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I was hoping to see this ever since I saw the Betrayal at Antara LP (the demo for which was included with Birthright). I only have some fuzzy-at-best memories for most of it*, but what I do recall is that the game is easily breakable in a number of easy and entertaining ways. I will make a note, though, for people who aren't familiar with 2nd ed.: Kill XP is minuscule, the XP you get for certain Regent actions is likewise pretty minor, and I'm pretty sure quest XP doesn't exist in this game. In other words, the levels you see are the levels you get; if your dudes aren't good enough for a particular dungeon, you can't do other dungeons to get their levels up, you have hire someone who's already there to do the job for you. That said, I do recall there being some very good recruits available, so don't sweat your regent's levels too much. *I could have sworn picking Boeruine most of the time, but going by the regent options I think I must have been taking Talinie and using them as a convenient punching bag.
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May 16, 2022 01:28
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You know, I knew it was technically possible to level up, but I don't think I've ever actually seen it. Probably something to do with using the high level caster squad and their 9th level Fighter meatwall. Speaking of which, I recall that 9th level Fighter there being the best of the recruitable heaps of HP and negative AC; probably safe to pick him up even if you refrain from broken stuff this run, because what's a 2nd Ed. Fighter going to do?
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May 17, 2022 02:30
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PurpleXVI posted:ahahahahahahahahah Late, but I meant Fighters as they are here; baseline, without any of the advanced stuff/splatbooks to give them options beyond being extremely durable beatsticks. I mean, they're good at it, but Birthright doesn't feature Gorgon Suplexing, and a dude who's really good at soaking damage is ultimately less broken in context than, say, a level 16 Wizard doing level 16 Wizard things. Also, at the levels we're generally dealing with here, spells with Saving Throws aren't completely useless yet. Just mostly useless. (Until you find good Rings of Protection)
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May 18, 2022 02:52
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Major fights in Baldur's Gate 2 usually boiled down to the Fighters(and other melee) pummeling mooks while the casters slowly stripped the fifty layers of defensive spells the boss had rolling thanks to multiple Contingency spells firing off at the start of combat so the Fighters could then thump them too, and that's before you took mods like Ascension and Tactics into account. Don't forget to pack Glitterdust and Ruby Ray of Reversal. It was nice that you had access to all of the same spells, but man, I just did not have the patience needed to recast all of that stuff constantly. Edit: Also glad they didn't bother with material components. Having to cart around huge piles of gemstones to cast all of that stuff would have been horrible. Unoriginal One fucked around with this message at 15:50 on May 18, 2022 |
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May 18, 2022 15:45
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Felinoid posted:Not quite on that last point. Bards can build a stronghold at 9th just like fighters, but receive only 10d6 0-level soldiers for it. Mages get nothing, but are kind of expected to build a laboratory; their army is in magic items and spell research, and as usual all of it costs big money rather than being given. And druids...hoo boy that's a whole thing. Doesn't kick in until 12th, and you have to literally fight your way up the hierarchy just to earn the levels, nevermind the perks, but you become part of the ruling caste of druids (complete with a domain to watch over and levelled druid assistants, similar to a thief's hangers-on but improving with each step) and eventually the leader of the whole world's naturists at level 15. ...Then you give it all up to continue advancing as a "hierophant" druid, solitary once again. Bloody weird. Don't forget the completely bonkers XP requirements for that stretch. ... and now that I'm looking at the tables, man, it's weirder than I thought. Starts out needing Fighter XP amounts to level, then goes to needing less than Thief, before ballooning to levels even Wizards and Paladins would wince at, before dropping off a cliff and being sub-Thief again. Evil Fluffy posted:So a question on the game itself while we wait for the next update ( A Fighter starts out needing 2000 XP to level, which roughly doubles each level after 3. Starting at 9, this levels out and all future levels require a flat 250k XP. Other classes mostly follow this, though with different bases; Thief need to least to start with by needing only 1250, and Wizards start with the highest base of 2500(though they're like Druids in that they buck the trend, and their XP requirements scale more slowly than other classes for several levels, before jumping back up to needing the most again). I don't recall the precise XP rewards for Realm actions, but if you want an idea of what mob XP is like, 1 HD things like goblins are worth 15 a pop. A 10 HD Ettin is worth 3000. I could go further, but I don't recall the mobs in this game scaling much past that, and most are going to be in that 1-10 HD range. I... want to say that the XP is also divided up between all active party members, but it's been too long. Suffice it to say, you're not getting all that far off of mob XP alone. Unoriginal One fucked around with this message at 06:10 on May 22, 2022 |
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May 22, 2022 05:58
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PurpleXVI posted:The next update is about half written, but going cold turkey on caffeine and soda has had some interesting effects on my sleep patterns so the usual writing rhythm got somewhat upset. Well that has me scratching my head, as I don't think I'd ever seen anyone level up, even if I used them for each and every single dungeon crawl available in the game.. Regent-only quest XP, maybe? But to be fair, it's been a long, long time, so I may well have forgotten an XP source or two. Also, to be fair to those world-class adventurers, they're doing it for a lot of money; and I imagine it's a cushier, more reliable job than wandering murder hobo.
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May 22, 2022 21:35
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Randalor posted:But... Rogr and Allina leveled up in the first actual update? I meant with my own experiences with the game, way back when. Kid me generally just grabbed the highest level characters available to throw at problems. Also don't think I had any of the patches that were mentions, those might have helped. Goodness knows wonky XP would hardly be the worst bug in 90s AD&D games I ran into back then. PurpleXVI posted:As far as I can tell there is no limit to Ioun Stones per character, not even in the base 2e AD&D DMG under the entry for Ioun Stones. I imagine that, at some point, you either have so many it's hard to see through the increasingly massive cloud, or you have to constantly stop and pick a bunch of them up off the ground because they keep unavoidably bumping into things. Update notes: Pretty sure provinces being Blessed can occur as a random event. Also vaguely recall that random events only occur on certain provinces, though I'm not wholly sure of that. Outnumbering your enemy four to one in total numbers is supposed to trigger an auto-rout. Whether or not it actually triggers is a bit... finicky. If you're trying to trigger this to do... certain things, I find it best to not rely on rely on the given numbers and just keep heaping in troops until it goes off.
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May 23, 2022 04:14
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Felinoid posted:That is going to be at least partially the issue. Higher level characters require significantly more XP to level up. For the first several levels it basically doubles each level on most classes. The amount of XP it takes to get a wizard/thief/bard just from level 11 to level 12 (or 12 to 13, or 13 to 14, etc.) is the same as how much you have to earn to get to level 11 from level 1. The same can be said for warriors and clerics, though they hit that point earlier (9-10 = 1-9). Take a high-level character on an adventure meant for low-level parties, and the XP they're getting will be orders of magnitude down from what they need to level. I'm well aware of that, I'm just saying that when one player never sees level ups and another has their Wizard regent go from five to ten in a few turns and a handful of mass combats, there's something going on. Getting any actual info on the game's XP rewards is something of a pain, but during a brief look I did see mention of one of the patches fixing some XP sources, so I'm assuming it has something to do with that. Also wouldn't be especially surprised if there's bonuses for repeatedly walloping that Spider fellow.
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May 23, 2022 18:18
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JustJeff88 posted:Were I foolish enough to play this, what would be a good, easy starting faction/position? Part of me wants to play a high-level mage for the obvious shenanigans, but perhaps I should start of with a faction that's peaceful and relatively far from the main antagonists. Some things to look for regardless of nation: I've mentioned it before, but that level 9 Fighter hireling is pretty much the best you're going to get; comes with some variety of plate armor, and at 9 he's gotten all of his full HP levels*. Not much can compete with him wall-of-meat-wise. As was mentioned in a previous update, there are independent factions you can conduct diplomacy with, and if you make them your Vassal you get both the character and all of their holdings, including what you traded to them in exchange for making them your Vassal. There are some very strong recruitment options you can pick up very, very cheaply. Always do dungeons, even if they're low level; there are some Artifacts in low level dungeons that are extremely disproportionately powerful compared to the effort it takes to get them. One in particular makes that passed-up coffer's bonus look like pocket change. *Well, I'm a bit rusty on whether it's 9 or 10, but past a certain level characters no longer get 1d(x)+(CON bonus) for HP, and just a small flat amount based on class. Fighters get 3.
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May 26, 2022 02:08
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One of the reasons I'm a fan of mister lvl 9 Fighter hireling is because he's fortunate enough to have some shade of plate armor. For the most part though, melee types are just there to sit out front and eat hits so your casters can do their thing. Also, I'm not sure if it's Turn Undead or another spell I'm thinking of, but you might want to just toss out it out on the battlefield even when not fighting undead. I recall the game being janky enough that some spells which really should not have lit a large bunch of random armored dudes on fire lit a large bunch of random armored dudes on fire.
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Jun 1, 2022 03:36
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Evil Fluffy posted:Or go with the 2.5D games and play something like Stone Prophet. This and Wake of the Ravager drove me up the wall back in the day thanks to late-game run ending bugs; Ravager to some screen transition stuffing the party under the run of some merchant on an otherwise unconnected map, Prophet for unavoidably blackscreening when trying to play a certain cutscene. PurpleXVI posted:U4 through 7 have already been done better by Nakar than I could ever hope to, and God no, I will not touch U8 or U9 with a ten-foot pole. U9 has in any case been tackled by better folks several times, and U8... unsurprisingly every attempt has imploded in some way. Unsurprising, best as I can recall 80% of the game is largely aimlessly wandering underground until you randomly chance into hitting something plot important, be it a new location or a plot critical macguffin.
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Jun 9, 2022 20:43
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I never bothered trying to fight the Gorgon, as he still has his Flesh to Stone gaze(or an approximation of one), and while the game has Resurrection, it doesn't have Stone to Flesh. If someone blows their saving throw, that's it, load your last save and lose however long you just spent wandering around the dungeon. Given that if you're careful you can generally scoop out most/all of the loot he's sitting on, it's easier to just skip the fight.
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Jun 12, 2022 23:43
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Chronische posted:Did you seriously just slay the GORGON? He's all but impossible to beat even with a team of very high level warriors, being level 25+ and dual-classed as a mage level 20 or so as well as being a True bloodline Awnshegh of insane power, stats, and with basically any magic item he drat well wants on the continent! Man they really under-utilized the big name Awnshegh in this game, to their extreme detriment. Man, you should see what happens when it's time to actually break the game and the gloves come off  Evil Fluffy posted:...what, if anything, happens due to you killing the Gorgon? Or is it one of those "he was dead but got better" situations where the overall game just ignores when they die unless it's on a mission specifically to kill them? As mentioned, nothing but a chunk of XP in-dungeon. Beating him on the battlefield -where, as far as I can recall, he shrugs off most spells and has appropriately high combat stats- does net you something, but that may have to wait for aforementioned snap-game-over-knee playthrough.
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Jun 13, 2022 15:58
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As I recall, you get an item called the Gorgon's Standard or suchlike for walloping him the first time around, and it's the item that gives you the points. Also you'd think the Gorgon would roll around with an army and only get caught out alone via Shenanigans, but there you go. Kind of surprised that one Artifact that Blesses all of your provinces and gives you more money than you could ever really use never popped up, used to seeing that one early. DUNK. It's what this game deserves.
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Jul 6, 2022 00:38
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PurpleXVI posted:Well part of the problem is that you have already seen the Realm spells that are useful: I'd include Teleport as another situationally useful spell. I mean, if you're a hundred points short of winning and the Gorgon is sitting on the other end of the map, there's worse things to do than to teleport him into the middle of an army that'll auto-rout him. And I'll definitely agree on the Cleric Realm spells, the only one I can recall off the top of my head is Bless, and that's because there's an Artifact that auto-casts it on all of your provinces for free. PurpleXVI posted:Are we talking about TGA or my suffering being fascinating in some other context? I could see such a run quickly abandon mashing pixels together to focus on getting and developing an absurd number of high-end holdings, as I recall those also contributing to VP. Which would also be incredibly dull, but for different reasons.
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Jul 7, 2022 16:22
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PurpleXVI posted:Holdings aren't supposed to count towards victory points and don't seem to, but considering everything else about this game... who the gently caress can really say for sure? On one hand, I could simply be misremembering. On the other hand, I might not. Birthright's gonna Birthright.
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Jul 8, 2022 18:32
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