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[Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition] PC version ETA Nov 30
Posts
I see little has changed your candor, Aegeri. Still a lant-gulping dirt chute.
Sixty -40- on Origin for some ME3 goodness.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/brilliantinsanity/
All of the original art assets have long since been lost, so the actual character/environment graphics won't get more than a bit of cursory touch-ups. I would love for all of the character sprites to be remodeled, but it's beyond the scope of what Beamdog can do right now.
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Darn. Is there any info on the new adventure and character?
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Answer? Just Mazzy and the Shield of Balduran for a ton of wetwork.
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Seems like the best thing to do is use the fighter levels for weapon proficiencies and the early thief points for your weapon style (aside from 1 into whatever weapon you will be using until you get fighter levels back).
Anyway, is there an exhaustive list of quests anywhere so I can be sure I didn't miss anything? Still a few houses in Athkatla I can't get into, etc.
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However I'm having an issue getting the "max stats" at the character creation screen. I have enabled "cheats=1" in the Baldur.ini file, however when I press ctrl+shift+8 at the stats page, nothing happens. When I had it on PC it worked fine, however I am wondering if this is a command that just doesn't fly with the Mac version.
I realize that most will see this as a form of cheating, however I rationalize it by the fact that I'm a goddamn demi-god, and wouldn't expect anything less than 18 strength, charisma, constitution, wisdom, dexterity, and intelligence.
Almost done with Chapter 2. Just the Planar Sphere and a few odds and ends to sort out.
I still haven't seen Terminsel, so I may be dragging Jaheira around when I get back to the surface.
e: my favourite Gaxx kill is when I had a protection from undead scroll but forgot I didn't have any +4 weapons so couldn't hurt him anyway.
So I used the scroll on a morde's sword summon and just watched it slowly hack him down.
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No, what's really broken is Azuredge. Splat! Helped make the Twisted Rune fight doable, since I just destroyed the lich whose name I can't remember before anyone else came, then the beholder fell down real quick.
I didn't realize until after that I could have just had Keldorn solo Kangaxx, so I wasted five scrolls of protection from undead. Five.
Pretty much done Chapter 2, excepting waiting around for a bunch of different stronghold events to pop. I accidentally blew up my favourite apprentice!
Only other things left are poking around Watcher's Keep, and maybe a try at the Shadow Dragon.
aerie: casts spell immunity:abjuration
aerie: undead destroyed
kangaxx: death
Chapter 4 finished, and I'm now at the halfway through the "point of no return" between leaving Athkatla and getting back to it. Like Arivia, my Jaheira romance has been kinda slow (though mine's been mostly due to Ctrl-Jing a lot of places to save time - those seconds and minutes saved add up when it comes to waiting for LOVETALKs), but it'll probably kick back into high gear as soon as I leave the Underdark.
After a cutscene, I fought off some Lizardmen (they used to be undead pre-SCS) and entered the asylum where I was greeted by Totally-Not-Irenicus-Even-Though-He's-Voiced-By-David-Warner. After that rigamarole, followed by Yoshimo's betrayal, my capture, and the subsequent soul-sucking and Bhaal dream chase sequence, I found myself in the Spellhold dungeon area. SCS has an optional component (that's worth using at least once) that strips you of all your gear for the duration of the dungeon, only letting you get it back after you get out, and before you face Irenicus. It's a very interesting change of pace, considering, bar a few certain encounters, the dungeon isn't too difficult to do even with a stripped-bare party. As the SCS readme for the component states, Imoen starts knowing Enchanted Weapon for a reason. Xan knows it too, and had it prepared before I came in, so Callic got a +3 mace, Jaheira got a +3 scimitar, and Mazzy got a +3 shortbow with a couple stacks of +3 arrows.
First order of business was to find some armor, which was lucky enough to be nearby at the portal puzzle. However, I forgot how it worked at first, and instead of summoning the armor-giving Djinni the first time, I summoned the hardest encounter: the Pit Fiend. Whoops. Luckily Callic's Aerial Servant managed to tank it long enough for the rest of my crew to sink a few spells and the people with weapons to get a few hits in on the thing, and it went down without too much hassle. The Djinni then popped out and gave me some armor, which went onto Callic and we were back in business.
Most of the rest of the dungeon wasn't too bad, with Callic and Mazzy doing most of the heavy lifting until I found the Bag of Holding on the first floor, which DavidW was kind enough to pre-stock with some generic unenchanted equipment to dole out to the group. However, one particularly long hallway on the second floor immediately reminded me of something I had completely forgotten about: the lich battle. One small room before Dace the vampire contains a bunch of greater mummies and a single high-level lich. In SCS, liches are dangerous and deadly enough on their own against a fully-equipped party, never mind one that has almost no gear and is also being attacked by a bunch of very hard-hitting mummies. I managed to lure the mummies out of the room and slam the door in the lich's face while I cleared out the former. Now I had to figure out what to do about this guy. I could kite him around, moving from floor to floor in a big circle while draining him of as many buffs and spells as possible... but then I remembered a spell on Callic that I still had memorized from fighting vampires in Chapter 3: Control Undead. Any undead in a 15' area have to make a save vs. spell or be under the control of the caster. There is no mention of any limit on how high a level of undead can be controlled. So, Xan loaded up a sequencer with Breach, Remove Magic, and Greater Malison and opened the door to take the first spells while Callic hung back a little and wound up the spell. A reload or two later, a miracle happened:
Needless to say, the lich was loaded with spells. Time Stops, a bunch of Fingers of Death, some Horrid Wiltings, all sorts of nasty shit, and I made that sucker waste every single last one of them by canceling each cast as it started. Then I made one of its own Skeleotn Warriors beat it to death. Sweet, delicious vengeance for all the times that particular lich gave me grief. The entire rest of the dungeon was essentially a non-issue after that, especially considering Callic transforming into the Slayer automatically pretty much ended the Bodhi fight before it began. After that all that remained was to free the prisoners, retrieve my stuff, and face down Irenicus.
Another thing SCS does with the Irenicus fight in Chapter 4 is something similar to what it did with the Demon Knight battle in Tales of the Sword Coast: the summoned clones of your party members are perfect clones with the proper levels and the same equipment and memorized spells as you. It makes for an extremely hectic fight, especially with my own Teleport Fields causing havoc on the battlefield, spell effects everywhere, and all kinds of craziness. The first couple of attempts went pretty poorly, with Clone!Imoen getting off a bunch of Melf's Minute Meteors and interrupting spellcasts, or Irenicus being an asshole and tossing down Spheres of Chaos after dispelling all of my party's buffs. Things are so crazy that a coherent strategy and smart targeting is practically impossible; you have to just toss down effects, focus-fire when you can, and hope for the best.
Jaheira opened the winning battle with Insect Plague in the time it took Irenicus to summon the clones, which also gave Xan enough time to land a Remove Magic to ensure Irenicus would eat the Plague while Imoen wound up a Teleport Field (this spell is absolutely amazing and I am ashamed that I never used it more often, especially considering it was in vanilla BG2 and even stronger than it is with Spell Revisions). Imoen then wound up a Horrid Wilting to greet the clones while the inmates went about their own business being largely distractions for Irenicus. Bizarro Xan went down first, eating a Disintegrate from Regular Xan, and the evil Mazzy went down next, having been unfortunately spawned right next to Jaheira and Shapiro. The Callic clone got hit by an Otiluke's from Xan, taking probably the most dangerous clone out of the battle for essentially the entire fight, and good Mazzy filled the clone Imoen with lots of tasty +3 arrows. Clone Jaheira went down next via a Finger of Death from Wanev of all people, and the Shapiro clone died at some point, probably from a combination of Callic and the Horrid Wilting. Dradeel did something massively retarded and summoned a Glabrezu which apparently didn't benefit from the various "all NPC summons automatically obey their caster" scripts, since it promptly turned around and killed him, leaving me to have to fight the thing off. Irenicus busied himself with many buffs, replacing many that Xan stripped at the beginning of the fight and generally just harassing the former inmates.
Late in the battle with only one or two clones remaining his AI bugged out a tad and he Dimension Door'd away to avoid eating a Khelben's Warding Whip... but teleported outside of the battlefield, where I could not go due to scripted sealed doors and he could not get back in. I eventually had to Ctrl-J Callic outside who Dispelled Irenicus and beat him until he poofed. Yoshimo and his merry band of backstabbers waltzed in, got caught in a fresh Teleport Field, and were promptly massacred, Jaheira's True Sight rendering their myriad invisibility potions pointless. We dusted ourselves off, talked to Saemon again, stole a horn from a sleeping lady, and after a quick couple of fights we were off to the City-of-Caverns with all the fishy folk. I honestly don't know why anyone would skip the place. It's a bit of lighthearted romp (if a bit gallows humor-y at times) after the dim and dreary heavy plot of Spellhold and it's got lots of great loot.
SCS doesn't do too much for City-of-Caverns, generally just spawning in more Sahuagin and making the priest-types more annoying, but it isn't too bad. I had some fun with the place, sometimes gathering two or three groups of them to launch a futile attack on a Protection from Elements'd Callic, who kited them around until they all stayed in one place so that Jaheira and Imoen could layer Ice Storms, Acid Fogs, and Incendiary Clouds on about thirty fishy people. Imp riddles were solves, Beholders were chatted to, Princes assisted (and pickpocketed from), Kings betrayed and subsequently killed, and much delicious XP was had all around.
Now it's off to the Underdark. This, like the city of Baldur's Gate in BG1, is usually where my playthroughs tend to kind of fall apart and I lose interest, so here's hoping I can soldier through. I'm scared to death of the Beholder hive considering with how much trouble I had with just the small handful of the things I had to deal with in the Unseeing Eye quest. I'm especially not looking forward to fighting a SCS Hive Mother without either a 99% damage MacGuffin or a quest-related golem helping me.
A fair bit of loot was had, most of it from the City-of-Caverns:
Originally just a regular old Platemail +3, Item Revisions takes the name literally and gives it an aura of Doom, hampering anyone around the wearer. The -1 Luck penalty for the wearer himself is more drastic than it might seem, though, since Luck affects to-hit, damage, saving throws, and even incoming and outgoing spell damage. Nobody's wearing it right now, but Callic wore it throughout the Spellhold dungeon due to lack of anything better, but to counter the Luck penalty, you get the...
Stone of Good Luck
...shortly before. Previously the Dusty Rose Ioun Stone, the +1 to AC has been changed to +1 Luck, which is probably much nicer overall. Callic wore it through Spellhold to counter the Doomplate's negative Luck effect, but Imoen has it on post-Spellhold, giving her a nice little boost to thieves and some extra to-hit and spell damage.
Flame of the North +2
Completely changed in Item Revisions. Previously sporting 10% magic resistance and a +4 damage bonus against Chaotic Evil enemies, the Flame was outshown by damn near every other +2 or better two-hander by the time you get it. It's still nothing to write home about - especially considering that you get it at the stage of the game where some of the tougher enemies will start needing +3 to be hit - but it's noteworthy in that the Hold effect's Polymorph save tends to be one of the tougher saves to make, so it should take effect fairly regularly.
Malakar +2
Item Revisions changes up the effects on Malakar a bit while keeping it in line with its original theme of being a defensive-oriented weapon. It has a companion blade - a wakizashi - named Malakar's Companion, suitably enough. Both weapons have the same bonuses, though the Companion has one less hit die, d8. Pretty much the only katana worth talking about for most of SoA, unless you're powerful/fortunate enough to grab the Celestial Fury from the SCS-ified Guarded Compound or swing by Watcher's Keep to grab the moved Yamato +3 (which I suspect was moved to give katana users in SoA a +3 katana to use that doesn't require a very high-powered battle to obtain).
Stormlord's Cloak
Originally the odd and kind of silly Cloak of Reflection, the Stormlord's Cloak replaces the original item's dubiously useful electrical reflect enchant with a bonus to all the three main elements, making it a much more worthy prize. On Mazzy currently, as I'm getting more and more really nice cloaks and I'm running out of people to put them on without giving up a similarly nice cloak.
Bone Club +3
For those weird people who spec Jaheira heavy into Clubs for the Club of Detonation, the Bone Club +3 is a nice little weapon to serve you for most of SoA. Gaining a Doom effect alongside the old Bone Club's minor boost against Undead being changed to the standard IR Undead Bane effect, it's actually not a bad weapon, provided you actually like having a front-line melee type doing d4 damage with weapons that aren't daggers (and lacking the lovely Save or Get Fucked bonus effects daggers tend to have).
Cloak of Mirroring
Completely changed from its old Beholder-murdering incarnation, it's still a very powerful cloak. From what I can tell, it does pretty much nothing until the wearer is his once, and then it gains a reflected image, similar to the first-level mage spell. However, all subsequent attacks have a 50% chance of hitting the mirrored image, and since it counts as a hit, it spawns a new one with a new 50% chance to take the hit, which spawns another mirrored image... you get the idea. On Jaheira as she's a dual-wielder who is still sitting at sub-100 HP and could use the survivability.
Boots of Etherealness
The ultimate panic button, the Etherealness ability has been changed from 30 seconds of immunity to normal weapons to 30 seconds of immunity to everything, though locking you out of any spellcasting or attacking. On Jaheira mostly for the immunity to Imprisonment, Maze, and Teleport Field, which Callic can already make himself immune to through Enrage. The Etherealness would be extremely nice on Callic as a Game Over avoidance though.
Rod of Lordly Might
As far as I can tell, Item Revisions doesn't touch it. It's still a unique little toy, and I've actually made good use of it in the past, mostly using the sword and spear versions. Callic could probably make use of the mace, but he's got much more generally-useful stuff to swing instead. Fun to play with, but you're almost guaranteed to have better, especially considering that the spear transformation is outdated before you even get it by...
Impaler +3
Still pretty much the final word in spears for SoA, Item Revsisions does little to mess with it aside from turning its frankly overpowered +10 bonus damage per hit into +1d10 instead. The Withering spear from the Underdark is probably more damaging overall, but it relies on percentage procs and failed saves, while Impaler is more consistent.
With all of that said, I mentioned before about a cloak problem. I have a ton of really awesome cloaks but only six backs to put them on. With the cloak list for a reference on what the cloaks do with Item Revisions, anyone have any suggestions on any better people to have these various cloaks put on to?
Cloak of Mirroring - Jaheira
Improved Cloak of Protection +2 - Xan
Cloak of the Shield - Imoen
Stormlord's Cloak - Mazzy
Cloak of Non-Detection - Shapiro
Cloak of the Sewers
Nature's Vengeance
Cloak of Balduran
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Probably the only reason I survived the Twisted Rune fight.
Still in chapter 2 of SoA, taking a breather from level 4 of Watcher's Keep (mostly because my bags were full to bursting.)
Twisted rune is possibly the hardest encounter in SOA.
Dragons just give me fits for some reason. You have the breath and all the wing buffets and individually they hit like woah and
See this big mess of pink stuff on the floor? Any enemy (it's party-friendly) within that radius is teleported every few seconds (with Spell Revisions they have to make a save at a -3 penalty, vanilla has none) to a random spot still within that radius while having spellcasts disrupted and their personal initiatives reset, meaning that anyone who melees them will get the first strike. Spellcasters and archers will try their damnedest to get out of it - and until they manage to do so, they're essentially useless - but it basically renders melee opponents a complete non-threat. Load up a sequencer with Malison, Slow, and Teleport Field, and the group of dudes you cast it on are pretty much boned. Ideally you get a couple of beefier types to stand in the middle and draw fire from the melee enemies caught in the stuff while the ranged folks pick off the mages that are being teleported around while trying to get out.
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