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Ground floor, huh? Well, I'll open the thread with a bog-standard OP class, the Cavalier. Once this one dies I'll do something goofier. Also, I am playing with because I don't want to bother with not learning scrolls or getting 3 HP per level   Anyway! Clicked reroll once, figured RNG was definitely loving with me, so here we go. Postmodernist Beatings the Cavalier departs Candlekeep.  Flawless victory.  And an ambush between the first two road areas? Thanks game. At least it wasn't bandits.  Rappaport 1, Tarnesh 0.  Silke did manage to fry Jaheira, at least it was only 100 euro for a rez.  And of course Xan walks into a kobold who instantly merks him  , missing out on the XP from Mulahey and the random ankheg we found top-side. But hey, 2nd ankheg plate if we murder Bassilus! And that's the first leg of the race, next up clearing Cloud Peak mountains and hopefully people will actually get XP from it.
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Dec 18, 2023 19:37
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 04:43 |
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Postmodernist Beatings the Cavalier has cleared out the (western) Cloud Peak mountains, rescued Dynaheir, murdered a village of xvarts, the usual. And no one died once! I usually play with Xan in melee range because he has a light saber, but this seems risky in iron man mode  But he's a fighter, not a lover, look at 'im  Although I did not let him wade into packs of gnolls or xvarts, I know you're feeling down buddy but geez!Speaking of Xan's fragility, we recruited Dynaheir at level 4. While Xan was still level 2.  Oh well, he was going to be using the Ring of Wizardry anyway for shotgunning Sleep, and some random monster dropped a Web scroll so Dynaheir is looking useful already.Since we kept running into ambushes, winter wolves and getting sleep interrupted, and selling all the magical junk we found in the southern wildernesses, the party had about 15 000 GP after we got back to Nashkel  So I was wrong, we'll get a 2nd ankheg plate before trying to merk Bassilus. And Xan hit level 3 too, so Tranzig's Glitterdust went to good use. I guess we'll go clear out some more of the western wilderness now, and try not to get killed by Bassilus. Not sure how I feel about the sirines jfenserty posted:And uh, it looks like I did something wrong because all my screenshots so far were black. OK, 2 potential tips. If you're running BG EE and hit "Print Screen", it makes a .bmp file in a folder (I'm assuming Windows) in your "Documents" called "Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition\ScrnShot" or something like that, in numbered order. Alternatively, if you're using Steam, you can hit your Steam screencap button, default is F12, and they'll go into your Steam screenshot thingy you can access from Steam's interface.
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Dec 19, 2023 20:26
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Postmodernist Beatings the Cavalier part 3: Right-o. Today's quest was the west coast, and we started out with Bassilus's / Melicamp's map. One of the ghast packs (!) dropped a scroll of Agannazar's for Dynaheir, how polite. They also Held Postmodernist Beatings twice, so that was exciting.  Bassilus went down easy enough.  Another exciting time, a pack of ghasts, again, Holds my character, and also a pack of spiders aggroes nearby. Xan is out of Sleeps. Swell. But Xan got Glitterdust last time, and apparently blind spiders weren't that dangerous.  Melicamp died   Arabelle lived  Random scroll loot gave Xan a Fear, nice. Going around the coast was dangerous though, we kept getting ambushed, including 2 (!) bow bandit gangs. Neither of our mages died though. I feel so naked without Stoneskin    A touch un-ladylike, but we merked Shoal for some sweet XP. And the Gift of Peace from Droth! The sirines gave me another scare, I did not know/remember that they feebleminded! But the wiki told me it wasn't the permanent kind (nor was there a game over screen when my paladin lost all motor control), so I just waited it out instead of rage-quitting. And my hubris of sending my paladin in alone with a couple of archers hanging in the back wasn't done; for some reason one of the sirines wandered over to a tasloi herd, but no harm done in the end.  We finished the round with the Brage quest, and since I wanted Batalista's Passport to go with my snazzy new helm, saved Samuel too. Here's my question for game designers circa 1998: Why does the Brage quest teleport me to Nashkel, which is next door to the archeology map, but the Samuel quest makes me walk 2 days to the Friendly Arm Inn, meeting yet another freaking bandit ambush? Also I remembered Imoen was lugging this junk around, so the Beregost gnome (?) gave me some piddly XP too. Party's now level five-ish, guess I might as well do the bandit camp next time. Or, there's the eastern wildernesses left.
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Dec 21, 2023 21:12
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Postmodernist Beatings wound up clearing the bandit camp. Is there normally a timer on Tazok, or does the BG1 NPC banter thingy do something to him? I hitched a ride to the camp from Larswood after merking the shadow druids, and Tazok hit me in the face a couple of times and then just walked off, telling his goons to merk me. This aggroed the entire camp, but they didn't all wade in. So I just killed them off in small packs, even got a Hold off on Taurgosz.  I guess we were over-leveled for it anyway, everyone in the party is level 5 now except Xan and Imoen hit level 6 in Tazok's tent. Oh well, Cloakwood awaits. Flowing Thot posted:I feel like my game might be bugged I told you man, I warned you bro, I told you about bypassing triggers
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Dec 23, 2023 21:31
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Postmodernist Beatings the Cavalier has cleared out Cloakwood and her mines. Yes, I am still salty that the guy you recruit before the trappiest place in Cloakwood (or the early game, really) has a whopping 26 find traps out of the gate I sent Yeslick away, I guess I could swap Viccy for him later but  So this is our group, barring accidents. Anyway, the woods were uneventful; I bought Thalantyr's 3 potions of perception before going in, so Coran could handle the spider woods under an invisibility potion, and nothing else in the woods was particularly scary. I almost messed up with the (a?) hamadryad, sending my cavalier in alone with their charm immunity, only to get held. But the RNG took pity on me, and the dryad's dagger broke (I should've screenshot this) and Coran just shot her to death. Cheesed the mercenary squad at the mine entrance, Minsc wading into the web with Spider's Bane and Xan blinding folks, with Coran giving covering fire, and well  Xan keeps delivering.  And then some; apparently trying to sleep in the mines is a signal that I'm trying to megaman-grind XP, I guess?  Davaeorn managed one lightning bolt before being overpowered. The re-bound hit Xan and Dynaheir, but I guess they saved since no one died I'm also thinking I'll try a spellcaster CHARNAME next time around, being the main tank in an ironman game is starting to feel like a silly idea to be quite honest, I keep getting owned by freaking mages and magical creatures. (Or rather, failing saves, but either way!)As a minor curiosity, the party had amassed some 30 thousand GP before heading to Cloakwood, so I just bought the archmagi robes for Xan and Dynaheir before we embarked. Now, after visiting the Friendly Arm post-Davaeorn, we have another 30 grand and change, and I haven't even off-loaded all our loot yet, for one thing Minsc has a disturbing collection of wyvern heads to his name 
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Dec 27, 2023 17:07
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 04:43 |
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Rogue AI Goddess posted:How good/bad/ugly of an idea would it be to do a blind ironman run without mods? I don't disagree with the above replies, but this was a fun question that got me thinking a little bit. My analogy would be, how fun would it be for someone used to "modern game design" (and what that concept implies) to pick up Nethack blind? I am aware it is possible to win that game without consulting spoilers, but it's very rare. Baldur's Gate has a lot of 90's game design stuff in it, and it's using the sometimes less-than-intuitive D&D rule-set. If the player knew nothing going in, I think ironmanning wouldn't be that much fun. The game has a lot of teaching by showing moments, i.e. enemy spellcasters will make If a person is familiar with at least some of the concepts of 2nd ed D&D and turn-of-the-millennium expectations of what's difficult and 'fair', then it sure would be a way to experience BG1 I guess? Pre-buffing just in case when going up against a group of enemies, scouting ahead with a stealthed character to see if there are spellcasters around, etc. would certainly be an exciting way of playing a computer role playing campaign. I know beforehand that there's an assassin in this doorway/tavern/piece of desert and act accordingly (most times, I still forget stuff ), but I suppose it's possible to use the game engine to suss this stuff out. Looking at some of the BG2 ironman runs from past years, people seem to cover their party members' portraits with protections and buffs anyway.The last thing is that modern (even -ish) roguelikes are designed so that usually the player only loses a relatively short amount of playtime when a bull-poo poo enemy one-shots them or something similar. BG1 in particular has a lot of wandering around if played blind, assuming the player actually wants to see a good bit of the content the game contains, so for example reaching the Big City would involve several hours of blind gameplay. I imagine it'd be a nasty kick in the video game knees to lose your run at that point due to someone unforeseen, like Davaeorn's nonsense. I've sometimes thought a funny companion thread to this one would be a "Let's ironman Fallout 1/2!", because I posit that would be an extremely exhausting exercise in frustration due to that game's critical hit tables among many other things  Getting mulched by an Enclave Patrol after 12+ hours of wandering around, woof.
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Dec 28, 2023 09:01
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