Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Challege RunThread [Pro-gamer zone]

By the way, when I'm soloing, I'm using my companions which stay in the camp, to provide me with two buffs requiring a Concentration: Shield of Faith and Protection from Evil/Good (and Longstrider to save your own spell slots, if you are leveling them to 4th). Yes, that's cheesing, but it frees up your own concentration, which is huge.

Concerning the absurdity - don't worry, miss M. Sue, you are perfectly fine:P

lol yeah I think that would trivialize it, since then you could just have another party member concentrate blur on you as well. With 21AC and warding flare you can already go through a round of 12 attacks and none of them hitting you - with blur as well it would be pretty funny + Cast blade ward every other round and stand middle of a fight indefinatly. Aid to increase hp to 15 so you that even if damage gets through you don't get 1 shotted.

Blur won't work - just 10 rounds of fighting, so only as a pre-cast to the fight.

Oh ok, that makes sense.So i think you would just have the combatant concentrate on blur and recast from scroll. Same effect really.

Another cool thing I found is that potion of fire breath attack is bonus action not action, so you can start any fight with three attacks if you want, even if you are not dual wielding.

I mean, it's cool and all. But you're still cheesing mechanics. Looks a lot like thievery cheese and you're still setting up fights. Cudos to you for doing it and not leveling up. I did a solo run with an Eld Knight and not dump stating. Just enjoy the game how you like and quit sounding like an elites.

Of course I am, that's part of the joke. the other part is this games joke difficulty har har amirite ladies

The stupidest run yet

2 Person Lvl 1 Poverty Run - Goblin's Camp Assassination Squad

Kill Minthara, Priestess Gut and Dror Razlin because you have a hankering for a party

"Rules"
Must remain level 1 and never level up.
May not abuse concentration to have camp dwellers buff you.
Full Poverty: May not equip use or even pick up any equipment, scrolls, throwables, consumables, nothing at all. Inventory must remain empty.
Equipment Allowed: A robe to protect your modesty, A plain quarterstaff.
May not buy, sell or pickpocket
May not learn spells from scrolls
2 person team. I'm using Shadowheart (with a plain robe and quarterstaff obviously) because she dies constantly but has guiding bolt
No Stealth once you make your first attack

Managed to do Minthara and Gut but Razlin is haaaaard; havent managed to come up with a decent strategy except for stealth yeet off throne which feels very cheap. I can kill him but can't escape before the rest of the squad merk me. If anyone is a top-tier masochist with a fetish for reloading then let me know how you managed this.

Edit: I was running half-wood elf wizard.

Didn't see this thread! Mentioned elsewhere that I'd done a no-kill run, generally avoiding fights but using KOs to complete quests where some fighting was necessary. (The latter are very few in number, so it's possible to skip fighting altogether if you have some metagame knowledge and don't mind leaving some quests undone.) I think the only "unnecessary" KO I did was on Wyll, who for unknowable reasons turned hostile after the initial goblin raid; after resting off his subsequent head-wound he went back to his normal NPC behaviour. I've since posted a big write-up elsewhere on the forum.

Overall, I won't lie, a lot of times this challenge run isn't amazingly, er, challenging. At least in principle. If you're avoiding combat, your chances of dying in combat go way down! And you can traipse into the Underdark and wrap things up mostly whenever.

Where things get a little more tricky, though, is if you do go into combat. Ranged attacks -- lethal. Opportunity attacks -- lethal. Any damage aside from the Knock Unconscious action -- lethal. When it comes to finishing enemies off, or when they just enter into low enough health for it to be risky, you've got to start tying your hands behind your back. So the harpies were a lot tougher, since they could just fly away at their leisure, and in the big gnoll fight I had to deal with archers slowly walking away during their turns. The fiends! So the fights you commit to become a little trickier.

Aside from that, it's just doing what you can to swing ability checks in your favour or bypass them if possible. Disguise Self is great with the goblins and with the gith, for instance. I got really lucky on this one; I didn't have to save scum much, and the one time I accidentally risked a 20 Target check I just-so-conveniently rolled a 20.

1) "cheese" is totally subjective.
2) Show me where Alice even implied something elitist.

Just because someone chooses to impose a set of rules to make things more challenging and discuss their accomplishments, does not make them an elitist even if it makes them elite.

Lavaeolus, you should check out this thread: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=731686#Post731686

That sounds really difficult. I'd be interested in doing a full poverty run, but not without leveling up.

I haven't seen the "well" rested buff (I think the dev's pun was intended) noted or used. Is that considered cheese for lvl 1 runs?

A poster reminded me about it earlier but then I forgot again -_- - Are they temporary HP (false life style) or added HP (Aid style) and if so do they stack with aid?

Personally I don't think its "cheesy" since its a deliberate feature put in the game. Might make my lvl 1 poverty run easier/doable.

the +10 from Well rested and +5 from Aid stack for a total of +15 hp. Pretty darn OP when I fist discovered it. False life and armor of Agathys overwrite well rested.

Also to note the Well rested buff does bug out, seems to be related to camp dialogue and its a big bummer when it bugs out because you have to reload a much earlier save or it wont apply for the rest of the game.

So for the Lvl1 Poverty run, you could use well + false life/armour of agathys if you have them as spells. For the non poverty run you could add in aid as well from scroll. With a 16CON cleric that looks like it would give you 11 base + 10 well + 5 aid + either 5 armor of agathys or 7 false life. for a max of 26 + 7. That extra 10 from the well might actually trivialize the Lvl 1 "all equipment/consumables allowed" run since since the well + aid HP can be healed with pots.

Negative false life and agathys overwrite well rested, as in remove it, aka do not stack. They only stack with aid.

Haven't tested battle master rally but that would require toting Lazel around due to short duration of the buff and seems to hinder the solo spirit of the challenge.

So, decided to give a no-items run a quick go, in the simplest terms. Specifically: no using any items, no buying or selling anything, and never equipping anything beyond unenhanced clothing. Look, it was funny running around in my underpants, but it was making the cutscenes a little weird. These rules applied to both PC and companions.

Exceptions:

• Sometimes items are forced onto you by NPCs, usually as quest rewards. By-and-large, these were quickly dropped on the floor shortly after enterring my inventory, usually directly in front of the NPC.
• To free Volo, I convinced a goblin to hand me a key and used it to unlock his cage, before discarding it forever. Similarly, the Staff of Crones was picked up so as to be immediately fed to Gale. A dowry ring was picked up to be returned to its owner. Etc. Essentially, the bare minimum of item-interaction to get through quests. I was mostly fine 'using' items like this, although I tried to keep it to a minimum.
• If you drop Shadowheart's mysterious box, she doesn't say anything, but it seems to keep mysteriously reappearing in your inventory. Spooky.

Enter Anna, wood elf and Cleric of Ilmater. Good Ilmater follower that she is, Anna long-ago swore a vow of poverty. She's a Light Cleric, which seems a little odd given that Ilmater's portfolio is the Life domain, but such are the mysteries of the divine. Other mysteries to ponder: why a Forgotten Realms elf is called Anna.


The first discovery of the run was that the game's female underwear looks kinda weird. As I ran into companions, I was a little unsure how some of the mechanics would shake out. Would Astarion be worth bringing around for Sneak Attack? Nope: Sneak Attack *does* check for if you've got a melee weapon equipped, so no killer-punching allowed. Alas. Less gamechangingly, I also noticed that the Knock Unconscious button had been taken from me.

Unsurprisingly, I ultimately settled on a pretty caster-heavy party: Gale, Shadowheart, and a Wyll spec'd around Eldritch Blast. For the most part, party members were unfortunately left in the nud. I'm gonna be frank: at camp, at night, I felt bad for them. It looked cold. In fact, until I looted a tiefling corpse for some extra robes, I initially introduced myself to Gale by nicking his clothes.


Since I couldn't use thieves' tools and generally wasn't picking up keys, Gale and Wyll became our new lockpickers -- in as much as blowing up a door counts as unlocking it. In general, my approach to combat involved trying to stay at range and using stealth to start combat in advantageous positions. Otherwise, I didn't do *too much* in the way of cheese, beyond shoving the hag and some goblin leaders into bottomless chasms when given the chance. Hey, if Mithara tries to run up and melee me when I'm standing next to the abyss, can you deny me my Shove? Invisibility was used once, to pickpocket the githyanki creche and solve things 'peacefully'. Otherwise I tried to avoid just outright skipping combat, although I (non-magically) stealthed past some enemies in the Underdark.

In the end, I didn't use the ithilid tadpole at any point. As a Cleric of Ilmater I was, in general, a total goody two-shoes, and took on the goblin leaders personally to relieve the tieflings of having to fight. Having royally pissed off the goblins and not wanting to teleport into a giant fight, I enterred the Underdark through the Whispering Depth. Also, to take the goblin camp pathway I think I'd have to pick up a key and then, like, use the key? That's sort of against my vow, probably.

Overall, build in the right ways and this challenge wasn't as hard as I thought it might be. I thought the low AC might bite me, but two Clerics with Healing Word backed up with sheer offensive blasting made this pretty workable. That said, I might load up the save and do some more in the Underdark, which should have some of the tougher fights; I did some quests there, and I did pretty much everything topside, but when you're in the Underdark, have been at the level cap for half your gametime, and the exit is right there, it's a little tempting to just waltz over and leave. You can do it pretty quickly as well, if you know where you're going.


Yep, looked through the thread. It's maybe a little more interesting than what I did in some ways: if you're completing eschewing combat I don't think you really need that many items, so I mostly just stuck with quest completion and following those little non-tracked stories (owlbear cub, etc.) -- but if you're going after all the loot you have a bigger reason to explore around and get involved beyond the bare mimimum.