Baldur's Gate The Baldur's Gate Series Thread

[Krivol]

What level should my party be by the time I enter Baldur's Gate? Everyone's around level 5 and I'm worried that I might be rushing through the game.

Lvl 5 is fine IMO. Somewhere i red full party doing just main quest will hit Lvl cap anyway. Also Lvl 5 gives great spells for mages.

 

[buru5]

What level should my party be by the time I enter Baldur's Gate? Everyone's around level 5 and I'm worried that I might be rushing through the game.

I've never had to grind while playing Baldur's Gate. If you're playing the game right (killing every hostile you see) then you'll be fine.

 

[laclongquan]

Sir, your blog is a travesty of a false advertisement! You should be ashamed of yourself, sir!

 

[ArchAngel]

You kill all basilisks and you are set for XP.

 

[Lilura]

What level should my party be by the time I enter Baldur's Gate? Everyone's around level 5 and I'm worried that I might be rushing through the game.

Don't sweat it. Fifth lvl is fine for that stage.

 

[McPlusle]

I'm a real big fuckin' idiot. I made some choice at some point that makes all the Flaming Fist attack on sight. Fighting back kills rep. My entire party is good guys. They leave. My old saves had already been replaced. Maybe my next character will do it right.

 

[buru5]

If your rep is too low to begin with Flaming Fist guards will randomly spawn and try to kill you, or if you "accidentally" killed a flaming fist npc, that will do it too.

 

[McPlusle]

My rep was normal until I killed those two guys in the Candlekeep library (in self-defense) and then killed (in self-defense) one of the robed guys on the library's ground floor. I'm assuming that's where it went wrong. Welp, next time I'll roll a good guy, I suppose.

I just had to fuck it all up in the last chapter, didn't I?

 

[Storyfag]

I'm a real big fuckin' idiot. I made some choice at some point that makes all the Flaming Fist attack on sight. Fighting back kills rep. My entire party is good guys. They leave. My old saves had already been replaced. Maybe my next character will do it right.

Can you try to make it to the Song of the Morning Temple (east of Beregost)? Donating there will improve your rep, and there are no guards around.

 

[moraes]

Donate in the temple, Money > Law in Faerûn.

Also, use the sewers in Baldur's Gate to avoid the Flaming Fist or cast mass invisibility.

 

[McPlusle]

Donating 8000 gp and increasing my rep to 8 still gets me attacked, so it must have been from some previous fuckup I had. I think I'm just going to start over. Having gone through almost the entire campaign already should make a new playthrough a breeze so I'm not sweating it.

 

[buru5]

Oh you might be at the part where the Flaming Fist attacks you on sight because you're "wanted for murder" which is actually part of the main campaign.

 

[Delterius]

Oh you might be at the part where the Flaming Fist attacks you on sight because you're "wanted for murder" which is actually a Massive Hoax.

 

[Sykar]

That and the romances...

Still better than any romance in the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchise. I know, that is not a very high bar I set there.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Why is BG1 so good?

Lots of reasons. It's very underrated, especially here.

1. Excellent world structure and exploration. The maps in BG1 are set up to be relatively adjacent, meaning one flows into the next, e.g. forests on the edge of one will turn into forests on the adjacent edge of the next. This makes it similar to an open world game, and creates a sense of a real region, as opposed to the more common point-of-interest approach in BG2 and many other RPGs. Also, each map is large and filled with wilderness, not just interesting stuff, so that you have to explore around, find interesting stuff.

2. Excellent character progression and itemization. BG1 captures the beauty of character development by starting you off as an absolute weakling and making each level hard to obtain, but providing outstanding rewards for doing so. This is character development at its best. Likewise, it has one of the better itemizations out there. Magic items are rare and usually unique or special in some way, from beautifully written descriptions to back-story to special effects. Even buying a regular non-magic high-end armor will cost a ton of gold and require you to adventure for a while.

3. Well written main story that is well integrated into the game-world. You will find references or tie-ins to the main plot on many optional maps, which makes the whole thing more believable.

4. Beautiful graphics, sounds and AI, leading to a charming atmosphere.

5. A low-key, more realistic world. If you go to an optional side-map, what you find there is more likely to be a farmer with some problems or a waylaid traveler rather than a downed spaceship, or a dragon, or a demi-lich. For some people, that is a good thing.

6. Fun combat system.

 

[octavius]

Anyone manage to install SCS with BG 1 EE without problems?
I run the downloaded file, then close the windows after extracting the files and running the short, preliminary set-up program. Then I run setup-stratagems.exe since the auto-installer is reputed to be buggy.
But I still get this error messages:
"ERROR: cannot convert skip_hacks or %skip_hacks% to an integer"

One suggestions is to use ModMerger, but I think I need to have Siege of Dragonspear for that. Which I don't haven't bought yet (waiting for a sale).

Any ideas/experiences with this?

 

[Baardhaas]

Check this thread: http://gibberlings3.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=28044

 

[octavius]

Well, that's the same thread I too found.

But...

The general consensus right now is:
1) use modmerge to extract and append SoD data to EE data in your installation folder (if the game acquired from GOG or Steam

The problem is that I don't have SoD (yet).

There's mention of some Hotfix, but that's for BG2 EE.

 

[Baardhaas]

There's mention of some Hotfix, but that's for BG2 EE.

Not sure how useful it is, but someone also mentioned this in regard to your problem:

2) the second error (about skip_hacks) is even stranger. SCS fails to run the engine detection code and set up some variables. I have encountered weird stuff like that when I was attempting to install SCS on BG:EE. Turned out, it was due to the fact that I managed to lose some of the file from the stratagems/ folder. Just to be sure, check that you are using the latest version of SCS from G3 and it was correctly extracted into the game folder.

 

[hell bovine]

Anyone manage to install SCS with BG 1 EE without problems?
I run the downloaded file, then close the windows after extracting the files and running the short, preliminary set-up program. Then I run setup-stratagems.exe since the auto-installer is reputed to be buggy.
But I still get this error messages:
"ERROR: cannot convert skip_hacks or %skip_hacks% to an integer"

One suggestions is to use ModMerger, but I think I need to have Siege of Dragonspear for that. Which I don't haven't bought yet (waiting for a sale).

Any ideas/experiences with this?

Install the fixes from the BWS (big world set up) first. Or just use BWS to install SCS onon the EE, it's easier (though I don't recommend using any of the mod presets it comes with; too many mods on them).

 

[octavius]

Eeww...Big World, that sure is a desperate measure.
I'll find out tomorrow just how desperate I am.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Eeww...Big World, that sure is a desperate measure.
I'll find out tomorrow just how desperate I am.

Whats wrong with BWP? Just uncheck all the content mods.

Except for Romantic Encounters of course.

 

[Jason Liang]

BWS will first extract all of your mods, and then WEIDU them. The trick for SCS (at least for me) is to extract SCS by itself first. Then have it installed with BWS/ WEIDU.

Also, make sure you have the BWS fixpack.

Modmerge is only used to get SoD to work with BWS.

I wrote a step by step install guide here.

The only thing I couldn't figure out was how to get Finch's voice work to work properly with SoD. I figure they are just incompatible.

Also I don't recommend Rogue Rebalance. It does almost nothing for BG1 and has a lot of conflicts with SCS.

 

[octavius]

Thanks, that will be useful when I will try again.
In the meantime I've decided to wait for SoD and BG 2 EE to come on sale at GOG, and then install the whole trilogy before installing mods for BG 1 EE.

I used to install RR, but was a bit annoyed that it did nothing with the pathetic Thieves Guild master (Renald something?) in Baldur's Gate.

Some things I used to mod myself: The mentioned guild master, making sling stones do "crushing" damage, making the cabin in the first section of Cloakwood safe to rest in, and increase cost of Raise Dead in temples to 5,000 gold.

 

[ArchAngel]

Why is BG1 so good?

Lots of reasons. It's very underrated, especially here.

1. Excellent world structure and exploration. The maps in BG1 are set up to be relatively adjacent, meaning one flows into the next, e.g. forests on the edge of one will turn into forests on the adjacent edge of the next. This makes it similar to an open world game, and creates a sense of a real region, as opposed to the more common point-of-interest approach in BG2 and many other RPGs. Also, each map is large and filled with wilderness, not just interesting stuff, so that you have to explore around, find interesting stuff.

2. Excellent character progression and itemization. BG1 captures the beauty of character development by starting you off as an absolute weakling and making each level hard to obtain, but providing outstanding rewards for doing so. This is character development at its best. Likewise, it has one of the better itemizations out there. Magic items are rare and usually unique or special in some way, from beautifully written descriptions to back-story to special effects. Even buying a regular non-magic high-end armor will cost a ton of gold and require you to adventure for a while.

3. Well written main story that is well integrated into the game-world. You will find references or tie-ins to the main plot on many optional maps, which makes the whole thing more believable.

4. Beautiful graphics, sounds and AI, leading to a charming atmosphere.

5. A low-key, more realistic world. If you go to an optional side-map, what you find there is more likely to be a farmer with some problems or a waylaid traveler rather than a downed spaceship, or a dragon, or a demi-lich. For some people, that is a good thing.

6. Fun combat system.

TL;DR;
It is everything PoE is not :D