The Cheese Guild

Xyx · Post by **Xyx** » Fri Aug 17, 2001 7:08 pm

Originally posted by Drako:
When fighting Garths and Beholders cast invisibility and follow your creatures into the battle. The monsters do not use their spells on summons

Are those Smart Beholders? They're due for an overhaul anyway, so I could take that along with it as well.

Originally posted by THE JAKER:
exploiting this bad AI is sort of cheesy.

Right. Using summons is not cheesy, exploiting AI is. No big cheese, though.

Originally posted by THE JAKER:
I'm not trying to say that "soloing" is EASY

But it is! You just need to make good use of what you have and rest often, that's all.

I can't quite agree with the statement that using summons or clones is not "soloing". After all, those creatures spawn from your very own power, without anyone lending a hand. You could memorize an extra Haste, Melf's or Skull Trap instead of Monster Summoning I. If you cast Project Image, you can't even do anything yourself anymore.

UserUnfriendly · Post by **UserUnfriendly** » Sat Aug 18, 2001 2:45 am

Another absolutely wicked spell caser tech...

you all know the trick about spell casting, then attacking in the same round until the end of round appears, so you get magical attack and mundane attack for more damage?

Wands work too!!!!!

I got my game on autopause at end of round, my sorcoress cast a abidahiz, and just for the heck of it I clicked on my wand of cloudkill after quickly hitting space bar after I swa the "blob" of abi dalzim fly away. Before the game auto paused on its own I saw her cast a cloudkill in the same damned round!!!!

I love wands, they make a sorc, or any mage who's outa spells sill immensely dangerous. They also work in magic dead areas.

anyway, I am in the teleport maze in watcher's, and I am debating on whether to watch again the sucubbis kiss my main protagonist...female. Sorry, kinda raunchy, but its friday night, and I have a beer in my hand....

Xyx · Post by **Xyx** » Sat Aug 18, 2001 6:18 am

Originally posted by UserUnfriendly:
Wands work too!!!!!

Item use counts as spellcasting for these purposes. You can only drink one Potion of Extra Healing every six seconds, for example, and you cannot cast a spell immediately afterwards. Mages suck at drinking potions...

UserUnfriendly · Post by **UserUnfriendly** » Sat Aug 18, 2001 5:40 pm

yep. as usual xyx is right. Tried to duplicate again later, no go. rats, I really thought I had somehting. However did test and found evil increaased acuity and machine gun wands work perfectly. Cast increased acuity and filled up an entier room with cloudkills in 2 rounds.

Fezek · Post by **Fezek** » Sat Aug 18, 2001 9:19 pm

Here is quick money cheese tactic

1 Turn off AI
2 Have your mage delete all his spells except..
3.. memorize Summon Hakeshar
4 Put the ring of ram(s) on the mage
5 Cast summon hakeshar
6 Attack hakeshar
The Hake shar will now attack your mage by removing the charges from the ring
7 Kill Hakeshar
8 Visit local shopkeeper and collect a whopping 24 million gold for the ring.

Sniff, sniff, this must be a dairy farm

THE JAKER · Post by **THE JAKER** » Sat Aug 18, 2001 11:28 pm

OMG Fezek! That is such sweet cheese...

If you invest the 24 million in tax free municipal bonds, by the way, you can clear a tidy profit (approx. 1 million per year, assuming you invest in th 3.5% yield Gullykin tobacco field and wine fermentarium project bonds, considered AAA grade by Moody's), and not pay ANY taxes. Beats the 500 gold a week I've been getting out of the thieve's guild!

Saruman · Post by **Saruman** » Wed Aug 22, 2001 8:49 am

I wonder if either Irenicus or Mellisan are suseptable to bribary, with that kind of finance you wouldn't even have to bother fighting them

cheesemage · Post by **cheesemage** » Wed Aug 22, 2001 9:08 am

BOW FOOLS THE CHEESEMAGE HAS COME
isnt this odd i have a cult

Xyx · Post by **Xyx** » Wed Aug 22, 2001 1:12 pm

Poll:

Off-screen Cloudkilling... Is it still cheesy when:

you are using Farsight or Wizard Eye instead of out-of-character knowledge? (this is what Wizard Eye and Cloudkill were made for, it almost seems)
you have a Skeleton Warrior standing in the middle, occupying the bad guys? (that way, at least, they'll not be just standing around in it)

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Wed Aug 22, 2001 1:17 pm

You bring up a good point, what is the point of cloud kill/death fog if not for cheese tactics, it is too slow acting to be of use for anything else (IMO)

Xyx · Post by **Xyx** » Thu Aug 23, 2001 2:13 pm

Yeah, like I'd use it in the middle of combat and stand around in it... What would be the point?

Xyx · Post by **Xyx** » Sun Sep 09, 2001 12:53 pm

Ahh... resurrection of a dead thread.

More Cheese:

Mislead decoy can sometimes attack. Not sure what the conditions are exactly, but it sure kicks a$$ if you're a Berserker/Mage.

Wizard Eye can attack and will become partially visible when doing so, drawing enemy fire very effectively.

If a clone puts Ras +2 in Sword Dance mode, they get it back after the duration expires. When the clone vanishes, an extra copy of Ras +2 is dropped.

spork · Post by **spork** » Sun Sep 09, 2001 4:55 pm

Interesting, the Mislead and Ras cheese!

But I wanted to pick up on the Cloudkill issue: I've come to the conclusion is that in almost all situations, when Cloudkill isn't useless, it's cheesy.

Whenever an enemy just stands around in the cloud taking damage, it's cheesy--it exposes a scripting problem which is a bug like any other bug. If the creatures were scripted to act realistically (AD&D style), they would get the hell out of the cloud. This is true regardless of whether you are "watching" with a Wizard Eye or using a Skeleton Warrior. Most enemies would know to get out of the cloud first and then waste the attacker.

Provided that creatures were correctly scripted and avoid the cloud, Cloudkill isn't much use. In AD&D you typically use it to kill something that's trapped, or you cast it behind you as you're fleeing in order to discourage pursuit. In this role, it isn't much use in BG2, exactly because creatures treat the cloud as though it weren't there.

My test for cheese involves asking whether a strategy relies on a failiure of things to behave they should in AD&D. Intelligent creatures who refuse to walk a few meters to avoid a painful death in a poisinous cloud would never fly in AD&D. So killing them that way is cheese.

It's a tempting and useful sort of cheese, especially once you have your wand recharged--and it's a sort of cheese that is difficult to fix in the Bioware scripting language. That makes is very bad!

UserUnfriendly · Post by **UserUnfriendly** » Mon Sep 10, 2001 12:27 am

I think tram deserves special mention. read his post on wizard slayer theif/ kundane/belm
He has got a way to do a long duration whirlwind attack!

A less evil but possibly more useful tech may be foebane or crom or foa in primary had, and kundane or belm in off hand. with imp hast you get 6 attacks per round with no prof in either weapon!

I whacked 3 vampires in brynlaw docks with lorgan, who had no prof in short swords or mace, with the mace of disruption he killed all three in a single round!

My tanks get picked on by other chars because they actually have a nice set of two ahnded and one handed weapons specifically chosed to fir specific situations. so they are liek giant swiss army knives, able to pick a blade for any job.. course, aerie gets picked on by korgy cause she's wand girl, with wands for every situation. I got her to carry the spares.

Xyx · Post by **Xyx** » Mon Sep 10, 2001 1:56 am

Originally posted by spork:
My test for cheese involves asking whether a strategy relies on a failiure of things to behave they should in AD&D.

That would be my way of "sniffing out" Cheese as well. If it's abusive and makes no sense; it's Cheese. If it's abusive but makes sense; it's good tactics.

Used in an unCheesy fashion, Cloudkill has minor uses when fighting spellcasters in enclosed spaces. They suffer much more from it than tanks (less HP to spare, spell disruption etc).

Originally posted by UserUnfriendly:
kundane/belm
He has got a way to do a long duration whirlwind attack!

According to the definition stated by Spork, I'd have to say that this is not true Cheese, merely good sense.

Nothing would prevent this in "real" AD&D (although no sane DM would let characters find such weapons before they've passed level 15 or so).

spork · Post by **spork** » Mon Sep 10, 2001 7:58 pm

Used in an unCheesy fashion, Cloudkill has minor uses when fighting spellcasters in enclosed spaces. They suffer much more from it than tanks (less HP to spare, spell disruption etc).

You're right. I guess I was exaggerating. But still, these non-cheesy uses would not justify using up a level 5 slot to memorize Cloudkill.

You know, once some serious, global MOD work gets done on BG2 I plan to go through it again without doing cheesy stuff. I fear for my life!

Maharlika · Post by **Maharlika** » Mon Sep 10, 2001 9:33 pm

What I do to make the use of the cloudkill/deathfog un-cheesy is to have at least 2 web spells cast (one as back up to the other just in case the victim makes one successful saving throw) on the designated area (after a recon check by my scout) - that's when I use my cloudkill spells. Prior to that, I have my thief set traps just in case they got the chance to free themselves from the multi webs.

BTW, I think I'll experiment on that 24million gold ring c/o the hakeshar thing...

Xyx · Post by **Xyx** » Tue Sep 11, 2001 3:10 am

Originally posted by spork:
these non-cheesy uses would not justify using up a level 5 slot to memorize Cloudkill.

Neither do the cheesy ones, IMHO.

I'd rather cast Animate Dead from memory and let wands handle all the Cloudkilling. The other way around... There is no other way around!

Would you consider it cheesy if six burly adventurers hold a door closed while various nasty creatures partake of lovely Cloudkilling fumes within?

Classic · Post by **Classic** » Tue Sep 11, 2001 9:10 am

NeKr0mAnCeR:

I like the "he miraculosly saved i got mad"!
Mad is the right word! Not irritated, not puzzled, but MAD!

.....or maybe disappointed!!!

Xyx · Post by **Xyx** » Tue Sep 11, 2001 4:50 pm

As some sort of twisted testament to Cheese, I killed Rayic Gethras today by running up or down his stairs each and every time he started casting a spell. If I hit Pause while the new screen was loading, I could Hide In Shadows a millisecond before he followed after me. After about 20 such transitions, he was out of spells and (foolishly) engaged me in melee.

It's sad! Solo Stalkers suck at lower levels. I absolutely breezed through this encounter with the Berserker/Mage, but now I'm forced to resort to Cheese just to survive...

@ Classic: Uhm... are we reading the same thread?