Baldurs Gate thread (Original)

Hey Holla Forums, I've finally decided to delve into the original BG. My previous experience was BG2, being a 10 yr old who had no idea how to even get out of the first dungeon.

Freeing Minsc was as far as I ever got, and I was unaware I could save the game so I always restarted it.

My shit childhood aside, I was hoping you guys could help me with a few things. I'm about 7 hrs in, at Beregost playing a human vanilla Paladin for my first play-through.

1) One thing I can't seem to find is the option to use lay hands (the paladin healing ability) I'm pretty sure I've got it, because I've seen my character use an action in combat to heal others. It's not a scroll in my inv, it's not in my "priest spells" book. Can I even use it myself out of combat? Or is it an auto-AI controlled thing? I've been all over google and beamdog forums but I can't seem to find a specific answer. Some people have said it unlocks at lvl 9 for Paladins, but other people say the game is capped at lvl 8? So how the fuck does that make sense?

2) Some of my party members killed others. I had the two starting evil companions. Xzar and his halfling thief. Anyway at some point the Elf male I recruited in the Friendly Arm Inn insulted the halfling thief and then a combat was triggered. Xzar and his halfling were slaughtered by the two good companions, however after the fight they then left my party…

I've reloaded a previous save and ditched the two evil characters, so it's not really an issue I suppose anymore, however I was just wondering is this normal? The fight was really out of the blue, I've read that companions insult each other all the time, but never read anything about them fighting.

3) Any other general advice/tips/info you can give me on BG so I don't end up breaking my game?

I really want to finish this and then start number 2.

Also I'm playing Enhanced Edition, I'm unaware if this information is relevant or not to my previous questions.

Thanks Holla Forums

Other urls found in this thread:

volafile.io/r/_rpsmO
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Speaking of infinity engine can someone give me a good build to solo pillars of eternity path of the damned?

Abilities are different from spells. At least for the main character. You should have an abilities icon in the bottom right(?) of the hud. The main character gets healing spells regardless of his class in that menu.
Honestly the level cap in the original is the biggest problem apart from the general limitations and flaws of the infinity engine games. You won't get any cool spells relegating the spell casters to support unless you willing to break the game on its back(which you pretty much have to if you want to enjoy yourself)

I couldn't get part the White March Pt 2, so I doubt I can help you there user.


I must admit I'm not a a fan of the combat system (ironically the same system in PoE). I much prefer the combat system in Div; OS or the original Fallout tbh.

Still thanks for you help user, I'll check my HUD for that abilities icon. I have noticed an icon before, but I swear it was greyed out and I could not access it.

Either way I'll check again, cheers.

Question 1

The Lay on hands ability is a special ability, just click the abilities buttom (the one in the far right, a cross-shaped star)

if it's not there, probably you're using a paladin sub class that don't have it (inquisitor, undead hunter etc)

2) Yes, there is some NPCs who don't stand each other. Xzar and Montaron are hated by most good alignes npcs, you should get attention to their alignments.


Question 3

Unlike BG 2, the majority of the battles in the BG 1 requires strategy, OP. Pre buffering, hit and run tactics, consumable special itens (arrows of dispelling, potions of mirroned eyes etc). It's silly to say that to you, but,

Also, small folks are pretty OP in this game. halflings, gnomes and above all, dwarves get bonus in their saving throws basing in their constitution. A dwarf with a 19 constitution (that can reach 20 in the game) turns himself into a mountain.

OP classes in BG 1:

Fighter/cleric
Paladin Inquisitor
Ranger Archer
Dwarven Defender (in TOB, DDs can get healed instead of losing HP when beated by certain weapon types.


Also, don't buy nothing from beamdog, piracy is the way. The company must die after all they have done with that marvelous game. They should put SJW agenda in their asses.

1: there's an abilities icon on your action bar. it's the 4-pointed star on the right

2: HAHA yeah. Once upon a time it was assumed in tabletop that PCs didn't always have to get along either. Chalk this one up to good scenario design. This can be thwarted in a couple of ways:

ingame, the paladin companion Ajantis will sometimes attack some of your evil party members. However, you can take control of him and move him to restrain him. Will still happen on occasion. I'm fairly sure that other infights, all of which are character specific to my knowledge, are uncontrollable
out of game, BGTweaks is a program for modifying certain gameplay aspects. Among other things, you can turn off fighting. You can even leave their grumbling at eachother on. This program will also let you keep your party members when they would otherwise leave due to reputation (evil characters hate goody-two-shoes parties with 18+ reputation, which is a pity considering that the best cleric and best romance in BG2 is evil)

3: lets see what I can come up with:
your party members are mostly pretty average except at the one or two things they're supposed to be good at. This is not a flaw but an opportunity to tailor them yourself. Magic items augment your guys where they are lacking. Need strength on that aforementioned best cleric? Give her gauntlets of ogre strength for an instant 18
manuals of stat gain are rare and should always be used on your hero (unless you're doing a certain lategame quest where you have to give a priestess a manual of wisdom. But there's like 3 of them ingame so don't worry about it). Long term, I like to take the same character through the game a few times (export them near the end of the game from the character bio menu and import them on a new game) beefing them up to max scores

Tips:
I haven't played in a while, so that's all I could remember.

Gonna hijack the thread for a question semi-related to Baldur's Gate: in particular the multiplayer.
Let's say that I managed to fuck up directplay and I have no means to repair/reinstall windows: can I fix it?
Is there a download in some old repository that I missed? Can I just copy-paste files from another pc?

Thanks for your help user.


I'm trying, and my characters surname is Gitgud ironically.


Can you elaborate? Has Beamdog changed dialogue or elements of the original game to serve an SJW narrative? I might pirate the original if Enhanced edition ends up becoming (((Enhanced Edition.)))


Ah thanks also to you user, that post was very informative, thanks alot.


Might have to start an evil character for a second play-through

Alot of that was good advice, but thanks for these 2 especially user.

no worries, she'll stick with you if you don't go too high reputation (and come to think of it I don't think she's ever abandoned me short of 20 rep). She owes you and she knows it

and in BG2 you can tenderly romance her even with a lawful good paladin. And while it's a minor spoiler (nothing story specific, I promise), you can get her to shift her alignment to neutral in Throne of Bhaal

They haven't changed anything in the original game as far as dialogue goes, its just the companions they've added obviously stand out and not in a good way. I make an exception for Baeloth though, since he's actually entertaining.

Its Siege of Dragonspear that has the SJW shit, so feel free to completely ignore it and skip over to 2 after beating 1.

The new companions also have sjw leanings in 2. Lesbian romances, etc
Nothing as bad as Saerileth but…

I'll have to say that they're worse. Don't have any pictures of romances/dialogues of these guys so I hope some other user provides them

Can anyone spoonfeed me a link for the enhanced edition of the original? All the usual places I check have the original and sequel but the original EE links are all dead for some reason.

Alright, to summarize everything you need to know about EE


The Good


The Bad
I mean, you'll like most of these NPCs except for you know who in the basilisk area, and the worse problems
Luckily, there is a mod that restores those classic BG cutscenes

But to summarize just how BAD things got with this past the momentary lapse of success and respect the team had for doing the Enhanced editions of BG:

For starters, they've released non-working updates for BG:EE and 2 as well as what is the most horrid thing on the face of the earth, Siege of Dragonspear, which can be summarized as "We'll hire the old voice actors, make a shitty game that holds to "modern" standards of hour gameplay instead of the kind of time it would take for just about anyone to play through BG, shovel in what can only be described as the awful marxist SJW commie writing of Dragon Age 2, Post glory Bioware, and make gamegators check their privalege by getting Minsc to talk shit whilst still sounding as cucked as pathfinder transsexual writing to boot.

It was really bad. Did I forget to mention that it actually didn't work either? Didn't sell, and no ammount of incompetence fixz this awful DLC and the subsequent 2.something updte for BG:EE and 2. Oh right, and they had the literally pasted from Guild wars 2/Dragon Age two talk to this character that took a gender chaning potion to change their sex and tell everyone about in that really, really, really bland way.

That's not even counting how Dorn goees from your muder bro to as Mad as MMOboys homosexual skyrim Machinimas, who literally forms an AIDS pact with you as you proclaim your homo-love with him to your enemies.

No I'm not exaggerating that, that's what happens.

A good reason why you can't find proper BG2 and Dragonspear torrents is because the games themselves DO NOT work and the update patches for the GOG versions DO NOT EVEN FUCKING UPGRADE you from even the earliest release version og BG:EE

So should you be playing EE?

Well, if you want the extras, that's fine, and mod-wise you're really set, except for BGT which is a mod that merges BG1 with BGII's engine, and lets you play through both games uncontested.

Well, BG:EE got that too! Except, it didn't because their version of it is barely complete and requires the non-working 2.something patched version of BG:EE 1 & 2 and Siege of dragonspear.

Yeah, you can't escape it.

Mods?

Whew, trust me, I've downloaded everything I need that isn't those massive overhauls and the 420Drizztsaga or follower additions, but the must haves include as thus as I read from my downloads folder:

You first need to go and make your portraits folder in you BG:EE folders located in your documents for custom Portraits, then you need to have the file Override in you BG:EE directory for Mods.

Portraits in BG:EE are different from the ones in the classic because they're resized from larger images, so you only need what would be Portraitexample_L.bmp for it to work, but the old method still works.

But in regards to portrait overhauls, I'll be honest with you, it's a matter of customization and quite frankly you need to do it manually, so it's a matter of finding the packs of portraits you want and dragging them to your override folder in your game directory.

But to start you off, you want the Picture Standard, which is a portraits pack of all default game portraits at a higher res, including supplied with alternatives also, you'll want All of the defaults, the the Followers file, and the one used for Saverok in the alternative file. Additionally, there is another pack of self drawn portraits that are really, really good, and Unfortunately I've forgotten it's name, but trust me, you'll know what it is when you see it, because it's the only one that has a good portrait for that blue dragon Bhaalspawn's humanoid form.

Your best bet is getting whatever tool it is that lets you view who has what portraits assigned to NPCs so you know what you want to replace ingame with homemade portraits or the like

Lastly, on portraits, you'll find an shitload of mods that give Non portrait NPCs portraits and ones that keep fucking asking you to switch between BG2 portraits or Siege of dragonspear or some other portraits you've not seen which is annoying as all hell.

I've yet to find what the definitive mod that enables Non-portrait npcs to have them is, but in all cases, avoid using installers that try to affect your follower portraits, because you'll just fuck up your game that way, you need to honestly (asides from non NPC portraits given portraits mods) do that thing manually.

...

Forget EE.

You now have BG1+2 completely bugfixed and compatible with high resolution monitors.

One thing to note about BG mods is that some are .exe files.
This is a ruse, open these files with 7zip and take the shit inside and move it directly to your game directory, you'll thank me later.

Baldur's Gate Unfinished business
Bunch of fun uncut content, I won't elaborate, it's like those cut content restored mods you'll find for bethshit, no reason to not have this.

Baldur's Gate NPC Project
Makes NPCs do more stuff akin to BG2 in addition to more quests, banter, and a whole ot of other fun stuff, with some optionals and fixes.

Baldur's Gate NPC Project Music
Compliments the above added content with music to fit the mood. I belive it works with the romantic encounters mod also.

Baldur's Gate Romantic encounters
Spices things up, a bit, some content is hit & miss, and it doesn't border welcome to the horrible SJW fetish zone too badly, and isn't just text fluff, some quests and other stuff to do with this, and it goes hand in hand with other mods I'm going to mention

Klatu fixes and tweaks
Extactly what it says, make sure to read this shit carefully as you could fuck your shit up and might have to reinstall, but there is SOME stuff here you need.

Saradas Revisioned Shapeshifter
Lycans are no longer shit, Shapeshifting has numerous fixes across multiple mods, but this is one you can trust in acpplication.

Baldur's Gate Mini Quests and Encounters
Adds more quests and encounters, all stuff is good, trust me.

Club of Pain and Distinguishable Clubs
Makes clubs more unique in ingame appearance, and the other is a simple weapon addition. Make sure to get the right files for these though. (pic related.)

Minor NPC portraits for BG:EE
This is the mod I'd recommend over the others that just so happen to have the same option without satisfactory description, it's better to use this one as a safety precaution.

Critter parts
Makes certain items harvestable from kills, I.E wolf pelts.

BGEE Classic Movies
Get this for the old cutscenes used in BG1.

Animal companions
For Rangers and optionally druids, only slight limitation of this is that the pet name is fixed from installation so when you get it ingame it'll have said name you gave it. For conveniences sake try to use a name that works in any situation.

That's it for general non-intrusive content.

Now I'll talk about optionals which I would have but here, but they're otherwise simple expansions of character content and roleplay for the better of in-depth play.

Lastly, for your interest I just remembered what that other Portrait pack you wanted was: It was Atraport, or something along those lines.

My last suggestion is to get any and all portraits used in Neverwinter Nights (including the ones you can't use) and using them for BG:EE also.

Lastly, if you want to get BG:EE1 BG:EE2 and BG1:O and BG2:O they can be found in the large GOG games complete part 1 torrent, which I will generously give to you over this volafile.

volafile.io/r/_rpsmO

Soundsets are up to you to install, but above all you want to aim for what is not available for use in the default game, then get what you want from the second, then what is present in Neverwinter Nights 1&2, both Icewind Dales, and possibly Planescape:Torment before you bother with anything else.

Now then the other benefit of BG:EE is online play.

So uh, arrange a group on Holla Forums I guess.

You have to rest to be able to use per day abilities like Lay on Hands, keep that in mind too.


For BG1, buy every potion of MIrrored Eyes you find, you'll most definitely want them if you have the expansion installed. Potions and buffs/debuffs in general make a humongous difference in your combat abilities and unlike most other RPGs, the overwhelming majority of enemies - bosses included - don't have random immunities to debuff.

For BG2, make sure to install the BG2fix and BG2tweak mods before you play. Use the original version and stay away from the EE at all costs. There's install guides that you can google. For BG2 NPCs will also end up fighting unless you disable that with BG2tweak. The most important thing to keep in mind for BG2 is to do EVERYTHING you can in the first town before continuing with the story. There's 4 romance options, worth seeing what they're about at the very least - use a guide for them because some of the options you need to take to advance the romance are bullshit.

Tehre are some nice mods for BG2

I think there was a re-balance mod that changed how armor work and removed all items/weapon limitations that don't make sense.

you could also try the Holy Avenger Kit + Extra. The Extra stuff is nice and the kit is pretty powerful

bump for more active discussion

Any chance we could actually get this going?

Only if everyone's installed what I mentioned in the general section.

I've a few more mods uploaded, but If I had to quickly summarize what should be got it's the Pale master Sorceror kit, and the Arcane Archer kit.

Psionics, as always is a fucking mystery to me.

So uh, OP, you still around?

Anyone else have this bug?:
Spell sequencers are not selectable in the special abilities, but you still have them memorized. Since it's still memorized, you can't cast a new one to fix it. The only cure is to kill that person (thus unmemorizing the sequencers), revive them, make a new sequencer, then cast the "fake" sequencers until they're all gone because they weren't actually removed. You can have multiple sequencers of the same type, but only one is real.

It's damn annoying. It only happens with classes that can't select Special Abilities all the time, like Edwin and Aerie. Imoen and Jan are thieves so they can almost always open up that menu to select traps. This happened in two different playthroughs, but I only now figured out the solution which is to kill the person etc. that I mentioned earlier.

Maybe he's dead.

If he did he should reroll as an Inquisitor.

Yup on phone now.

Lay hands was in tge bottom right. I thouhgt the star was a compass…

A compass in an isometric game? C'mon, user. That's just silly.

FUCKING KILL YOURSELF

Yeah I know but I thought it was like a compass pointer that was another way to get to the map.

At this point maybe I should take 's advice.

bitch I didn't just give you everything on vola to bail out now, you are playing pre-total shit BG:EE


Don't make me cast charm on you.

...

Bump.
Someone tell me, is the rest of Siege of Dragonspear's writing as bad as that bit with the tranny character? Part of me wants to play it just to see how bad it is.

You tell me.

It's pretty bad.

They also make the game look like dogshit, I don't know but they made the UI even worse.

where is the porn?

After playing through it once, I just try to ignore the writing and focus on killing shit

the fights are good at least
on Insane, they're like IWD-style hordes of enemies and they're smarter than the "attack nearest" AI of BG1 and 2

Just as I thought.
Maybe I'll watch a YT video instead.


Here.


At least they're competent enough to do decent combat, then.

Not OP.
I started BG2 a while ago and playes it with a (dragonborn?) sorcerer (the non scroll mage).

I think I have EE as I got it on a sale on steam about 2 years ago.

I played it for around 30 hours but I didnt really like it tbh.

Should I re start it?

No.

At some point you should realise that you should stop doing things you don't enjoy.

You only failed mentioning the fucked up balance, the added NPCs being shit and that they added more bugs then they ever fixed.
There's also straight up stealing from mods and failing to match their quality


>not evan's spiked tentacles of forced intrusion

Not OP but I have to ask..where can I find a pirated copy of the original? Everywhere I look points me to the EE version.

Just to update, I have BG2 with the Throne of Baal Expansion. Running a Thief-Swashbuckler

Wait, seriously? I never heard about that.

...

Most torrent sites should have a gog version available for download.


AFAIK they stole stuff directly from the BG2tweak and BG2fix mods. But I don't follow the IE modding scene, so don't quote me on that.

Are you retarded? BG2 required far more strategy than 1 because of the levels of spellcasters and special abilities high-level monsters/npcs had.

No. It's overall rather average. Main villain and her motivation plus the horde following her are illogical and pretty stupid.

I kind of agree with him. Yeah there are lots of high level spellcasters but in vanilla they're retarded. If you have Keldorn he's enough to take like a room full of spellcasters. Whereas in vanilla you and your party is very weak, so you have to use strategy. Though again you can just abuse the stupid AI and use shit like Sleep.

Though even in unmodded I remember having hard time in BG2's tower, especially its last level just before the bost. I spent really long time there

in BG1* of course

this is literally all of bg1's strategy. also bg2's had a lot more immunities/special skills, like iron golems only being hurt by blunt weapons +2 and up, enemies dispelling your buff spells, mindflayers using confusion, vampires hitting you with level drain etc. etc.

PALADIN!

Current patch SJW of eternity a paladin or ranger are the 2 most powerful classes.

Most of their art assets (including their resolution patch 1.1+) came from 1pp, or rather one member of the group which they later screwed and deprived of any credit


Them epic feat spells :^)


Bullshit. In BG1 you actually need to account for stuff like enemy archers doing work, every mage mob evil look potentially capable of gibbing your people, and faggots like the Greywolf will wreck you unless you go out of your way to bully him.

In BG2 you've got great gear from the getgo, swarm spells will fuck 90% of vanilla casters, ress spells and abilities are a dime a dozen and generally speaking the PC alone can ruin people. also so much more cheese


BG2 had +5 weapons available within the first ten minutes. Also melfs, magic arrows, disconjution/enhancement spells…

Absolutely nothing stopped you from abusing their abilities or say the abilities of creatures immune to stat drain with shifting. Also play a zerker and you're literally immune to most of that shit, there's like only imprisonment and a few save type spells.

Why romance a slut? She has the most beaten up box known to man and enough baggage to break a packmules back….

But she'd be good just for a rut.

BG's doesn't have strategy. It's dependent on you having knowledge and knowing which tactics work best on specific enemies. And in BG1, praying for good rolls.

Flayers could easily be killed with summon spam, Incendiary Cloud and other static aoe spam, you could use that one cleric buff or potion to become immune to their stuns, you could spam potions to get your Int really high so you wouldn't die from being dumb, you could abuse backstab/mislead, you could use some of the transformation spells and you could just use Berserkers.


Knowledge, understanding, preparation and application of tactics are all parts of strategy.

Pretty much. And knowledge, understanding, preparation and application of tactics are all parts of bait.

Liches are kinda nasty but again, nothing unbeatable even if you don't cheese.


You an Aeriefag or something?

A lot of encounters can be trivialized with a single spell or item. Basilisks are trivialized with petrification protection or undead summons. Mages are trivialized with magic immunity potions or scrolls. Vampires are trivialized with negative plane protection. Every undead from skeletons to demiliches are trivialized with a protection from undead scroll. Beholders are trivialized with a reflecting shield, or a reflecting cloak.

Guess that's another reason to dislike Beamdog, then.

There's like 2 magic immunity and 2 protection from undead scrolls, the shield that protects you from beholder is obviously broken and probably shouldn't have been put in the game in the first place.

But that's all besides the point I was making. Point was that saying strategy isn't present in the BG games is asinine. Nothing more, nothing less.

A lot of these enconuters you need to be aware of them beforehand so you can properly prepare. If you rest and save a lot you could probably do it all the time, but I don't like to do that. If there was a way to stop people from abusing rest, then it might not be as big of a deal.
Same goes for traps. Spike traps are ridiculous, but hilarious. They do so much damage, and you can place more than one right on top of each other.


The shield itself is also broken in the literal sense. It doesn't always reflect attacks back, but just absorbs them. My whole first playthrough it was only absorbing attacks.

Does it actually matter? I think beholders are immune to their own attacks anyways.

They aren't. It started working on my second playthrough and the beholders kill themselves in various ways. Direct damage, or even petrification.

Well…time to Lay on Hands on that body

When did Aerie become so hot

what drugs you on, son?

As soon as you leave tutorial dungeon

1. Go to the slums inn
2. Talk to Lord Firkaag for his quest
3. Go to Lord Firkaag's place
4. Go through his dungeon
5. Kill Firkaag
6. Retrieve Carsoymr

When the artists doesn't fuck up the eyes/face, that's when

a) That's not 10 minutes. Just reaching the dungeon and going trough it is gonna take you a while
b) Good luck doing that with the starter gear and level. (unless you cheese)

Finally, people accept the true splendor that is Aerie.

Git gud. Also get dungeon-b-gone or faster initial dreams/cutscenes

Other noteworthy shit you can get in 10 minutes or less: Celestial Fury piss easy with something like snare cheese, Frostreaver with it's acid damage and the Staff of Rynn OK, it's +4 so sue me
And that's in addition to Seeking Sword, archer bonus and other kit shit, IWD cheatsy items from the promenade, summoned weapons and effects say the gnoll from the polymorph has a +3(5) weapon

You are a faggot if you play EE instead of vanilla first btw.

You're not doing your argument a favor. We are talking about a normal playtrough, not speed-runnign with pre-knowledge and exploits, you stupid faggot.

What argument, that skipping or speeding up intro text scenes you've seen a few gorillion times is a good idea? Or the one about BG2 being a high level campaign?

Then again you're just throwing cheap bait and trying to shit up the thread and I'm playing the seriousfag and repeating helpful shit I already said in fifty other threads. C'est la Holla Forumsie