Baldur's Gate 3 Playthrough Discussion

[Zed Clampet]

Bard is absolutely not useless and you can consider them a jack of all trades with some incredible good party buffs.

I was wanting to try them out and see how they are. In my solo game as soon as I come across one (and don't kill her) then I'll give her a try. In general, though, maybe my tactical strategy is still coming around, but I need to kill stuff as fast as possible, and if the bard doesn't really contribute to that philosophy, as the rogue doesn't, then I'll have to get rid of them.

There is plenty of strategy in my strategy, but it doesn't call for a lot of sneaking and singing. But I'm not playing on the highest difficulty. If I did that, I might have to adapt a bit.

Potion of hill giant strength helps my monk a LOT. It just needs some hill giant fingernails. I need to make friends with a hill giant tribe and make sure they get a lot of calcium.

The 9th level Ki Resonance thing is great! You hit them with it and, whenever you like, you can make them explode for 3-18 damage in a 5m radius. Dex save to half damage. Doesn't sound like a whole lot, but there's a trick: if you set up 2+ enemies, the explosion from one will set off the other. It reminds me a little of Dragon Age's "Walking Bomb" spell, but it has still another bonus: it doesn't hurt your party!

So far I've managed to keep fairly stocked with that potion from being frugal with it and just finding them around. Wouldn't mind having a lot more of them, though. I was out of health potions for a long time, but the place we are at now seems to restock them.

 

[Pifanjr]

Yeah, the whole healing dynamic has really changed a lot. I guess all those decades of nobody wanting to play the healer finally made them decide to just dump them.

OH FOR.... OK, so I've been wondering how to make various potions, elixirs, and whatnot. I've found quite a few recipes but even more have been missing. When I grab various plants and monster bits, I get the recipe for how to combine 3 of them into an ingrediant that can be used for alchemy. What I didn't know is that the recipes for the second step don't need to be found. All you have to do is make the salt, ash, or whatever ingredient it is the raw materials makes and POOF! You know the recipe for the potion/elixir/oil. I just combined the 123 ingredients and had 24 recipes unlock!! Eeeeeesh. Wait, what the frak is tadpole elixir??

Anyway, I highly recommend hitting that 'extract all ingredients' button often.

That's good to know. I have a ton of ingredients, but when I recently checked what I could make with them I only had a couple of recipes and not enough to make any useful ones.

Also, are you supposed to be able to copy scrolls into your spellbook or something?

Only wizards have spellbooks and can thus copy scrolls.

 

[Frindis]

The 9th level Ki Resonance thing is great! You hit them with it and, whenever you like, you can make them explode for 3-18 damage in a 5m radius. Dex save to half damage. Doesn't sound like a whole lot, but there's a trick: if you set up 2+ enemies, the explosion from one will set off the other. It reminds me a little of Dragon Age's "Walking Bomb" spell, but it has still another bonus: it doesn't hurt your party!

I need to try a monk soon, that 9th level KI sound a lot of fun!

I was wanting to try them out and see how they are. In my solo game as soon as I come across one (and don't kill her) then I'll give her a try. In general, though, maybe my tactical strategy is still coming around, but I need to kill stuff as fast as possible, and if the bard doesn't really contribute to that philosophy, as the rogue doesn't, then I'll have to get rid of them.

There is plenty of strategy in my strategy, but it doesn't call for a lot of sneaking and singing. But I'm not playing on the highest difficulty. If I did that, I might have to adapt a bit.

Ahh, I see. Then it will depend more on the bard. With the exception of the buffs I mentioned, a bard is also pretty good for crowd control, so that will be of help in focusing the damage for your other damage dealers.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I need to try a monk soon, that 9th level KI sound a lot of fun!

Ahh, I see. Then it will depend more on the bard. With the exception of the buffs I mentioned, a bard is also pretty good for crowd control, so that will be of help in focusing the damage for your other damage dealers.

Ignore the "(and don't kill her)". I just found out about The Dark Urge, and that Guido is playing him.

 

[Zloth]

I'm right at the last battle for act two. Oh my. It seemed so easy at first...

Spoiler: Act 2 final boss

So, you finish off the big bad guy and he decides to kill himself by jumping into a pit. You don't stop him because... uhhh... he's really heavy and his armor is so gaudy that nobody wants to wear it? Whatever the case, he falls and something in the chasm gets very angry, comes out, and attacks you. A big something that looks like somebody welded a collection of giant skeletons together. 390hp, 20AC, resists piercing and slashing (and even bludgeon if it isn't magic), hits like a wide brick, radiates an aura of cold, and so on. It also can make 3 of those skeleton incubator things per round anywhere on a big map. If it wants, it can "eat" one of the skeletons to heal itself for quite a bit of damage.

So, my main archer has a70% chance to hit and just does around 5 damage. Karlach as a monk can hit it pretty good, if she manages to hit. Dame Aylin just hits for 4 or 5 damage. Wyl should do OK damage if he manages to hit. Shadowheart, using her radiant artifact mace, only has a 45% chance to hit and only does 5-9'ish damage. My first try really wasn't even close.

There's a thing, though: it's completely immobile. Most of its attacks are melee, too, if you don't count the skeleton things. Also, Dame Aylin is immortal. Maybe I could run around, killing every skeleton incubator that pops up, and plopping it with weak arrow attacks when I get extra time while Aylin slowly whittles it down? Cloudkill would work awesome except the boss is totally immune to poison. Maybe I've got similar, though.

Edit: Nope. Even worse than before. Every round, somebody is going to get hit for 20-25 damage and be frightened for 2 rounds by the boss' gaze weapon. (There's a save, but I need to roll a 20 to make it.) The incubators show up so spread out that even the whole team can't get to them all in time. The Deep Chill that radiates out a few feet from the thing prevents all healing. Dame Aryl is smart enough to stay outside of that range so she can resurrect, but the boss also has a power that sucks everyone toward it - once she gets in that field, she stays dead unless you can manage to move her out.

On the plus side, I've got a couple of fog cloud spells that will blind the thing, at least until Wyl gets his concentration broken.

P.S. The cutscene engine was having issues last night. Some of the scenes' animations would play several seconds ahead of the voice acting. When I tried to go to the final room, the cutscene wouldn't kick in at all. I had to quit the game and restart to get it to work.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I swear my average dice roll today is a 3. It's so bad I'm considering scum saving, which is something I didn't want to do.

The other day during the co-op campaign, I had a miracle run of great rolls. I was talking to someone who we assumed was going to murder us with little difficulty, and I had to do a bunch of rolls while talking to him. I needed anything from 14 to 20, and I swear there were about 8 rolls. I had guidance going and a small bonus here or there, but there's no way we should have made it through that. Honestly, I wouldn't have minded having to fight this guy and his minions because he seemed interesting, but I did get an achievement for talking my way out of it.

Fast forward to today, and I can't successfully intimidate a small child.

 

[Pifanjr]

I had to protect an NPC from some guy with his minions. I got the guy down to 7 HP when the NPC I was supposed to protect triggered three Opportunity Attacks and was promptly downed, triggering a cutscene where the enemy just slowly walked away carrying the NPC while my party just kind of watched.

I normally don't reload saves just to get a better outcome, but this just felt ridiculous. So I tried buffing the NPC before triggering the fight, but I'm pretty sure that didn't actually prevent her from being hit even once and I still lost. After another reload the NPC managed to get into a corner of the room while I blocked the enemies from getting close, which finally worked.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I had to protect an NPC from some guy with his minions. I got the guy down to 7 HP when the NPC I was supposed to protect triggered three Opportunity Attacks and was promptly downed, triggering a cutscene where the enemy just slowly walked away carrying the NPC while my party just kind of watched.

I normally don't reload saves just to get a better outcome, but this just felt ridiculous. So I tried buffing the NPC before triggering the fight, but I'm pretty sure that didn't actually prevent her from being hit even once and I still lost. After another reload the NPC managed to get into a corner of the room while I blocked the enemies from getting close, which finally worked.

We had an NPC die on us the other day because we needed water to put out a fire, and neither one of us had it. We'd have had to reload to outside the area and go looking for merchants selling water, but we decided just to let it go. From now on I'll be carrying water for sure.

 

[Zed Clampet]

How is Wyl the Warlock? Thinking about subbing him in for Shadowheart just to see what he's like.

 

[Pifanjr]

How is Wyl the Warlock? Thinking about subbing him in for Shadowheart just to see what he's like.

I love Wyll's Eldritch Blast with the Repelling Blast invocation, which makes Eldritch Blasts push enemies 15 feet away. His Imp familiar is also pretty useful, especially if you cast Aid to give it 5 more health, and though he only gets two spell slots, he gets them back at the end of a short rest instead of needing a long rest. I can recommend getting counterspell and fireball, both are very useful.

The only possible downside is that Wyll has a lot less to say than Shadowheart. Shadowheart has quite a lot of ties to the main campaign, Wyll is just kind of tagging along most of the time. I've enjoyed the times he's spoken up though.