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There's a pseudo interview with Beamdog up on Kotaku that's quite interesting. I know a lot of people don't like the place but it's worth a read if you're looking for information on Dragonspear before buying it.
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Apr 1, 2016 11:54
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Gotta say most of the VA doesn't bother me, whether for the original or the new EE additions, but Entar Silvershield may have the hammiest voice in modern gaming. Good thing he's not a potential party-member!
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Apr 1, 2016 12:03
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Belt sounds like he is being voiced by an actual robot or one of those text to speech programs. Also, surprise, the writing so far as been pretty loving awful, im only at the start of chapter eight but holy poo poo it's bad.
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Apr 1, 2016 12:23
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The Beamdog downloader is currently downloading at speeds I havn't seen since 1995. It's averaging around I would only get it through Steam right now. I've emailed them for a key, but I don't expect a response before I finish downloading the game in...4 days time. Beamdog: When you want to remember the games of 20 years ago, with the download speeds top match!
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Apr 1, 2016 12:23
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Washout posted:Half-Orc Cleric-thief is great because you take two classes that you wish weren't mandatory and then you only use one character slot for both of them. Plus 19 strength with a sling is almost as much damage as two shots with a bow. But again, if you use kits and dual wielding and such the game is going to be stupid easy. psudonym55 posted:Backstabbing with a 19 strength quarterstaff also does a surprising amount of damage. Yup 
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Apr 1, 2016 13:25
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Maybe the patch broke my game in really interesting fashion, but I started to play a BG2 EE save from a few month back yesterday, with the Unfinished Business mod and after I downloaded the newest version of that, everything went smoothly, until i noticed that battles got remarkably easier. I checked my character sheets and found that all my characters have their strength set to 25 and the Invulnerable status effect. I tried to remove the mod altogether, but that didn't help. I google it, but I didn't find anything. Has anybody encountered something like that before? I just entered the Underdark and I really don't want to restart, but as it is, the game is pretty boring. e X fucked around with this message at 13:40 on Apr 1, 2016 |
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Apr 1, 2016 13:35
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Vikar Jerome posted:Belt sounds like he is being voiced by an actual robot or one of those text to speech programs. Baldurs Gate and it's characters aren't masterpieces themselves. Are we talking hammy/"bad" in the way most old RPGs are hammy/bad? ie I didn't really like that Neera/Dorn/Monk Guy had quests in BG1 when nobody else did ( and they also felt over the top in a fairly simplistic game setting. BG1 only gets crazy as you finish it up, most of it is woodland exploration. ), but by the end of BG2 all three felt about on par with the other BG2 characters in terms of everyone being kind of caricatures/poorly written. Or are we talking bad in the sense that it just outright doesn't fit the setting/storyline/characters that BG1/BG2 set up.
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Apr 1, 2016 13:36
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e X posted:Maybe the patch broke my game in really interesting fashion, but I started to play a BG2 EE save from a few month back yesterday, with the Unfinished Business mod and after I downloaded the newest version of that, everything went smoothly, until i noticed that battles got remarkably easier. I checked my character sheets and found that all my characters have their strength set to 25 and the Invulnerable status effect. I tried to remove the mod altogether, but that didn't help. Isn't that the "Story mode" difficulty?
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Apr 1, 2016 13:57
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drat but Insane throws a lot of poo poo at you. I'm in the first real dungeon of the game and Corwin, who just joined and apart from a Sword Spider pack that actually killed me the first time hasn't seen any combat outside this dungeon, has 64 kills. Good thing I don't have an army waiting for me, because I'm resting after every second fight to refill my Webs and Fireballs. Rookersh posted:Baldurs Gate and it's characters aren't masterpieces themselves. The voice acting is abysmal in a lot of places. Sometimes that can be funny, like that super convincing "little girl" voice in Neera's BG2 quest, but generally it's just bad. Don't know why they bothered voicing so many NPCs if that's the quality they could afford (I'm assuming some of these voices are done by devs, some by people paid in hot dogs). Companion voice work is okay to good so far, though. e: The one thing that I'd say is actually bad about the writing are the Irenicus cameos. Dude just showed up in my bedroom and said he was gonna test me to see if I'm worthy, which almost felt like the beginning of a truly wonderful fanfic, but then he just kinda left. This scene took place in the Duchal Palace of Baldur's Gate, by the way, which was at high alert at the time because some assassins just broke in. Then ten minutes later I see a cutscene where he's openly casting spells at the main antagonist in the middle of her army like it's nothing telling her pretty much the same thing. What cunning! e2: Also I can't believe they redid the UI, wrote Glint into the game and the Thieving button is still under Special Abilities for Cleric/Thieves urghhh Wizard Styles fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Apr 1, 2016 |
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Apr 1, 2016 14:13
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Vikar Jerome posted:Belt sounds like he is being voiced by an actual robot or one of those text to speech programs. Have you forgotten how unremittingly terrible most of the BG1 writing is compared to BG2, IWD, or anything Bioware and Black Isle did later? This is the game that gave us Dynaheir, you know. It would have to be truly, remarkably atrocious to stand out (not that I have time to check because I'd rather play ToB and IWD first). e X posted:Maybe the patch broke my game in really interesting fashion, but I started to play a BG2 EE save from a few month back yesterday, with the Unfinished Business mod and after I downloaded the newest version of that, everything went smoothly, until i noticed that battles got remarkably easier. I checked my character sheets and found that all my characters have their strength set to 25 and the Invulnerable status effect. I tried to remove the mod altogether, but that didn't help. This is not the mod's fault. 2.0 will adjust difficulty down if you reload a save you've loaded a couple of times before because it's stupid, thinks you're frustrated, and wants to "help" you. If you were playing on Easy, this means Story Mode. Turn it off, be prepared to do so again (and again, and again). This is the worst thing they did for 2.0 and I hope they get rid of it. When you load a save, watch the character portraits for the invulnerable icon. If it appears, the game auto-enabled Story Mode and you'll have to turn it off. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Apr 1, 2016 |
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Apr 1, 2016 16:01
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I'm real mad that apparently Kagain is not a recruit-able NPC for Siege of Dragonspear, and he's run off with my Gauntlets of Dexterity which I REALLY could use on some other characters!!! I guess this happens with every character but at least all the rest of my party seem to be recruitable again. This seems a really stupid way of handling the transition given A: it encourages taking off some of the strongest items on non-SoD party-members before Sarevok so you get those items at the start of SoD, and B: they have a perfectly elegant solution already in the player stash into which the game will dump the inventories of those characters anyway, just not anything they have equipped. Oh well.
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Apr 1, 2016 16:33
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Insurrectionist posted:I'm real mad that apparently Kagain is not a recruit-able NPC for Siege of Dragonspear, and he's run off with my Gauntlets of Dexterity which I REALLY could use on some other characters!!! I guess this happens with every character but at least all the rest of my party seem to be recruitable again. This seems a really stupid way of handling the transition given A: it encourages taking off some of the strongest items on non-SoD party-members before Sarevok so you get those items at the start of SoD, and B: they have a perfectly elegant solution already in the player stash into which the game will dump the inventories of those characters anyway, just not anything they have equipped. Oh well. Kagain becomes an absolute monster with those gloves, perhaps its best for the realms that he keeps them.
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Apr 1, 2016 16:34
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Wizard Styles posted:Irenicus cameos. You don't need to spoiler this, it's been mentioned tonnes in the thread. I think it's totally stupid to have him in it since when you see him in the dungeon you have absolutely no idea who he is. Hell making the DLC is dumb story wise anyway, but that seems extra dumb.
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Apr 1, 2016 16:36
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mitochondritom posted:Kagain becomes an absolute monster with those gloves, perhaps its best for the realms that he keeps them. That is true, but now I'm running around with a 15 base Dex Archer and it's not right! E: For some reason Corwin has -4 Missile Adjustment, anyone know what causes this? She's only level 8 so according to the Archer description she should only have -2 from that class, or I guess -3 depending on when you get your first bonus. But definitely not 4. E2: Oh duh, I forgot I already gave her the bracers of archery Imoen was using. Solved then. Insurrectionist fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Apr 1, 2016 |
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Apr 1, 2016 16:37
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Woolie Wool posted:Have you forgotten how unremittingly terrible most of the BG1 writing is compared to BG2, IWD, or anything Bioware and Black Isle did later? This is the game that gave us Dynaheir, you know. It would have to be truly, remarkably atrocious to stand out (not that I have time to check because I'd rather play ToB and IWD first). What's particularly egregious about Dynaheir's writing? The formality of it? TBH Baldur's Gate doesn't really have enough party banter to even justify complaining about the quality.
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Apr 1, 2016 16:43
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So having beaten Baldur's Gate back in the day but never having gotten around to finishing Baldur's gate II, I decided to use the Black Pits to level up a new Bhalspawn and start at the beginning of BG2. I'd planned from the beginning to try an Elf Archer as my Spawn, and built a reasonably balanced party around her. Get to the final fight with Baeloth, and it doesn't go real well. People are dying left and right, and Garaq (Who, for the first time, I realized is named after Garak from DS9. Dangerous tailor indeed!) in particular is taking people apart aside from my Mage who died first round from a fireball. Shoulda had Lesser Globe of Invulnerability up on her. Didn't.  End of the fight two of my people left standing versus Garaq, and my Dwarf barbarian goes down...followed immediately by my Archer critting and killing the Rakshasa and becoming last woman standing. So I guess that's why none of the rest of the arena team shows up from BG2 on!  Honestly, I couldn't have gotten a better ending to the Pits if I'd tried.
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Apr 1, 2016 17:05
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Baulder's Gate novel update: It is very very bad. Maybe the worst novel I have ever read, it makes the Mack Boland series look like serious lit. I have been reading it at night before bed and it is so bad it is ruining my dreams. So so bad.
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Apr 1, 2016 17:26
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Didn't the author say that he hated writing adaptations and that he wrote most of the novel on the toilet?
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Apr 1, 2016 17:30
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rakovsky maybe posted:What's particularly egregious about Dynaheir's writing? The formality of it? TBH Baldur's Gate doesn't really have enough party banter to even justify complaining about the quality. They couldn't get the Shakespearean English correct and kept confusing "thou", "thee", and "thy". Also I've cleared two levels of Kesserack's Tomb in IWD and holy poo poo is this game brutal, even with kits.
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Apr 1, 2016 17:45
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Woolie Wool posted:They couldn't get the Shakespearean English correct and kept confusing "thou", "thee", and "thy". Also yes, IWD is good, and hard.
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Apr 1, 2016 17:53
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The tomb is one of IWD's harder parts, especially if you end up rushing forward and pulling all the enemies.Insurrectionist posted:I'm real mad that apparently Kagain is not a recruit-able NPC for Siege of Dragonspear, and he's run off with my Gauntlets of Dexterity which I REALLY could use on some other characters!!! I guess this happens with every character but at least all the rest of my party seem to be recruitable again. This seems a really stupid way of handling the transition given A: it encourages taking off some of the strongest items on non-SoD party-members before Sarevok so you get those items at the start of SoD, and B: they have a perfectly elegant solution already in the player stash into which the game will dump the inventories of those characters anyway, just not anything they have equipped. Oh well. I've got Corwin at 19 Dex thanks to the gauntlets and her personal bow, she's incredible. I'm not sure the extra Dexterity even does anything for her, she never misses anyway. I also had half a stack of Arrows of Detonation left over from the Sarevok fight, my Charname is an Invoker and I picked up Dynaheir. Everything explodes. I think Neera should show up soon, then my party can explode, too.  Taear posted:You don't need to spoiler this, it's been mentioned tonnes in the thread.
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Apr 1, 2016 17:55
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No, people are not stupid and are perfectly capable of understanding grammar, it's just that the writer didn't bother to look anything up, much like the the bizarre Olde English phrases and words in the player's dialogue options that come and go and were thankfully entirely removed for BG2.
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Apr 1, 2016 17:56
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Something pretty weird just happened. Killed some enemies at the entrance to the cloakwood mines and several of my party members leveled up Xzar wasn't one of them but he suddenly had several spells he didn't know previously added to his spell list.
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Apr 1, 2016 17:58
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Woolie Wool posted:No, people are not stupid and are perfectly capable of understanding grammar, it's just that the writer didn't bother to look anything up, much like the the bizarre Olde English phrases and words in the player's dialogue options that come and go and were thankfully entirely removed for BG2.
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Apr 1, 2016 18:00
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Forsooth, methinks you are no ordinary talking chicken!
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Apr 1, 2016 18:01
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Also, I love how you can't walk five steps without the game dropping another stack of magical arrows in your lap in SoD. They really want you to use Corwin, and I don't mind at all. The game also gave me 3 good items specifically for Bards already, and I know there's a Skald companion coming up, but I won't be suckered into that. 
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Apr 1, 2016 18:02
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Some day I'll do a charname's merry men run of the game. Bard PC, Garrick, new Skald, Safana, Skie, Eldoth will definitely be a great party and not at all lack brawn! Plus I'd get to hear the Garrick/Skie/Eldoth banter spoken of in legends. Surely nobody has ever actually experienced it in a regular playthrough.
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Apr 1, 2016 18:12
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Characters items end up in a chest next to your bed after the tomb intro. I didnt check if everything was there though. Also what i mean by bad writing is, something feels off about it. sure i havent played vanilla bg1 since 1998, i never run a game without bg1npc but still. SoD feels very fanfictiony. I'm probably remembering bg1 wrong or maybe my tastes have changed but from what i've seen so far the actual written word reads off. I don't believe i'm same pc or these are the same characters i was just in bg1 with. Also limited talk options so far and poo poo feels linear as all hell already. Oh and they're doing that annoying prequel thing where they go overboard with the loving wink wink wink GEE I WONDER WHY SERAVOKS SWORD WAS TAKEN TO A CERTAIN PART OF ATHKALTA WITH THE BLOOD STILL ON IT GEE, like its not even a loving wink, its hitting you over the head with this poo poo and over explaining the loving thing. I did just read Ready Player One though so maybe i'm still having PTSD over that loving pandering shitheap. Really tho, they should not have had all this bg2 poo poo in, just one big adventure around dragonspear that was not part of the bhaalspawn plot, make the world feel bigger (not hard with FR) then just end it with the capture, loving simple. Vikar Jerome fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Apr 1, 2016 |
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Apr 1, 2016 18:32
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Vikar Jerome posted:Characters items end up in a chest next to your bed after the tomb intro. I didnt check if everything was there though. Anything that's equipped by a character isn't in the chest it seems. At least Edwin kept all his stuff until I met him again, and the memorable items Dorn and Kagain were carrying (+3 Twohanded sword, the mentioned Dex gloves, etc) weren't there either.
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Apr 1, 2016 18:45
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Vikar Jerome posted:Characters items end up in a chest next to your bed after the tomb intro. I didnt check if everything was there though. It feels like the new dialogue has you replying with super long weird quips a lot of the time. That VERY rarely happens in BG and it feels out of place.
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Apr 1, 2016 19:48
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Taear posted:It feels like the new dialogue has you replying with super long weird quips a lot of the time. That VERY rarely happens in BG and it feels out of place. While I agree with EE having more quips, and arguably worse ones, I disagree with your second statement. Replayed BG1 over the course of the past week and saw a fair few smart-rear end options from the original game even having no bothered talking with Portalbendarwinden and co.
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Apr 1, 2016 19:51
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I finished the Tomb of Kesserack and killed Lysan. That was harder than any dungeon in BG1 or Shadows of Amn, except maybe if you go into Nashkel at level 1 (don't go into the Nashkel mines at level 1). I had to cheese the fight at the start of the third floor by racing back up the stairs to draw a few skeletons with me, killing them at the doorway, and then repeating until the room below was clear. And then I cheesed the fight leading to Kesserack by pulling the knights away from the mage.
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Apr 1, 2016 19:57
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Woolie Wool posted:I finished the Tomb of Kesserack and killed Lysan. That was harder than any dungeon in BG1 or Shadows of Amn, except maybe if you go into Nashkel at level 1 (don't go into the Nashkel mines at level 1). I had to cheese the fight at the start of the third floor by racing back up the stairs to draw a few skeletons with me, killing them at the doorway, and then repeating until the room below was clear. And then I cheesed the fight leading to Kesserack by pulling the knights away from the mage. Icewind Dale is a lot harder than BG for sure, but I think the fights are much more interesting than BG2's Mage spam. I hate the bit in the Vale of Shadows where you first encounter wights immune to normal weapons. Some parts of the "Trials of Luremaster" are brutal, I don't think I ever finished that part of the game.
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Apr 1, 2016 20:04
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I remember having a hell of a time my first playthrough of IWD way back when. Especially Dragon's Eye.
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Apr 1, 2016 20:16
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The funny thing about IWD was that I always found playthroughs on a higher difficulty to be easier than on an easier difficulty because you got more experience on harder difficulty's and got out of the whole level 1 thing far faster.
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Apr 1, 2016 20:26
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I'm liking the expansion. Theres been quite a few battles with huge amounts of enemies to fireball which is always fun. They did some cool reactive stuff with some quests too: in one quest someone wanted me to go find an ingredient for a potion but I'm a mage so I used my arcane skills to make do without it. Another quest needed someone to sing which I can't do but there was an option to have a companion do it who wasn't a bard but she had high enough Charisma to make the check. Plus Minsc is back and Jim Cummings came back and loving nailed it so I'm just having a good time with my old pal and Boo having dumb monkey cheese adventures.
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Apr 1, 2016 21:13
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Huh, did they actually make a new sprite for a boss? I just fought a Neothelid, and I have no idea what the gently caress that thing was. Really glad to have had ~10 Magic Missiles to blow on the Swords it kept summoning, though. Oh, and Corwin got Grand Mastery out of that fight, so  e: Insurrectionist posted:Plus I'd get to hear the Garrick/Skie/Eldoth banter spoken of in legends. Surely nobody has ever actually experienced it in a regular playthrough. e2: Corwin has 21 Dex now. Wizard Styles fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Apr 1, 2016 |
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Apr 1, 2016 21:21
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did anyone else continue from a bg1 save beat sarevok and then start sod? i think i have a bug but i'm not sure, i'm in chapter eight but the journal is stuck on chapter 7.
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Apr 1, 2016 21:46
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Yeah it did the same thing to me until I left the city.
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Apr 1, 2016 22:10
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Isn't that the "Story mode" difficulty? Woolie Wool posted:This is not the mod's fault. 2.0 will adjust difficulty down if you reload a save you've loaded a couple of times before because it's stupid, thinks you're frustrated, and wants to "help" you. If you were playing on Easy, this means Story Mode. Turn it off, be prepared to do so again (and again, and again). This is the worst thing they did for 2.0 and I hope they get rid of it. That was indeed it, thanks. I hadn't touched the save in over 7 month, so I wasn't sure at first if it wasn't just the lingering effect of some buff. Turned it off and immediately got slaughtered by a bunch of beholders. And that it turns itself on is extremely annoying. If people really want to experience an almost two decade old game without the hassle of going through the fights, sure, but at least let me suck at it without being patronizing about it.
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Apr 1, 2016 22:17
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