Cheese and Roles
Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 5:47 am
chap with the arcane library and lots of scrolls - it occurred to me that if you have any spare scrolls, or buy too many from him, you can have a nice experience boost.
I spent about 100k in the shop buying everything I fancied the look of - I felt a bit depleted and there were still more scrolls that my characters could benefit from -
I'll not mention whether I buffed and shoplifted any scrolls at this point...
[OK - I got caught even at 175% pickpocketing! so I reloaded my 'shoplifting' saved game, which I recommend that you create and use after every few items]
...but having been shopping for 3 casters, I did buy too many of certain scrolls and before I could sell them back, I realised : you can 'erase' scrolls from the spellbooks and get experience for writing them in again. It then struck me that although you get very little money for 2nd hand scrolls, you can convert them into experience.
[shopkeeper doesn't buy stolen goods BTW]
I had never deliberately erased spells I thought a character might need, but the write-back policy at least means that when you pick up a whole bunch of true-sight scrolls, you get a fair reward for it and it becomes much more worth-while to pick up low-value scrolls, such as charm or blindness. you can place them in the inventory, open book, right click, erase, confirm, then write back in. it is helpful to make sure that you don't erase more times than you write and make sure that you erase the correct one - some have very similar icons to others.
All discovered because I was being honest and didn't wish to waste the purchases I'd made - when you are shopping, you can't see what spells are in the books and it is difficult to keep track of what you have and haven't got.
On the subject of keeping track - for a bit of role play, at times I had given certain mages certain themes of spells - specialising in protection or summoning or attacking - but you can retrospectively achieve that by erasing the spells that do not fit the theme.
for example as an example of cooperative party behaviour, I have Anomen and Aerie take turns in summoning 4 skeleton warriors then Nalia casts wizard's eye and Imoen hastes them or makes them invisible - so you have a 4 strong expeditionary force that can do substantial damage to any enemy group it encounters. I find it especially good for sending into gauth/beholder/flayer territory as they pinpoint the enemy and pin them down - when at least a couple of the warriors are destroyed, I do the same again and keep summoning expeditionary forces until I run out of summonable creatures or I think I have weakened the enemy sufficiently to send the party in. it is good role-play to have the characters have defined roles in the party - in battle I have 'summoners' and 'scrappers' using the summoners to spread the enemy more thinly amongst the party fighters - or to attack where party members may take too much damage e.g. from blade barrier. also skeleton warriors (my favourite cannon-fodder) have resistances that make them last long enough to deplete casters before the party go in - the mace of everard (?) has a spellcaster depleting effect too, so after Anomen has run out of things to summon, he wades in as a scrapper along with Minsc, Boo and the PC - Aerie and/or Jaheira remain summoner/caster/healers and Nalia works offensively - as would Jan Jannsen. If Yoshimo or Valgyar are in, then they work with missiles whereas Keldon's love of 2-handed swords usually puts him in the thick of battle.
not all battles go to plan and ambushes sometimes happen, but if you know the roles, you can use the scripting to assist that party behaviour.
so - potential cheese the use (and abuse) of erase
the roles - using erase to more define casters
I spent about 100k in the shop buying everything I fancied the look of - I felt a bit depleted and there were still more scrolls that my characters could benefit from -
I'll not mention whether I buffed and shoplifted any scrolls at this point...
[OK - I got caught even at 175% pickpocketing! so I reloaded my 'shoplifting' saved game, which I recommend that you create and use after every few items]
...but having been shopping for 3 casters, I did buy too many of certain scrolls and before I could sell them back, I realised : you can 'erase' scrolls from the spellbooks and get experience for writing them in again. It then struck me that although you get very little money for 2nd hand scrolls, you can convert them into experience.
[shopkeeper doesn't buy stolen goods BTW]
I had never deliberately erased spells I thought a character might need, but the write-back policy at least means that when you pick up a whole bunch of true-sight scrolls, you get a fair reward for it and it becomes much more worth-while to pick up low-value scrolls, such as charm or blindness. you can place them in the inventory, open book, right click, erase, confirm, then write back in. it is helpful to make sure that you don't erase more times than you write and make sure that you erase the correct one - some have very similar icons to others.
All discovered because I was being honest and didn't wish to waste the purchases I'd made - when you are shopping, you can't see what spells are in the books and it is difficult to keep track of what you have and haven't got.
On the subject of keeping track - for a bit of role play, at times I had given certain mages certain themes of spells - specialising in protection or summoning or attacking - but you can retrospectively achieve that by erasing the spells that do not fit the theme.
for example as an example of cooperative party behaviour, I have Anomen and Aerie take turns in summoning 4 skeleton warriors then Nalia casts wizard's eye and Imoen hastes them or makes them invisible - so you have a 4 strong expeditionary force that can do substantial damage to any enemy group it encounters. I find it especially good for sending into gauth/beholder/flayer territory as they pinpoint the enemy and pin them down - when at least a couple of the warriors are destroyed, I do the same again and keep summoning expeditionary forces until I run out of summonable creatures or I think I have weakened the enemy sufficiently to send the party in. it is good role-play to have the characters have defined roles in the party - in battle I have 'summoners' and 'scrappers' using the summoners to spread the enemy more thinly amongst the party fighters - or to attack where party members may take too much damage e.g. from blade barrier. also skeleton warriors (my favourite cannon-fodder) have resistances that make them last long enough to deplete casters before the party go in - the mace of everard (?) has a spellcaster depleting effect too, so after Anomen has run out of things to summon, he wades in as a scrapper along with Minsc, Boo and the PC - Aerie and/or Jaheira remain summoner/caster/healers and Nalia works offensively - as would Jan Jannsen. If Yoshimo or Valgyar are in, then they work with missiles whereas Keldon's love of 2-handed swords usually puts him in the thick of battle.
not all battles go to plan and ambushes sometimes happen, but if you know the roles, you can use the scripting to assist that party behaviour.
so - potential cheese the use (and abuse) of erase
the roles - using erase to more define casters
