Baldur's Gate: The Beginning

Oh boy, the little annoyances in good ol BG become far more pronounced when heading underground....

I love dungeons. That's the setting that Ive always liked best, the reason i gave a crap about D&D in the first place. Give me a labyrinth of hallways and rooms loaded w/ all manner of dangerous creatures and traps (and some cool loot of course!) and I'm a happy camper. Dungeons have to be approached the right way (very slowly and surely) in BG or they can be a totally aggravating, tedious experience.

Now I had done Ulcaster, and it was kinda annoying at times, but nothing like the fun of the Firewine ruins! Trying to lead a party thru that narrow maze of corridors was no picnic at all. Every time I look, someone's heading in the opposite direction, stuck in some nook, somehow on the OTHER side of the wall (usually under attack by the aggravating respawning kobolds), or even halfway across the maze. Whew, now that was a nice little dungeon workout.

I know, I know "c'mon sammy, this is what you do. Do you have geek cred or not? Handle it, just micro them every step of the way, click on the ground in front repeatedly.."

Still, at 1 am, I tend to get a bit testy when I'm at the "big fight" at the end, and Jaheira is halfway across the map in the other direction, being pegged w/ flame arrows by the ever-respawing kobolds because i took my eye off her for a sec. ARGh!

Was a very busy night for Imoen, as she was either spotting a trap or a flame arrow heading in her direction every other minute. Damn kobolds!

"I feel so cold....."



I didnt lose anyone, but came close w/ both Imoen and Jaheira. Ive never played the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion, but I intend on playing it after this. I hear it has a major dungeon, bigger than anything in the original game. I sure hope the hallways are wider!

Most annoying part about those ruins is the respawn rate of the kobolds. You get one little spot of shadow, and as soon as you move into range again there's a new kobold attacking. It's just crazy! One of the most annoying dungeons in all of BG1, and the main reason I'm glad they ditched that sort of respawn in BG2.

Also, the expansion is popped right into the game, unlike ToB, so it's basically a very large, new dungeon (several floors, tons of loot, very hard) and a relatively long sidequest in the north with various new locations. It's a bit like Night of the Raven (Gothic 2), in a way.

the thing that really kicked me in the nuts when it came to the respawners, was that i had left the rest of the crew behind in a big alcove due to pathfinding annoyances driving me up the wall. Just me and Imoen were cruising around de-arming traps and exploring when we suddenly tripped over the boss and his lackeys. Tried to fall back a little and bring the rest of the gang up to the fight, but much to our chagrin, there were kobolds everywhere, eating up the crew gradually w/ fire arrows as we tried to consolidate into one party again. Add to that the confusion of actually leading the party to me.... yeah i let fly w/ quite a foul litany of curses there for a few mins!!

Like i said, I hope the other dungeon has wider corridors!

Sammy best buy tons of healing potions beforehand. Don't rely solely on healing spells since they are quite unreliable. In addition rest whenever there is a chance. And keep your fighters buffed constantly. Against kobolts i think the best strategy is having one strong front line fighter (minsc usually) eating their arrows and kicking their asses while rest of the party is shooting rocks, arrows, bolts, darts etc, just don't let your fighter get too far ahead or those noisy fuckers nail him on the dungeon wall

I do pretty well w/ just spells actually (i rarely use potions), w/ both Jaheira and Branwen healing I dont have too many problems. My problem was more environmental last night than anything, and bad decision making splitting up the group. While it is good practice to have Imoen scouting out ahead by herself in stealth mode most times, i find that splitting up the group any more than that often leads to problems.

I generally try not to rest *too* much tho, as I'm shooting for a challenge. By the time it starts getting scary, it's time to rest anyway and everyones pissin and moaning about how tired they are.

Me and Khalid generally rush the shooters and tie them up in melee while Imoen, Safana, and Jaheira hammer away w/ ranged. Branwen usually cruises up to the fight and either supports w/ spells or let's fly w/ her mighty hammer.

The Firewine ruins are actually pretty easy imo. I always just sent Imoen to scout ahead equipped with a bow+ Bracers of Archery. Usually a fire arrow would kill a kobold in 1 shot, then the kobold would drop 3-4 more fire arrows to stock up with.

JDR13 said:

Yeah, but it's a pain in the ass, and it's still hard to keep your reputation down long enough to reach that point if you're playing a good party.

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That's weird. Maybe I accidentally installed some tweak that kept her from leaving because I only romanced her until I had to chose between her and Aerie, then chose Aerie, and I pretty much pushed my reputation up as high as it would go as quick as it would. Yet she never left.

Yeah, that is one bad thing about the pathfinder in Infinity Engines. If it's a maze type thing, your NPC's can end up all over the place.

I'm like you Sam, I LIVE for dungeon crawling. I like the multilevel monsters that I end up spending 3 or 4 days (real days) trying to get through. That was actually my biggest complaint about BG. There simply were no proper dungeons in the whole thing! The mines are nice, and plot specific, but not the same as a real dungeon, and the ones like Firewine are just too small.

I like the overall feel of BG better than BG2, but I was very happy to see the extended dungeons in BG2.

blatantninja said:

That was actually my biggest complaint about BG. There simply were no proper dungeons in the whole thing!

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That may be true with vanilla BG, but Durlag's Tower in TotSC definitely satisfies.

True. I guess I don't really count it because:

1) The first two times I played through BG, I didn't have the expansion

and

2) While cool, it has no ties to the plot.

Huh? Very few of the dungeons have any ties to the plot, so I'm not sure why that would matter. Durlag's Tower is definitely a masterpiece as far as dungeons go.

I really need to play that series again.

I actually cbf playing through BG1 again... but I've never finished durlag's tower. Is there any way to skip all BG1 and play just expansion? I know there's pre-made party for the expansion... but I'm wondering if there's another way to do so.

If you have some old savegames you just could export your Character, start a new Game and travel right from Candlekeep to Durlags Tower - the joinable NPCs will have a lot more XP than if you start with a lvl 1 Character, but they may have had bad luck for their Hitpoint-score on Level-up. Gatekeeper will help in this cases:

http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG/index_editors.php

(or you could create a new main-character and give him a few thousand XPs this way)

JDR13 said:

Huh? Very few of the dungeons have any ties to the plot, so I'm not sure why that would matter. Durlag's Tower is definitely a masterpiece as far as dungeons go.

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I would disagree that few dungeons have a tie to the plot. I seem to recall that most, if not all, in IWD were tied to the plot, and most in BG2 were, though a few were tied to subplots.

I guess the thing with Durlag's tower was that outside of a small mention by the halfings, it just appears on the map. No real reason to go in except for the sake of going in!

I would agree though that it is a really well done dungeon though. I just wish they could have beefed up a reason to go there and tie it into something.

I actually cbf playing through BG1 again

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Ok, I know I'm old, but what does cbf stand for?

blatantninja said:

I would disagree that few dungeons have a tie to the plot. I seem to recall that most, if not all, in IWD were tied to the plot, and most in BG2 were, though a few were tied to subplots.

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I wasn't talking about all dungeons in general, just the ones in Baldur's Gate.

blatantninja said:

I guess the thing with Durlag's tower was that outside of a small mention by the halfings, it just appears on the map. No real reason to go in except for the sake of going in!

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The mystery surrounding the tower was one of the things that made it so appealing to many.

blatantninja said:

Ok, I know I'm old, but what does cbf stand for?

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cbf = can't be f*cked....

Heck of a potty mouth for such a cute little thing!

Too bad I am a bit late to bash the Firewine dungeon Respawning + poor pathfinding + me not liking dungeon crawling adds up to an agonising experience.

Luckily the dungeon is optional. I usually skip the quest to find the armour there and only go in through Gullykin to kill a pesky non-goblin... Awful dungeon.

JDR13 said:

Heck of a potty mouth for such a cute little thing!

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I will watch my words...

I tend to skip it as well Zaleukos, it's just too annoying. If Carsomyr +5 or Celestial Fury was at the end of it, I might consider doing it again, but just for the sake of killing kobolds? No thanks.