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#520613 16/07/14 06:23 AM
Joined: Jun 2014
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journeyman
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Just got to level 18 and cast Earthquake. It... knocked down most of my party as well as my companions, who promptly complained and gave me -10 attitude. WTF.

I tried a few of the other similar tier spells at the same time, like Storm (can also hit you, it seems) and hail storm but at least you can target them away from your character. Earthquake just emanates out of you, so...

What am I missing? Is this working as intended? I can't see why it would be worth using. Even if you did get the whole party immune to knockdown just for Earthquake, wouldn't your comps complain about getting hurt?

This is't the end cap I expected... major letdown unless I'm not thinking about it right.

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Even when you boost their earth resistance to a point where they heal from Earthquake, your companions still complain about the Knockdown part.

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Thanks for the reply. Seems to me it's an ill-conceived spell. It would be too good if it just hit enemies and knocked them down in that huge AOE... so I guess this is their way of balancing it.

I think it should be redesigned so it's on par with the other top-tier spells (i.e., easy to use and powerful). Either that or put in a new option we can actually use and leave earthquake in for flavor. After all, it's not just any earthquake. It's a *magic* earthquake. Therefore, how about some magic we have a little more control over, and that doesn't make our companions mad? smile

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The really stupid thing is having companions lose attitude towards you at all. Magic has friendly fire potential, and it just means that you have to position yourself correctly to avoid FF, or face the tactical consequences of having one or more of your party members suffer the same effect as your enemies. The problem arises when these henchmen/followers bear a grudge towards you afterwards, and might outright leave your party. Is it realistic? Probably, but seeing as I could send any henchman to die in lava at my whim (with no protests) it doesn't make any sense that they'd have a problem with getting hit by collateral.

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All of the higher level magic spells are situational, I find the lower spells like Headvice more useful

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Quote
The really stupid thing is having companions lose attitude towards you at all.


^^^this.

I'm expecting someone will mod that as soon as they get a better handle on the toolkit, and the devs are back from vacation next month.


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The spell is quite powerful once you get the immunity from Knockdown Talent.

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How about sneaking/invisibility into the middle of the group of enemies and using earthquake while the rest of your party is not in the battle?

Or engaging first and then using the spell?

Everything has its use.

That said, I haven't actually got to the point where I can cast the spell, but there are many different playstyles, and different spells have different uses.

I'd consider smokescreen, firefly and ice wall to be amazing spells for example. I rarely use them, but when either the situation demands their use or I create a situation in which their use is good, they're amazing.

It's just finding the use and determining if it is a worthy use of your AP to use a spell or not.


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Earthquake can be extremely powerful if you devote a ton of resources to building around it, but if usually rather mediocre otherwise. The problem, I feel, is that by the time you can cast it, you don't really have many points left to adjust your builds to use it, so unless you somehow know about it in advance, it's only going to reach a fraction of its true potential.

Kind of like the whole Tenebrium ability thing...

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I have found that the low and medium skill level spells are far better just for the ability to better adjust them.

Those last spells seem to require too much AP and AoE. I'd rather Boulder Bash + Fireball than use earthquake.

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On a modded play through, I had a companion with this spell from level 1.

This meant I quickly learned the do's and don'ts of this spell.

I found it best used as a fight opener. I would sneak / invis into a group of enemies, and ensure my party was far enough away so as to avoid the spell.

Once casted, my party would join the caster and most/all enemies were knocked down with a few poisoned.

The only other spell with this amount of cheese was Chain Lightning + Rain (used in a similar fashion).

It is NOT a spell to be used once combat is engaged, unless you've positioned your party correctly which is likely a waste of AP at that point.



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