Baldur's Gate: The Baldening

[Montague]

Oh god I forgot the talking sword. This is going to be delicious. 

[The Beef]

I'm glad you decided to keep going, and can't wait for you to meet Lilarcor.

[WindupAtheist]

Lord Nythrax. It has a certain ring to it, don't you think? I knew that Nalia bitch was naive, but even I would have never guessed we'd get away with THIS much.

We got to de'Arnise keep around noon, and found Nalia and the remaining guards holed up in this little wooden palisade a short distance from the walls. She bitched about how long it took us to get there, but I just told her to cram it and finally explain what we were there to kill. Apparently the place had been taken over by trolls and snakemen, who had somehow tunneled into the keep from below. Irritating in that we'd need fire or acid to permanently kill the regerating trolls, but Kor was just like "Dudes I got this shit!" and started waving around that flaming sword Lex stole for him.

The drawbridge was up, so they pointed us to a secret passage hidden just outside the keep, and pretty soon we were in without anyone being the wiser. Some of the servants were still alive, so we squeezed them for information and told them to get the fuck out while the getting was good. About thirty trolls, some snakemen, and a handful of weird burrowing creatures they used to tunnel in. The lord of the keep may or may not still be alive, we were told, but what the hell did we care?

Resistance wasn't really organized, so we started looting like mad while kicking the shit out of everything we came across. One of the snake-men was a magic user, but we dispelled his bullshit and bumrushed him before his buddies could do anything about it. Oh, and one of the family guards was some sort of traitor, babbling about the power of his master as he attacked us. I suppose Nalia might have known what his deal was if we let her dumb ass tag along, but who ultimiately gives a damn? We killed him, and I took his nice full plate armor for myself.

We also freed some poor guard who had been holed up with Nalia's snobby cunt of an aunt this whole time. I'm not normally a man of great compassion, but this bitch was insufferable, ranting about peasants not knowing their place and how this whole thing was affecting her social calendar. I wanted Mordak to charm her and use her for troll-bait, but the she and the guard scampered before I could give him the signal. For an old bag she was light on her feet.

Oh well, back to pillaging.

The family chapel was... interesting. Three statues, each concealing a pile of sweet looking loot, with five animate but passive golems standing watch nearby. It didn't take a genius to figure out that grabbing the goodies would sic the golems on us. Well shit, if plundering were easy, everyone would do it.

Each statue's loot turned one or two golems loose. The adamantine golem was a bit of a fight since we only had a couple of weapons powerful enough to hurt it, but the real problem was the clay golem. You can't just cut through these things, you need to bash them with something blunt in order to hurt them. Mordak tossed me the enchanted quarterstaff he never uses, and I set to it. Kor yelled for Vaere to toss him her hammer, but she just ignored him and jumped into the fight herself.

I guess ideally she would have handed it over to him and armed herself with a spiritual hammer spell or something, but whatever. We took sort of a beating but we killed it okay. She gave Kor this real smirky "See, I can handle my shit!" look and he was just like "Bah!" but you could tell he was at least mildly impressed.

After that we lowered the drawbridge and let the guards in, so they could cover our back while we went down into the keep's dungeon to look for the enemy leader. Turns out the weird burrowing creatures we'd heard about were umber hulks. Vaere had a spell that would keep their confusion bullshit from affecting me, so I had her cast that and then took point. Once they had used that shit up on me fruitlessly, we moved in and chopped them to hell. We cut through a few more trolls, blah blah blah.

Now there was only one room left, and all my dungeon-crawling instincts told me that this was where the leader of the trolls would be found. We began to formulate a strategically brilliant plan of attack based upon our extensive combat experience.

Then Mordak ran up, threw the door open, screamed "LICK MY TAINT, HORSE FUCKERS!" at the trolls, cast a cloudkill spell into the room, and slammed the door shut again. All six of us leaned on the door to keep it closed until all the hissing and screaming died down. The couple of lackeys who were still alive after that staggered out to be easily killed. Yes it was kind of insane, but I'm not a man to argue with success.

We found Nalia's father, the lord of the keep, dead in there along with the trolls. Thankfully his head was bashed in, which saved us having to go through any subterfuge in regards to accidentally murdering him. We also found over two thousand gold and some other loot in the base of the statue they had apparently dragged him down there to point out. Score.

Oh, we also rebuilt the old guy's awesome three-headed flail out of it's component parts. Apparently he'd taken it apart and scattered the pieces around the keep because... because he was a pussy who hates good weapons, I don't know. We gave it to Vaere since her silly religious strictures keep her from using any of the good swords or axes we come across.

We went back out to the little palisade and told Nalia it was all over. The old bitch we found holed up with her guard earlier was there, and boy was she pissed. She was ranting about how we probably stole everything good from her home, which I'll admit was quite astute on her part. I just winked and she got even madder.

Then Nalia started hemming and hawing and asking if we wouldn't mind staying for a while. I told her to just fucking spit it out and tell us what she wanted. She gave us this long sob story about how she's betrothed to the idiot son of the douchebag noble next door, a guy named Lord Roenall. The short version is that she wanted me to become lord of the keep and make her my ward, so that the Roenalls couldn't force the marriage and take over her land.

Yeah, because I bet that Roenall would be a real jerk. Heh. Yeah, a real villain. Heh heh. I'm totally the more benevolent choice. Hahaha.

Naturally I agreed, and her bitchy old aunt almost had a stroke on the spot. Granted there were plenty of good reasons for her to be outraged by her niece's obvious stupidity, but her fixation on my lack of "noble blood" was sorta hilarious given who my father is. I mean obviously I didn't try to explain it. I want to keep it a secret, and watching the old bat go crazy was hilarious anyway.

As the peasants and such were streaming back in and putting things back in order, Nalia did point out that she could take away what she had given. I smiled and nodded, then once we were inside, made sure she and her aunt had an "unfortunate accident" of the fatal variety almost immediately. None of the peasants were dumb enough to make a peep over this, and our little coup was complete.

I immediately renamed the place Castle Nythrax and threw a party in my own honor. Those dipshit Roenalls won't give up on getting this place that easily, but fuck them. This place is mine, and I'll kill anyone who says otherwise. We haven't really "lived" anywhere since Candlekeep and that place sucked shit, so this is the first "home" we've had that we actually like. (And we do like it, what with being able to do whatever we want!) Not that we'll get to spend too much time here, what with our other concerns, but still.

Oh, and the best part? All these peasants, in the keep and on the surrounding farmland, pay TAXES. Taxes to their LORD. As in ME. Your old friend Nythrax is actually a figure of lawful authority. Go figure.

[Merusk]

Shit man Mordak's cloud-kill battle shout had me rolling.  I'd forgotten about that spell, fucking awesome.

[WindupAtheist]

After a few days of putting things in order, alternated with a few nights of drinking ourselves stupid, we decided to get back to Athkatla. We still have Two Hundred Thousand Mother Fucking Gold to recover which, to put things in perspective, is almost two years worth of taxes there at Castle Nythrax.

No sooner had we hit town than one of the local vampire lackeys informed us that her "mistress" would like to meet with us. Yeah, vampires. Apparently they're enemies of the Shadow Thieves, as we've glimpsed them fighting in the streets at night more than once. She told us to meet her in the graveyard district after dark to discuss a deal. Obviously they were going to offer us something in order to turn us against the thieves, which was just dandy with us. Either that or eat us.

We couldn't even make it all the way to the graveyard though, before Gaelen's runt nephew was telling us that he needed to see us. I figured they had been watching us, and planned to warn us off of cooperating with the vampires. I told the kid we'd go see him, and Mordak started pitching a fit, talking about how vampires are totally awesome and way better than mere stupid thieves. Then Lex kicked him in the ass and threatened not to steal him any more scrolls, and suddenly he decided it would only be prudent to hear what Gaelen had to say. Heh.

We got in there, and I was sorta expecting some vaguely menacing threats. Which I was looking forward to, really. Nothing cheeses a guy off like making the hand-job motion as he's trying to tell you "what's good for you" in a super-serious threatening way. As it turned out, they didn't admit to knowing that we'd had any contact with the vampires at all. Instead they wanted to drop their price from 20k down to 15k, supposedly out of the goodness of their heart. Yeah.

I told Gaelen we'd think about it, and got out of there with my mind made up. Clearly we're about to be sucked into this whole vampires-versus-thieves war, and I want to be on the side that doesn't fucking reek of fear and desperation. Unless this "mistress" is totally unreasonable in her demands, we're going with the vampires. I still can't believe the Shadow Thieves, the largest criminal organization in the region, didn't even have the balls to threaten us.

So we met the leader of the vampires, this little dark-haired chick named Bodhi. Full of all the pomp and self-importance you might expect, but not particularly rude or unfriendly. Kinda cute, if you could get past the whole undead thing, which Mordak certainly could because he started drooling on the spot. She also wanted 15k to help us get at Irenicus, and wanted our help in wiping out the Shadow Thieves.

Doesn't seem like much of a deal on the surface, since it's the same gold cost plus a bunch of strife and combat with the thieves. But consider 1) anyone with a brain could tell we weren't going to get out of having to fight either one side or the other, 2) the thieves by far come off as the weaker of the two, and 3) killing the thieves probably means looting the thieves. What's more, pointless strife is part of how Sarevok planned to become a god, so it seems like the sort of thing I ought to be doing.

So yeah, we agreed, and handed over the cash. After our looting of the now-defunct de'Arnise family, we could afford it. Right away, Bodhi had us move against the thieves. Intercepting a shipment here, assassinating a member there, all good wholesome fun, and easy to boot.

Next thing she wants us to do is invade the thieves guild proper and wipe the place out, supposedly so that she can do her thing about getting us to Irenicus without their interference. That last bit was a little condescending, like we're supposed to believe she wouldn't want them wiped out anyway, but whatever.

I don't need much excuse to pillage, and I'll bet the thieves guild is full of nice loot that we'll get first crack at. I told her we'd get to it, but we'd do it in our own time. I want to check up on Castle Nythrax and a couple other things, and what's more I don't want this bitch to get too used to ordering us around.

We're helping her for our own reasons, but that doesn't mean I have to be a lapdog. If she had anyone else of our talents, she wouldn't need us. And since she needs us, she can damn well wait on us.

(Mordak dings 10. This update was a bit hasty, but all this stuff seemed to have time limits on it so I wanted to get it out of the way before going to look for my talking sword.)

[Threash]

I don't know how i missed this for so long but i just blew my entire weekend reading it, while desperately trying to find a good old fashioned group based rpg to play.

[WindupAtheist]

We hit the Coronet again. While Alexia was surreptitiously cleaning the place out for some of it's better magical weapons that had come into stock since our last visit, and Mordak and Vaere were betting on how many lizard kebabs Kor could eat without stopping, Garrette and I were keeping the owner busy with a lot of big talk about how much money we had to burn. We just wanted to distract him, but as it turned out we persuaded him to let us in on some of the Coronet's less publicized services.

Turns out the "back room" at the Copper Coronet is several times larger than the public room, and that they do a thriving business not only in whores, but in slavery and gladitorial combat.  I'm all in favor of these practices, and the weirdo who runs the joint let the bouncers know we were cool. They didn't really direct us anywhere though, they just sorta let us wander around on our own. That's cool and all, but we didn't really know where we were going, and ended up getting split up.

Gar and Lex were with me, but the others were nowhere to be seen. I figured Vaere was probably behaving herself, but Kor and Mordak, plus booze, plus whores, plus slaves and gladiators and who knows what else? In my mind I instantly saw the two of them riding through the streets naked on the backs of headless zombie prostitutes, while my balls ached in dread at the sort of bribe it would take to make that go away. I mean on his own Kor isn't likely to get into any trouble worse than a barfight, while Mordak might get tossed out for trying to do something unnatural to a whore. But if the two of them are left alone together, they fucking magnify each other's insanity.

We found Vaere getting her feet rubbed by a couple of male prostitutes while throwing gold coins at a third who was standing on top of a table and... well never mind what he was doing up there. Suffice it to say I was totally cool with all this, because I'm a laid back guy, and anyway, what do I care what Vaere does? Sure I yanked the table out from under the one, and used it to bludgeon the other two manwhores into fleeing, but... screw it, since when do I need an excuse? I just didn't like their faces, okay? Fuck you.

I don't know what the hell she was so smug about.

We didn't see any sign of Mordak, but then we didn't get to look for very long before we were attracted by the sound of an argument. Kor was over by the animal pens, with the joint's beast master yelling at him to get out because his scent was getting the guy's giant pet panther riled up. Kor's just like "How's your pussy like this smell?" and wham, lets one rip. Probably the lizard kebabs, any sort of reptile meat is always the material component in Kor's own personal Stinking Cloud spell.

I mean it just went on, and on, and then Kor got this look on his face and it was pretty apparent that it had gone on a little too long. That's right, Korgrim the berzerker, bane of our foes, wielder of Daystar, had just shit his drawers in the back room of the city's largest brothel. The beast master was just like "Fuck it, that's all I can take!" and hit a lever that opened up every cage at once. You'd think this would result in general chaos, what with half a dozen tigers and bears and shit all running loose at the same time. But no, every one of them came straight for us.

Not that it mattered. I mean we've faced a LOT worse things than a pack of bullshit animals, and Kor wasn't going to let a pantsload slow him down in a fight. We hewed through everything in no time and took down the trainer. Only the bouncers aren't taking too kindly to all this, and now we're fighting them too.

Which was Mordak's cue to come strolling by with a whore on each arm, calling out ahead of him that he needs to borrow five hundred gold to compensate these girls for being such good sports about something he called "two wenches, one goblet". Then he sees us slugging it out with the staff and goes "Sweet, never mind!" and sets them both on fire with a snap of his fingers. With the cool kids all back together, we easily fended off all the guards.

We needed a cover story though, a red herring, anything to make this story into something besides "Nythrax and friends sack whorehouse", so we ran over to the slave pens and released all the gladiators. Boy were they ever delighted to be free. They all took up weapons and went after the remaining bouncers, fighting their way towards the front while screeching about freedom and revenge. Yeah, that'd do.

We were going to join them, but Kor was like "Fuck no, man!" There was just no way he was going out in front of the tavern crowd with pants full of shit, and no amount of logic about how nobody would notice amidst the chaos would persuade him. I wasn't about to have us sit around and wait for the city guards, so instead we escaped into the sewers.

(I took more license than usual here, but failing to leave after the beast master bitched about the smell disturbing his pet WAS what set the fight off and convinced me to free the slaves I otherwise didn't give a damn about. Kor just had to shit his pants so I'd have a better excuse to go into the sewers than "walkthrough says a neat sword is in there".)

[Rendakor]

  Thanks for continuing to deliver.

[pants]

Two wenches, one goblet.  Excellent!

[WindupAtheist]

I have more fun writing this than I do playing the game, now that the whole exercise isn't just me beating my face against a bunch of incomprehensible spell bullshit. I've already decided that if I run into a bunch of "uber dispel won't work becuase they have spell immunity abjuration and have stacked protection from magic weapons with protection from missiles and have a spell shield in place to stop my first attempt at breaching them" bullshit, I'm just going to blow them up with a cheat and not tell anyone. Haw.

1) Uber dispel
2) Haste the good guys
3) Bum rush to victory

[Azazel]

Please continue with the 

[Triforcer]

I have more fun writing this than I do playing the game, now that the whole exercise isn't just me beating my face against a bunch of incomprehensible spell bullshit. I've already decided that if I run into a bunch of "uber dispel won't work becuase they have spell immunity abjuration and have stacked protection from magic weapons with protection from missiles and have a spell shield in place to stop my first attempt at breaching them" bullshit, I'm just going to blow them up with a cheat and not tell anyone. Haw.

1) Uber dispel
2) Haste the good guys
3) Bum rush to victory

Kangaxx and the Twisted Rune should go down fairly quickly, then 

[WindupAtheist]

Pretty sure I can just put a scroll of Undead Protection on Kor and have him blow Kangaxx out of his socks with Daystar. The Twisted Rune fight, I can Daystar the vampire, and throw a dispel to make their own pit fiend attack them.

I do read a lot of guides.  

I don't mind screwing around a bunch to kill bosses that are probably worth uber XP. I just may or may not do so on behalf of every random barfight mage if what I consider to be bullcrap becomes really common.

[The Beef]

Unless you install one of the available AI-"improving" make-the-game-harder mods, you're basically never, ever going to see a mage buff himself with spell immunity. And since (I think) dispel is one of the things that ignores magic resistance, your Inquisitor-style dispel is going to be a win button for pretty much the whole game. Enjoy.

[WindupAtheist]

So there we are trudging through the sewers, and Kor may as well have a force field with a six-foot radius around him, because nobody is going anywhere near him. He's just like "Oh fuck you guys, we're in a sewer, you can't even smell me!" But we totally could. Lex started in with some cracks about how he always smells, until he threatened to give her a hug in his present condition.

We had to kill a few of the usual sewer-dwelling monsters and even disarm a trap or two along the way, but it wasn't anything we couldn't handle. Along the way we found a magical sword which had been hidden down there for some reason, protected by a really nonsensical and arbitrary riddle that had to do with stuffing random bits of junk into particular pipes in a specific order. I'm not going to go into it, because frankly it was pretty stupid and isn't important anyway.

The important thing is, it's the first two-hander we've come across that's better than Sarevok's old sword. Everyone else has been getting awesome new weapons left and right (thanks mostly to Alexia's pilfering) but I hadn't gotten shit lately, so this one was mine. And get this, IT TALKS. A talking fucking magical sword. And all it talks about is killing.

I picked it up and it immediately wanted to know when we were going to kill something. It also said it's name was Lilarcor, and I knew we were going to be best pals, especially after I went into my sword-flapping routine and it kept screaming "WHEE!" as I swarked it around the room. Everyone else sorta facepalmed, but I swear sometimes those guys don't know what fun is.

Anyway, there was only one exit from the sewer that would accomodate us, and it just happened to lead... right into the headquarters of a bunch of slavers. They didn't look very happy to see us, and I was debating the best way to explain that I actually approve of the institution of slavery and that this was all a misunderstanding. Then Lilarcor piped up with "Kill them, kill them, I want to see what's inside!" and that pretty much made up everyone's mind that this wasn't going to be a friendly encounter.

I knew this sword would fit right in with our little gang.

So we wasted everyone in the place while my sword kept up a running commentary on what body parts it had managed to sever. Nobody in there even managed to slow us down, and we looted the place bare for good measure. Kor thankfully excused himself to their washroom to clean the shit out of his drawers, and while we were waiting Lex turned all the child-slaves loose. I felt a bit dirty doing a good deed, but what the hell? At least it furthers the deception that we're slavery-fighting do-gooders, as opposed to degenerates who can't visit a brothel without killing half of everyone in it. That can only help us if the massacre at the Copper Coronet comes up in the future.

Speaking of which, we stopped by the Coronet to see what was up. The place had calmed down, and apparently one of the former slaves had managed to take over ownership of the place after gutting his ex-master, the previous owner. I don't know how THAT works legally, but whatever. The guy was so grateful to be free that he extended us a permanent discount, so I'm not complaining. We sold some loot and caught a night's rest.

After that I decided it was time to check up on Castle Nythrax. If nothing else, the taxes should have come due by now.

(Vaere dings 10, Gar and Lex ding 12.)

[Phire]

"Kill them, kill them, I want to see what's inside!"

  Awesome! Such a good read that keeps me busy throughout my boring work days. Thanks for all the hard work!

[WindupAtheist]

That quote was only mildly doctored. Here's a list of actual quotes:

'Come on let's kill something NOW!'
'mmmm.... now?'
'What about now?'
'Now!  Now!  Kill something now!! Yeah!'
'Murder!  Death!!  KILL!!!'
'Wouldn't it be cool if you could dual-wield me?'
'YOINK!  Got yer nose!'
'Let's see what's inside this one! Yeah!'
'Muwahahaha-ha-ha!!'

Like I said, as soon as I read about it I knew I needed to have it.

[NowhereMan]

Lilarcor is the single most awesome weapon anyone has put into a game ever. The lore story for it is pretty too.

Also I've just finished Throne of Baal and Edwin's epilogue is  beyond words.

[Seraphim]

Thanks for a great write-up WUA, been a while since I laughed this hard at a forum thread...

[WindupAtheist]

Thanks all for the comments.  

More to come soon, as Nythrax is called upon to actually govern his little estate. It's been my goal for a long time to make this the most viewed thread on the forum. Only about 1600 to go before I catch the original Dwarf Fortress thread, and that's been here since January.

  

[Koyasha]

I'm glad you managed to get around your (to me, mind-boggling) dislike for BG2's combat and mage stuff, cause this keeps getting better.

[NiX]

You need to write more. This is what gets me through the day.

[Mortriden]

I agree, I'm like a fucking junky coming back to this thread.  This is a 100 times better than the game ever was for me.

[WindupAtheist]

We got back to Castle Nythrax just in time for the majordomo to tell us that someone was there to see me. Some merchant, pissed off about something or other. Since this would be the first time someone outside the household had called upon me as lord, I decided that I needed to make the right impression.

The first thing I did was tell Kor, Lex, and Mordak that they didn't have to hang around for the boring merchant talk. I don't want to make this guy feel too important by having the whole crew there, and those three are the ones most likely to try to pick the guy's pockets or saw his head off, or something similarly impolitic. Needless to say, they seemed pretty relieved.

Vaere sat down next to me, looking real pleased at playing lady of the keep, which is how most of the staff treats her. I can only imagine they see the fact that she's been toting the old lord's magic flail around ever since we recovered it as a symbol of her status in my eyes. Clearly the local peasantry isn't up on the logistics of magic weapon dispensation among adventurers. Not that I don't respect her, I mean. She's a big part of the team, I just mean... fuck. Whatever. Shut up.

Anyway, Garrette went and stood in a far corner, where he'd be able to see the entire room and would presumably spend the entire time with his eyes on the visitor's back. Then he put on his "I am stone cold and will totally just shoot a guy!" face. I greatly approved. Any one of us could singlehandedly wipe the floor with anyone likely to visit, sure, but to have Gar looming in the corner is a nice way to remind them of it.

I told the majordomo to send the guy in. Turns out the merchant is this fat little red-faced guy, irate as hell about one of his caravans getting bushwhacked by bandits within my territory. I was about to tell him to calm down, when Lilarcor piped up from inside the scabbard with "Who's that? He sounds mad! Can we kill him?!" I don't think I'm really used to having a talking sword yet.

Goddamn it, if I wanted a running commentary of insanity I'd have made Mordak stick around. The merchant is just looking at me with this "What the fuck?" look on his face. A brief argument then ensued between myself and the sword over the merits of slicing open visitors to see what's inside them, which only ended when I threatened to grind it down into a letter opener if it didn't shut the hell up.

So much for making the right impression. On the bright side, the merchant's anger seemed to have been dissipated by the sheer weirdness of the situation. He calmly described how the caravan had been sacked within my territory, and how he needed me to make this right, with only a few instances of "C'mon!" and "I bet he's squishy!" coming from Lilarcor, which we both ignored through a sort of unspoken mutual agreement.

Guy wanted a thousand gold for his losses. I rolled my eyes, and he made some noises about foreclosing on a bunch of farmsteads on my land that he owned the deeds to. Garrette gave me the "Should I shoot him?" look, but I just gave him the negative signal in return. I told the guy I wasn't paying him for his little caravan, but that I was going to buy the farm deeds off of him instead.

Garrette coughed once from the corner to remind the guy of his presence, and of the fact that refusing to sell probably wasn't a good option.

We did the deal on the spot. As it turns out, the farmsteads were also worth about a thousand, and the merchant wisely decided to act as if this were just as good as being paid a thousand for his losses. Needless to say there's a bit of a difference between handing out free money as compensation versus purchasing valuable property, but whatever. If this guy wanted to keep it friendly, I'd oblige him. I even told him I'd spend another five hundred hiring mercenaries to clear out the bandits, which seemed to genuinely please him.

After we saw him off, Vaere and Garrette both expressed surprise that the guy got out alive and with money in his pocket. I simply explained that trade was important to my little fiefdom, and that I didn't want to be lord of an impoverished shithole. Also, buying those farm deeds tightens my grip on the land, and my power over the people. That's never a bad thing, and anyway a thousand gold isn't that much for us anymore.

(The merchant really does act like selling his land for 1k is just as good as being compensated 1k for his losses, which is rather silly. Thus I figured it made sense to write in some threats.)

[WindupAtheist]

Played some more tonight, more writing to come tomorrow. This is going a bit slower than BG1. I had that game down pat and could virtually speedrun it, but not so here.

[Khac]

Sounds good. This is a great thread so far with BG2.

[Hannibal]

Great thread, keep it up.

If you still need thief skill pointers, find traps, set traps, open locks and detect illusions all have their cutoff point at 100. The toughest pickpocket mark is Bernard in the Copper Coronet, you need about 230 for him. Other merchants go from 120 to 190. Remember, you can always buff up with potions beforehand. Hide in shadows and move silently are basically the same skill. 200 in one and 0 in the other is just as good as an even 100/100 spread. 120-150 in each are about right for sneaking about even in daylight. Just don't go over 255 in a single skill, because beyond that, the points roll over.

As for their utility, you want the cloak of non-detection for serious stealth, otherwise True Seeing will reveal you. Potions and rings are handy for multiple backstabs each combat. Open Locks and Detect Traps are pretty much required, max them ASAP. I'd also consider having find traps on both your characters, eventually. That way one can keep searching new areas the while the other one disarms them. Detect Illusions is basically a free True Seeing whenever you need it. Use Find Traps to activate it. It triggers once per round, similar to turn undead and find traps. It's very handy against thieves and mages casting Shadow Door or Mislead, except I don't know if you'll actually need it with your Dispel Magic ability. Pickpocketing (or killing, considering your playstyle) random soldiers will occasionally yield high-level magic scrolls. You can occasionally pickpocket quest rewards from NPCs, but not always. If you don't use the fixpack, this can occasionally multiply items. The only notable item I remember that you might not normally get is the Efreeti Bottle from one of the djinns in Trademeet.

Set Traps is very, very powerful, bordering on exploitastic. Almost(?) nothing is immune to trap damage, so if you can prepare your field of battle before enemies appear (or turn hostile), you'll either one-shot or seriously cripple them. Luring regular enemies back into prepared traps is usually more of a hassle than it's worth, however. But it'll give you the edge you need if you find a combat too difficult. Using them on dragons is a bit too cheesy for me (I'd rather turn them into squirrels), but very little is more satisfying than letting those annoying Cowled Wizards teleport smack into the middle of a deathtrap when they come to arrest you for using magic openly. If you kill enough of them, they'll eventually stop bothering you.

Hope it helps.

[WindupAtheist]

Thanks, that's EXACTLY the sort of info I was looking for!

[Merusk]

but very little is more satisfying than letting those annoying Cowled Wizards teleport smack into the middle of a deathtrap when they come to arrest you for using magic openly. If you kill enough of them, they'll eventually stop bothering you.

Hmm.. I wonder what Nythrax 's next order of business might be...

[Koyasha]

It's a tough set of fights, but interesting and fun in some ways.  I did it once as a solo mage, killed enough wizards to make them leave me alone.  It's also rather profitable because a ton of guards appear with them eventually, if I remember correctly, dropping loads of plate armor and halberds.  Also, the high level wizards that appear in the last few rounds before they decide to leave you alone often drop very high level scrolls.  If I remember right you can get 9th level spells off them (which, in original BG2 were very rare and could never be memorized due to the exp cap putting even single-class mages at 17th level).

[WindupAtheist]

With the business of governance out of the way, I decided we should get back to Athkatla and crush the Shadow Thieves already. Bodhi told us a while back that if we wanted to get at the leadership, we'd have to get a special key from our old pal Gaelen Bayle, mushmouthed incomprehensible dipshit.

No subtlety on this, we marched right into his house and killed him dead. Mordak wanted to reanimate the corpse and use it as cover to help us sneak into the guild, which was actually a pretty rational idea for him. Once he cast the spell though, it started going "COOO!" even before standing up, so I hacked it's head off on the spot. Mordak stomped his foot and insisted that he made it do that as a joke and I had just overreacted, but whatever. Then he took the still-animate head and put it in his backpack. Weirdo.

Look, I'm not averse to subtlety on a philosophical level (though the company I keep isn't normally conducive to employing it) but this was a time for brute force. I'm not about to try to compete with the enemy on their own sneaky terms. I'm going to turn this little scuffle into the sort of brawl which they, with their leather armor and their little short swords, aren't prepared to handle.

After we had the key, we headed down to the docks, marched through the front door of the Shadow Thieves guild, and started killing everything in sight. They had a few wizards and such on hand as additional security, but it was a pretty straightforward romp on the whole.

I mean yeah there were traps here and there that Garrette had to pick out and dismantle, but he's an old hand at that sort of shit. And there was a bit of wankery with a door that required both a key and a button to open, the button behing behind a bunch of silly machinery and the key being held by yet another wizard. But we busted one of Bodhi's guys out of his cell, and he explained it all to us right quick.

The wizard was named Kaz or Haz or something like that, and had a few guards with him. A volley of arrows and bolts (and one severed but still-biting thief head) disrupted his initial spellcasting though, and it was off to the races. The priest with him got off a spell or two, but nothing I couldn't dispel the effects of. We killed them all in short order.

By the way, I had sorta wondered if Lex would be annoyed at the fact that she was never going to get membership in a thieving guild at this rate, what with us seeming to slaughter every such organization we come across. I should have known better, because if the logic of "killing thieves means we get to loot thieves" was going to sway anyone, it would be her. She picked every lock in the building as we went along, and started loading us up like mules when she had more loot than she could carry.

Eventually we came to the leader of the Shadow Thieves. I can't remember his name, to be honest. I mean you kill enough people and it all starts to run together. Anyway, we caught up to him and he clearly thought he was ready for us. He had a mage, and a priest, and a couple of fighter and archer types with him.

But like I said, the order of the day was "Fuck subtlety!" and we laid into them. The mage was a powerful one and summoned some sort of demon against us, but we just plain beat it into the floor. I dispelled all their silly magical defenses, and then forced them into a straight slugfest, the results of which were predictable.

Man they had a lot of nice stuff. Even the bits we can't use should sell at the Coronet, and we can always steal them back from there if we need them. Haw. We should probably let Bodhi know the job is done at some point, too. Doubtless she already knows, but I'm curious as to what she'll have to say.

(Nythrax and Korgrim ding 10. Butchering the forces of law and order into abject submission is definitely on my things-to-do list, but probably as a later-game thing.)

[WindupAtheist]

So anyway, thieves.

Gar (assassin) is all stealth and disarm traps. With his piddly 15 skill points per level, branching out into any useful amount of trap setting isn't going to be an option until many levels from now.

Lex is all pickpocket and lockpicking. Both of these are at their meaningful limits and she needs to start putting points elsewhere. But I'll confess that trap setting doesn't really suit the character, and I'm enough of a dork that such things matter to me.

When do you get High Level Abilities? And do you need points in trap setting to choose the spike trap HLA?

Fuck it anyway, I'll put Lex's extra points in detect illusion for now and just use Shadow Keeper to respec if I think I fucked up. With uber dispel having eliminated a lot of the mage-related bullshit, I can't complain about the combat anyway. I don't need to totally cheese it by setting 35983498 traps under a dragon or something.

[Hannibal]

You get HLAs on levelup once you're past BG2's old XP cap of 2 950 000. For thieves, that's level 24. And yeah, you need the skill for HLA traps.

Btw, there's a limit of 7 active traps per area, so you can't cheese quite so much.

[Soln]

MOAR

[WindupAtheist]

I'll get back to this, but I have to admit that my interest is flagging after more than a month of playing the BG series hardcore. It's a long-ass game, and I can only write so many "chopped his head off" jokes before the whole thing wears a bit thin. I won't forget about it, but I need to do something else for a while. Right now I'm plugging away at a 'box office roundup' to bump my old thread with.