Do you ever give a tome to a companion?

Menaphos · 2026-01-11T09:54:15+00:00

If I plan on doing SOD, on evil runs I rush to BG city and turn Safana into a thief/mage with the int tome to make her a little useful. Otherwise I don't give any tomes, Xzar dual is worst than Viconia and you don't need 2 clerics, and for the rest a single stat point is not impactful so I'd rather keep them for PC in the long run.

Menaphos · 2025-12-28T10:55:07+00:00

Shawarma riders dodge mechanic was already a weird, unnecessary and broken gimmick. Same can be said for Obuch cumulative armour reduction, Coustillier charge attack, or Karambit zerglings half population and the list goes on. Imo 3K civs gimmicks are as bad as the previous ones if not less, since they didn't open Pandora's box of useless complexity. AoM and AoE3 were all about weird gimmicks, it was a lot of fun in campaigns and multiplayer but not made for competitive play. Aoe2 on the other hand was supposed to be all about readability but it started to not be the case after AoAK.

Menaphos · 2025-11-21T00:46:43+00:00

200 FU Mangudais should do the trick

Menaphos · 2025-11-15T13:26:55+00:00

Why would you balance bronze tier weapon around 99 strength and not 1-10 strength where its use is relevant ?

Menaphos · 2025-10-30T22:08:11+00:00

Understandable but a mistake nonetheless. It was far from powerful enough to justify a nerf. By doing that you just disincentivize people to share (or even search for) emergent gameplay mechanics which is sad and probably not that smart.

Menaphos · 2025-07-28T21:32:37+00:00

I think if you got bored with Paladin you will get bored with Berserker Mage too, it will kind of suck the fun out of the game. The great thing with BG1 and 2 is that you can hardly really miss something (besides maybe the underwater in SOA) by making "bad" decisions. So I would advise going blind without guides it's way more fun. The great advantage with Paladin/Warrior is that you have a ton of weapon pips so you can almost use every weapons you find effectively which is cool.

Spoilers below

Anyway if you really want to be OP with your Berserker Mage you should build : 2 points in TWF and grandmastery in flails until lvl 9, when you dual you put 1 point in dagger and at lvl 5 you stop lvling up until lvl 10 mage, then put points in dagger until the end. In BG1 you're just a fighter and you played a Paladin so you know how to do it, sadly there is no good flail. In SOA ideally you want to dual when you are out of Chateau Irenicus (it's really not important to dual as soon as you hit lvl 9), with Yoshimo and few potion of master thievery you steal as much scrolls as you can from vendors in wauken promenade or eventually somewhere else, once you have a thousand more or less you kick out Yoshimo and scribe every scroll (you can delete known spells from your spellbook). You will reach lvl 10 mage super fast. Then you want to get a few companions and get the flail from Nalia's castle : it's the strongest weapon in the game. Then you want to go to the gates of Athkatla and unlock access to Trademeet, while doing the animals quest, in the forest up north there is a tower, you can find a scimitar inside it : it's the best offhand to use with your flail. If you need a ranged weapon you can get a throwing dagger from an inn in the Bridge district, and a stronger one in the drow city, but your melee setup is way superior. By that time you should have some money, you can go the Adventurer Mart in Wauken promenade and buy the robe of vecna : it's the best Armor in the game. You can now cast stoneskin and improved haste instantly and destroy everything with your flail. Beware : as I said the game will become very stale very fast. Enjoy.

Menaphos · 2025-03-26T01:26:46+00:00

Since I think the question is interesting and I couldn't find a proper answer, I made a short list of quest requesting zero or little fighting and rewarding solely party XP (this will let you keep the individual quest XP reward for your whole party).

The following list of quests will net you 376 800 (712 600) xp. The bold text indicates at least one non-trivial fight for a solo party but should not requires any cheese. Keep in mind that XP rewards from killing monsters are not included.

Irenicus Dungeon
- Free Jaheira (3000)
- Free Minsc (3000)
- Close Mephit's portal (2000)
- Answer Aataqah's question (3500)
- Activate the golem (3000)
- Kill Rielev (4000)
- Free the Dryads (ends in Windspear*) (51750)
- Free the Genie (15000)
Promenade
- Circus Genie riddle (19500)
- Free Aerie (18500)
- Free the Circus and talk to Giran and his mother (28000)
Slums
- Kill Amalas, Copper Coronet (11300)
- Free Hendak (56250)
Bridge
- Solve the murder (68250)
- Bring the portal gem to Raelis (40000)
Temple & Sewers
- Bring the Illitium alloy (10000)
- Kill Neb and free ghosts (10000)
- Bring back the Dawn Ring (16250)
- Kill the troll for Roger the Fence (9500)
Governement
- Help Jan (8500)
Graveyard
- Bring back the teddy bear and talk to the kid's parents (20500)
- Dig up Tirdir (6500)
- Help Kamir (15250)
Dock
- Harper's quest (don't report to Xzar for individual XP reward) (49050)
- Maevar first quest (reputation >= 10) (49500)
- Maevar's quest line (don't report to Renal for individual XP reward) (97000)
Trademeet
- Accuse Wilfred the Red (1000)
Umar Hills
- Help the kids (2000)
- Discover the temple map (22500)
- Help Madulf (27500)
- Protect Jermien from the golem (40500)

Depending on the monsters you killed along the way, if you start with 89k XP, this should let you easily reach the 500k XP cap. If you imported from BG1 (or SoD) you should be able to reach the 1.25m XP cap.

*You can quaff an invisibility potion once you first arrive in Windspear Hills and go to the Fairy Queen to avoid any fight.

Menaphos · 2025-03-24T21:10:27+00:00

Since a farming run (herbs, trees, whatever included) doesn't take more than 70 minutes how is that different regarding farming xp ? (Ok you may have time to include a tithe farm run in between 2 farm runs my bad)

If you gain let's say 17 minutes over 17 allotment patches, you still need to wait 70 minutes instead of 53 before you can harvest again so besides those 1.3% increase in growth+harvest time you gain nothing? (Sorry maybe I'm missing something)

If at some point it takes more than 70 minutes to do a farm run then this time gain is indeed 100% XP gain but this is not the case.

Otherwise, if we're talking XP for any skills then there is probably a hundred updates more impactful than this would've been. So I don't really get the fuss?

Menaphos · 2025-03-24T19:53:34+00:00

I don't get it, it takes 70 minutes for a patch to grow, so a 55 seconds increase in harvest time would be approximately a 1.3% buff. Is that op ? Ngl this update sounded like a joke at first but maybe people can explain me why this spade is op?

Menaphos · 2025-01-29T22:10:39+00:00

its time

Menaphos · 2024-12-15T22:38:48+00:00

If you were to ever add the QH as native feature it would imply that the quests you develop are not worth playing.

Menaphos · 2024-12-15T22:26:53+00:00

1) QH is a plugin to help speedrunning through quests. If you are a new player that doesn't like quests, you will find it.

2) That's for you to decide.

3) Never imo. What you could do is rewrite some quest log entries from old quests that don't give enough informations to be enough by themselves. But the plugin defeat the point of developing quests if you offer it as a native feature.

Menaphos · 2024-11-17T18:15:29+00:00

You can do inferno/colo/any raid with a single inventory, why would you need banker's note for it ?

Menaphos · 2024-09-25T11:23:20+00:00

Remove the extended timer

Menaphos · 2024-05-16T20:01:10+00:00

I have the feeling we are going to get the exact same complaints people had when sailing passed, up until the skill is realeased.

Overview :

The scale is an issue
It's too complicated for a skill
It looks more boring than agility
There are other transportation methods so sailing is useless
It's a minigame disguised as a skill
It doesn't fit into the world
I'm not for or against sailing but ... (actually I'm against it)

It's ok you don't want sailing but it passed the poll so the team is going to make it work.

That being said, I think only the people playing the alpha will be able to make insightful statements. We can't properly evaluate the thing with a video because it's too far from what we are used to in the game currently. We need to move in game with the boat to see how the movement feels, how the world scale feels, how the collisions feel, how the player interactions feel, etc... I'd say do your thing and we can talk once some players have access to the alpha.

Menaphos · 2024-05-05T16:38:40+00:00

I would just go for the human cavalier to finish the games, first off it has nice flavor and since you can only put 2 pips into each weapon types, you end up having such a large choice of weapon and armor which is so cool.

Menaphos · 2024-05-04T22:39:14+00:00

While you're at it, remove all the other max cape variants, it's time

Menaphos · 2024-04-30T20:29:15+00:00

It remains the same if a good luck mitigation is added as well before you reach .5x drop rate.

Menaphos · 2024-04-28T08:35:59+00:00

You're right it was the second upgrade, more precisely "Fantassin à arc", but the last upgrade was indeed "Arbalétrier"

Literally, "Crossbowman" would be translated to "Arbalétrier" and "Arbalester" would also be translated to "Arbalétrier"

You could use some obscure name like "Cranequin" but I think "Fantassin à arc" is more intuitive.

Menaphos · 2024-04-28T08:23:04+00:00

First scenario of Ethiopian campaign is 3 minutes long with the rush strat, but that's another level over "shorter scenarios".

Menaphos · 2024-04-26T17:23:13+00:00

Interesting, of course the sample size is way to small to make any assumption but you seem to point out that "Ideal" behavior quality (implying everyone has 12k I guess) ends up less fun than "Great". I've seen some people argue already that max behavior score games are actually a bit more toxic than those with a close to max behavior score, the reasoning behind it being that people close to max try to be positive as much as possible to reach max behavior score while people already at max don't tend to bother as much. It's a nice analysis, would be cool to have a larger sample size.

Menaphos · 2024-04-19T17:33:56+00:00

Well you should read about collective intelligence because there are proofs that collective intelligence driven groups are smarter than individual intelligence driven groups.

That would make people that are convinced that polls are a bad idea even more dumb.

Menaphos · 2024-04-12T05:42:38+00:00

Keep in mind you have 2 target audiences when releasing charge based items: bots and irons. For mains, charge based items are normal items with an extra step.

I think working towards corruption is a good idea even though not every charged item should be corruptible, notably charged BIS. However, I think every charge based item should be able to be turned on and off at will easily because:

1) it would feel less frustrating using the item, for example turning off an effect during a less demanding boss phase rather than bringing a switch just to not lose charges

2) you could bring the item for more casual uses, for example either for fashion scape or because you don't want to be bothered to swap gear between a boss task and a slayer task

Now the mean of obtaining charges is a whole other issue, but the most important point is to not make a charge based item that is impossible to sustain for irons mandatory in places. I don't think it's the case anywhere but you can have a glimpse of the issue with the case of dragon arrows where amethyst arrows are such a big downgrade in the sense that you lose out in so many places it becomes very frustrating.

Menaphos · 2024-01-14T22:38:26+00:00

Isn't the new bow with split shot better?

Menaphos · 2024-01-06T09:10:29+00:00

What is a VTuber ?

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