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alias_sqbrMasterpost
I am still enjoying the game! I am, however, not very good at it, and had to look up advice on the internet. Also it turns out some details in my previous posts were wrong. Like...the species and class of several characters... including my character's class >.> LOOK. IT'S A LOT TO KEEP TRACK OF.
Yesterday I realised I could stream to my laptop and played A Lot. There is some unfortunate Fantasy Racism but I am otherwise really enjoying it, both the overall plot and little moments are interesting and fun, and while I am not good at the combat it is doable and sometimes fun too.
It took multiple characters referring to my character as a druid for me to go "Wait, did I not actually pick ranger??". Not sure how I screwed that up but I can still hit things with a stick and talk to animals so that's ok, and druid turns out to work nicely with the early plot.
It's eventually possible to change your class but I'll stick with druid for now.
I spent a while trying to figure out how to talk to animals instead of just intuiting their vibe, and it turns out one answer, as a druid (since that turns out to be what I am...), is to turn INTO an animal. So I have been wandering around as a giant wolf chatting to cows and so forth which is pretty fun. Quite a few of them have little voiced conversations, so far nothing significant but it was still charming.
Like five minutes after making my last post where I said I wasn't going to redo any failed rolls I ended up save-scumming to undo inadvertently starting a fight with an entire group of previously friendly people. And then...again...five minutes after that...
But now I know not to click on any red objects! That means you're stealing it, which makes people very angry!! Also don't use any combat techniques like "push" on people or animals even if you mean it in a non-fatal way, they and all their friends will take it very personally.
You can sometimes get away with stealing objects when noone's looking, but Tav thinks Stealing Is Wrong so avoids it even then.
Once you've pissed people off there's complex mechanics about when and how news travels that you're an enemy, and whether people stay angry. You can sometimes kill/avoid everyone who currently hates you without setting off everyone else in that faction, but sometimes news spreads via line of sight or someone running off to get reinforcements.
I eventually screwed up an optional battle enough that everyone died, so I looked up a guide, and it turned out I'd missed THREE companions by not exploring the map thoroughly enough. The combat is sometimes kinda challenging even on easy mode, but I've been doing ok as long as I heal as I go, avoid super hard optional fights, and don't make a whole camp of people want to murder me at once.
The mechanics for switching between companions and moving items between inventories are annoying. And you have to clear out your inventory pretty frequently, it fills up with loot from battles and everything has a weight. OOOH ok after writing most of this I discovered you can just right click on an item to send it to another active party member.
Sadly I discovered this AFTER my character became encumbered in the middle of a dungeon fight and their walking distance became heavily reduced. And then after finishing that battle I fast-travelled to a shop to sell everything...and then realised the nearest fast-travel point to get back to the dungeon was surrounded by unkillably many previously friendly characters who I had pissed off since the last time I went there. So had to go back to my previous save and replay it all :( So. Don't do that.
Quick-saving on PC is f5. QUICKSAVE FREQUENTLY. The game saves like 50 of them?? Lots of nicely labelled autosaves too.
Not sure what I'm doing with the barter/selling system, but I have been doing ok so far selling what I HOPE are useless items, and spending it on better equipment and healing potions. Just. Gotta be strategic about when I do this.
The earlier Baldur's Gate games weren't made by this studio, but in fact by Bioware! Which definitely explains the "old school Bioware with modern game tech" vibe, actual Bioware don't make games like this any more (and were never this trans inclusive).
You can go to camp at any point to change your party and move items around between them, and also talk to anyone who has something to say. This has no downside asides from the hassle. Actually sleeping (a 'long rest') progresses the plot and possibly doing it too often might screw you over plotwise? I've been doing ok so far though, and sometimes the plot progression is interesting!
For example, some companion arcs seem to only progress after conversations that happen 'at camp' during a long rest. Otherwise, it seems like whenever there's conversation to be had, a little exclamation mark pops up above their head. I've started dipping my toes into romance and at least as a non-binary character it's all very enjoyably ungendered. Afaict approval is a mix of how you respond within conversations, what plot choices you make when the character can see, and possibly how often you take characters out with you, since I seem to have higher approval with characters I take out a lot but don't have much in common with, versus characters I get along with fine but never take out on the road.
PC screenshots are f12, and get saved to your steam folder (if you're playing on steam) They didn't transfer to my steam account on this laptop so a nicer shot of Tav will have to wait!
I figured out the purpose of backstory! It's how you gain inspiration. Companions have it too. Whenever someone does something notably "in character" they gain "inspiration", which is a chance to do-over a failed dice roll. For example, my NPC has a "hero of the people" backstory, so when they do something significant to help the common folk they get a point of inspiration. You can only have four inspiration saved up at a time so it's worth just spending them when it comes up.
Other than that my character's backstory is pretty vague. Apparently they're from Baldur's Gate originally? Not sure if that applies to everyone.
There's a bunch of ways to do things and get places. After I got around to redoing the sidequest that killed me last time, I got lost, and ended up not even encountering that sidequest as I wandered around finding my way back to the main plot, instead encountering a couple of other sidequests I missed the previous time. And when I looked up a guide there were often conversations I'd missed which told you important information, but I had encountered that information a different way. Sometimes I got lost in a way where the guide was necessary to progress, but I get lost very easily.
The guide and mechanics encourage you to do stuff like throwing grease on a spot then knocking over a brazier to set it on fire etc but I keep screwing up with friendly fire so haven't been doing that sort of thing much. I've been following my gut with levelling up, thinking about what would have been most useful/satisfying in previous battles, which is working ok for me so far. Like I kept being annoyed that my archer kept getting disadvantage on shots from low ground, so when I had the chance to give him a feat that removes that disadvantage I took it. Maybe other choices would be more beneficial numbers wise, but at least I won't experience that annoyance any more!
Ok I think that's everything! Now to finish the *spoilery* post about where I'm up to plotwise.
EDIT: Two things I forgot: the game crashed after I tried going to camp while one of my characters was stuck in a pit. Luckily it didn't crash when I just walked everyone else into another area, which teleported the character out of the pit.
Also one of my characters fully died in a battle and afaict could have stayed permadead if I hadn't had the scroll to resurrect her. But I did, phew! And in both cases another lesson learned was don't stand at the edge of pits, or enemies will push you in.
These both happened to the same character, namely the one I want to be Tav's girlfriend, so I am very glad she didn't permadie! There were spiders in the pit that didn't kill her but Tav had already befriended them, so since you can't teleport during battle she just chilled with them down there while everyone else fought. SORRY HONEY. STAY AWAY FROM PIT EDGES DURING BATTLE, OK?
Also naturally some of the details in this post are STILL wrong, see moonvoice's comment below for some examples.
I am still enjoying the game! I am, however, not very good at it, and had to look up advice on the internet. Also it turns out some details in my previous posts were wrong. Like...the species and class of several characters... including my character's class >.> LOOK. IT'S A LOT TO KEEP TRACK OF.
Yesterday I realised I could stream to my laptop and played A Lot. There is some unfortunate Fantasy Racism but I am otherwise really enjoying it, both the overall plot and little moments are interesting and fun, and while I am not good at the combat it is doable and sometimes fun too.
It took multiple characters referring to my character as a druid for me to go "Wait, did I not actually pick ranger??". Not sure how I screwed that up but I can still hit things with a stick and talk to animals so that's ok, and druid turns out to work nicely with the early plot.
It's eventually possible to change your class but I'll stick with druid for now.
I spent a while trying to figure out how to talk to animals instead of just intuiting their vibe, and it turns out one answer, as a druid (since that turns out to be what I am...), is to turn INTO an animal. So I have been wandering around as a giant wolf chatting to cows and so forth which is pretty fun. Quite a few of them have little voiced conversations, so far nothing significant but it was still charming.
Like five minutes after making my last post where I said I wasn't going to redo any failed rolls I ended up save-scumming to undo inadvertently starting a fight with an entire group of previously friendly people. And then...again...five minutes after that...
But now I know not to click on any red objects! That means you're stealing it, which makes people very angry!! Also don't use any combat techniques like "push" on people or animals even if you mean it in a non-fatal way, they and all their friends will take it very personally.
You can sometimes get away with stealing objects when noone's looking, but Tav thinks Stealing Is Wrong so avoids it even then.
Once you've pissed people off there's complex mechanics about when and how news travels that you're an enemy, and whether people stay angry. You can sometimes kill/avoid everyone who currently hates you without setting off everyone else in that faction, but sometimes news spreads via line of sight or someone running off to get reinforcements.
I eventually screwed up an optional battle enough that everyone died, so I looked up a guide, and it turned out I'd missed THREE companions by not exploring the map thoroughly enough. The combat is sometimes kinda challenging even on easy mode, but I've been doing ok as long as I heal as I go, avoid super hard optional fights, and don't make a whole camp of people want to murder me at once.
The mechanics for switching between companions and moving items between inventories are annoying. And you have to clear out your inventory pretty frequently, it fills up with loot from battles and everything has a weight. OOOH ok after writing most of this I discovered you can just right click on an item to send it to another active party member.
Sadly I discovered this AFTER my character became encumbered in the middle of a dungeon fight and their walking distance became heavily reduced. And then after finishing that battle I fast-travelled to a shop to sell everything...and then realised the nearest fast-travel point to get back to the dungeon was surrounded by unkillably many previously friendly characters who I had pissed off since the last time I went there. So had to go back to my previous save and replay it all :( So. Don't do that.
Quick-saving on PC is f5. QUICKSAVE FREQUENTLY. The game saves like 50 of them?? Lots of nicely labelled autosaves too.
Not sure what I'm doing with the barter/selling system, but I have been doing ok so far selling what I HOPE are useless items, and spending it on better equipment and healing potions. Just. Gotta be strategic about when I do this.
The earlier Baldur's Gate games weren't made by this studio, but in fact by Bioware! Which definitely explains the "old school Bioware with modern game tech" vibe, actual Bioware don't make games like this any more (and were never this trans inclusive).
You can go to camp at any point to change your party and move items around between them, and also talk to anyone who has something to say. This has no downside asides from the hassle. Actually sleeping (a 'long rest') progresses the plot and possibly doing it too often might screw you over plotwise? I've been doing ok so far though, and sometimes the plot progression is interesting!
For example, some companion arcs seem to only progress after conversations that happen 'at camp' during a long rest. Otherwise, it seems like whenever there's conversation to be had, a little exclamation mark pops up above their head. I've started dipping my toes into romance and at least as a non-binary character it's all very enjoyably ungendered. Afaict approval is a mix of how you respond within conversations, what plot choices you make when the character can see, and possibly how often you take characters out with you, since I seem to have higher approval with characters I take out a lot but don't have much in common with, versus characters I get along with fine but never take out on the road.
PC screenshots are f12, and get saved to your steam folder (if you're playing on steam) They didn't transfer to my steam account on this laptop so a nicer shot of Tav will have to wait!
I figured out the purpose of backstory! It's how you gain inspiration. Companions have it too. Whenever someone does something notably "in character" they gain "inspiration", which is a chance to do-over a failed dice roll. For example, my NPC has a "hero of the people" backstory, so when they do something significant to help the common folk they get a point of inspiration. You can only have four inspiration saved up at a time so it's worth just spending them when it comes up.
Other than that my character's backstory is pretty vague. Apparently they're from Baldur's Gate originally? Not sure if that applies to everyone.
There's a bunch of ways to do things and get places. After I got around to redoing the sidequest that killed me last time, I got lost, and ended up not even encountering that sidequest as I wandered around finding my way back to the main plot, instead encountering a couple of other sidequests I missed the previous time. And when I looked up a guide there were often conversations I'd missed which told you important information, but I had encountered that information a different way. Sometimes I got lost in a way where the guide was necessary to progress, but I get lost very easily.
The guide and mechanics encourage you to do stuff like throwing grease on a spot then knocking over a brazier to set it on fire etc but I keep screwing up with friendly fire so haven't been doing that sort of thing much. I've been following my gut with levelling up, thinking about what would have been most useful/satisfying in previous battles, which is working ok for me so far. Like I kept being annoyed that my archer kept getting disadvantage on shots from low ground, so when I had the chance to give him a feat that removes that disadvantage I took it. Maybe other choices would be more beneficial numbers wise, but at least I won't experience that annoyance any more!
Ok I think that's everything! Now to finish the *spoilery* post about where I'm up to plotwise.
EDIT: Two things I forgot: the game crashed after I tried going to camp while one of my characters was stuck in a pit. Luckily it didn't crash when I just walked everyone else into another area, which teleported the character out of the pit.
Also one of my characters fully died in a battle and afaict could have stayed permadead if I hadn't had the scroll to resurrect her. But I did, phew! And in both cases another lesson learned was don't stand at the edge of pits, or enemies will push you in.
These both happened to the same character, namely the one I want to be Tav's girlfriend, so I am very glad she didn't permadie! There were spiders in the pit that didn't kill her but Tav had already befriended them, so since you can't teleport during battle she just chilled with them down there while everyone else fought. SORRY HONEY. STAY AWAY FROM PIT EDGES DURING BATTLE, OK?
Also naturally some of the details in this post are STILL wrong, see moonvoice's comment below for some examples.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-15 01:45 am (UTC)If you press tab (you might already know this now) you get the full inventory screen and then you can just drag and drop as necessary! You can also drag things in chests to specific characters rather than 'take all' if you just want someone else to take the weight. You can do the tab thing at any point in the game. Granted you can only drag between your active party members, but it's helpful when you have four!
And yeah that's the thing with the companions, they're easy to miss, because things seem dangerous and it's like 'noooope' and it turns out almost every single time, that's a companion x.x I missed Astarion, and then missed Gale for AGES because of this.
and then realised the nearest fast-travel point to get back to the dungeon was surrounded by unkillably many previously friendly characters who I had pissed off since the last time I went there.
If this is the Emerald Grove tieflings (goddamn it, Mol), you *should* still be able to get back to the trader and get out again via fast-travelling without activating anyone's ire (because the trader isn't a tiefling, he's a druid, and his loyalties aren't actually with the tieflings). I did this twice last night. The frustrating thing is I think it's buggy for me because I didn't even activate that part of Mol's storyline, and everyone was friendly to me, and then I left and *came back* after saving Mirkon, and it was activated and it was like '....why.'
Re: Barter - Click the button up the top and go straight to Trading! Barter is really only useful imho if you want to improve your relationship with a trader, and that involves giving them more items and gold than what the items are worth, while the bottom right says 'trader is pleased with your offer.' That's really only worth it in certain circumstances. Otherwise you can do a straight up trade for gold.
Actually sleeping (a 'long rest') progresses the plot and possibly doing it too often might screw you over plotwise?
This is *only* if a certain quest says 'do this by tomorrow' or specifies a specific today/tomorrow time. Otherwise the main quest isn't really time locked at all and you can long rest as often as you like! It's just dependent on camp supplies. This one stressed me out at first, I'm a lot more relaxed about it now!
You may know all of this stuff now though! <33333
Tbh it reminds me a lot of Inquisition, I was determined to play without a playthrough and Mage Circles (as a Mage) sounded like the worst thing EVER and I tanked my approval with Vivienne down to 0 in approximately 3 minutes (just like consecutive 'heavily disapproves') and it took me - god I wish I was joking - over 200 hours to get it back to a friendship level. She hated me SO much. After that, I googled things lol. I'm not as walkthrough dependent in BG3, but I do google 'should I save this person' or 'what happens if this NPC dies' lol
no subject
Date: 2023-08-15 06:58 am (UTC)I did not know all of that so thank you!
I was talking about the goblin camp, I don't think I've gotten to the tiefling thing you're talking about.
I try to play without too much of a guide unless I am stuck or super frustrated or think I'm going to miss/screw up something really significant like meeting a companion. But I also generally play these games a few times, so a bit of variety in experience can be fun, even when it's caused by failure. I had one of those intense disapproval cascades due to a misunderstanding with Merrill in Dragon Age 2 and decided to just roll with it... except DA2 has a rivalry mechanic that meant her anger led to my character accidentally having intense hatesex with her when he just wanted to be her friend while romancing someone else. So I did look up a guide on how to fix that haha. And I like looking up guides to sections I've already done to see if I've missed anything worth going back for, which turned out to be a very good idea for this game!
no subject
Date: 2023-08-15 05:08 am (UTC)Also, does this mean Tav gets to turn into a bear? ;D
no subject
Date: 2023-08-15 06:22 am (UTC)SO DID I. BUT APPARENTLY THAT IS NOT A THING.
Tragically Tav cannot currently turn into a bear, just a wolf, giant spider, cat and...badger, I think? Shadowheart seems like the type who might be into giant spiders, though ;)
no subject
Date: 2023-08-15 08:05 pm (UTC)Also...badger? I assume that's not a combat form. Are you digging holes?
no subject
Date: 2023-08-19 11:56 am (UTC)It's a combat form in theory! Even the cat is, you can use it to distract enemies. But I only ever use any of them for talking to animals.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-19 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-15 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-19 11:59 am (UTC)Yeah I'm stuck on a fight in Act 2 and considering mods /o\
no subject
Date: 2023-08-18 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-19 05:47 am (UTC)Haha, yes, all mistakes from now on are Just The Brain Worms. It's characterisation!
I'm having to didge spoilers myself, I'm looking forward to finishing my first playthrough so I can read other people's reactions without worry. But yes, without spoilers, I can say I'm having fun :)