Did you ever read the History of Halruaa?

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I'm talking about that first quest in Candlekeep where you must get Phlydia's book she's forgotten in the hay nearby. I must say I have played that segment dozens of times and it never even occured to me that I could read that book.

 

At some point I have read them all, though I don't do so every time I play. Some are amusing, some give back story to events in the game (As the History of Halruua does for the Thieves' Guild quest once you reach BG). Some just help create the feel of a magic rich fantasy realm for those not familiar with the Forgotten Realms.

 

Somebody has taken the time to extract all the text from all the books and put it in a nice text file for your convenience.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/75251-baldurs-gate/faqs/24524

If the above link doesn't work, it's the "book transcripts" FAQ on GameFAQS.com

http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/75251-baldurs-gate/faqs

It's much easier than hunting down all the books in the game, and if you are playing the original game without TutU, you aren't wasting game time standing around reading.

 

Thank you, Slick and Tal for those links. I have read some of the books but all of them. They are very interesting. BG is still the best, a true clasic.

 

Over the years I think I have read all those little history books. I know I was really fascinated by all this stuff when I was playing BG as a kid. Sometimes when browsing the FR wiki I'll remember little details from them.

 

At one time I read all of the books in the game. I don't any more.

 

I think Ive read them all

 

The last BG1-playthrough I competed was with a character that just really loves books and was overjoyed to get back to Candlekeep, which she just wouldn't have left if it wasn't for all the happenings. She got bethroted to Gavin, planning to both settle in Candlekeep after the mission, and she showed him around in the library.

It was the first time I ever took the patience to read all books in the library, and I was surprised to find the infamous History of the North isn't just one book, but a whole series of books. It took some time sorting them into chronological order once I've had them all in my inventory, but it turned out it's a series of 9 books if I remember well. History of Shadowdale is 12 books long. I could have known if I clicked above links, but I didn't want to 'cheat' but read them all in-game instead, after some puzzling to get them in chronological order.

 

I've read it. I don't know if I've ever read it after getting it from the hay, but I know in one of my recent restarts, I was reading all the books I found stealing in Beregost, and that was one of them. I'd read it before that, too, because I remembered it, so it's possible, even likely, that I read it in Candlekeep, too.

I like reading books in game, although I like the links, too, because in the game, you come across the books in kind of random order, so it's hard to get an actual overall picture. You just have a snippet here or there. And as others have said, with the longer histories of several volumes, it's hard to figure out which one is even first. So, it's a kind of disjointed method of learning the history.

 

I feel I should comment that by today's standard's I'm an OLD CRPG gamer. Technically I'm second generation, as missed the heyday of Wizardry and Ultima. I got my lifelong addiction to RPGs from The Bard's Tale series and the Gold Box games such as Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds.

Back then, you made a point to read ALL the available text, and in some of them such as The Bard's Tale you wrote down EVERYTHING as vital clues were normally found in them, even the most innocuous and seemingly random or irrelevant text could be a vitally important. Heck, in Bard's Tale II countless people had trouble getting into the final dungeon because they didn't note down the clues found MUCH easier (first or second dungeon).
I didn't realize how unimportant the books were when playing Baldur's Gate until after I'd finished the game the first time. I made sure to read History of Halruaa as back then when I first played, I was certain that with the way that book was highlighted, its text must contain some important clue.

Oh well, just a peek into the mindset of an old gamer from the old days. Although I'm not old, since I'm younger than Dennis and have never been mistaken for an old woman.

 

That was one of the big disappointments of the BG series. There were tons of books, but nothing was included in them that was required for the continuation of the game path. I am a collector of the FR campaign setting and I read all the books in game. But then I started to realize that a) they had nothing to do with the story line and b) I already read everything they had to say in the PnP supplements. I was hoping they were going to add a few tidbits of lore that would be new to the FR fans, but I was wrong.

 

The only one that really ties into the story is "The History of the Dead Three" and only indirectly.

As for the disappointment, is there anything that isn't in the set of books that comprised the core "Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting" as opposed to supplements?
I'm not sure if I got the name of that set of books correct, it's been over 20 years since my newly formed group bought it. We went for the Realms straight off because it was the Gold Box games that got us interested in AD&D in the first place.

 

I didn't read any of the BG1 books before Tutu. It was hard to appreciate them when you could only stack 20 arrows/bolts at a time and your inventory was full of gems/quest items/novelty items/etc. They also had a tendency to appear in inappropriate places.

I liked the way BG2 handled them better, and the first time I read most of them was when I was playing BG2. As someone who started with very little D&D background outside of CRPGs (a few RPGs and arcade games) the books were very interesting. Even after I started reading D&D stuff it just seemed like someone took the time to word those stories/histories you find in both game/s very carefully.

From my point of view the presence of those books was one of the things I liked most about BG.

 

I loved the "History of the Dead Three" and oddly I found a copy of it in the middle of my "Faiths and Avatars" book.

 

I fear I still not realized that now.

What clues are in the History of Halruaa?

 

Reread post #13 in this thread that I made two years ago.
http://www.sorcerers.net/community/...ead-the-history-of-halruaa.53130/#post-783017

 

But I don't understood a thing: did the books provide clues on in-game quests?

 

No. "History of the Dead Three" told a bit of the backstory, but none provided any clues and most were irrelevant flavor texts with no impact on the game at all. They were pretty much quotes from the 2nd edition Forgotten Realms sourcebooks for the history of the Forgotten Realms, but had little bearing on the game as the game was focused on the Baldur's Gate region of the Sword Coast and its southern border with Amn.
The only texts that were relevant were the ones you find in Candlekeep pertaining to Alando, and I believe those were scrolls.