Soloing a mage...

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I have a simple question is it possible in BG1 to solo a mage?

I have tried several times but get killed by the first gibberling I come across, am I missing something?

 

Difficult, but not impossible.

1. Take a specialist mage, so you can memorize more spells.

2. Get the ring of wizardry by the Friendly Arm Inn, which doubles the number of 1st level spells you can cast. That way there, you can memorize 4 1st level spells from the very beginning of the game.

3. Memorize spells that will help you the most in the early part of the game. People love magic missile and chromatic orb, but at 1st level, they are only going to do a little bit of damage, and the enemy will survive. More useful first level spells include:

Charm Person - get one of the enemy to fight against his friends

Sleep - it's much easier to kill things when they don't fight back. This will be a life saver early on.

Larloch's Life Drain - it doesn't do a lot of damage, but it also heals you, so it's worth memorizing. Plus it has a very fast cast time, and always hits. You can even use it on squirrels and such to get HP back.

Armor - reduces your base armor class to 6, and compounds with dexterity, so if your dexterity is 18, your AC will be 2 - not bad. Plus it lasts for 8 hours of game time, so you only have to memorize one of these each time you rest.

4. Take proficiency in missile weapons so that you can attack some creatures from a distance using either slings or darts - and as a bonus they're dirt cheap - a pack of dart or sling stones only cost 1 gp. Another option is to take daggers, as that way there you can use both throwing daggers and regular daggers (so you have both melee and missile weapons with one proficiency). The only problem with that is throwing daggers cost like 15 gp for a set of 10, so they're a little pricey in the beginning of the game.

5. Do as many of the "easy" quests as you can as soon as you can to get quick XP. For example, kill the hobgoblins around the Friendly Arm Inn and give the woman her ring back. Easy XP, and with a few sleep spells you should have no trouble.

6. Accept the fact that in the early parts of the game you are going to have to REST OFTEN to replenish your spells.

[ March 10, 2004, 19:09: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

The beginning is the hardest part obviously.
When you start finding wands things will get pretty easy.
Also, if you dont mind the bad rep hit, kill Algernon for his cloak.
This cloak is IMO very overpowered, but I didn´t make the item so...

And as Aldeth said, it´s all about what spells you use. You cant use the same spells that you do in a party, because you are the only target now.
Getting someone else to be the target is the best tactic. Unless you can disable them all that is.

 

There is no way (NO WAY) you can complete Baldur’s Gate with a solo mage, and I don’t believe anyone who says it’s easy or has done it themselves. If someone seriously completed this game as a solo mage, I would be very, very impressed.

Has anyone seriously done it?

100%

 

As I just said. Yes, and I dont aprechiate you calling me a liar.
If you had been playing the game on a regular, almost daily, basis for about 6 years I bet even you could do it.

Just because you might find it hard, doesn´t mean it is...
You might want to get better at things before you start insulting people.

 

I've done it myself, and I actually found it easier as a solo mage than as any other class (except fighter/mage). I've tried it with a fighter, a thief, a fighter/thief and a couple other combinations, but the mage makes it easy.

Sleep allows you to render lots of low-level enemies helpless. Magic missile is handy for hitting enemies at a distance when you don't have much skill in hand-to-hand combat. Wait till you hit level 5 and you can cast Haste - nothing in the game can catch you! Best of all, wait till you find a Fireball scroll and you can massacre half a dozen enemies at a time with no risk to yourself. Throw in a few Charm spells, Mirror Image and Blur and the game can be easy.

Oh, and the Ring of Wizardry near the Friendly Arm Inn isn't in the patched version of the game or indeed any version of the game that I've played so unless you've got a really old version don't even bother looking for it.

 

I beg to differ...I just played a Tutu game and was wearing it.

The place to get it is extremely tiny IIRC...having the Tab function helped.

 

It's never been in any version I've played, patched or unpatched, Tutu or no Tutu. I've stood on the exact spot where it's alleged to be and never found it. Even with the TAB highlighting items, it didn't show up.

 

Why am I not surprised to see yet another one that says mage is actually easier to solo with than for example a pure fighter...
Enough said about that I think.
Or is further explanation needed?

About the RoW, I have the 5 cd bg, totsc and the latest totsc patch from bioware.
And the ring is there for me. Both with and without Tutu.

 

There are 2 rings of wizardry in the game one is in the friendly arm in area, the other on a mage (he is in a house and will think that your a thief so attacks, IIRC) in the south west of BG.
I think that the ring near the friendly arm inn depends on what version of the game you have.

Congrats, to anyone who soloed through the game with a mage, I still find it hard with a whole party.

 

Exactly like Duke. The 5 cd's, with TotSC, patched, and the ring is there.

Another thing to remember for people who are doubtful about soloing a mage is you will gain levels very quickly. Once you hit level three and have access to mirror image and blur, it gets a lot easier. Usually, you're level 5 by the time you complete chapter 2, and you're level 9 before setting foot in the cloakwood.

There's a place to get a scroll of cloudkill in the map area directly south of Nashkel. (I recommend saving game before attempting to scribe it.) A level 9 specialist can memorize two copies of that spell, and since most creatures in the game have fewer than 6 HD (not HP), they must save versus spells or die. Even if they make the save, they still take 1-10 HP of damage.

Never underestimate the power of using web or stinking cloud in combination with fireball or cloudkill. (Or just using web or cloudkill and then firing darts, throwing daggers, sling stones.) It is possible, you just have to be creative, and remember that you can't memorize 8 magic missiles and 4 fireballs as your spell selection. Your going to have to summon up some help for the harder battles as well.

Remember you don't have to do EVERYTHING. I never go into the place where you get Spider's Bane - I know they'll rip me apart.

I already listed level 1 spells above, but here's some quick additions.

Level Two: Mirror Image, Blur, Web/Stinking Cloud (practically equivalent spells) and Horror (probably the most useful level 2 spell)

Level Three: Haste, Fireball, Monster Summoning I.

Level Four: Monster Summoning II (usually only one that is really helpful).

Level Five: Cloudkill, Monster Summoning III

 

well about the spidersbane, ive never tried that with solo mage but i know with the protagonist as a solo character and a few protection spells, mirror image and blur, and about 2 fireballs/cloudkills it can take one or two of those spiders out while you go outside and rest, then you can repeat and get em all, though its a really cheesy way to win.

 

I mostly agree with Aldeth but I am horrified he did not mention Magic Missle. I have found it is inevitable to have Magic Missile as a starting spell because I gave my mage the Ring of Wizardry and memorized 6 of them! Otherwise, I hate to be called a liar also. The one who said it is impossible to solo a mage is wrong! My first mage, Synwyr, won the game just as a universal mage.

 

In the beginning Edwin, when your level is low, a sleep spell is alot better than MM.
One MM does not damage an enemy enough to kill it.
And you will not have alot of time to cast more of them until the enemy reaches you.
Especially not when there are more than one enemy.
A sleep spell however will most of the times put all of your foes to sleep and let you pound away.

When you reach lv9 however MM can be a good choice, depending on what enemies you´re facing, since you then get 5 missiles.

And yes, he is wrong, which he probably has realized aswell.

 

I haven't tried Sleep before. I know that is hard to believe, but it is true.

 

Call me crazy, but I NEVER use magic missle. Chromatic orb does more damage at lower levels, and then gets spectacular effects at higher levels. I was constantly stunning my opponenets with chromatic orb, making them very easy to kill. Chromatic orb is a nice combination of utility and damage, and IMO it is the best candidate for lvl 1 slots, after enemies get to the point where they almost always save against sleep.

 

Not really Edwin, there are still plenty of spells I have never tried. And I´ve been playing since the day the game was released.


Magic Missile does more damage than Chromatic Orb on every level except Lv2.
That the effects you CAN get will be way more beneficial is correct though. It´s a matter of luck.
And yes, as soon as monsters get more than 4HD+3HP they aren´t affected by sleep anymore.

 

Now there's some one who agrees with me!

 

Sleep is only effective against low level enemies, but as you can get it right from the very start of the game this is pretty ideal. I quite often put half a dozen low level enemies to Sleep then have Imoen kill them all with her bow and arrow before they wake up.

 

well i can also truthfully say i have never tried sleep, because im used to final fantasy games and unfortunately in those games if you hit a sleeping enemy, they wake up

my solo mage usually ends up running away a lot at the begining, then when i get enough distance between me and my enemies, i hit em with a larlochs (sp) drain or my sling, very time consuming but it kept me alive especially against ogre berserkers and any type of bear, though i had a bad incident trying to fight a winter wolf this way, *mutters* damn ice breathing buffoons!