Baldur's Gate: The Thread

[Winthur]

You don't have to fight him the first time you meet him in his dragon form, you know. Including as a paladin.

As a paladin, you should actually wait with killing Firkraag until the Order gives you a quest to slay him, otherwise the quest does not appear and you lose out on a sizable chunk of XP. And by the time you're done with paladin's keep, you should be more than ready to kill Firkraag.

Anyway, pointers on killing Firkraag with lower level characters:

• Resist Fire is a must on your frontliners (use the dragonslayer items peppered around the Windspear Hills, like the Dragon Shield), as well as Remove Fear.
• Surround Firkraag to minimize the effect from his AoE attacks.
• Be careful of the dispel he casts (Spell Immunity: Abjuration helps, also Minor Spell Deflection), Remove Magic it's called in English version I believe.
• Stoneskin can also be dispelled with Spell Thrust in addition to Secret Word. He is not immune to Poison (most of them go through Stoneskin) and Poison also screws up his spellcasting.
• Useful items for this fight include Ring of the Ram (you can glitch to have 3 of them, but even 1 is a welcome piece of burst damage), Cloak of the Sewers (see below) and all the fire resistance gear you can carry. Staff of Fire +2 lets you summon a bonus Fire Elemental, which is useful for tanking.
• Mages cast Lower Resist (enables Magic Missiles, preferrably fired from Minor Sequencer if possible), Doom and Greater Malison. Follow up the debuffs with: Flesh to Stone (poor man's Finger of Death), Chromatic Orb, Blind (if Blind hits you can even keep distance and use missiles because his line of sight gets screwed), Glitterdust and Confusion. Cone of Cold is good if available. Clerics can cast Holy Smite. Druids cast Summon Insects to prevent Firkraag from casting Heal, and summon elementals (immune to knockback; can also be cast by a mage but only before the fight). They can also cast Winter Wolves from one of the Summon Animal spells if I recall correctly but it's hard to keep them alive.
• If you have Aerie, you can set her up to tank Firkraag by self-casting Fire Resists, 2-3x Armor of Faith (+Stoneskin etc.), then Fireshield (Blue) and then turn into a Rat from the Cloak of the Sewers (support the transformation with the potion that sets your AC to 0). Fireshield (Blue) will bounce back cold damage at Firkraag. Any properly protected spellcaster can tank Firkraag that way for a few hits and give damage back. He is also not immune to Acid or Electricity at all. Jan Jansen can do the same thing due to the resistances granted to him from his AdventureWear (replicating the Armor of Faith effect).
• The most powerful enemies in the game (including the entire latter half of the game, especially ToB menagerie) don't give a crap about your armor class. Firkraag's THAC0 is -12.

[Feytalist]

There is, but that skirts uncomfortably close to cheating. I guess I'll just keep her Wisdom as it is.

How is that cheating. It's a legitimate option presented as an in-game mechanic. It's about as much "cheating" as those Wisdom tomes in BG1.

Just find the note with the Wisdom recipe lying about the level and apply it. It's not even hard to find or decipher.

[mangosta71]

Another cheap way to take Firkraag down is to have a monk in your party. At level 15 (I think) they get Quivering Palm - you can reload spam until you oneshot him right out of the gate.

[Winthur]

Another cheap way to take Firkraag down is to have a monk in your party. At level 15 (I think) they get Quivering Palm - you can reload spam until you oneshot him right out of the gate.

Also Finger of Death and Harm... but the question was how to bring him down at an early level (10-12 is pretty early for the Red Dragon). Firkraag is easy when you leave him for the last and are grossly overleveled.

Hell you can even just Greater Malison+Doom then Polymorph Other or Flesh to Stone or even Disintegrate.

[Hubert]

I don't know if it is patched in EE, but an easy way to kill (or at least severely damage) Firkraag was to set up some traps under his feet while he is neutral. As soon as he turns hostile, he will trigger all the traps at once.

As said above, a nice item for this fight is the Ring of the Ram. The damage is not very high, but it can bypass most of the magical protection, allowing you to disrupt Firkraag spellcasting if timed correctly.

[Calemyr]

There is, but that skirts uncomfortably close to cheating. I guess I'll just keep her Wisdom as it is.

You could justify creating (via Shadowkeeper or CLUAConsole) three tomes of Wisdom. You could get three tomes in BG1, but NPC stats don't carry over. So you could just create the three tomes and let her read them as she really should have been able to in the first place.

Lum the Mad's machine, however, is a one-time-only thing for each individual bonus. You only get the +1 WIS bonus once, for instance, so it's not really cheating. You're using a powerful and chaotic device to gain a moderate advantage.

As for Hexxat, I like her for primarily for one reason: she's a different kind of evil from anything else in the "trilogy". Dorn, Sarevok, and Edwin are all about personal advancement at the expense of everyone else (and usually taking some pleasure in the expense to everyone else for good measure). Korgan cares for nothing other than good bloodsport (though even he has some standards). Viconia subscribes to the philosophy "Take what I want and let everyone else burn, because they'd do the same for me". Hexxat's sense of evil is just... far more pragmatic. She takes no pleasure in making people suffer, she doesn't advocate senseless violence, she doesn't even want to spread her perspective (actively doesn't want to, that is, as she actually declines when given the chance). She has one and only one simple wish and she is willing to do absolutely anything, regardless of morals, to achieve it. Her only problems with good are that good people are prone to take unnecessary risks, make needless sacrifices, and then pointlessly limit any advantage they might gain from those actions. They are also likely to be unwilling to do distasteful things to achieve their goals and resist or even outright obstruct the efforts of more right-thinking individuals, or even oppose her simply as a matter of principle. She doesn't hate good, she just finds it to be in the way of her personal objective. She represents the kind of evil I personally like to see in stories: not evil for evil's sake or personal advancement, just... "This is my goal and this is the optimal path to reaching it. Morality doesn't factor into it anywhere."

Spoiler: For the record, Hexxat's objective:

Show

Hexxat's only real objective is simply not to die a vampire. As such, the insanely suicidal tendencies of good aligned people increase her odds of dying while a vampire while potentially restricting her methods of not being a vampire any more. More than any allied NPC in the game, Hexxat is driven by the simple desire not to die, and only Jon Irenicus comes rivals her outside of the party.

[Morty]

How is that cheating. It's a legitimate option presented as an in-game mechanic. It's about as much "cheating" as those Wisdom tomes in BG1.

Just find the note with the Wisdom recipe lying about the level and apply it. It's not even hard to find or decipher.

I'm talking about editing the stats, not the machine.

You could justify creating (via Shadowkeeper or CLUAConsole) three tomes of Wisdom. You could get three tomes in BG1, but NPC stats don't carry over. So you could just create the three tomes and let her read them as she really should have been able to in the first place.

I didn't have Jaheira in my BG1 party, so that'd be a bit hard to justify. Besides, I don't think I found any of those tomes anyway.

[Calemyr]

I didn't have Jaheira in my BG1 party, so that'd be a bit hard to justify. Besides, I don't think I found any of those tomes anyway.

Jaheira introduces herself as a long time friend of yours, and readily integrates with your current party, despite not having her in your BG1 party at all. Yet you have qualms with not finding the Tomes in BG1? You can still justify it in any case. Canon is a tricky thing in the Baldur's Gate trilogy. For Jaheira to be the friend she is by the time of your stay at Chateau Irenicus, there must have been adventures between the two games. If those included Durlag's tower, or raiding the Temple of Umberlee in Baldur's Gate to recover the body of a dead child, or actually exploring the catacombs under Candlekeep, you'd have those tomes.

Okay, I'm stretching a bit. Point is that there's at least some level of "justification" for those three points. If you're headcanon isn't flexible enough to accept those justifications, you're either going to need to accept that you're cheating or just live without bonus druid spells and a character you don't want near a wish spell. It's not like Wisdom is a game breaker, even for clerics.

[Thialfi]

Also Finger of Death and Harm... but the question was how to bring him down at an early level (10-12 is pretty early for the Red Dragon). Firkraag is easy when you leave him for the last and are grossly overleveled.

Hell you can even just Greater Malison+Doom then Polymorph Other or Flesh to Stone or even Disintegrate.

Thanks for the tips on Firkraag. It's been over a decade since I took him on. I know I don't have to beat him now. I was just trying to get the holy avenger a little early. I was wondering why my tanking strategies always went out the window on the big monsters. I guess they had to ignore D&D rules to make some encounters especially challenging. When I played the first time, my character was an elven fighter/magic-user. I never tanked anything. It was all summon swarm and abuse with missile weapons and spells.

[Morty]

It seems that I encountered a glitch. I retrieved the horn in Brynnlaw, but Saemon Havarian fails to appear in front of the ship.

[Sylthia]

It seems that I encountered a glitch. I retrieved the horn in Brynnlaw, but Saemon Havarian fails to appear in front of the ship.

You could try console coding him in. I had to so that to complete the extended ilithium quest.

[LibraryOgre]

So, my Kensai-who-will-turn-druid is doing pretty well. There's a +2 Scimitar just sitting there on the Cloakwood Spiders map, giving her a turn, finally, with magic weapons... and kicking her ThAC0 down to 6, and her damage range to 13-20 (what with 4 dots in Scimitar, an 18/70s strength, and all the rest). Her AC still sucks (5 most of the time, 0 with a Barkskin from Branwen), but she kills most people INCREDIBLY quickly.

[Inarius]

So it seems Beamdog is working on Baldurs Gate 1.5. A new game that sits between BG1 and 2 in the timeline. I'm curious to see if they intend to do it as a side story using different characters or as an actual extension of the Bhallspawn Saga.

[Sylthia]

So it seems Beamdog is working on Baldurs Gate 1.5. A new game that sits between BG1 and 2 in the timeline. I'm curious to see if they intend to do it as a side story using different characters or as an actual extension of the Bhallspawn Saga.

That's pretty ambitious. I wonder if you'd be able to transfer characters, but it seems like there's not much "power level" available between BG and BG2.

[Aidan305]

Not sure how I feel about sticking a bunch of extra plot in the middle of the two games. They're fairly complete already.

What I'd like to see, if they were going to do this, would be a prequel with Gorion and co back in his adventuring days.

[Calemyr]

So it seems Beamdog is working on Baldurs Gate 1.5. A new game that sits between BG1 and 2 in the timeline. I'm curious to see if they intend to do it as a side story using different characters or as an actual extension of the Bhallspawn Saga.

I wonder if that will create the excuse for why there's a canon party in BG2. Not everyone uses Imoen, or even Minsc/Dynaheir, and certainly there are people who avoid Jaheira/Khalid. Always kind of bugged me that Yeslick, Coran, Kivan, and Alora weren't sitting in the cells nearby. Alora in BG2 would have been great. I'm picturing her as something like Princess Uni-kitty from the Lego Movie. "Happy happy joy joy happy happy joy joy happy... happy.. joy... ... joy... aw, <blank> it! Kill 'em all!"

As for the power level question, levels 7-11 would probably be viable for it. Heck, play all the games and you might start BG2 at level 13. Wouldn't matter much, really. Major encounters have level-sensitive variants, after all. Because you could do the Cult of the Eyeless as your first quest at level 10 or after you've come back from Spellhold at level 16, the game is ready to give you anything from a beholder and a few gauth to a sea of elder orbs. You'd be walking through the game, true enough, but some folks are fond of criticizing BG2 for being too easy anyway.

[Winthur]

Always kind of bugged me that Yeslick, Coran, Kivan, and Alora weren't sitting in the cells nearby. Alora in BG2 would have been great. I'm picturing her as something like Princess Uni-kitty from the Lego Movie. "Happy happy joy joy happy happy joy joy happy... happy.. joy... ... joy... aw, <blank> it! Kill 'em all!"

Having a whole bunch of additional NPCs in Irenicus Dungeon would have been a little silly. You meet Edwin and Viconia in Athkatla anyway, Ajantis, Coran and Safana also show up, etc. - a lot of them had their own motives and one-off quests. Safana wanted a treasure hunt, for example. Meanwhile, I&K&J stick with you because they're basically family and M&D just want to travel to complete the Rashemen. With everyone else they join you because you're a helpful ally in their cause or for a contract. This makes sense.

You'd be walking through the game, true enough, but some folks are fond of criticizing BG2 for being too easy anyway.

Being guilty of this I can only say that I might have lost my touch on how the game's objective difficulty is after all those playthroughs.

[Maryring]

So I am trying to play Baldur's Gate, the first. I've installed it in english, on an english computer that uses an english keyboard, but I still get the error message This version will only run on English language operating systems!

Anyone know what else might cause this error to pop up?

EDIT: Found the error, fixed it. I can run Baldur's Gate just fine now, but if I try to run the Baldur's Gate Trilogy Installation, it fails.

Error loading C:\Program Files (x86)\Black Isle\Baldur's Gate/override/karoug.cre

Anyone know this error?

EDIT EDIT: And it turns out I hadn't installed the patch properly. I'm not usually this dumb. Honest.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: It works! Trilogy works! Sort of. It starts, but it does seem a bit laggy. Is that normal, or did I screw up? Furthermore, Gorion is busy all the time when I try to get out of candlekeep.

[Cheesegear]

So it seems Beamdog is working on Baldurs Gate 1.5. A new game that sits between BG1 and 2 in the timeline. I'm curious to see if they intend to do it as a side story using different characters or as an actual extension of the Bhallspawn Saga.

I think it'd be pretty crap to use the existing PC, as the story would end up with you in Irenicus' dungeon. It has to.

Unless you start the interlude Torment-style as Sarevok fighting all the stuff in Bhaal's realm. Or, maybe have a story about The Five, which lets you play with stuff that's never really been done before.

[Calemyr]

Having a whole bunch of additional NPCs in Irenicus Dungeon would have been a little silly. You meet Edwin and Viconia in Athkatla anyway, Ajantis, Coran and Safana also show up, etc. - a lot of them had their own motives and one-off quests. Safana wanted a treasure hunt, for example. Meanwhile, I&K&J stick with you because they're basically family and M&D just want to travel to complete the Rashemen. With everyone else they join you because you're a helpful ally in their cause or for a contract. This makes sense.

I was actually suggesting that it really irked me that my starting party wasn't my party. I mean, sure, Imoen. Of course. I honestly can't bring myself to play a round of the trilogy without her. She's a vital grounding element to the story and you'd have to be some kind of monster to abandon her outside Candlekeep or underneath Spellhold. An absolute monster. Still, I have played many games without Jaheira and Khalid and even a few games without Minsc and Dynaheir (mostly EE, as Dorn is basically Minsc). I have never seen that domineering half-elf or that brain damaged wall of muscle in my life! Yet, somehow, all my real friends abandon me and these two lunatics act like I've been their friend for ages.

I know that they had to pick a starting party for me and I respect that. I'm glad they choose those two, even. Of the original cast, those WERE my prefered team both for plot reasons and for simple gameplay (Khalid is a god with a longbow). But if they do a 1.5 bridging the gap between the two games, it would be nice if they explained why I ended up with Widow Balance and Decidedly Unbalanced for roommates.

[Cheesegear]

Still, I have played many games without Jaheira and Khalid

Particularly jarring for me, 'cause I ended up killing Khalid so I could get Jaheira without him. Then his body shows up in BGII, and I'm like "I'm pretty sure I left Khalid in a shallow grave outside Nashkel.", surprisingly, Jaheira didn't seem to mind when I straight up murdered her husband in front of her, but when Irenicus does it, that's the line.

Also, I'll also point out that in the canon version of the story, Khalid is an a-hole who is emotionally abusive to his wife, and he cheats on her, too.

[Sylthia]

Also, I'll also point out that in the canon version of the story, Khalid is an a-hole who is emotionally abusive to his wife, and he cheats on her, too.

Is that a joke or from the novelization? I've heard it's pretty bad.

[Maryring]

The novelization inflicts a more cruel butchery upon the Baldur's Gate story and characters than anything Irenicus could ever conceive. "Pretty bad" is an understatement.

[Winthur]

The novelization inflicts a more cruel butchery upon the Baldur's Gate story and characters than anything Irenicus could ever conceive. "Pretty bad" is an understatement.

Duuuuude, Imoen on Faere action was raaaaad. /s

[Calemyr]

Particularly jarring for me, 'cause I ended up killing Khalid so I could get Jaheira without him. Then his body shows up in BGII, and I'm like "I'm pretty sure I left Khalid in a shallow grave outside Nashkel.", surprisingly, Jaheira didn't seem to mind when I straight up murdered her husband in front of her, but when Irenicus does it, that's the line.

Also, I'll also point out that in the canon version of the story, Khalid is an a-hole who is emotionally abusive to his wife, and he cheats on her, too.

I'm sure you're joking, because any "canon" that paints Minsc as a redhead who takes a job at the Copper Coronet simply doesn't count.

[Inarius]

I'm sure you're joking, because any "canon" that paints Minsc as a redhead who takes a job at the Copper Coronet simply doesn't count.

Is that really in the novelization? If so... just...

[Seharvepernfan]

I'm having trouble giving npc's new portraits.

I found a sweet one for Dorn that I want to use: http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/f/20...rn-d6n6nlt.jpg

I tried using the method detailed here, but it's not working. Help?

[Maryring]

Y'know. Talking about the novelization, terrible as it is, it did give me one idea.

Namely that I'd love to read a story where CHARNAME, instead of fleeing from Sarevok, tries to protect Gorion and gets killed for it, and the story then follows Imoen instead as she makes the same journey through the two games. An alternate timeline story. I think that'd be pretty cool.

[Cespenar]

Y'know. Talking about the novelization, terrible as it is, it did give me one idea.

Namely that I'd love to read a story where CHARNAME, instead of fleeing from Sarevok, tries to protect Gorion and gets killed for it, and the story then follows Imoen instead as she makes the same journey through the two games. An alternate timeline story. I think that'd be pretty cool.

Or, CHARNAME kills Sarevok at the end of BG1 and overtakes his plans, continuing on with the Sword Coast shenanigans and actually becoming strong enough that Irenicus can't up and kidnap him. He kidnaps Imoen instead, and now she has to deal with two villains at the same time.

[Morty]

I wonder if I should just hand over the Silver Blade to the githyanki. The sword you make out of it is flashy, but I'm not sure how good it really is. By the time an enemy fails its save, they'll be dead from hit point damage. And I already have a +4 two-hander.