Questions regarding NPCs...

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1. Where do you find Viconia? I can't find her anywhere! I thought she was being chased by Flaming Fist guards or something...

2. Who's better: Coran or Imoen? I'd rather have Imoen, but Coran's partly a fighter, so...

3. I got Dynaheir before Minsc, and now Minsc is refusing to talk to me! What have I done wrong?

 

1. Peldvale wood (I think this is the right name for the area, you can burn me in the Government District in Athkatla if I'm wrong) it's on the right of the Friendly Arm Inn area on your map IIRC. And yes she is chased by a FF merc.

2. It depends on your party. Coran is better because of his skill with a bow (low level foes, few HP you get the idea). Still Imoen can be used as a Mage with a few Thief abilities if you dual her (remember the Ring that doubles your level 1 spell slots).

3. Have you refused Minsc's quest? If so he would probably have attacked you... Did you accept Edwin's mission? That's a nuisance. You still get a good mage. If you can't solve this problem pick another fighter (Kivan is a great choice or Shar Teel if you need more muscle).

 

Going one north of the Friendly Arm Inn and picking up Ajantis along the bottom of that map can be another good fighter as well.

 

Coran is alot better than Imoen if you just let her progress as a thief because he can become a true sniper!

Umm, you want Dynaheir ... ewww

And yes, you find Viccy in Peldvale, but remember you lose 2 rep points for taking her along.

 

1. In Peldvale NW. She's the worst cleric in the game imho.

2. Coran is more useful than Imoen as thief since he can fight much better. But you can beat the game without him if you don't like him.

Imoen's power is different.
She is the best mage in the game. She gets more HP and better AC than any mage in the game and can still reach the highest available level for mages within the cap if you dual her at level 2-6.
If you have someone else in your party who can cast identify, then dual her to conjurer, else to illusionist.
You can drop Dynaheir then if you want, Imoen is far superior.

3.Minsc is overrated, any NPC can get 18/00 strength if you cast strength on him twice.

 

I don't want Dynaheir, I want Minsc but I thought you had to get Dynaheir first to be able to get Minsc. It's aaaaaages since I last played this game.

 

You can actually get them in either order. Minsc not talking to you is definitely a bug. Heck, you can even kill Dynaheir and then talk to Minsc and he'll offer to join you, after first wailing about her death. Why don't you try that? (In fact, you should first try killing her right in front of him to see if he reacts. )

@$ilvershield:
Actually, with Tutu's BG1 NPC Project, you have the chance to romance Dynaheir.

 

Fel, you can get Minsc after killing Dynaheir? My evil party killed Dynaheir and when they came back to Nashkiel(sp?) he turned red and attacked. I didn't even have a chance to talk to him.

In BG I find him a pain-in-the-butt. One very early game I was trying to find the blasted Gnoll Stronghold and he got mad and started attacking everyone. We were even headed in the right direction just taking too long. This was a vanila game.

 

Well, I don't know if you can get him after specifically killing her (especially if Edwin's involved), but you can get him if Dynaheir's dead. That's actually why I wanted Moon Elf to try killing her right in front of him, to see if it would work. Then she could try killing Dynaheir in a different area and seeing if Minsc would join, and if neither of these work she could just Ctrl+Y or get Dynaheir killed some other way.

Huh? As soon as he complains it ought to have clued you in that you should get there post-haste, and you can't miss the Stronghold since he puts it on your map.

 

He puts it on the map but if you take the maps wrong it takes you a really long time. And if you end up sleeping a lot to get there he flips out. He's the most intollerant of any BG character in any of the games that I've ever experienced about wanting to get something specific done.

 

Maybe, but not ten days. I've never had Minsc flip out on me; I didn't even know he complained at all until I came here!

And I'd put Ajantis as the most intolerant of getting something done. He insists that all evil NPCs be removed from the party (with seven in the game, you're sure to have at least one unless you're discriminating), and will attack you if you don't do it within one day. Of course, if your PC's evil, there's nothing you can do about it, and you can't stop him from attacking. If he weren't the only paladin in the game (and one with pretty good stats), I'd never take him.

And now that we're getting into it...

You'd really waste two second-level mage spells every few hours of game time when you could just get Minsc? What a waste. (Not to mention that at that point in the game you could probably just stick the GoOP on someone and be done with it.) Granted, Minsc isn't the uber-tank, but he's damn good. Yes, he's overrated, but only in the banter department; people get to like him so much from his banter and such in BG2 (as well as his combat effectiveness), and then they show their preference in BG1, even though he's not quite as good there (in either aspect).

And, just for the sake of being on-topic:
1. Been beaten to death already. Yes, she's in the upper left corner of Peldvale (one area northeast of FAI).

2. Definitely Imoen. Of course, having both can be pretty sweet.

3. Kinda covered. Make an archive save first, and then try various ways of getting rid of Dynaheir before talking to Minsc. One of them should trigger his weepy act when you talk to him, and then ask him to join. If nothing works, reply and I'll give you something else to try.

EDIT:

This is strange...Minsc's ears feel as if they burn. *squeak squeak* Boo says his do as well! What evildoer has cast his spell on us? Butts will be liberally kicked until we find him!

[ March 27, 2006, 08:08: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

While that is true it's also very easily to play without any evil members. there are so many good and even neutral ones of various kinds that you can take. Most of which are very good at what they do in some way.

 

Coran rocks If you can get to him when he is at 3rd level you can distribute his thief skills perfectly and he is the ultimate sniper.
give him a str. potion or cast str. spell on him and he can backstab pretty good too. His hit points are a drag but I try to keep a potion of fortitude handy. If I wre choosing between him and Imoen it would rest on wether I need a mage or fighter added to my party. I usually dual Imoen to a Mage.

 

I had Minsc got nuts on me. I was on the way to Gnoll stronghold and everybody got tired so I tried to go a little ways back on the map before it so I could rest and he went postal and attacked. I ususally pick Dynahier and let her get killed ASAP. I really don't use that much magic in BG.

 

Most fun I had was picking Minsc, rescuing Dynaheir, and THEN speaking to Edwin. Oddly enough he WILL join you (odd because if you pick him up earlier, he automatically unjoins if you refuse to kill Dynaheir), and it makes for a very interesting triangle

 

If you talk to Edwin twice with the right dialogue's and she is in your party he will attack you and you get a few hundred xp for killing him as far as I can remember. Sadly he doesn't have anything special that he drops though.

Minsc will throw fits if you have all three in your party.

 

True, but I don't think he'll go as far as attacking him. Never had that happen in my game anyway.

I did once get Khalid and Jaheira attack Xzar and Montaron, after a rather interesting dialogue that ended with Jaheira telling Xzar that he had finally revealed himself (or something like that). Never managed to reproduce that though.

Needless to say it took K&J only seconds to slaughter X&M, while Imoen and I watched from the shadows and laughed

 

Minsc will attack Edwin if all three are in the party, but it's a non-timed dialogue, not unlike the Xzar & Montaron VS. Jaheira & Khalid fight. You may have it, you may not. The same goes for Kivan VS. Viconia, Kagain VS. Yeslick (didn't see it at all in my Quayle runthrough), and Quayle VS. Tiax.

 

Now that's one I was unaware of. Of course, there are a few reasons for this. First, the two characters are really only worth having in your group for comic relief reasons, especially regarding Tiax. He's not a particularly good thief or cleric, and seeing as how the XP cap really limits your levels (heck, even if you remove the XP cap there is only enough XPs in the entire game to get a 6 person party up to around 200K XP) he will never become even quasi-useful. Another problem is that even in BG2, cleric-thieves are rather underpowered, and from personal experience I never found them an overly enjoyable class to play. Quayle has his uses, as you really don't need a full time mage in BG1, and having a second cleric never hurts given the low number of healing spells at your disposal in BG1.

Secondly, and probably more importantly, neither character is available prior to chapter 5. As such, unless I deliberately did the first four chapters with only 4 characters, I'd already have my party together, and I am loathe to kick out existing party members after I have invested a considerable amount of time making them better. I just view it as wasted XP, which are in very limited supply in BG1.

 

And the one you missed is that they both think they're the shizzit; that's bound to cause some problems.

I definitely disagree with you on the characters' usefulness, though. Tiax was incredible in my little people party. Stick some armor and the GoOP (which you can get almost immediately) on him, and he makes a better tank than anyone. Combine that with his clerical powers, which are even better than Quayle's due to higher wisdom BTW, and he can kick some serious a$$. The only way Quayle could be of any use as a cleric is if you fed him a Potion of Insight every time you rested.

Yeah, that's just wrong. Given all the good backstabbing staves, I can't imagine how a C/T could be underpowered unless you just didn't use him at all.