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Aec'letec is a twelfth bastard until you try snapping off cloudkill and running away giggling whilst your silent but deadly fart gas solves 90% of that fight for you.
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Aug 29, 2017 16:49
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A buddy asked for a guided tour of co-op BG2/ToB not knowing quite how insane I get about these games. a few questions: 1. Are mods (no content mods, i'm thinking the EE version of the gibberlings tweakpack at the most exotic) something that get run from the host, or do both host and client need to have it installed with the same settings? Or is it just too fussy to get working in MP? Mostly I just want the poor guy (who did not listen to a goddamn thing i told him about character creation) to be able to backstab as a F/T with a halberd. 2. Is there a way to organically start Black Pits 2 from SoA (in which case hell yea I'll take that) or is it just gatekeepered behind importing a character? Ideally I'd like to take my SoA party into black pits before ToA for maximal munchkin funtimes, but if there's no way to do that organically and continuously ingame then I kinda don't care. Chubby Henparty posted:Edit: Gone down a Bigworld hole 
Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Jun 3, 2018 |
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Jun 3, 2018 18:22
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Well that's once less thing to worry about. Is there a more graceful way to get backstabs working with non-thief weapons other than installing Level 1 NPCs or whatever? Otherwise, put a pin in that, too. e; bike tory posted:If you're doing MP you both need to have the mods installed. Also I'd probably avoid them because it is always finnicky and there's my answer. homie shoulda listened, but nooooooo he's gotta gimmick. There's a point in halberd proficiency he's not getting back short of EEkeeper. Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Jun 3, 2018 |
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Jun 3, 2018 23:41
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PurplieNurplie posted:I mean that's basically what the BG Trilogy is on a modded playthrough, assuming SCS or the equivalent. I really like the idea of SCS and precasted protections and reworked AI that plays like someone who understands 2.5ed rules like a decade+ long player and BG1 style spawns where every summon spell--which the AI uses as well--spawns a Warcraft 3 control group's worth of units. But honestly my mostly vanilla EE playthrough is probably the first one I'll actually finish since the Bush administration, just because I can memorize and cast spells other than Breach and Pierce Magic and Dispel Magic and True Sight and and and and and and Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Jun 24, 2018 |
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Jun 24, 2018 05:43
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Grevlek posted:For a first time playthru, should I have just made a single character for my party and used the NPCs that show up? Yes. This game is the beginning of Bioware's whole schtick, including the PC being a blank slate and riffing off Bioware Characters.
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Jul 1, 2018 02:19
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That fight is brutal because except for Bassileus (if you found him) or the High Hedge surroundings, that's your first time getting really swamped with skeletons on all sides, which means its a dire situation where sleep for once won't actually be your get out of jail free card. Hope you're a level 3 cleric so you can Turn them and buy a round of breathing room!  If its a lot of small things: sleep If its a big thing: hold person If it's a massive thing: greater malison, hold person, and IRL prayer. I'm in the Cloakwood Mines now and deep in the woods traipsing down memory lane breaking the game far harder than I could've back in the day. Y'know how in these games you hit That Point? The point where you stop being afraid of the game and the game starts being afraid of you? this is me hitting that point and mostly soloing the bandit camp with my PC. Potions: Use 'em or lose 'em.
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Jul 2, 2018 06:07
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Mordaedil posted:Imoen is the first party member you have and a thief that can unlock containers and disarm traps, if they thought she'd be unpopular, they have failed game design 101. They arguably literally did for most of BG1. The founding members of Bioware were 3 doctors who liked playing D&D and while they got really good at what they did (Durlag's Tower speaks for itself) you can tell BG1 is a freshman effort. It's a gigantic sprawl of like 3 dozen wilderness maps, many of which contain roughly 3 "events" per, and the carrot at the end of a longass stick that stretches through four chapters of game is a colossal and totally unlabeled and non-signposted urban sprawl any one of whose sectors contains half as much content in terms of quests and items as exists in the entire rest of the gameworld. Nobody at all would deal with that in 2018. If steam completion achievements are any indicator, few have. I'm having so much drat fun with my BGEE run, but I'm doing a character that wouldn't have been possible in old school BG1--dual wielding half orc fighter/cleric multiclass--and using the munchkin Beamdog mage NPCs and sometimes I'll be clicking quick through the looting quickbar and it'll hit me: back in the day I beat this game in 640x480 resolution, maximum 20 arrows per stack, no containers, 80,000xp cap, NPC placement that made 3/4ths of them even more useless than they already are, and a maximum of 4,000 pathing nodes on a map. thieves maze? firewine dungeon? you think they're bad now?? imagine if those teeny tiny hallways were also pachinko machines. in 640x480. e; You can't buy a phone with a screen that lovely today!!! It is a testament to how solid the core concept of the game and games are that I put up with that, though how or why I did I cannot rightly say. Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 08:35 on Jul 2, 2018 |
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Jul 2, 2018 08:26
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KKKLIP ART posted:Just did my first full runthrough of Durlag's Tower and dang it kicked my butt a whole lot. Also Durlag got the raw end of the stick, dude just wanted to put down some roots. Pretty much no other game than BG has given me the feeling of trucking along with an ongoing narrative, and then climing into a hole in the ground, and emerging a literal month later with a thousand-yard-stare, a million XP, and a glittering set of new items stained by the fluids of abominations.
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Jul 22, 2018 21:03
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BiggestOrangeTree posted:There's nothing you can say about Elminster in this game that you can't say about Tom Bombadil I mean, when you ain't wrong, you ain't wrong. Node posted:I normally have played Baldur's Gate games with groups that have light amounts of magic potential. I'd like to change that this time around, and have probably three casters in my current BG2 EE run. I have Jaheira and Aerie but I'm not sure which spells are the best to use and when. Does anyone have some simple advice for getting the most out of them, which spells are good to cast and when, and which are garbage, etc.? Jan is gently caress-busted excellent with Mislead (free invis every round for the duration unless someone casts True Sight, with a strength item/pot and Assassinate and Improved Haste he gets truly silly) and also covers the Rogue slot. Jaheira with Belm in the offhand and a solid main-hand, two weapon mastery, the ring of Gaxx for Improved Haste, a strength item (or potion) and Ironskin is the best non-PC tank in the game who is also a crit-striking cuisinart more deadly in melee than even epic-leveled Korgan. With the Robe of Vecna, the Amulet of Power, the Staff of the Magi, Improved Alacrity, and pause-on-cast enabled, Aerie can empty the entire spellbook of an epic level cleric AND and epic level wizard in under a single real-time second of animation frames and then Wish for a rememorized spellbook with a Wisdom potion.
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Aug 25, 2018 02:08
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you have not meaningfully played this game until casting improved alacrity and machinegunning the Chromatic Demon with eight lvl 30 Fire Arrows. *looks at ice chunks on the floor* oh. I'm sorry. Were you supposed to be some kind of climactic encounter or something? Sorry. Im soryr.
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Aug 25, 2018 02:30
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Node posted:I meleed Kangaxx to death with whirlwinds, improved haste, and a few dispels. I had to reload a few times because he kept imprisoning my main character. Improved haste is kind of a waste with whirlwind, especially if you have an oil of speed or lvl3 haste instead, since whirlwind is just "10 attacks per round, no matter what, period" and improved haste is mostly for getting 8-10 attacks per round on your dual wielders and then using the HLA crit strike to melt things even faster than you're already doing. As you're finding out however, you don't really need to sweat it too hard. It's just fun to make Disgaea numbers in late game BG.
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Sep 4, 2018 20:49
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Well, the series ends, for one
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Sep 9, 2018 20:40
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Entropy238 posted:I'm getting the Baldur's gate itch again I got into The City and got caught between Lothander's Geas and lawyering the precise time for Imoen to do the thieves guild stuff but really really need to get back to it because godDAMN I was having Too Much Fun with it.
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Oct 17, 2018 20:55
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I was not expecting to agree with that sentiment at the start of my playthrough, but yeah. I kinda do.  "native" 1080 and scrolling zoom does quite a bit for taking the Suck out of chapters 2-4 in BG1, where if it weren't for prior series familiarity and mods that auto waypointed most places of interest I'd probably already have thrown in the towel in chapter 5. There is so much poo poo happening all the time, and its hard to keep track of!
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Oct 17, 2018 21:57
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Edwin holding the amulet of power and vecna's robes throws on improved alacrity and never casts anything other than Spellstrike into Khelben's Warding Whip into All The Breaches, Jaheira runs interference on demons with Ironskin, improved haste critical strikes, viconia summons a celestial who immediately casts globe of blades and becomes a better version of viconia, your PC and Sarevok hit things and try not to die. Minsc will also be present.
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Oct 21, 2018 22:30
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Suspicious posted:Edwin can't equip any amulet gently caress, you're right. Whatever, the robes are the source of most of the casting time reduction  I'm in chapter 7 of BG1 and ready to to TotSC stuff, guess I have to take my fighter/cleric through the entire series as "punishment" because it has clearly been too long.
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Oct 22, 2018 17:46
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I really liked the idea of SCS but the execution just made me exhausted to play. I love the AI changes but all the difficulty tweaks make me need a nap after every "filler" encounter, and every significant one requires the deployment of a full spellbook.
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Oct 22, 2018 19:06
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pmchem posted:BG2:EE question Nope and yep, respectively. Thats a 100% legit thing to do that many also do for that exact reason. The first floor is a mood-setter rather than an outright challenge, and the exit is easy enough to reach. Speaking of the other greatest dungeon in the series, wow Durlag's Tower is a lot more insane than I remembered. Literally. Durlag was a madman. The pack of gnolls on the third floor exterior do a good job evoking the stronghold from Chapter 2, and providing a nice contrast to "The Room Where Fireballs Explode Every Round For No Reason, Hope You Got Haste." The sparring dummies as door controls in the second level was not intuitive at all, but all the rest of it is 100% on point. Its not just that the levels are good and the atmosphere a great transition from "spooky dungeon" to "monument to utter madness", its that the arrangement and layout of them walk you through a story of an adventurer who pushed around too many of the wrong kind of people. EE improvements made it far, far more pleasant to play as well.
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Oct 28, 2018 18:24
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Durlag's Tower is an excellent dungeon, and the Aec'Letec fight back in Ulgoth's Beard, as well as all the backstabbing assassins the cult deploys around you, is loving loving loving loving loving dumb. If there was a reservation in my mind about not installing the improved AI in SCS on this playthrough, this quashed it. At least in pen and paper modules you get to roll perception for a chance for your backline to live. Nope, because they spawn in and because True Sight isn't a thing in BG1 you just get to eat a whole bowl of poo poo unless you precast stoneskin. Oh my goodness I'm salty. I'm super ready to crush the ending of chapter 7 at least.
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Oct 29, 2018 00:54
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bike tory posted:Yeah the invisible assassins that spawn in Ulgoth's Beard are probably the worst thing in the entire BG series imo. I'd slog through the entire length of firewine ruins and thieves maze three times to avoid that poo poo. I was very very upset the second time after beating the demon one of my party exploded into a ghast with no chance to raise meaning I had to do it again. 
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Oct 29, 2018 01:34
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It would've been nice to have the chance to take the potion case full of like 45,000 gold of drinks and the ammo belt full of over 100k gold in arrows out of Imoen's inventory before beginning Siege of Dragonspear. I would have liked to take those into the expansion.
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Oct 29, 2018 06:08
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I modded it in somewhere, somehow. I don't remember if it was the tweakpack or EEkeeper, this particular playthrough took a long long time to finish IRL.
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Oct 29, 2018 16:10
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If you don't let Imoen cool her heels in Spellhold for two ingame years while you exhaust every piece of content in Chapter 2 then you're playing BG2 wrong in a very categorical sense.
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Oct 31, 2018 19:39
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Siege of Dragonspear has really incongruous writing compared to the rest of the BG series, but dang I dig the encounter design and AI implementations. It's just enough elements from SCS to feel good, new, and challenging, without any of the bullshit in the Ulgoth's Beard finale. just really unfortunate writing tonality and VO choices, though, as well as a very regrettable preference for scripted sequences whose brevity in the OG games were a strength.
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Nov 7, 2018 19:54
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Goddammit Siege of Dragonspear why do you have to make loving you so difficult. The atmosphere is SUPERB with areas like refugee flooded Baldur's Gate and a temple to Bhall riven by illithid plotting that are genuinely enjoyable to walk through, yet the writing is uneven--ranging from Pretty Good to hilariously gently caress-awful. The quests and encounters are really great, until you bug one out due to a combination of an over reliance on the IE's "use scenery" action, or utter disconnection between weird responses to inscrutably worded dialogue selections. The set piece chapter finales are epic homages to the excess of Throne of Bhaal, and they hang the entire thing on keeping Khalid alive. *in extremely benihana voice* Khalid? fuckin' Khalid!?! Are you loving kidding me Khalid, and he's level two and has no items because everyone in their right mind kicks him out of their party for being an anchor even in early BG1 and the quest fails instantly if he dies and his uncontrollable AI script charges into swarms and swarms of enemies WHY BEAMDOG WHY WOULD YOU BE SO CRUEL
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Nov 13, 2018 19:38
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they literally bring back a BG1 side character with Raise Dead in the prologue, and joke about how death is impermanent in Faerun! Just let him die and have Jaheira rez him or whatever, and to hell with her reasons for not doing it again in BG2! It's like having an escort quest for a kamikaze pilot!! It's definitely making me appreciate BG2's--and I cannot believe I'm using this word in relation to one of the largest RPG's ever--restraint in it's use of game elements. SoD is like drinking an entire fifth of scotch: a fun and indulgent notion, brought low by a messy reality.
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Nov 13, 2018 19:44
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Part of my problem might be: I have a party of four. Ha. Ha. Ha. Even using potions of explosion and wands, you can only make so many explosions per round, y'know? Listen: when my fighter/cleric has time to summon and buff up the Bone Boys we're a party of nine, when you think about it. We didn't even blink at the Neothelid!!  That said, I love being mostly to the XP cap with half of the game left to play, heh.
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Nov 14, 2018 00:53
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I mean for every time Glint quotes Judge Dredd in camp, there's a moment in BG1 where you're escorting a chicken back to his arcane tutor, or Minsc being... Minsc. But even at its worst, at least BG1 is bad quickly. The unskippable voiced cutscene where they re-introduce Baeloth in SoD is like, three times the length of the entire BG2 intro for god's sake.
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Nov 14, 2018 08:23
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This current playthrough of BG1 was weird in that I kinda found myself enjoying chapters 2-3 largely because of the QoL changes in the UI (oh my GOD how did I play this game without the ability to zoom and a quick loot bar), where Chapter 5 felt like a hot mess of uncategorized nonsense. e; well gently caress you too khalid. thanks for all your help missing a single punch in this fight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dY2aim1h6w Now That's What I Call A Powerspike Relative To Chapter 1 e; anybody have any notion of why Belegar will always claim to be too busy as part of the Memories of Battles Past quest? It's not really that big a deal I guess, but its annoying that the game has just decided to crap out again in this instance. Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Nov 15, 2018 |
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Nov 14, 2018 21:38
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Jay Rust posted:How are you supposed to roleplay as evil in Baldur’s Gate, are you expected to pick the lovely jerk dialogue choices with poo poo rewards, and also randomly kill a commoner once your reputation reaches eighteen, because that’s what I’ve been doing and it’s dumb You don't. Bioware didn't really figure out how to make Jerk Runs viable until KOTOR. The biggest reward you get for being evil--and I mean godshittingly evil up to and including murdering a Silver Dragon so you can tote her blood around for a while--and dealing with half the NPCs in the game instinctively hating you and paying 5000% markup in all stores everywhere, is this:  AC3 leather armor with 20%MR. And you only get this in the last 10% of the base game, when you absolutely have better options. whhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
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Jan 5, 2019 19:36
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queeb posted:any kid of spellblade thing going on? gibbing dudes in melee sounds fun. but if you can obliterate packs of dudes as a spellcaster... that could be awesome. Fighter/Cleric. You're talking about fighter/cleric. People will fixate on Fighter/Mage because of Wizard spells. They are absolutely not wrong. For the poo poo this game throws at you, though, on a first/only play? Fighter/Cleric and actually use Potions of Explosions instead of just holding onto them until Chapter 7. And also buy them with the literal hundreds of thousands of gold you'll have by the end. There's your AoE right there. And in the meantime you've had sustain healing and buffs and summons for free. Easy money.
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Jan 8, 2019 03:47
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I see your aganzar's scorcher/fireball argument and raise you: i cannot discard a wand of fire unless all of both are used completely, and cannot use one in excess of the other. Always both. Alternating.
Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 10:57 on Jan 8, 2019 |
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Jan 8, 2019 10:01
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Reverting proficiency categories to BG1 style is the only mod I really insist upon in the EE. "I am a grandmaster in the two handed sword" *stares uncomprehendingly at a bastard sword whose exotic purpose can only be guessed at*
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Jan 9, 2019 01:02
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Jay Rust posted:Is SoD actually any good? The EE NPCs are weak imo, so a whole game filled with them doesn't sound too fun It's uneven, and a little fanfictiony, but overall I enjoyed it. For every puzzle that leaned too hard on the IE's incredibly spotty "use switch" action, or long long long overwrought painfully cringe long bad dialogue sequence, there was a really great dungeon, quest or setpiece to keep me engaged enough to finish.
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Jan 12, 2019 23:44
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I took my series play into BG2 chapter 2 over the last couple days and HOLY CRAP it gets me every time how you can go back and chart a flow from a munchkinned fighter/cleric just barely holding the line against Mulahey and his skeleton summons as the rest of the team tries to hit a 2AC cleric, to to squeaking past the Neothelid in SoD and putting a toe into Baby's First Nine Hells, to a 10APR, 24 strength Jaheira solo-ing the Planar Prison with Improved Haste/boots of speed, and the game arcs into treating the party like such a heroic force of nature that it really really works! e; ooh, and Ironskin. I'm finally abusing Ironskin on Jaheira too. Its insane. So far the scaling has held up okay, but going into BG2 with SoD xp levels has meant I'm on the cusp of HLAs as of starting chapter 3, so as the blind man said "we'll see" Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Mar 3, 2019 |
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Mar 2, 2019 23:54
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Mar 4, 2019 13:54
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Gritty is now Chaotic Evil because in the Hell Trials the demon of selfishness snapped up Edwin, and aside from how nobody's touching my PC's stats and I had 16 rod of ressurection charges in my inventory, its just too hilarious to not immediately own the guy. I kinda wanna EEkeeper it back to CG, because that is frankly not a very fair estimation by the game, but also I've never finished ToB as an evil character and now.... am kinda curious... He's Thayan, I've been busting maces of disruption through heads like his for half the game now!!
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Mar 6, 2019 19:41
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Oh man, that's even better. When the game had me slaughter like 200 ghosts of innocent peasants, elves, and paladins in the first trial I was worried, for a minute there. Clearly they were lumpenproles, coastal clickbait thinkpiece freelancers and cops sent to the Abyss in their hereafter.
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Mar 6, 2019 21:16
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Azuren posted:I'm playing the original games with bgtutu and (some of) the tweak pack, so XP cap is removed. Currently in chapter 5, wrapping up the Baldur's Gate sidequests. Still level 9 There's almost more XP in ToTSC than there is in mainline BG1, haha. Durlag's definitely transitions you into the "i-dont-get-out-of-bed-for-under-4000xp" mindset of BG2. If you play the EE with Siege of Dragonspear uncapped you can coast into BG2 with 700,000 experience and that's WITH a party. The EE's scaling handles it okay, however.
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Mar 7, 2019 20:08
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kingturnip posted:And now Sarevok is dead. The EE definitely alters a few cheesy behaviors that were time-honored exploits in the vanilla retail release (iirc they also fixed Sarevok's magic immunity not counting toward Magic Missile. RIP. If you've never played the EE before, there's also just general AI changes overall in terms of ability use and mage spell use. Rogues hide in mid-fight and backstab now!!!  I'll be the shock of your life when you do good, old-fashioned Animate Dead spam, and then it turns out that Beamdog brought the AI into the 21st century, so now those Evil Drow Clerics.... Turn....
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Mar 11, 2019 04:33
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