Party advice and miscellaneous questions

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Bonjour,

I am playing BG2:SoA for the first time, still in Chapter 2 (Athkatla) and would like some advice on a few things:

1. Party makeup. Right now I've got: PC, Minsc, Korgan, Yoshi, Aerie, Jaheira. My party seems to be geared as a "good party" (my PC is CG) and my reputation is 16, I think. I want to avoid any future problems with Korgan being eeevil, and dump him for a substitute tank. The question is... who to pick? I met Nalia, who left for her Keep, but she's a thief. Viconia seems to be evil, so I can't pick her. Anomen looks to be a cleric but I already have a Cleric/Mage and a Druid. I met Valygar but he seems to be a ranger. Korgan's really useful because he has an amazing armor class and 114hp at this point - 15hp more than the next guy (my PC). So my question is, what *good or neutral* tank can I replace Korgan with? preferably someone who uses longswords because i've got a million "named" longswords that no-one's using! well, actually just 5...

note: I can't use my PC as a tank since he's an archer, and his thac0 is only good with a longbow.


2. Game quirks. A few things in the game are annoying me: "you must gather your party before going forth" - can I silence that? Also, Minsc and Aerie are ALWAYS bantering, saying the same old lines over and over again. I swear, Minsc says that line about him and Boo being "heroes" once every 30 seconds! Can I make them shut up? There have been so many times when they start a banter line the same time I try to talk to an NPC: so I can't hear the NPC's dialog because Minsc/someone is repeating a one-liner!

3. AI frame rate option in config program. This option does not seem to be explained well anywhere. I searched a bunch of forums. Can anyone shed some light? Disadvantages/advantages of using lower/higher numbers? I am editing some of the AI scripts so I can automate certain behaviors of my mage/cleric: will this option affect the performance of such scripts.

 

1. Mazzy or Valygar should work. I'm told that Haer'Dalis can be used, but I wouldn't recommend him.

2. The Ease of Use mod can silence that, but it's got a number of "cheats" in it, so be careful if you want that. I never found that "You must gather" thing to be too bad. As for the one-liners, lowering your reputation will do the trick.

3. It will, as the higher the number, the faster the game will seek out new actions. There's no advantage/disadvantage, as all the enemies will suffer the same speed increases/decreases that your guys will.

 

1. Hitpoint-wise, are Mazzy and Valygar competitive with Korgan or at least Minsc? (err, I could add them to tbe party and check, but I'd have to travel to Trademeet for one and I don't know where the other went). What's also good about Korgan are his nice saving throws: less chance of being affected by the enemy's disabling spells. I hate casting Dispel Magic on my own party members when they're disabled, since it also disables all the "good buffs" that everyone has (wide area of effect/close quarters battles).

2. I'll try ease of use, but I guess I'll have to live with the one-liners. I like 'role-playing' a good-aligned party so I have no desire to lower my rep... maybe my second run-through.

3. But I assume this may have a relation with my CPU power? i.e. if my CPU isn't quite good enough, putting a too high AI-rate will make things choppy? I have an Athlon 1.4ghz.

Thanks for the tips!


Err, one last question. When I played IWD2 with a ranger, it was easy to switch between dual-wielding and a longbow. But in BG2, it seems I have to manually open the inventory and dump the off-hand sword everytime I want to equip a longbow. Any way around this?

 

For a good party, Keldorn makes a good tank. Find him in the Temple District sewers after starting the unseeing eye quest.

Jaheira will make a good fighter later on.

And about the dual weild/ missile weapon prob, no theres no way around it. Its the same with all two handed weapons.

 

Keldorn is an ideal tank for a good party; not only is he a great tank, but he's an inquisitor, one of the best classes in the game. I usually find him indispensible when I play. While you already have two clerics, both are dual classes; Anomen is a Pure cleric (well, he has some fighter levels, but they're pretty marginal) and he'll gain access to his higher level cleric spells more quickly, plus his turn undead is incredibly useful in certain areas. With his high strength, he makes an excellent tank as well.

 

Although he's a cleric, I found Anomen to be an extremely capable fighter. He was normally my third tank in my party.

 

Keldorn is probably the best tank in the game especially after you find the Gaunlets of Dexterity. They raise his AC by 4 points.

 

Thanks for the advice, people. I guess I'll have to decide between Mazzy and Keldorn. Maybe in my next run-through I'll go for a pure evil party and keep Korgan.

 

I'm not sure if you mean bantering. Bantering is the random conversation that actually pops up a screen that shows the dialogue. If your characters are just saying their one-liners from the speakers, then there is an option to turn that down. I don't recall where it is but check the available sound or gameplay options.

If Valygar is alive, then he is probably in his cabin in Umar Hills or in his house at the Docks.

For the second tank in your party I would highly recommend Keldorn because he is able to talk Minsc down from his berserker rage. Since both Minsc and Aerie are in your party, there may come a time where this would prove usefull.

Baldurdash.org has a tweak that silences the "party gathering" that is seperate from the other "cheats" in the ease of use mod.

http://www.baldurdash.org/SoAtweaks/BG2ShutUp'YouMustGatherYourPartyBeforeVenturingForth'.zip

 

Since it's your first time through the game, it's a no-brainer who you should pick up as the tank: Keldorn. As a paladin he get a bonus of 2 to all of his saving throws, so his saving throws are going to be about equal to Korgan, he has great special abilities, and he comes with 2 stars in longswords so he even covers that requirement of yours.

 

you are correct, i didn't mean bantering (which are the proper conversations they engage in; those are interesting and only happen once) but rather the annoying one-liners which seem to get played all too frequently.

 

In my own game I have all of the one-liners turned nearly off except for when I issue a command. This reassures me that I finished the command properly. As I recall there are sliders to set for how often you want the NPCs to speak in response to certain things or just randomly. This does not affect their banter.

[ April 09, 2004, 19:32: Message edited by: CUE ]

 

In regards to the AI frame rate option, is it possible to disable 3d acceleration, but still have your sprites move as fast as they do when the acceleration is enabled?

 

About the bantering: CUE is right in that there is an in-game control of how often you want to here NPC's babble randomly. I think it is under the "Sounds" menu and you can switch the setting from always to seldom or never.

 

Am I the only one who sings along with the NPCs? We are all heroes.. you and boo and I! Hamsters and rangers everywhere! Rejoice!

...I even do the squeak. *goes to his corner*

 

On a 1.4 you shouldn't have much problem.

Most likely.

Up the framerate. Honestly, though, 3D acceleration on doesn't always seem to work properly, so be careful.

 

@Thayvian

No you're not, i love to "singalong" with minsc

Cities always teem with evil and decay, lets give it a good shake and see what falls out!

 

Take Mazzy. She's like a tactical nuke, small but extremely powerful. She's got a lot of hit points, great dexterity and she's almost a lawful good halfling paladin, so she fits perfectly in your party. Furthermore, as an archer, she should be nicknamed "Machinegun Mazzy", mostly if you equip her with Tuigan's bow. Check sound options for fixing the dialogue. As for the framerate, I don't know, I always let it with the default setting.
As for Anomen as a fighter... Equip him with the Crom Faeyr and see how "marginal fighter" he is with five weapon proficiency slots allotted to Warhammer...A tank on his own right. Also, if you don't want to take Mazzy along because you already are an archer, take Keldorn; He's your solution, good tank, excellent abilities-his Dispel magic is just great-and a interesting quest.

 

OK, just thought I would update you all on the advice given to reduce the frequency of "one-liners". It doesn't work, not with regards to the one-liners I was talking about.

The 2 options in the Sound Config. menu allow you to disable NPC's saying something: (1) when you click on them, and (2) when you give them an order. I wasn't referring to either of those, but rather the one-liners which are played for no particular reason, such as Minsc exclaiming about being a Hero and Korgan muttering about the surroundings being "shoddily maintained" or having more fun "bleedin' from every orifice, don'tcha know". (Or Aerie whining about being underground... Or Yoshi warning about possible mousetraps... etc)

Now again with regards to the "AI Frame rate" option in the config program. Does this change the length of a combat round? i.e. would setting this to 60 (which is double the default) cause combat rounds to take only 3 seconds of realtime as opposed to 6 ? So if I'm using a global timer in a script to keep track of a spell's duration, it would mess things up? err, this is rather easy to check for myself, so I guess I'll just do that...

Oh and thanks for all the tips. I think I will have to play this at least 2 more times through; once more as a good party but with all different members and finally as an evil party with poor Korgan who I just gave the boot for Keldorn!

 

I found Keldorn to be the single greatest NPC i had.
His instant-speed super-powered Dispel meant every Mage i fought had his spell protections stripped in the first 10 seconds of the fight and died very soon after. He caused some fights to be almost too easy! as i'm not too keen on over-buffing my party i never found it to be a problem when i caught my party in them - the enemy always suffered way more than i did!