Gesen Cheese

Remove all ads!

This is embarrassing - I have always used ammo with Gesen, only to discover in the latest "best bow" thread, that this is considered cheese. I just felt that since it was never corrected in all the various fix packs that were put out there that this ability was being implemented as intended. In fact, the only time I didn't use the ammo was when I was fighting something that wouldn't be hit by the standard ammo. I do the same thing with the Sling of Everard. And I'm sure that you can do it with Tansheron's Bow and Firetooth as well, although I admittedly use those items much less regularly. (As a complete aside, they couldn't come up with something better than Firetooth? There's already a throwing dagger, Fire Tooth, in the game.)

 

How is this cheese? Seriously, some people just call anything cheese. It's just using an alternative fire mode as far as I'm concerned.

 

To be honest I consider it cheese myself, but then I rarely used ranged weapons because bow ammunition got so severely nerfed and maybe 'abusing' this glitch is the fair way of getting past the weakness of missile weapons relative to melee weapons which is inherent to BG2.

Though as soon as I say that I find myself imagining an archer with unnerfed grandmastery, bolts of lightning, Firetooth, Greater Whirlwind and maybe some form of Improved Haste. While this may be excusable it does on the surface sound pretty unfair on your enemies.

*Thinks* I may start allowing myself to use ammunition in these weapons. They are all clearly meant to be very powerful but suffer from lack of strength boosts and suffer penalties in close combat. *Slowly but surely heading down the road to cheese kingdom*

 

Any archery cheese you can think of, a melee weapon can do better. Kensai + grand mastery + GWW + two-hander + str-boosting item seems like it would have a lot higher damage output.

Compared to using a projected image to summon 5 planetars to deal with your enemies is a lot more potent as far as cheese is concerned. And even that is comparitively mild compared to what is actually possible.

 

I agree with henkie. It's an exploit, no doubt, but in the great big world of BG2 cheese it more or less only counts as soured milk. Add to this the fact that quite a few monsters in BG2 are (for all intents and purposes) immune to ranged weapons, like Kangaax, otyughs, and the Ravager.

 

One that doubles your damage output, though the doubling makes no sense at all? For me it's certainly cheese. Even though it doesn't make the game as easy as 5 or 15 planetars do, it makes it easier than it was meant to be.

And archers are not purely about damage. It would be crazy if they did as much damage as Kensai, considering that Kensai who has terrible defense has to get to the enemy to hit. And Firetooth with lightning bolts is not much behind a Kensai with 24 STR and Impaler, my calculators show 395 vs 451 dmg/s round, though they use different formulas (the latter is more accurate).

 

If you didn't use ammo in it, it wouldn't be worth much. It does hardly any damage without arrows. Not worth the trouble to have forged, IMO.

 

Who cares what you use with Gesen? It's a bow, FFS!

 

Could it actually be intentional? I mean, what if I wanted to use fire arrows to hit trolls? Would I need to switch to another book?

 

That was the exact point I was trying to make. (Well, not the hitting trolls part, but that the ability to use arrows being intentional). In all the fixpacks, patches, etc that have been made, this has never been altered, which suggests that it's that way intentionally.

Also I'd like to point out something in the items descriptions that supports this. Looking at all the items that produce magic arrows/bolts/bullets, most of the same in the description: "Does not require [ammunition]" Not requiring ammunition is in no way stating that you could not, or should not, use ammunition.

True enough, but if you have, say, Imoen, Nalia, or Mazzy in your party, chances are it's a bow that they are using.

 

It's said to be hard to fix. I read that it would require major engine modifications. That's totally out of modders' capabilities and it's possible that it was considered too costly to be worth fixing by the authors. Or maybe they just didn't notice. Why I don't consider this explanation to be the only possibility, I find it convincing because hey, doubling damage by using supposedly weaker ammo? It just makes no sense.

Well, saying it the other way wouldn't be that great either. Because they do use ammunition, they just create it for themselves.

 

I'm retracting my previous statement. Now that I'm actually playing BG2 again (got Gesen earlier) I think this is more likely to be an intended glitch. Gesen's Bow with no ammunition simply falls flat - I find it hard to believe the developers made us go through all that trouble for such an underwhelming weapon (it even loses quite spectacularly vs Tuigan). It's more likely that they knew about it, and decided to leave it. Fitting, seeing as no attempt is made to replace Gesen in ToB (all other weapons types get an upgraded, more powerful version - bows got Taralash, and the only noteworthy thing about that weapon is that it increases your movement speed - nice for dual-classed thief-mages, rubbish for true archers).

 

I've never considered it to be cheesy.

Why not? The arrows used are made of pure lightning, and therefore presumably have no physical mass. So there would be nothing to stop you from stringing a "real" arrow in the bow, and firing off what is essentially an arrow augmented by lightning (and while there aren't actual lightning arrows in the game, there are lightning bolts, so this shouldn't be a difficult concept to wrap one's head around).

 

Does Gensen get any bonuses if you use normal arrows, or only if you use special, magical arrows? I never noticed much if I used normal arrows, and tend to horde my magic arrows for either really tough fights or foes that require magical weapons to hit.

 

Any ammunition gives a bonus.

Gesen itself fires the silly lightning arrows and will fire them whenever it is fired. Put any ammunition into it and those get fired but, as I said, the lightning arrows also always fire. Put normal arrows in and you fire lightning and normal.

So there is a benefit but it is a small one 1D6 damage increase. Although normal arrows are of a lower enchantment than the normal Gesen arrows. Not entirely sure how enchantment is handled with Gesen *Thinks* It should be.

Gesen's inherent lightning arrows are +2 or +4 .... +2 I think.
Adding ammunition to the bow means that the enchantment of the new ammunition is used so putting in plain arrows would fire Gesen ammunition plus a plain arrow at a 0 enchantment.

Hmm, now I think about it +2 doesn't make much sense and it is more likely +4 enchantment level for basic Gesen ammunition.

I'm sure someone else will correct all my mistakes (which are many in this post alone). But that should be BASICALLY correct.

 

You're mostly right. Gesen is +4 when determining what it can hit, but it adds +2 damage, along with 1-8 electrical damage on top of that. That's why if you don't equip any arrows at all in it, you can hit things like golems (although they don't take the 1-8 electrical damage, you just get the 2 - and owing to physical resistance, that's often times reduced to 1).

Now, once you add arrows, it's the arrows' enchantment that determine whether or not it will do any damage upon hitting the target. So let's take that golem again. Iron golems require +3 or better to hit. Unless you've hiked over to Watcher's Keep, you won't acquire any +3 arrows in SoA. So no matter what ammunition you use, it won't do damage to the golem. You'll get the "Not even a scratch?" or "Gotta try something else" message from which ever character is using the weapon.

So to sum up, you always get the +4 THAC0 bonus from using the bow. However, for the purposes of determining what it can hit, it depends on the ammunition used, which is only +4 if you aren't using any ammo, or if you're using +4 arrows.

Really? By the time I can make Gesen - Chapter 6 - not having magic arrows is typically no longer an issue. I too hoard magic arrows in the early going, but even by the time I reach Spellhold I usually have several hundred magic arrows - not all +1 of course, but several hundred combining all of my enchanted arrows together.

 

Interesting, thanks Aldeth, I didnt know how that worked. Pity its not always considered a +4!

 

I think you're referring to adamantine golems - they're the ones with very high damage resistance and requiring +3 enchantment to hit. I don't think iron golems need +3, though I don't recall exactly.

As for magical arrows, an early excursion to the WK will get you infinite +1 arrows and bolts.

 

Yeah those - although I think there's an iron golem at the D'Arnise Keep, and I don't think he's hit by +2... Not sure.