Throne of Bhaal: Newbie Thoughts

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Well we had to face Abigail's son and he was tough enough. He kept blowing us away and then healing himself and turning invisible.

One thing that tells me that I must be nearing the end is that Arya is now on about 6.1m XP. With an XP cap of 8m and the knowledge that I must have squandered loads of XP through missing quests, there can't be much XP left to get. Arya now has more thief skills than she knows what to do with.

 

Well, without technically cheating there is unlimited experience available although leaving your computer sitting there all day with your party shooting missiles at fire giants ranks up there as pretty damned cheesy in my books.

A lot of people find Draconis to be a more difficult opponent than Abazigal so your having some trouble with him is not unexpected.

 

Yes, I do have trouble with that mongrel wimpy. Actually that's the only dragon I failed to kill with Sarevok, Korgan and an Inquisitor

 

Harbourboy, try and use a different skill durring every battle....mix things up a bit.

 

That's the battle when Protection from Energy on everyone really helps

 

Chaotic Commands deals with the first and Protection from Magic with the second, but Draconis can kill anyone of your characters with one acid breathe and attacks pretty damn fast too. And unlike Melissan and other cheesy characters, he doesn't have unlimited spell-triggers, immune to everything, and 10 attacks that automatically hit for max damage. Plus, you need to whack his head off only once whereas Melissan needs three attempts.

 

After reading all this, I believe I like the Underdark - where we currently are - very much, thank you
Feels like a resort hotel compared to what you are going through Harbourboy

Guess I'm going to reevaluate my going to ToB or to just mark it off as... an academic challange

 

Wirhe - I think you may be revealing something crucial about Melissan that I didn't really want to know........

 

*gasp* Biggest spoiler ever

 

Melissan is really Elminster in disguise, you know...

Don't know what to do with HLAs? How about lots and lots of spike traps?

 

@ C-F

Well, ToB has Watchers Keep and some of the events are actually fun, so it's not complete waste of time.

@ Harbourboy

Sorry, I meant "Amelyssan"; a completely different person. Mix those names quite often so you haven't been spoiled yet.

 

Abigail is now dead (he was easier than his son) and we've had a battle with our own 'Doubt' back in that crazy pocket plane.

But in town and finally found a use for all those nutty doors in the cave of the dead as this looks like the way in to see Balthazar...

On a side issue, you guys keep raving about how good the 'banter' is in this game and how it is the big thing that sets BGII apart from all other games. Well, my banter must be broken because nobody our party has bantered since before Watcher's Keep.

 

Doubt ?? (he-he-hee)

Well, they don't talk much in TOB. In my games, they didn't as well. You could install one component of the Banter Pack called "Banter Accelerator Script", then you'll have some.

 

Hmm, Balthazar wasn't so tough (except when he managed to power kick us across the room).

So, Melissan is the real bad guy? I would never have guessed. But in the grand tradition of bad guys, she has unveiled her evil plan to us before killing us, thus giving us the opportunity to thwart her.

Oh well, seeing as the pocket plane is going to destroyed, and because XP and party management are no longer an issue, I've decided to recruit Mazzy for the rest of the game, just in case we need an archer (seeing as none of the other party members ever use their missile weapons any more).

Hopefully, this is the last part of the game (surely it must be……)

 

Don't worry, if you haven't been using archers up to this point, now's not the time they will suddenly be needed

Balthazar IMO is far easier than Draconis and Abazigal And while he may be (personally) more powerful than Sendai, the latter is more draining becomes it drags on for a longer time. With Balthazar it's just a straight melee fight, no fancy tricks.

How did the fight with the Ravager go?

 

You seem to be starting to hate it by now

 

Who did you drop behind ? (or did you have to do it anyway ?)

 

I didn't have to leave anybody behind because I only had 5 characters before getting Mazzy.

The Ravager fight wasn't too difficult but now we're in some weird machine battling Melissan and a variety of shadows. Minsc, Sarevok, and Arya are such awesome fighters (with such uber-weapons) that they seem to make short work of most enemies these days.

 

Like I said: it's just a matter of hack'n'slash, and thus ToB is not content-wise even nearly as good as SoA. Makes you wish they would had made it a proper trilogy instead of a quick cash-in expansion, doesn't it?

[ March 11, 2005, 22:36: Message edited by: Wirhe ]

 

Yes, we hacked and we slashed and we finally managed to kill Melissan (well, I think we killed her - we defeated her anyway). So the Solar thing (never really worked out what that was) came and told us that we'd won and that was the end. All a bit anti-climactic really.

So that's the end of my first ever game of Baldur's Gate II. The original point of my SoA newbie thoughts thread was actually just to outline some stuff I thought about a game that was new to me but is held in glowing reverence by so many of you. Somehow it became a running commentary of my game. Never mind. But to return to my orginal intention, here is a summary of my thoughts on this game now that I have played it once:
- it has incredible attention to detail, with all the various side-quests, dialogue options, and in-jokes, most of which you would never notice first time through
- it provides great variety on how to approach the game, the order in which to do quests etc
- having NPCs you can recruit in to your party is a nice idea that adds some interest to the game and your tactics
- there are too many super powerful weapons that end up making the game more about the magical items than the characters themselves
- but in order to get the really powerful magic items, you have divert artificially from the story (as evidenced by the fact that I missed many of the good items simply because I did not attack in cold blood some dragons whom I did not need to attack)
- the levellling system unfairly penalises single class characters by providing very few benefits for being at higher levels and by making it so easy to gain levels in another class
- in SoA, there is too much banter between NPCs, and in ToB there is not enough
- Kensai / Thieves rock in this game and I am glad I ended up with that character
- it is more fun thinking of new character ideas than it is to actually play the game with those ideas.
- overall this is a pretty good game. It has kept me occupied for over six months solid so I certainly got my money's worth. Not sure if I'll ever play it again. I'll have to see how it goes after I have a bit of a break from it.

Thanks for the feedback from all of you have been reading this thread.

EDIT: Just noticed that in my original thread, I said this back in October:

I wasn't too far off with that estimation. I must have had slightly less of a real life than I originally thought......