GameBanshee Forums

Sorry, Radek. Didn't see your post.

This is probably a really stupid question but what do you guys mean when you say fake talk?

A "Fake Talk" is the following method of killing dragons:
1. Pause the game.
2. Pretend that you want to talk with a dragon.
3. Instruct all your guys to attack the dragon.
4. Unpause the game and attack for 5 seconds
5. IF( dragon_state == death) THEN
good for you, worse for the dragon; quit;
ELSE
go to 1
END
The method is based on the time slice in the scripts. Because somebody has pretended the talk, the dragon will wait 1 round (= 6 sec) for the dialog before it becomes hostile. The dragon will not notice that it is beaten in the meantime.
In general, I call "Fake Talk" any combat strategy that gives the monster no chance to counter your attack. Understand me well, if you suceed with a Hold Monster spell and then you hack it down then you do not use any Fake Talk (the monster was given a chance to resist the Hold Monster spell).
Examples of Fake Talks: the method described above, the Cloudkill method, the Feeblemind method (with dragons).
Fake Talks are unsatisfactory. The do not prove that you are better or that you are better prepared for the fight, they prove that you have found a drawback of the logic of the game.

So you pause the game and click on the dragon as though you intentd to talk to it.

Then while still paused you instruct your party members to attack it.

When you unpause don't you get the dialogue box which effectively pauses everything else?

Anyway, I would not use it or the cloudkill method either. What fun would that be? The battles are the fun part for me. No way am I cheating myself out of a dragon fight.

A great item to use during Dragon fights is the wand of resurrection. Its hard to get a heal spell off in time from my clerics because of the casting time. The wand will fully heal your characters with almost no casting time from a distance.

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"Four thousand throats may be cut in one night, by a running man."
- Klingon Crewman "Day of the Dove"

Originally posted by Saumerez:
Anyway, I would not use it <fake talk> or the cloudkill method either. What fun would that be? The battles are the fun part for me. No way am I cheating myself out of a dragon fight.

Yah, though remember "fake talk" is either a bug or programming limitation, while "cloudkill" methods are just oversights in the game logic.

For BGIII: Just give dragons the ability to buffet cloud spells back at the party, I say.

Well, not that anyone asked but I personally don't think it is "wrong" to use those methods or any other methods, editors, cheat codes or whatever. If you plop down the 50 bucks you should do whatever is fun for you.

For me personally though, it is less fun to use the foibles of the game engine to progress.

@Saumerez (the Fake Talk question above): No, you do not get the dialog box. The dagon will wait another round for a talk. This gives you another 5 seconds. And another... And so on. The only important thing is: let one to pretend talking then command ALL (including the "talking" one) to attack.
The drawback of the game logic (mis)used by the Fake Talk are:
1. Time slice quantum for a script = 1 round = 6 sec.
2. The "talk" block in the dragon script has higher priority than the "attack" block(s). If the "talking" one activats the "talk" block, the "attack" block(s) is/are suspended until the script is checked again.
If you do not command the "talking" one to attack the dragon then you get the dialog box of course. The "talking" one has caused it.

I personally think that anything that doesn't follow the simple rule of the game is cheating. However, if the person/thing is dumb enough to fall for the trick, then it is their fault! I fought the red dragon early in chapter 2 and had to result to snare and traps, as no one in my party had the spells nor the weapon to defeat it.

However, the shadow dragon was another story. I fought him fair and square, summoning over 15 sword spiders and skeleton warriors, throwing everything at him. After 10 minutes of ugly fight, I finally down him with the mini-dragons that I summon. He did cast heal and that wing flap move (if only my psuedo dragon can do that...) and it was the best fight that I had to date. This is more so because I decided not to cheat this time and dragon is undeniably the hardest battle in BGII.

whats up with all this fake talk stuff, i just went up to every dragon i have seen so far and beat the crap out of them, without using spells or anything.

I did kill the Red dragon with my Berzerker/Cleric (9/20), summoning 1 aerial servant and level 9 berzerker, with only spells that i myself could cast on myself and without help from anyone else, and all i did was hitting him with my Crom faeyr, no kind of magicattacking.It was hard, but i did it with a single character, bet a fighter could do better with their exra THAC0, using some items that helps with extra defence/offence

Of course i talked to him before, anyone can kill a dragon if attacking them first, before i realised how boring this wa i attacked thesilverdragon and for a minute i attacked while she was still blue.

My tactic i used against the red one would work against every dragon except the Silver one im sure, the shadow dragon is very weak compared, and the black isnt quite as powerful