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I have the canon party with me because I'm more of roleplaying type of person. And since I've heard all types of awesome things about Imoen dual classing, I thought I should try that out (dual classing her to a thief/mage of course at level 9). I also want to dual class PC (who's a berserker) to a mage, but I'm at the Nashkel mines and all the spells, monsters, and quests, wouldn't give me nearly enough experience to dual class quickly. I'm assuming the exp is gonna go up as I progress the story, but would it be difficult later on to have Imoen and PC sit out?

You're obviously not playing BG since you can't play a berserker there.
For answering it would help what you're playing instead, which mods you have installed, how they change your XP gain and what the XPCap is and if you're playing BG only or just want to use it to pump up your character for BG2.

In the original game the XPCap is 89,000 without and 161,000 with expansion, so if you take more than 5 fighter or 6 thief levels you get crippled mages who can never cast spells of the highest level. If you take even more levels before dualclassing you might never finish it.

Mages aren't very powerful in BG, it's good to have one in the party for disabling, buffing and protection spells, but you really don't need three of them. Unless your mod doesn't cheat in spells you'll also suffer from scroll shortage.
It's a bad idea to have the only thief in your party change class, playing without someone for handling locks and traps isn't difficult (metagaming) but it's extremely painful.

Oh, woops. I'm playing BGTutu with an xp cap remover and a bunch of other mods (unfinished business, BG1 NPC mod, BG1 mini quest encounters, divine remix, song and silence, spell rev., and sword and fist), so I'll probably get a lot more xp than I would if I just played vanilla BG. And I'm playing BG1 all the way to ToB. Plus the expansion for BG1. And that DOES sound pretty painful. Dx So I guess I'll just dual PC. I've never played a pure thief either, so that should be rather interesting.

It's not all that bad. I would even suggest that some people start the game as a mage only to dual to something else as soon as possible, just for the sake of using wands, which are, in my opinion, the greatest tool that you can possibly get.

I'd say that you could probably finish dual-classing both characters by the time you finish the game, just by doing all of the quests. There are also a few locations which spawn unlimited monsters that provide two thousand experience a kill.

And where would these locations be? I might be too weak to grind anyway, we're about to go to Cloakwood and we're around level 4/5. xD Not sure if we're underleveled or not but, oh well. (This is my first BG1 run by the way :>)

Since there's no time limit in the game any location where you can get interrupted resting works for gaining unlimited XP. You can also get unlimited area travel encounters.

some of the creatures on the first *dungeon* (not tower) level of Durlag's Tower respawn endlessly.

I'm talking Battle Horrors (4000 XP per) and Wraith/Phase spiders (1400 XP per).

Just make sure you're capable enough before going there.

Okay then I'm no where NEAR ready. xD We're in the middle of Cloakwood and I had to skip Centeol after reloading about 5 times, and every time I fight 2 huge spiders, I spend up all my potions and spells. Also, even though this is completely unrelated, where can you buy level 3+ spells? xP I just realized after Dynaheir leveled that I haven't seen one at ALL.

xCherryXSherryx wrote:where can you buy level 3+ spells?

My memory is terrible but I believe that outside of the city of Baldur's Gate you'll want to visit Thalantyr at his compound within the High Hedge map area.

The Battle Horrors take too long to kill, especially without the Wand of Frost. I think the best location is the lighthouse map, all the way to the left of the High Hedge. There you can fight Sirens and Flesh golems, each of which grants 2000 experience.

Alrighty, thanks a lot you guys! Looking forward to about an hour of grinding. Ah well, what can you do.

would it be a mistake to dual imoen to mage on her first lvlup? i have a kikass thief for detecting traps and i use my cleric under a sanctury spell for scouting out the enemies. i dont think i need another thief.

what do you think about dualing imoen to a mgae at first lvlup?

denebswift wrote:would it be a mistake to dual imoen to mage on her first lvlup? i have a kikass thief for detecting traps and i use my cleric under a sanctury spell for scouting out the enemies. i dont think i need another thief.

what do you think about dualing imoen to a mgae at first lvlup?

Using Sanctuary to scout is a bad idea IMO. First, it lasts only one turn and you will find that often expires at the worst possible moments. Second, that's a really expensive way to scout, especially when Sanctuary competes for spaces in your spell book with Armor of Faith.

Hide in Shadows is way cheaper for something you will be doing a great deal of, not to mention, following up with a backstab is pretty badass. There are a ton of humanoid mages in BG1 who you will insta-kill with backstab.

RPGguy wrote:Using Sanctuary to scout is a bad idea IMO. First, it lasts only one turn and you will find that often expires at the worst possible moments. Second, that's a really expensive way to scout, especially when Sanctuary competes for spaces in your spell book with Armor of Faith.

mmm, quite true, however i have always played a cleric and sancury is my prefered scouting method. ive been doing it for years now. and higher lvl cleric get a much longer time in sanctury, dont they?

what do you think about dualing imoen to mage on first lvlup? i never dual class my pc and the only chr i regularly use who is dualed is jahera, i think. i did play a fighter/mage once in a multi with my regular online party but i soon swapped him for a swashbuckler.

denebswift wrote:mmm, quite true, however i have always played a cleric and sancury is my prefered scouting method. ive been doing it for years now. and higher lvl cleric get a much longer time in sanctury, dont they?

No. Sanctuary only lasts 1 turn (10 rounds) and never increases. Armor of Faith lasts 3 rounds + 1 round per level and provides something you can't get from rings, amulets, potions...DAMAGE REDUCTION!!!

It's cool to have one Sanctuary memorized in case you need to escape a situation. It's also cool to play the way you prefer, but Armor of Faith is the single best level 1 spell, including anything available to mages.

what do you think about dualing imoen to mage on first lvlup? i never dual class my pc and the only chr i regularly use who is dualed is jahera, i think. i did play a fighter/mage once in a multi with my regular online party but i soon swapped him for a swashbuckler.

I don't have any experience dual'ing Imoen but I hear it's quite popular. I'm sure someone else will chime in shortly to advise you in regards to when best to do this. Sorry, wish I could offer more on that.

Just dual Imoen at level 2 if you want. If you wait longer she gets more benefits from the thief side, but even if you dual early she's better than a pure mage.
Each level you wait grants 2 extra HP and 25 extra thieving skill points, level 4 grants an extra weapon prof point and level 5 backstab*3 on top of this.

kmonster wrote:Just dual Imoen at level 2 if you want. If you wait longer she gets more benefits from the thief side, but even if you dual early she's better than a pure mage.
Each level you wait grants 2 extra HP and 25 extra thieving skill points, level 4 grants an extra weapon prof point and level 5 backstab*5 on top of this.

thanks kmonster. i think i will wait until i get that backstab multiplier at lvl4 (and give her a prof point with dagger) before i dualclass her.

Thieves get backstab*2 at level 1-4 and backstab*3 (*5 was a typing error) at level 5-8, so you need thief level 5 to improve backstab.

kmonster wrote:Thieves get backstab*2 at level 1-4 and backstab*3 (*5 was a typing error) at level 5-8, so you need thief level 5 to improve backstab.

cheers kman