Going Through Again

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Yeah, it's easier (but time consuming) to take them out from afar. I had forgotten about the Impaler spear -- that's a required component in my groups. I tend to shift Jaheira (or someone else) to 2-handed weapopn fighting style with specialization in spears. The Impaler does incredible damage and works well until you can get a better replacement in ToB.

Is there a decent mod for a monk? Or would it be better to use the level one npc mod to make someone ... say Nalia or Valygar ... a monk? Mazzy would make a cool monk (if you're going to cheat may as well make it fun).

 

You mean Ixil's Spike?
I'd still use Impaler, except for boss fights. The pinning effect isn't worth more then ~10% higher damage output.

 

Ixil's Spike is +6 -- it blows through Absolute Immunity (and all lesser spells). The higher damage from Impaler doesn't help if you can't hit them. Having +6 weapons makes every battle with a mage much easier (Carsomyr, Ravager, Ixil's Spike, and Staff of the Ram are all awesome).

 

Good to know, thx. Though I don't remember Absolute Immunity causing troubles too often.

 

That was what I was referring to - that unless you're playing in a small party, reaching 8 million XPs per character is not something you'd typically do in a normal play through. (That said, prior to the relase of ToB, the XP cap was around 3 million per character, and you would routinely reach that prior to reaching the end of SoA.)

The larger point here is that unless you are playing a tri-class, there's enough XPs to go around. Typically, if you are playing a F/M/T as your protagonist, one of two things are true: 1.) you are playing the ultimate support character or 2) You are soloing. In parties, such a character may be the party's primary thief, but it almost certainly isn't the party's primary mage, and unless you're into trying out odd combos, there would be at least one other fighter/ranger/paladin in the group to help with the fighting duties.

This got me to thinking. While I don't have a monk and don't need the bracers, shouldn't it be possible to get everything no matter who you side with? It seems like there are two ways to do this: 1) Side with the King, kill Villynaty, get reward, kill the king, pick up the key to the treasury and loot it. 2) Side with Villynaty, kill the king, get the key to the treasury, then kill Villynaty and pick up his stuff. Yes, it's underhanded and backstabbing, but I for one do not feel any loyalty to either party in this - they are both using you as a means to an end.

 

That's what I usually do. I don't like either side and Edwin said that they taste well.

 

If you don't side with the king you can't get the Gauntlets of Crushing. It is a reward only item from the king -- it is not given by the prince and won't be on any bodies after a slaughter. I think that's the only item which is affected by who you side with if you choose to betray either the prince or king and then kill everyone.

 

BTW this thread made me suspend my IWD solo and start BG1 with a R/C.

 

OK - so option A it is if I want everything, although it seems like it's not worth it since there's no monk in the party. The quest is very open-ended in the sense that there's not a "good" and a "bad" side here.

I think the game definitely intends for you to betray the king, but the king is just crazy and/or dumb, and the prince isn't much better. Neither of them care whether you live or die, so long as each of them get what they want. The basic deal is do what we want you to do, and we won't kill you (or if we can't kill you, we won't let you out).

To proceed in the game, one of the parties has to be betrayed, which isn't a particularly noble thing to do no matter how you slice it. Neither one offers you anything more than the other, and from the limited information you are given about the conflict between the prince and king, you have no way of knowing whether the king or the prince are in the right. There isn't even a "good" or "evil" way to complete the quest. Both ways entail the same actions - it's just who you decide to screw over.

 

Well, I'm certainly into trying weird combos, I'll not deny it. My most recent runthroughs, for instance, were:

• A party consisting of four half-orcs - a barb, kensai, F/C and F/T, so no mage support.
• A monk solo
• A party consisting of four elves - a wild mage, a C/wild mage, a T/wild mage and a sorc. Challenging to get through BG at low levels, until I surrendered my C/M's arcane spells for heavy armor and a big shield so she could play party tank.

As for siding with the prince or the king, there is a definite push from the game to side with the prince, as that will supposedly save their people. On the other hand, there is no real motivation to actually help these guys, so I have no remorse about helping the king.

 

After killing the prince and the king, I went to the Underdark. As I typically do, I clear out all three of the side areas before going into Ust Natha. (I hate when my party gets transformed into drow as it's hard to tell them apart on-screen - since you can cast mage spells in the elvin chain mail +3, everyone in the party is wearing either that or full plate +5.)

So from a strictly aesthetic point of view, the only parts of the game I want to complete as a drow are the parts I have to complete as a drow. So I did the Kua-toa side area, and I did the Beholder side area, but dude, where's my elder orb? I killed every freakin' beholder in that area, and I don't see no stinkin' elder orb blood (or perhaps eyestalk). Not that I need to have it. Hell, I don't even need the Equalizer (I'm pretty sure the elder orb has the last piece of it, although I concede that it could be in the illithid area that I haven't done yet - it's been years since my last play through and I forgot a lot of stuff.)

I hate the beholder dungeon, mostly because I hate having to deal with 5 beholders at a time (and I refuse to use the shield of cheese - I imagine if you have that you can take one person in and solo the area). So anyway, I was done playing for the night anyway, so I saved inside the now cleared beholder dungeon, and I guess I'll take one last look-through before moving on to the illitihids. (As a side note, I don't consider the illithids to be THAT bad. If you can limit the number of them that you are fighting to one or two at a time, you can typically handle them quite well, especially if you have a character who basically is immune to being held or charmed.)

EDIT: Just checked Montresor's walkthough, and evidently the elder orb you need to kill is in the very first fight as soon as you enter the dungeon. Well, I'm still right there, and it shouldn't have disappeared yet...

 

You should get the beholder eye in the 1st fight in the area.
And equalizer is in the mind flayer area.

I don't know why do people consider illithids to be tough enemies. Even going through the game for the first time, it took me a couple of trials, but many fights needed it too and the tough ones took ~20. I never feel the need to avoid being swarmed by them. I just use summons as distraction and / or the killing power (a hasted deva kills any group that you encounter even on the highest difficulty. Mordenkainen swords do the job too.). Or pump up AC of one character or use mirror image to have a decoy.

 

Well, a hasted deva is currently completely out of the question, but just good ol' summoned skeletons work great too - they have no brains to suck out!

 

I've heard that one before - and it makes sense too - but it doesn't work that way (not for me anyway). They still get INT drained and die from a couple of hits from a mindflayer. Still, summoning five skeletal warriors and hasting them will make short work of any mindflayers. The best thing about them as a summon for this is that they're immune to the psionic blasts. At least I've never seen them get stunned by it or anything like that.

But normally I just use the NPC with the lowest AC and cast chaotic command on him/her. Immunity to hold like what an Inquisitor gets doesn't work against psionic blasts (or stun effects, for that matter), so chaotic commands (or the potions of brine, or the green amulet charges) is still necessary. If they swarm me, it's still not enough to save my hide, though.

Actually cleared the last of the beholder area yesterday and then the mindflayer lair myself too. I have no qualms about using the cloak of cheese, though, so the beholder area was mostly just a big bucket of free experience (have to watch out for the imprisonment the elder orbs like to cast, though).

I also do all the areas before becoming a drow, mostly because you can take however long you want for it (many of the drow missions are timed) and because for some reason becoming a drow freaks out some scripts and occasionally I have to remind one or more of the party members where they were going. Just this morning I almost got my bard in drow form stuck on that bridge where you get ambushed by drow the first time you go there. Had to click around for a while before she would actually move from the place on the bridge where she got stuck.

 

Perhaps it's because they are immune to charming and hold spells then that makes them seem rather resilient against illithids?

 

I don't know what specific immunities help skeleton warriars out here, but at the very least they have a very high magic resistance which makes them pretty much immune to magic in general.

 

I wanted to check how is it to do the Illithids early and today I had an occasion to do so. I did very few quests to get little exp and with a party of 5 (R/C- lvl 10/11 or 11/10, Korgan - lvl 15?, Mazzy - lvl 14?, Edwin - ?, Jan - ?) I approached the challenge.
I wanted to avoid smart tactics like using skeletons not to have it too easy. And though I didn't have any other summoning spells remembered, I didn't want to reorganize my spellbook for it. I didn't have chaotic commands either. The tactic was simple: Summon a Moon Dog and a Genie, cast all buff spells that I have and rush to kill the bastards. Initially it didn't work well because my PC had INT of 4, but moving him to a farther position solved the issue. I got problems only in the room with Staff of Command - I tried to attack it w/out rest or rebuff after the previous fight, with no summons and with protections worn down a bit...and only because the enemies had incredible luck hitting my people when they were protected by mirror image. I mean, with fresh mirrors, they had accuracy of like 80%. I think I had to do 4 or 5 trials. I didn't rest because I couldn't believe they would have such luck yet another time, all fights that I started freshly rested went easily on the first trial.
After that I did various things, I think everybody in my party levelled up, I got some new stuff and went to the orbs. Fully prepared, I needed, I think 6 trials to win the 1st fight with some strategy refinements on the way.

I still don't understand why do people find Illithids hard.

 

I'm with you Bsisi - I find the illithids more annoying than difficult. So long as you have a strategy somewhat more advanced than walking into the room and hacking them to pieces, they aren't terrible. It usually isn't too bad to get them to follow you, so you can get the fight within a corridor, and only have to take them two at a time, and a thief can usually make chunks out of one each battle with a well timed backstab.

IMO, the beholder area is much more difficult if you aren't/won't use the reflecting cloak or the shield of Balduran. (I clearly think that at least the cloak does not work as intended. Yes, in game, the beholder gaze is portrayed as "missiles", but there is in fact nothing to actually reflect.) If you are using the cloak or shield, then you can probably solo the area with that character in less than 5 minutes, but otherwise, I think it's much tougher. And it's because if you aren't using those items, you just have to take it. There's no way to avoid the beholder missiles. Sure, some of them allow saving throws, but others, like the cause wounds ones you just get hit by repeatedly.

 

jesus I still remember the Beholder lair it was hardest part of the game for me lol I think we(multiplayer) reloaded more there than in whole BGT. I remember posting on it i think on bioware forums and finally when I was done with them someone posted about cheese of balduran (somehow i managed to miss or sell that item) but i well there are other ways to kjill them, but they are tough - they kill most summons with one spell- so it might be quite frustrating area for totemic druid solo(if anyone would be masochistic enough to solo a totemic druid) at least for non-pros like me