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Radio Talmudist posted:If I want to play all the party NPC quests, can I just go around picking up NPCs, doing their various quests, and then drop them off? Do I have to do all that stuff before chapter 2 ends? Technically chapters 2, 3 and 6 contend for the "longest" title, since you can do all of the sidequests in them, but since you have to do main quests in #3 I'd say it's the longest 
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Jun 9, 2014 20:18
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jneer posted:The main thing to keep in mind as far as NPCs go in BG2 is that spellcasters are extremely strong. Mages in BG1 and IWD never come close to the kind of apocalyptic poo poo they can do in BG2. Don't stack your group with too many physical damage-dealers. (Personally I generally prefer to have one mage on buffing detail and just melee everything to death instead of relying on spells.)
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Jun 9, 2014 20:25
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Yeah but after two Inquisitors you have four slots to play with. If you take more than two melee, the fighters start getting in each other's way. Ranged physical damage drops off in terms of relevance pretty quickly. Personal preference is an absolute minimum of 1.5 divine casters and 1.5 arcane. NPCs like Jan, Anomen, Jaheira and Aerie take care of the 0.5 pretty nicely.
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Jun 9, 2014 22:15
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jneer posted:The main thing to keep in mind as far as NPCs go in BG2 is that spellcasters are extremely strong. Mages in BG1 and IWD never come close to the kind of apocalyptic poo poo they can do in BG2. Don't stack your group with too many physical damage-dealers. Related to this, is there a good way to prevent my party from the held spell in BG2? It's by far the most annoying thing I've encountered in the game so far. I can't even quaff potions as monsters steadily pound away at me.
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Jun 9, 2014 22:52
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The free action spell and potions of freedom work, but they're not really easy and convenient protection. There are items that grant limited or full free action and all of them will protect against being held. You can also use Keldorn who is immune to hold thanks to his kit, and he can always use his dispel to free held party members.
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Jun 9, 2014 23:08
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Note that freedom of movement measures tend to negate haste spells as well, which are far and away the most useful spells through most of BG2, save for maybe Breach, which is mandatory. The thing with IE games is that that the fights are often puzzles (this tendency is greatly exacerbated by difficulty mods), and spell combos are the keys. As a general rule you should not get too frustrated if you die the first time you walk into a fight. With harder ones you're pretty much supposed to. Pre-fight spell buffing is the great equalizer. Move just outside the fight range, buff, go at it. Clerics / druids have a number of saving throw buffs, use them until hold spells stop working. Or you could do it the easy way, which brings me to the next thing: If it's your first time in BG2, go with Yoshimo and Jaheira. The former has your thieving covered (provided you burnish his lockpicking skills a bit over time) and is good with a bow, the latter has you more or less entirely covered in the cleric role (minus some nicer buffs and restoration, which you need) and is far and away the best tank in BG2 once you're able to cast 2 5th-level spells. Fill one slot with Iron Skins, which gives her an edge in melee (preferably paired with a strength-enhancing item or spell) and fill the other with insect swarm, which will completely obliterate any spellcaster who doesn't have innate magic resistance or high-level spell protections (and cause most of their buds to panic, as well). There's no save and spellcasting is completely impossible when you're hit with it.
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Jun 10, 2014 05:37
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jneer posted:Yeah but after two Inquisitors you have four slots to play with. If you take more than two melee, the fighters start getting in each other's way. Ranged physical damage drops off in terms of relevance pretty quickly. Personal preference is an absolute minimum of 1.5 divine casters and 1.5 arcane. NPCs like Jan, Anomen, Jaheira and Aerie take care of the 0.5 pretty nicely. I agree heartily with your party composition approach, but I would argue that Anomen is 1 and not .5 - his personality/character aside. Keep in mind that he's a dual-class human, the only such NPC in the game, and when you get him he has all of his cleric abilities and advances only as a cleric from then on at the normal exp rate. To me, he's a cleric who's a bit better at melee, unlike the other characters who advance more slowly due to being multiclass and have to wear several hats. Other than maybe getting 3/2 APR, Anomen doesn't really benefit much from his fighter levels because clerics can wear the best armours regardless and he's still stuck with the obnoxious cleric weapon restrictions. He never gets fighter HLAs, either. Don't get me wrong - I like Anomen and he's a better brawler than Viconia, surely, but I don't think that he benefits too much from his class combination.
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Jun 10, 2014 18:21
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Nalia and Imoen are also both dual classed characters.
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Jun 10, 2014 18:24
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jneer posted:Yeah but after two Inquisitors you have four slots to play with. If you take more than two melee, the fighters start getting in each other's way. Ranged physical damage drops off in terms of relevance pretty quickly. Personal preference is an absolute minimum of 1.5 divine casters and 1.5 arcane. NPCs like Jan, Anomen, Jaheira and Aerie take care of the 0.5 pretty nicely. So out of these 4 slots you could have a mage (who hopefully won't melee), a cleric (who might if necessary), a thief (who again might if necessary) and another slot that could include another melee character. So with this setup you have 3 dedicated melee types. (Maybe 4 if you use Anomen or Jaheira and buff them properly.) JustJeff88 posted:Don't get me wrong - I like Anomen and he's a better brawler than Viconia, surely, but I don't think that he benefits too much from his class combination. Factor_VIII fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 18:43
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Before I go to the trouble of trying to get it to work, does anyone in the thread have experience with running IWD2 through GemRB for Android?
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Jun 10, 2014 21:45
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How am I supposed to know in BG2 that I have to use acid or fire to kill a troll on the ground? There's no monster info sheet or anything. I just had to look it up.
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Jun 12, 2014 00:38
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In De'Arnise Keep at least, where a bunch of them show up, some NPCs will explicitly tell you to take out trolls that way and even hand you arrows for that purpose. Not sure if they telegraph that info in the other games.
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Jun 12, 2014 00:44
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moot the hopple posted:In De'Arnise Keep at least, where a bunch of them show up, some NPCs will explicitly tell you to take out trolls that way and even hand you arrows for that purpose. Not sure if they telegraph that info in the other games. They do mention it several times at the Keep, but if your first encounter with trolls is on the slaver ship(which it probably will be), you might not be able to figure out what to do.
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Jun 12, 2014 00:47
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Selane posted:They do mention it several times at the Keep, but if your first encounter with trolls is on the slaver ship(which it probably will be), you might not be able to figure out what to do. Yes that is what happened.
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Jun 12, 2014 00:48
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The loading screen, that thing that appears for only a split second on a modern computer, will randomly inform you about how to finish trolls off. It's a 15 year old RPG. Back then they didn't tell you much. Absolutely nothing tells you about how liches and raksashas are immune to spell levels 1 through 5 either, which is in my opinion a far worse omission.
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Jun 12, 2014 00:49
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KingKapalone posted:How am I supposed to know in BG2 that I have to use acid or fire to kill a troll on the ground? There's no monster info sheet or anything. I just had to look it up. Suspicious posted:The loading screen, that thing that appears for only a split second on a modern computer, will randomly inform you about how to finish trolls off.
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Jun 12, 2014 00:53
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Suspicious posted:The loading screen, that thing that appears for only a split second on a modern computer, will randomly inform you about how to finish trolls off.
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Jun 12, 2014 00:59
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The best thing about trolls in BG2 is that if your hurting them too fast they won't die. I had to load an earlier save before De'Arnise keep because I wasted all my arrows on a single troll.
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Jun 12, 2014 01:00
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Roobanguy posted:The best thing about trolls in BG2 is that if your hurting them too fast they won't die. I had to load an earlier save before De'Arnise keep because I wasted all my arrows on a single troll. You don't need to reload to fix that bug. Turn off party AI by clicking the lantern, group select everyone (= key) and order them to stop (the X button). The troll should promptly fall down. Sometimes it won't and will keep attacking a nearby party member instead, in which case just move everyone away from it and it will fall down after a second or two.
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Jun 12, 2014 01:05
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Roobanguy posted:The best thing about trolls in BG2 is that if your hurting them too fast they won't die. I had to load an earlier save before De'Arnise keep because I wasted all my arrows on a single troll. It's not that you're killing them too fast, it's a bug where hits will interrupt the script that makes the troll fall over and landing hits fast enough can basically keep the troll alive forever. The fix is to just stop attacking it for a few seconds and back melee away.
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Jun 12, 2014 01:11
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Suspicious posted:You don't need to reload to fix that bug. Turn off party AI by clicking the lantern, group select everyone (= key) and order them to stop (the X button). The troll should promptly fall down. Sometimes it won't and will keep attacking a nearby party member instead, in which case just move everyone away from it and it will fall down after a second or two. You misunderstand, I reloaded because I ran out of all my fire/acid arrows and I was probably like 10 at the time and didn't realize wizard superiority was a thing so I didn't have any in my party.
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Jun 12, 2014 01:19
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Withdrawal Plans posted:Well I was trying to make a character who could primarily use ranged attacks (bows) and also be able to cast some area effect spells early. Am I trying to do too much/spreading myself too thin? Quoting myself from last page. I took everyones advice and started a new BG 1 (vanilla) game and my fighter/Mage has 18 DEX and 18 INT and I think 14 CON with a point added to bows and one to long swords. Man the last time I played this game was over 10 years ago and I forgot how rough it is early on. And also about the armor restriction for spell casters. And how sleep does not heal unless in an inn. And how much easier quicksave/quickload make things. And how much time you spend doing inventory management. I've been playing nothing but Fallout New Vegas over the past few years so its an adjustment. I've just moved on from Nashkel on the way to the mines and had the Noober encounter. Should I ditch Xzar and Montaron at Nashkel and pick up Minsc and Edwin or wait to ditch them after I get through the mines and Gnoll Fortress? I remember they get pissed and leave after a while. The goal is that I have Minsc as a permanent party member but if I recall he won't stay if Dynaheir is not added to the party. Also isn't Edwin incompatible with certain party members?
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Jun 12, 2014 02:48
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The classic out w/r/t any paired CNPCs are to kill the one you don't want and then kick them out of the party. Pretty much the only credit I can give to the BGTutu party dialogue mod is that Jaheira would call you on that halfway through the game if you ditched her lame husband's corpse. These days I just use the tweakpack to make him a fighter/mage and he's a decent ranged combatant.
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Jun 12, 2014 05:35
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If for some bizarre reason you want to have access to those dead people later after you boot them, you can just Petrify them instead and go back to Stone to Flesh the statue whenever you feel like it.
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Jun 12, 2014 09:37
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What's the cheesiest, most game-breakingly crazy thing you've done in an infinity ward game? In BG2, which I'm playing for the first time, I just used Sanctuary to steal all the amazing gear nestled inside the hidden treasure room in De'Arnise Keep....past the watchful gaze for 7 massive golems that activate upon the items being taken. I got this idea from a very helpful BG2 walkthrough.
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Jun 12, 2014 15:45
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Not Infinity Ward. And you'll find that gear to be pretty boring fairly shortly, and using Sanctuary as it's meant to be used isn't exactly game-breaking, cheese or crazy. I dunno, probably infinite T/M backstabs off Project Image or however that goes?
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Jun 12, 2014 17:37
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Radio Talmudist posted:What's the cheesiest, most game-breakingly crazy thing you've done in an infinity ward game? A sick 360 no scope across the map.
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Jun 12, 2014 18:52
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Casting improved alacrity, improved chaos shield, time stop, then chain gunning dragon's breaths via nahal's reckless dweomer. Goooooood luck enemies.
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Jun 12, 2014 19:31
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Stuff that's not supposed to be happening can be pretty fun. Like on an uncapped FMT with access to most HLA's, use IA to get GWW, Assassination and Critical Strike all active at the same time for 10 autocrit backstabs in a round. Or if you want stuff you can do in the base game...I cast Mislead one time, that was pretty broken.
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Jun 12, 2014 20:49
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Every time I prepare to move onto chapter 3, I find another sidequest to do. I'm not complaining....I just can't believe how much stuff there is. I kind of hope it keeps up like this....though I would like to beat the game some day!
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Jun 12, 2014 23:01
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Radio Talmudist posted:Every time I prepare to move onto chapter 3, I find another sidequest to do. I'm not complaining....I just can't believe how much stuff there is. I kind of hope it keeps up like this....though I would like to beat the game some day! You can do almost all the sidequests in the game in Chapter 2 if you want, though it makes you out to be the worst step-sibling ever by just leaving Imoen to rot.
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Jun 13, 2014 06:09
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Mislead is crazy loving broken. It is pretty much just cheating. If you cast it before you know enemies are coming up they will all just stand there doing nothing as you kill them with melee or cast spells over and over. Doesn't work on dragons though or some other random enemies including torgal the troll at the keep.m
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Jun 13, 2014 06:15
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Any recommendations on how I should first build my BG2 party? I had myself, Minsc, Jaheira, Korgan, Nalia, and the EE person Hexxat. I did the slave thing in Coronet, the slave boat, and the spider lady dungeon in the graveyard, but now Nalia just ran back to her castle so I have no mage. Hexxat is worthless so I came to the graveyard to find her tomb before getting rid of her and Korgan says his quest is here too. Need that mage though.
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Jun 13, 2014 07:29
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All the mages in BG2 are powerful, but Nalia is the least among them. Aerie is a powerhouse and a great cleric as well but her innocent Lawful Goodness chafes a lot of people (also iirc the EE-implemented spell level caps by intelligence score might hurt her as a mage). Jan is a joke character but is a decent mage in addition to ably covering thieving duties. If you've dropped Hexxat I would say just get Jan and then Keldorn.
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Jun 13, 2014 08:41
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Cast Simulacrum, petrify it, cure it, and you have a fully-functioning cloned party member.
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Jun 13, 2014 08:45
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Casting Restoration works, too.
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Jun 13, 2014 08:59
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Basic Chunnel posted:(also iirc the EE-implemented spell level caps by intelligence score might hurt her as a mage) The only thing EE did is fix the level 9 spell bug where intelligence was not checked and copying was always successful. Potions of genius/mind focusing will still allow a low intelligence mage to copy anything and intelligence is still not a factor when casting spells.
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Jun 13, 2014 10:03
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Tee hee, my party going into the fight with Korgan's friends in the Slums ended up with some combination of me (a Thief), Hexxat, an Aerie who couldn't cast magic without pissing off the Cowled Wizards and Korgan. So I hid the two thieves up above, triggered the enemy dialogue with Korgan, then backstabbed everyone to death while they were piling off to get him. That kind of made me reconsider never bothering to roll with two Thieves (although I guess I could accomplish the same thing by grabbing Valygar).
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Jun 13, 2014 10:20
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ANIME MONSTROSITY posted:Cast Simulacrum, petrify it, cure it, and you have a fully-functioning cloned party member. Ooooh! how long does this clone last?
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Jun 13, 2014 10:34
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DeathChicken posted:Tee hee, my party going into the fight with Korgan's friends in the Slums ended up with some combination of me (a Thief), Hexxat, an Aerie who couldn't cast magic without pissing off the Cowled Wizards and Korgan. So I hid the two thieves up above, triggered the enemy dialogue with Korgan, then backstabbed everyone to death while they were piling off to get him. That kind of made me reconsider never bothering to roll with two Thieves (although I guess I could accomplish the same thing by grabbing Valygar). Opening with two or even three backstabs even feels like cheating sometimes, especially when its a big Lich fight and you kill it before any protections go off. The only challenge is to position them right.
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Jun 13, 2014 10:51
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