Evil is a Rough Road

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I thought I really should play an evil party at least once before putting BG2 away for a time. I've found it tough to get the party rolling. Following the general advice from Dave Milward's walkthrough, I chose a F/T for my protagonist. The rest of the party would be the 3 evil characters, Jaheira, and Haer' Dalis. Recruiting Korgan and Viconia is of course easy, but after that the problems began. I wanted to assemble the party as fast as possible to avoid wasting experience on characters I wasn't going to keep, so off I went to see Renal Bloodscalp to begin the Shadow Thief quest and recruit Edwin into the party. Much to my amazement, I discovered that Dave is right and Minsc, carefully handled and supported, can beat 2 Stone Golems all by his lonesome. (His Sword of Chaos is the only +2 weapon in the party at that point). Rayic Gethras is another matter, however. He starts off with a spell trigger of Spell Shield, Protection from Magical Weapons, and Protection from Normal Missles, which pretty well makes him untouchable until those protections wear off. The walkthough's only comment on this battle is that it is challenging, and offers a suggestion of casting Protection from Evil 10' Radius to increase everybody's saving throws. I added to that by giving Minsc the non-magical mace I'd bought for Viconia, but for some reason, he never seemed to be able to hit with it. Liberal use of Power Word: Reload got me through this battle - eventually everybody made all their saving throws, and we were able to outlast Reyic. But it felt wrong to have to reload a bunch of times because we were messing with a power that was beyond us. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to make this battle winnable without a lot of luck?

Once I'd finally recruited Edwin, I dismissed Minsc as the last remaining back-sliding do-gooder in the party, not realizing that this also meant dismissing the only +2 weapon we had, and went off to do the Astral Prison quest, to recruit Haer' Dalis. I was rather chagrinned when I realized that I had nothing that could touch the fire elemental at the portal, but some magic missles from Edwin and a bit of help from Haer' Dalis got us into the prison. Of course, I wasn't thinking about the two Air Elemental bodyguards the Master of Thralls has, so I reloaded a previous save and bought one of the two +2 Warhammers that Ribald sells for Korgan, and with much finger-crossing and a couple more reloads, we made it past the Master, and even managed to defeat the Warden and company, thus completing the quest, and allowing us to welcome Haer' Dalis on board. But I had the same feeling that I'd had on the previous quest - we just weren't ready for it.

I was pretty tired of having inadequte weapons at this point, so I went off to do the D'Arnise Keep to get the Flail of Ages and Frostreaver. The Iron Golem was beyond us, so I left the Elven Court bow behind; and I ended up giving up on the Umber Hulk room, and cheesing my way through it with a Wand of Cloudkill and slamming the door.

What path through the game do those that like to play evil generally follow? Trying to do it the way I did seems unreasonably hard, but its also the fastest way to assemble the party. My good parties have a much easier time of things. I think the deck is stacked against evil

 

I think you should have done this quest before going to the planar prison. The monsters are all a little easier, and the loot is well worth it.

Actually, if you move from one stash to the next, pausing at just the right time, and then running out of there like a bat out of hell, you can get every single item in the room. I do it all the time when I'm not quite ready for an Iron Golem. Also, you can just fight one at a time by just attacking one at a time before touching the stashes.

 

For the Rayic battle, I usually have Viconia go up all by herself. Her 65% MR means she'll usually take his attacks in stride.

You could also simply buy some high level scrolls for, say, Jan, and have him read them off. Viconia's Dispel Magic will also help occasionally.

At any rate, +2 Weapons aren't hard to come by. Even +3 are pretty common. You can do the Slaver's quest and there's a +3 axe called Stonefire which you can buy for about 4000 or something. Also, there's a +2 Long Sword in the Graveyard district (Neversleep?) which can cast silence 15' radius.

Anyway, the point is, if you know where to look, you can get some powerful weapons really easily. And I don't think the deck is stacked against evil, per se. What if you want a good party which compiles of Keldorn, Mazzy, and Valygar?

 

Hmm. It was Viconia that tended to die 1st in my battles with Rayic - usually when he cast Sunfire. Perhaps I was just unlucky.

I agree that +2 and better weapons aren't hard to come by, but to get them means doing quests other than the ones needed to assemble an evil party, meaning at least some experience is going to be wasted. But looking back, that would have been preferable to the way I tried it

 

If you really want to make your life difficult with an evil party, use the Valen mod and get Valen as soon as you can. If you also get Viconia as well(why wouldn't you?), your reputation can/will be 1, and you'll fight guard teams wherever you go. Now that's some crazy fun for 9th level characters.

 

Actually I've always found the battle against Reyic to be one of the most difficult early fights in the game. After all, the easiest way to win a fight against a solo mage is to have a mage yourself, and you don't have Edwin at this point (obviously). IMO, Nalia, Aerie and Jan don't have the casting power this early on to be of much help, not to mention their spellbooks aren't very good at this point.

Every time I try to get Edwin in my party early on, I run into trouble trying to beat Reyic without resorting to cheesy tactics.

On the subject of +3 weapons, IIRC you can get 2 relatively early on, one fire (Stonefire) and another cold (can't remember the name. Is that Frostreaver?). If you have a warrior that can dual-wield them, they do serious damage in the early game. Great against trolls too

The Planar Prison quest, on the other, is definitely a thoughie, and being unable to return to the city can be a serious handicap for low-level parties. I really don't think this quest was intended for this early in the game.

I don't think you should worry that much about "wasted XP", because if you put off recruiting an NPC until later, they will join at a higher level than if you had recruited them early on anyway.

 

If you want to be cheesy: steal the +2 maces from the merchant in the thieves guild. I believe they're unlimited.

There's a +2 Axe in the graveyard, and all you have to fight is a mummy (I think). It's in one of the small, one room crypts, not the main dungeon.

Also, in the DeArnise Keep, the easiest way to get the stuff in the Golem room is to have a cleric walk in alone with the spell "Sanctuary" cast. The Golems will turn hostile, but they won't have anyone to attack.

 

It does help to have a mage in the party to take out Reyic. One really cheesy way to beat him is simply cast Acid Arrow on him before he turns hostile. This obviously causes him to become hostile, but the acid arrow continues to hit him for a few rounds after this, disrupting his spell casting. Now, he will get the spell trigger off, as that doesn't have to be "cast" like a regular spell, but what it does do is buy you time so he can't cast anything else while his spell protections wear off.

In fact, if you have two mages in the party, and both of them cast acid arrow simlutaneously, he usually dies from the repeated acid damage long before his spell protections wear out. Same thing if you have a wand of the heavans along with either AA or A. Scorcher.

Perhaps the easiest way to beat him is to hit the graveyard district early and get the sword that casts Silence 15' radius as a special ability. Mages aren't too hard to beat if they can't cast spells.

 

@Truper: Just FYI, Viconia kept dying because of Sunfire...because Sunfire ignores MR! Sunfire, Skulltrap, Dispel/Remove Magic and Dragon's Breath are the only spells which do this in the game. (AFAIR)

 

Skulltrap does not ignore magic resistance.

 

Oh well, try having fun in Black and White while playing good! Some games are just a bit biased oone way or the oother

 

I have also wanted to play an evil party for some time now just to use some new characters but I keep making the decisions as a good character. I know its stupid but I just can't seem to play as an evil party.

What I'd really like to play as is a true neutral party. Anybody think that's possible?

 

everything's possible.....

is this spam?

 

@ Good Thoughts - Download the Valen mod and include her in your evil party - you will be doing evil deeds in no time, whether you want to or not.

 

A true neutral party would work quite well, I think. The 2nd edition definition of True Neutral was either the balance mongering druid type true neutral, the "I don't care!" attitude (that's why most commoners are true neutral), and the "I'm a selfish bastard!" attitude. 3rd edition changed the latter to be the Neutral Evil approach to life, but you can play as Neutral, do selfish things (as long as there's a direct tangible benefit for you), and get away with a ~10 rep easily. That's the way I'm playing my current Neutral Evil person, and if it wouldn't be for Valen, the Virtue mod would have moved my alignment to Neutral a long time ago.

 

Why would the True Neutral party bother to do anything at all? Why would they care about Imoen? Wouldn't they just settle in at the Copper Coronet and have a few beers?

 

The problem is, there's no real benefit to being evil. The amount of extra cash you get for choosing all of the "evil" greedy or threatening lines when accepting a quest is negligible next to the cash you rake in during the quest itself. And face it: whether you're a paladin or an assassin in BG2, you truly are one hell of a homicidal maniac. I mean, has anyone calculated the body count for the BG series?

So what's the point in being a CE opportunistic bastard when you can be a LG opportunistic bastard just as easily? Is it simply to be surrounded by smart*** NPCs? And if you really were neutral evil, wouldn't you prefer to have Minsc as an NPC over Korgan, as Minsc does everything you tell him to do anyway, he'd be super easy to cheat out of his share of the goods (unlike Korgan), and he's completely loyal and doesn't threaten to kill you every other day (also unlike Korgan). For example, if you were an evil factory owner, wouldn't it be in your interest that all of your workers (except perhaps the foremen) be lawful good (and so, honest, attentive to their work, respecting authority, etc.)?

There should be serious powergaming rewards to being evil, so there is a price to choosing goodness.

This reminds me of P:T, where the biggest rewards would come from being LG (the most powerful weapon, the largest strength bonus, the ability to upgrade NPCs, etc)...

 

I dunno about the body count for the entire BG series, but I do remember looking at the statistics screen in the late stages of ToB - only to be appalled that "I" had done in over 700 creatures....

About the only powergaming reward for being evil that I can think of is that several of the Hell trial rewards for evil are more appealing than the ones for good.

 

I had some technical trouble with a couple of mods a while back. Is the Valen mod really worth having as far as dialogue and entertainment? Are there any bugs to watch out for?

 

I'm currently running Valen with not much else installed--just Ascension and Tactics (oops, and Virtue). I've not run into any problems. I also used Valen in a more elaborate mod setup my last time around, and saw no problems there. It seems to be a pretty stable mod.

As for quality, Valen is top-shelf, with one exception: she is just too powerful. But the concept, the AI, the interjections to the story--these are all excellent. She is well worth the download, as long as you are prepared to play an evil group.