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bike tory posted:Note also that you can access it from SoA and ToB, but they're separate areas in the game files so you can do it twice if you want. It's perfectly viable to do in late SoA but you'll end up hilariously overlevelled and over geared for SoA's end game content. Wait, what? I've never heard that before.
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May 20, 2023 10:33
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Air Skwirl posted:IIRC only combat experience is split, quest experience every gets the full amount. So a party of four killing a 1000xp monster each character gets 250xp, turning in a quest worth 1000xp earns each character 1000xp. That might vary game to game. It varies - some quests (the major ones, generally) give the same amount of XP to party members. Small ones give a lump sum split between the party. X_Toad posted:Personally I always thought it had something to do with the fact that the camera seemed much closer to the ground that in other IE games, probably so that we could admire the custom models of the party and some important characters. That's largely just a resolution thing, the amount of viewing area is very similar to BG1. There's a reason that Tutu became so popular.  
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May 20, 2023 10:36
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The way the character portraits/whatever model they are using in Torment always kinda freaked me out when they moved, especially considering the change in color and the twitching they do when low on health.
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May 20, 2023 10:48
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Air Skwirl posted:Years before Let's Plays were a thing there was a thread on the official Bioware forum where someone cleared Watcher's Keep solo with a Jester immediately after getting out of Irenicus' dungeon. I doubt this would be possible in the EEs since bard song breaks invisibility now.
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May 20, 2023 18:38
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I'm about to finish the trilogy and plan on playing Icewind Dale EE next. I've played the game a few times before and I'd like any comments about the party I plan on making. Paladin, undead hunter, long swords Fighter/thief, short swords, (dual or multiclass? if dual, what level should I get in fighter?) Fighter/cleric, maces (same question as above) Bard, unkitted, crossbows, mostly for the songs Archer, longbows Sorcerer If I'm missing anything big please let me now. I know that druids get more interesting spells in Icewind Dale compared to the BG series but I can't fit one in this party.
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May 21, 2023 01:02
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I'd multi the fighter/thief, otherwise seems solid.
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May 21, 2023 02:38
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Air Skwirl posted:I'd multi the fighter/thief, otherwise seems solid. Cool, thanks. What level should I stop my fighter/cleric's levels as a fighter? I see a lot of people say 7 or 9 but I'm not sure why. Also that will be a decent portion of the game without any healing or divine spells which I can probably handle with potions.
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May 21, 2023 02:47
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7 is an extra half attack, 9 is first level you can put a proficiency toward grandmastery. Does IWD EE get the good grand mastery like IWD HOW? If so 9 is extremely worth potion micromanagement although I usually get around that with a druid.
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May 21, 2023 03:37
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Node posted:Cool, thanks. What level should I stop my fighter/cleric's levels as a fighter? I see a lot of people say 7 or 9 but I'm not sure why. Also that will be a decent portion of the game without any healing or divine spells which I can probably handle with potions. I'd multi them also
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May 21, 2023 04:11
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I'd go with a straight cleric. You have the fighting covered with your paladin, fighter-thief and if necessary the archer. Getting higher level divine spells as soon as you can plus increasing your level for turning are probably going to serve your party better than getting bonuses to hit and HP from fighter levels on that dude.
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May 21, 2023 04:41
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And a pure cleric is really helpful with all the undead in the first chapter
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May 21, 2023 04:42
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Also, rip tony jay
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May 21, 2023 04:55
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rojay posted:I'd go with a straight cleric. You have the fighting covered with your paladin, fighter-thief and if necessary the archer. Getting higher level divine spells as soon as you can plus increasing your level for turning are probably going to serve your party better than getting bonuses to hit and HP from fighter levels on that dude. Air Skwirl posted:And a pure cleric is really helpful with all the undead in the first chapter Adding my voice as a third vote. I never like to MC casters as it just slows them down. BG is something of an exception because it drowns you with experience in later BG2; IWD does not. I like Anomen (as a character, not a person) in BG2 because he's not sharing his cleric experience and the 7 levels of fighter that he has are not slowing his development too much. Plus, single-class clerics in 2e with their own buffs are solid melee fighters.
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May 21, 2023 06:17
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rojay posted:I'd go with a straight cleric. You have the fighting covered with your paladin, fighter-thief and if necessary the archer. Getting higher level divine spells as soon as you can plus increasing your level for turning are probably going to serve your party better than getting bonuses to hit and HP from fighter levels on that dude. Thanks for the advice, although I already made the fighter/cleric before these posts. So no turn undead for me for a while. When I do dual class the fighter to a cleric, I allocate new proficiency points, right? If my fighter has 3 points in flails, and as a cleric they put 1 more into flails, that doesn't turn into 4 points in flail when the cleric catches up to the fighter levels, right? That point is wasted?
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May 21, 2023 06:58
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Node posted:Thanks for the advice, although I already made the fighter/cleric before these posts. So no turn undead for me for a while. When I do dual class the fighter to a cleric, I allocate new proficiency points, right? If my fighter has 3 points in flails, and as a cleric they put 1 more into flails, that doesn't turn into 4 points in flail when the cleric catches up to the fighter levels, right? That point is wasted? Depending on how far along you are you can just make a level one cleric and replace the character mid game. I once planned to do a gimmick pseudo ironman of Icewind dale where I wouldn't reload and wouldn't resurrect and just replace any dead party member with a new one once I got back to an inn or town (and likely use the console to level them up to like 90% of the same experience as whoever just died), but didn't get around to it.
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May 21, 2023 07:17
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The only classes I prioritize coming online early in IWD are bards and either/or druids or wizards for area denial. Everything else can benefit from a dip into 7-9 levels of fighter limited only by the variety of good weapons. An effective damage mitigation by HOW and TotLM are your attacks per round and many of the good arcane or divine damage mitigation don't come extremely late. But also taking a dwarven defender or archer short circuits some of the original concerns so IWD is a land of contrast.
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May 21, 2023 13:02
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Suspicious posted:Wand of lightning is how I get rid of Karoug / Mendas / that other loup garou if I have no other means to hurt them (solo F/M/C for example) Sometimes you need to do science like telling Jaheria and Edwin to go stand in a room with a closed door and fire a wand of lightning at her to see if a potion of magic blocking protects against it (it did). I will be putting this to broad use in the future thank you.
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May 23, 2023 01:02
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For a full run of Baldur's Gate dual class fighter clerics are sweet because you can start with an OP subclass like berserker, get grandmaster weapon proficiency, and use all those great cleric buffs to boost your THAC0 to the moon. If you do part or all of Dragonspear and dual in Irenicus' dungeon at 9 you'll level up enough to be useful by the time you're out of the dungeon and you should get your powers back around the time you finish your first major side quest. Multi class is also a great way to go because you get fighter HLAs at high levels and you'll have a fighter's THAC0 even before buffing, but dual class characters will have higher HP, more higher level cleric spells, grandmaster weapon proficiency, and the abilities of any subclass you start as. For IWD I wouldn't bother though. You want to have your cleric powers early, and you don't want to drag a weak character around one of the more annoying midgame dungeons like Dragon's Eye.
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May 23, 2023 02:00
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Randallteal posted:For a full run of Baldur's Gate dual class fighter clerics are sweet because you can start with an OP subclass like berserker, get grandmaster weapon proficiency, and use all those great cleric buffs to boost your THAC0 to the moon. If you do part or all of Dragonspear and dual in Irenicus' dungeon at 9 you'll level up enough to be useful by the time you're out of the dungeon and you should get your powers back around the time you finish your first major side quest. Multi class is also a great way to go because you get fighter HLAs at high levels and you'll have a fighter's THAC0 even before buffing, but dual class characters will have higher HP, more higher level cleric spells, grandmaster weapon proficiency, and the abilities of any subclass you start as. It's nowhere near as powerful, but my favourite way to play is single class cleric of lathandar or helm. You can buff up like a fighter, and the kit abilities get you the extra APR you lack as a single class cleric.
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May 23, 2023 03:28
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bike tory posted:It's nowhere near as powerful, but my favourite way to play is single class cleric of lathandar or helm. You can buff up like a fighter, and the kit abilities get you the extra APR you lack as a single class cleric. That's a much more sensible way to go. Dual classing is really just for when you want to make your MC as ridiculous as possible. I lore-justified it to myself as Gorion's Ward basically finding religion between games as a way to cope with being a bhaalspawn. Honestly even just the amount of rerolling most players would have to do to get a fighter with appropriate stats to dual to cleric and be effective makes it kind of a cheesy build.
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May 23, 2023 03:41
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I keep meaning to do a solo fighter/druid who gets their fire resistance to 100 and solves as many problems as possible with the club of detonation.
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May 23, 2023 03:42
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hosed up they don't let you heal from 100+ resistance anymore
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May 23, 2023 03:45
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Doing an archer build in BG1 I intend to take through all the games, I've done pretty much all the BG1 content now other than EE and I have decided to inflict it upon myself. The game actually keeps track of how much XP you have above 161,000, but resets it upon any load to 161k. Been using EE Keeper to look up my true total and the console to award myself the correct amount any time I need to load. I'm sitting at 207k and look forward to leveling up early in SoD and then never again until BG2.
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May 23, 2023 04:12
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Play how you want, but being heavily overlevelled isn't really necessary or enhancing of the experience imo.
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May 23, 2023 04:26
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I see it how I could keep the XP without using the console if I just left the game running and beat it without reloading which I've done before many times. I don't want to have to play the game in one go like that though.
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May 23, 2023 04:29
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bike tory posted:hosed up they don't let you heal from 100+ resistance anymore I think you can change a setting in the .lua to bring that back.
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May 23, 2023 04:34
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Flowing Thot posted:Doing an archer build in BG1 I intend to take through all the games, I've done pretty much all the BG1 content now other than EE and I have decided to inflict it upon myself. The game actually keeps track of how much XP you have above 161,000, but resets it upon any load to 161k. Been using EE Keeper to look up my true total and the console to award myself the correct amount any time I need to load. I'm sitting at 207k and look forward to leveling up early in SoD and then never again until BG2. Tweak pack lets you just get rid of the xp cap.
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May 23, 2023 04:35
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Yeah I basically use the tweak pack to make the game incredibly slightly harder by enabling identifying potions and jewelry (I was a Gold Box babby so it makes me smile) and then also removing the XP cap because honestly that is the single thing that bothers me the most across all of CRPGdom so really just please go away, as soon as number stop going up I lose at least some tiny amount of joy from fully exploring the game
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May 23, 2023 05:18
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Dr. Quarex posted:Yeah I basically use the tweak pack to make the game incredibly slightly harder by enabling identifying potions and jewelry (I was a Gold Box babby so it makes me smile) and then also removing the XP cap because honestly that is the single thing that bothers me the most across all of CRPGdom so really just please go away, as soon as number stop going up I lose at least some tiny amount of joy from fully exploring the game it's pretty much over now but you would have liked diablo 3 for that get to level 60? okay here's a second levelling track that's got 800 levels, and then scales infinitely after that.
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May 23, 2023 07:09
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Dr. Quarex posted:Yeah I basically use the tweak pack to make the game incredibly slightly harder by enabling identifying potions and jewelry (I was a Gold Box babby so it makes me smile) and then also removing the XP cap because honestly that is the single thing that bothers me the most across all of CRPGdom so really just please go away, as soon as number stop going up I lose at least some tiny amount of joy from fully exploring the game I liked how in Fallout 2 you could continue playing after winning. I mean there are no more quests but you can drive around in your car and kill stuff as long as you want
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May 23, 2023 07:14
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Doing Rasaad's BG1 quest because I wanted to wrap up all the content in the game before moving on and all that is really left is the EE characters. I went to the Cloud Peak Mountains where his quest takes place and wanted to rest before tackling the quest and found out that resting spawns frost trolls very reliably for 1400XP each. Not bad at all.
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May 24, 2023 04:56
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Flowing Thot posted:Doing Rasaad's BG1 quest because I wanted to wrap up all the content in the game before moving on and all that is really left is the EE characters. I went to the Cloud Peak Mountains where his quest takes place and wanted to rest before tackling the quest and found out that resting spawns frost trolls very reliably for 1400XP each. Not bad at all. If you’re not aware, the fight at the end of Dorn’s questline drops an elven chain mail, which is a HUGE power jump for one party member in BG1.
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May 24, 2023 05:55
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Landing a stun on Sarevok with the wand of paralyzation is effective but anti climatic. Time for SoD.
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May 24, 2023 09:57
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Played through IWD1 again, the last time I played it was in 2016. It's fun. The hardest thing to get used to was Horrid Wilting hurting party members. I'm going to play IWD2, which I only played last when the game was new. If I remember right, it uses a newer edition of D&D like NWN does.So I have a few questions on making characters. If I have a paladin of helm, is there any particular reason to put levels into fighter? With thieves, I've heard they aren't very useful in the game. Is there a way to make a decent "fighter/thief?" And if I made a sorcerer, are spell picks going to be somewhat the same as in previous games, or are spells entirely different?
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May 26, 2023 15:59
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Node posted:Played through IWD1 again, the last time I played it was in 2016. It's fun. The hardest thing to get used to was Horrid Wilting hurting party members. I'm going to play IWD2, which I only played last when the game was new. If I remember right, it uses a newer edition of D&D like NWN does.So I have a few questions on making characters. Rogues are incredibly awkward in IWD2 because not only are their sneak attacks still middling in this era of DND, they are hard to land for engine reasons. It's kind of competitive to cut them out entirely with just Find Traps and or trap tanking. Fighter thief focusing on fighter levels until you need rogue for some skills is not good but also not awful if you want to fiddle with sneak attacks working questionably. The power game choice is strangely Rogue 1/Wizard X because taking thief levels is a drag on your main character class spinning up but Wizard isn't impacted by a drag because of scroll availability and as a bonus you can use your Int extra skill points to keep thief skills ticking up without excess rogue levels. I don't think there are any arcane spell traps if you are just coming off IWD. Disables remain king and as sorcerer you have some balancing to do around disables that just stop working vs disables that will still work later but poorly. There are some common sources pick lists for IWD2 if you Google and need just some sanity checks.
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May 26, 2023 16:13
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zedprime posted:Fighter 4 paladin X let's you take weapon specialization which is a big deal for people using weapons. Cheers, thanks. Are fighter x/mage x characters viable in IWD2 like they are in other IE games? If so, what would that character look like? I enjoyed how they start out weak, but once you can regularly buff yourself with stoneskin/mirror image/blur/protection from magical weapons/tenser's transformation they are nearly immortal. Party is looking something like fighter 4/paladin x cleric bard rogue, shortbows since it sounds like sneak attack is clunky sorcerer and either a fighter mage, or a barbarian if that doesn't work
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May 26, 2023 20:42
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I haven't played IWD2 in a very long time, but in 3rd edition in general you can't really split levels between martial and spellcasting aside from very specific builds that you need to plan ahead of time based on my experience with Neverwinter Nights. With a Sorcerer and a Bard you probably don't need another arcane caster
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May 26, 2023 20:56
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IWD1 is easily the IE game that I know the least about, but I do know a touch about 2. Air Skwirl is correct that splitting levels between martial and caster is a very bad idea in 3e and beyond. One of the things that I miss about 2e rules is how well MCing works (apart from the pairing restrictions). However, one combination that works very well in IWD2 is 1 level of rogue and then the rest bard. That essentially allows you to have your cake and eat it too as you will be able to use rogue skills with a bard's fantastic songs and spells. In your case, Node, that would free up a slot for a druid, which are great fun in IWD2 (pita in 2e rules) and would give you a very nice second healer/blaster. I would also consider a wizard instead of a sorcerer as the former are scroll users. I would never have more than one scroll user in IWD2 because the game is very lean on scrolls, but bards are spontaneous casters that don't learn spells from scrolls. That way, your two arcane casters aren't competing for resources but you have the versatility of a wizard who will be able to use any spell he can find a scroll of. Mind you, a sorcerer is still good, but they have a limited arsenal.
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May 26, 2023 21:07
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If you drop the wizard then your sorcerer or bard can cast all the scrolls instead of write them in a stupid book. I'd slam the rogue into the bard, take a druid, and call it a day at 5 members. You can add a 6th character barbarian later if you find yourself missing meat and this actually makes everyone level up faster because reasons.
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May 26, 2023 21:53
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zedprime posted:If you drop the wizard then your sorcerer or bard can cast all the scrolls instead of write them in a stupid book. I feel like he would need another tank-type; not sure if even a single-class cleric would hold the line well enough.
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May 27, 2023 04:55
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