New all purpose Baldurs Gate thread

[duke o' york]

The dwarf and ranger sound good. I'll probably go and pay them a visit.
I managed to wangle the day off work tomorrow (I have a doctor's appointment really early in the morning, but got the whole day off ), so I have a feeling that I may have a lot more to tell you all on Wednesday.
Just as a point of interest, are any decent items in locked chests? How many tries can you have at opening locked chests or doors? And how do I backstab someone?

[Jamski]

Just as a point of interest, are any decent items in locked chests?

YES!!!! Make sure that you have at least once person with 60-80% pick locks. Or get the spell "Knock"

How many tries can you have at opening locked chests or doors?

As many as you want, normally.

And how do I backstab someone?

Ah....
1.)Be a thief, or a thief multi/dual class.
2.)Use a thief allowed melee weapon. (i.e. this won't work with a Fighter/thief using a bastard sword)
3.)Hide-in-Shadows or use the spell "Invisibility"
4.)Stand BEHIND the person you want to backstab.
5.)Hit them.
6.)You have to score a hit as usual, but you get a +4 to your roll if they didn't see you. ADVICE - now is the time to have drunken those potions of x-giant strength.
7.)Your damage will be multiplied up to a maximum of x5 depending on level. Sweet.

-Jam

[duke o' york]

That sounds tasty.
I had some fun with Imoen when I fought the ogre with the belts. I used her stealth and crept up to where the ogre was because I wanted to ensure that we wouldn't just come across him and find ourselves in a battle straight off. So far so good, but once she arrived in sight of the ogre, she decided to turn off stealth and fired an arrow at him. He er, noticed. I have no idea why this happened, but it was quite effectively because she just kept running away from him and he didn't bother hitting anyone else, so they could stand off him and fill him full of arrows.
I was a bit disappointed that she just lost stealth like that though. By the time he gave up the chase, he only had the time to whack Khalid and then die. I'll just keep practising with the locks then. Is there anything worth pickpocketing in the game?

[Jamski]

You have the AI turned on. Its the left-hand icon of the two in the bottom right corner. Your characters will attack any enemies they see unless they are busy doing something else. Either turn it off, or keep your scouting character moving.

BTW, you just discovered the technique that will see you though to the end of the game. The AI will chase the "selected target" character ignoring the rest of the team unless attacked in melee. Pincushion them

-Jam

[duke o' york]

With the AI on, then will the wizards cast spells as well as the archers firing arrows, or will I have to control the wizard to do that? I tried switching control of the character, but every time I went to do that the ogre would almost catch Imoen, and I had to keep her running.

[Jamski]

If you want your characters to do anything with the AI other than just use the weapon in hand on the nearest foe, you have to press "r" for the character sheet and then find the button that let's you adjust the scripts. I advise leaving them all on the default script though, and contraolling them manually, as the AI is very poor. (i.e. will cast charm spell on undead...)

DON'T FORGET TO PRESS SPACE TO PAUSE EVERY TIME YOU GIVE AN ORDER IN COMBAT!!!

-Jam

[duke o' york]

Yes, I just thought of that after I'd made my last post. It is all so simple now, but I got carried away amusing myself by playing chase with the ogre.
I can see that I've got a lot of practising to do all day tomorrow.

[Dis]

One thing about that dwarven fighter- he is evil. Evil I tells ya!

I would recommend keeping Khalid. But that's just me. If you don't ming evil guys- that dwarven fighter is good. I think you have to say the correct things to him to get him to join your party. I don't think that's too difficult- just remember he's a dwarf.

And later on you can get Minsc- who is a ranger, but essentually a fighter. He has a quest he needs to go on. I believe you only get 10 days to finish it, so keep that in mind. But 10 days should be plenty of time.

[Jamski]

Minsc suffers a bit from being a ranger, but he does have the highest strength in Baldur Gate, and he has... Boo!

-Jam

[duke o' york]

And what might Boo! be pray tell......?

I've taken the dwarf for the time being, but I'm going to boot him out, and the necromancer for that matter, as soon as possible. Likewise the rubbishy bard bloke. I've got him up front in the hope that he dies soon.

I'm going to have to go back to the Friendly Arms now to pick up some antidotes because noone in Beregost sells them and I always get poisoned by the spiders in the house. I am planning to kill one and then retreat, heal up and antidote myself before going in to polish off another, but I don't have enough antidotes to do this that often.
I'm also cheating because I got tired of being beaten to a pulp by the town guards and will now save before entering a house to break into chests so they don't turn up all the time. I've also done this before picking pockets and got a mysterious cloak from the bloke upstaris in the inn with ants in his pants. I don't know where to find one at the moment, but what would happen if I go to visit the chap upstairs in the other inn with a paladin in my party?
My party are rubbish by the way. I only managed to kill Silke (?) after a couple of reloads when she killed most of my party with spells. They're all still level one apart from Jaheira, and I really need to find somewhere to go and kill useless beasties for a bit to level up. How often will they respawn? Will I really have to wander around for ages until a new one comes back? How can I get good experience points for nothing (re: gold pantaloons), or for very little danger to my party?

[centrifuge]

re: getting beat up by the guards


Be careful with this, It will knock your reputation down to zilch and your party members will tell you to piss off and then leave you. If you want to rob places, don't do it when there are people in the house

[duke o' york]

I know that. Besides, I always got killed by the guards so it didn't affect my rep in the end anyway.
That's why I've taken to saving before going on looting sprees, in case the watch turn up. I send Imoen in by herself, and try to use hiding in shadows as often as possible - this certainly got me the cloak from that fat man, but I can't afford to find out what it does. Well, I could, but I'd prefer to spend the cash on other stuff. In fact, I suppose that I could find out and then reload to save 100g.

[Jamski]

Best way to get EXP early on is to cover all the maps near Beregost and kill everything you see with bows 'n' arrows. But Naskell is designed for levels 1-2 anyway, so you can just go for it.

Don't try using melee at level 1. You only get one or 1 & 1/2 attack per round, and you miss a lot. One hit, and you are dead at level 1. Bows have 2-3 attacks per round, miss about the same amount, and disrupt enemy spell casting. Plus if they are dead before they reach you, you can't get hurt.

As for Boo... wait and see

That cloak you got is one of the best items in the game, BTW.

-Jam

[centrifuge]

I can't remeber if this is the case for BG, but in many of these games you can't use an item unless it's been identified.

[Jamski]

In BG you can wear an item or wield a sword etc, but you can't use the special powers of a magic item till its been IDed. Don't bother IDing magic arrows for example, once you know what each type looks like, just use them.

-Jam