Favorite class and noobish questions

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I'm aware of one regeneration item available immediately out of chateau Irenicus, two if you feel you can take on the demi-lich right out of the dungeon. Of course, to do the demi-lich, you need to have a +4 weapon just to hit him, (does Daystar count?), and regardless, you'd have to at least start the Unseeing Eye Quest to do it, so I don't think that really counts as right out of the dungeon.

 

Blackrazor only regenerates 1 hp/5s, as opposed to 1 hp/6s for the rings of regeneration. Of course Blackrazor also heals every so many hits, but by the time you get it, it's not so great, while you can get a ring of regeneration straight out of chateau Irenicus.

To each his own, but your first half of act 2 is either not so combat heavy or you manage to avoid a lot of damage, because if, in my all-mage-party, I put my C/M on the front lines with stoneskins, they tend to disappear very quickly.

Daystar does count and is actually one of the best weapons to take him on with because the bonus damage is not subject to his damage resistance and will kill him much faster. And you only need to get to the lich in the unseeying eye quest, you don't actually need to take on beholders or anything.

And anyway, these are the things I do get as soon as possible. First steal that first ring, then visit the three liches and then visit the demi-lich, and only then do other stuff.

 

You shouldn't have a front line at all. Especially a 1-person front line. Spreading load over entire party is important.
And, besides, it takes a specialised build to make a tank who could be able to tank alone. This is true to fighters just as well as for mages, except that mages start weak and quickly improve, but fighters start weak, improve thanks to getting better items, but then stop and by the end of SoA, a solo warrior tank is poor; in ToB - just infeasible. A well made mage can tank alone in ToB.

 

A little nitpicky, but isn't 1 hp/5s better than 1 hp/6 seconds? Blackrazor will regenerate 12 hp per minute, whereas rings of regneration would heal 10 hp per minute.

Oh, if we're talking soloing, then yes. I cannot imagine even trying to solo a fighter. I've never tried to solo with anything other than multiclassed character.

 

Too much micro-management involved in that for me. There's a reason that my mages tend to only throw rocks until I really need them. The only time I really use mages fully is when I have a party of only mages or when I solo one. Besides, the AI has a tendency to focus on one character anyway, so even though you're presenting more people on the front line, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll go for it.

Indeed, it is strictly better, but it's not of the order of magnitude that I can see you dismissing one over the other. But of course you wouldn't do that anyway

Sorcerers are so easy to solo. Mages are more micro-management, so I don't really like to do that, but pretty easy nonetheless. Unless you start in BG1, but even then it's only difficult until you get a wand of monster summoning. Or the paralyse wand.

Monks are pretty easy to solo too. I should really try to solo a barbarian some time. They're not too shabby as tanks once they start getting damage reduction. Combined with that flail from one of the bonus merchants and hardiness you can already get up to 80% damage reduction. Should make for a pretty decent tank.

 

What do you do about traps? Just take it? That's why I always multi-class when soloing, and I'm always at least part thief. I consider F/M/T to be the easiest, and with XPs being of no consequence when soloing, you get a freakin' ton of HLAs.

 

As dmc says, traps are a nuisance, not much more. In BG2, at least, in BG1 they can be quite dangerous. The bigger problem is that there's a couple of doors that you can't open even with 25 strength. The door into the house with Kangaxx' tomb comes to mind, the chest with the rune to upgrade Yaga Shura's hammer is another.

In BG1 the lower levels of Durlag's tower are pretty nearly impossible without a thief too. Still, I'm not so stuck in the solo-idea that I won't recruit a thief just to open those few doors for me. I won't let them fight, and if they soak up some xp by staying in my party, well, no harm done either. There's too much xp for soloing anyway.

 

Nah, I meant having just 1 HTH fighter (or 1 other than Kensai). I did such things.

Understandable. Still, that's much less micromanagement than making mages cast spells.

When it's important, just make the targeted person run in circles around the party, so enemies can't catch you. They'll soon change targets and in practice it will spread the load quite evenly across all party members.

On Blackrazor:
Actually I listed it w/out being sure that it really worked...I have little experience with it. I remembered that regeneration was fast, apparently I was wrong. Maybe the healing effect of average 3 HP/hit was what made the difference or maybe I remember it wrong and it didn't regenerate so well.

Knock. When soloing I always had one remembered.

Not confirmed. I did it. It was very annoying, but not very hard.

 

They are both factors. But the standard healing rate is actually slightly better than what you'd get from a ring of regeneration.

 

15% chance of getting 20 hp @ 3 attacks per round is a 45% potential of getting a 20 hp boost each round. Or something, I'm a bit rusty on statistics. This is most likely why you remembered Blackrazor being as good as it was. It also hastes you when the 15% chance goes off, which gains you an extra attack and so even more chance of getting another 15% to go off per round.

I've noticed this too for for instance the Sword of Chaos that you can get from the genie in Irenicus' dungeon. It gives you +1 hp for each hit,which sounds rather pathetic, but which in practice is actually not that bad, especially when you're still relatively low level and don't have any regeneration items.

Sure, if I was soloing an arcane caster. Usually I don't, though.

I'm not entirely sure about that. I think you need to unlock some doors at least to be able to progess, on the second underground level, I believe. Traps are survivable for the most part but it's very annoying that you'll have to chug a lot of potions. When I soloed it with a monk, I just recruited some help and had her disable all traps, unlock all doors, but not fight. Far less annoyance, though I could've just ignored it completely, I suppose.

 

Ack! In practice, it's impossible to calculate without also factoring in THAC0 and the like, so we'll have to make a few assumptions. If we assume 3 attacks per turn with all of them hitting:

There's a 61.4% chance that none of the three attacks will activate the drain (0.85 x 0.85 x 0.85).

The chance of all three activating the drain are unbelievably low - 0.3% (0.15 x 0.15 x 0.15).

The chance of just one activating is 32.5% (0.15 x 0.85 x 0.85 x 3 - the x3 at the end if because there's three ways to get that combination in some order).

The chance of two out of three activating is 5.7% (0.15 x 0.15 x 0.85 x 3 - again, x3 because there's three ways to get that combination).

And yes, that technically adds up to 99.9%, but I rounded everything to the nearest 0.1%. If we're just looking at the chance of at least one hit activating the drain, it is the sum of the last three - 38.6%.

 

I'm 98% sure that no. Even if yes, I'm 95% sure you can do it with DUHM.

Mhm. Very annoying.

 

I think I have a BG problem. I beat SOA not 2 weeks ago and already i'm tempted to go through again with a F/M...

 

You had to wait 2 weeks for that? Get off of this site

Seriously, I think most people here have that problem, myself included

 

There's just so much stuff I seem to have missed. Kangaxx, tons of awesome weapons, never found Haer'dalis, etc.

 

You NEVER found Haer Dalis? Since the main story line (in Chapter 3) directs you to the Five Flagons Inn in the Bridge District that I assumed everyone would find this eventually. Granted, none of the story lines would force you to check the basement of the Five Flagons, but don't you explore everything when you go somewhere?

I also thought it was rather dumb that the only NPC bard you can get in the game is acquired through completing the bard stronghold quest. So the character class that is most likely to prioritize that quest is the least likely to take Haer Dalis as a party member, unless you're into having two bards in your party...

 

Aerie's personal quest also leads you to Haer'Dalis.

 

I just beat TOB for the first time (it was awesome, btw) and not 20 minutes later I restarted BG1 because I wanted to be evil. Thanks for my new addiction, Sorcerer's Place

By the way, is it true you can make Sarevok become good? I had one dialogue with him the whole game, but that could just be that it was really short. I flew threw most of the parts. 4 melee characters all using GWW = win

 

Yes you can turn Sarevok good, if you pick the correct dialog options. However, in order for this to occur, when you first meet him you must NOT ask him to swear an oath of loyalty to you. If you do that, he won't switch no matter what you say to him later on.