Yora plays Baldur's Gate

[Yora]

Baldur's Gate was the most important game I ever played. It was the first RPG I ever played and the first fantasy game I ever played. I had encountered several children books that you could very well call fantasy, and I did read The Lord of the Rings. And while I thought that one was pretty neat, it was a one off thing that didn't stay with me after finishing it.
But then, 20 years ago on this day, Baldur's Gate was released, and the next summer I bought it on a whim, solely because I had seen it getting extremely high ratings in games magazines (in a section that I had never read, what's this RPG thing?) and I really needed something new to play. Anything!
I had never seen anything like that (except for LotR) and since I first played it I never stopped wanting more of it. It's one of the two most influential pieces of media in my whole life, and I think it might even come first, slightly above Star Wars.

I played this game a lot of times, and it is a pretty long one, so it's probably the game I've played the most. Hard to tell after such a long time, but I probably completed it more than 5 times, and started it possibly more than 50 times. Though the last time I played it is now pretty long ago. Might have quite well been over 10 years now. I played Baldur's Gate right on release in 2000 and finished it maybe 3 times, and Throne of Bhaal on release in 2001 but played it only once. I'm a teeny bitty OCD when it comes to being a completionist, and as such the only way to play Throne of Bhaal is to do a single continous playthrough starting at 1st level in Baldur's Gate I. I never managed to finish such a run again in the last 17 years. But I always wanted to.
Now that the first game is 20 years old, it's a great occasion to play this game one more time. And given how my tastes in games have changed over the decades, this might very well be the last I am going to play it. So this really is as good a time as any to try doing that legendary complete run again. From 0 XP to 1,000,000+XP. (Though I have to admit that last night I realized I never ever did an evil PC with a party of evil companions, and I am curious to try an evil run after this one.)

My plan is to play this game and write regular posts summing up my thoughts about the things I've seen and done. I know this game inside out, so it's probably mostly going to be a retrospective, with a major part of it being meta thoughts about what D&D, Forgotten Realms, and BioWare games used to be back in the day. Discussion about annything that I mention or that I don't mention about a particular part of the game is very much encouraged. This game is 20 years old now and with the focus on retrospective we don't have to worry about spoilers. In fact, I am probably going to talk about the foreshadowing of "the big twist" a lot. This isn't about giving interested people an impression of how it is to play the game for the first time. This is going be more of a dissection of the aftermath.
The game is also designed as a "segmented pseudo-open world" (all the outdooor maps are actually tiles of a single continous environment), so it doesn't have any natural level transitions that make for good points to stop and write a report. But I play to write a post every time I close the game, or at least before starting it again. Though since I am on my winter break for the next two weeks, I might be doing two or even more posts per day and really haul through the game. Or I might actually not be that thrilled and posts will be more sporadic as I play at a slower pace. We will see.

Setup.exe
This is a damn unapologetic nostalgia trip, so I am going to play the game as I did it back in 1999 (except in English instead of German). Original unmodded game with the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion on patch 1.3.5508. In glorious 640x480, fullsceen.
I am using Linux on my computer now and installing the game with the PlayOnLinux interface for Wine went very smoothly. The speed of my CPU is "200 MHz or faster". I still don't know to this day what a cache is, so I leave it at 240. I decided to go with a custom installation and copy all the files from the disks to the hard drive. Now that the main game is on DVD instead of 5 CDs, switching disks during play isn't as much of a chore anymore, but you'd still have to switch between disks for main game and expansion areas. And it's also less noise from the DVD drive. Something I found always funny, and which still persists on modern computers, is that the installer can only detect 2 GB of available hard drive space, while a full installation takes up 2.4 GB of space. Thankfully, they thought about letting you ignore the warning that you have insufficient space and proceed with the installation anyway. But it's still odd that they shipped the game with this flaw in the installer.
One really weird thing that Baldur's Gate and Tales of the Sword Coast did was to play a trailer for other Interplay games at the end of the installation. (The later one for Plannescape:Torment.) unsurprisingly, this didn't quite work on my Fedora 28 system and when I Alt+F4ed out of the black screen my screen resolution was stuck at 640x480. And all my desktop items were messed up. Though that's the fault of Fedora and Wine, not the game.

Starting the game did not. When I clicked anything in the launcher it just would freeze and crash. After a bit of panicking, I changed the Wine version from the preset 1.4 to the more recent 1.9.4 and that fixed it. First thing I did was recreate the keyboard scheme I have always been using. Q remains the button for Quicksave, and then I match the WERTZ... row to the column of buttons on the left side of the interface. Because I know that if I didn't, muscle memory would punish me for it mercilessly.

New Game

First thing: The logos for Black Isle and TSR were pretty cool. Then there's a Friedrich Nietzsche quote, which I now think was a little bit weird for a fantasy game, and more than a little bit corny. But it's really the intro movie that is getting you excited. At least it did for me back in the last milennium, and it still did now. Being older and therefore wiser now, everything about Sarevok here is ridiculous. A completely over the top Darth Vader knockoff. The animation and models really did not age well. But I am still impressed with the blood running from the crushed corpse on the cobblestones in the light of the sunrise. How artistic. And then you get the title with the symbol of Bhaal. Which is also on the front of the cover. Back when I first played the game, it didn't mean anything to me. But I really wonder what impression it would have made on fans of the Forgotten Realms. Most should have recognized it as the symbol of the God of Murder, who had been killed off as part of the metaplot 8 years earlier as part of the efforts to sanitize the setting and reduce its edginess. (*snicker*) There probably was a statement there.

Next step: Character creation.

Male. Because my characters in Baldur's Gate had always been male.
Half-Elf. Because I always play half-elves in D&D! I once had a short lived human fighter and human cleric, and played a dwarf fighter for a single session, but other than that it had always been half-elves. Half-elf for life!
Fighter. Yes, it's the most bland of all classes. My first character ever was thief (who didn't got far into the game) and I played some rangers (which in this series are pointless), though mostly I played bards as fighter/wizards. I did consider trying a cleric for a change, but thinking about who I am probably going to have in my parties later on, I actually could really quite use a straight up fighter.
Neutral Good: In my youth I almost always went with Chaotic Good, because that's how teens see themselves. It now seems a bit over the top for me. Given what I know about the story of the series, I did consider Chaotic Neutral, but since I might be doing an actually evil run after this one (though probably not) I now want to play good. And Lawful Good still smells way too much of the establishment.
Str 16, Dex 17, Con 15, Int 10, Wis 11, Cha 13. If this game were mechanical, I would have worn away the letters on the "reroll" button ages ago. And I've been pouring over the modifiers tables in the manual for so many hours to figure out the optimal stats for my characters that aren't straight 18s. But when the first rolls the game gave me for my first character in ages came at a total of 82, which is really pretty good. So I actually did the previously unthinkable and kept the first result that I got. I just redestributed the points to be best suited for a believable fighter that didn't minmax. I also know that durig the first game I have the opportunity to raise every stat by 1 permanently, so this was already taken into consideration. I like it. These are stats I can very much live with and they represent the mental capacity of the character I intend to play.
Large Sword ++, Bow +, Spear +. I put one point in bows, because a very long time ago I found a way to kind of exploit the games mechanics and AI with ranged weapons. Particularly early on in the first game, having the whole party attacking at range is super useful and makes life so much easier. Unfortunately, while you can have multiple weapons equipped to switch between them easily, you can't have both a bow and a shield on the same character. The game can only switch main hand weapons but not off hand weapons, so you're stuck with that. As a fighter I would like to use a shield, but if I have a bow, I might as well also use two-handed weapons. Even though the best weapon in the game is a one-handed sword. I'm not a fan of sword. Swords are overrated and the real king of all weapons is the spear. And since I want to use a bow, two-handed polearms become an option. Unfortunately, D&D never cared about that and went with the hype so that swords are awesome and spears are meh. All the best weapons in the games are swords, the spears are all meh. But there are also halberds, and fighters get a lot of proficiency points as this game goes on, so I intend to put good points in both of these as the game progresses.

And here we go.

[Winthur]

I played some rangers (which in this series are pointless)

Kivan is consistently my best damage dealer NPC throughout BG1 (esp. since you can pick him up early, and archery really rocks) and BG2 gives you the Archer kit, which is ridiculous. Unless you mean something else altogether.

[Yora]

There is no tracking or any other interactions with the environment in the game. A ranger and a fighter with the same stats will be identical as fighting with a bow is concerned. Once the fighter puts a third specialization point into bows, the fighter gets even better than a ranger.

[Winthur]

There is no tracking or any other interactions with the environment in the game.

Hey, you get to charm a wolf or cow for cannon fodder!

A ranger and a fighter with the same stats will be identical as fighting with a bow is concerned. Once the fighter puts a third specialization point into bows, the fighter gets even better than a ranger.

Oh yeah, sure. I just don't think they're necessarily "pointless", especially referring to a "series", not BG1 itself.
The point about fighters is obviously valid. Ranger still, however, does have the excellent Archer kit by BG2 and isn't terrible in BG1 (though still inferior to Fighter), however, unless you're not planning to add a kit to an imported character (and you're more of a melee sort by the look at these proficiencies). I stand by my view that the BG2 Archer is one of the few single-class characters worth keeping in a "powergaming" party.

It stands to reason you wouldn't be playing an archer in this series, of course, given the clamoring for spears and halberds (which there are some pretty damn good ones in BG2), but I felt like being pedantic.

[Caelestion]

I played the original almost to death at university, but it wasn't until the early Noughties that I hit upon the archery playstyle, with even my druids and wizards equipped with slings.

By the way, I'm definitely odd, but I saw myself as Lawful Good when I was a teenager.

[Yora]

Candlekeep and The Friendly Arm Inn

What can really be said about Candlekeep. This place is probably the same experience every time to 99% of people who play it. There's a couple of really basic fetch quest that consist of "go to the other side of the map, talk to someone, and get back to me". But along the way you do get some first basic exposition. A bit of context of what the place is and what you are doing there. The named monks seem to know that something worrying is going on, but not being specific about anything. And you got to kill some rats, while the lazy cats are strolling around. "A glorious battle."

You also get attacked by two assassins. These fights can often get ridiculous as you probably still have a weapon you're not proficient with and the assassins both can barely hit you even without any armor. Both of you missing over and over and over is not uncommon.

After leaving the keep with Gorion, I got another Darth Vader and Obi-Wan moment. Still a pretty cool battle, given the capabilities of th game. Of course I take Imoen with me. She's a good thief and at this stage I need any additional help I can get.
The letter that warned Gorion about the assassins is singed by E. I wonder how many Forgotten Realms fans got that immediately.
Further down the road I pick up Xzar and Montaron. Surviving the next hour or two without them would be quite a challenge. And I always had them along for this reason. I've told them I would come along with them to Nashkell, but first had to meet Gorion's friends at the Friendly Arm Inn nearby.

On the next map I've run into an "Old Man". I think everyone who knew about Forgotten Realms recognized him then immediately. He says something cryptic and is then off again. Continuing along the path, I encountered more wolves. Wolves in this game are ridiculous. They have 24ish hit points each. That almost as much as my entire party has. One of them killed me. Which gets you a little death cutscene in which your hand disintegrates into glowing dust, and the dust forms into the symbol of Bhaal. Of course, it didn't mean anything to me when I played through the game the first time, but I wonder what Forgotten Realms fans would have thought of that. The symbol of Bhaal is not a recognized "You died!" message, and turning into dust from wolf bites certainly isn't normal in this setting.

At the Friendly Arms Inn i first killed and looted the hobgoblins. Having the game auto-pause when an enemy comes within sight distance and then raining arrows and bullets on them, one or two at a time, works like a charm. And then only got about 10 hit points each. Outside the inn there is a hidden treasure hole just maybe three or four pixels big. And inside of it is probably the best item in the entire game. A ring that doubles the number of 1st level wizard spell slots. You have to know that it is there and it's almost impossible to find by accident, unless you just happen to move the mouse over those three pixels and notice the tiny flicker as the cursor flashes to Pick Up Item. Collecting that ring feels a bit like cheating, so I didn't pick it up.

Inside the yourtyard of the inn, I got attacked by the third assassin. That guy is really tough. He killed me three times with his spells before I finally killed him quick enough the fourth time, with help from two of the guards. Fortunately, I now knew that he was coming so I saved the game just before approaching the stairs. The first time you play it, this really sucks. Inside the inn are Khalid and Jaheira, yay! I took them into my party and will probably keep them for the rest of the game. At these low levels, having more fighters is always welcome, and Jaheira's druid spells have always served me very well. Just the equipment restriction on druids makes absolutely no sense. Splint mail and scimitars are okay, but short swords or maces are not. So I either have to take a staff and get no shield, or just a lously club.
Khalid and Jaheira also want to investigate the mines at Nashkell, which is convenient and also helps establishing what the player is supposed to do, even if you switch all your party members soon after. "Nashkell mines. There's something to do."

Also inside the inn are two more "kill monsters and bring my their item" quests (and a third one outside the inn). And of course, the Golden Pantaloons! This item confused me as much as probably everyone else. It's the only item on your character that isn't taken away when you import it into Baldur's Gate II, and if you do it you finally get payoff for it in Throne of Bhaal, which came three years later.

Having conducted my business at thr Friendly Arm, I set out to go south to Beregost, which lies on the way to Nashkell. Over a tense couple of minutes I crept forward towards the ogre I knew to be somewhere nearby. That guy can be really dangerous. But Jaheira can also prepare entangle, which has a really good chance of immobilizing the ogre. And then it's arrows all the way. Actually quite easy that way. He got two magic belts as treasure. One is a really nice item that you can hand in for a quest at the Friendly Arm. I really would like to have a protective item, but as a compulsive completionist I can not leave any quest unfinished. The other belt is a girdle of gender reversal. The first time I played the game I put it on without having identified it and was surprised at the result. And you can't take it off without getting a remove curse spell from a temple. From that point, I never equipped any unidentified items.

Also in the area were a bunch of xvarts. And this is something that puzzled me for a long time: Why does this game have hobgoblins and xvarts, but no orcs and goblins. When orcs and goblins appeared in Baldur's Gate II, it always felt somewhat inappropriate. These don't belong in this series.
In the middle of the night, I made it to the edge of Beregost.

Approximate time played yet: 3 hours.

[Caelestion]

For what it's worth, I usually expended Xzar (and sometimes Montaron) during the Friendly Arm attack, using the whole "protect the protagonist with live bodies" routine.

[Xania]

Ah, Baldur's Gate. My copy came to me late, but it's a beautiful game. Used the second part much more though.
Personally i prefer the xvarts/hobgoblins.

[Yora]

Beregost

I've been to Beregost dozens of times, but until now I never noticed how weird its design is. It's a little town in the wilderness and while I am running around in chainmail with horns on my helmet, all the buildings look like 19th century town houses. They look so completely out of place. I already had some weird moments in the Friendly Arm Inn, when I noticed that there are neat gravel beds between the walls of the keep and the neatly maintained lawn, all with perfectly straight edges. This isn't how a castle yard looks like. Back when the game came out, I didn't notice anything off. This was a completely new world for me and I had nothing to compare it to. But now that I have years of above casual interest in the realities of medieval and ancient life, this feels really wrong.

First person I met in Beregost was Garrick, who hired me to be a bodyguard for his boss. Turned out the boss didn't need bodyguards against muggers, but muggers to help her rob her victims. She didn't take my refusal lightly and attacked. Thankfully I hit her while she was casting her first spell, which I believe to have always been mirror images. This spell is really quite powerful for spellcasters. It negates the first couple of hits, which not only would have reduced hit points but also interrupted spells. I think the best counter against it is magic missile at higher levels, as each missile removes one mirror image. I think this could have been a really tough fight for my 1st level party.

Inside the tavern right next to the fight I ran into the fourth assassin. Now my bounty had been raised from 200 to 350 gold pieces. Fortunately he was trying to attack Khalid, who has the most hit points, and with one healing spell and one potion I got through the fight without losses on the first try.

In another tavern I got attacked by some guy who has something against adventurers. This time I managed to only fight him with his friend staying out of it. I know it's possible to get him to leave you alone without a fight. But after he attacked, I decided that for this playthrough I would take every dialog as it plays out the first time. No reloading to get someone to not become hostile, or to not disappear with some really cool loot you can get from a fight.

I went to the house of the gnome in the Friendly Arm and cleared it of the spiders. Took me two attempts to get them without casualties. Returning the things from the spider house, and also the magic belt from the ogre I got earlier to the Friendly Arm, I got 1600XP and a measly 70 gold for the belt. I am sure it's worth way more.

I also got a quest from a halfling to get his sword back from some gnolls at the High Hedge, the home of a wizard selling magic items. There I ran into Kivan, who I chose not to take along. And even though I thought I remember the game inside out, the gnolls ended up being in the very last corner of the map that I was searching. Gnolls are probably my favorite monster in the game and their design in Baldur's Gate is the coolest I've ever seen over the years. Those guys just look really viscious and mean, and they are huge. The wizard has his house huarded by two meat golems who really pack a punch. One of them one-hitted Imoen with a 20 damage hit. This game does not pull its punches.

Another resident of Beregost, behind a door that you can't see but only assume to be in that part of the screen, is Firebead Elvenhair from Candlekeep. He wanted me to get a book and as my reward he gave me another book that he recommended to me. The Story of the Dead Three. Who were Myrkul, Bane, and Bhaal. More foreshadowing. Was I the only person in Candlekeep who didn't know what was going on with my past?

I also remember a pair of magic boots being in a crate somewhere in the northeast of the town but couldn't find them this time. I plan to come back later and comb the whole town for interesting things anyway. In the past I always did that immediately, but this time I somehow don't feel like being that meticolous and just get on with the game.

I left Beregost for the south to conntinue my journey to Nashkell.Were I ran into two ogrillons. Which I think are half-ogre/half-orc. I remember them being really dangerous, so I approached them with the tried and true hail of arrows. Got both of them before they came into melee range. They had a letter from a dead halfling that was to be delivered from Calimshan to Beregost, and the guy got killed on the last mile. The woman who is waiting for the letter is in Beregost, but I remember finding her being really difficult the first time. She's in one of the many unremarkable houses, and one of those where the dooor isn't visible.

After having completed all these side quests, Jaheira, Imoen, and Naderion all reached 2nd level. I hope to get at least Khalid and Montaron to 2nd level before going into the mines. I can really use the additional hit point.

Approximate playtime: 5 hours.

[Yora]

The Lion's Way

I continued traveling down the road South of Beregost. On the road I ran into a mercenary of the Flaming Fist, who are working for the lords of Baldur's Gate, and who wanted to arrest my party for banditry. Fortunately I was able to talk him out of it, as he wouldn't have stood much of a chance alone against six.

Also in the areas were more hobgoblins and two ghouls. I really like the design of ghouls in this game. Very beefy and not the dried up cadavers they are usually shown as. But being still 1st and 2nd level, I was still scared of their ability to paralyze with their claws, so I relied on my trusty arrows.

In the next area I ran into another group of hobgoblins. Four with sword and two with bows. When I played this game for the first time, 19 years ago, this was the biggest challenge I had encountered up to that point. Those guys had brutally slaughtered me many times before I finally manged to defeat them without any losses. It was this encounter that later taught me how massive a difference it makes in videogames when you have truly figured out and internalized how enemies and abilities work. I don't think my party had any lesser stats that first time than the many other times I played the first chapter of the game. But by the third or fourth playthrough, this encounter had become a cake walk. Just don't walk your whole party into the middle of the ambush and have your 1st level wizard and thief fight them in melee while being shot at by archers. Let them come to you in groups of one or two, and it's a breeze.
The only time I had a similar experience again was when I played the second area of Dark Souls for the second time. I had taken me several hours to get from Firelink Shrine to the Taurus demon, but on second try I could do it in 10 minutes without a challenge.

Also on the last area of the road, I ran into my first kobolds. To this day, these little rat-dog-guys are the only proper way kobolds should look like. I don't care for miniature lizardmen.

Halfway through clearing my fifth wilderness map in this game, I made a realization of something that I probably have felt for a very long time, but which I only became consciously aware of now. Like in most open world games, exploring the wilderness is really boring. On a whole map you get maybe three groups of enemies like wolves or kobolds, and one traveller who gives you one sentence of advice and then walks off. Yes, occasionally you find a little cache of treasure that might actually have something decent in it that is worth getting. Those Thief Boots that the thief in Beregost wanted me to get back for him increase stealth by +45%. But there is so little payoff for spending so much time combing through a mostly empty map. In Morrowind or Skyrim you frequently run into interesting looking environments, and sneaking through them in first person to spot enemies before they spot you gives you something to do. But the environments in Baldur's Gate don't visually impress like that and there is no sneaking from cover to cover in this game engine. I think I am probably just going to the major things I remember being in the wilderness, but not going to comb through all the wilderness areas completely.

Nashkell

I always loved Nashkell. Beegost always was a bit odd, but Nashkell feels more fitting. Some little huts in the wilderness with dirt streets and a little river running through. And when you arrive, you get this neat little cutscene with two kobolds sneaking up menacingly on a farm. Right as you arrive, you are greeted by Amnish soldiers who inform you to see the mayor about the problems in the iron mines, and that the captain of the garrision has disappeared into the wilderness after suddenly going berserk.

Inside the tavern, I got attacked by the fifth assassin. Montaron got her with a sneak attack and I did quite well disrupting her spells. She manged to get off one hold person that took out Naderion and Jaheira, but Xzar killed her with Larloch's Minor Drain. First try, wooo! My bounty is now up to 680 gold pieces.
Hold person is a really powerful spell. I think it might actually be the most dangerous in the whole game. Not only does it hold potentially a lot of your characters, it almost certainly will last until well after the end of the fight. I really need to get this spell for my casters later on and abuse the crap out of it.

Next to the tavern is the Nashkell store, where I've spend so much time and collected so much gold over all the years. The store owner also has a little quest for you and wants you to bring him winter wolf pelts. Those beasties will be quite a challenge ahead.

Then there is the Temple where I have a chat with the mayor who once more tells me about something going on in the iron mine that kills the miners and makes the ore go bad. There is also a big guy called Oobleck who mistakes me for a bounty hunter who was hired to hunt a bandit. I don't recall if you can find that bandit anywhere in the game. The Temple also has a graveyard full of funny tomb stones. Which were obligatory for graveyards in games back in the day. Sad that this old tradition seems to have disappeared.

Also in this town are both Minsc and Edwin. I didn't speak to them for now, and continued across the bridge. Aw, crap... It's Noober! I totally forgott about this guy. Of all the cruel developer jokes, this is probably one of the meanest. Noober is some villagers who follows you around to start dialogs asking annoying questions to which you can't reply. And he keeps going, and going, and going. Being a goody, I did not kill him, but planned to loose him by leaving the map to the south, circle around, and enter it again from the north. But either he got stuck, or at some point he actually does stop following you around. Stupid Noober.

On the far left side of the map there is another tiny trasure whole that is completely invisible unless you hover your mouse exactly over it. Inside of it is a copy of one of the best armors in the game. It even has the description of being custom made for you by an NPC. I took it out, but like the wizard ring in the Friendly Arm, using such an amazing item that is impossible to find through normal play felt like cheating and I put it back. But I kept the pearl that was also inside the hole.

East of Nashkell is a carnivale. I hate fantasy carnivales. But in this case, it's actually not that bad. This is not an excuse to have creepy supernatural clowns or a front for a convoluted robbery. These are just a couple of normal tents with normal entertainment and normal market stalls. The entertainment mostly consists of gambling, but back in the 90s the obligatory minigame apparently wasn't obligatory yet. It's not the same to just click "I make a bet" in a a dialog screen and then get told you lost your money. The shops are actually just ordinary weapon and armor shops. A bit weird for a fair ground.

However, there is also an illusionist who does a routine with conjuring an ogre that then explodes into gibs. Talking to the illusionist three times make the ogre annoyed and it attacks you. I killed him on the fist time. I'm feeling quite powerful by this point. I really like the way ogres look in this game. Basically just small green bald giants and not the strange animal men usually depicted in D&D. And actually, I think this goes for all D&D monsters. The way they look in Baldur's Gate is always the way I think they should really look like, regardless of what the pictures in the books are. Gibberlings are another expample. I am sure there will be a lot more of these along the line.

Another attraction is a petrified maiden. A dwarf is offering a scroll of break petrification for 500 gold pieces, but it's a ripoff. The temple of helm in Nashkell sells them for 225 gold pieces. Restoring the woman reveals her to be Branwen, a cleric of Tempus. She was petrified by someone named Tranzig, who I know does appear later in the game, though I forgot at what point. One time I had Branwen in my party and she's a straightforward human cleric. But somehow she seems really dull. There is very little characterizatin to NPCs like Khalid or Montaron, but at least what little there is gives them some kind of personality that you can imagine in your mind. With Branwen, as with many other NPCs in the game, there just isn't anything. I think the two block dialog when recruiting her is all the writing that exists for her.

In one tent on the fair ground is a wizard who is trying to kill another wizard with a curse. I wasn't able to talk him out of it, but at least he attacked me before finishing his curse. This got me a neat, though yet unidentified robe for Xzar and some decent XP. Khalid leveled up to 2nd level and rolled maximum hit points, being now at a wooping 26 hp.

APT: 7 hours.

[Yora]

The Nashkell Mine

Baby's First Dungeon Crawl

Actually, not quite. I had played the board games The Sorcerer's Cave and Hero Quest before, which are also about exploring rooms, fighting monsters, and picking up stuff. But a dungeon in a game like Baldur's Gate is something different, of course. I had a great time first exploring it, and I found that I still really like it.

Outside the mine is another mostly empty outdoor area, but in addition to the mine it also has an artist carving the giant face of an elf woman into a cliff. He says she's called Ellesime, which happens to be the name of the elf queen in Tethyr in BG2. For the eyes of his sculpture, he has stolen two big emeralds and the bounty hunter Graywolf has been send to take them back. And he's the kind of psychotic maniac who absolutely has to butcher the artist while doing so. When he shows up seconds later, I tell him that I won't allow it and the fight is on. This Graywolf is one bad dude! Fighting him without getting completely butchered took many tries and a very long time. Eventually I decided that it just wouldn't work that way.
In the top left corner of the map is a suspicious looking burned tree stump with a big hole in it. And I believe that I actually discovered the cache in it myself and didn't read about it somewhere. Inside is a staff of ice. This thing will be my biggest gun in the arsenal for a very long time to come. It causes 8d4 frost damage to a single target. It has a limited number of charges and no indication of how many more charges are left, so I always use it only in emergencies when I have a particularly tough enemy that I don't want to come back to much later. Exactly the kind of enemy like Graywolf.
I tried taking Graywolf down with help from one blast from the wand, but after a good number of attempts that also didn't work. Eventually I decided to sacrifice two charges, and together with three health potions and a backstab from Montaron, this finally did him in. After I had dealt 80 damage to him, which at this point of the game is insane. However, he got me a lot of XP and Xzar and Montaron got to 2nd level and Imoen to 3rd level. He also has the best weapon in the game. A longsword +2 plus 1 point frost damage. I think it's the only +2 weapon in the game.
After the artist finishes his sculpture, he falls over and dies. Maybe exhaustion? He also drops the two emeralds which I can return to Nashkell for the bounty.

After that I went into the mine. I found it to be impressive looking even on the outside, with a biggish pit of several levels, with ladders and rail tracks everywhere, and finally the mine shaft at the bottom, guarded by three Amnish soldiers.
I really like the design of the mine. The first level is really basic and there's a total of two kobolds hanging around the general area of the passage to level two. But the lighting of the environment is very atmospheric and the music also fits. You can talk with some miners who all give their own guesses on what is going on in the lower levels. Some say demons, others ghosts, one a dragon, because what else could it be, and one thinks it's just kobolds. In some of the mine carts you can examine pieces of ore, which are coated in something corrosive.
On the second level, things change. The passages are narrower and more winding and there are pools of water on the ground, as well as some corpses near the passage to the third level. There are few miners around a good number of guards. Two kobolds at the passage to the third level carry bottles with mysterious liquid, hinting that they are connected to the iron going bad.
The third level is completely abandoned by the miners and guards. There's only kobolds down here, and a lot of them. Also the first traps I have encountered in the game are guarding some of the choke points. I still remembered all of them and got through without trouble. And then suddenly you get to the bridge of Kazad Dum over a river of lava. That's a bit random. Though I admit looking quite neat. On the other side are natural caves, which house more kobolds. And a ghoul that I now braved to fight up close, and won. Then there is a scary spider cave that I was quite afraid of, but it turned out to only have two regular huge spiders. I think there's more and stronger ones, if you get there at higher levels. And then you run into the first kobold commando. It's a bit stronger than a normal kobold, but much more dangerous because it shots fire arrows. I took care of it with a hail of arrows myself. Having to walk up to him to get him with a blade always takes too long for me, since he's shoting his fire arrows at you while you do.

The fourth level is a big flooded chamber with a strange rock dome in the center. Inside the dome are three caves. One empty, one holding an imprisoned elf guarded by some kobolds, and the lair of Mulahey, a half-orc cleric of Cyric, the generic evil good of the Forgotten Realms, now that the three big bads had been sanitized out. Mulahey thinks I am being send by his boss Tazok for messing up the supposedly secret sabotage of the mine. He summons some skeletons and more kobolds that come from the first cave, but knowing how this fight goes I have Jaheira cast entangle on the connecting passage. It gets all the minions and so I can swarm on Mulahey alone. He's quickly damaged and offers to surrender, but when I chose to let him go, he immediately just calls in more kobold reinforcement in the same dialog. Still doesn't help him and he goes down on the first try. Sweeping up his minions goes over painlessly as well.
In his chest are a lot of wizard spell scrollls and two letters from Tazok, which confirm that Mulahey was supposed to have the kobolds secretly spoil the iron ore with the liquid in the bottle. There's also a hint that another conspirator called Tranzig is staying in Beregost for now. That Tranzig who petrified Branwen. He's the next target. The elf is a wizard who wants to come with me, and I think I might return and pick him up later.
There's a convenient exit from the caves on the fourth level, which leads into the wilderness. On my way to the edge of the area to get the travel world map I run into an ankheg but immediately nope right out of there.

Returning to Nashkell, I visit one of the three regular houses where a woman is looking for news from her husband, and I can deliver to her a ring I found in the mine. I got the reward for the emeralds and the reward from the mayor to clear the mines. Which brings Naderion to 3rd level. Outside the inn, I am attacked by one more assassin. This one obviously being the toughest yet. Again, he starts with casting mirror images, but fortunately there are some guards around shoting him with arrows to get those away relatively quickly. Also fortunately, Jeheira still has remove fear prepared, which I remember to need for this fight and cast right away. And cause fear is indeed the assassin's second spell. With the fight going bad several times, I take out the frost wand again, and he is quickly defeated. Mulahey and the assassin got a lot of cool enchanted items and after selling all my loot from the mines, I feel that I can now easily afford plate for Naderion and Khalid.

APT: 11 hours.

[Caelestion]

Are you fully exploring each area's map or not? E.g. taking on the wolf packs outside the Beregost temple or the xvarts (I think) and the fearsome mercenary band not far from where the mine shortcut leads?

[Winthur]

Are you fully exploring each area's map or not? E.g. taking on the wolf packs outside the Beregost temple

Those include Vampire Wolves which at this stage of the game take more than a little bit of kiting with Imoen's wand of magic missiles.

[Yora]

I'm not fully sure. I don't want to commit to it, but I've already been doing a good amount of wilderness exploration today. The game is not that big, so I might still do it, but if I get bored, I'll only check out the things I remember wanting to see,

West of Nashkell

I had a strange and spooky dream about meeting the ghost of Gorion at the gate of Candlekeep. I really like how these are written, I find them very memorable. After waking up, I had cure small wounds as a special ability once per day.

After having dealt with the business in the mines, I went west into the wilderness to look for the captain of the guard. I ran into some gnolls and some half-ogres, which got another level up for Montaron. Then I came across a small gang of bandits. I had losses the first time, but the second time I had the fortune of interrupting the wizard's mirror image and then it went quite well. I was thinking that the leader was the bandit that Oobleck mentioned Graywolf being after, but it later turned out he wasn't. This was 3rd level for Khalid and a new robe for Xzar. I don't see what he would need with fire resistance, since he will die from anything that hits him anyway, but it looks smarter than the yellow one I had.
Oh hi, it's Mister Fanservice. South of the bandits I ran into Drizzt, who requested my help fighting the huge band of gnolls that was swarming him. Not that he needed it, as he completely upstaged me, speeding across the screen and one-hit gibbing gnolls left and right. He mentioned that the bandits on the Sword Coast seem to be connected to the Black Talon and Chill mercenary companies, which had also been mentioned in one of Tazok's letters to Mullahey.
Resting again, I had another dream, this time about encountering the ghost of Mullahey in the mines. Again, very well done and spooky. It got me another cure small wounds ability per day. This really beefs up my party's healing ability.

Next I came into a large, almost completely empty area, but in the center I came across a xvart village raider training camp where I killed some 40 xvarts and a cave bear. Very random. Level 3 for Jaheira. With the ring from Mullahey that grants one additional cleric spell per spell level, Jaheira has now five first level spells and two second level spell. This is getting serious now. There also was a roaming merchants offering me a potion, a scroll, and some other thing to buy. I took the improved health potion, which actually was genuine. Then the guy just disappeared. I once started a fight with him and he had really cool gear, but this playthrough I want to play properly good and don't start needless fights for loot.

After that I ran into a tasloi. Which I think is some kind of jungle goblin. No clue why this game has the obscure xvart and tasloi instead of goblins, but it does set it apart. Nearby I came upon a caravan that had been completely wiped out by the mad captain. After answering his riddle correctly with "death" (of course), he regained his sanity and we agreed to take him to the Temple of Helm in Nashkell and take his new magic sword. The priest chose to take care of him and not hand him over to the guard, but paid me the bounty that had been offered by Oobleck. This got Montaron and Imoen to 3rd level.

As my next destination I picked Beregost, where Tranzig is hanging around. But on the way I encountered a hermit north of Nashkell who said something ominous about my aura looking strange and that he thinks that an early violent death seems likely for me. Getting a random encounter with skeletons and xvarts got Xzar to 3rd level as well. He now has second level spells, but I don't actually have any 2nd level scrolls he could learn. But this also means he now gets two magic missiles per casting, which makes it much more potent as mirror image counter.
Sadly, it looks like the times of frequent level ups are now over. Getting the first character to level 4 seems still a very long way off.

APT: 14 hours.

[Caelestion]

Those include Vampire Wolves which at this stage of the game take more than a little bit of kiting with Imoen's wand of magic missiles.

Oh yes, but you can at least cheese the Fog of War and not reveal them if necessary. I found that doing at least some extraneous exploration was necessary to bulk up before the big hitters in Chapters 4 and 5.

[Yora]

My usual approach was to do all the optional stuff before going to Cloakwood. Except Tales of the Sword Coast, which I did after the return to Candlekeep. This more or less devides the game into a first half of open world exploration and a second half of story progress.

In my experience, the west side of the road is easier than the east side. There's nothing truly bad on the west side, while on the east sidw you got firewine bridge, ulcaster, the green slimes, and the basilisks, which I would always leave for later.

While I do recognize everything that I see, I actually don't remember a good number of things being in the game before I get around the corner. And with several areas I don't remember where they are on the world map. I often don't know where I went until I have explored a good part of the area. Not quite surprises, but still a fun experience. I had completly forgotten about Noober, and only remembered that there is an area with basilisks while I was looking something upl
It still leads to the result that I walk into things without being optimally prepares, which does make the game a bit more challenging than it was the last four or five playthroughs.

[Caelestion]

In my experience, the west side of the road is easier than the east side. There's nothing truly bad on the west side, while on the east side you got firewine bridge, ulcaster, the green slimes, and the basilisks, which I would always leave for later.

In that respect, it's a bit ironic that you can actually stumble into the Cloakwood in the northwest without even realising it. Otherwise, I'd totally agree with you.

[Spore]

Funny how you start off by creating a character with RP stats and then first thing you do is talk about AI exploits :)

But yea, your let's play prompts me to try an elven fighter/mage, as I LOVED bows, and always felt the archer ranger falls a bit short...

[Yora]

I am playing much less cheesy than I could.
I'm not starting any unnecessary fights because I want the sweet weapons and armor some NPCs have and I don't pick up items that are impossible to find without a guide. And I am barely relying on pulling and shoting every enemy in a group one by one. I think the cheesiest thing I am doing is kiting big enemies like ogre berserkers in circles when I am out of healing and don't want to go back to a save from 20 minutes ago.

Various Wilderness Stuff
I've cleared out most of the optional wilderness Most of it was boring and tedious, but there were several highlights.

Xzar and Montaron got too fed up with how popular I am and left. Only once did I ever see them starting a fight with Khalid and Jaheira, but it seems to be triggered at random and the chance for it to happen at each time apparently isn't very high. After that I went back into the mines to pick up Xan. Unfortunately, since I had previously talked to him, his XP had already been set to second level. And I also realized that he is an enchanter, the most useless of all the nine wizard types in the game. Because an enchanter can not learn evocations. No magic missile, no web, no fireball, no lightning bolt, no cloudkill. In a pen and paper campaign I am in agreement that evocation is the least interesting of all schools, but in Baldur's Gate, any spells that aren't combat are pointless. When you have a cleric or druid for buffs, evocations are the only thing a wizard is good for. But I decided to take this as a challenge and see what I can do with it.

I also grabbed Minsc and went to the Gnoll Stronghold. When I was still young (and stupid), I thought Minsc was absolutely awesome and hilarous. These days I find him only obnoxious and silly I only took him in the party for this quest. (There's a couple more like that to come in BG2.) On the way, I meet a boy who is searching for his puppy. Turns out that the puppy is not really a puppy. And the boy is not really a boy. I think this is a cool little moment that makes the game feel more fatastic than just fake middle ages with wizards in it. I think there should have been much more like that.
The Stronghold area had really impressed me when I first saw it, and it always was a non-main quest highlight on all following playthroughs. Coming back, I realized how much I had forgotten about it. The two ogrillions on the bridge were not much of a threat at this point. And of them has the awesome Dexterity 18 Gauntlets. Since Dex is God-Stat, these have always been one of my favorite items. I remembered that there was one path up to the keep and one down the cliff. I took the lower path first, like I always did, and felt myself getting really quite excited. I did remember that there was a cave at the end of the path and one that was very important. After fighting through some xvarts I got the to cave, and it turned out that is really wasn't. Just a round cave with five xvarts and nothing else. Making my way back and still feeling strangely antsy, I saw a fork in the path. Wasn't there a second cave as well? Yes, there was. This must have been the important one I always was excited about. Getting inside there are another bunch of xvarts and yes, there's a little side passage to a small secondary room. With absolutely no memory of what did await me there, I went forward and it turnned out to be a carrion crawler. Those things always got me in a panic because they could really rip through my party with their paralysis. And I think this cave must have been the first time I ever encountered them. I love them. I recently made the realization that in my many years of gamemastering, almost all my own custom creatures or conversions are some kinds of worms. I love worm monsters. And still this thing looks and sound really creepy. It's once more my favorite design of the creature, though this time it's based very closely on the image in the 2nd edition monster manual by Tony Di'Terlizzi. When I did my own fantasy setting, I wanted to not use any D&D monsters. With two exceptions: Aboleths (also a bit wormy) and carrion crawlers. This first encounter with a carrion crawler must have been what made that cliff path stick so deeply in my memory that I got excited even without remembering why.
But then I left the cave, made my way back to the bridge, but thought that one shadow next to the cave entrance in the cliff looks someone suspicious. Mouse over it and it's a third cave! Inside there's a big chest. No trap, but a lot of loot. And it's the TOME OF CHARISMA! That's why going down to the caves was always so important! Now charisma is not the most important stat in the game (I think it only affects store prices, which are irrelevant with all the money you get), but this is the easiest of the six tomes you can get. Charisma up to 14. Bam!
Up the other path is the stronghold where I kill some 40 gnolls. And my party is already so strong that I go through the whole thing without using any healing spells or potions. Knowing where Dyneheir is it doesn't take me half an hour to find her and I finish the quest, making Minsc leave with her.

Back where I found the captain of the guard, who I had escorted to the temple of Helm in Nashkell, I kept exploring and found a dig site excavating an ancient cave settlement. It's a small event, but one I really like. One guy from the expedition wants me to kill the boss and sell the treasures to him, but I of course refuse, so he walks off. The inside of the cave looks unlike any other area in the game and like it's from the stone age. Turns out it is a temple of Kozah, which I know to be an ancient name of Talos, and an evil spirit makes the guards go insane and attack. The dig leader tells me not to take the idol from the altar and that the cave should be burried again. As I leave I am awaited by the Doomguy Doomslayer, some demonic armor ghost knight who mumbles something that makes me thing it was good idea to not attempt to take the idol out of the cave.
Forgotten Realms is one of those settings that suffers the most severely from having an ancient past that always seems so much more interesting and exciting than the present. I particularly like the ancient pantheon of the Netherese, with Kozah, Janath, Jergal, Mystryl, and Amaunator.

Back on the coast where Xzar and Montaron had left me, I picked up Safana to get the treasure she wants to get from a sea cave. To just get to the cave I have to get past five sirens. Having six characters pepper them with arrows, bullets, and axes works pretty well against them. I don't know if they can actually do much damage, though they have pretty nasty poisoned arrows that you can loot, but when they get just one of their charm spells off you not just have to kill her with one character less, you also have to run away in circles from your own party member for a pretty long time. Without accidentally running into other enemies. Enchantments and crowd controll all last really long in this game. Might make more sense in pen and paper, but in this game it seems excessive. On the good side, each siren gets the party 2000 XP. And so do the three meat golems inside the cave. Which are immune to piercing attacks, so no arrows. It was tough, but I did get them all down without resting, This way, I got Xan to higher levels pretty quickly. And turns out part of the treasure is the TOME OF CONSTITUTION! This is actually much better than the tome of charisma. It's just 1 additional hit point per level for me, but I assume there are also effects on saving throws or something like that.

I ran into a couple more seers and hermits. One of them is a surgeon who wants to atone for his failure of stopping his evil brother Daeveron when he had the chance to kill him. Antother one wanted to do some divination on me but freaked out when she looked into my past. When I insisted she tell me what she saw she rather tried to kill me. And then there was a stargazer who told me that the events on the Sword Coast weren't everything in the bigger picture. Because she has seen that in the future much bigger events were going to happen in the South, and there would also be something in the far North, in a city where it is never winter.
How portentous.

The Ruins of Ulcaster were quite neat. There was very little actually in the dungeon, but when you have no idea of what's ahead, creepy through mostly empty tunnels is also pretty exciting. The ghost of Ulcaster wanted me to bring him a tome from the dungeon, and I found one with the corpses that are down there. All but one of them piled up into a single big heap. The dungeon is spot clean, except for one corpse next to the entrance, and then you get a mountain of rotting flesh in the farthest corner. Which has been trapped. I never noticed that, but the creator of the map surely had something in mind with that. It's an idea worth stealing.

On the other side of highlights, there is the Firewine bridge. The English language has a perfect word that precisely matches everything about Firewine Bridge. And that word is "bad". I went into the dungeon through a secret passage in the temple in Gullykin, but on the other end you have the outdoor area that goes with it. There is the quite impressive model of the ruined bridge over a dried up river, but other than that there is nothing! The map is completely flat and empty. There are two NPCs that you could provoke into a fight, but who otherwise will say nothing of relevance. One of them was really asking for it and when I doubted that he is the best swordman on the swordcoast, we got into a fight. He had a longsword +1, which by this point is already vendor trash for me, and some really nice gauntless that give you +1 to hit and +2 to damage. These are really good. This is clearly the most boring outdoor map in the game. Not by much, but still the most boring and tedious to explore.
But inside, the dungeon is even worse. The tunnels are very narrow, so your characters are blocked by each other all the time. They are also extremely winding and the already weak pathfinding AI in this game just can't handle it, leading to characters constantly wandering off into random directions to walk into traps and enemies. And the enemies are kobold commandos, who shot you from far away with quite dangerous fire arrows. The best way to counter them is to get into melee so they fight with short swords instead, but in this dungeon this is a real pain in the ass. But better get used to it, because in this dungeon the enemies are infinitely respawning. When I went into the dungeon I had 20 fire arrows. When I was finally done I hat 150. All my archers are now equipped with nothing but fire arrows for some time to come. And the worst thing is, that none of this is in any way worth it. There is a skeleton who tells you to take his armor. And there's a group of ghost who say "Thanks" when you have the armor and then disappear. At the very end of the dungeon you fight an human wizard and an ogre mage who claims to be the leader of the kobolds and has them attack the halfling village nearby to lure adventurers with valuable equipment to the dungeon. This dungeon sucks.
The village Gullykin is very much connected to the dungeon but it feels extremely unfinished. There is nothing to do in the village and no store or inn. Just a temple. If you kill the ogre mage in the dungeon, one of the halflings gives you a few coins if you talk to him, but that's it. It's like someone created the backgrounds for the maps and then they never got around to actually do anything with them.
Poopy.

Also on the Gullykin map are four bounty hunters, and these are a very different league from the goons in the Friendly Arm, Beregost, and Nashkell. They really made it a hard fight and I had to throw all the spells I had at them. Bless, Remove Fear, Entangle, Lightning Strike, and two Acid Arrows. And it still really hurt. Nice loot though. One has the chainmail +2, which you find again at the start of BG2.

I got pretty rich very quickly. First I bought the Shadow Armor +3 for Imoen and later found another boots of sneaking, so I could give the first ones back to the halfling in Beregost. With these things on, Imoen has now 100% stealth. I also bought the Full Plate for Naderion. And I am still swimming in gold. I should go back to the High Hedge and buy a load of spells for Xan. He now has two third level spells but the only spell he knows is dispel magic.

Overall, my party is pretty awesome now:

Naderion: Fighter 5, AC -3, 48 hp; Full plate, Halberd +1, Greatsword +1, Composite Longbow, Ring of protection +1, helm of defense, swordmaster gauntlets, magic boots, magic belt.
Khalid: Fighter 5, AC -1, 49 hp; Plate mail, longsword +1, Warhammer +1, ring of protection +1, magic boots.
Jaheira: Fighter 5/Druid 5, AC -2, 44 hp; Chainmail +2, gloves of Dexterity 18, winter boots, extra priest spells ring.
Imoen: Thief 6, AC 0, 37 hp; Shadow armor +3, archer bracers, shortsword +2, thief boots, ringe of fire protection, wolf cloak, 100 fire arrows.
Xan: Enchanter 5, AC 4, 16 hp; Robe of fire resistance, Bracers of Armor AC 8, ring of protection +1, moon sword, wand of frost, wand of paralysis, wand of fireballs.

I realized that some of the potions I wanted to keep for the late game have already become pointless. Everything that sets armor class to 0 is pointless now. Which I find a bit off. Descending armor class was always strange idea (and a bad idea ), but from the numbering chosen I assume that it wasn't really expected that characters would get better than AC 0. I was already past that with most characters on 4th level.

APT: 31 hours. (I've been busy.)

[Winthur]

But yea, your let's play prompts me to try an elven fighter/mage, as I LOVED bows, and always felt the archer ranger falls a bit short...

Spoiler: Archery and powergaming

Show

The Archer kit is the only class that will actually proceed to evolve in terms of ranged DPS as it advances through BG2, though, because of the bow grandmastery, Aimed Shot and constantly receiving scaling to ranged damage. Elf Fighter/Mage, on the other hand, can only become a Weapon Specialist in bows and there are no spells that really make you a good bowman - buffs like Shapechange, Polymorph Self or Tenser's really lend themselves to melee prowess. You will be great at shooting bows throughout BG1 like every other Fighter or Fighter-hybrid if you just take any martial and slap ++ in the Bows skill, of course, but Bows tend to diminish towards the late-game SoA/ToB and Archer's passive bonuses go a long way in keeping the skill afloat in the long-term.

I mean, Mazzy is a terrific archer throughout BG2, and she's just an exceptionally statted Fighter with +++++ in Short Bows (by far the best ranged weapon of BG2, don't get Long Bows!), but everyone tends to pick Mazzy as early as possible to make sure she scales well into melee as well. If you wanted a character that stuck to bows as a fluff choice and otherwise had a number of good abilities behind it to be less one-dimensional, you might as well play an Elven F/M with Bows; merely be advised that at some point you might feel like you have fewer and fewer reasons to actually do archery as the game progresses.

If you want a dedicated archer build that actually has power reasons to stay a full archer throughout the whole saga, Archer Ranger it is. Anything else can be a competent archer, but in terms of sheer archery prowess, thye don't really compare, and I think that a F/M hybrid focusing on bows will start phasing out of using them past BG1, although they obviously will have more utility outside of just "shooting everything in sight for ridiculous damage". That said, it doesn't take much to make Tuigan / Gesen a solid choice for artillery.

[Yora]

Up in the North

I went north of the Friendly Arm and hunted bandits and ankhegs with Ajantis for a while. The ankheg hole is another neat idea for a dungeon with which the game doesn't really do much. The treasure of the ankhegs was pretty great, though. It included a second wand of fireballs. Now I can be wasteful with them. I took one of the ankheg hides to the smith in Beregost and got him to make an armor out of it for me. While waiting for the armor to be completed, I did some minor stuff in the area. I got some third level spells for Xan at High Hedge.

What I forgot to mention last time was that south of the High Hedge, I ran into something I had completely forgotten about Mellycamp the talking chicken. That was always one of the more funny things in the game. I took the chicken to the wizard and he tried to return his student into a human with a necromancy spell. I decided that I would take whatever result happens first without reloading, and as luck would have it, Mellycamp survived. I think the odds for that are actually rather bad.

I went to the map in the very south east, which I had forgotten to check out again. There I encountered another group of bounty hunters that includes two casters and all of them have pretty good gear. But by throwing everything I had in spells at them, they went down pretty quickly. Crowd controll does a lot, and once you have third level spells you really have a pretty good arsenal at hand.
I also encountered a wizard who was trying to control slimes, which didn't turn out so well. Since I now had two wands of fireballs, I used to shots to clear out the slimes, which I remember as being ridicukously deadly. Still got only 65 XP for them. I know that the wizard can be provoked into attacking and that he has decent stuff. Like I know quite a lot of NPCs in the wildeness that can be provoked into attacking and giving you really great loot. Apparently I must have played the game somewhat differently back in the day. Now I just sigh at the missed loot and let them leave. But lame insults really are no reason to start a fight to the death when you play a good guy.

Once I had my armor, I headed back north. At the ankhegs, there were three fishermen who had trouble with a priestess of Umberlee. Turned out they are servants of Talos and murdered the old priestess to get her magic bowl of summoning water elementals. I got them to give me the bowl and let them leave. Next to the house of the priestess was an ankheg, among whose remains was a normal looking dagger. But I had some vague memory about something being special about that ankheg and that dagger is actually named. I think somwhere inside Baldur's Gate there's an NPC who wants it. Making quest items indistinguishable from vendor trash is a bad idea. Same goes with the sword of the halfling in Beregost.

Even further North is a map almost as bland as Firewine Bridge. There is one farm house with a farmer who asks you to kill the 20 zombies on the map for 150 gold pieces. And that's the whole area.

I went on to quickly check out the store in the expansion town Ulgoth's Beard to get a saber for Jaheira. Since she has fewer points in swords that blunt weapons, it's actually less useful than a regular club. I hope there's a magic club somewhere in the game.

Next I went east of the Friendly Arm and got to a big open area on which there are a good number of lesser and greater basilisks. These are really dangerous, as they can turn you into stone. But understanding the game and D&D much better now, there are actually several ways to deal with them quite safely. My trusted old method had always been wand of fireballs. Send a hidden thief first to spot them, and then blast away from outside their range of vision. What I did first this time is to make everyone use ranged attacks to avoid engaging more than one at a time, and have my leading character take a potion that gives +5 to all saving throws. That worked quite well too.
Also on the map is the talking ghoul Korax who wants to join the party. Eventually he gets hungry and wants to eat your party, but now I realized what he's there for. Being undead, he is immune to petrification in D&D. He's your invulnerable meat shield to distract the basilisks while you kill them at range.
A bit later I also realized that there is a wizard spell "protection form petrification". It's only on a single character, so I had never paid it any attention, but this lets you use the same method to fight basilisks at any place in the game. I will remember that for later.
Also also in the area is Shar-teel, a human fighter. I took her along for a while, having Ajantis left behind in Beregost, and continued on to the forests in the Northeast.

I dumped my loot from the first forest map in the Friendly Arm and left Shar-teel there as well. On the second wilderness map in the region I helped Viconia against a Flaming Fist mercenary and took her into the party. Somehow I never before noticed how terrible her stats are. 10 Str and even lower Con makes her terrible in battle. Even with the +2 warhammer, she hits as well and as fast as Xan. I had intended for her to use Khalid's old plate mail (or the one from the mercenary we just killed), but she just doesn't have the strength for it. Jaheira's +2 chainmail is just as good, though. Downside is that Jaheira now looks boring again. But with Mullahey's ring, she gets a lot of spells to cast, and a couple that Jaheira doesn't have. I am looking forward to see how that will play out in action. I rarely had straight clerics in the party in either game.

There were a lot of Black Talon Elites in the area and now I got loads of ice arrows and piles of +1 arrows. I don't have any normal arrows on any character anymore. For now it's only the good stuff.

That leaves only one and a half wilderness maps. After that it's all bandit camp, cloackwood, and Baldur's Gate. On all my playthroughs (I think even the first), I always did all the wilderness stuff before going to Cloakwood. With lots of games ending up unfinished 20 or 30 hours in, I've been to Beregost, Nashkell, and the wilderness maps many more times than I have been to Cloackwood and Baldur's Gate. My memories are getting much more hazy from this point on.

APT: 37 hours.

[Caelestion]

Did you ever do the TotSC content? I don't think I ever completed that myself.

[Yora]

The Ice Island and Balduran's Island I did every time. Durlag's Tower I did twice, and one time even completed it.

The tedious parts are over now. From here on it will be pretty much 100%.

[Spore]

Spoiler: Archery and powergaming

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The Archer kit is the only class that will actually proceed to evolve in terms of ranged DPS as it advances through BG2, though, because of the bow grandmastery, Aimed Shot and constantly receiving scaling to ranged damage. Elf Fighter/Mage, on the other hand, can only become a Weapon Specialist in bows and there are no spells that really make you a good bowman - buffs like Shapechange, Polymorph Self or Tenser's really lend themselves to melee prowess. You will be great at shooting bows throughout BG1 like every other Fighter or Fighter-hybrid if you just take any martial and slap ++ in the Bows skill, of course, but Bows tend to diminish towards the late-game SoA/ToB and Archer's passive bonuses go a long way in keeping the skill afloat in the long-term.

I mean, Mazzy is a terrific archer throughout BG2, and she's just an exceptionally statted Fighter with +++++ in Short Bows (by far the best ranged weapon of BG2, don't get Long Bows!), but everyone tends to pick Mazzy as early as possible to make sure she scales well into melee as well. If you wanted a character that stuck to bows as a fluff choice and otherwise had a number of good abilities behind it to be less one-dimensional, you might as well play an Elven F/M with Bows; merely be advised that at some point you might feel like you have fewer and fewer reasons to actually do archery as the game progresses.

If you want a dedicated archer build that actually has power reasons to stay a full archer throughout the whole saga, Archer Ranger it is. Anything else can be a competent archer, but in terms of sheer archery prowess, thye don't really compare, and I think that a F/M hybrid focusing on bows will start phasing out of using them past BG1, although they obviously will have more utility outside of just "shooting everything in sight for ridiculous damage". That said, it doesn't take much to make Tuigan / Gesen a solid choice for artillery.

Spoiler: Archers cont.

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Seriously while building a decent Fighter I stumbled upon the Half-orc (yet again) and with the insane Str bonus to damage and the imho underutilized slings I want to do a Tank/Slingshoteer Fighter/Thief now. Not that I want to ambush people, Thief is just to be a lot more flexible with my groups but +7 to damage on slingshot ammo is very VERY nice with Str 19.

Maybe I do a Human Archer with Slingshots (the stat book is easily attainable though I feel a Strength Archer is VERY counter intuitive). As far as I understand the BG wiki, slings have a superior speed factor and are thus quicker than bows which means more damage bonus in shorter time.

Aaaand Archers cant specialize in Slings. Well.

[Winthur]

*snip*

Spoiler: I accidentally wrote a huge post about Slings and am now somewhat ashamed of myself

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Spoiler: Slings are great, but

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you're gonna have a hard time getting your Attacks Per Round up, which is the single best way of increasing your damage dealt on any martial. Getting Greater Whirlwind really helps because you'll be capped on around 3,5 attacks per round otherwise if perfectly equipped, hogging stuff like Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization, and relying on Improved Haste, in which case the Bow users have superior APR.

Spoiler: How to build an unorthodox power Slinger with some fun utility

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Priest of Lathander (X) -> Fighter, where X goes to a maximum of 11 (for the 6th level spell slot spell slot), but 9 (for a 5th level spell, which will be Righteous Magic) and 10 (for a bonus Gift of Lathander) depending on your patience for the dual are also feasible. You get to become a Sling Grandmaster (which is more important in Enhanced Edition and fixes that restore True Grandmastery; original BG doesn't really make investing in Grand Mastery worth anything), cast some good priest utility, you get to buff your Strength really high at will with the clerical buffs (DUHM, Holy Power etc.). This build is hard to pull off in large parties, though, due to the sheer amount of XP you need.

Spoiler: More builds around Slings

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Half-Orc is great for the initial 19 Strength and is a solid Fighter/Cleric candidate (you lose Grandmastery, but you avoid screwing around with Duals while getting more casts of Righteous Magic), but it's mostly an early-game power and Half-Orcs don't bring anything to the table other than their powerful early game, a cool sprite, and the romancable Viconia. Overall, I'd say more superior and more thematic slingers are Halflings for the sheer defensive power (saving throw bonuses from high CON), as well as +1 THAC0 with Slings on top of high Dexterity. There are just a lot of ways of getting your Strength up, so the 19 STR is really only that amazing in BG1, IMO.
Archers are actually solid Slingers / Throwers and it doesn't matter that they can't GM the weapon - if you really insist on being an Archer with a sling, it's fine, your bonuses apply to all ranged weapons.
One-handed throwing builds are allowed to wear Crom Faeyr in the off-hand while slinging, which means any slinger, not just a Cleric-type, can sling with 25 Strength. Slingers are also, obviously, allowed to use a shield.
Pure Fighter works really well here as well, it's just nothing special and I figure that it would mostly use Sling as a backup weapon.

Spoiler: Throwing builds

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Somewhat surprisingly the best damage dealer is a throwing Kensai built around the returning dagger Firetooth +3 (not to be confused with the crossbow). Even though you're not supposed to be at range at all as a Kensai by design, but they overlooked thrown weapons. Thrown axes also benefit greatly from strength bonuses and you have some decent weapons like Azuredge, K'logarath and that one returning axe in BG1. Dwarves get a handy and thematic magical dwarven thrower, although it mostly "does the job" and doesn't top damage values.

Spoiler: The best BG2 ranged damage dealers among NPCs

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Pre-buffed Anomen with the best sling you can find might outperform Mazzy with a short bow, but Mazzy can fire Gesen very well on demand and she's otherwise very versatile as well. Haer'dalis can use Melf's Minute Meteors with Offensive Spin.

Spoiler: tl;dr

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just pick any martial and put points into Slings and find a way to fix the APR bottleneck and get your strengthi high up and you should be fine. Otherwise all I can say is is that the creme de la creme ranged builds are generally Archers (any ranged weapon, but most obviously short bows), Kensais (thrown daggers and axes) and various F/C hybrids (due to Righteous Magic and ability to self-buff Strength). Halfling, Dwarf or lastly Half-Orc (for early game power) Fighter/Thief with a sling + shield who switches up between tanking and slinging is actually solid, I just don't think there's anything in the Thief kit that really makes you crank out the Sling DPS and you're delaying GWW without much in terms of compensation so you're mostly gonna use it as a backup option like most people. You will STILL be a really solid character, just without any express Sling (or ranged fighting) synergy.

[Caelestion]

Your post about slings reminded me of the most recent character with whom I completed BG1 Tutu (a few years ago): a human Fighter/Kensai 9, who I then dual-classed to Wizard shortly after BG II began. I think the mod-makers have since fixed the bug where you get both the fighter and wizard strongholds with this wheeze.

[Yora]

The Bandit Camp

Resuming my search of the Forest of Sharp Teeth, I killed more Black Talon Elites and some spiders, until I ran into a bandit leader who approached me, and I convinced him that I want to become a bandit as well. So he took me to his camp to bring me to his boss. Who turned out to be Tazog, the half-ogre. Tazog wasn't happy about it, but he was in a hurry to leave on another visit to the Cloackwood, so he allowed me to stay. The west side of the camp was inhabited by the hobgoblins of the Chill, and the east side by the bandits from the Black Talons. There were also a group of gnolls, but they had been causing so much trouble that they have been confined in a cave.
Tazog's big tent was guarded only by one guard, who was fortunately an idiot who tried to hand over the job to me. He also told me that this tent was also where Tazog kept all his important documents that needed to be guarded.

Inside the tent were four of Tazog best men, a gnoll, two hobgoblins, and a wizard. Having buffed up with bless, prayer, and remove fear, I just tore through them. Xan may not be able to learn all the big explody spells (also including agnazar's scorcher and stinking cloud), but this leaves plenty of slots for sleep and hold person. And with their long durations they pretty much take an enemy out of the fight completely, to be mopped up one by one at the end. I got a good longbow out of it, but unfortunately my main archer is Imoen and she can only use short bows. I rarely need to use the bow on Naderion.
Also in the tent was one of Tazog's personal prisoners. He was happy for the rescue and able to tell me that he thinks the rumor that the bandits are working for the Zhentarim don't make sense. He never crossed the Zhentarmin and always only really pissed off the Iron Throne, who he suspects to be Tazog's real bosses. In Tazog's stuff were two letters from Daeveron, which confirmed that the sabotage of the Nashkell mines and the bandit attacks were all done by the same group, who also hired the assassins to kill Naderion. But no clue of why they wanted to kill him when he was still a nobody in Candlekeep. The letters also mention that Daeveron is at their main base in Cloacwood, where Tazog was just leaving for, so that's the obvious next place to go.

Outside the tent in the camp, nobody seemed to have noticed the fight in the tent. But since one of my goals is to destroy the bandits that are disrupting the iron trade, I started a fight with them myself. The leader of the Black Talons was quite tough and dealt out very good, but I still took him down and took his full plate armor for Jaheira. The whole battle also got me two Shields +1, which brings Jaheira to an armor class of -6. The rest of the frontline fighters not looking much worse at -3. I also mopped up the Chill and then cleared out the gnolls in the cave, to then loot the whole camp. Though there wasn't really much of interest there.
During the fighting I realized that Viconia really isn't made for frontline fighting. She just doesn't have the hit points to survive more than one hit from a big enemy. So I gave her Mullahey's ring to get her more spells, and use her as a caster and ranged fighter like Xan.

I noticed a weird thing, that actually happened to me a lot in previous playthroughs of Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II. I always did all the optional side content first to get my party well leveled and equipped, and then concentrate entirely on the main story. Going to the Bandit Camp and preparing to sail to Spellhold should be highlights of each playthrough. But I think most of my unfinished playthroughs ended very shortly before that. And while I've been powering through the game so far, my enthusiasm has gone down a lot now. Which is weird, because now I get to the parts which I regard as the best parts of the game, and the ones that I don't have memorized inside out yet. Where this sudden, but in hindsight very consistent drop in interest comes from, I really do not now.
But I assume that when I now go to Cloackwood, the fun should return very quickly.

APT: 38 hours.

[Yora]

Cloakwood

First I went to the final map in the Northeast that I had not been to yet. I ran into a group of four red wizards that attacked me and I absolutely wiped the floor with them. A fireball from Xan, silence from Viconia, and call lightning from Jaheira and the whole thing was pretty much done. A 6th level party is very powerful in this game.

Some traveler was asking me to get back his scoll of wisdom that had been stolen by a tasloi who ran into the territory of the ettercaps with it. Ettercaps were surprisingly tough, but the real danger are the traps. Because I believe, the web traps are undetectable. There are three or four in this area and many more in an area later on, and Imoen was not able to spot a single one with 90% trap detection. When the rest of the group are webbed up, an ettercap can kill any one of my characters pretty easily. But things get so much worse when you have to deal with wraith spiders and sword spiders. Those are really tough cookies.
I got the scroll and brought it to the guy, who said that as a reward I can keep the scroll. Of course, I identified them first before consider using it, and it was of course cursed.
There was another neat dream and I got the ability to heal poison one time per day, which is going to come really handy.

I dropped Xan off in the Friendly Arm and continued on into Cloakwood. In the first area there were only tasloi and wolves, thogh also a hunting lodge where a merchant on a hunt was besieged by "savages". A group of druids arrived to kill him, and when I asked if we could talk this over they attacked me as well. The merchant thanked me and told me to visit him in Baldur's Gate. Even though he and his friend might have murdered a druid, but the other druids were not interested in talking.
On a small bridge was Coran, who had come to the forest for the bounty on a wyvern. I had him come along with us for the exploration of the forest. While he had some XP under his belt, his gear was absolute rubbish. Lether armor, longsword, longbow, and 12 arrows. That's 1st level gear.

The second area was heavily infested with giant spiders. I met a guy whose brother had found a magic spider slaying greatsword and went to exterminate all the spiders but never was seen again. On the search for his brother I ran into phantom spider. Giant spiders that can teleport. Which in a campaign can be really enemies to fight, but since in this game all they do is running straight at you and attacking until dead, the teleporting is just a visual gimick. And lots and lots of undetectable web traps here. The best way to deal with them is keeping the party close together at all times and letting all enemies come to you. So when you trigger a trap while no spiders are around, you just stay where you are and wait for the effect to end. Which as with all effects in this game, is pretty long.
Eventually I came upon a huge strange structure. Inside was a giant spider nest and in the center sat a fat naked woman. I managed to talk to her for a bit and she said she had been cursed by the wizard Jon Icarus, because she had been getting between him and his wife. I killed her and got a sweet +2 greatsword that makes you immune to webs and the like. Also the corpse of the guy, who was so heavy that nobody in the party could carry him. Coran waited with the corpse at the entrance of the lair while the rest of the party went back to the other guy to start the dialog and complete the quest.

On the furthest part of the peninsula I met Eldoth, who wanted me to join him into rescuing his girldfriend from her father's mansion in Baldur's Gate and getting him to pay ransom money. I refused, of course, since I have no more party slots. Nearby was a sanctuary of the shadow druids, who are all Neutral like regular druids, but want to murder all humans. Or rather, wipe out all civilization and kill everyone who gets in their way. Which is Neutral, because they are druids. Faldorn wants to join my group to destroy the bandit base in the forest, but the rest of them know that Jaheira is a non-Shadow druid and try to kill is. Without ever leaving any real scratch on us. Even the archdruid doesn't put up a fight, but that happens when a caster starts a fight in a tiny room surrounded by four tanks.
In a small cave some guy was trying to hide the fact that he was training young wyverns as guard animals and when his attempt hilariously failed he attacked. And immediately died.

In the fourth area I ran into a hamadryad, who seems like a regular hostile dryad, excapt that she keep teleporting after every spell, so you have to chase her around. With half my party being ranged, that didn't do her any good either. Nearby was a giant cave entrance with a huge blood trail going inside. I buffed the party with bless and prayer and went inside.. I was greeted by two adult and four young wyverns, and also the corpse of one colossal giant wyvern. Entangle didn't work to keep them separated, but looking at my spell options I tried out Viconia's animate dead, which created a little wall of skeletons. Which conveniently are also immune to poison, which is the most dangerous thing about wyverns. With the wyverns busy, I had them all dead pretty quickly with ranged attacks and spells. This party is rocking it.
And Viconia in particular. She may be pretty useless with her +2 warhammer and no hit points worth mentioning of, but her cleric spells are awesome. Entangle, silence, hold person, animate dead, miscast magic, and a dispel magic for good measure. And she got the ring that gets her one additional spell for each level. This is a spellcasting beast. In the past, I had used priests only for healing and buffs, but this offensive potential is really powerful. And only on 6th level, This is going to be so much fun in BG2.

Since I had been low on arrows since the spiders, even though I had packed a lot, I took a skull from the wyverns and made a trip to Beregost to collect the bounty of 2,000 gold pieces. Which raised my wealth from 34,000 gold pieces with which I have nothing to do to 38.000 gold pieces with which I have nothing to do. By this point, I no longer collect any nonmagical geat from killed humanoids to sell. I think I could even stop collecting gems and scrolls by now. I don't see how I could ever spend this money.

I left Coran in Beregost and picked up Xan again in the Friendly Arm, and loaded up on ammunition.

APT: 42 hours

[Caelestion]

Isn't there a +1 stat book at the back of the spider lair? It probably wasn't until BG2 that they brought in Tab to highlight all interactable objects, though.

I'm fairly sure that Baldur's Gate has some really pricey items to buy when you get there.

[Yora]

No, just checked it. The remaining ones are in Baldur's Gate and Candlekeep.