movie.

Step 3: Istalling Baldur's Gate Tutu: get EasyTutu-TOB from http://usoutpost31.com/easytutu/
first question the install package asks is for a temporary unpacking folder. By default it creates a folder CTemp\EasyTutu. This one may be deleted after your finished.
next choose a normal install if you don't want your vanilla BGII game to be deleted (if you leave BGII untouched, you can use it to make a new Tutu install if you messed up somehow),
the EasyTutu setup will now spot the install paths of BG1 and BG2. Confirm if correct.
at last it's own install path is chosen. Again, don't use Program Files, change to CGames\BaldursGateTutu and confirm you want the folder to be created. Next is some patience as Tutu sets up it's engine taken from the BG2 install, copies the content of the game from your BG1 install and when it's finished you get a shortcut with which you can start your game (and check it's working fine).

But before you start a new campaign, finally onward to modding!


Step 4: Modding your Tutu install:

any mod you download, needs to be extracted into your Tutu-folder and subsequently installed by opening [modname]-setup.exe found inside your Tutu folder after extraction. Many mods won't auto-detect your Tutu-path and you'll need to point the way manually after opening the downloaded mod-file.

I'll just show the way for a minimalistic install:

a must have is the EasyTutuHotfix found on the Tutu-homepage above, that takes care of the bug causing infamous crashes that often occured when entering or exiting Beregost. Open the Hotfix-file, click Browse to find your BaldursGateTutu folder in the folder-tree, select it and confirm. Setup-EasyTutuHotfixes will open automatically, click i to install, then Enter to exit.

second recommended: NPC1-Project. Gibberlings 3 is in maintenance right now, but there's a temporary download page. Find BG1NPC-project and download it's windows version. Installing acts the same way as the Hotfix, point the way manually to your BaldursGateTutu folder. Only this time a lot of optional components. Just read and choose.

final recommendation: the widescreen mod (again, G3 temporary page), where you can choose the resolution of your monitor, instead of being stuck to 800x600. Again, don't forget to point the way to your Tutu folder manually.


Some final tips:

If setup of a mod doesn't start automatically, [modname]-setup.exe is found inside your Tutu folder after extraction. You can open it manually.

Weidu.log keeps track of all changes made. It can be viewed with Notepad. Just make shure it's not opened while installing a mod.

If a mod setup-exe screen keeps scrolling on repeating the same message it's checking for mod compatibility, you need to close the screen with the x, open a setup-file that's has a more recent version of WeiDu and just open it to make sure all your setups are updated to the newest version, than choose Quit without making any changes. Then open the setup of the mod that kept hanging and it won't be hanging anymore.

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Don't be afraid of the large swath of text. It's not that difficult, I just wanted to pre-empt most possible mistakes by elaborating on every single important step. Good luck!