spoilers, cheese and time traps

MitchMc · Post by **MitchMc** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 12:49 am

So my question is,

I the only person who plays BGII using the thief time time trap as the ultimate killer Cheese

I have played for years and after playing various classes have settled on the Fighter/Mage/Thief.

It is the most versatile character and I like my PC do do 90% of the work with a party for backup in the tough battles. I like mods/upgrades/cheats and have wiemers Ascension, ease of use, Item upgrade and tactics installed.

One of the really uber powers of this class (although it also works for the fighter/thief as well) is the ability to combine several special abilities. The use of them all revolves around the use of time traps

For example set a number of time traps close together in a line, then advance on the enemy and retreat.

When the bad guys trip the first trap the fun begins. GWW and you start the slaughter. As the traps are close together the momentum of the lead bad guy triggers the second and so on. Often several will trigger at once and you have an extended time to beat them silly.

If necessary you can get right up next to a protected enemy fire a breach ( or with really protected enemies contingency consisting of Ruby ray/warding whip/breach) retreat let the spell hit them between time stops and then go to town.

True sight continues to run during the time stop and no on can stay invisible for long, a few points in detect illusian is a wonderfull thing as well, hit the detect traps button and you have instant true sight

You can cast seven time stop traps and when they are clumped real close together it seems that you often get a few extra. What I mean is that on numerous occasions I have observed that time stops but the particular trap that is triggered, does not disappear, Then time starts, the trap disappears and time stops again.

Two for the price of one although it seems more like three for the price of two.

Depending on the situation you can also set up you own massive, instantaneously cast time stop. NO CASTING TIME WHAT SO EVER

Well in the rear, or even in another room you set up the following

archer...Time trap... T trap...T trap...T trap ....summons

then when you are ready to go the fighter with the bow fires at the summons (use a summons that goes hostile when attacked). The summons goes hostile and advances on the fighter with the bow. As the summons advances trap after trap fires and the PC gets five or six time stops to wreck havoc.

If you try this make sure that you turn off the AI, otherwise the fighter with the bow or some other NPC may screw things up by killing or advancing on the summons. I usually give the archer
a limited supply of arrows, non magical to boot.The best thing is that you can start the time stop
with in seconds of your decision that you want it. Set up two "three trap strings" (each in a separate room) and you have A very flexible attack.

With ease you can destroy 90% of the big boys before they have a chance to know what hit them

You never need to buff as no one gets a chance to attack, in any event most of the defensive spells
bless chant Pro magic weapons will all expire while the time traps are in effect.

Suspect that the bad guys are hiding behind the door, like in the mind flayers lair in the underdark. Set a couple of traps, pause, GDB, open door take them down while they stand there.

Doing the Thieves strong hold is a breeze even with improved M'var drop a few traps, come back he goes hostile and you clean house.

Improved twisted ruin isn't even a chore.

After a while you can judge the time between the traps going off based on how far apart they are.
Two at the "front" close together gives you time to knock off an unprotected NPC or two, cast breech on a mage and then go back in.

Wearing boots of speed cast haste then Mislead, Now set off the time stop traps, trigger GWW and you can backstab to your hearts content, but at the GWW attack rate.

The backstabGWW combo makes userunfriendlys bunny look like a wimp. It takes a bit to get the positioning down but what the heck. There are some creatures immune to back stab but.........................

So Am I ??????

Cheers
MitchMc

nephtu · Post by **nephtu** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 8:03 am

No

The core strategy you describe is in the cheese guide, too. To get better duration, try using them with the spell, as described in the guide, though chaining them is also viable.

Mislead + GWW is pretty cool for a F/M/T since, being constantly returned to invisibility, you can chain backstab, if the enemies can't see invisible. A little jiggery-pokery with the decoy placement and spell immunity, and you're gold, though not for critters with innate see invis.

MitchMc · Post by **MitchMc** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 1:37 am

Re: No

Originally posted by nephtu
The core strategy you describe is in the cheese guide, too.

I haven't seen a copy of the cheese bible since version 1.4 if time trap & GWW has been added that is news to me. I posted a similar strategy in this thread Users comment was

Originally posted by UserUnfriendly
i dont really find timetrap useful for the run away tactic, leading up to an ambush...time traps just are not that useful, except to allow a mage to cast timestop uninterrupted...skull trap is better for those traped corridor schemes...dont forget prot from magic energy

I cannot for the life of me agree.

Originally posted by nephtu
To get better duration, try using them with the spell, as described in the guide, though chaining them is also viable.

A time stop is good for three rounds, but takes one to cast, during which can be interrupted. Each time stop trap is good for 10sec so you can get a total of 70 sec. I am not sure how sec convert to rounds but I do know that you get two + rounds per trap.

my math is 7 time stop traps times two rounds per trap = 14 rounds (min)

14 rounds divided by 3 rounds per time stop spell= 4.7 time stop spells

and you do it with no casting time (this in itself would add 4.7 rounds of saved casting time)

you can always cast time stop at the end of your traps but I do not agree that you get "better duration" by using one time stop trap and casting the time stop spell

you get the traps well before you get any 9th level spells esp if you play multi class

Cheers
Mitch

Bruce Lee · Post by **Bruce Lee** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 10:56 am

Time traps are very good indeed. Timestop spell is ofcourse better if you dont have time or space to setup the traps.
It is ofcourse very cheesy to get summoned creatures to set off your own timetrap far away from the battle. Timestop originally has an are of effect, here it effects the whole map.
However cheesy it may be, it is very effective

Quicker than casting as you said.
You dont get it earlier though. No timestop or timetrap before 3 million xp.

MitchMc · Post by **MitchMc** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 4:44 pm

Originally posted by Bruce Lee

It is ofcourse very cheesy to get summoned creatures to set off your own timetrap far away from the battle. Timestop originally has an are of effect, here it effects the whole map.
However cheesy it may be, it is very effective
Quicker than casting as you said.

Do you have any suggestions in tems of other cheesy ways to
use time stop traps ????

If you put lots of points into traps, you cast them almost instantaniously, with virtually no chance of failure. If you are quick you can cast one between the dialogue and the NPC going hostile. This is sometimes difficult but worth it. Makes the tactics encounter with the poison party much much easlier.

In terms of the 3mil exp level, I play with multi class PC (F/M/th)
he gets special abilities before he has enough exp to raise the mage level high enough to get 9th level spells

with the "use anything special ability" I often wonder why I don't just go F/Th. The breach/pierce wands from watchers keep do the trick 90% of the time. Guess its the status of being a mage LOL

cheers
MitchMc

Bruce Lee · Post by **Bruce Lee** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 7:25 pm

Yeah it is a tough call between the fmt and the ft. If you play ft you could end up wondering why you didn't go for fmt. You are a good enough thief anyway and stoneskin and such helps your fighting ability before you get uai. They are equally good I think.
I have played a cleric/thief multi and I then used timetraps in combination with the harm spell. Pretty cool and actually not cheesy.
I dont think I have any cheesy other than what you described.
Not whith timetraps anyway.
It is a fun game

nephtu · Post by **nephtu** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 11:23 pm

It's simple really...

For multiclass thief/mages, you use the time trap to get you sufficient time to cast time stop without interruption

, just as you can use mislead to allow you to backstab freely. The combination works well, IMAO - getting the time traps to cooperate on trigger in such a way that you get serial timestops never seems to work for me, perhaps you've had better succes.

To be honest, I think, at heart, I have a personal antipathy towards timestop strategies, I just about never use them - and I love spike traps soooo much...

Good gaming!

Boris · Post by **Boris** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 7:06 am

I'm probably completely wrong, but...

...is there not a big problem with relying on time-stopping (however it is invoked)?

I *thought* that spells cast against time-stopped enemies don't actually take effect until the t-s finishes. So, for example, if a F/M were to cast a Breach, then start thumping away at a Pro-vs-Magic Weapons-ed target, the Protection wouldn't be dispellled until the t-s was over, so attacks (by magic weapons) would be ineffective until then. The same problem applies to Lower Resistence, the various "dispel spell protection" spells, and even True Seeing - I know that the True Seeing keeps ticking over, even for characters who are themselves time-stopped, but nobody suffers the "illusion dispelled" effect until the t-s is finished.

I *was* sure about this, so try to arrange my own combats accordingly. But from the way other correspondents in this thread are talking, I suspect I've gotten the wrong end of the stick (again!) and am giving myself a lot of bother for nothing...
Can anybody put me straight?