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I just had my XP PC die, then my Vista PC fry its motherboard in a month.

Now I am dirt-poor, literally, they say there is no powerty in Denmark, but if so; how come I often go hungry? But a friend gifted me with a really-really old PC to get me through, we are talking 2001- 2002ish here.

So I will try a totally unmodded game. Only installing Fixpack from G3, not even Ascension, UB or anything else. I have not tried that since my first runthrough :-D

Anyone else (except for RPGGuy) play unmodded? And any advice on playing evil? I might as well, now that I go old school Vanilla. never played evil either.

Hah, i play unmodded quite often on my laptop

What do you mean with advice for evil party? What to do? Well, you can wipe knights of the radiant heart for starters!

If you mean party, its much easier in bg2 than it was in 1, because ALL the strongest NPCs are evil. Throw in Jan or Haer on top, and you have a team.

Start out with casting magin within the city range, resting one hour, casting again (kill wizzards), rest, cast etc.. Till you wipe out Zallanora (this is the only thing that truly hurts me in vanilla.. That Zallanora is such a nobody, unlike in the lore )

Or, cast just once, to have cowled wizards appear the next time you fight someone! Possibly when you have reputation <3 so that you face both wizards and goody-two-shoes party

Other than that? Well, evil choices in quests, and overall massacre everywhere you go

I always play unmoded. Its the way the creators intended it to. Why cheat? Is it to hard for you? The only thing I do to any game is download the patches.

Cheer up Edar man, we all have PCs die on us. Sucks every time.

The good news is, PCs have never been cheaper...at least here in North America. They have almost become commodities...you know...wheat, pork bellies, RAM

I really like stworca's style, but you don't have to be a totally evil to play evil. You can hover around the neutral side of things and be fine. Not as fun in my opinion but definitely no probs.

But since you're going there, Korgan is pretty damn good at what he does. Edwin is pretty damn good at what he does. And Viconia well, you get the idea.

PS. I don't prefer the unmodded version but I do want to understand and remember it well for the sake of comparison. My next play-thru will definitely have SCSII and Ascension. We'll see about Tactics after that but right now, it has me a little freaked out.

[QUOTE=krissyboie]I always play unmoded. Its the way the creators intended it to. Why cheat? Is it to hard for you? The only thing I do to any game is download the patches.[/QUOTE]

I'd love to know how adding a quest pack or an NPC mod for a change of party interactions is cheating..
Further, there are all kinds of tactics mods out there that actually make the game more difficult.

If people just want to cheat, all they need to do is download Shadowkeeper. In BG2 people add mods to extend the replay value of an already fine game. Why do you think so many veterans of the game still play after all these years? In large part it's because of all the mods that provide a new experience.

dragon wench wrote:I'd love to know how adding a quest pack or an NPC mod for a change of party interactions is cheating..
Further, there are all kinds of tactics mods out there that actually make the game more difficult.

If people just want to cheat, all they need to do is download Shadowkeeper. In BG2 people add mods to extend the replay value of an already fine game. Why do you think so many veterans of the game still play after all these years? In large part it's because of all the mods that provide a new experience.

Now tell us how do you play the game, and participate a bit in the "Go evil or go home" discussion

(i'm not stalking!)

To add to Dragonwench's already on-point remark Krissy, for my specific case. I added Tactics on my second runthrough for higher difficulty and played with it till half a year ago when I discovered that SCS II is much less cheesy. Ascension, etc. If you have a look at my list of mods you will notice that they make things harder, add quests, and add NPCs. I am not as fine a tactician as Sworca or Crenshinibon, but I am competetnt enough and find the challenges, new adventures and new NPCs (especially the romances as I dislike the Biogals) to add to my overall experience of BG and to have kept me playing it for 6-7 years now.

As for playing evil, I find it a challenge, and a hard one, to be an evil bastard... so keep it coming. I liked Wench's idea about Anomen a while back for example. Though it is a bit elaborate. Slightly simpler ideas along those lines will also get us back on topic.

One of the evil things you could do is.. (spoilers) offer the silver dragon's eggs to the demon -after he kills both priestessess- in exchange for items (items ain't good, but it surely is evil), and later on kill the dragon in order to create "Human skin" armor using its blood.. Not that human skin is a good armor, but that is an evil act for sure (/spoilers)

Other than that..

(spoilers)
- betray the sahuagin prince / priestess
- kill Aerie either in circus, or take her to party with Korgan (watch out! Killing Aerie in circus sometimes causes the game to freeze when you kill the mad gnome!)
- Let Nalia rot in prison if they catch her
- Let Jan rot in prison.. Furthermore you could wipe out his family.. Or make a turn in his quest, so that the small gome dies.
- It requires a decent rep and quite some time, but : Arrange all the in-party fights. Like Anomen vs Keldorn, Minsc vs Edwin etc.
- Let Jaheira die to the curse
- Kill Sarevok either after you get him to open the test for you, or.. the funnier option.. after he turns good (if you keep a decent rep via church donations)
- Cast Imprisonment on random people
- Wipe out the knights in the sphere
- Chose the bad way of dealing with Valygar
- Play with the exploding-slaves machine in Ust'Natha
- Kill the prisoners in Mind Flayer enclave instead of freeing them
- Sacrifice the prisoners in Ust'Natha(/spoilers)

And that's just the tip of the iceberg! This is what makes BG2 so great

Edit : In first part of Baldurs Gate it was much, much harder to go evil. Why? Well, walk into a city when your rep is equal to 1, and You shall see. After few minutes the only question that i asked myself was "Where the f do they all come from!?"

Spoiler

Can Jaheira die to the curse

? Oh YES! I almost regret kicking her for a certain sassy Drow already (I RP a Drow myself BTW).

Edited to add, so I guess what I want most is spreading chaos & evil both. Rather that than "possess prescience and arranging the in-party fights, my character is not able to see into the future. He weighs actions on a scale of "Is it of use for me?", "Can it be of use to me later?" If no to both = it dies, if yes to one or both, it lives- unless it spreads chaos to kill it.

I really want to take on the Cowled sissies, but does not want to do it cheesy way; rather milk them first, has anyone actually tried an assault on their building? Will it turn all Athkatla Hostile?

Edar Macilrille wrote:Will it turn all Athkatla Hostile?

No, and the fight is very easy.

Edar Macilrille wrote:I liked Wench's idea about Anomen a while back for example.

I think that was QuenGalad's genius. DW has her own brilliance, but I think that was Quens...and it was pretty good I have to admit.

Edar Macilrille wrote:As for playing evil, I find it a challenge, and a hard one, to be an evil bastard...

You're not going to go to Dutch hell. Just think of it as an opportunity to see all of the content in the game that you've missed all these years. There's some good stuff on the evil path.

The Human Skin is very good armor. I disagree with stworca on that. Not to mention you can break off a piece and eat it beef jerky style when you're in between campfires

Maybe its because i don't value any armor other than Robe of Vecna and Shurrupak's Plate

Ok i see its uses. Giving it to Vici will raise her MR to 85.. Which is great! I said its not that great because i tend to use the potions that raise your MR by 50% and other potions that make all saves succesfull.

And i'd like an armor that will not only protect you, but feed you aswell!

Take the human flesh!

I will probably sell it, not stylish enough for a Drow ya know.

And I want to Valhalla ;-)

No one will give you more than 1gp for it unfortunately. Sorry bud.

Stworca wrote:Now tell us how do you play the game, and participate a bit in the "Go evil or go home" discussion

(i'm not stalking!)

lol! The reason I've been reading this thread is because I actually have a lot of trouble playing truly evil. I tend to vacillate between between chaotic good and chaotic neutral.
All of my characters (no matter the game I'm playing) tend to reflect who I am in RL to some degree... So... I play a lot essentially well-intentioned types (usually some variation of mage or rogue) that generally steer their own moral compass.



All of that being said.. while there are definite "evil" paths you can take in BG2, the problem is that they don't really have any far-reaching consequences by the time you reach end game.. in my honest opinion anyway.

I think that was QuenGalad's genius. DW has her own brilliance, but I think that was Quens...and it was pretty good I have to admit.

Definitely wasn't mine, I don't even have a current BG2 game going, though the game is installed, and I keep thinking it may be time for another run.... hence the occasional lurking here.

For the most part 'evil' tends to equate with 'mercenary' in WRPG games. It's even worse if you're trying for Neutral...

krissyboie wrote:I always play unmoded. Its the way the creators intended it to. Why cheat? Is it to hard for you? The only thing I do to any game is download the patches.

Ermmm...No. That's what I used to think but there's actually a whole bunch of extra stuff the creators intended to add in, like a Haer'Dalis romance (hence the Aerie love triangle bit and a whole bunch of superfluous items like the 'Writ of Innocence' plot item) that they couldn't include due to time restraints. Imoen was supposed to die in Spellhold until the fans kicked up a fuss; Aerie was supposed to have a 'bittersweet' romance option where you could turn her into a bird; there was supposed to be a lot of extra stuff for ToB...the list goes on and on. I believe some of the mods out there - Unfinished Business, Ascension? I forget which - add some of this stuff in, but sadly nowhere near all. Even just the G3 Fixpack and Tweakpack fix a whole range of issues not addressed in the official patches, such as the crazily buggy Jaheira romance. If you come right down to it, Cleric/Rangers aren't supposed to get all druid spells, only the those they would normally get as a pure Ranger, but the way the Divine spellbook system is implemented means they do.

Besides that, NPC mods a la Xan (Wild Mage FTW!) and Kivan (or even Saerileth) can add quite a bit to the game and give you a wider range of NPC character classes (seriously, not even a single Archer in the vanilla game?) and personalities to choose from, Dungeon-B-Gone allows you to skip the starter dungeon if you don't feel like going through it for the 30th time, Sword Coast Stratagems stops a lot of the usual cheese tactics from working (no more use-Wand-of-Cloudkill-then-waiting). Personally I'm a big fan of level using Level 1 NPCs to better match the NPCs class to their characterisation - most of them are pretty good but the returning BG1 NPCs especially suffer from a lack of kits...in terms of her skill distribution and attitude Imoen really makes a much better Swashbuckler/mage dual, and character-wise Minsc is a much better Barbarian rather than a berserker Ranger with 6 WIS. I mean, why is it that Anomen the Priest of Helm isn't actually a Priest of Helm in the vanilla game? It's a limitation of the game engine, and can be worked around with mods and/or Shadowkeeper.

Forgive the rant, but as well as being a great game BG2 is also a consumer product produced under time and manpower constraints, and so is in many ways less than the creators intended. If used 'correctly' fan-made mods can rectify that to a large extent.

dragon wench wrote:and I keep thinking it may be time for another run.... hence the occasional lurking here.

2 words:

Play with Cernd.

Is that not three words?

but I believe DW should have another go as well, with or without Cernd.

Edited to add, I now fully understand how hard it is to be truly evil in SoA,

Spoiler

just did the Slavers' Quest and there is no evil option really. I imagine my Drow would want a piece of the profits, take over Copper Coronet himself through a proxy and continue the gladiator games.

That sort of thing, but cannot be done. And by Lolth items are expensive with a Rep of 7.

Really hard to roleplay really evil.

Is that not three words?

3 words for you:

You can't count very well