I figured I ought to fix a big blind spot in my list of classic games played. So a few days ago, I installed both Baldur’s Gates plus addons (the discs of which I’ve owned for several years), and started playing BG for the very first time. I was having fun until I reached the Friendly Arm Inn and instantly realized how wretched I was at this game. My party of four was wiped out in seconds by one assassin.
I would appreciate any help to get me past this early headache, as well as any general gameplay advice. I’m not a heavy RPG player; I don’t think I’ve even played anything D&D-related, aside from Tower of Doom in the arcades. I love the Elder Scrolls and the Fallouts, but my RPG tastes are generally light e.g. KOTOR, Diablo, and, er, Deus Ex. Please feel free to condescend when giving tips, as I think I might need my hand held a bit.
By the way, does anyone know why I’m having so much trouble accessing Desslock’s Gamespot guide? All I get is a red textured background.
I’m very slowly making my way through the game too. One thing that works well is giving everyone missile weapons (or really, one missile weapon and one one-handed melee weapon for emergencies) except one of your fighters, who will tank with a sword and shield. I like Kagain for that purpose, but I’m going with an evil party. You might prefer Khalid or Minsc. I don’t think you have any of those people yet if you’ve just arrived at the Friendly Arm, but you get the idea.
Other than that, just pause a lot, and save a lot. Later on you’ll want to cast buffs (like Bless or Barkskin) before battles, but you’re so early in the game you don’t have to worry about it.
The assassin is unreasonably hard. You have two options:
wander the wilderness a bit levelling by killing wildlife so as to be much tougher when you meet him, or
save just before the battle, and either
2a) IMMEDIATELY after he finishes blabbering at you, hit him with a quick weapon or a magic missile to interrupt his mirror image casting, or
2b) shoot him as he walks toward you before he talks, and have a second character on standby with a quick weapon (wand of magic missile is good) to followup IMMEDIATELY and interrupt his mirror image.
The mirror image is the problem. Get rid of that, he goes down fast.
I’m with Enduro, I really want to play Baldur’s Gate 2 but my ocd won’t let me start it without having played through the first game, and I really hate that game. I’ve started it several different times and just completely failed to grasp it - which is funny because I had no difficulty getting through Knights of the Old Republic, but combat in this game completely eludes me, so I just bail. I’ll probably give it another try sometime, maybe with god mode if there is one.
Rollory’s 2b works the best, but I did it with 2a because I like the dialog and can be a little obsessive with these RPG’s because for some part of me crazily attacking a guy before he proves his intentions in-game feels wrong unless it matches my character’s alignment in the game, even if I’m not wholly immersed in the “roleplaying” aspect.
Great tips! I’ll try them out when I get home and hopefully walk into that dang Inn before too long. Either that or be so frustrated that I wind up bullying small nations in Civ4.
Oh, how I wish I could do that, but Pogue isn’t kidding about that OCD. Guys like us would sooner not play either game than skip ahead and possibly miss a reference to BG1. It’s a good thing I was able to play Morrowind without feeling compelled to finish Arena and Daggerfall!
First of all, you guys are playing BGTutu or one of the BG-in-the-BG2-engine packages, right? The BG2 engine is much, much, much nicer if only because it has higher resolution graphics.
The first assassin at the Friendly Arm is notoriously tough, if only because you’re probably still a first-level character. The key is to hit him fast. Punch him if you have to. Yes, with your bare hands. If possible, give the rest of your party bows/ranged weapons, which are overpowered at low levels. It helps to have Xzar and Montaron along for the support, even if you later decide to ditch them. Otherwise, it’s just you, and maybe Imoen if you took her. Of course, the advantage to a small party is that you’ll level-up that much faster (XP is divided evenly among party members). As mentioned, you can also try to get the guards involved.
As Arnold said in Commando, “Wrong!” Seriously, though, I didn’t know that such a thing existed. I’ve been living with 640x480 pixels smooshed onto an 1280x1024 native LCD, so I’d love to try it out. Is it a hassle to install?
Will try the exploding fist technique if I’m still having trouble.
Smoke scrolls if ya’ve got 'em. I think a Scroll of Magic Missle shoots 2-3 missles instantly, which will either disrupt the Mirror Image or bring it completely down.
He hits you with a Scare spell or something in the second round right? There is a Potion of Clarity in the Prologue that prevents you from freaking out (but you’re screwed if you don’t have that).
Oh! I hear ya! I had the same problem. I powered through that game by playing it every few months, year after year, hoping it would get better, but it doesn’t get much better.
So my advice is: get over your OCD, and move onto Baldur’s Gate 2. If you don’t enjoy the first one in the beginning like me, then you probably won’t like it later in the game either.
I’ve heard from some people that adding the expansion to Baldur’s Gate makes the original more tolerable, since it adds the “pause when enemy spotted” feature, or something like that. One of the important ones that was missing in the first iteration. But I never thought it was worth it to spend even more money on a shitty game.
BG1Tutu homepage, though what you really want to use is EasyTutu. Don’t forget to poke around the Pocket Plane site to see if you like any of their other BG1 mods. There’s also Baldur’s Gate Trilogy, which mooshes the entire BG saga into a continuous experience.
I never liked BG1. Too hard, too frustrating, too unforgiving. BG2 fixed a lot of that, once people at work managed to ram in to the lead designer’s head that it wasn’t fun. The early BG2 builds were even more unforgiving than BG1 was. It was disgusting.
And side-story time! The lead designer at one point, when D&D 3E came out, started up a big campaign. Anyone in the company was invited to play. The turnout was something huge, like 30 or 40 people. They filled up a boardroom and played. In the first session, he killed over half of the players. He enjoyed it. Everyone else? Not so much.
That is awesome. I can’t figure why BG2 is considered easier, though; there’s many more ways to screw up your class development and/or get insta-killed. I guess that means there’s more ways to exploit the rules, though. As for that stupid assassin, yeah, I always have to get him to follow me into some guards, who take him out easily. After the not-so-fun kobold mine, the game gets much better.
I can’t imagine playing BG2 and actually caring about the storyline without going through the original. There’s a reason people considered it the comeback of the computer RPG when it appeared (Fallout was too obscure).
