Soloing vs Partying

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I've gone through the game three times already and I'm well into my 4th run.

First time was with a party consisting of Protagonist (inquisitor), swashbuckler (created), archer (created), sorcerer (created), Viconia, Jaheira (replaced with Imoen in chapter 4, then Sarevok in ToB).
Second time was soloing a monk.
Third time was soloing a F/T/M.
Currently, I'm soloing a sorcerer.

What surprises me, and is the object of this post... is that I find soloing actually EASIER than going through the game with a party.

I can see a lot of reasons why that is so:
- my first time was just that: my first time. Now I know the game better, know what to expect, etc...
- With only one character I'm obviously extra careful.
- Managing one character is easier: your attention is always focused on it.
- Being level 30 when you're supposed to be barely 15 of course makes a difference (you can feel it from the end of chapter 2 to the start of ToB mainly).
- Since that's my only character, it gets all the best items; I don't have to spread the goodies over the party. There are only one Amulet of Power and Ring of Gaxx afterall. So there are few if any gaps in my protections, while it's kinda hard to protect your whole party vs confusion 100% of the time for instance.

So, what's your take on it? Do you also find it rather easier to solo then to party or not?

(note: this post isn't about which is more fun or what. It's about difficulty.)

 

What difficulty setting are you playing on?

I think soloing is tougher, because: maze kills you, charm kills you, domination kills you, etc.

With a 6 player party it is possible to hit the SoA X-cap by the end of SoA. I guess your party has to be about 3-4 members to be able to hit the ToB X-cap. This would mean you have 3 High level characters instead of 1. 3 characters also allows more possible approaches to any given situation. Starting of with a solo monk must be tough. Dual classing will also be tough, because you will have a worthless thac0 and abilities when you do.

 

Partying, with NPC's (I just like their personalities

 

I have not got very far with this, so I am only speaking from the point of Chapter 1-2. (Also chapters 8 & 9 in TOB only).

I soloed a FMT, FM and Thief. Fighter types can hit and use the weapons available so not so hard, but mages and bards simply "can't do it". Thieves are the same. Clerics can at least heal themselves. So I'd say that any element of fighters can eventually make it. (My beserkers can )

I made a customised multi-player party of 5 and 6. The majority where fighter types and we breezed through Chapter 1 and I expected Watcher's keep to be fairly tough. I was shocked to find it nearly a joke! TOB is almost entirely reliant on Fighter types! The first time I played TOB, I had Anomen, Edwin and Imoen, who were basically decorations. They can't "fight" so they just hung around removing enemy spell protections, stoneskins, dispelling magic...(blah blah blah) These three were boring!

I agree that you would "care" for your solo character a lot more than otherwise. You never really need a cleric for healing, since there are tons of potions and regeneration type items.

I would always recommend a FT since the xp for detecting and removing traps and locks is handy espectially at high levels. Mages, as I said, end up being decorations (nearly) at the end.

I watched my nephew do a solo sorceror and they kick some proverbial. So in the end...

Soloing is harder "if" you don't know what is going to happen and you are not prepared. Controlling a whole party in dangerous encounters is harder.

Clear as mud?

 

-StressedE:

That's why you make damned sure you won't get mazed, charmed, etc. My monk ended with 100+ magical resistance so the only spells that hurt were maze and imprisonment. For maze, I quickly donned the Cloak of Mirroring when I saw the enemy mage stop casting spells and advancing on me (usually means he's going to cast Maze or the odd Sunfire). Only Emprisonment was a problem, and I had to "cheat" around that one: exploiting the "drink pot/replace pot with scroll while paused" to cast immunity from adjuration.
Playing a mage... Well, I just make sure I kill them before they hurt me, and, just in case I fail, I also have all sorts of protections up at all time.

-Sirdan:
Grrrrrr... I *knew* someone would answer along the lines "partying is better cause you miss all the party fun interraction when soloing".
I know. It just isn't the point of my post.

-Khazraj
My gaming experience was similar to yours: the paladin and the archer totalled 90% kills when I partied through the game, the other characters having a mere support role. A monk is the ultimate fighter. And my F/M/T was mainly a fighter with thief skills and mage spells again in a support role.
That is... until I started soloing my sorcerer. I've cleared chapter 2 and I'm well into Watcher's Keep now and god, I never had it that easy! There's a lot more to mages that Resist Fear and Breach after all, lol.
Thieves are way too powerful in ToB: Use any item and traps are just too good skills.
I dunno, maybe a single-class cleric would prove a tough challenge (they can tank, but they can't really fight)... but once they start getting HLA I'm not so sure. Planetars *do* kick some butt.
That's the problem with soloing... you hit the 8 million xp cap very early. So roughly, from the end of chapter 2 to the start of ToB you are overpowered.

 

ok, you can say i misunderstood it If you want opinions in soloing well, lets see:

I have soloed the game only once and I am currently soloing it with a monk too. I have soloed BG2+ToB with a Wild Mage and it was hard at the beggining easy at the end of SoA and ToB. He could cast about 7-8 9 lvl spells (using NRD that is). Also Wish (Wisdom 18) proved a lifesaver especially in the continuous battles with Mellisan at the end. That's why wild mages rule

 

I have soloed the game A LOT . I think about 7-8 (or more?) solo runs. And in my opinion it is easier than running with a full party:

1) loads of XP - powerful char
2) controlling only one char at a time - faster gaming
3) all this awful group pathfinding - arghhh
4) potions, scrolls, items - all for one char
5) - and lots of it

Effectively, you have to know what is ahead of you to be able to prepare. But there are a few classes (single, dual and multiclass mages) that can protect themselves against every spell or bad effect of the game. Cleric/Mages, Thief/Mages, F/M/T and F/M/C are just overpowered with thier protections. My fav option would now be F/M/T (once I liked a Ranger/Cleric better, but now I admit that a F/M/T is the most useful-powerful-easy to play class)

Imagine (with HLA and Improved Haste) 10 attacks per round (5 core, double via IH) with Critical Strike (or Asassination!), Incendiary Cloud and a few Fireballs to finish up! Not to mention sequencers, Mislead, Backstab and Detect Illusion... Too much to list....

So I say soloing rocks.

 

I like going with with 1-2 NPCs in my party. That way you can have a romance, or better protection for your PC.

 

I agree that one to two NPCs are nice, maybe three. Usually I added 3 selfmade PCs to have a well rounded party like that: kensai, archer, mc wild-mage/ thief ( ), Mazzy, Edwin and Jan or so.
A pity a few of the cooler kits weren't available as NPCs, that's especially sad for the archer. Actually I like to to play parts solo, parts in team.

My best overall compact party for BG-2c SoA/ ToB was 4 chars strong, consisting of a pally, cleric, Mazzy and Jan - but of course, completely selfmade it would have been more powerful. But I like that bit of char interaction two or three NPCs offer.

 

"That's why you make damned sure you won't get mazed, charmed, etc."
The problem is that you hardly can. 100% MR is very nice, but it takes a while to get there even when soloing. You have to be what? level 30 or something?

 

When soloing, you get to level 30 merely by completing chapter two (depends on what class you are, but thieves and clerics/monks level real fast).
And there are items that help you get the main immunities.

Of course I got charmed, confused, etc a few times at the beginning of the game. But my point is that you can very quickly get decent protections vs all those nasty effects, while it takes *much* longer to get half the same level of protection for an entire party.

 

Hmm, I never solo'd through ToB. aren't the last few fights tough with a solo character? The last fights are designed for high level parties, so if you only have one character.... Just a thought.

 

I've only done the last fights with the monk and the F/M/T. Not there yet with the sorcerer, although Demogorgo was a piece of cake with the sorcerer.

With the monk:
- Draconis, his dad, and Balthazar were indeed too tough. They killed me again and again and in the end I had to resort to bug-exploiting: I used mage scrolls. A mere "Protection from Magical Weapons" did the trick for Balthazar. As for Draconis, I used the ultimate cheesy combo that he used on me: Timestop / melee (ww in my case).
- For Melissan I didn't have to "cheat". It was just a matter of some reloads. Basically, the odds were 60/40 in her favour.
- The other bosses in ToB were easy.
- Demogorgo slaughtered me once... and I just read the scroll.

With the F/M/T:
One word: Traps.
(I did fight most bosses "normally", though. But traps are so grossly powerful that don't ask how a thief can survive those fights).

 

I chose a very thievish approach for Draconis: I went to draconis and fought a little until he became a dragon and blew my and my minions all over the place. I withdrew, thinking of a smarter tactic than frontal attack. So I placed a barrier of traps (spike traps, not the detonation traps - they are just good for straying enemy parties), went back to find Draconis and then ran away in direction of my traps when I found him. Poof. A pity I didn't use a jester to lure him there by making funny faces Not too cheesy IMO

[ August 01, 2002, 12:17: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

I decided to solo a new character. I always wanted the IWD style dual class fighter to druid, so lets go!

I decided that getting imprisoned and mazed, confused and stunned are rather... annoying, so I decided that a beserker druid would be fun. There was the problem of losing the spell casting icon when the beserker class came back into swing, but the patch fixes this .

So I was playing away in chapter 3 doing Aran's jobs and went over to bash Bodhi and co and then I hit 1 million xp for the beserker level 12. That meant 5* quarterstaff 2* 2 handed weapon style and sling. So I dual classed hoping that it would not be too hard.

It was way too hard !

I had to sort of retreat out of there to complete some easier way of regaining the 750 000 xp needed to hit level 13 druid. So I decided to go to Trademeet and do that stuff so that I could get some reasonable items. Picked up Belm and the Gnasher, got the xp and then returned to Bodhi as a level 12 druid.

Then I finally smashed her evil vampiric behind with my mini army!

Now I can head off to Chapter 4 and as I have regained my beserker skills my real thaco and armour and weapons means that I am dangerous again.

The result is as I expected. Fighters solo easy! Druids can't do anything alone (almost) and thieves are great for getting traps and locks, while mages scribe scrolls and can hurt things...... (lots of xp)

It was fun but soloing a druid is not exactly easy. Garbage thaco, no armour (almost) no items (almost) and no spells (almost). Why are druids so close to being lame in BG2 when they are so dangerous in IWD? Hmmm....

I think that the Underdark will be fun. The best part about this solo trip was, as a female I shrugged of that pervert Anomen in the "pit of base corruption if ever there was one", the Copper Coronet, and I won't have to romance the bozo!

 

Right now I am trying a small party of three people. Two sorcerers (one specializing in area-effect and protection removal spells and the other in projectiles and creature summoning) and a Swashbuckler. I did all the optional quests I could before going to the Asylum and had hit 3,000,000 for each character. Solo, no. Full party, yes (but only for NPCs) If I create the whole party I do about three guys.

 

It's actually possible to hit the level cap in a six person party before you reach the asylum.

 

Khaz - what speakest thou? Edwin was merely a decoration? Humpf! In my party Edwin had roughly 35% of all the kills second only to Korgan. Sarevok did quite a good job of catching up admittedly but he was weilding the Vorpal blade + deathbringer assault etc. Of the rest of my party: my PC (Cleric dualed to a mage at lvl 14), Viconia and Jan all got about 12-15% each. But essentially Jan's a thief who does what? Steal things, open locks and disarm traps and Viconia's a cleric who does what? Heal people etc. So Kahz is it not natural for Fighters to get the majority of kills? Closely followed by Mages who by ToB can clear out whole rooms with a spell or two. It seems to me that you did not use your mages effectively in combat.

On the Solo thing - it's never appealed to me, BG was designed for you to have a party, incidently how the HELL did you kill Sendai with one character? Of all the battles that one was not neccessarily tough in any way but certainly one of the most tactical (I had Sarevok and Korgan cover the door where the drow would come in, Viccy and my PC beating on Sendai's various forms and Edwin and Jan in the middle casting removals/ summoning/ attacking spells). With one character this battle seems almost impossible to me. Dragons must be tough too as well as the final Irenicus battle.. I mean what did you do? There's like 6 demons in that battle was well as Jonny boy in Slayer form. And how did you get through the bit in hell where you have to sacrifice one of your party members??

 

Sendai is not that hard when soloing. He only spawns 2 drow per form, so you could kill the drow and then get back to sendai. What I did is I focussed on sendai and killed him real quick.

Dragons can be killed with various tactics, so it kindof depends on class.

The final Irenicus battle? Don't make me laugh. By the time you get there you have almost hit the ToB X-Cap. First he teleports away and leaves you with the demons. Few seconds later you have dispatched the demons and only Irenicus is left.

First of all you don't HAVE to sacrifice one of your party members you can also give a point of dex. Second, when alone a commoner is put in your party member's place.

Why solo? Simple, because it really lets you get to know a certain class, and it requires much tactical planning.

 

Parvini. Please don't misunderstand, I loved having Edwin around. This is just how I ended up playing and finding the game my first time through to the end. I simply found that in TOB having a very high thaco is essential since most creatures are so magic resistant. I mostly used Edwin for Breach, Spell Strike and Time Stop, and even then Time Stop is useless in the last three major fights... What I am saying is that all of the really useful spells in SOA have become "semi-obsolete" by TOB. You need to have some much lower resistance and greater malison that it makes using magic sort of dull. Edwin was also not so good at melee or missile combat. Let's face it with a thaco of about 10 how is he ever going to hit creatures with a base AC of -11? Anyway, I found Anomen even more useless. Nowhere near as good as a fighter and the only spells I used him for was protection from evil. Most characters could get items of regeneration, so clerics become obsolete. Besides, the amount of potions of healing and antidotes (they must farm them in TOB) was so ludicrously high, I never needed to ever cast healing spells. It takes too long in combat and potions are much simpler. I feel that TOB (without MODS) is so combat oriented that mages and even moreso clerics are fairly useless. If you have weapons that dispell magic on hit, reduce thaco, magic resistance and AC on hit, why do we need Breach or Spell strike? The creatures in TOB also have such low saving throws, that even if not resistant to magic, they are hardly ever effected by magic. O well, let's not get too lame here. It's just the way I found it and my "so called" opinion...