Baldur's Gate Beamdog's Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 Enhanced Editions

[Delterius]

Scribing failure is very avoidable. Considering how useless INT is otherwise and the fact that scribing success can be ensured with potions, I'd say that it actually adds to the game. As opposed to the randomness of HP gains.

 

[ArchAngel]

Scribing failure is very avoidable. Considering how useless INT is otherwise and the fact that scribing success can be ensured with potions, I'd say that it actually adds to the game. As opposed to the randomness of HP gains.

Randomness of HP gains is because damage is also random. It is so spells like fireball that do 5d6 or more are more useful.

 

[aVENGER]

A brief explanation on how specialist mages and scribing scrolls work together in the IE games.

• Your base chance to scribe scrolls depends on your Intelligence (18 INT = 85% etc.)
• Specialist mages get a +15% bonus when scribing scrolls from their chosen school (so a Conjurer with 18 INT has a 100% chance to scribe a Conjuration scroll)
• Specialist mages get a -15% penalty when scribing scrolls from any other school (so a Conjurer with 18 INT has a 70% chance to scribe any scroll that doesn't belong to the Conjuration school)
• Specialist mages get a +2 bonus to saving throws when making a save against spells from their chosen school (Conjurers get +2 to saves vs. Conjuration spells)
• Targets suffer a -2 penalty when making saving throws against spells from the specialist mage's chosen school (i.e. enemies save at -2 when a Conjurer casts a Conjuration spell on them)

Note that this was in the code since BG1 (1998). Beamdog hasn't changed this behavior in any way. As of SoD, this is properly documented in the specialist mage kit descriptions.

 

[Immortal]

When is the Triple pack Steam sale?

I've bought baldurs gate like 3 times over the course of my life.. I'll be damned if I am gonna drop another 60 bucks just to play Seige of Dragonspear.

 

[Lilura]

aVENGER, is it possible individual instances of spell scrolls for a specific spell were flagged as being harder to scribe than others? Over the years I've just had an inkling...

Also, can you give me a number/range for the damage cap of the Staff of Striking found in Durlag's Tower (vanilla)? (It's "charges" are based on damage inflicted with it, but it seems to vary?). Lastly, I asked another Q in the Dragonspear thread (yep, I'm full of 'em).

 

[Shadenuat]

I checked on specialist Abjurer and with 18 INT it's definitely 100% chance to scribe at least your own spec spells. So people may just suffer from unlucky rolls. It's hard to say what's bug or feature since IE games always had tons of secret bugs and EE brings them and some of their own and then more to the table (which puts me into constant state of paranoia whenever I do something like scrolling through spell descriptions).

 

[hell bovine]

A brief explanation on how specialist mages and scribing scrolls work together in the IE games.

• Your base chance to scribe scrolls depends on your Intelligence (18 INT = 85% etc.)
• Specialist mages get a +15% bonus when scribing scrolls from their chosen school (so a Conjurer with 18 INT has a 100% chance to scribe a Conjuration scroll)
• Specialist mages get a -15% penalty when scribing scrolls from any other school (so a Conjurer with 18 INT has a 70% chance to scribe any scroll that doesn't belong to the Conjuration school)
• Specialist mages get a +2 bonus to saving throws when making a save against spells from their chosen school (Conjurers get +2 to saves vs. Conjuration spells)
• Targets suffer a -2 penalty when making saving throws against spells from the specialist mage's chosen school (i.e. enemies save at -2 when a Conjurer casts a Conjuration spell on them)

Note that this was in the code since BG1 (1998). Beamdog hasn't changed this behavior in any way. As of SoD, this is properly documented in the specialist mage kit descriptions.

Thanks for the info, I recall much confusion over the specialist spell saves back in ye olde days. Makes a transmuter an interesting option.

 

[Roobenator]

I managed only to find one fireball scroll before the city and failed to copy it with Edwin. No problem, just added challenge. If you feel that the mechanic is unfair, you are a fucking pussy. First time hearing about the int. potions, thanks!

 

[Shadenuat]

Well I finished BG1 EE in preparation for Dragonspear.

Spoiler

I really liked Shadowdancer class from IWD so I rolled one for BG.

So what I didn't like about BG EE?

- New movies. Old movies were old. But so is the whole game. As well as every other IE game. Old movies were nicely directed. Still pictures are not ugly, but they're not movies.
- UI. After some time I got used to it. Not that BG1 UI was that great, but new deep blue with acid gold made me want to stop playing.
- You thought you had lots of money in original BG? Now you'll have even more. How many clones of unique magical items can we put into the game? As many as we want, goddamit! And have that STR 19 belt. We care about you.
- OP companions. How about 19 STR free uber fighter who already has magical weapon and can heal himself and debuff and poison enemies? Or maybe a sorcerer with Edwin's ring? And certanly casting 5 level spells through wild magic roll twice cast 4 x times Cloudkill won't harm the game.
Remember when people were upset about Viconia's MR being 2 edged blade, or Khalid or Garrick running from battle singing "Brave Garrick ran away" and you had to deal with that?
- At the same time, why not put a 3d edition slash AD&D shitty monk as companion for level 1 party. Who can't even get his fists to become magical weapons even at level cap.
- Boy do new locations look ugly (but Rasaad's temple doesn't look as bad as Neera's location).
- I want my hordes of summons back. There are no strong single creatures in BG1 to summon like in BG2.

Mixed:

- New companion's writing is uh... well it's BG1, whatever, not like there can be any noticable drop in writing quality, lol. But Neera's romance kinda sucked with it's abrupt ending.
- Kits/spells from BG2 in BG1 without enemies doing anything resembling Stratagems. Touched upon this in my IWD post.
- Is standartising spells across all games a plan or...? That Color Spray triggers me.

Liked:
uuuh... mmm

Well I thought Dorn's dialogue was ok.
Also, compared to IWD I had no crashes and no graphical glitches. Although I somehow broke Nalen's second thief quest (he didn't spawn for me).

Overall: wouldn't recommend. Stratagems + NPC Project would lend you hours of entertainment and new experiences compared to EE. IWD EE offers playing 6 characters with new kits through moderately difficult dungeon crawler. BG EE really offers nothing for the money.

 

[Lhynn]

Whats with the changes to the UI and the movies? i just cant wrap my head around them changing it. Its suposed to be a better version, not a different version, polish whats there, dont change it.

 

[Lilura]

Whats with the changes to the UI and the movies? i just cant wrap my head around them changing it. Its suposed to be a better version, not a different version, polish whats there, dont change it.

It's mystified me, too. And in my opinion the cosmetic changes are fucking awful, across the board. For an Enhanced Edition the prime focus should be bugfixing, AI/scripting and optimizations to reduce lag.

 

[Tigranes]

Maybe they think it looks better? I don't know how, but you know...

Also, given the trouble with gaining total access to old assets/etc when they started, they might have seen those things as two things they can definitely change, two things that will show clearly in every screenshot that it's a new product, etc, etc.

And so there we have it, you can instantly tell a game is enhanced because it's fucking ugly everywhere.

 

[Jaesun]

The new movies were made for a more modern audience. The old ones, which are still great, just are limited to a low resolution. I get why they did that, but that development time that could have been spent on much other things.

The UI changes, I don't really get, other than just to make a new and cool UI?

I absolutely LOATHE BG put into the BGII engine. BG was so horribly imbalanced, but even in all of it's broken state, it was so much fun. The summons, the horribly broken and unbalanced spells (and spawns). None of these things work at all in the BGII engine (and for a good reason). But you cannot ever experience that, UNLESS you play the original game. I get the whole BG:EE put in the BGII engine, but I just so not like it at all, and will still only play the original game.

I am actually looking forward to their new game (which bridges BG and BGII), but sadly I'll just have to start a new game, with a new character, that I cannot import form the original.

 

[Tigranes]

Jaesun You will need to buy BGEE to play this, apparently.

 

[Lilura]

I'd also like to challenge the idea that BG somehow runs better as EE.. people talk of the insta-loading and stuff, but I am just on a dubious "gaming laptop" (quad core Radeon chipset) and the load-times are pretty much instant in vanilla (0.5 sec) and the game runs very smoothy - with EE, I have lag all over the shop..

And yeah, aside from the innumerable game-play changes that occur as a result of playing BG1 in the BG2 engine, I dislike the cosmetics of BG2 and even moreso EE. The paperdolls are pure shit to me and I don't like many of the sprite changes and the appearance of some of the equipment (large shield, f.e - looks pathetic). These are lil' things that add up to me.. but yeah, my mind is not fully made up on this: I will probably give Dragonspear a whirl to see what they come up with.

 

[FeelTheRads]

The originals running bad or worse is just bullshit perpetrated by dumbfucks, the kind that instantly consider something new as being better only by the virtue of being new. If the original don't insta-load for you then there's something wrong with YOU.

 

[ArchAngel]

The group of "left behinds" has gathered. In few years when everyone is still enjoying the whole EE package you lot will still be bitching alone and cold here on the forums.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I will be so very sad about people playing a different version of the game.

P.S.:

dumbfucks, the kind that instantly consider something new as being better only by the virtue of being new

 

[Delterius]

Jaesun

Well, my plan is that if all else fails I'll just play the whole of BG1 and then Shadowkeep a similar character into SoD.

 

[Shadenuat]

I'd also like to challenge the idea that BG somehow runs better as EE.. people talk of the insta-loading and stuff, but I am just on a dubious "gaming laptop" (quad core Radeon chipset) and the load-times are pretty much instant in vanilla (0.5 sec) and the game runs very smoothy - with EE, I have lag all over the shop.

The originals running bad or worse is just bullshit perpetrated by dumbfucks

Oh the long loading times for a 5 CD game (unless you copy all content to HD from all CDs and rewrite baldur.ini by hand) is a known thing. Since EE repacked old content it's now not a problem and instant save/load is probably the best feature of EE, actually.
But tbh, you can achieve same effect by doing what people mostly did before (copying all CDs and rewriting loading paths).

However, saying that it runs BETTER than vanilla is not correct since EE has it's problems. My Friend had to put in older video card cause EE didn't work on newer one for example.

IE games were always buggy in a way like, say spells didn't work as intended. But they were also the most stable games I know, ideally working for me in win 95, 98, xp, me, win 7, on all systems I had, surviving all sorts of shenanigans and technically very solid. Can't say same thing about EE.

Btw I tried running BG2 EE and what the fuck is this? :

Spoiler

Also check this asian mod for BG1 http://www.littlemistake.com/main/wp-content/uploads/bbgsc.jpg
http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/1082-bg2ee-gui-in-bgee/ notice that even modders understand the use of free space and this one removed awful patchwork between Money and Ground parts of UI, making inventory window look more compact

 

[ArchAngel]

That is some fuckup on your end. I never has anything similar on my computer with Bg1EE or Bg2EE or IWDEE.
Or any other problems you mentioned. Bg2EE before last patch had some quest bugs but that is it.

 

[Shadenuat]

Yes user is to blame for everything, always, developers just improve thing you already loved you ungrateful bastard
(I'll reinstall game and apply last gog patch again see if that will help, not going to play before Dragonspear tho)
(Yea I think it helped)

 

[hell bovine]

The new movies were made for a more modern audience. The old ones, which are still great, just are limited to a low resolution. I get why they did that, but that development time that could have been spent on much other things.

The UI changes, I don't really get, other than just to make a new and cool UI?

I absolutely LOATHE BG put into the BGII engine. BG was so horribly imbalanced, but even in all of it's broken state, it was so much fun. The summons, the horribly broken and unbalanced spells (and spawns). None of these things work at all in the BGII engine (and for a good reason). But you cannot ever experience that, UNLESS you play the original game. I get the whole BG:EE put in the BGII engine, but I just so not like it at all, and will still only play the original game.

I am actually looking forward to their new game (which bridges BG and BGII), but sadly I'll just have to start a new game, with a new character, that I cannot import form the original.

Both games had an unbalanced combat system that could be easily abused; if anything, BG2 is worse. But at least with BG1 in BG2 I can use SCS to spice things up and don't have to deal with NPCs getting stuck on each other (much), whereas vanilla had both terrible AI and annoying pathfinding.

 

[FeelTheRads]

But tbh, you can achieve same effect by doing what people mostly did before (copying all CDs and rewriting loading paths).

I don't imagine anyone is still playing the game from CDs.

 

[Shadenuat]

- buckler.