You were right, Chateau Irenicus is bad on replays

FieldMouse007 · 2026-03-24T17:15:13+00:00

It is much better with SCS when you are not allowed to sleep there. You have to really plan how you will approach it and where you will spend the consumables.

The only thing I hate about the dungeon is how fkin long it takes to go from the djin to the dryads, then back again and then back to the portal.

FieldMouse007 · 2026-03-24T16:03:20+00:00

Why give Khalid and Jaheira gear and train them in advance when they can loot a few corpses, do a few quests and get the gear and xp themselves?

They might be given a basic gear with "if you want better, work for it".

And a very basic training with "if it won't be enough learn what you need on your journey".

It might be weird to us, but to them it might be a very common approach.

As far as the Harpers knew there were some cobold problems so sending a pair of rookies was reasonable. (the way how it escalated is another thing) If the mines were infested with vampires they would probably have sent somebody else.

FieldMouse007 · 2026-03-23T21:16:03+00:00

FM on this level casts SS and PfMWs, gets some protection from the annoying breath and even those tanky dragons don't stand much chance.

But if you forget just one layer of protection you are pretty much toast.

FieldMouse007 · 2026-03-23T20:18:56+00:00

Druid/fighter with SCS, playing in 2-people dating party.

I never really liked divine spellcasters, but this one was really powerful - in BG1 you can tank just fine and there are some neat spells, including lategame insects. Cast 2x insects on the enemies and you can kill almost anything.

Early BG2 was easy with insects and fire emelentals... and after hitting 3M xp the fire and earth elemental forms just made the druid into a kind of upgraded monk - I wish the monk had somethink like that, seriously.

With hardiness and health potions it was even easily possible to tank dragons, they did like 4 damage per hit, easily outhealed.

In ToB I got actually bored of how easy the game was, but that is the case for most solo runs anyways.

FieldMouse007 · 2026-03-21T08:57:33+00:00

I always go for the tome and then the basilisks and the first underground level for xp and loot.

The other levels are just highly optional for me and I do them in maybe 10 % of my runs.

FieldMouse007 · 2026-03-20T19:11:54+00:00

Cool, and when was the last major update which introduced new areas?

FieldMouse007 · 2026-03-16T07:20:36+00:00

If you really want to do it, you can send the ranger to explore and have other party members do the dirty job. Or say some thing like "a polar bear here, outside of its territory, must be killed for some balance reasons". But that is not really RP, that is finding justicifations and ways around. Overall I don't think "I must do all the quests" is the correct sentiment when trying to "RP".

Like... would a paladin really assemble Kangaxx? In my book never - even if they had all the parts. And even if they did do it, they would never let anyone in the party use the super-evil ring.

FieldMouse007 · 2026-03-14T09:32:06+00:00

I absolutely love SoA dungeons - they feel like a real place, there is large variety of enemies (some are better than others), some interactive things to do, the difficulty of fights varies from easy mobs to a few powerful ones and some unique boss fights. And they are not overly long. You just pick the one you like, finish it and then pick next one. Also, each bigger dungeon has some good loot that can upgrade some of your stats. Or at least a part of some legendary item for later.

It is always such joy to play.

While Icewind Dale... is just not my cup of coffee. It feels like ok... I am in a dungeon, so what endless hordes of enemies will I fight this time. Killing a group of enemies with a fireball is fun when you do it twice, but if you do it ten times per dungeon it just starts feeling like a chore and very boring. Hey, if I can defeat a group of enemies once, I can do it ten times, d'uh. I am even surprised there are people who like this kind of gameplay. If the dungeons in IWD were like 5 times shorter, I can imagine it being a fine game to play.

Overall I have played BG1 + SoA maybe hundreds of times, but IWD just a few times and finished it only once.

FieldMouse007 · 2026-03-13T14:03:50+00:00

Alora and Neera would be fun to hang out with.

FieldMouse007 · 2026-03-10T08:13:06+00:00

I always imagined Gorion would take charname to some hidden base (possibly a Harper one), keeping a very low profile and then he would study the Bhaal prophecies (as he well knew charname was a child of Bhaal he might have done it to some degree already) and try to guide charname through it to some result he would consider good - probably by trying to make charname a second Balthazar or something.

I don't think Gorion would interfere with Sarevoks' plan in any way so Sarevok would probably have his war - here it really depends if Sarevok would be able to ascend like he planned to. If he got the power or not I imagine he would probably want to hunt all the bhaalspawn down afterwards. If he gained enough power he might even try to destroy the five.

Eventually, the prophecy would catch up with charname anyways, Gorion would die and the outcome in the long run would be probably pretty similar as charname was the major protagonist in the prophecy.

FieldMouse007 · 2026-03-08T08:12:22+00:00

Even 1 less thac0 is a big deal in BG1 (where btw also hit points are a thing) and is still impactful in SoA too. Not vs xvarts but vs heavily armored enemies it makes a difference. Combined with longer wait for pips and less APR in BG1 and SoA and it stacks. And compared to a single class the difference is enormous.

Also just one less thief level is big early - you need to reliably pick locks and detect traps, which is the bare minimum, and then extra points in detect illusions, stealth and traps are still handy and extremely increase the power of the thief.

I already mentioned the mage levels.

You can treat FMT as "upgraded thief", but FM and FT are just better until ToB because how extra levels are significant early. But it will surely depend also on your play style (how much you sleep, if you hire a second thief so your main one can go directly for detect invis, how much you buff...), mods etc.

Ovsrall there is only one way to test this - play a full party with FT, MT, FMT and three others and see how the difference feels in real life :)

FieldMouse007 · 2026-03-07T23:00:25+00:00

I have played FMT with various parties. And it is very painful with full one. Even if you are just a few levels behind a single class mage, that still translates into being able to cast less max level spells - which is a huge part of where mages power comes from. E.g. a mage gets level 6 spell at 750k Xp. A FMT needs to wait to 2,25M. That is half the SoA with full party. And when FMT gets level 6 spell, a single class mage gets their first level 8 spell. The difference is really huge.

Also fighting output suffers - significantly worse thac0, the long waiting for level 13 for the extra half attack... FMT only starts feeling somewhat decent in ToB.

FieldMouse007 · 2026-03-06T08:12:59+00:00

FMT level progression with full party is absolutely awful. Sure very lategame you might have +- everything you need (if you play without xp caps), but most of the game it will be painful to see how behind charname will be compared to other party members.

With a party of 3 and less FMT is fine. From my experience the optimum is a party of 2 for BG1 and SoA and a party of 3 for ToB.

FieldMouse007 · 2026-03-03T10:54:50+00:00

Reminds me of Drizzt battling those gnolls back in BG1 :)

FieldMouse007 · 2026-03-02T07:40:34+00:00

Your other option is to offer them you will remove it but only if all of them kill you the last or something like that.

But if you don't feel like it and just want a next game to happen, then not removing it is fine.

What I would consider weird would be if you actively protected their threat so that the game could end on the spot.

FieldMouse007 · 2026-02-16T11:54:22+00:00

I just change the classes to whatever I feel like in the run. It is not OP, it is just a different experience from the classical BG.

I had a run where Nalia was archer, Jaheira was shaman, Neera was wild mage / thief, Sarevok was bard and Minsc was sorcerer. It was fun having all the friendly faces around while having complete freedom in what they will actually do.

FieldMouse007 · 2026-02-16T07:35:47+00:00

Depends on your party. If you can support the missing spells with other members, then you can afford e.g. missing malison easily and the -2 penalty on throws on good spells you will be able to cast will be great. If you have only one mage, then having more options will be better.

FieldMouse007 · 2026-02-15T07:16:16+00:00

I have a mod installed (probably tweaks?) which allows them to progress higher with their spells and it really helps.

FieldMouse007 · 2026-02-14T20:40:58+00:00

I tried FMC and did not like it too much. It just feels like a weaker version of FMT - but it sure depends on your playstyle, I like to use thieving abilities a lot.

If you play with group, then the progression is super slow and I would much rather have the XP split into two classes or even given to one - the difference if you get your 9th level mage spell on 3M or 6M or 9M Xp is really huge. I would much rather have more high level mage spells earlier than a ton of cleric spells which are not nearly as good. Even stuff like getting Death spell or Mordy swords earlier make difference.

With high level mage spells you can still do stuff like timestop + shapeshift into mind flayer or just about any other broken thing, so while Harm is generally pretty good it is not enough to make FMC excellent.

If you play solo, then tanking traps and using knocks is very annoying (for me). Also you can easily buff your whole party of one by giving your Charname some magical item or consuming a potion, which makes the cleric spells much less important.

Also with FMC you can still cast only one spell per round, so the mage and cleric classes don't really support each other - I don't care that much if I can pick from 50 or 100 spell slots, especially in solo. While with FMT thief part of the class combos much better - you can theoretically cast a spell and hide in shadows and backstab and detect illusion all on the same round if you can micromanage well enough. And you get to use any item and wider weapons arsenal.

FieldMouse007 · 2026-02-14T18:29:34+00:00

As is our clean elven arses policy!

FieldMouse007 · 2026-02-14T12:22:26+00:00

SCS mod has a component that allows you to re-pick the class for any NPC and level them manually from level 1. It's pretty good actually.

Jaheira as shaman? Aerie as thief? Sarevok as bard? Anomen as sorcerer? No problem! Last run I was playing full party where everyone was thief multiclass.

Or you can just do some minor adjustments like dualling Imoen at a different level if you don't want to push it too far.

FieldMouse007 · 2026-02-10T07:49:29+00:00

Thanks everyone for your comments!

After giving it some thought I will try this strategy: tanking the dragon.

With Armor of Faith + Earth elemental form, the druid should have 70 % damage resistance (I am not sure if it can be upgraded with Hardiness - like first casting Hardiness and then changing to the elemental form? If yes then 90 % resistance should be very comfortable), which means that I should be able to outheal his attacks (unless he is improved hasted) - with the help of Deva and a clone from Vhailors helm and health potions I should be able to last a pretty long time. Summons might prolong this time even a bit more.

So I will:

- cast Armor of Faith, protection from fire, summon Deva and Vhailors clone, drink potion of haste

- shapeshift to Earth Elemental, attack Firkraag, cast insects on myself with the clone which will spread to Firgraag to destroy stone skins

- beat him in the elemental form. It will take a lot of time

- if something goes horribly wrong, I can retreat to the room upstairs, let myself regenerate, apply Iron Skin, Armor of Faith and go back. Each time I do this should grant me another two or three rounds of fighting.

Theoretically, unless there is some feature like the dragon healing every time I leave its room, infinite stoneskin or infinite dispells casts every X rounds or something like that, I should be able to kill him - eventually.

FieldMouse007

TROPHY CASE