[X] My Assistant

[SubRosa]

With the Enhanced Editions to Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 now out, and Gog.com having sales on both the originals and the Icewind Dale games, it seems like a good time to create a thread about our old friend the Infinity Engine.

I have Icewind Dale 1 from a long time ago, but never got too far with it back then. Other games like Diablo II and Star Trek Elite Forces caught my attention, and the old school D&D ruleset of Icewind felt too cumbersome for me. I tried installing ID1 again a few weeks ago, but could not get it to work on my Windows 7 box. So I finally broke down and bought it and ID2 off of Gog.com a few days ago. While I was at it, I discovered that Steam had a sale on the Baludur's Gate Enhanced Editions, so I bought those two. I wound up getting all four games for under $20.

I decided to start at the start, so so I rolled a toon to pwn Baldur's Gate 1. Terra started out as a regular Ranger, and I experimented with her using dual swords and a longbow. I found I liked the bow better, and thought about restarting her game to specialize as the Archer subclass. But I found EE Keeper, and instead I used it to change her class and move around her proficiency points a bit.

So far BG1 has been a blast. I still think the old school D&D rules are cumbersome and clunky. Especially where magic is concerned. I hate that memorizing spells business and having to rest to be able to cast them again. I much prefer mana point systems for mages. But gripes aside, it is still a good game, even after all these years. It feels a lot like the original Fallout rpg in its look and feel - the same isometric view and sprites. BG1 just has more party members and the D&D rules.

I have been using BruceVayne's soundsets in Oblivion for years, and many of them are BG characters. So now it is a kick to finally hear them in their original settings. I especially love Imoen and Viconia's voices. From "Good on you if you saved the day!" to "Nightsinger, give me power!". So far those are my two favorite NPCs as well. I loved Minsc in the tutorial, but have not found him yet - he's clear across the map from where we start!

My current gang is Terra (the PC), Imoen, Viconia, Neera (she's a new EE added NPC), and Kagain. I am a little light on the muscle, and am looking for another good melee fighter. I'd like to hire the new half-orc NPC Dorn, but I have not gotten the encounter where it happens yet. OTOH, the team is strong in ranged attacks, and when we all focus our fire on one target we can usually kill it on one round. Unless it is a boss. So fights against ordinary critters often consist of mowing them down before they can even reach Kagain.

So far I am not thrilled with Neera, but for now she is the only mage in town. I'd like to hire the new Drow mage the EE edition added, but he doesn't appear until 5th level. It is funny, my party seems to be going to the evil end of the spectrum. Maybe I should use EE Keeper to change Terra from Neutral Good to Neutral Evil!

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Apr 11 2022, 08:04 PM

[SubRosa]

I understand that back in BG1 when you slept you did not get back all of the hit points you had lost, and how much you did get back was based upon the quality of the room you rented. But in the Enhanced Editions one sleep period either outdoors or at an inn will heal you up to full. At least so long as your sleep is not interrupted by an attack if you are outside. You can still pick from the 4 types of rooms at the inns, from Peasant to Royal, but it does not make a difference which one anymore.

There are also new NPCs to play with too, like Neera. I have to say I like the Wild Magic. It adds a lot of spice to wizardry. There is a new place called the Black Pits, which I have not tried yet. It is separate from the rest of the game world, but I understand you can export your character from there to the main game.

One of the downsides is that many of the old mods made for the original games do not work on the Enhanced Editions. Or they need a lot of work on your part to mod the mods to make them compatible. Like I had to do with that voicepack I created, or the new portraits.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Jul 6 2014, 03:14 AM

[Acadian]

Thanks for some of those pros and cons. When last I played BG II, I had a few mods (eg: widescreen) and had it going pretty well. I had a great editor that allowed me to tweak any of the characters (NPCs and Player Character) all around, add abilities etc.

[SubRosa]

The EEs have native support for widescreen displays, higher resolutions, and a lot of bug fixes. As I understand it, they took a lot of the fan made bug fixes and incorporated them. Baldur's Gate EE Keeper will let you edit your character and all of the companion NPCs, whether they are currently in your party or not. There is a spell, creature, and item browser, but as far as I can tell they are read-only. However, the character editor allows you to add or remove any item or spell to or from any character.

[Callidus Thorn]

Oh that sounds great! One of the reasons I didn't go back to BGI after II was because I got spoiled by all the gameplay improvements in II.

There are a couple of mods for Baldur's Gate 2; BGTutu and BGT, both of which allow you to play Baldur's Gate using the engine for BG2, giving you all the improvements from the sequel.

This post has been edited by Callidus Thorn: Jul 6 2014, 09:36 AM

[Acadian]

I think the reason I backed away from BG II the last time I took a TES-break to play it (maybe a couple years ago?) was because of a known bug where when you go to talk to someone you can't and get a spiel 'so and so appears busy'. Apparently the bug was introduced by the Throne of Baal expansion. There is a fix for it, but it is also known that the fix generally doesn't fix it - and it didn't fix it for me.

I think if I were to go back to BG, it would be back to II and without the ToB expansion - I didn't really care for it anyway. I know I enjoyed a couple mods to make the game look better on widescreen and an editor to tweak characters or respec them.

What I wanted was an elven no melee mystic archer (doh!) who had thieving skills. A dual classed Fighter-thief was good for bow and thieving skills but had no magic, had to be human and the melee skills were wasted. An elven archer (kit) was good but had no thieving skills. That's where the editor and some tweaks helped create what I wanted.

[SubRosa]

If you want simplicity I would suggest going with the Enhanced Editions. The EE natively combines the two games already, without you having to jump through a bunch of hoops to install this and that separately. They also add a little bit of new content, which you cannot get with the old games. I am not sure if they fix the "person appears busy bug". But from what I read they do contain a plethora of bug fixes from the original games. When it originally came out there were a lot of new bugs but there have been a lot of patches to fix them, and I have never had an issue when playing so far.

If you want more mods, go with BGT or Tutu. Tbh, I have not been very excited about the mods I have seen out there though. The only things I have really wanted with mods were more portraits and voices. I got an old portrait pack to work after some fumbling. Out of the voice mods out there I only found one voice I liked out of about 50 or 60. That didn't work natively in EE, but I was able to create a new voice using the sound files myself. The EE character editor has done everything I have wanted. As you said Acadian, it is simple enough to use it to give a character lockpicking and trap finding skills through it.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Jul 6 2014, 05:19 PM

[Acadian]

Thanks for the additional info. I'll wait until I get the BG bug again, but that EE does sound nice also.

[SubRosa]

As an added bonus to waiting, over time more old mods will be converted to the EEs, and more new ones will crop up for them. One thing I noticed reading opinions about the EEs is that when they first came out, many people who had tried them said you were just as well sticking with the heavily modded originals. But now that they have been out for a while, and bugs fixed, I see the opposite statements by people who own both. That you should go with the EEs.

In other Baldurdash, Scáthach and company finally made their way to the Nashkel Mines. Just before reaching them they got a not-so random encounter where they met Dorn, the new Blackguard npc introduced by the EE. As far as I can tell, to get him you have first talk to him at the Friendly Arm Inn, and then you will get this encounter when you travel from Naskhel to Naskel Mines.

So that brings the team up to 6 members again. I was thinking of cashiering Kagain now that I have Dorn, but then I noticed he has twice the hit points! I don't want to get rid of Viconia or Baeloth, as they are my sole cleric and mage support. Which just leaves Imoen. To be honest, I am not sure I really need a thief in BG1. So far there have been almost no traps at all that I have encountered. The treasure cave in the Lighthouse area is the only place I recall coming across them. There are a lot of places with locks to pick. But those are usually inside people's houses or inn rooms. Basically straight up thievery. I don't think I have ever had to pick a lock to finish a quest. I have already been thinking of dual classing Imoen since her thieving skills are not really critical. Mostly she is just an archer.

It is a real dramatic change from the Neverwinter Nights games, where a thief is a necessity. In those games traps are everywhere, and nearly every chest is locked. You would never get any loot without a thief, assuming you even managed to walk through a dungeon alive.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Jul 29 2020, 08:47 PM

[Acadian]

I never touched any of the NWN stuff. In BG II, you really do want a thief - but, since the levels are higher it's very easy to do that via dual or multi-class. I found that dual classing a fighter with solid bow skill into a thief worked fabulously - making a perfectly good, but very tough thief/sniper. A mage/thief can work well also.

[Lopov]

Dorn looks badass, I checked his pic on the Wiki. Looks like EE adds a lot more companions that I thought, I thought that it's 2 or 3 but there are more. Also, it seems I was wrong when I said earlier in this thread that romancing isn't possible in BGI, they enabled in EE because it says that Dorn will romance the PC.

EDIT: Nope, I read things too quickly (as usual), looks like that he returns in BGII, that's where he can be a potential partner.

This post has been edited by Lopov: Jul 7 2014, 09:55 AM

[SubRosa]

There are four new Companions: Dorn, Neera, Rasaad, and Baeloth who was originally a secret npc. But the secret about him is obviously out by now. Rasaad is the only one I have not had in my party, though I have met him. I just didn't need anyone like him. So far the three I have used have been excellent, though Neera's wild magic does come with a learning curve. It does make things a lot of fun though.

I noticed something last night about Dorn. He can carry 500 pounds, or weight units, or whatever they are called. He isn't just a pack mule, but a pack caravan!

[ghastley]

Just installed BG1 on my laptop. Now I have to see if any of the save games on my old hard-drives are readable. The old dead machine that used to run it had EIDE only, and the new ones all do SATA only, so it could be tricky.

[SubRosa]

What you could try is putting the old hard drive in an external drive enclosure, and then connecting that to the new comp.

For s&gs I copied my portrait pack from BG1EE to BG2EE, the exact same files, to an override folder using the same path as BG1. They do not appear when I create a character. However, after I save a game and open it with EE Keeper, all the new portraits are there for me to choose from.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Jul 7 2014, 06:57 PM

[SubRosa]

I finished the Black Pits 1 (for Baldur's Gate 1 EE). It was ok, but nothing spectacular. It is an arena-style mini-campaign. You are given a party of six characters whom you can keep or alter as you desire, the same as when you start a regular game (except you can import or change all six characters). It is separate from the regular campaign, though you can import or export characters between the two.

A note to keep in mind, the first character listed is considered to be the party leader, no matter how you might change the order later by moving the pictures around on the right side of the screen. For the entire campaign, npcs will refer to you by the name and race of that first character listed. So if you are importing a player character, or plan to export your character to the regular game, make them the first character.

There are 15 battles. You fight a battle in the arena, then return to a waiting room with merchants where you can buy new gear, potions, scrolls, etc... If your team members are killed or injured, they will be back up to full when you all appear in the waiting room. You can use the Rest function here so your mages can learn new spells. You are also given an amount of gold that you can use to buy things with.

You get a ton of experience points after every battle. I mean a ridiculous amount compared to the regular game. It is enough to go up a level every other battle. So you will end up at level 7 or 8 with every character in the party. I imported Scathach from my first save at the start of the regular campaign, and she ended up 8th level.

The battles are arranged into three tiers. The first tier battles are pretty easy. After that they get progressively more difficult. After you finish each tier, the vendors restock with newer, more powerful gear. They get +1 weapons at the start of Tier 2, and +2 at the start of Tier 3. You can also go back and refight any battle you want at any time. That is one way to grind up experience and get more money for gear if you want.

Export your character before the final battle. You can then take that character file and import the character into the main BG1 campaign if you start a new game. You start with all the experience and levels you had at the point you exported. That also includes your gear. So you can do this to start the game with a pretty uber character. Of course you will probably never level up even once in the regular campaign, considering how high your starting level will be, and how much xp you will need to make the next level.

[Renee]

This weekend. I'm getting this game on my old computer. I might have to buy it all over again, but I'm really drawn to BG again, after reading your exploits.

[SubRosa]

It is well worth getting. One of the best games I have played in a while. Definitely get the Enhanced Edition(s). They cost a little more, but $20 a piece is nothing compared to buying a brand new game and all of its addons.

Even on an older comp, they should run fine. I just checked, and BG1EE is only using about a fifth of a gig of memory.

[SubRosa]

Just out of curiosity I tried starting a new BG1 game with Scathach imported from the Black Pits. The game does not scale its monsters any differently. So the baddies in Candlekeep literally explode after one hit. The bears and wolves in the Candlekeep Coastway take a few hits before going down. But don't seem any different from when you start with a 1st level character.

I did notice that while Imoen was gaining experience points after killing critters in the Coastway, Scathach was not. So my guess is that if you import a character, you don't gain any experience until you reach the same amount you had from the Black Pits. For Scathach that is 161,000, and she needs 250,000 to hit the next level.

So it pretty much looks like if you do import a Black Pits character you will start the game quite uber, and that you will never level again.

I am going back to my regular game with Scathach, where she is about 5th level or so.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Jul 12 2014, 07:41 PM

[Renee]

Imoen. I remember that name. Is Steam required for this game? .. I have Steam on my old computer, but not on the new one. I can't remember how I wound up with Steam back in October, so I'm thinking it was either from Baldur's or Sims 3.

[SubRosa]

It isn't required, unless you buy it from Steam! You can either buy it from Beamdog, or Steam. I got the Steam version because I found it on sale a few weeks ago.

[Renee]

See, I bought BG from gamestop.com. And I'm not sure if it's related to Steam or not. I don't remember how I got Steam on my old computer. *shrugs* It was either BG or Sims 3. But never mind. I'm going to try to see if I can get BG started.

Alright I found it. The GameStop icon. Amazingly I also wrote down my password on one of the walls in my room. I do this, ya know, write passwords on a wall near my bed. If I put them in a book, stuff will get lost. Books fall behind things in my room. I put the book in a specific place, and at some point it'll wander. Much better to write User IDs and passwords on a wall. The wall will never wander away like books do.

Hey SR, I see you are here. It's asking me to re-install, and I'm fine with that. But it's asking to put it in Program Files. Probably not such a good idea, right?

This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Jul 14 2014, 01:38 AM