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MrTheDevious
May 7, 2006

Ahh nostalgia, you cruel bitch
Best new bug yet! The pool in Abazigal's dungeon teleports you to itself rather than the next area, rendering the game apparently entirely broken. About to go fishing for the item code for the breathing potion and see if I can manually fix it, but otherwise it looks like my game's unable to progress any further :(

Edit - caused it by forcing open another door you're not supposed to be able to force your way through. I really don't understand how this many bullshit bugs caused by something not that farfetched make it past QA. Really wish I'd just used the old version of the game

MrTheDevious fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Dec 4, 2013

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Basic Chunnel
Sep 21, 2010

Jesus! Jesus Christ! Say his name! Jesus! Jesus! Come down now!

Angry Lobster posted:

I've not played it before, so, can I get advice for a good/neutral party composition?I guess I'm too lazy to figure it out the good ol' way (dying a lot).
There are two things about BG1 that you have to know about party composition.

1) They spread the CNPCs all over the world, and plot-gated a fair few (Tiax / Quail, for instance) which was neat on paper but turned out to be a very bad design decision that they learned from. The reason that Imoen / Jaheira / Khalid / Minsc / Dynaheir are the canon party in BG2 is because that's what most people ran with, precisely because they were good/neutral-friendly and they lay directly on BG1's critical path very early in the game. Note that Jaheira / Khalid and Minsc / Dynaheir must be brought on as pairs, unless you cheese it by killing off one and kicking their corpse out of the party (the only good thing about Tutu's NPC mod was that Jaheira would eventually get really pissed off if you let Khalid die).

2) All of the CNPCs were characters that the devs rolled up for PnP games, and in contrast to BG2, most are not that munchkin-y in the stats department or are munchkin-y in the wrong stats for their class. 17-18 primary stats are rare. A lot of people kill-kick Khalid because his stats suck for a fighter. But those are the breaks.

Unlike BG2, BG1 features no party banter to speak of, so there's nothing stopping you from starting an "LAN" game and just rolling up a capable party from scratch. If you'd rather not do that, the configuration above is workable. If you're not opposed to a bit of cheating you can change Khalid to fighter / mage in EEkeeper and he becomes more agreeable. Otherwise, if you go north of the Friendly Arm there's a paladin who fights pretty well, and if you can scrounge up a stone-to-flesh scroll you can nab a neutral cleric from the carnival. There's a pretty great fighter-cleric but you can't get him until chapter 4 I think? Mage-wise you'll be in a bit of a bind if your PC isn't a caster, since both of the obvious options (Xan and Dynaheir) are specialists who are classed out of some useful spells. Dynaheir is probably a better fit but Xan casting sleep is plenty good through the first game.

Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Dec 4, 2013

Captain Oblivious
Oct 12, 2007

I'm not like other posters

MrTheDevious posted:

It's just ToB that's riddled with bugs really. I did everything possible in SoA and never really had any issues at all, but ToB's just one huge bug. I stopped doing the new NPC ToB quests entirely after Rasaad's trapped me in the shadowplane permanently :downs:

Is it just the new NPCs who's poo poo is bugged or are there other noteworthy ToB bugs (besides the door, which I wouldn't consider terribly noteworthy)?

Because if it's just the new NPCs than that works for me, I have no intention of using any of them.

Basic Chunnel
Sep 21, 2010

Jesus! Jesus Christ! Say his name! Jesus! Jesus! Come down now!

MrTheDevious posted:

Edit - caused it by forcing open another door you're not supposed to be able to force your way through. I really don't understand how this many bullshit bugs caused by something not that farfetched make it past QA. Really wish I'd just used the old version of the game
It's probably because you're forcing doors, which no one does because it rarely ever worked, ergo no testing. Are you going thief-free on this run or something?

Captain Oblivious
Oct 12, 2007

I'm not like other posters

Basic Chunnel posted:

It's probably because you're forcing doors, which no one does because it rarely ever worked, ergo no testing. Are you going thief-free on this run or something?

Ah yeah that would be it. I can't remember the last time I bothered even trying to force a door.

Excelzior
Jun 24, 2013

Captain Oblivious posted:

Ah yeah that would be it. I can't remember the last time I bothered even trying to force a door.

Well to be fair its much easier to start with 18 or 19 STR than to get a thief with sufficient lockpicking for the early locks in BG1. The habit carries over.

MrTheDevious
May 7, 2006

Ahh nostalgia, you cruel bitch

Basic Chunnel posted:

It's probably because you're forcing doors, which no one does because it rarely ever worked, ergo no testing. Are you going thief-free on this run or something?

No, I have one, but the xp reward for picking the lock is pretty meaningless at this point so I've just been forcing through everything instead to save time and effort. Obviously won't be doing so anymore, but I still feel like it's something a lot of other new players are going to try too, since we're not conditioned to not even bother trying due to the old versions.

It's just plain a lot less trouble to mash bash on doors instead of having to single select my thief then maybe move the rest of the party out of his way then pick the lock with him

Bholder
Feb 26, 2013

Basic Chunnel posted:

2) All of the CNPCs were characters that the devs rolled up for PnP games, and in contrast to BG2, most are not that munchkin-y in the stats department or are munchkin-y in the wrong stats for their class. 17-18 primary stats are rare. A lot of people kill-kick Khalid because his stats suck for a fighter. But those are the breaks.

That explains a lot, especially Imoen's stats.

And there are character banter in BG1 but they are extremely rare.

Basic Chunnel
Sep 21, 2010

Jesus! Jesus Christ! Say his name! Jesus! Jesus! Come down now!

I mean there are ambient barks (Khalid and the Paladin big-upping each other, etc) but nothing like the character-building you get in BG2.

Excelzior posted:

Well to be fair its much easier to start with 18 or 19 STR than to get a thief with sufficient lockpicking for the early locks in BG1. The habit carries over.
I don't remember ever succeeding in door forcing in BG1, even with a hoss fighter like Minsc. But I might be thinking of Fallout 2, where the feature works for exactly one door and is otherwise completely useless.

Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Dec 4, 2013

MrTheDevious
May 7, 2006

Ahh nostalgia, you cruel bitch
I have not yet found a single door in all of BG2EE that you could open via pick lock but not via bash. Not one.

Karmalaa70
Jun 15, 2006

MrTheDevious posted:

No, I have one, but the xp reward for picking the lock is pretty meaningless at this point so I've just been forcing through everything instead to save time and effort. Obviously won't be doing so anymore, but I still feel like it's something a lot of other new players are going to try too, since we're not conditioned to not even bother trying due to the old versions.

It's just plain a lot less trouble to mash bash on doors instead of having to single select my thief then maybe move the rest of the party out of his way then pick the lock with him

Selecting your thief and lockpicking takes..3 seconds? C'mon now.

I am up to Abazigal's Enclave and I can't remember any bugs I've had. I'm not using any of the new NPCs but likely will on my next run through both EEs.

MrTheDevious
May 7, 2006

Ahh nostalgia, you cruel bitch

Karmalaa70 posted:

Selecting your thief and lockpicking takes..3 seconds? C'mon now.

Yeah but that's 3 seconds I was enjoying saving until it started breaking the game, not sure why that's bad :confused:

Every ToB bug I've found is either directly related to new NPCs or arises from being able to smash down doors I shouldn't, so if you're not doing NPC quests or forcing doors, I'm not surprised you haven't seen any

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009
Is it me, or are pathfinding and AI scripts even more hosed in BGEE than they were in BG1? Characters frequently take the long way around or just get stuck trying to walk into a wall instead of going around to the stairs/ramp, or else just stop walking for no reason. Characters also sometimes auto-attack with AI off, and Jaheira's been casting spells despite being set to cleric passive (wasting Summon Insects on a loving wolf, or casting Bless multiple times in a row). :iiam:

Factor_VIII
Feb 2, 2005

Les soldats se trouvent dans la vérité.

Basic Chunnel posted:

I don't remember ever succeeding in door forcing in BG1, even with a hoss fighter like Minsc. But I might be thinking of Fallout 2, where the feature works for exactly one door and is otherwise completely useless.
My Fighter/Mage/Cleric solo was pretty good at bashing doors. Then again I used Draw Upon Holy might to boost the PC's strength to above 20. Some can be bashed with just 18 though. Some were too difficult to bash, and I used Knock for them.

Karmalaa70
Jun 15, 2006

Lemon Curdistan posted:

Is it me, or are pathfinding and AI scripts even more hosed in BGEE than they were in BG1? Characters frequently take the long way around or just get stuck trying to walk into a wall instead of going around to the stairs/ramp, or else just stop walking for no reason. Characters also sometimes auto-attack with AI off, and Jaheira's been casting spells despite being set to cleric passive (wasting Summon Insects on a loving wolf, or casting Bless multiple times in a row). :iiam:

Don't know about scripts but the pathing is pretty awful, though honestly I notice it much more in BG2EE. The Baldur.ini file has pathing nodes set to 32K, so you'll probably want to change that to 400K. I'm not sure that makes that big of a difference but at least it's something.

Basic Chunnel
Sep 21, 2010

Jesus! Jesus Christ! Say his name! Jesus! Jesus! Come down now!

I honestly don't know why they removed so many of the config options from the original games. I assume they just crank everything to 11 just cuz, but things like AI updates should be changeable.

Factor_VIII
Feb 2, 2005

Les soldats se trouvent dans la vérité.
What annoyed me with the AI is that the default fighter script seems to switch targets to the last enemy that attacked a character, meaning that you can't focus damage on enemies when using it. Ironically the ranged attack script seems to focus on a single enemy much more when in melee combat, though it has the disadvantage that characters will periodically run away from melee even if they have no ranged weapons equipped.

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
The only script I use is that "thief controlled" one which makes your thief continually Find Traps or Hide in Shadows whenever they're not doing anything else. It really cuts down on the micromanagement and the only downside is you need to remember to turn them to Find Traps mode if you need to give them some post-combat healing.

I'm also tempted to try the generic controlled scripts for everyone else, because those hotkeys seem more convenient than selecting people individually to switch weapons.

Furism
Feb 21, 2006

Live long and headbang

Jabor posted:

The only script I use is that "thief controlled" one which makes your thief continually Find Traps or Hide in Shadows whenever they're not doing anything else. It really cuts down on the micromanagement and the only downside is you need to remember to turn them to Find Traps mode if you need to give them some post-combat healing.

I'm also tempted to try the generic controlled scripts for everyone else, because those hotkeys seem more convenient than selecting people individually to switch weapons.

The annoying part of this is that the character will switch back to Find Traps even if you're looting something, forcing you to loot again, and if there is a lot of loot you have to can have to this twice. I ended up turning off the AI when I was looting :argh: Or am I thinking of a different script?

Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
I never use the A.I. It does get slightly tedious at points, but it was never that bad. Dragon Age has much, much better scripting for NPCs and there's a reason I keep coming back to BG.

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem

Furism posted:

The annoying part of this is that the character will switch back to Find Traps even if you're looting something, forcing you to loot again, and if there is a lot of loot you have to can have to this twice. I ended up turning off the AI when I was looting :argh: Or am I thinking of a different script?

Hah, I wondered why that was happening! I thought I was just misclicking. It's a small price to pay in my opinion, especially if you're like me and pick up all the loot and only sort out later whether or not you actually want it.

Basic Chunnel
Sep 21, 2010

Jesus! Jesus Christ! Say his name! Jesus! Jesus! Come down now!

Furism posted:

The annoying part of this is that the character will switch back to Find Traps even if you're looting something, forcing you to loot again, and if there is a lot of loot you have to can have to this twice. I ended up turning off the AI when I was looting :argh: Or am I thinking of a different script?
You gotta open the container and then pause the game.

The real trouble with the AI scripts is that the devs didn't alter any of them even though Hexxat is actually flagged in the game's engine as a vampire, so none of the cleric scripts aside from "aggressive" work, because Jaheira or whoever will start firing off all of their negative plane protections immediately after you're done resting due to the vampire in their field of vision.

Piell
Sep 3, 2006

Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer


Young Orc

Basic Chunnel posted:

Unlike BG2, BG1 features no party banter to speak of, so there's nothing stopping you from starting an "LAN" game and just rolling up a capable party from scratch. If you'd rather not do that, the configuration above is workable. If you're not opposed to a bit of cheating you can change Khalid to fighter / mage in EEkeeper and he becomes more agreeable. Otherwise, if you go north of the Friendly Arm there's a paladin who fights pretty well, and if you can scrounge up a stone-to-flesh scroll you can nab a neutral cleric from the carnival. There's a pretty great fighter-cleric but you can't get him until chapter 4 I think? Mage-wise you'll be in a bit of a bind if your PC isn't a caster, since both of the obvious options (Xan and Dynaheir) are specialists who are classed out of some useful spells. Dynaheir is probably a better fit but Xan casting sleep is plenty good through the first game.

Neera fixes the mage problem, since she can cast any spell.

Slashrat
Jun 6, 2011

YOSPOS

Piell posted:

Neera fixes the mage problem, since she can cast any spell.

Not necessarily the one you want her to cast, however.

John McCain
Jan 29, 2009

Basic Chunnel posted:

I honestly don't know why they removed so many of the config options from the original games. I assume they just crank everything to 11 just cuz, but things like AI updates should be changeable.

AFAIK pretty much everything is still changeable, you just have to go through the .ini file instead of having the nice GUI.

TjyvTompa
Jun 1, 2001

im gay

Lemon Curdistan posted:

Is it me, or are pathfinding and AI scripts even more hosed in BGEE than they were in BG1? Characters frequently take the long way around or just get stuck trying to walk into a wall instead of going around to the stairs/ramp, or else just stop walking for no reason. Characters also sometimes auto-attack with AI off, and Jaheira's been casting spells despite being set to cleric passive (wasting Summon Insects on a loving wolf, or casting Bless multiple times in a row). :iiam:

I don't know if the pathfinding is worse in EE but it is really bad. I find it works much better if the characters are hasted, not sure why though but the pathfinding feels much more "fluid". I've also noticed that they sometimes auto-attack even though the AI script is disabled, especially when their previous target just died.

LibbyM
Dec 7, 2011

You can also get Neera before doing the mines, where was Xan isn't until after the mines. So if you don't want to be forced to take Minsk for Dynaheir, Neera is your best super early option.
Also wild mages are cool.

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009

TjyvTompa posted:

I've also noticed that they sometimes auto-attack even though the AI script is disabled, especially when their previous target just died.

Yeah, it's the sometimes that gets me. If they consistently switched targets when you give them an attack order and the original target dies, that would be perfectly fine. If they didn't, it would also be perfectly fine. It's the fact that it's a crapshoot as to which they'll do that's a pain.

e; vv someone do an ironman Wild Mage playthrough where the only spells you're allowed are Nahal's Reckless Dweomer and Chaos Shield.

Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 11:49 on Dec 4, 2013

Basic Chunnel
Sep 21, 2010

Jesus! Jesus Christ! Say his name! Jesus! Jesus! Come down now!

That's true, I hadn't thought of Neera. But yeah, in the early levels of the game the reckless dweomer is definitely a last gambit thing, but it's fun in that sense. You just need a 1st level slot open for it. Just be prepared to lose all your gold or gate in a pit fiend accidentally. Once she wild surge'd on casting stoneskins before a tough fight and it made it an AoE spell that replicated across my whole party. Encounter suddenly wasn't so hard.

Angry Lobster
May 16, 2011

Served with honor
and some clarified butter.

Thanks, much appreciated!

I decided to use the canon party plus the wild mage. For my character, I rolled a priest of lathander, like one of my first characters ever in BG2, a simple character for a simple run, until I learn how to break the game's back on my knee.

Rolling Scissors
Jul 22, 2005

Turn off the fountain dear, it's just me.
Nap Ghost

Slashrat posted:

Not necessarily the one you want her to cast, however.

When Neera turned the Shadow Dragon to stone with a wild surge all was forgiven.

verybad
Apr 23, 2010

Now with 100% less DoTA crotchshots

Piell posted:

Neera fixes the mage problem, since she can cast any spell.

There's really no mage problem in BG1, specialist wizards are pretty much strictly better than standard mages. There's enough good spells for all levels that missing out on some alternatives isn't that big of a deal and wands can fill the gaps, if there are any.

Nuclear War
Nov 7, 2012

You're a pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty girl
I've run into a new bug that's gamebreaking. My CHARNAME paladin walks really jerky, stopping and seeming to go in and out of combat mode every five seconds, the same thing happens in combat where he spends most of his time changing stance instead of capping fools with Carsomyr. Has anyone run into this and knw how to solve it?

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009

verybad posted:

specialist wizards are pretty much strictly better than standard mages.

No, not the ones in BG1, because they specialise in schools that make them unable to cast a bunch of useful spells.

You can always just pick a character you like and EEKeeper them to a non-specialist mage, though.

Nuclear War posted:

I've run into a new bug that's gamebreaking. My CHARNAME paladin walks really jerky, stopping and seeming to go in and out of combat mode every five seconds, the same thing happens in combat where he spends most of his time changing stance instead of capping fools with Carsomyr. Has anyone run into this and knw how to solve it?

Do you have AI turned on? Turn it off.

verybad
Apr 23, 2010

Now with 100% less DoTA crotchshots

Lemon Curdistan posted:

No, not the ones in BG1, because they specialise in schools that make them unable to cast a bunch of useful spells.

Dynaheir can cast color spray instead of sleep, Xan can fill his first level slots with blind/charm person/spook after sleep becomes useless and use glitterdust/horror/grease instead of web/stinking cloud, Edwin can use glitterdust for invis detection if you somehow really need it, Xzar can dual-class to a cleric. There, no significant holes left.

a whole buncha crows
May 8, 2003

WHEN WE DON'T KNOW WHO TO HATE, WE HATE OURSELVES.-SA USER NATION (AKA ME!)
Time to do a complete enhanced run through, I am determined to be as evil as possible for the first time - I always end up being good I have no idea why but not this time!

Wingless
Mar 3, 2009

Nation posted:

Time to do a complete enhanced run through, I am determined to be as evil as possible for the first time - I always end up being good I have no idea why but not this time!

It's really written in such a way as to punish you, the player of the computer game, for playing an evil character. It is the bad-wrong way to play the computer game and the devs punish you. They make token efforts here and there but generally the only way to be an evil character is to be petty and really loud about how evil you are and the game hates you for it. There's really no way to play, say, a cruel, calculating evil guy, or a CHARNAME Irenicus sort; ambitious and capable, with class and dignity. You can go around sneering at people and demanding petty sums of money and generally acting like a member of some local gang, that's about it. I find it amazing that developers frequently realise that an NPC doing something in a cool way is great, but don't realise that the player might enjoy doing something similar themselves. Like in Mass Effect, Adepts get to use their powers in awesome ways during cutscenes, but the player never can, even if he's twice the space-wizard the NPC is.

It's the same with a lot of RPGs though. I generally find playing good/neutral makes the story flow a lot better.

Wingless fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Dec 4, 2013

a whole buncha crows
May 8, 2003

WHEN WE DON'T KNOW WHO TO HATE, WE HATE OURSELVES.-SA USER NATION (AKA ME!)
I serve the flaming fist x infinity

TjyvTompa
Jun 1, 2001

im gay
Regarding mages in BG1, I dual classed Imoen to a Mage at level 6 and she ended the game as a level 6 Thief, Level 9 mage. Together with Dynaheir this made the game super easy. My other members were Minsc, Jaheria, Garrick and my pure fighter PC. I did play on the "regular" difficulty though.

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JustJeff88
Jan 15, 2008

I AM
CONSISTENTLY
ANNOYING
...
JUST TERRIBLE


THIS BADGE OF SHAME IS WORTH 0.45 DOUBLE DRAGON ADVANCES

:dogout:
of SA-Mart forever

TjyvTompa posted:

Regarding mages in BG1, I dual classed Imoen to a Mage at level 6 and she ended the game as a level 6 Thief, Level 9 mage. Together with Dynaheir this made the game super easy. My other members were Minsc, Jaheria, Garrick and my pure fighter PC. I did play on the "regular" difficulty though.

I don't remember the original BG1 well enough to say, but I played through BG1EE recently (before that last great patch, ironically - had a few quests that didn't go off) and I was kind of irked with the difficulty level selection. The 2nd-lowest level had the "quality of life" improvements that I wanted, where every character got max HP per level and spells scribe with 0% of failure, but enemies also do reduced damage, which I did not want. The next step up gives full damage, but it removes those aforementioned aspects that make 2nd edition so irritating. Some might say "well, change the slider down when you want to scribe a spell/level up", but I think that they prepared for that, because I would still get random hit points at leveling up if I turned down the difficulty slider after getting the little + sign in the character portrait. I guess that the game calculates HP gains before you hit level up, and that screen is just reporting it to you.

Not sure why they couldn't have just made it so that you could set a bunch of individual options for difficulty, but I could say "not sure why" about an awful lot of things in terms of these games.

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