I can't play an evil guy either. I feel bad for the little digital people that I'm killing.
My gf says it's because I'm a nice guy at heart, so I'm going to go with that explanation.
Cycloptichorn
I never play an evil character in an RPG simply because i'm cheap. If you are an evil character, no amount of charm can overcome the ruinous prices you have to pay for goods. Additionally, some degrees of unpopularity entail being attacked whenever you appear in a new area. I have a friend, though, who enjoys it for exactly that reason--and i can see his point.
In BGII, my favorite party always includes Viconia Devir. She is (i believe) rated Neutral Evil. I also like to have Airey in my party (i may have misspelled her name--she is the Mage-Cleric found at the Circus in Waukeen's Promenade)--and Viconia and Airey fight like cats and dogs. But Airey won't leave the party (necessarily) just because Viconia is in the party. To avoid problems, it is only necessary to assure that you add Viconia before you add Airey. Viconia, if given a strength modifying artifact, is the best cleric in the game, and she is absolutely fearless in combat. She fights like cats and dogs with Jaheira, too, but Jaheira, as a Druid, is a True Neutral, and adding Viconia is not only never a deal breaker with her, she states at the time when you do the Viconia subquest that she thinks you should take Viconia into the party, and that she has no use for racist attitudes toward her. Minsc is Chaotic Good, but he is so addled (which is what Viconia calls him), that he states absolutely that Viconia is the party's responsibility.
Viconia: Minsc, that tattoo on your face. Does it have tribal significance, or did some nursery's fingerpainting class assault you with the blue pastels?
Ahh... Minsc and Boo. Such great moments. And Viconia was so... sexy. Unfortunately I couldnt handle a party with her and this Paladin NPC who's name I can't remember.
Recently I tried running again BG2 in my computer, but its so powerfull - compared to my old P3 - that it runs the game at 3X the speed! Unplayable. Wonder what I can do...
Oh and I felt bad when Yoshimo backstabbed us.
The guy you're thinking of is Keldorn. You pick him up in the sewers during the Cult of the Unseeing Eye subquest. I ran a party with him, but on balance, i would rather have Viconia. He's not as good a fighter as either Minsc or Jaheira, and he can't function very well as a cleric. Viconia is the whip as a cleric. You can give her the girdle of Hill Giant strength, and she is just awesome. Her sarcasm with the other players is marvelous, too. The cat fights between Viconia and Jaheira are hilarious.
I never had problems with the speed of the game. As for Yoshimo, none of the strategies i tried to keep him ever worked (people online claim you can leave him in Athkatla when you go to Spellhold and pick him up again when you get back, but it never works). I just strip him of everything he's carrying when we get to Island where Spellhold is located, and sell his sword, and then integratre Imoen into the party.
There is a first-level spell called chromatic orb, and when Airey reaches level twelve, she is just awesome with it. A twelfth level chromatic orb does 12-20 points of damage, no save, and if the target fails a save against deaths spells, kills the target instantly. I've had Airey bring down red dragons using that spell. If you fill up Imoen's first level spells with magic missle, the two of them just make a mess of any enemies you face. She can't advance as a theif, but they give you high trap finding and lock picking abilities for her, so she's adequate. Just be sure to do all your pick-pocketing with Yoshimo before you lose him.
Wow Setanta, you sure know that game by hand. What you say brings me back memories of when I read the instruction manual (and then the strategy guide) hours and hours in the toilet.
Ahh... glorious.
Ah BG2, what a stunning game. I could spend ages talking about my experiences and I've only played it once through. For some reason on 1st play throughs with RPG's I always tend to go for purely good paladins (a trend I broke with a thief in Morrowind). After my main character, the Paladin, got the Holy Avenger he went from strength to strength, with the added bonus of natural defences to some important types of magics he became truly awesome. I was able to wade through hordes of monsters with just him at times.
I read that Viconia was one of the best characters in game, I decided against her based on the evil thing clashing and the cautious nature of not wanting to wreck the balance of my team. I'll definitely use her next time though, that crayon line is great. One of my favourite NPC's was the 'butler', Cespenar, he made me laugh. Oh and dragons, got to love em, without 'cheating' I tended to use every trick in the book with those things. That Red dragon was my favourite though, defeating him had such an impact on my game and main character.
I also had Aerie in my team right through the game, she's incredibly weak physically but I just kept with what I had. Much more experimentation needed I think. One thing about Aerie though, to combat her weak physical statistics, at least to an extent, I gave her the boots of speed so she could zip around avoiding attacks. It worked pretty damn well. I actually started playing through Throne of Bhaal a while back but due to over things I had to pause my progress, can't wait to get back into it this summer maybe, carrying on with the same party etc. Has anyone tried Keldorn out with the Holy Avenger?
Cool bastard sword! Why bastard, you think? No parent?
There is a "cheat" you can use to bring in a character from Baldur's Gate with all of their equipment. I would play through BG until my character had max experience points. Then, before the final fight, i would quick-save and pause, put the best equipment in her inventory (i always have a female main character--my buddy thinks i'm nuts, he always has some big, bad lookin' dude; but i don't see myself as the character, and would rather look at one of the hot custom portraits i make, and hear a female voice). Then i would export the character. Then i'd reload and fight Saravok.
When i begin a game of BGII with the imported character, when the screen goes black, but before you hear your character scream, i'd hit the space bar, and pause the game--the screen control panel will come up. You then take everything off your character, and out of inventory and put it on the ground. Then you unpause the game. Your character screams (or groans, however you want to describe it), and game begins. After Jon Irenicus leaves the dungeon, and Imoen comes in and opens your cell, you run through the dialogue with her, and then hit pause and go into inventory. All of your stuff is on the ground.
There are several crucial things to consider when you do this. In Baldur's Gate, you can get five cleric scrolls of protection from magic. That is critical, because you can only get two in BGII. You need those in your inventory. If your character is a dedicated fighter, you'll have four weapons slots for melee weapons. So i'd put a weapon in there for the main character, one for Minsc, one for Jaheira, and one for Viconia. Usually, i'd have a long sword +2 for the fighter (although i give a fighter skills in katana--more on that later); a club +1, +3 for unnatural creatures for Jaheira (she starts out with two stars--specialize--in clubs, and you can get Blackblood, the best club in the game, +3 with additional acid damage, at Trademeet in BGII after you finish the Druid Grove subquest); i'd put a mace or morning star +2 (if i could find one in BGI) for Minsc, which he can give to Airey later when you get a better weapon for him, also, you can pickpocket one of the watch nights at the Watcher's Keep for a mace +2, and i'll explain that later; and i'd put the Hammer of Sparks, +2 with electrical damage, for Viconia. I'd put in inventory a sling +1 (Jaheira), the Eagle Bow (short bow +1 with added THAC0, for Yoshimo) which you get from a guy who tried to poison you in the city of Baldur's Gate; the composite Long Bow +1 that you can buy at the Feldpost Inn in Beregost in BG1 for Minsc; the light crossbow of speed which you can by at Thunderhammer Smity in Beregost in BG1 for the lead character (give your new BGII character skill in crossbows--you can buy a crossbow +4 that needs no ammo at the Watcher's Keep. You'll need to buy additional slings for Viconia and Airey, but you can get them cheap by going out at night and buying stuff from the fences. I'd put the Plate Mail +3 that you get in Durlag's Tower in BG1 (if you have Tales of the Sword Coast--and you can get it without completing Durlag's Tower, which is the hardest quest in the game); the full plate mail +1 that you get from Sarevok's girlfriend if you kill her before you go in to fight Sarevok, the Robe of the Good Archmagi (for Airey), five scrolls of protection from magic (the green cleric scrolls), the gauntlets of ogre might (for Viconia), and anything else good you can think of and can carry. You can buy arrows of blasting (basically, a fire ball spell on the end of an arrow) from Sorcerous Sundries in Baldur's Gate, and you want 40 of those in your inventory when you export your character. You can put 40 bolts +2 and 40 bullets +2 in your quiver, too--the game doesn't care what ammo you care or even if you can use it. Put potions in your quick slots, wear every ring you can (I suggest ring of fire protection and ring of free action--a fighter can't wear a ring of holiness or a mage ring, but you can carry those in your inventory). Yes, you need the boots of speed for Airey, i agree one hundred percent--and you can get those in BG1, too. By the time you finish the first quest in Throne of Baal, you should have six pairs of boots of speed. You get a second pair in the dungeon under spell hold, and you kill a couple of people for boots of speed before the end of BG2. In ToB, you can buy one and take one pair off a corpse.
I spread all the loot out over the party as i go along in the quest in the Irenicus dungeon. Some of my "tricks": first, i take a mace and go kill the Jailkeep Golem in the room next to the cages. It takes a +1 blunt weapon to hit him, and if you are doing this in the normal way, you can use the +1 quarterstaff that you get in the room full of tanks later in the dungeon, and then go back and kill him, giving the quarter staff to Jaheira. It takes forever to kill him, but he won't fight back, and he's worth 5,000 experience points. Don't go get Jaheira or Minsc before you do this, because then you won't have to share the experience points with anyone but your main character and Imoen. In BG1, it's easy to hit the 161,000 xp limit, usually in the dungeon under Candlekeep before you go back to the city of Baldur's Gate. But even though you are kept to the 161,000 xp limit in that game, the game continues to keep track of your xp--i've imported characters into BGII with way more than 161,000 xp. Once character of mine came in with 179,000 xp. That matters, because the number of xp that all the characters you pick up increases in response to your xp total. If you have more than 250,000 xp when you pick up Viconia and Airey, they will each have 400,000 xp to start! If you have 161,000 or more, so do Jaheira and Minsc when you get them, and Yoshimo will start with 220,000 xp.
Don't waste any xp on Imoen, because it won't change what her xp will be when you pick her up in Spellhold. I go through the bottom level just enough to get to the Sewer Golum (don't try to kill him, you can't, and you need him to get out of the Irenicus dungeon), and then i teleport upstairs, pick up Yoshimo, and come back downstairs to finish the bottom level, so that Yoshimo gets the xp from that dungeon. Go just past the room where you find the Sewer Golum, and you will find a room with two Golums in it, who are the Golums who come to attack you when you break into Irenicus' private room in the bottom level--kill them, you can attack first, and fight them one at a time. Then when you do break into Irenicus' private room, they come running up again (usually later, though), and can be killed with a single hit point damage, and you get xp for them twice. I carry out every spell scroll i can manage, and all the most expensive equipment i can manage, to be sold when you get out of the dungeon. If you can bring along a stack of rogue stones from BG1, that helps a lot.
When i get out of the Irenicus dungeon, i go sell off everything i can, and then head for the slums. Upstairs at the Copper Kettle, you can lockpick to get the gauntlets of pickpocketing. Go back to Waukeen's Promenade, go into the Adventurer's Mart, save the game, and then pickpocket Ribald Barterman--keep reloading the game until it works and you get a ring--it's a ring of regeneration.
My course after that is to burgle, loot and rob, without using magic in the streets, until i have 5000 gp, and then i go bribe the clerk in the Government District for a magic users license, which will allow me to blast anyone in the street without consequences. Then i go southwest in the Government District and pick up Viconia. From there, i go pick up Airey. If you have Throne of Baal installed, you can go to the Watcher's Keep. Don's sell anything there, they're cheap. But so are their prices. You can buy a potion bag there, for Viconia or Jaheira to carry potions. When you can afford it, you can go there and get flame tongue, a +4 crossbow with does additional fire damage, and needs no ammo. You can buy a +4 short sword there, too, and give it to Yoshimo--sell his katana, it's a piece of ****. These things are expensive, but you can come and go, they will always be there waiting. You can go carefully loot the top floor of the Watcher's keep, but leave all quest items there alone, don't try to do anything with the altar at the northwest end of the room, you're only there for loot you can use or sell. You can get an ammo belt there which has a capacity of 2000 rounds of any ammo. You can bet a quiver of endless arrow +1 (you can also get a quiver of endless bolts +1, but if you buy Flame Tongue, you don't need it--but you can sell it for about 800 gp). You can get the Crimson Dart there, which is +3, which Jaheira can use (until you get a really good sling), and it automatically returns to thrower's hand. You can latter get the Sling of Seeking, and a +3 sling and a +4 sling, but the Crimson Dart is handy in the beginning. You can get the Golum Manual, which a mage can carry, and which can summon a Golem for one minute once per day. Lots of good lot there, and you can just pick it up and leave again. The watch nights will tell you you need to come back when you have more experience, but you can just tell them to piss off, that you're going in anyway. You will get a spell scroll and an entry stone for the Watcher's keep which you must never lose, or you'll never be able to complete that quest. You can always come back to buy stuff from them, and if you feel up to it, you can go down to the next level to loot that--but it is a tough fight down there.
Back in Athkatla, walk the streets at night if you can. Viconia prefers the dark, and more muggers will try to jump you, and you're more likely to run into vampires, who can be killed for large xp. There are theives who only come out at night who have good items for sale, cheap, but you have to visit them all and check their prices. There's a guy in the bridge district at the southwest end, by the abandoned house, who sells a light crossbow +2, which is good to have for your lead character until you can afford to buy Flame Tongue at the Watcher's Keep. There's a good house to loot in the middle of the Bridge district, but do it at night, and don't kill the civilians in there, they're no the ground floor in the kitchen and the library--you lose reputation big time if you kill them. In the Temple district is the best house to loot--tens of thousands of xp and tens of thousands of gp--+2 weapons all over the place and good armor. But it also has the toughest adventuring party you'll ever face. One of them is a Kensai with the best sword in the game--the Celestial Fury katana. You wanna kill that SOB first, because otherwise he'll chop your party into hamburger. Save your game before you go upstairs in that house. Celestial Fury is a +3 katana, with a chance of an additional 20 pts of electrical damage (slim chance) and a chance that the target will be stunned for four round (good chance, which is why you need to kill that bastard before he attacks your party). You can spot the Kensai because he is dual-weilding katanas, and wears a helmet but no armor.
I could go on, and on, but i'd better stop.
Viconia: He dropped to his knees to beg for mercy, which offered me height advantage as I smashed in his skull with a sledgehammer.
*******************************************
Minsc: Cities teem with evil and decay. Let's give it a good shake, and see what falls out ! ! !
Minsc: What? Boo is outraged! See his fury! It's small, so look close. Trust me, it's there.
LOL!
Wow Setanta, how old are you? And you seem to be a guy, but I always thought you where a gal.
For some reason all my RPG characters are chicks, same reason as you. But for that game I created a male single class mage. Raistlin, he was called, in a pure Dragonlance fashion.
After you have told me all of that, I feel so cheap because I used a special program that hacked my saves, spawning every ingame item in my inventory, even giving me the option of custom creating one. Dang... I need to play that game again. Gotta find out how to run it smoothly in my PC...
So, you used the Shadowkeeper, eh?
You can get Gatekeeper (for BG1), Dalekeeper (for Icewind Dale/Heart of Winter) and Shadowkeeper for BGII. I don't know if they have one for Planetscape Torment or Neverwinter Nights.
I found that i enjoyed the game much more when i did not hack it. I don't mind the import "cheat" that i used to bring my stuff in from BG1, because it implies that you could find your equipment, or some of your equipment, in the dungeon. Given that the dungeon is littered with useful items to pick up and use, or to sell, using the import cheat didn't ruin my game for me. You still need to get a heap o' cash to finish all the quests. I estimate it takes between 300,000 and 400,000 gp (gold pieces) to buy the best of everything.
I still use the Shadowkeeper, but not to hack the game. I have assembled literally thousands of custom portraits for use in the game (in BG1 and BGII, and IWD/HOW, the portratis need to be 170 by 110 pixels for the large portrait, and 60 by 38 pixels for the small portrait). You can create your own custom portraits, and then just create a folder in your game file and name it "portraits." When you are creating your character and the portrait section comes up, click on "Custom," and it will go to the portraits folder in you game folder. You could go online, find a picture of Raistlin, and then photoshop it to use in your game. Also, there are literally thousands of sites online for these games, and you can download portrait sets. Try
The Ironworks portrait section--i believe they have Dragonlance portrait sets.
I do use Shadowkeeper, but only for one purpose. I use it to put up custom portraits for Jaheira, Minsc, Yoshimo, Viconia, Airey and Imoen. I've got some great protraits.
If you have a problem with game speed, select the game configuration when you start up your game--you can set the speed of the game there. Some useful ideas to help you with game speed--while in the game, go into options, and find the "autopause" option. There, you can set the autopause when various conditions are met. I usually use just two, autopause when enemy is sighted, and autopause when a trap is found.
On an interesting note, if you have the advanced "stores" option in your verions of BGII, there is a merchant, Diedre, upstairs at the Adventurers Mart in Waukeen's Promenade. She will sell you, among lots of other cool stuff, the Robe of Vecna. Only mages can wear it, and it gives the same protection as the Robe of the Archmagi--but it reduces casting time by four! ! ! For a lot of spells, that makes them just about instantaneous. I've had Airey wearing the Robe of Vecna, and since she is an elf, she can see as well as or better than anyone in the party. I've had the game autopause when the main character spotted the enemy, and Airey's magic missles are already in the air--she got the spell off before the game had a chance to autopause.
I'm 55 years old, if that means anything.
There's a sample of a wizard portrait set from Ironworks:
Game Banshee and the Sorceror's Palace both have great downloads, walkthroughs and other cool stuff for the game.
On this page at Game Banshee, look for the "Bonus Merchants" download, which is the third download in their list. When you install that, you get Deidre at the Adventurer's Mart (upstairs--she gives you top dollar when you sell stuff, but Ribald Barterman is a skinflint--don't sell him anything). You also get Joluv in the Copper Coronet (Slums District)--he's in the southeast end of the tavern, and looks like any other nobleman dweeb you'll meet in Athkatla. He'll sell you (at horribly high prices) some great stuff from Icewind Dale, not from the game, just stuff from the North. That includes a +5 sling which requires no ammo ! ! ! (He wants about 25,000 gp for it, unless you have max charm and max reputation, in which case you can pick it up for about 13,000 gp--give it Jaheira, she'll do awesome damage with that sling.)
When you sell stuff, you get the best price the first time you sell it. The next time you sell it, the price goes down. The three best merchants to sell things to are Bernard and Joluv in the Copper Coronet, and Deidre in the Adventurer's Mart. Also, the theives who fence things at night will usually give you a good price. There's a trick though--don't sell any item until you have sixteen of them. There are sixteen slots in inventory, and when you switch from character to character, it counts as the second time you sell something, so the price goes down. I find a barrel near the place where i will sell it (such as the barrel upstairs at the Adventurer's Mart, or one of the barrels by the doors to the Copper Coronet), and i fill it with the stuff i rob off the dead bodies after combat. When i've got sixteen of one item, i go in and sell it. Here's and example: a composite long bow sells for 30 gp, the first time you sell it. It only sells for 20 the second time you sell it. So, if you save up 16 of them before you sell them, you get 480 gp. Do that once with Bernard, Diedre and Joluv, and you get 1480 gp for the three sales. This applies to all items--don't sell one of them, wait until you have sixteen of them. Carry them inside, and put them all in one player's inventory (even if the means they can't move), then sell them. There is a barrel upstairs in the Adventurer's Mart, right next to where Diedre stands, so you can store stuff in the barrel (alternate dimensions, you know, it can hold an endless supply of loot), and then sell the items to her as soon as you have sixteen of them. Be careful, though, be sure to pick up anything you put on the floor when you fill inventory with sale items. If you put something on the floor, and forget to pick it up before you leave, it will be gone when you come back.
After we get out of the dungeon, my first mission is to get to 250,000 xp for the main character. Then i pick up Viconia and Airey, and with that much xp for the main character, you will get each of them with 400,000 xp. Then i got out and loot every damned house i can find which has good stuff in it. 20,000 to 30,000 gp per house is not unusual. Who says crime doesn't pay. Just save, be careful, and don't get caught.
Woohoo 55! Thats awesome!
Setante, we can agree that the single player experience is fabulous. But how about multiplayer dungeoning? Have you tried that one out? Is it satisfying as well?
I've never tried that Boss, i couldn't say.
Setanta, some insightful posts there, enjoyed them. I've never played Baldur's Gate 1 but I definetely want to, if only to test out the import function in developing characters further. I remember importing characters with another game years ago, Eye of the Beholder 2 (another classic RPG series which surely graces this thread) for Eye of the Beholder 3 to great effect.
Now even I want to play BG.
Now if only I wasn't so devout to WoW right now.
One does get addicted to certain RPGs. I actually started with Icewind Dale, but when i got BG, i was hooked, because it offers so much lattitude of action--you don't have to follow a certain path, you just have certain subquests which are necessary to complete to complete the entire quest. This is even more accentuated in BG2, which can be played fast, or can be played slow by doing absolutely everything there is in the game. Once again, no certain path of subquests is mandatory, you just need to complete certain subquests to complete the entire quest. How you decide to do the subquests, and which you choose to do or ignore, is optional. That is what has made Baldur's Gate/Tales of the Sword Coast and BGII: Shadows of Amn/Throne of Baal so attractive to me.
