How about a new Baldur's Gate game?...possibly.....

[GreenGoo]

If you want to cheese the start of the game and a good ways in just use bows on everyone. Enemies just melt away.

Everyone has missile weapons.

[Blackhawk]

If you haven't, setting the auto-pause options can be invaluable for that kind of thing. Weapon unusable and character death are good, but the most important ones are 'enemy sighted' and 'trap sighted.' I wouldn't want to play without those two. It lets you react before the enemy.

[GreenGoo]

If you haven't, setting the auto-pause options can be invaluable for that kind of thing. Weapon unusable and character death are good, but the most important ones are 'enemy sighted' and 'trap sighted.' I wouldn't want to play without those two. It lets you react before the enemy.

I have almost everything set to auto-pause, including the ones you mentioned. My wild mage has 4 hp, is most of the problem. The problem will fix itself once she levels once or twice. Assuming the Hobgoblins aren't replaced with something else that can do 8-12 ranged damage per hit.

The thing is I may not reach that point, as I'm already playing the game less and less because I'm struggling to have the fun outweigh the annoyances/frustrations.

What surprises me is that none of the reasons why I might stop playing are directly related to the age of the game, if we ignore game design as an age problem rather than a choice problem.

[GreenGoo]

Could use some advice on turning undead. There is no feedback as far as I can tell. Is it working? Is it even happening? Who knows? Even without ai on it seems like being attacked causes you to stop turning undead, and given the previous questions, maybe that's for the best?

I feel like this should be more intuitive. I assume it's like searching for traps or bard singing. You turn it on and wait and hope. How long before I know it didn't work and should do something else?

[GreenGoo]

Bassilus slain and Melicamp restored (although it took several save scums). Huzzah. After many attempts to turn undead, it finally worked, and it worked on everything in sight, taking out most of Bassilus' family in a single moment. Can you fail to turn and continue to try and the succeed? I have no idea. The game sure doesn't tell me.

So much for playing the game without doing any meta learning about quests and such. Having Melicamp die was too unsatisfying to let stand, plus so anti-climatic that I thought I had done/not done something wrong/right.

I am now a 2nd level Fighter/2nd level cleric, with 28 hp. That's pretty tanky, and so far I've been tanking, although Jaheira's double proficiency in clubs means I sometimes bring her into melee too. She has the ankheg armor, which I swear I discovered without looking it up first, although I admit I play with interaction highlights on, which pretty much removes the pixel hunt aspects of the game. In any event, I stumbled upon it rather than seeking it out.

More importantly Neera has 8 hp now. Woohoo...

[NickAragua]

Honestly, in the Baldur's Gate series, that's one of the most useless abilities in my experience. I wouldn't waste time on it. The advanced undead are too good to be affected by it, and for skeletons, just bring some maces or something (actually, flails are better: 2d4 vs 1d8 for maces). Swords and spears do less damage (I forget the AD&D rule. Is it 1/2?)

As for your wild mage, you can always keep the character out of the fights for now. Like, "two screens behind" out. Not like a mage is going to do anything anyway in those low-level fights. "I cast magic missile." "Ok, that's 1d4+1 damage, you roll a 1. Two damage." "Right, now I'll be resting for eight hours." "What about the goblins." "Uh... they want to rest for eight hours too, right?"

[GreenGoo]

All good advice.

Turn undead is mostly useless in BG1 apparently, but is more effective in BG2. In my case it was pretty effective, but it took a billion tries to get it to do anything, then it did too much, and destroyed everything. I figured it would "fear" a couple of them at best. I was only 2nd level, although these were just skeletons and zombies.

You're absolutely right about mages at this level, although as mentioned earlier equipping everyone with a missile weapon helps a lot, and that goes for lvl 1 mages with slings too. So mages can contribute, just not with spells. She doesn't hit often, and sling stones are what? 1d4 or something? It's still better than nothing. That said, she has 3 spells at lvl 2 now, and she can learn sleep, which is very good at this low level, so she can definitely help on some of the harder fights, it's just as you say, once per sleep cycle. Since I haven't been resting much, just at inns and only when I'm in the area, most of my casters are walking around with only 1/2 their spells, or less.

[Blackhawk]

I agree about the uselessness of turning. Same thing with the bard's song. I played a bard, and I think I used my song three times in my entire playthrough. One thing to keep in mind if you do use them - they end after one round unless you have the AI off or set to use them.

Jaheira is set up to be more of a front line fighter with support magic than a caster, at least in my experience. Her only real weakness is Khalid. He's awful. I always dump him (and keep her) as soon as I can.

[NickAragua]

Jaheira is set up to be more of a front line fighter with support magic than a caster, at least in my experience. Her only real weakness is Khalid. He's awful. I always dump him (and keep her) as soon as I can.

That is a good point. He's the only fighter in the game that I've seen "go yellow" in combat by himself when hit.

[Blackhawk]

"Better part of valor!"

[Jaymann]

So I downloaded BG2 Enhanced Edition from GOG. This is why I love games that let you re-roll your stats (got a 97):

[GreenGoo]

Had a heck of a time finding the right world map area that contains the Half-Ogres for Bjorin's quest. Had to look it up actually, which is too bad. In my roamings, everyone has been leveling up so now I'm looking at lvl 3 for anyone multiclassing and just shy of lvl 4 for the single class characters. The wild mage is taking her sweet time leveling up. The bard levels faster and is a better caster to boot, at least at this low level.

I've given up not metagaming, and every time I meet a new npc I immediately look him/her up to see what's what. I decided against my nature to kill Borda, who was according to the internet, a level 9 mage/level 8 thief. His magic missiles were enough to kill anyone but my tanky characters in 1 spell, but eventually I was able to take him down. 150xp/party member. Not great, but was fun.

Once I deal with the 1/2 Ogres I'll return to Nashkel and the mines there. I think the entire party has either magic weapons or wooden ones, so I should be free from breaking weapons now.

[JCC]

Pretty great article here...

https://www.theringer.com/2018/12/21/18 ... ideo-games