GameBanshee Forums

I thought the Monk battle was a joke. 2 Monster Summonings and then bum rush the Balthazar. Not very fun.


Melissan was alright. Ironically enough I found the hardest part to be the Ice Trolls/Salamanders/etc and then the Shadow Slayers (or whatever they were). Overall it was very disappointing. I lost the first time because I didnt realize she had spell protections (didnt show up on the battle dialogue), so I took to many losses before I realized it. Then I just had Edwin memorize 3 Spell Thursts. That was it. Fight the bad guys at the pools. Ressurect Ressurect. Cut the link. Spell Thrust. Hack hack hack.

They could have done a MUCH better job with the final battle. Also making it ridiculously cheesy, Jans Spike traps. Before the second time I fought her (before I cut off the first pool) I laid down 4 spike traps. There was no battle. "I will deal with you now" pop pop pop "oops got to go" I didnt have any more spike traps because I had used his skill points for other things, but if I were a pure thief or even if I just used all of Jans for spike traps, this who affair would be a total joke. Normal traps dont do much of anything (I checked) because she is "immune to their damage" (they do like 8) but spike traps do full force (like 70 somethings times 4 or 5 traps).

Anyways

overall thoughts on ToB

Better designed then SoA. Not as much suspense as I would have liked, but then the games kind of short, you have a good idea of whats going on anyways, and ive been hanging around this site (cant help but pick up story spoilers) so <shrugs> unavoidable.

Some of the battles were VERY good. The Drow one, I forget her name already but I made a post on it, is easily the best battle ever out of all the Baldurs Gate games. (Ok, kind of premature since I only played it once didnt even reload, BUT, I suspect even if I played it again itd be tough. There isnt to much you can cheese with it which makes it so cool)

Also Draconis, tough as hell. But his constantly flying up and healing seemed kind of cheesy. But still best dragon battle. It actually "felt" like ive imagined a dragon battle would feel like. All the other dragon battles have been jokes =(

WATCHERS KEEP
Best Dungeoun ever. Lots of cool mind tricks and puzzles. But its not annoyingly puzzling. Its all pretty clever. The blood war battles are pretty damn good too. I found the end battle to be lacking though, again, to many chances to cheese. Yes I could NOT cheese, but I mean, stuff like setting traps on spawn points. Im not lying, I didnt reload for this battle. I just knew theyd be spawning ugly people so I threw traps up. I just think traps ruin all spawning battles. Maybe go through with no traps? But I hate having to handicap myself to make battles fun.

I think mod makers need to study the good battles. For me, personnally (maybe not anyone else though), I dont want near invincible enemies with 19238 level 9 spells and triggers which constantly make them invulnerable to everything. I want smart battles.

Fight smarter not harder! That sort of deal =P

Anyways. Overall. BG1 > all, but it was the first so it has a huge advantage. ToB is great, ending battle anti-climatic though, but the story line was cool. LOVED the end stories. Loved the dialogues throughout ToB. I liked some of my dialogue choices. They really fit me "Oh im scared now (yawn)" You know, after youve been hunted by 1938 bounty hunters, killed 6 liches, 8 dragons, destroyed whole armies of Giants, well, not much phases you anymore you know?

Edit - OH by better design I mean the battles and enemy thinking/scripting. The roleplay was exceptional throughout all of the BG series. No complaints. But in ToB things were smarter. They removed a lot of the borderline cheese that existed before and made enemies react a lot better to things you did.

BTW I choose to become a God in case you were wondering. Viconia would understand im sure

If you want a really cool fight then do a search "toughest scrap" and try that fight. Now that was fun!!!!!!!
Coolest battles imo are the onnes with groups of enemies that do different things so the battle can swing once or twice... when facing one opponent like a dragon or worse, a demi-lich you just use one strategy and thats it... in the above suggested battle you really have to use the strength and skill of all you party members.
Try it!

This is the site for you.

(Scroll down and take everything....)

The final battle in Ascension (which I'm close to try at last!) is considered from what I've read the most difficult battle in the
ENTIRE BG1-ToSC-BG2-ToB serie.... you have to defeat all the 5
AT ONCE... Sendai keeps healing all of them..........

And there are the other Improved Fights of course.
Tried yesterday the Improved Abazigal (multiple dragon fight!), and I have to admit it, my little kensai/mage really DIED this time...
I was so sad..... this should have never happened.....
(though I don't understand how they managed to dispel my protections, I had Spell Immunity: Abjuration... Maybe they took down this one first, but I didn't noticed...

Maybe for this battle I should concede myself some pre-buffing spells............

Note about the trap thing: if you use them in every party, they could indeed take away a lot of fun.
BUT, if you play through the game with different parties, you'll find fun as hell seeing how you can win a battle easily, when the last time you had to pass it without traps....
It exalts your actual character and his strategies!

First of all, congrats, GNCSpam! ToB is fun!

Second of all, congrats, Littiz! For mentioning Ascension. Ascension is fun too!

Trust me, GNC, the original battles are nothing compared to what you will face in Ascension. You will find it more of a challenge. Right now, I am trying to solo again with User's patented BUN BUN version 3 with Timestop immunity, and even then, it's tough.

Good luck if you decide to go solo.

Cheers.

Yeah the Ascension was super tough... I have to admit that I couldn't finish the last fight.
Spoiler
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
You also have to fight Jon Irenicus using his spells cleverly and he was a pain. I think he did the improved invisibilty, spell immunity trick plus loads of other stuff... and then there was sarevok, Imoen and Bodhi and the five and Melissan... I just gave up
But if you want a challenge... go for it.

Spell Immunity abjuration doesn't actually stop the anti-protection spells. I posted on this recently actually. Try it out. Breach, pierce magic, etc all just go right by Immunity:abjuration. Not sure if this is a ToB thing or also in original SoA. I tried to avoid cheese defenses but in fighting draconis he does it so I did some tests to see what I needed to do to stop him and turns out Immunity abjuration isn't as munchkiny as I thought it would be. Stops dispel (though not from weapon effects) but not much else.

thanx glod, but I had already understood everything from your post.
Spell Immunity can be taken down with a spell breaker like Ruby
Ray...
Its usefulness remains almost untouched anyway (but now I know how to kill kuroisan... )
Breach works against the other protections, so I expected it anyway...

hhm, only there was such a mess, I didn't understand what was happening on the screen.......

Originally posted by Glod
Spell Immunity abjuration doesn't actually stop the anti-protection spells. I posted on this recently actually. Try it out. Breach, pierce magic, etc all just go right by Immunity:abjuration. Not sure if this is a ToB thing or also in original SoA. I tried to avoid cheese defenses but in fighting draconis he does it so I did some tests to see what I needed to do to stop him and turns out Immunity abjuration isn't as munchkiny as I thought it would be. Stops dispel (though not from weapon effects) but not much else.

Yeah but it is difficult to cast breach on an invisible opponent so improved invis, spell immunity abj, div is great unless enemies can see invisible characters.

Yeah thats a good combo. Weird thing I just noticed in a test is that the dispel from a hit off staff of magi bypasses immunity, but dispel from a hit off carsomyr doesnt seem to. All these wacky oddities in this game.

I think the dispel from magi and carsomyr count as level 15 so if the enemy is of high level chances are they wont dispel much.

Actually that is the problem with Carsomyr as I checked shortly after last post. It's level 15 dispel and I was testing on a save from ToB where the target was 25 or so. However ... Staff of Magi dispel was still working every time and imoen who was wielding it was 2 levels below the target. In the engine it has dispel power 0 (whereas Carsomyr has dispel power 15). Power 0 appears to be unstoppable. I just redid the test with Imoen dropped to level 13 and it was working 100 percent on Viccy who was level 34.

So they both bypass immunity (and resistance is seems) but with Carsomyr fixed at level 15 its value is limited. Man ... if only I could dual wield Magi and Crom =P.

Originally posted by Bruce Lee
it is difficult to cast breach on an invisible opponent so improved invis, spell immunity abj, div is great unless enemies can see invisible characters.

You can use wands (Spell Striking) and scrolls on "shimmering" creatures, I believe.

Originally posted by Xyx
You can use wands (Spell Striking) and scrolls on "shimmering" creatures, I believe.

You can?? Now that is a breakthrough! So that counts as attacks same way as melee does it?

Yeah thats correct, though NPCs don't usually have wands/scrolls handy for that. Going to plug my recent wand of spell striking fix post to this board now just cause I'm sad noone, ok well 2 people, downloaded it. The current wand of spell striking behaves wierdly. It gets turned/deflected by spell turning/deflection when it shouldnt and it ignores spell shield which it shouldn't.

The fix is in this thread.

Fight the bad guys at the pools. Ressurect Ressurect. Cut the link. Spell Thrust. Hack hack hack.

GNGSpam
i dont understand if you think it was so easy then why did you die so many times? lmao


try using an evil charecter and rollplay that through its alot harder. TOB was not easy for me at all it was probably one of the most difficult rpg i have played. You might have found it easy cuz you used those [removed] editors that modify your strength to 25 .ect .ect


i have my constitution at 14 as well i like things tuff


try using no editors or exp removers. Thats what i did the first time and IT WAS TUFF!

When I played ToB the first time, I had Jaheira, Imoen, Minsc, my regular-classed Fighter, Aerie and I think Anomen...Maybe Aerie and Naila. It's been a while...

But I just remember having an aggrivating time with Abazi and Melissan. Sendia wasn't so hard, but man, Melissan! She was like, impossible! Then I did some interesting spell combos and eventually made it through...My grand totaly of fights against her before I one was...get this...brace yourself...

It took me 17 reloads to finally figure out a decent technique to kill that mage. Now I'm proud of that lil' unacomplishment! Glad you fared better off than I did!

~A.

@Xyx: hey, glad you're back to the forum!!!!
You have always something to teach us, haven't you?