Larian Banner: Baldur's Gate Patch 9
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Joined: Nov 2013
M
stranger
OP Offline
stranger
M
Joined: Nov 2013
I am 17H in, still trying to decided on how I would like to play with my wife in two weeks who will need extensive coaching. I know I am wasting too much time with this, I get too caught up in optimizing, probably best to just RP and get going.

We will look to read dialog, lore, craft, blacksmith and open things. (Historically in older games she has liked discovery and collecting stuff/loot)

I was thinking:
2H Knight for leader and blacksmith.
Ranger for locks, crafting, talking to animals.

Spoiler:
I know one of the two companions are 2H. Is it viable to go lone wolf/glass canon for my 2H Knight?

Is barter and charisma worth it?
We will not be stealing, pick pocketing so I imagine every coin will be of value.
Must you invest some in Will and Body for Ranger to survive?
If so is having 5-6 primary skills (ranger: bows, will, body, locks, craft, lore; Knight: 2H, body, will, leader, smith, leader, armor
Should I not concern myself with body/will on the ranger and go for barter/charisma instead?

OR

Should I just go with lone wolf+glass cannon on a 2H Knight and Wizard?
We would have no henchmen and companions, but should have plenty for all the above mentioned skills.
Would it be too hard to survive? It may be a lot easier for her to just manage one person.
Would this setup be easier than managing 2-4 more party member?
I will be playing with someone without much RPG experience, just looking for a complete experience.

Also what about stat distribution?
I was thinking 3-1-1
3 int, 1 speed, 1 perception for Wizard
3 str, 1 speed, 1 cons for Knight
3 dex, 1 speed, 1 perception for Ranger
(Speed omitted with Glass Cannon I assume)



Last edited by mugsyman; 05/07/14 09:51 PM.
Joined: Mar 2014
A
journeyman
Offline
journeyman
A
Joined: Mar 2014
Ok, here is my opinion. Both lone wolf and glass cannon are trash. I did not like how they both worked and so avoided them after given them both a try. To explain further, glass cannon double your AP which is not worth it IMHO for half your health as this game is not kind enough for squishy characters. You can of course spec towards it by getting other talents to support it but once more not worth it imo.

Now, lets talk resources. You have to understand everything that matters in this game is very limited. From that perspective, having two knights, or two of anything is not ideal. You can play the game whatever way you want, but each character being different will provide more options in combat and even outside combat.


The game does provide you with a knight and Air/Water Wizard. So your Wizard in my opinion should be the default choice which is Fire/Earth Wizard. As for your other main, it can be anything from ranger, to warrior, I would just avoid making him a knight because once more limited resources.

There is always the option of going lone wolf on both heroes but you can't possibly cover all magic arts with just two. I mean you face a boss who is immune to fire and earth, what do you do then?

Again this is my opinion and you can ignore it all together if it does not suit you.

Last edited by Amon; 05/07/14 09:57 PM.
Joined: Nov 2013
M
stranger
OP Offline
stranger
M
Joined: Nov 2013
Thank you for your insight. I had the same thoughts with as one of my test build saves was a Ranger+Witch. Maybe now I will consider consider a Fire/Earth wizard with rogue of some kind and utilizing the two companions (Knight and Air/Water wizard).

Joined: Apr 2014
G
stranger
Offline
stranger
G
Joined: Apr 2014
Just go with knight x 2 + mage x 2.
With some points in forge (and a lot of gear has + forge), both your knights will always have high dps weapons. And you can easily have both mages invest in 3 different schools of magic, thus providing heals, dps, buffs, etc.
Also if you go double mage, it's not a bad thing if they have some magic schools in common, so their spells benefit from the same debuffs on mobs (eg: it's better to throw lightning than a fireball at a mob that has just been made wet by the other mage). And don't forget about the sorcery school, it has some nice spells too.
Last thing, it's good to have one mage with high leadership.

Anyway from what I've read here and there pretty much anything work.

Joined: Jun 2014
G
stranger
Offline
stranger
G
Joined: Jun 2014
For the record, my air/water mage with glass cannon singlehandedly makes 95% of the fights a breeze. My fire/earth glass cannon mage is a little less effective, but with enough summons, they just don't get hit enough for me not to take glass cannon.

Joined: Jul 2014
D
stranger
Offline
stranger
D
Joined: Jul 2014
That post above about resources is a bad joke. One of henchmen at lvl1 is a very nicely built Fire/Earth Wizard, and it costs very little money to hire her. So you don't need to play one yourself at all.

Generally, you can play anyone you want to play, as you can always fill the gaps with henchmen, don't have to pick up default companions at all.

If you start with your preferred build, a Ranger and a Knight (which is very nice and very much doable), you just hire Jahan, the air/water Wizard, and then that henchman that I mentioned above to cover earth/fire schools.

- My tip for your 2H guy, as he's going to be a crafter and a blacksmith, would be cool to give him Crossbows in addition to swords. He'll be the kind of an engineering type, the sort that dwarves are in games that have them. Don't hesitate to drop all sorts of buff spells on him, this is the guy you want hastened, armored, boosted in damage most of the time.

- My tip for your Ranger, take a look at Scoundrel skills, admittedly a lot of them are for dagger types. But not all! You have Haste there, you have Invisibility there, both right at start. And both based on DEX just like your standard archery skills. Since Guerilla talent works with bows (and doubles damage when attacking from sneak), you can make a very sneaky sniper type here.

Joined: Nov 2013
M
stranger
OP Offline
stranger
M
Joined: Nov 2013
Thanks for all the great tips. Need to get in there past a few levels before being tempted to restart again.

Joined: Jul 2014
K
stranger
Offline
stranger
K
Joined: Jul 2014
Glass Cannon is totally worth it, and so is Lone Wolf. But there is a catch. You Essentially can only truly pull it off IF you have 100% resist in most if not ALL elements, which in turn lets you heal and essential be immune to well elemental damage.

Generally speaking get all 100%+ resist in everything is hard till the last 1/3 of the game where you can "farm" and reload multiple times at vendors for elemental essences to use on your gear.

Basically Hybrid builds seems to dominate if you can get a hefty stack of essences to slap on +2 +2 +2/+1 yellow gear.

This is all assuming you can get the cash (I stole a ton of paintings and gold cups, and bartered well), and of course the essence drops and vendors.

(SPOILER) You can later buy a bunch of essences from your homestead.


Joined: Feb 2014
V
apprentice
Offline
apprentice
V
Joined: Feb 2014
Having Oath of Desecration and haste will make your 2H warrior do tons of damage and have a lot of action points.

After a fight with 4 statues yesterday i only just noticed that any resists above 100% make that element heal you. My warrior has 115% fire resist so i get healed for 15% of any fire damage on that character. Those statues hit my other characters for 3.2k!!! There is a warrior talent that gives you 10x men at arms skill worth of all resists (so +50 to all) pick that talent up (requires 5 in men at arms iirc)

I run a rogue/witch. Very powerful combo. Self haste, invis, a stun, 2 blinds, +50% damage buff, AoE -50% damage debuff and can summon undead to help take some damage off the party. I use her to quickly get into the pack of encounters and assassinate any annoying casters/crossbow mobs and then crowd control the others.

My other main character is a ranger. The ranger utility is very good. Lots of different arrows and they work well with a mage in your party. One of the strongest arrows is the silver arrow which destroys the targets armour for a short time. It works very well with the hasted/damage increaded warrior. Rangers start off a bit lacking but get better at around level 8-10. At later levels i take 1 point in air magic, 1 point in scoundrel and 1 point in geomancer. That gives my ranger +sight buff so she misses less, invis incase she gets into sticky situations, summon wolf, +30% hit chance buff incase my mage has the aoe one on CD, and then self haste, invis and self teleport from scoundrel.

Hope this helps with some ideas.

Joined: Apr 2014
F
apprentice
Offline
apprentice
F
Joined: Apr 2014
Originally Posted by KyosukeDei
Glass Cannon is totally worth it, and so is Lone Wolf.


No, that's mathematically wrong.
Sadly right now, once you get to a decent level you max your Start/Recovery/Turn APs so the boni you get from Glass Cannon / Lone Wolf become invalid.
Right now they are not worth the sacrifice, at all, from mid-game onwards there is no difference between a normal character and one with those beside the fact the latter dies much quicker.

They need change to be worth taking.

Joined: Jul 2014
A
stranger
Offline
stranger
A
Joined: Jul 2014
what people miss with lone wolf is the extra skillpoints it gives.

i have a knight with a 2h weapon, and that's all he does. (damage heal and buffs all from man at arms + str)

Jahan whom i made master water and earth, with the backup of witchery (the witch and earth buffs/de-buffs and summons are damn strong) I haven't upgraded air, but i made him forget some and learn new spells. so now he have teleport/lightning bolt and become air for protection

and my lonewolf ranger/pyromancer/scoundrel. I wanted a ranger/pyromancer but i din't want her to be useless in melee, but you don't normally have point's needed to spread yourself to 3 combat skills. So I went with lone wolf for her. The extra hp have helped a bit in that i haven't had to focus much on constitution other then from gear

so when fights break out my ranger casts haste uppon the knight and Jahan summons eighter a elemental or a skelleton depending on the enemy (usally just the undead decapitator, that thing is a beast) and throws out one bless or a spot of oil for the first round.

I admit i had some problems early game, but after i hit lvl 10 or so I haven't had much problems. Im still considering giving Jahan glass cannon, but he feels squessy enugh already without the 4th party member to protect him.
------

but the game is clearly beatable with 3 non optimised characters. so I say play the way you want!


TL:DR

I Think lone wolf's biggest problem is that it doesn't make up for a 4th party member in terms of damage and damage mitigation (read tank)

while glass cannon have the opposite problem, that in my mind you're left just too squishy even with the possibility to throw out spells like a mini ahru

---------

I regret leveling charisma tough. In a game where xp is finite avoiding every and all fights you can talk you trough (without getting xp for doing so) makes you too weak in the end (amounts for about 2 levels)

Last edited by Ayra; 06/07/14 07:09 PM.

Imagination is the only weapon against reality
Joined: Jun 2014
C
journeyman
Offline
journeyman
C
Joined: Jun 2014
You can also take lone wolf at character creation, and then remove it via a respec later in the game. In so doing you keep all of those extra juicy skill points and are free to recruit companions. It may be a bug, though - can't really see it as being intentional on Larian's part.

Joined: Jul 2014
D
journeyman
Offline
journeyman
D
Joined: Jul 2014
Well I'm playing with two LW mages (not glass cannon), pretty much steamrolling through everything. There have been very few fights that have brought me below 50% hp, but in those if I'd have twice the AP it wouldn't have been a problem.

Pretty sure I'll take glass cannon at the next possible opportunity.

Joined: Mar 2014
old hand
Offline
old hand
Joined: Mar 2014
Originally Posted by mugsyman


I was thinking:
2H Knight for leader and blacksmith.
Ranger for locks, crafting, talking to animals.

Thats fine and can be good but there is really no need to stick to a form of a "class" in this game.
This is actually a classless game, its just that Larians missed with presenting various "classes" examples in the character creation. They did it for the ease of use but unfortunately it makes most people think they actually need to play a specific class.

You dont.

And the game is actually made to allow that.

Originally Posted by mugsyman

Spoiler:
I know one of the two companions are 2H. Is it viable to go lone wolf/glass canon for my 2H Knight?

Glass cannon makes you loose half of HP so isnt the best choice for a fighter.
But you could play it even like that. If you want to.

Originally Posted by mugsyman

Is barter and charisma worth it?

No. And you will find various equipment to boost such secondary traits so you dont need to waste any points on them. And other things i will let you discover yourself.

Originally Posted by mugsyman

We will not be stealing, pick pocketing so I imagine every coin will be of value.

Suit yourself but you will be hampering your own investigation buddy. After all, if someone just leaves stuff lying around... is it really stealing?
(plenty of loot in the game anyway, even too much for my taste)


Originally Posted by mugsyman

Must you invest some in Will and Body for Ranger to survive?

I found out there isnt enough points for that. Take only one of those for the start, per character.
Add more points when you get comfortable.

Originally Posted by mugsyman

We would have no henchmen and companions, but should have plenty for all the above mentioned skills.
Would it be too hard to survive?

Depends on how good you are tactically and in correctly using environment, the elemental effects and various items in the game.



Originally Posted by mugsyman

It may be a lot easier for her to just manage one person.
Would this setup be easier than managing 2-4 more party member?

If someone told me it will be easier to manage just one person in OS i would punch them in the face.
It is pretty easy to manage two or four.

The game is relatively easier with more characters in the team because of diversity of the skills - ergo, different types of elčemental damages you can do.
The game is made for hybrid characters the most, after all. But its perfectly doaable with just two characters, even without Lone Wolf or Glass Cannon talents. (Though probably not for beginners playing for the first time)

I will be playing with someone without much RPG experience, just looking for a complete experience.


Originally Posted by mugsyman

Also what about stat distribution?
I was thinking 3-1-1
3 int, 1 speed, 1 perception for Wizard
3 str, 1 speed, 1 cons for Knight
3 dex, 1 speed, 1 perception for Ranger
(Speed omitted with Glass Cannon I assume)

You want a walkthrough?

How about you let me play with that girl (woman) instead of you?
Just hook her up with me on steam and we will do some co-op.
Or you can both let me play your game for you and just watch.(sorry for the jibe but its good for you)

In other words... discovering things for yourself is a large part of the fun in the game and you dont really need a perfect build to play it.

It actually depends on how you will use those characters according to their strengths and weaknesses.

And exactly how - is something best figured out by yourselves.


Link Copied to Clipboard
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5