Got to baldur's gate in baldur's gate - how much longer to go?

[BillButNotBen]

OK. Title probably says it all, but anyway:

After playing Baldur's Gate for several months I've finally entered the city of BG. But I'm wondering how far through the game I am. In terms of playtime and content.

Walkthroughs seem to put the city as chapter 5 out of 6. But then the city seems to contain almost as many maps as the rest of the world combined.

So am I near the end, or do I have another several months of gameplay ahead of me? In which case I'll just quit and play something else instead. I know there are a lot of BG experts/fans here... so what percentage complete would you say i'm at? (assuming a regular player, not an expert or power player. And assuming I skip durlag's tower as it seems imoen is never gonna get her theif skills back anyway..)

[ChaK_]

As far as I recall, BG is the last map. You've got a few things to do here, but the end is closing in.

Long time I didn't play that game though.

on a side note I would have much MUCH prefered for a BG2:EE rather than the first. The second is stellar in comparison.

[thejimster]

If it's the first time you arrive (I'm assuming it is) then you've got about as much game left as you've already played if you want it, purely following the main quest from here on in will shorten things significantly, though. Maybe slightly less if you have thoroughly explored every single other area 'cept the Gate itself but still; there is a lot of game left if you want there to be.

[Casimir Effect]

There's less side quests in the city than you might imagine, but it'll still take you a few hours to find them and do them all. Once that's done then I think the rest of the game is a straight charge to the end with no more deviations. I'll warn you though, that last fight is notorious for being hard and I've known people to get all the way through the game and just give up or God mode there.

[NathanH]

There's less side quests in the city than you might imagine, but it'll still take you a few hours to find them and do them all. Once that's done then I think the rest of the game is a straight charge to the end with no more deviations. I'll warn you though, that last fight is notorious for being hard and I've known people to get all the way through the game and just give up or God mode there.

My first solution to the final battle was kobolds. Effective and humiliating: the perfect winning strategy.

[Heliocentric]

My first solution to the final battle was kobolds. Effective and humiliating: the perfect winning strategy.

How do you deploy kobolds? Is it a summon? I wouldnt know as for religious reasons I can only summon badgers.

[Casimir Effect]

The Wand of Monster Summoning spam does seem to be the officially recognised tactic. But it just makes you feel so dirty.

[Heliocentric]

The Wand of Monster Summoning spam does seem to be the officially recognised tactic. But it just makes you feel so dirty.

I used an into the fog cloud kill because by the end of the game I was just sick of it. But my cheese rose up 30 notches in BG2 with my magic immune paladin with about 25 st and 25 constitution, I dropped everyone else except people who could cast contingency and chain up huge death power and I slept like 4 million times.

I refuse to play games that require sleeping to regain spells any more, as least you can use atronach in morrowind.

[NathanH]

The Wand of Monster Summoning spam does seem to be the officially recognised tactic. But it just makes you feel so dirty.

I also had two wizards with Monster Summoning 1 in every available slot. I think I had a couple of MS2s as well, but I don't like them so much, you get fewer creatures and the fact that they're better creatures is mostly irrelevant because they only hit on 20s and get 1-shotted by the baddies anyway. But you need to spam a fair number because everything apart from Kobolds and Hobgoblins is useful only for slowing the baddies down.

[b0rsuk]

How do you deploy kobolds? Is it a summon? I wouldnt know as for religious reasons I can only summon badgers.

Badgers are the master race.

[NathanH]

The only good thing about Neverwinter Nights was being able to summon a dire badger.

[squirrelfanatic]

A thief with a high backstab multiplier and a bunch of invisibility potions is also a valid strategy for the last fight.

[SMiD]

As others have said, entering Baldur's Gate for the first time puts you slightly past halfway on the main quest. But don't be too concerned with the number of maps making up the city; there aren't particularly large or anything, and their close proximity means the game picks up the pace quite a bit (no more wandering through forests trying to find camps). If you stick to the main quest line and ignore the many side-quests in the area, you can easily finish the game in under a month. The last battle, however, is much nastier than any of the other fights in the game (except maybe a few in the expansion).

[Theblazeuk]

A few in the expansion? God there's so many. I cleared the final battle without too much trouble but that shipwreck full of werewolves was a finely balanced act of backstabs, invisibility spells and haste. So close. Then the tower dungeon crawl itself...with the demon...arrrrgh.

[SMiD]

Oh come now, the werewolves aren't that bad. And Durlag's tower is mostly traps. I will credit your answer of the final demon battle; that can be.... difficult.

[BillButNotBen]

Well, that's answers of almost finished and about half way ;-)

As i have things like Durlag's Tower on the map I guess I've cleared out almost everywhere already. (except some weird polar bear island i was teleported to that i had no chance of succeeding in and i reloaded a save and didn't go back. )

My initial approach was to ignore all the dumb timewasting sidequests and just follow the main quest... but then i discovered my level was way too low to get anywhere and was forced to revert to "hoover up the fog of war" mode and just systematically work through every area. I even finished the frickin Firewine bridge. God that was hell.
Was it Jim who wrote a piece comparing games to cleaning, because for this game he's sure right. Also agreed on never playing a game where you have to sleep to regain spells again. Does Planescape do that too?

Might try Bastion and then come back for BG.

[SMiD]

BillButNotBen, if you're not against some minor spoilers, here's a basic checklist/walkthrough for BG (http://www.mikesrpgcenter.com/bgate/walkthrough.html). That should give you an idea of what's left of the core game.

[Mohorovicic]

Haha, the Firewine Bridge is a horror indeed.

So is the Nashkel Mines for low level parties. Gotta love how broken bows are in BG(and possibly in the endire 2ED, never played the pnp version).

[Subatomic]

Haha, the Firewine Bridge is a horror indeed.

So is the Nashkel Mines for low level parties. Gotta love how broken bows are in BG(and possibly in the endire 2ED, never played the pnp version).

Ranged combat is only really overpowered in BG1, once BG2 and especially ToB come around, it's pretty much mage multi/dual classes that break the game.

Edit: Oh, forgot to something about the actual topic... how far you are from the end largely depends on how many of the sidequests you've done up until entering the city. If you've already scoured every corner of the map(s) and done every quest you came across, you aren't that far from the end (though there's still a lot to do). If you mostly sticked to the main quest line though, there's a lot left to do.

[NathanH]

It was kind of them to give you Boots of Missile Avoidance early on in BG1, given how effective missile weapons are at low level. At some point though they suddenly switch from the most important form of attacking to being something for wizards to do between spell casts.

[Mohorovicic]

Sadly, your AC(and thus the boots of avoidance) doesn't really matter here. It's a combination of three things:

- the crappy d20 mechanics of a critical hit - on every natural 20, or 5% of the time, which is way too often
- the fixed two attacks per round of bows no matter the actual weapon skill
- the fact that bow enemies usually spawn in groups

So if 5 Kobolds are shooting at you with bows they're totalling 10 attacks per round, and with the 5% critical hit chance that means 50% chance you'll get hit for double damage (critical) *every round* which is simply a massacre at lower levels and even medium ones because you'll still not be strong enough to kill them all quickly. And it will happen even when your AC is something like -12(or hell, even if you cheat and set it to something like -5000).

This is also why summoning Kobolds or Hobgoblin archers with the Wand of Monster Summoning is the most effective way of killing "boss" fighter enemies like Drizzt, that evil god of the two-handed berserking sword or Sarevok - they're just as screwed by the critical hit/attacks/round system as you are.

[NathanH]

If they're only hitting you on 20s the big gangs of mooks aren't that much of a threat because you should probably be killing them at a vastly superior rate with your own three-bow three-sling barrage. 10 kobolds will only hit me on average once per round, for crappy damage with a shortbow (as long as they're not commandos). My tank will have a helmet so will be immune to crits, so it's only a few points of damage per round on average. Meanwhile I would expect to kill at least 3 every round. As long as you have a level or two you shouldn't be troubled too much by low-level arrow swarmers. Of course if you try to melee the arrow swarms you might find yourself in more trouble.

Things like the hobgoblin with the super magic longbow, on the other hand, remain a significant threat.

[Subatomic]

Things like the hobgoblin with the super magic longbow, on the other hand, remain a significant threat.

At least until you get Protection from Arrows / Protection from Normal Weapons, at which point enemies with ranged weapons become a non-issue and your mage can just walk in and soak everything while the rest of the party does the killing.

[NathanH]

At least until you get Protection from Arrows / Protection from Normal Weapons, at which point enemies with ranged weapons become a non-issue and your mage can just walk in and soak everything while the rest of the party does the killing.

Yeah; in general I like that the enemy AI in the infinite engine games doesn't try to be clever, but with regards to targetting immune enemies I think it'd be better if they passed over them and attacked someone else. It's not very difficult to set up the Ai to do this, although the way I know to do is a bit counter-intuitive so it's possible they didn't know how to do it themselves.