Another run through BG1: suggestions please :-)

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Yes indeed. Picked up the tome which increases constitution from Durlag's tower and given it to the main protagonist (CON is now 21). Unfortunately I haven't had much time to sit and play recently, but as soon I get more game time in I'll update...

 

What a shame such an excellent series! If I recall correctly I believe the tome of WIS is in Durlag's Tower, the CON tome is in the lighthouse area (Far West of Beregost).

I too find myself replaying this game, just made a legit Solo Assassin/Mage 39/40 (BGTUTU to TOB Ascension - Removed XP Cap), and just hit the level 40 Mage reaching Sendai. Real pain to do!

Meh, might have to restart the whole thing, I always get bored after accomplishing something epic.

Do keep us posted!

 

My party is now on level 4 of Durlag's dangerous dungeon. It's been really tough and slow going. My party is really stretched at every major fight, challenging and lots of fun. A big problem I have is storage space since there are only 4 party members. My kingdom for a bag of holding! The party left the dungeon and is walking around getting rid of valuable items as well as recharging wands. They'll head back shortly and attempt to meet Durlag himself...

 

My party cleared out Durlag's Tower, which was NOT a walk in the park. What an awesome addition to the game! So the party returned to Ulgoth's Beard only to be met by a horde of nut-cases after soul stealer. A really nasty fight broke out, which my party barely survived. So into the cult lair we went, to be repeatedly massacred by a pit fiend. I think we'll leave the evil be for now, he doesn't play nice. We'll have to whip him later when we've learnt a few more tricks. So it's off to Cloakwood to kick some bandit butt. As you know, the main protagonist has a score to settle with Tozak...

 

Greetings all :-)

I really haven't had much time to play BG lately, so there have been no updates. My party is currently in the mine, getting ready to take on the head honcho and flood the mines. Will post here once completed.

Until then enjoy your adventures :-)

 

Do remember to finish the Aldeth rescue quest in Cloakwood before clearing the mine. That quest got a hardlimit on chapter. After clearing the Cloakwood mine you wont be able to do it.

I am tearing my hair out to find a way. I dont want to lose the Merchant League quest.

 

Greetings all.

There has indeed been a GREAT development: my boss bought me a laptop (What a nice guy, sometimes...). Now my woman and myself shall be LANing and attempting a run through SoA and ToB. She doesn't want to go through BG1 again since she's been through it twice already. We've decided that we're each going to make a single character and go for it, maybe picking up one or two NPCs along the way for quests and maybe a little help where we might need it. But we mostly want to go through the game with our two characters, minimizing the amount of XP we might share with NPCs. So, choices of characters...? Listed below are our choices. Please give your opinion (if interested). I tried to cover all the bases with only two characters.

1) Half-Orc Multi-classed Fighter/Cleric [STR 19 DEX 17 CON 19 INT 6 WIS 18 CHA 4]
Yes, I rolled those stats! :-)

2) Gnome Multi-classed Thief/Illusionist [STR 16 DEX 19 CON 16 INT 19 WIS 10 CHA 10]
Modified DEX (+1) and STR (+2) in order to have similar potential as character 1

I know that fighter/clerics are awesome, and after generating the thief/illusionist it looks as though the little gnome has great potential. I think we may have two really potent characters here. What sayeth the community?...

 

F/C is indeed awesome, and since he has already great ability scores, Draw Upon Holy Might spell will give him inhuman STR and CON. Better, Righteous Magic will give STR bonus and will give you maximum damage with your weapon:smack with Critical Strike HLA with Staff of Ram+6 while this spell is active:major ouchies few can survive long unless immune to massive blunt trauma! So specialise in quarter staff and two handed weapon style for maximum benefits. Until you get the ultimate nasty killer staff-weapon you can use flail of ages or improved mace of disruption when facing vampires+best shield you have. Or, dual-wielding crom faeyr and flail of ages is almost too strong a combo to be valid. Ooh there is no bad choice with this guy, for cleric weapons indeed rock!

T/I is essential, because cleric spells alone are not effective against high level mages. You'll use this guy to breach enemy mage's protections. However he will not be good at dispelling since he is MC, enemy casters levels will be almost always higher. So load with secret word, breach, pierce magic etc. As for thief skills, he will need good open locks and traps score, for obvious reasons. Don't invest in hiding skills if you ask me, you can use invisibility spells/potions. I suggest you put skills in detect illusions:extremely useful skill, a score of 100 is enough to dispell all kinds of enemy illusions in one round:it is like a free, never ending true sight spell! Or you can got set traps for cheesy kills, but do remember that he will get trap HLAs which are tons better and do not need set traps skill at all. For weapons, go shortbows and thief weapons your F/C can't use. This guy can actually use the Staff of Ram+6 for massive backstabs to awesome effect with a STR girdle too.

 

I agree with dmc on the R/C.

I’m not sure Silverstar’s concerns on dispelling in a small party (that will level up quickly) are that big of a deal. Also, personally, I would just go with a mage (unkitted)/thief. With an illusionist, you lose necromancy spells, which means you don’t get spirit armor, animate dead, death spell, horrid wilting, etc.; while losing these is not the end of the world, they sure are useful. But that’s just me.

 

Well, a MC mage wil not be able to rise to top levels as a mage, even in a small party, because of the XP cap. 8 million xp divided by two equals 4M which puts the mage class at mid 20s. Average SoA lich is lvl 25 conjurer or so. ToB enemies are even higher. A level 20-ish mage will not cut it against any serious spell caster worths its salt. Inquisitors and bards are still the best dispellers.

Ofcourse, it has been far too long since I played the vanilla (unmodded) game so my memory of it may be a bit hazy.

So, with an xp cap remover mod, this duo can become horribly and sickly powerful, since there is a lot of xp to be had in the game. Even a six group party generally reaches or gets very close to the cap at the end of ToB.

 

Thank you kindly for the responses thus far. You have all helped us in making our final choices. I'm going to stick with my F/C for now since I'm playing a dual class Berserker/Druid in my other game (the one to which this thread was dedicated originally), so I'll keep the character as is to avoid getting bored with my other game. We'll be changing the thief/illusionist to a thief/mage. My lady wants access to ALL the mage spells because she wants to be able to lay down a world of pain on our enemies later on. She is not well versed in the subtleties of spell casting, so this is going to be a learning curve for her. I've got a sick feeling she might enjoy it all a little too much and get absolutely drunk on mage power when her mage hits the mid twenties in levels :-).

Well then, thank you all kindly once again. I shall keep y'all posted. Shall I create another thread and detail our progress there, or shall I just continue to make use of this thread?

P.S. We'll definitely be removing the XP cap for this little adventure... :-)

 

A cleric/thief is an absolute riot. Use a half-orc to keep your 19 strength and do incredible backstabs with a staff (which is generally the first magic item found in BG, a +4 is available early in SoA, and the Staff of the Ram +6 is arguably one of the best weapons in the game). Once you gain epic abilities you can choose UAI and have all the mage equipment open to the cleric/thief (Robe of Vecna for example -- the Staff of the Magi is great fun).

Combine the C/T with a blade for even more fun (or a F/M your lady to help her stay alive while she learns spells).

If you're willing to cheat a bit, the cleric/assassin has great potential (and fits well with the half-orc).

 

Right! I've used a cap remover for so long I forgot about the cap in the first place. But since OberonZ is going without the cap, my comment still stands.

I'm not sure what T2 is implying regarding STR, but the STR damage bonus doesn't get mutilpied in a backstab (I believe the to-hit bonus still applies, though, so your backstab has a better chance of connecting).

 

True Splunge. A C/T can only have an 18 str unless they're a half orc. 18 strength is +1 to hit and +2 damage; 19 strength is +3 to hit and +7 damage -- the additional to hit and damage are both really great early in the game, but it becomes moot by the time you reach 9th or 10th level. Of course, once you read a tome you have a 19 or 20 strength and difference is negligible. Perhaps a gnome is better after all (for the thieving bonuses).

 

My lady and I started our adventures this weekend. Getting through Irenicus' dungeon was no straight forward task with only two characters. Man, did my F/C take a royal beating, but we made it out alright. Having the T/M hang back and pepper enemies with arrows and magic missiles helped. Also summoning spells saved our bacon a few times, and then of course there's the odd fireball that got dropped in the midst. I also showed my lady the potency of the sleep spell on hordes. Whenever my F/C was overwhelmed by too many critters, she just had the T/M drop a sleep spell in there and BAM!, they all played nice.

We went shopping the moment we got out the dungeon, bought some spells and made our way to the circus. We took Aerie with us when going through the circus, she helped quite a bit against those nasty werewolves. Acquired the ring of human influence, so now my F/C has 18 CHA as well. We let Aerie go when we cleared the circus.

We immediately went off to the slums, met with Gaelen and bought the glasses of identification. Next we investigated the back rooms of the Copper Coronet, slaying all in our path when necessary. The beastmaster gave us a headache until we swarmed him and his horde with summon spells and then a sleep spell. It was easy while the critters were sleeping and my F/C was bludgeoning him.

That's where we're at now. I'll post more as our adventures continue...