New all purpose Baldurs Gate thread

[duke o' york]

I hope not!
Thanks for coming back to visit us in this dark corner of the net Jamski.
I now have two characters with bows and one with a crossbow, so I'll probably set out and kill some stuff.

[Jamski]

You have a party of 5-6 level 1-2 characters and only 3 bows/crossbows/slings Doomed

/me continues his obsession with never getting anyone in the party hit ever *

-Jam

[duke o' york]

What can I say? I'm a complete slut and end up stringing poor adventurers along in my party, until they either die in the stead of a character I want to keep more, or I just tire of them, strip them of all their wordly possessions, and turf them out into the street.

[Jamski]

Yep. But that's roleplaying

-Jam

[Dis]

you can use melee chars in BG1. I did. I find using bows and arrows a pain in the ass . But you will probably need to heal more. Having a cleric or Jaheira is a necessity. I eventually dropped jaheira in favour of Branwen (though her fighting abilities suck the big one)

I had Minsc use a 2 hander iirc. And I had the paladin as well (adjantis I think is his name). I think he had some sort of 2 handed weapons as well. Imoen used a short bow. Dyanheir used a sling I believe. Branwen used a mace I believe. And myself (I was a bard), I used a bow or a melee weapons sometimes.

[Jamski]

Bows and arrows stop being a pain if you have the "Ease of use" pack installed. You buy the arrows in stacks of 100, and they stack up to 999 in one slot. At the beginning of the game fill up on arrows and then forget about them for the rest of the game. Sweet.

-Jam

[duke o' york]

Well I don't have any packs installed. The arrows thing sounds great though. I guess that they cost 10g for 100, rather than 1g.
I'm tempted to get some +1 arrows in, but I reckon that more money will be required. I can go and do the mission with the rich bloke that I've heard about, but I can't remember what it was now, and will have to go and have another look at my journal.
I have Imoen with a short bow, the rubbishy bard with a crossbow, my character has a composite bow and a bastard sword, the dwarf has his axe, Jaheira has a +1 staff and the necromancer has a dagger, but never gets to use it.
That ought to be enough firepower for the time being I'd have thought. Especially if I take the wand of magic missiles from Imoen and give it to Jaheira. In order to fill the baddies full of arrows before they even get a chance to attack me, how should I have the character scripts set up? I've got a feeling that Stumpy will just charge into the enemies waving his axe, and would prefer if he waited until they were full of arrows before doing anything stupid like that.

[Jamski]

Give "Stumpy" a bow as well, and switch to axe only when the enemy gets near.

Jaheira (IIRC) can't use the wand. Give her a sling. I tend to have her using a Sling+1 and Shield+1, with the Poisoned Dagger +2 as her melee option in the other slot. The staff uses both hands, so it can't be equipped with a sheild

Have the characters AI off. Just pause when you see an enemy and make the whole group shoot. Or use the default script and they will use the weapons in hand on any enemies they see.

-Jam

[duke o' york]

Rubbishy not-using-wand-characters!

How come Stumpy can use a bow? That's a little out of the ordinary, and not something I'd do if I was roleplaying him. Hell, I'm doing it anyway.

I may well have a little play around with the AI attitude settings this weekend, and hopefully learn more about the game.
Or I could just spend the entire weekend fruitlessly trying to kill them damned spiders!!!!

[Jamski]

I just assume he's holding it horizontally. Dwarfs tend to crossbows though in my mind. I can't imagine a dwarf NOT using a crossbow actually.

-Jam

[duke o' york]

This had slipped off the front page!

[mutter]I bet that's because there's a thriving BG thread at Eventis[/mutter]

Well I didn't make loads of progress this weekend, but I killed the spiders at last, got hold of the letter for the girl who lives in Beregost (haven't taken it back yet), and got Kivan in my party instead of the usless bard. (Guess which party member of reduced stature benefited from the bard's accidentally losing a crossbow when he was kicked out? ). I also took the stuff from the spiders' house back to the woman at the Friendly Arms, but because the character I used to talk to her wasn't holding all three items, I've still got a spider's body and the old bottle of wine, and didn't get all the XP for the quest. This is very rubbish, I'm afraid, and I should have had the whole lot for even having the items in my possession. Similarly, when I went to kill the spiders, I foolishly bought the antidotes in bulk, and was then unable to share them out among my party members, so a couple nearly died of poison because I had to transfer the whole lot between characters before the one that needed it could use it. This is a very irritating feature, but I'm going to buy things separately in future. Currently, I'm saved outside the High Hedge, having just polished off a party of 4 skeletons, but every time I go in, the Flesh Golem kills most of my characters before I can do anything to it. Is there a good way to kill it, or should I just keep firing a few arrows and then running out the door to the outside so I win by attrition?

[Jamski]

You can double click on stacked items to split them, silly

With the High Hedge, talk to the wizard QUICKLY (in the central room) before the golem attacks. It will then stay friendly. Be REALLY nice to the wizard to keep him friendly. The Golem can only be hurt by magical weapons, and is dead tough too.

With the woman at the FAI, just talk to her again, and then talk again, till she takes all the items. You need to start each conversation seperately. Silly thing really.

Oh, and why not start a BG thread in the Tea-room

-Jam

[duke o' york]

Well the manual is on the disk and I can't check these things that easily. Having said that though, I went through the relevant areas when I had this problem and couldn't find anything to split them up.
How odd - thanks for your help though.
I'll have to run through to the wizard and hope that I can talk to him before anyone gets into a fight. Would it be worth using just Imoen and sneaking into the wizard's chamber before talking to him, so that the other characters don't automatically start fighting the golem? Can you tell I couldn't be bothered to look at the different AI settings?

[Jamski]

Heh, just move the whole party straight into the wizards room, and talk to him. You'll have enough time.

-Jam

[duke o' york]

OK.
I was just hoping that I could get something good from Imoen's pink 18 charisma (does this mean "as a result of magic" cape?). She's now my shopaholic.