Oh No! Not another Baldur's Gate thread!

[duke o' york]

Where's Firewine, at least where's Firewine from where I am?

[Drogue]

Firewine is East of Beregost. Past the Ulcaster School ruins, you get Firewine Bridge. When in Beregost, go to the top floor of the run down wooden bar near next to where you fight Silke, and talk to the people sitting up there. They'll tell you tales of the Firewine Bridge.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Jamski
You're missing out on the most effective strats in the IE games. Hold 'em in place, then toast them.

• Use an invisible or stealthed character to locate the enemies.
• Move up wizard (for Web), another wizard (for Grease) and a ranger or druid (for Entangle) all nice low level spells.
• Keep the casters back so they cannot be seen by the enemies.
• Pause the game.
• Cast all the entangling spells at once, so they overlap, and cast AHEAD of the enemy group, so the area effects them, without moving your casters into their sight.
• Then release pause.
• Use the whole party to eliminate anyone that escaped being held who tries to rush you (hopefully noone unless you were careless and got seen.)
• Now pile on with the area effect spells, starting with "cloud" spells with long durations, while peppering lightly with arrows.

This techique will kill 95% of the monsters and bosses in BG1, BG2, IWD and IWD2. Spiders and Dragons may pose a problem though.

-Jam

I just use web and fireball.

And even without web, fireball is a very useful spell. You just have to get accustomed to the radius, and make sure you cast it away from your party. Make sure the ai is off when you use fireball. You eventualy learn where to cast it. Often I'll only use it once in a battle. After that eventually the enemy gets close to you. But one fireball is usually enough to kill or severely weaken many monsters. Later in BG2 there are better spells like Jamski said. Cloudkill, Horrid Wilting etc.

[duke o' york]

Once I get to the fireball level then I'm planning to equip Minsc with a ring of fire protection or something similar, and then cast it. This will let him run into the fray unharmed, toast the baddies, and let all the others stand back and fire arrows/slingshots in.
Is there anything wrong with these tactics?

Oh, yeah, and I'm off work until next Thursday and will get quite a bit of BGing in tomorrow. I'm off on "family business" with the duchess until Tuesday, but I've thought ahead and can play more BG next Wednesday too (we're doing a hit at Skanky Burns' bar ).

[Jamski]

What's wrong is a ring of fire protection only gives 50% fire resistance at the best, so you need to combine it with other items that give fire resistance.

Interesting to note, is that if you have more than 100% fire resistance, fire will HEAL you.



-Jam

[DrSpike]

That's silly.

[duke o' york]

Not as silly as having such a high constitution that you can heal yourself really quickly.
It's the same principle as using heal spells to damage the undead in various RPGs.

[DrSpike]

I think heal spells damaging the undead is much more rational than fire healing you. Once you hit resistance of 100% that should obviously be the limit.

[duke o' york]

That's the power of magic!

[Jamski]

Its a simple line in a script that subtracts damage from fire by the amount of fire resistance you have. Silly programme doesn't know better and applies negative amounts of damage to you.

In the game rules, it shouldn't happen, but its a nice trick vs firebreathing dragons

-Jam

[Drogue]

Originally posted by duke o' york
Not as silly as having such a high constitution that you can heal yourself really quickly.

Why is that silly, having more HP? Have I missed a trick?

Originally posted by duke o' york
It's the same principle as using heal spells to damage the undead in various RPGs.

Actually, that's a plot feature in BGII

My party's just done Larswood and is heading towards bandit camp. Is there any point doing Peldvale too, seeing that I can already go to the bandit camp? Anything of interest there, or anywhere else for that matter, that isn't an important map?

[duke o' york]

No Drogue, apart from getting more HP, a high (21+) constitution means that you get regenerative powers. The higher your constitution, the more you can regenerate, and quicker.
eg (as in, numbers not correct, Jamski will put them right ):
Con 24 = 3HP regained / game hour.

[Jamski]

Not an important map, but some good stuff to kill, as always

And Duck is correct, a high CON score will cause you to regenerate. A good trick is to cast DUHM with a already high CON score just before resting to heal all hit points in 8 hours

-Jam

[Drogue]

I didn't actually know that about CON, Is DoY right that it's 21+ CON? My main character's is 19, is there any other way to get it up perminantly (used the manual already)?

Jamski: Nice trick, although a bit cheesy, since DuHM shouldn't last 8 hours. I can't be bothered with maps just to kill things, unless there's some decent monsters (Golems, Sirenes, Basilisks, Wyverns, anything worth more than 1000 XP) or some decent magical items. I'll hit the XP cap before the end of the game, so extra XP isn't of concern. I have most of the magical items I want (waiting on Ankheg Plate, and money for Robe of Good Archmagi and Dagger of Poison). I just want to get on with the plot, since I'm enjoying that part, and get to BGII to see how my character duals, although I don't want to miss anything interesting.

When I get to BGII, I think I'll use Shadowkeeper to put the characters to how they were at the end of BGI, for example, I've put Jaheira and Minsc up in different attributes than they have in BGII, and so for continuity I'd like them to be like that. Although I'm tempted to turn Minsco into a dual wielding longsword man, rather than a two handed sword man, since I'll have Keldorn in my party. Although another bowman might be nice, and go with Lilacor. The fact I won't be able to use Celestial Fury is annoying too. Having Minsc with Celestial Fury and Daystar might be nice, and helps with undead killing, but having two people not able to use missile weapons is annoying.

What's bets to roleplay Minsc. I always thought of him as a two-handed sword wielding berzerker, but with the Ranger dual wield bonus, it seems that Rangers are meant to be dual wielded. His strength suggests large weapons, but his Ranger status suggest dual wield

[Jamski]

He's a strange one, is Minsc. No points in two-handed weapon, so I don't know where this idea of him as a bash-with-big-sword guy comes from... Its a shame not to use one of the Ranger's big advantages and dual wield him for cheap, though. And he can still use missile weapons, just you have to go into the inventory and swop them. Its a pain to do it all the time, but still...

If you go to Peldvale, there's some Elite Bandits who all carry a nice stack of +1 and Ice arrows, and some spiders too for the EXP.

-Jam