Baldur's Gate 28: Oops.

Oh dear. So I'm glancing through Hearavon's FAQ this morning and I start reading more about how to dual-class folks, and character creation, and such like, and I realize that I have done a major oopsie.

I do not have a cleric. Hearavon says that a cleric is one of the absolutely required characters that you must have. It's the one that casts the highly useful Animate Dead spell, the spell that I don't have.

See, I thought Jaheira was a cleric. Jaheira is a druid. A druid is not a cleric. A druid is something else.

I got confused because Jaheira can heal, and that's what clerics do in the other RPGs I play. So I thought they were the same thing. 

Nope.

Hearavon says anyone without a character in all of the required classes probably will lose the game.

I'm darned close to the end, actually. Yeah, I've still got to slay the Demon Knight (although no doubt that's avoidable if I can't do it), and then I've got the endgame to do.

The endgame, of course, is going to be the toughest part.

Well, we'll see if I can do it. If not, I've had a lot of phun and learned a lot. I can play again, and put a cleric in my party next time.

Sheesh.

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Baldur's Gate 27: So I Needed a Bit of Instruction

Apparently plenty of folks have had trouble with this, and I did too. On the second lower level of Durlag's Tower we find a room with sparring dummies in it. Now, nothing indicates that you're supposed to hit these things. You can loot them, and you get a blue circle indicating you can talk to them (although they have nothing to say), but hit 'em? No clue.

But that's what you're supposed to do: whack 'em. Whacking 'em opens doors to other rooms that cannot be accessed otherwise--including one that leads to the rest of the entire level.

Fortunately I have the FAQ. It said to hit 'em. I tried. I managed to right click and get a little gray sword icon, but when I clicked it on the dummies my characters just stood there. Nothing.

I googled it. It seems that lots of folks have trouble here. Finally somebody said that you have to whack the floor.

Finally! I whacked the blue circles, and that did it! The door opened and I was able to continue. Whew!

The rest of the level is the usual stuff. Meet enemies, conquer them. Loot the bodies, detect traps, disarm traps, look for more loot.

I am now doing my best to stack my consumables, and am making an effort to use a bunch of it up. Healing potions are everywhere. I can gulp 'em down with abandon. My real problem is all the scrolls. My scroll case is full, as is my potion case. I've got to use that stuff up so I can make some room in my inventories. I'm already dumping out my regular arrows, bolts and bullets. I'm finding so much enhanced stuff that it seems silly to clog up the inventories with mere normal weaponry.

I must say that I'm really enjoying Durlag's Tower. It's got some real atmosphere. You go into lots of nicely furnished rooms. I enjoy that. It isn't just your common dungeon. It has character. Plus, the looting opportunities are extremely nice.

In short, it's more like an adventure game. Probably why I like it, and lots of the regular players of this game don't.

And I've got two more levels to go, after I clear out one more room (according to the FAQ).

More phun ahead! Finally, an episode of Tales of the Sword Coast I can get into!

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Baldur's Gate 26: Having Some Real Adventuring Phun!

I've been playing but not posting. Have been having some serious fun with the game though! Lots of fighting, as per normal, but some puzzle work too! Neat!

After slaughtering the boss on the werewolf ship, I learned that I had to get out of that area, and it's a timed portion of the game. Had to navigate my way through a maze of tunnels before my party started turning into werewolves and got killed, permanently. Actually I was able to do that without any real difficulty. Once I reached the ship that would take me back to Ulgoth's Beard, where the Tales of the Sword Coast started, I had to kill another greater werewolf, but this time I had not two but three lycanthrope-slaying weapons so she went down pretty easily. Upon returning to town, there's yet another one to slay, and that was even easier.

(Except that--ouch!--apparently I managed also to slaughter an innocent bystander during the melee and my reputation is down from a heroic 20 to an average 10. Oops. But shoot, it's late enough in the game that I don't really need the rep any more. By the time I realized what had happened I didn't want to go back and do it all again.)

But wait! I thought I was through with Tales of the Sword Coast! Not so, in fact. There is one more quest, and it's the big one: Durlag's Tower.

Now I've been reading about Durlag's Tower in the FAQ for months, so I approached it with trepidation. And no doubt, the next several levels of it will be fearful.

But boy howdy am I having fun so far! 

First, I went down instead of up. That got me into a nice riddle with layers reminiscent of good adventures. There were puzzles to solve! 

Actually they weren't difficult, except that the screen is so dark it's really difficult to recognize things. I did fine with turning on the machinery--I mean, it's easy to see that you have an inventory item that's meant to be a quest item. The key, the grapes, etc. are pretty obvious. But I stood right next to the gong I was supposed to hit and didn't see it, and I was looking for it. Also, the mallet head you find doesn't look like any such thing, so it's easy to ignore. 

But I did it with a bit of help from the FAQ. The final battle really wasn't that tough at all, except that I thought it would never start.

After that I went up, which is what you're supposed to do in the first place, and no wonder: the fights are pretty routine and not difficult.

I finished all the upper level stuff, and have descended to the second lower level, which the FAQ says is awful. The guy says he hates this level. We'll see. 

I saved there. Getting busy in my actual life again, so it seemed a good place to stop.

It was PHUN!

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Baldur's Gate 25: Got 'Em!

Finally got the guy. Got blasted again at first, no matter my good prep. However, I learned stuff (for once I actually read the scrolling descriptions of the action). 

First, I realized that even though I had chosen the correct weapons for my fighters--they weren't using them. I had to actually take all their other weapons away from them. That worked. 

Then I realized that the boss indeed could by hurt by magic missiles. I only managed to slow him once, but I got kinda lucky. I took the advice of the FAQ and sent Ajantis upstairs, then immediately headed back downstairs to draw the bad guys into my fighting area instead of theirs. First, I was getting slaughtered and Jaheira got killed. Also Ajantis was getting seriously wounded, despite his nice potions. 

On my second try (and after making sure my fighters had only the proper weapons available to them) I got kinda lucky. Only the minions followed Ajantis downstairs. I got them easily and couldn't figure out why it was so easy. Aha. Because the boss and his girlfriend had stayed upstairs.

So, another trip up, and this time the boss followed Ajantis down. With all my new knowledge I finally was able to get him. 

Went back up, and there was the girlfriend. She went down fairly easily though.

So I got all the goodies (I remembered to have Imoen check for traps and sure enough, she found 'em).

According to the FAQ I've still got fights ahead on this dratted island. But, the big fight is done, and I've got another nifty werewolf-slaying weapon, so now I can have three fighters active at one time.

Well it was exciting!

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Baldur's Gate 24: Oopsies

Right. I got slaughtered. 

So I decide I'd better get outta the ship and go do the quests I missed, according to the FAQ. I found most of them, but I think I already slaughtered a few of the monsters that had the quests items. 

One really nice quest, however, was to the Sireen queen to retrieve a dead body. Now, I could fight her and her minions, but they love to charm my characters, and my characters are strong enough now to wreak true havoc when charmed. Against me. 

But I wanted the stuff the FAQ said the queen had. So ha! I decided to do it peacefully, get 2,000 points for that, then pickpocket the queen. I was able to get Corwin's pickpocket skill up to 60 recently, but that really isn't good enough. It is with a master thief potion though, and I had one of those. So he gulped that down and picked her pocket of most of the stuff I wanted, including a goodly handful of Arrows of Biting. I'm running seriously low on arrows.

Actually that doesn't matter, because the only fight I've got left here is the Werewolf boss, who can be harmed with only three weapons. I've got two of the weapons.

The guy slaughtered me on my first major attempt. I was whaling away at him without realizing I'd selected the wrong sword for Ajantis. Poor Ajantis was clinging to life, gulping down health potions, and causing no damage at all to the bad guy.

So now I'm really ready. I've cast my spells; I've arranged my weapons; I've just got to gulp down some major potions and get to it.

The first time I was able to kill the boss's wife, who shows up--the FAQ says to get her first. That was fairly easy. Then his minions go down in the general melee.

But now I've got six slow spells ready to lob onto him. I'm going to use only Ajantis and Jahira on the boss (she has one of the weapons and she's skilled with it). They will both gulp down major potions to keep them as invulnerable as possible. I've also put my two boots of speed on them, so I won't have to worry about my haste spell running out.

Then they're just going to whale away at the guy. Problem is that Jahira won't be able to cast too many healing spells--she's going to be busy. 

With my speed and slow spells, I ought to have a chance this time.

Till tomorrow!

(Oh, yesterday I managed to get the author of my FAQ, Haeravon himself, live on his Facebook page. I learned that the Animate Dead spell comes with a cleric I don't have in my party. The mages will get it eventually, but not yet. So that's why I couldn't find the thing.)

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Baldur's Gate 23: Getting a bit Frosty

As of this morning, I was really glad I'd gotten back to the game. Really got caught up in it again.

But today I finally got around to the expansion pack to the original game: Tales of the Sword Coast. I'm less enchanted with this one, despite it's frosty first quest. (Winter is my favorite season.)

Of course the story in the game was completed in the original release. So the expansion pack doesn't do much with it, other than fill in some background on Balduran. Mostly, it's just two smash and grab expeditions. Not really that much going on other than increasingly difficult combat.

The first one confronts us with multiple mages in the frosty north. We slaughter a couple of innocent polar bears (I hate killing bears in this game--I like bears). We slaughter numerous winter wolves. But mostly we slaughter mages. Oddly, the most difficult fight in this first quest comes first. Once that's done Imoen gets to show off her trap finding skills, and we slaughter a few more mages and wolves. Then we go home to absolutely no consequences or discussion.

The second trip, following the sea charts we stole a while back, takes us to Balduran's Island. Balduran is the original Baldur, who built the gate, apparently. Here we have to slaughter increasingly more powerful wearwolves. 

I have reached the final boss, but I just don't feel like tackling him right now. I have enough potions and spells that I ought to be able to make my whole party pretty well invulnerable, so I'll tackle it once I get some housework done tomorrow. Today was an official holiday. I didn't work. I played. Tomorrow is an actual workday, so I will work, then play.

Then I have to chase down a few smaller quests I missed on the island, and after that, it's the endgame of Baldur's Gate I itself.

Wow! I'm nearly done. No doubt the endgame will be about as extensive as this expansion pack, however. Plenty of playing time left to go!

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Baldur's Gate 22: So I was Lost . . .

So that hiatus was a bit unplanned. Really, I was super über busy and did not have the time to play. However, I finished my Kirkus work early this morning, and decided just to take New Year's Eve and Day to get back to this game.

Good thing I did. I still remember how to play (mostly, although I'm still really bad at it), and after lots of bungling around, at last I managed to get to the next chapter in the game. I am back in Candlekeep, have learned the truth about my parentage, and am now crawling in a dungeon filled with dopplegangers, but also, according to the FAQ, with seriously good loot.

It took down the mages in the Iron Throne without too much trouble. Funny, the FAQ gives all this strategy, and I just used my normal fighting technique, which is pretty basic. However, by this time in the game I am seriously strong, so I can get away with it.

Candlekeep itself is mainly for loot, apparently. I killed the bad guys too soon and would have missed out on lots of goodies and that information about my parentage, but I consulted the FAQ and went back. One does need to know whom to kill, and when. Once I hit the fifth floor of the library I should have gone back down and slaughtered the bad guys. 

Then in the catacombs I went the wrong way. Will start there tomorrow. After I get out of that I will do the Sword Coast quests, and then it's on to the endgame! I was closer than I thought. Make sense though. I finally have some decent magical items and am pretty tough, even if I am a dork at fighting. I always forget to use my consumables, and I clog up my inventories. Then I tend to use the same spells over and over.

Plus, the guy in the FAQ keeps advising to use the spell "animate dead." I have yet to find that. Maybe after I get out of the catacomb I ought to go back to that wizard in the hedge near Beregost and see if he has it. If not, the guy in Ulgoth's Beard might, or the Sorcerer's shop in BG itself. Those would be about the only places you could acquire such an item. I will look.

Anyway, I moved the puter out to the den where I have these wonderful recliner lift chairs. I was able to have my nice fire in the fireplace and play my game too! And really, I don't have a comfortable chair in the bedroom for the computer. Until I have to show off this place, I may just leave this setup in place. At least I'm comfy!

So it's now 2014, and for the last 41 minutes I have had health insurance! Thank you Obama!

Nighty Nite!

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