Baldur's Gate: The Zero Reload Saga

We’re in the graveyard and it’s night time, so we’re going to talk to the ghost of the murdered halfling kid…

OK, time out.

We’ve seen one kid abandoned in the street by his mother so that she could go and enjoy the circus, one kid kicked out of his village to embark on a gruelling journey into a cold, cruel city, one kid that’s been brutally murdered in his own home and cannot find peace in the afterlife because his teddy bear’s missing, and later on we’re going to encounter Neb, the child-killer, who has with him a group of tormented, weeping wraiths, spawned from the corpses of little boys and girls that have been tortured to death.

Am I the only one seeing a pattern here? What the hell does BioWare have against children?

Regardless, we agree to find this kid’s stuffed bear, twee though the whole idea might be.

(Note: I know that this quest doesn’t boost your reputation, before you tell me about it. This wasn’t the one I was talking about. Still, we might as well pick it up now while we have the opportunity. Eventually, they’ll both lead us to the same spot.)

With that side-quest taken on, we now head into the south-easternmost tomb.

Remember how I said earlier that I liked most of the content in the Quest Pack aside from the voice-acting? Here is where I have to take my headphones off.

Because there is a zombie in here. Not a hostile zombie that we need to kill, but a friendly one that needs us to do something for him. And as is the way with NPCs in this game, the first line of his dialogue is voiced.

It is not voiced well. Presumably the person doing it was trying to put on a sinister, hissing tone in order to sound more like a zombie. Fine. Good idea. But it comes out in this horrible, nasal, strangled mess that tends to conjure the image of someone with a peanut stuck in their throat as opposed to a rotting, undead monstrosity.

As for the quest itself, the short of it is that we need to find this guy’s wife. Apparently the reason he’s not at rest is that he had an argument with her and stormed away without saying goodbye, then rather unfortunately got murdered while he was out on a voyage. So now he wants to give her one last kiss in order to be at peace.

Yeah, I know. But who am I to argue with easy XP?

He’s given us our lead; a woman named Mira in Waukeen’s Promenade. Three guesses as to where we’re headed next.

OK, we’re safe. I realised what the problem was as soon as I brought the game window back up; Vespero got hit with a Silence spell.

He hadn’t taken any actual damage during the fight and the effect doesn’t last that long anyway, so I just Ctrl+R’ed it away and tried again. Sure enough, Viconia asks to join us and our reputation takes an undeserved hit. Phew.

We do a little item shuffling at this point. Korgan gets the dead fanatic’s plate mail and Viconia gets Korgan’s recently shed splint mail. Korgan also gets a medium shield while handing his small shield over to Viccy. Jaheira donates some bullets and a spare sling she’d kept just for this occasion, and we’re all set.

Of course I had the foresight to keep a spare sling around, but not a mace or a hammer. Ah well.

Does anyone else find it odd that Jan wears neon blue? It certainly doesn’t look that way on his portrait. Anyway, we’re going to head inside here so that the Cowled Wizards won’t bother us while we patch Korgan up and make the party safer with a few protection spells.

Now…this is just downright inexcusable. We’re in the council building in the Government district. There are two Cowled Wizards in here, Corneil and Tolgerias, and we’re casting spell after spell RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES AND THEY COULDN’T CARE LESS. WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU PEOPLE?

Ugh. Well, given the selective blindness of the law enforcement in this city, we’re still free to act, so we’ll want to get back to the task of doing reputation-boosting quests. There’s a perfect one to start on down in the Graveyard district, so that’s where we’ll be heading next.

I can’t help but think that the developers didn’t really do their research here.

One of the fanatics lets slip that they worship Beshaba. If you’re not a Forgotten Realms buff, Beshaba is a crazy, evil goddess of bad luck and curses; not exactly the type that you’d expect to object to the presence of a drow. Still, I suppose it could be justified with further thought. It just seems a bit odd.

What we do know, however, is that slaughtering a group of crazy evil goddess worshippers is in no way a no-no in the adventuring hero handbook, so we set Viconia free and get ready to crack some cleric skull.

Before we actually start the fight, we position Korgan and Jaheira right next to the archers so that they won’t give us any trouble when they turn hostile. We have Jan fire at the cleric while Vespero blasts him with a wand of frost.

You may feel like I’m wasting wands here, and you may well be right, but I’m fairly confident that once Vespero’s back in action, I’m really not going to need them that often. Besides, wands of frost aren’t really that great anyway, but it’s better than trying to whack someone with a magic stick.

It’s a long battle, but we eventually dispatch the fanatics. I had to pull Korgan back about halfway through, but a healing potion fixed him up enough that it was safe to send him back in. Fanatics dead, corpses looted and…Viconia won’t talk to us.

Uh-oh.

This is, of course, a bug, so it’s OK for me to reload here and try this again. I’ve got my fingers crossed that it was just some fluke glitch and it won’t happen the next time around…but if it does, we could be in trouble.

I’ll keep you all posted.

Just realised I’ve been walking around all this time without the Metaspell Influence Amulet on. Durrr.

Into the Government District, and I’m just going to go ahead and recruit Jan now as well. We’re going to want him at a decent level too since he’s our only thief, and more NPCs means more security. Better safe than sorry.

We finish the conversation and…Vespero levels up? Huh. OK. I never noticed before now that you actually got experience for doing this. Who knew that chatting could be so good for you?

I’m certainly not going to complain, in any event. He gets another proficiency point, and since the game won’t let us put any more in Daggers, it goes into Quarterstaff. I’m sure he’ll find a use for the Staff of the Magi eventually.

While we’re at it, we go ahead and talk to Delon just to add the Umar Hills to our world map.

Now this is yet another kid in seriously messed up circumstances. This boy’s been sent here all the way from Imnesvale to find someone that would be willing to investigate the murders that have been taken place there.

Look at the world map. How long is the journey from here to the Umar Hills? 20 hours. Right.

What kind of person do you have to be to send a little boy on a 20-hour journey through dangerous wilderness, all by himself, only to reach a huge, unfamiliar city where muggers and vampires run rampant and unchecked through the streets, all in the hopes of finding some random dudes to send back to your village in order to solve all its problems?

That’s friggin’ ruthless. That is straight-up stone cold.

Vespero is intrigued, and inquires as to how to go about meeting this person, and once Korgan is done complaining about it, we’ve got ourselves a shiny new map marker to visit.

And now, onward to rile up an angry mob.

Let me just show you the portrait I’m using again.











I have to give Amalas credit; he’s got some serious balls calling Vespero "dolly boy".

Into the ring we go. First of all we draw our Wand of Monster Summoning and aim it at the centre of the floor, directly between Amalas and Vespero.

And…wow. Five Gnoll Elites. I was kind of expecting to have to help whatever got conjured up by continuing to blast Amalas with more wands, but the snarling hyena men just get stuck right in and gib him without me having to lift a finger, thereby proving that I am a real man and a true hardass because I can summon other creatures to fight my battles for me.

Jaheira levels up from this, which she DOESN’T DESERVE. I’m the one who killed him, damn it. I should be levelling up.

Well…actually, the gnolls are the ones that killed him, but shut up. I made the gnolls.

One extra spell slot for levels 4 and 5, to which we’ll assign Defensive Harmony and…oh, let’s say Insect Plague.

With that out of the way, we can finally do what we came here to do; recruit Korgan. We saunter up and talk to him, and after being seated around his table, he tells us he’s going to…“Flail the bladder for a spell."

To this day, I still have no idea what the hell this is supposed to mean, but it sounds absolutely disgusting. You keep your bladder to yourself, you bearded little freak.

We agree to find his damn book, but of course we’re going to stall on this for as long as we can, because the undead in that crypt are pretty tough, and at this point in time, Vespero is not.

Going to rest for now to memorise my meagre spell selection, then it’s off to add Viconia to our sorry troupe.

Into the tavern we go, carefully avoiding the two thugs outside…and the three thugs inside. Normally I wouldn’t hesitate to show Amalas who the boss man is in these parts, but as a 5th-level mage with no spells memorised, I don’t think the battle would go too well for me right now. We’ll tear him a new one later.

That reminds me. I should really get some rest once I’m done here.

Unfortunately, to avoid the thugs, we’re going to have to take the long way around, which means bumping into Anomen. We lie through our teeth here by telling him that we’re courageous do-gooders, and then do a U-turn and speak the absolute truth when we tell him we do not want him to join us.

I don’t ever want Anomen to join me, ever again. But I have to complete his quest, so it’s going to have to happen at some point. Not now, though. I can’t handle him so soon after losing those scrolls.

We also get intercepted by Nalia and subject her to the same process. Yes, we’ll come and save your keep, but no we don’t want you with us right now. Jaheira approves.

Of course, we won’t actually be going to the keep for quite some time, since I don’t think we’re up to taking on trolls and umber hulks just yet. That, however, will not be a problem, since apparently all the hostiles overrunning the place are quite content to sit there and wait forever until you come along to massacre them. No hurry, then.

Besides, she deserves to be kept waiting, giving you that crap about there being “no time” to tell you what you’d be up against if you agreed to help her. No time? How long is it that you’re willing to follow me around before you start complaining that we need to get a move on, again? And how long is the journey to the keep? Eight hours? DO YOU THINK EIGHT HOURS MIGHT BE ENOUGH TIME FOR A BRIEF SUMMARY, AT LEAST?

Interruptions, interruptions. That’s the last of them, thankfully, so we’ve got a clear run to Korgan now. Almost there, almost there…damn it. All that and they still spotted us.

Well, we’re certainly not going to back down from this moron, so it looks like Vespero’s in for a fight. Not to worry, though. He may be devoid of spells and anything resembling prowess in combat, but I’ve still got one thing to fall back on.

Wands.

This game has a sense of humour.

Don’t get me wrong. That’s not to say I find what just happened here to be amusing. But it definitely has a sense of humour.

With Vespero’s intelligence boosted to 23, he was able to neatly and efficiently transcribe every single scroll he had in his inventory.

With two exceptions.

Stoneskin. And Haste.


I realise I seem very calm and collected about this, but understand that most of the words that I want to type here would be highly, highly inappropriate for my younger audience, should I happen to have one. With that in mind, I will have to settle for the following paragraph:

**** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** *********************************


In rather more welcome news, this process has caused Vespero to leap from level 1 to level 5, and he's well on his way to 6. Plus, he can't actually cast level 4 spells yet, so he wouldn't have been able to use Stoneskin anyway. So that's good. It's cool. I'm cool. There are other scrolls of Stoneskin in the game. No problem. I don't need to let this upset me. Deep breaths.

OK. In light of this development, we really can't afford to screw around here. We need some meatshields and we need them now, so it's back to the slums to pick up Korgan. Hopefully he won't start badgering us about his quest too soon.

On our way to get our potion, we come across two guys fighting over some girl. If their names are any indication, these are the two people who tried to murder us for a bounty, way, way back when we were in Candlekeep. Admittedly it was a feeble attempt, but it’s still quite enough for us to have no qualms whatsoever about breaking out the popcorn and watching these two kill each other.

Sadly, our entertainment is cut short, if you’ll pardon the pun. The fight literally ends in half a second, with Shank running Carbos through with a mighty blow and then throwing down his sword, turning to face us and bellowing “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED? ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?! IS THAT NOT WHY YOU ARE HERE?!”

Actually, he doesn’t do that, because his puny brain is incapable of that level of "badass". Instead, his girl complains that he got blood on her dress and he goes chasing after her, dragging his knuckles across the ground and drooling slightly. At first we sigh with disappointment, but then we remember Carbos’ dead body. Sweet, free gold.

With that pleasant little distraction over and done with, we move on and finally get our grubby mits on a Potion of Genius. As soon as we knock this sucker back, we’ll begin scribing these magical scrolls right here in the street, in plain view of everyone in the district.

Truly, the vigilance of the Cowled Wizards knows no bounds

We’re outside, and Brus very kindly takes us straight to the edge of the district, saving us a ten-second walk. What would I do without you, kid?

As always at this point, Jaheira immediately starts kvetching, demanding to know what our plan of action is and telling Vespero that he sounds like he was dropped or kicked as a child. Well, screw you, you insensitive harpy. Maybe he was. Maybe that’s exactly what happened to him, and is the reason for him being such a sociopathic loon despite being utterly convinced that he is Lawful Good. Did you ever think about that? Of course not. You’re far too busy concealing your exuberance over the convenient demise of your whipping boy.

We agree to try and be pleasant to each other, though Vespero secretly resolves to put fire ants in her bedroll as soon as he can find some.

To tbe Bridge district, whereupon Lieutenant Aegisfield informs us that there is a disgustingly sick person running around town. Vespero, of course, assumes that this man is on to him and immediately reaches for his katana to silence him.

He then remembers that he forgot how to use his katana and probably doesn’t stand much of a chance with his barely-adequate knowledge of how to handle a quarterstaff, so he lets it drop. For now. But this pig will get his, oh yes he will.

Conveniently, we can accomplish two of our objectives here. Not only is this where we can pick up a Potion of Genius, but the thief we need to catch for Galoomp is lurking only a few yards away. We go up to talk to him, and he immediately blurts out a confession without having to be subjected to even mild coercion.

Easy, perhaps, but not much fun.

We determine through dialogue that this thief, whose name is Kram, is extremely ugly. He gives us a sob story about how daddy made him this way and he can’t make any friends because of how he looks so he stole scrolls of the "Friends" spell to make people like him and blah blah blah.

There are numerous ways to solve this one, probably the most “rewarding” of which is giving him the Ring of Human Influence so that he, too, can pretend to be good at talking to people. Take it off for a second...yep, Vespero's natural charisma is still 4. To hell with that.

Our other options include simply letting him go on his way, (optionally taking the scrolls he stole first) turning him in to the guards, or killing him.

Remember how I said that if it didn’t break any quests and I didn’t have to force-attack them, I’d kill anyone? Yeah. Bye, Kram.

In Vespero’s defence, it was the only way he was going to wring any XP out of this quest. Giving him the ring is the “proper” way to complete this one, but with Vespero’s charisma as low as it is, it simply wouldn't have been worth it. You don’t get *much* experience, just more than you would by doing it another way, (i.e. more than zero) and there are plenty of other places where we can boost our reputation.

Therefore, we’re just going to have to settle for the XP we get for sticking this meat sack, a measly 500. Aegisfield, who is standing well within range, very kindly decides to aid us in our apparent murder of an innocent halfling, taking potshots at him while Jaheira clubs him to death. Man, he really must have been ugly if a dedicated and upstanding member of the city watch was willing to help us kill him.

Incidentally, Kram’s last words are, “I’m just a soul of good intentions…Lords, please don’t let me be misunderstood.”

No joke.

Normally, at this point, I’d go upstairs and buy the Glasses of Identification from the merchant upstairs, thereby saving me the trouble of having to arse around with the scrolls and/or memorising the spell. However, we’ve installed the “Identify All Items” component from BGII Tweaks, so we won’t be needing them. We will, however, purchase ourselves a gem bag for keeping all those expensive jewels that’ll come in handy in TOB.

On the subject of jewels: I find it interesting that a lot of spells in D&D (the real game) require the material component of a valuable gem, which is almost invariably consumed when you cast the spell.

For example, “True Resurrection“, a spell that allows one to bring anyone or anything back to life no matter how long its been dead or how little you may know about it, (no excuse, Jaheira) requires one to use a perfectly cut, high-quality diamond worth no less than 5000 gold pieces.

Presumably this is to impose a limitation, because you don't want people casting spells like this all over the place. However, I think they've got it backwards. Once an adventurer is at a high enough level to cast spells like that, 5000 GP is nothing. I think, instead, it would be much more restricting if they had to find a perfectly cut, high-quality diamond worth no more than a single copper coin.

After all, for a high-value diamond, you just kill a dragon and take its hoard, and hey, 5000 GP. There'd probably even be just such a diamond in there somewhere, saving you the trouble of having to go out and buy one. At that level, no problem.

If it were the other way around, you would have to embark on a great mission to systematically locate and destroy major sources of copper all over the world, thereby artificially increasing its value until it becomes rarer than perfectly cut diamonds.

And of course, once you’ve done that you'll have completely screwed up the economy. Everyone will be angry with you. Nobody gets angry with you for killing a dragon.

What was I doing? Oh yeah, Baldur’s Gate.

Yep, we’ve just spent an entire update on going upstairs and buying a bag. I begin to wonder how long you people are going to read this crap for.

You’ve got creatures with misaligned alignments. Enemies that are incapable of following you through closed doors. Dragons that will stand idly by and watch you while you place deadly traps mere inches away from their feet.

But by far, the biggest oversight on the part of the developers was the omission of the dialogue option wherein Charname punches Gaelan Bayle in the larynx, thereby ensuring that he has cooed his last coo. This action would permanently set your reputation to 20, alter your alignment to Chaotic Good and cause the Shadow Thieves to be so pleased with you that they would charter your ride to Brynnlaw free of charge.

Alas.

We go through the same old routine, asking him why we should be inclined to believe that this isn’t all a trap, to which his response is “I have no interest in setting up a trap.”

Oh, well, that’s OK, then. I suppose my suspicions have been all been allayed and I now trust you implicitly, because if this were actually a trap I’m sure you would happily tell me as much upon being questioned about it.

“Come with me and you can decide whether to enter me house.”

No, actually, I don’t think we can.

Come on. I know that if you could actually refuse to go and speak to him at this point then you’d basically be stuck, but they could have done something here to make this feel less railroaded.

Anyway, you know the drill here. More talking, more beating around the bush, “20,000 of your American GP”, shut up shut up I don’t want to talk to you anymore just let me resume playing the game OH PLEASE JUST LET ME OUT OF THIS ROOM BEFORE HE STARTS SAYING COO AGAIN.

Aaaand cutscene. Super.

Before we go journeying into the cesspit of Athkatla, we’ve got one more thing to take care of in the promenade. We’re going to talk to Galoomp the bookkeeper.

Am I the only one who thinks that “Galoomp” is onomatopoeia for swallowing? Gulping something down? Real mature, Bioware. There’s another merchant standing next to him; why not call him "Patooie"?

Anyway, you may be wondering why we want to talk to Galoomp, seeing as how he’s just a standard scroll merchant and we already bought enough scrolls earlier on to leave us all but broke. The answer? We’ve got the Quest Pack installed, which means this guy’s got a problem that he has no intention of solving himself, and he has therefore decided to stand around and wait for some rag-tag assortment of “heroes” to come along and fix it for him.

In other words, he’s got a side-quest for us.

Galoomp seems to be miserable about something, so being the nosy adventurers we are, we ask him what’s up. He informs us that someone’s been stealing his scrolls, and as such it’s been hard for him to make ends meet…because, you know, it’s not as if the money he’d make off a level 1 scroll alone would be enough for a person to live comfortably on for years.

Speaking of scrolls, we’re going to buy a second scroll case from him. They can only hold about a dozen each, and we certainly won’t be scribing every single scroll we find, so we’ll need to make room to stash the more useful ones away should we end up in a pinch later on.

Back on the subject of the quest, though, Galoomp says that, should we manage to catch the thief, our reward will be whatever scrolls he may have on him. Gee, thanks a lot, Galoomp. What exactly makes you think that he hasn’t already used them all? Cheapskate.

Asking him whom he thinks might be responsible, he mentions a “right scruffy halfling” that he’s seen skulking around the north side of the Bridge District. This is, of course, exactly where we need to go and whom we need to apprehend, since we haven’t had any hints suggesting otherwise. Nothing like a good mystery.

As a final note before we part, he tells Vespero that he is a good soul.

Ahaha.

Onward to the slums.

I’d forgotten how much it sucks to buy stuff without the full reputation discount. We did speak to the guard outside the tent letting him know that we’d solved the problem in there to get a rep boost of 1, so I think we’re getting a small one. Nevertheless, those scrolls just about cleaned me out.

Later on, when I have more gold than I will ever need, I will look back on this moment and laugh, but right now I am not best pleased.

We haven’t spent so much that we’ve screwed ourselves out of a place to sleep for the night, however, so it’s off to the Mithrest to memorise and cast Find Familiar.

At this juncture, I find myself wishing that I’d done the honest thing and set Vespero’s alignment to Chaotic Evil. Starting reputation be damned; he should have a Quasit familiar, not one of these nauseatingly cute little pseudo-dragons.

“Ooh! Do you have an apple, master? Apples are so good. And pie. I like pie too, master. Can we play a game, master? You’re so good to me, master. I wub you soooo much.”

Christ. It’d almost be worth waiting until the Hell trials so that I can turn evil first.

We rest again after this, both to replace Find Familiar with Shield, and because it’s safer to travel during daylight hours. That, and I don’t think the potion lady we’ll be looking for comes out at night; which is odd, because her name is Mrs. Cragmoon and she an old woman who calls you “dear” and she sells a variety of alchemical concoctions. She’s so obviously a witch it isn’t funny. She weighs less than a duck. She turned me into a newt. You wouldn’t think she’d balk at the notion of a moonlit evening, and nobody *else* disappears at night. She’s obviously hiding something.

Not that we care, of course. All we want is her smart juice.

In any event, with my characters kicking back for now at the Mithrest, I think it’s about time that I took a break myself. Tomorrow we leave the Promenade and commence Chapter 2 proper.

This is Lorph Halys, and you’ve been reading Baldur’s Gate: The Zero Reload Saga. Thank you, and goodnight.

It is done. Vespero has taken his first steps on the path of wizardry, while simultaneously forgetting every single aspect of his extensive combat training for no good reason, causing him to become so utterly clumsy and inept that he literally dropped his katana on the ground.

As tempting as it is to immediately scribe this huge pile of scrolls we’ve amassed to our spell book, not least because the experience from that alone will be enough to bump Vespero up by a few levels, I’m not taking any chances here. Not even an intelligence of 19 is enough to scribe scrolls with a 100% success rate, and since I can’t reload if I fudge one and I have no intention of being a pansy and setting the difficulty to anything lower than Core Rules, these are staying right where they are until I can pick up a Potion of Genius.

Here, of course, I reach a bit of a dilemma. I want to get Vespero’s Kensai class active again ASAP so that he can stop cowering in the corner during fights and get back to killing things, so it would make sense not to amass any more NPCs right now. That way I can run around town doing easy, Fed-Ex quests that don’t require any combat, amsssing more wealth, buying more scrolls and maximising my XP.

On the other hand, I can’t avoid fights entirely. There are quite a few instances of you getting ambushed, and if I haven’t recruited anyone else then Jaheira would basically have to handle these all by herself. I don’t think Vespero would be much help with Find Familiar, Shield and an intimidating leer.

I think, therefore, that it’d be safer to take the middle ground. I’ll pick up a few more important scrolls (Breach and such) to round out the ones I already have, then get a Potion of Genius from the Bridge District. Once I’ve squeezed the XP out of the scrolls, I’ll go and find a couple of NPCs (probably Korgan and Viconia) just to make sure I survive the unavoidable encounters.

Returning to the present, however, we’re still in the tent, and the Ring of Human Influence is ours.

I must confess that I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Aerie. She’s not a particularly strong character, but I like her versatility. It’s just nice to have a single character on-hand that can, herself, cast almost any spell you’re ever likely to need on demand. Alas, she doesn’t make the cut, and since she doesn't have any side-quests to complete, (unless you count the one we just did) we leave her here with her ass of an uncle.

Now that we can pretend to be good at interacting with people, we head to Lady Yuth in Wal-Mart to make some purchases, the first of which is a scroll case. Since scrolls constituted about 80% of our occupied inventory space, our bursting backpack problem has now been solved.

You’ve got to love that. The game doesn’t care what you’ve got as long as you ain’t got more than 16 things. Be it sixteen scrolls or sixteen suits of full plate armour, the unspoken conversation goes thus:

“Have you got more than sixteen?”

“Nope.”

“Then you can carry ‘em. It‘s cool.”

This place is infuriating. You know the damn werewolves aren’t real and you know what will happen if you attack them, so you don‘t. Nevertheless, they insist on being obstinate and chasing you everywhere, taking swings at you until you’ve beaten Kalah and escaped. They’re like one of those stubborn, obnoxious children that follows you around and sings “The song that never ends” incessantly, even though you’ve explicitly told them that they’re not annoying you and you’re just going about your business and ignoring them and they’re not getting to you in any way and you’re not going to rise to their provocations because that's exactly what they want you to do so you're just going to be the better man and DEAR GOD WILL YOU SHUT UP WILL YOU WILL YOU JUST SHUT UP SHUT UP AND DIE.

As for the Shadows, these creatures are not a threat unless they attack in swarms or are paired with other enemies. As they are, they just can’t inflict enough damage to really pose a problem, and the strength drain is only a minor annoyance. Much as I’m sure you’d love to hear me scream and rant that I accidentally sold all my enchanted weapons, and as such am going to have to dispatch them using only a Wand of Missiles and a Potion of Firebreath, it just didn’t go down that way.

Up pops the genie again, and then we’re off to kill a Kalah.

I have to admit, I really want to just hang back for a while until Kalah kills Quayle here. Why, you ask?

Have you played the first game? Quayle’s an ass. What’s more, he’s a useless ass. I can deal with asses if they make up for being asses by also being worthwhile party members, (Edwin) but Quayle is probably the most useless NPC in Baldur’s Gate that isn’t named Garrick, which in no way compensates for assness.

Just to make it worse, you can’t even get him until the game’s almost over since he’s in Baldur’s Gate, (the city) and you assume he’s going to be awesome since you’ve had to wait so long to come across him, but he isn’t. None of them are. All the NPCs in Baldur’s Gate suck.

I quickly find, however, that I do not have the patience, probably because I’m already sick of hearing phantom werewolves snarling in my ear at this point, so I just go ahead and kill him. Again, no strategy here since he doesn’t even bother putting up a fight.

Hark! What’s that I hear? Did Vespero just level up? You bet your Quayle he did. Since we imported him, that places him firmly at level 9, and you know what that means, folks.

It’s time to d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-dual.

Whoops, almost forgot to talk to the boy outside the tent.

Does anyone else see something wrong with this picture? This kid’s outside crying because his mother went in to see the circus and hasn’t come out. What kind of godawful parenting is that? Don’t you think it would have been a good idea to, I don’t know, TAKE YOUR SON IN WITH YOU RATHER THAN LEAVING HIM OUT THERE ON THE STREET BY HIMSELF?

I want to tell the child that his mother is a horrible person and he’s better off without her, but sadly, no such dialogue option exists, so we’re just going to have to settle for agreeing to track the errant parent down.

Inside: Genie, riddle, and I know by now that the right answer is option 3 without even having to look at it. Once I answer, Jaheira levels up in Druid again, giving her a 5th level spell. Hurrah. We’ll put Iron Skins in there, because with the amount of HP she ended up with, she’s pretty darned fragile.

Say hello to Aerie! We’re not going to be taking her with us, but we’ll go ahead and free her anyway for the XP, and because she’ll probably cry if we don’t.

Mostly for the XP.

On our way to merrily butcher some “peasants“, we come across the lost boy’s mother, transformed by insidious illusion magic, and of course we immediately freak out and kill her dead because hey, giant spider.

Or maybe not. After a bit of a chat she tells us that her son “Didn’t come into the tent with her.” Yeah right, lady. I believe that your young and innocent and wide-eyed little boy decided to wait outside in the promenade, lonely and bored, while you came in here and enjoyed a circus act. You deserve everything that has happened to you and I hope someone flushes you down a bathtub.

No strategy at all involved with the peasants; we just waltz right on up and murder them both without taking a scratch. A few seconds later, Aerie is free, and we're moving right along to the next room after taking the opportunity to ogle the naked lady here.

In-character, I mean. Vespero is ogling the naked lady. I'm not. No siree.

Cutscene! And not a single one of those amateurish Shadow Thieves even attempts to backstab the unprotected spellcaster standing in plain sight. Tsk tsk, gentlemen.

“So, godchild, you have escaped. You are more resourceful than I had thought.”

Really? Is that a fact? You didn’t think I was going to escape when you left all manner of weapons, armour, potions, scrolls and magical trinkets just lying everywhere around your prison, free for the taking, and the most troublesome resistance I encountered consisted entirely of outside forces whose presence you had no personal hand in?

Exactly how unresourceful did you think I was?

You know, for the longest time, I didn’t realise that when the people in this game called you “godchild”, they meant it literally, as in “The child of a god.” Until this dawned on me I was seriously bewildered. Irenicus is my godfather? The solar in TOB is my godmother? Am I to assume that they were at the christening, or what?

Imoen and Irenicus have their little back-and-forth while I’m forced to stand there like an idiot, and then she goes and sets up a major plot point by blasting him with a Magic Missile. Yeah, Imoen. Cast a weak, level 1 spell at the all-powerful wizard that effortlessly captured us and has just blown a whole bunch of dudes to pieces right before our eyes. That’ll show him.

And now here come the Cowled Wizards the save the day.

And they do save the day, when you think about it. They may be a bunch of corrupt, arrogant jerks, but if they hadn’t intervened here then Irenicus would have just stomped you flat and thrown you straight back into your cage. When you look at it a certain way, you kind of owe them one.

But when you look at it another way, they proceed to capture your best friend and throw her into a magical prison to slowly go insane and die, just for casting a single, puny little spell in self-defence and therefore breaking a law that she wasn’t even aware of, so you also kind of don’t.

Seriously. You’ve got a megalomaniacal magical murderer here that resisted arrest and killed four of you in the process, as well a destroying a good chunk of the promenade and causing a big disturbance, and then you’ve got some kid who cast Magic Missile once, in the hopes of stopping the psycho mage, I might add…and they both get the same sentence. Nice justice system there, guys.

Anyway, Irenicus spends some more time demonstrating his unhealthy obsession with Power Word: Kill, and one brief conversation later, Yoshimo has levelled up and we are once again free to move about the world as we wish.

Or not, because we still have one more cutscene to endure before we can go anywhere but the slums.

Sigh.

I’m hearing a strange, groaning noise. I wonder what that could be?

Oh, right. It’s the seams of my inventory. Before we go anywhere, I think we’d better palm some of this stuff off. But before we do *that*, we’re going to need to do two things:

1. Improve Vespero’s abysmal Charisma in order to get better prices.
2. Artificially raise our standing in the eyes of the general public in order to get even better prices.

In less verbose terms, we want to get the Ring of Human Influence and max out our reputation before we go a-bartering, and by an extraordinary stroke of luck, I happen to know just where we can go to make a start on both tasks.

Unfortunately, we have a bit of a problem. We want to remove Yoshimo from the party here because we won’t be using him through the whole game (duh) and so he’s just going to suck up XP. Yes, yes, I know that the last time I said this it didn’t end well for me, but I’m certain that there aren’t going to be any traps I can’t avoid until I can pick up Jan this time, and the karma factor isn’t going to kick in since we’re basically just parting company in a city with which he is familiar, rather than abandoning him in a dangerous dungeon.

Back on topic, though, if we kick Yoshimo out now then our shortage of inventory space is really going to go critical. We literally will not be able to carry any more stuff, not even if we squeeze as much as we can into equipment slots. So, anathema though it may be to my packrat nature, we’re going to have to sell a few items at a sub-optimal price. Oh the trials I must endure.

With sufficient space made, we send Yoshimo on his way and tell him we’ll meet him later at the Copper Coronet, which we’ve never been to before and don’t know about yet, and it’s onwards into the tent after convincing the guard that we can help. We then surreptitiously flip him off as we enter for daring to stand in our way. Stupid guard.

BOY I SURE DO LOVE FIGHTING GOBLINS. FIGHTING GOBLINS SURE IS FUN AND SURE DOES NOT EVER GET TIRESOME, SURE ENOUGH.

Yoshimo really knows how to make a sneak attack count at times when he really doesn't need to. I managed to lure one of the archers into chasing after us alone, and Yoshi promptly splattered it all over the room with a 53-point backstab. Wasn't even a critical. Thanks, Yoshimo, but if you could save that kind of performance for enemies that are actually dangerous, that would be just great.

You know, something's just occurred to me. Don't composite longbows require a strength of 18 to wield? Yes. They do. So how is it that these wimpy goblins are able to use them, but the big, strapping hunk of dark ranger meat that is Valygar cannot?

Another group of Duergar beyond the goblins, which were easy to deal with. I had Jaheira shoot an Entangle spell into the room , which ensnared everyone except the mage…who stupidly came charging straight down the corridor into a flurry of flashing katana death. Stayed out of range of the archers to snipe the axe-wielder, had Yoshimo backstab what was left over.

Only loot of any real interest in here is more healing potions and the Girdle of Bluntness, which again is going to Vespero. It's not going to help a lot given that not many enemies in the game use blunt weapons, and those that to don't tend to be the most fearsome melee combatants, but it'll do until something more useful comes along.

To Frennedan's room!

Now, I haven't forgotten everything about this place, thankfully. I know full well that this guy is a doppelganger and will turn on you at an inconvenient moment should you decide to let him accompany you out, so we will not be doing that.

I decided not to abuse my advance knowledge overmuch in this particular instance, however. I went to the trouble of following the conversation path that causes him to transform from an old, fat guy to a little kid right before your eyes. Vespero, therefore, could feasibly realise what Frennedan really was, and thus it wouldn't be in any way be unreasonable or unexpected for him to flip the hell out immediately after opening the door and cut some innocent prisoner into pieces like I just had him do.

Why was Irenicus keeping a doppelganger around? I don't know. I would theorise that it was to force it to transform into a likeness of his ex, but…ugh. That's just gross. It might have shape-shifted, but you'd still know exactly what the thing you're trying to get it up for really looks like.

Moreover, why does the doppelganger feel the need to attack you after you let it out? This is a classic example of "Stupid Evil." It doesn't stand to gain anything by murdering you, and you've just released it from a prison and are going to lead it to freedom, probably acting as a convenient shield against any hostiles it should encounter along the way. It could have just left you alone, got out of here and lived a happy life screwing with people's heads and then killing them, (because apparently that's all doppelgangers like to do) but no. Had to go and push its luck.

A minute or two spent looting the various magical items and scrolls that Irenicus evidently deemed suitable to be left inside an occupied prison cell, and we're now on the home stretch. Just a few more baddies to kill and then we'll finally be out of this place.

Here we are about to enter into what will prove to be the last battle in this godforsaken dungeon.

You know what’s fun about this one? The thieves that are hidden in here don’t take any action until the one that's visible speaks to you and the conversation ends. If you hide and backstab this one well enough then he’ll never get the chance to start his dialogue, and there’ll be a delay of a few seconds before the others start attacking you; presumably time they spend going “Wait, what the hell just happened there?”

Think about how terrifying that would be. I mean, really. Put yourself in the shoes of an enemy for a moment. You’re just standing around, minding your own business, and then all of a sudden you hear a quiet *shnk* and the guy next to you, a guy that you may well have known for years and been good pals with, EXPLODES VIOLENTLY in a shower of body parts and gore, drenching you with blood and other unsavoury bodily fluids.

That’s exactly the sort of experience that lands a person in a padded cell.

Of course, we’re heroes and we don’t want anyone to have to live with a traumatic memory like that, so we do the merciful thing and slaughter them all.

And that’s it. With no more enemies to deal with and no more traps to be disarmed, we make a beeline for the exit, and sweet, sweet freedom. It’s all gravy from here, ladies and gentlemen.

A strange thing happened when I loaded the game up.

I had made my last save for the night in the mephit portal room. A few seconds after the screen faded into view, four mephits appeared, one in front of each portal…and then half a second later and through no doing of my own, they all simultaneously dropped dead.

I’ve never seen this bug before, but that isn’t saying much given that I haven’t been here in two years.

In other news, Jaheira levelled up again, this time in Fighter. This is much less exciting, because Fighter level-ups tend to be synonymous with “crushing disappointment”.

We’re all familiar with it. You’ve been grinding through the game for what seems like, and probably actually has been hours, slaughtering monsters left and right and harvesting that sweet, sweet Quest XP wherever you can find it…and then, just when you’re about to give up hope, you hear it. The soft, soothing, ethereal, sparkly little noise that lets you know that someone in your party is about to become just a little bit more awesome. And after all that, what you get when you click the button is this:

“Breath saving throw reduced by 1.

Additional hit points gained: 2.”

Which, incidentally, is precisely what I just got here. God damn it, Jaheira.

We’re beginning to run out of inventory space as well. I’ve had to start cramming things that I’m not going to be using down here into our quick slots in order to make room, as well as wearing the odd item of jewellery I’ve picked up. The completely non-magical jewellery that confers no bonuses whatsoever. Such indignity.

I had Yoshimo hide and snipe the escaped clone while she was fighting the assassin, then back off once she turned hostile to hide again. Getting ready for a backstab here, but…damn it. As soon as he’s within sight she casts Detect Invisibility.

Now, this is something I’ve always hated the game doing. If you’ve got a character concealed by any means, be it invisibility or stealth, and you get within range of someone who has any kind of illusion dispelling magic memorised, they will immediately start using that magic as soon as they “see” you, even if they aren’t initially hostile.

But that’s just it. They shouldn’t be able to see you, so how would they know to cast it? Are we supposed to believe that every time this happens, it’s mere coincidence? That all these enemy spellcasters just happen to unerringly think “Hmm, maybe I’ll check and see if there are any invisible people running around” whenever you’re walking by?

Try it yourself. Go into the Adventurer Mart while invisible. I guarantee that Ribald will cast True Sight as soon as you get inside.

This is one of the (admittedly few) examples of the AI “cheating” in this game. There isn’t even much point to it, because if you’ve got a thief skulking around and someone suddenly starts casting a spell for no apparent reason, you know that your cover’s about to get blown and you should retreat until the spell’s been cast/wears off.

To be fair, in this particular instance, the woman’s just had several arrows plunked into her tender flesh seemingly out of nowhere, so she did have ample reason to suspect that someone might have been trying to get the drop on her. That doesn’t excuse all the other times this happens, though.

But my, this is a lot of complaining for an enemy that didn’t give the party any hassle. After Yoshimo quadruple backstabs her for (sigh) 33 points of damage, we pilfer the key from her poorly cloned corpse and move on.

for (i =1, i < 5, i++)
{ Charge in
Kill nearest mephit portal
Retreat
Heal }

Yeah, I just narrated my strategy for beating a room in a D&D-based CRPG using Java pseudo-code. Dear god a need a woman in my life. Doesn't what I just did here basically amount to spawn camping? Well, anyway. With the mephits and their portals "dead", our attention is now drawn to the sight of Khalid’s corpse. Jaheira gets her emo on, blah blah yadda yadda no we can’t raise him because the spells would drain the caster. Moving on, we go to loot the… Wait a minute. We can’t raise Khalid because the spell would drain the caster? Since when does Jaheira say that? I could have sworn that what she said if you asked her about this was that raising Khalid would have been outright impossible because his body’s too damaged…which makes sense, because that can actually happen to your own party members if they take enough damage to destroy them completely.

We can’t raise him because the spells drain the caster? What kind of lame reason is that? Above and beyond everything else, they don’t drain the caster. If I’d imported a cleric instead of a fighter, I could cast Raise Dead right now and the only “drain” it would inflict on me is the removal of Raise Dead from my list of memorised spells for the day.

I think you’re glad he’s dead because it means you’re now free to get into Vespero’s pants without having to worry about scaring him off with emotional baggage, and now that he’s inquired about the possibility of bringing your poor, dead husband back to life you’re just pulling half-baked excuses out of your nature-loving backside so that it won’t happen. You are one callous whore, Jaheira.

Of course, Vespero’s probably going to let you get into his pants anyway, but that doesn’t make you any less of a callous whore.

I’m almost certain that I’m not just remembering this conversation incorrectly, so I can only assume that this change was introduced by one of the mods I installed. But if someone went to the trouble of altering the script here, why? What was wrong with how it was? It was a perfectly acceptable justification. If you really wanted to change it, why not have Jaheira tell it like it is? “We can’t raise him because the developers were too lazy to write him into the game, and nobody would have wanted the stuttering fool even if they hadn‘t been.” That works. I like it. Khalid sucked.

Had Yoshimo backstab one of the air mephits in here that was floating around all on its own, quadrupling the damage…for 13 points of damage. How the hell does that work? He inflicted 3.25 points of damage?

Whatever. Dodgy mathematics aside, come on Yoshimo. 13 points of damage after it got QUADRUPLED for you? And you there with a strength of 17? That’s pitiful, my friend. You’re obviously not very good with that katana of yours. I think you should let me have it.

I’m not kidding. Gimme the sword.

When I was done coveting Yoshi’s shinies, I moved on to the big group of mephits in the centre of the area. They weren’t a problem. I had Yoshimo hide in shadows and run back and forth, sniping them from as far away as possible. This softened them up nicely, and when they actually caught on to what was happening and charged us, they did so individually or in groups of two, so they were much easier to deal with. Yoshi took a few scrapes from their ranged attacks, but nothing Jaheira couldn’t patch up with tender, loving, smoking hot druid care.

Sidenote: I just realised that Yoshimo ended up with more hit points than Jaheira. 20 more points, to be exact. That’s just sad.

We go forth to talk to the imprisoned genie (or djinn or whatever you want to call it. The game seems to use these terms interchangeably as and when it pleases.) Boy, Irenicus sure does love his genies. Those genies with their powerful, sculpted, muscular bodies (well, torsos) and their perfect, bronzed skin and their penchant for not wearing any shirts. Draw your own conclusions here.

We have to talk to him now, of course, because if we don’t do that then we won’t know to ask those dryads about the flask we’re supposed to retrieve to free him, and so we won’t be able to get it from them because that would break the flow of the game.

But of course it has no problem letting you know that some random pile of acorns you come across belong to a group of dryads that you are, at that point, completely unaware of the existence of, proving that the game is perfectly willing to provide you with inexplicable foreknowledge as long as it doesn’t make things any more convenient for you.

Backtracking to the dryads because the game said so, and one painless exchange later, we find ourselves a +2 greatsword richer. Once again, I fear, a whole lot of trouble for an item that’s never going to get used.

Incidentally, I’ve heard tell that if you import a character from BG1, you can randomly get other magical items that came from the first game instead of the Sword of Chaos, like the +2 long sword that does cold damage. I, personally, have never seen this happen; does anyone else have any experience with the matter?

We could pretend that Vespero killed Drizzt in the first game and that the “item” the genie had was actually his Defender +5 scimitar.

It’d be great.

What? Magical scimitars are friggin’ hard to come by in this game, you know.

On the bright side, the XP we got from this little jaunt was enough to push us to our first level-up. Let’s all have a big hand for Jaheira, who has just reached her eighth level in Druid. We’ll use that extra 4th level spell slot she just received to memorize Negative Plane Protection, which will be a big help against the vampire that we're going to have to deal with later on.

Alright. That’s it for this floor. We’ve picked it clean of all its valuables, and everything is dead that was worth causing the death of.

Back to floor 2, and one step closer to sweet release.

Roight. We now have ourselves a thief, and not before time. I never thought I'd be so happy to see someone that I know for a fact is a treacherous spy in league with my nemesis.

Yeah yeah, spoilers. The warning's right there in the header. Shut up.

Naturally, before we plough on ahead here, we're heading straight back to the first floor to open all those containers we missed.

None of the stuff we get here is particularly useful right now, with the exception of the excellent Helm of Balduran. Jaheira gets this, of course, because she's the only one who can wear it, but I do so wish I could give it to Vespero. Not so much for the bonuses, but because I just like the thought of him wearing that waistcoat/skirt combo that all unarmoured male fighters get stuck with...and a horned helmet to round it off.

Fearsome.

More backtracking, more containers, more traps...there's a painting in the room with the Jailkeeper Golem that has been locked and containes a magical dagger and three healing potions. How does one lock a painting, exactly? More importantly, how do you squeeze three glass bottles into it?

On the way back I remembered that you can examine those pools in the crystal cavern, and since at this point I'd completely forgotten what it was they said, I decided to check them out. Once again, a bunch of mysterious waffle that is completely unhelpful and has no bearing on or pertinence to anything else in the game.

I hate this dungeon.

Moving right along, we come back to Ilyich's recently vacated premises, and this time we move on ahead, disarming the trap in the corridor and marching forth to kill ourselves a cambion.

Now, if you've played the first Baldur's Gate with its expansion, Tales of the Sword Coast, you'll probably have been through Durlag's Tower at some point. If you've done that, you'll probably know that the sprite used for the cambion here is the same one used for the Demon Knight that you fight at the end of the aforementioned tower, and you'll also know that said Demon Knight was pretty badass.

As such, the first time I came across this guy I was convinced that he was going to utterly ruin my day, because there I was mercilessly stripped of all my awesome magical gear from the first game and having to face some killer boss. As it turned out, of course, he's just as much of a pushover as everything else is down here once you switch his safety bubble off. One thorough chunking later and we've got ourselves a magical bastard sword that we're never going to use. Yay.

On we go to the air motel.

Curses, curses, curses. It really has been too long since I’ve been through this dungeon.

I completely forgot that in order to get to the next level, which is where I can pick up Yoshimo, I need the portal key, and that the portal key resides in a room filled with hideous traps that I can’t disarm now because I sent Imoen away like an idiot arrrrgh.

The paranoia kicked in as soon as I made this realisation. I made damn sure to rest again and have Vespero at full health. I would have sent Jaheira in, but she’s got literally half as many hit points as Vespero does, and if she dies here then I’ve basically failed in what I set out to do anyway.

With his cache of healing potions at the ready, Vespero carefully sidled into the room. He managed to avoid the trap that I’m (fairly) sure is placed right in front of the door by walking right around the edge of the room, but of course the one on the chest that held the all-important key was going to strike him no matter what.

After a moment spent gritting my teeth, sweating furiously and steeling myself, I clicked and OH GOD POISON IT WAS A POISON TRAP SLOWLY DRAINING MY LIFE OH GOD DOES JAHEIRA HAVE SLOW POISON MEMORISED NO SHE DOES NOT OH DEAR SWEET CHRIST MY HIT POINTS ARE STILL DROPPING AND I CAN’T STOP IT AND I ABSOLUTELY REFUSE TO PERISH IN THE FIRST LEVEL OF IRENICUS’ DUNGEON TO A TRAP OF ALL THINGS AND oh wait I can just rest. Phew.

I won’t lie, though. I was genuinely worried there for a minute. I suppose this is my karmic retribution for sending Imoen away by herself to escape from the lair of a crazed, evil sorcerer.

Fine, game, you’ve made your point. I’ll take her with me in Spellhold. Happy? Good. Don’t do that to me again.

Alright. That episode aside, everything’s going just fine. Poked Jaheira’s head into the corridor to lure out that fancy, jumped-up goblin archer with the poisoned arrows and dispatched him without a hitch after he chased us through the doorway and blundered into melee range like the foolish little goblin he was. Also managed to evade the floor traps in the lounge room (repeatedly) no problem.

By the next post I will have added Yoshimo to the party, and then maybe my hands will stop shaking.

You know you’re having a bad day when you’re overjoyed to find a heavy lump of wood.

Yes, we got Jaheira a club. Just like a druid to spec themselves for what is possibly the most useless weapon group in the entire game.

By extension, we’ve also dealt with Ilyich and his cronies. They didn’t cause any trouble, not that this should come as much of a surprise to anyone. After a few swings and a swift chunking of the mage, about half of them broke and started running, including Ilyich himself. They didn’t get far, of course, partially because the CPU’s path-finding doesn’t have enemies “flee” when their morale fails so much as it makes them run around like beheaded poultry, and partially because Vespero was after them like a shot, grinning madly and screaming, “LITTLE PIGS! LITTLE PIIIIIGS!”

That’s what I envisioned him doing, anyway.

You’ve also got to love the way all the Duergar shout “By Moradin’s hammer!” over and over again while they’re fighting.

Because, you know, Duergar totally worship Moradin.

God, I’m such a nerd.

So, now we’ve got some acorns and a snazzy set of chain mail; going to Jaheira of course, because armour is for pansies. It’s interesting to note that the description for the acorns tells you that they belong to the dryads, even if you haven’t actually spoken to the dryads yet. Obviously I wasn’t supposed to come to this room first. Well, screw you developers. I defy thee.

We won’t be progressing any further down this path for now since it’s trapped. Got to pick up the ferner first, so it’s off to kill Mr. Otyugh and contract hideous, debilitating diseases that mysteriously vanish in a matter of hours.



Or not, because it didn’t actually manage to hit anyone. Haaaah.

We pick up the Wand of Frost key, trying to avoid thinking too much about where exactly on this disgusting, filth-ridden freak of nature’s carcass that such a thing might have been kept, then backtrack slightly to the corridor the Sewage Golem uses to slay a few more goblins. No archers this time, so they’re about as much threat as a beached haddock.

Since we don’t want Yoshimo hogging any undeserved experience, and because it’s just easier in the long run, I went ahead and killed the clay golem guardians while they were still inactive, rather than tripping the alarm and waiting for them to chase me down. A couple of hits a piece does the job, but I had Jaheira Barkskin me in advance just in case.

Spoke to Rielev and took his power cells, though after having gone through this same process time and time again, I don’t know why I bother. You can go back and plug them in to the other jars and all you get is a bunch of anguished, gibbered nonsense that isn’t helpful at all and would probably only make sense after your second or third time through the game. Not even a sliver of XP. It’s shameful.

Ditching those, I go back and activate the Sewage golem…god, but the workmanship on these things is appalling. First you’ve got a jail keeper golem that is incapable of taking any action whatsoever to impede escaping prisoners, then you’ve got two guardian golems that one of the goblins could probably take down if they put their mind to it, and then you’ve got another golem that CAN’T SEE. How much trouble could it possibly have been to roll the poor thing a couple of eyeballs?

How is it even supposed to perform its duties if it can’t see what it’s doing? How do you know it isn’t going to get the wrong room and bust in on you at an inopportune moment, like, say, while you’re trying to recreate the special feelings brought on by your ex-girlfriend's boobs with a dryad prostitute? Do you think you will be able to accomplish anything on that front while there’s a poor, blind golem that doesn't know any better grabbing your ankle and trying to scrub you up all nice?

Friggin’ sloppy wizards.

As an aside, Clay Golems are made of clay. Stone Golems are made of stone. Iron Golems are made of iron. Does that mean the Sewage Golem is...

Eww.

ANYWAY, we’ll send it on its way, but we won’t be following it just yet. We got ourselves some negro dwarves to lynch. Also, it smells probably funny and we don't want to get any closer than we have to.

Going to rest for now and have Jaheira memorise some decent spells, just to be on the safe side.

Just dispatched my first wave of goblins. I had Jaheira charge the archers because they’re the only ones that ever manage to hit anything, and Vespero stood back for a bit and then rushed in to deal with the axe-wielders.

Yeah, that’s right. Vespero uses women as shields. You want to make something of it? Well, there’s Jaheira. Take it up with her.

Of course I swipe the arrows, because what you can take from the goblins in this dungeon alone is enough to last you for about half the game. Everything else except the odd gem gets left behind, however, because I can’t be bothered playing inventory management long enough to haul it all out and sell it.

Which I realise is odd, now that I’m writing about it and looking at my own actions. Composite long bows are worth a fair bit more than the puny, low-quality gems you get from the goblins (Sunstones and whatnot)…so why is it that when an enemy drops gems I always go to the trouble of lifting those, but not any of the non-magical equipment they have on them that’d probably turn out to be more valuable? The world may never know.

I don’t want to set off the trapped container and none of the others have anything worthwhile, so for the Peculiar Parlour of Persons Pickled, I just kill off the enemies inside for now…and one radiant mephit later we’ve got Jaheira a scimitar and shield.

Now this has always confused me. Who came up with the druid weapon restrictions and what exactly were they thinking? Spears, quarterstaffs and clubs…those I can understand, because those would all qualify as “natural” weapons. Why are scimitars acceptable? And what is it about a scimitar that makes it more acceptable than any other kind of sword? The fact that it’s curvy?

Well, katanas are curvy too. Druids should be allowed to use katanas.

But we won’t harp on about the AD&D system too much since it is not unlike kicking a sick puppy; far too easy. I do not, however, make any promises that the restrictions on Cleric weapon proficiencies won’t be taking a pounding too once I actually get a Cleric in the party.

We did not get killed by the lightning mephit.

See? Didn't I tell you we wouldn't? Let it be known that I deliver.

God, all those weapons lying around and not a thing for Jaheira. You'd think you could make an impromptu club by hacking off a table leg or something, but no. She's proficient with a quarterstaff, at least, so we'll let her have that.

Resting isn't worth the bother right now, so we'll just fill up her spare spell slots (hur hur hur) and move on for the time being.

You know, I'd completely forgotten about the Jailkeeper Golem being in here. I've walked by it so many times in the past and it's so utterly inconsequential and useless that it just became another part of the room, like an item of furniture.

Of course, an item of furniture is basically what it amounts to.

Think about it for a second. The golem doesn't attack when it sees you escape. It doesn't attack when you take all the items in the room. It doesn't attack when you say, to its face, "I'm a prisoner and I've escaped and I'm leaving and you can't stop me." It doesn't even attack when you attack it, a trait that I do not think is shared by any other creature in the game.

In light of this, what we can surmise from the "conversation" we have with this golem is that this its sole purpose is to let prisoners out of their cages. Presumably, then, we are to take it that Irenicus went to all the trouble of creating a huge, magically animated, vaguely man-shaped lump of baked clay just because he couldn't be bothered to open doors.

I'm tempted to call him a lazy schmuck, but it's not exactly laziness when your attempt to cut corners probably required more effort overall than doing things the normal way, is it?

Moving on, we come to Mr. Random Genie.

You know, for all the things that the Unfinished Business mod does, I'd always hoped that it'd eventually go towards explaining just what the hell this guy is doing here. He mentions being "interested in your progress" and he's all needlessly cryptic and stuff, which I had hitherto considered sure-fire signs of an irritating recurring character, (I'm looking at you, Elminster) but after this encounter you never see him again, and the advice that he gives you if you play along with him isn't even remotely helpful. What's the point?

Anyway, he gives me his question and Vespero answers that, in a situation where he can press a button and sacrifice himself for a friend or not press a button and have a shot at staying alive, he will press the button. Not necessarily because he's inclined to make a noble sacrifice, but because in a situation like the one the genie puts forth, your chances of surviving are basically zero anyway, so your choice basically consists of dying while looking all tough and heroic or dying looking like a craven coward. With a Charisma of 4, you take any opportunity you can get to make yourself look good.

Ataqah does his summoning thing and up pops the Ogre Mage, which lasts all of three seconds against Vespero's furious slashing.

Man, remember in BG1 when Ogre Mages were dangerous and capable opponents?

Well, sorry folks. It’s over. The lightning mephit in the first room killed me.

Nah, I’m just kidding.

But MAYBE IT DID. You’ll never know.


So, here we are back in Chateau Irenicus.

I must admit, it’s been a long, long time since I’ve properly gone through this place. For at least the last two years or so, I’ve used the Dungeon-Be-Gone mod in almost all of my playthroughs and allowed Jasper to take me straight to the exit. Into the fresh air. Into an enjoyable playing experience, where Imoen doesn’t interrupt me every five seconds to talk about Candlekeep and how her head hurts.

You’d think that after two years of having never gone through it, it might just have regained its spark and become interesting again. But no. You’d be wrong. It hasn’t. I don’t know what it is about it, or why this doesn’t seem to apply to any other area in the game, but this dungeon continues to bore the living hell out of me, and if I ever see it again it'll be a thousand years too soon.

Nevertheless, it has to be done. I said 100% completion, and by thunder I’m sticking to it. It’s for the Interwebs.

Back to the game. We’re going to want to get Vespero levelled up as quickly as possible until he’s properly dualled, because that will increase his survivability tenfold. Naturally, this means squeezing every last drop of XP out of the game until he’s got his levels in Mage and is active as a Kensai again.

Therefore, for the sake of efficiency, Imoen’s getting the boot. Sorry, kid, but I know full well by now that you’re just going to suck up experience points that rightfully belong to Charname and let them go to waste. Besides, this whole ordeal will be a lot more tolerable without your constant nagging about death, thank you very much. See you outside and don't get yourself killed, because god forbid you break the plot and foil the evil villain's scheme.

You know, that was really a dick move on behalf of the developers. Most newcomers to the game aren't going to be starting out as a mage, so they'll probably be letting Imoen scribe all the scrolls they find. And then suddenly, oops, she's gone for the next two chapters and when you get her back she'll have forgotten everything, ha ha we got you good you sucker. Screw you.

We also won’t bother recruiting Minsc at this point. His quest certainly isn’t going to trigger down here and he won’t be one of the final party members, so again, he’s just going to suck up XP for now. He and his furry friend can meet up with us at the Copper Coronet later.

I do say “us”, because we’re going to need to take Jaheira along for reasons I’ve already explained; that, and I’m pretty sure that if you refuse to let her join right now, you don’t ever see her again, and we can’t be doing with that when there are side-quests to be had.

And nookie. Don’t forget the hot druid nookie.

Obviously, with Imoen gone and me devoid of thieving skills, we’re going to have to leave all the traps and locks for now until we can pick up Yoshimo. Experience harvesting is all well and good, but I still want my lewt. Hopefully the XP from disarming said traps will compensate for what he leeches off.

With the party details worked out, let’s grab a portion that huge stash of equipment that’s conveniently lying around in the next room for absolutely no good reason other than to aid in the escape of any freed prisoners, and then we shall venture forth.

And we won’t get killed by the lightning mephit. No sir.

We're going to start Vespero off with his proficiency points in Katana and Two-Weapon Fighting, for dual-wielding Celestial Fury (because it rocks) and Dak'kon's Zerth Blade (for the extra spells and AC).

It'd be nice if we could get him up to Grandmastery with War Hammers as well, because using Crom Faeyr in the off-hand for 25 STR would be super. Alas, with the Mage's pathetic proficiency progression, the most we're likely to get up to is specialisation. We'll probably end up giving the mighty hammer over to Korgan; if possible we'll have him dual-wield it in the late game, because that other hand just begs for an Axe of the Unyielding.

Once we get Vespero some spare proficiency points we'll probably just sink them into Daggers, so that he'll have some kind of ranged attack capability. You know, aside from fireballs.

But that's enough talking about future stats. Let's take a look at Vespero as a person.

It's important to note that Vespero is only Lawful Good in that that's what it says on his character sheet, which is just like any D&D character, really. With the way I'll be playing this game, the reality of the matter is that he'll be an absolute nutcase, randomly breaking into buildings looking for stuff to kill, slaughtering everyone that he perceives as a threat or that can be made into a threat, stripping close friends of all their gear and sending them away to fend for themselves, and so on and so forth.

In light of this psychotic character trait, and after careful deliberation, I have selected a custom portrait for him that I feel is appropriate:











As I mentioned earlier, Vespero uses the MALE002 soundest, and he dresses in a delightful combination of teal and mauve hues, a fine choice of colours for any gallant adventurer.

As a final note, here's his finalised initial character sheet.

I had a rather spectacular stroke of luck here in that the game gave me some superb rolls after only seven or eight attempts. A sign of favour, I think, and a good omen for things to come.

Here's a screenshot of the original, unmodified rolls:

For those too lazy to do the maths, this works out at a whopping 90 points, which I think will be more than enough.

With these rolls I am able to put four 18s into the stats that are really going to matter; Strength, Dexterity, Constitution and Intelligence.

This leaves Wisdom and Charisma.

Now, Wisdom is almost useless to me because I'm not a divine spellcaster. It does, however, come into play for the Wish spells. While this hardly makes it an important stat compared to the other four, it does make it more important than Charisma.

Putting any points whatsoever in Charisma is rendered pointless by the simple fact that the Ring of Human Influence exists and can be easily obtained as soon as you're going to start needing it, which I'm sure we're all well aware of. Therefore, safe in the knowledge that there is a readily available item of jewellry out there that will make me much, much sexier, I do what any self-respecting future mage would do and drop my Charisma to the minimum of 3. This leaves me with enough points to bump my Wisdom up to 15.

So currently, Vespero's stats sit at 18/63, 18, 18, 18, 15, 3.

However, these will not be his final stats. Since we're "importing" from the first game, we're going to assume that we got all the stat-boosting tomes and gave them to Vespero, which I always do anyway if I'm going to take a character through the trilogy. I like to think long-term.

To my knowledge, there is one of each type of tome available except for the Wisdom tome, of which there are three up for grabs. Yes, three. So, finalised, our stats will be 19, 19, 19, 19, 18, 4, making Vespero both physically and intellectually superhuman as any protagonist should be...and slightly less unappealing. Not that that matters because Ring of Human Influence hurrr.

So, we're going to export him and modify his stats appropriately, as well changing his starting XP to 125000, the cap for BG:TOTSC.

It occurs to me that the "Zero Reload" title might be somewhat misleading.

I will be keeping regular save games because I have no intention of trying to 100% Baldur's Gate II in a single sitting, and also as a safety net should the game crash or my computer explode.

There will, furthermore, be certain other circumstances in which I will consider it acceptable to reload, such as if I encounter a bug in a quest that renders me unable to complete it. Generally speaking, if something happens to screw up my playthrough, and that something was completely beyond my control, (bugs) I will reload.

However, aside from such exceptions, I will avoid reloading under any circumstances. If I come out of a fight with all my NPCs dead and Vespero at 1 hit point, too bad. I'll have to deal with that. If an NPC gets chunked, removing them from the game completely, too bad. If I "accidentally" fireball a merchant…

You get the idea.

Obviously, given these conditions, if Vespero dies then it's over. I'm not sure what I'll do under these circumstances. If things have been well-received up until that point then I'll probably just keep going and try to get it done in as few reloads as possible. However, if nobody's really interested then, should Vespero snuff it, I'll just call it a day and move on with my life. You know. The healthy option. The one I really should have gone with as soon as I had this idea.

Fret not, however. Having owned (and regularly played) this game almost from the day of its release, I am quite experienced in the art of not getting killed, and I shall care for Vespero as I would my only infant child. Better, even, since the prospect of having children actively terrifies me and I'm not exactly opposed to the concept of abortion. Or baby-eating.

He shall live a full life, and if he must meet his end, it'll be at the hands of something epic like a Demi-Lich or Demogorgon himself. He will not die in shame.

But if he does then you'll be the first to hear about it.

None. Kensai/Mages don't need friends.

Alright, seriously. Tempting though it is to go overboard and make this a solo campaign on top of everything else, I don't think I'd get very far on the "no reload" aspect if I did that. Not even as a Kensai/Mage. So we're going to need a party.

As I mentioned earlier I do intend to complete the character-specific quests, so at the beginning stages of the game my party will be changing a lot, both to obtain said quests and to keep apart NPCs that don't like each other and will end up in a catfight if left unsupervised.

However, sooner or later, those will all be done, and I'll have to decide on a (mostly) finalised party to take through the remainder of the game.

My initial thoughts on this are as follows:

JAHEIRA: She's not a very strong character, but she's going to have to stay with me from start to finish.

Why, you ask?

Because I need to follow the romance path, and since none of the potential love interests understand the concept of "me time", if I ever kick her out of the party then the romance will be broken, which will, as far as I know, prevent her whole Harper plotline from taking place. She also won't get taken hostage by those bandits, which means two quests left undone.

Note, however, that this is up in the air. I'm fairly sure that completing certain less savoury aspects of the game may cause her to become disgusted with you and leave the party, and if I decide that the need to do those parts outweighs the need to complete her personal quests then she'll become just as expendable as everyone else.

JAN: I need a thief to deal with those pesky traps and locks, and Jan's pretty much the only thief that's actually any good at being a thief. In fact, he's *really* good at being a thief because of all the equipment he gets that boosts his thief skills. There's Yoshimo, of course, but he won't last me through the game for reasons you should already know about.

KELDORN: Dispel Magic at twice character level? Yes please. Also, I'm sick to death of having to sell Carsomyr. It's like receiving a Porsche as a gift and having to keep it in the garage because your licence has been suspended. You know, since it's your fault that kids suck at crossing the road.

But yes, it's high time I put that sword to use.

VICONIA: The candidates for Party Cleric consist of Aerie, Anomen and Viconia.

I wouldn't exactly call this a "choice".

PARTY MEMBER 6: I'm torn here. I'm thinking of Edwin because, to quote Mae'Var, he's a bloody good spellcaster, even though he got BONED in terms of stats. However, I'm a mage and Jan's a mage. Do I really need another one?

On the other hand, I could have another tank, which would probably be Korgan. As much as I like Minsc, I think that Korgan *just* about pulls ahead because of the higher CON and Grand-Mastery. TRUE Grand-Mastery as introduced by BGII Tweaks, rather than the nerfed version that was in the original game. However, I'm a tank and Keldorn's a tank, and Jaheira's kind of a tank. Do I really need another one?

Seriously, I hate slot 6. You never know what to do with it. It's just a good thing that I don't often play a straight power game, because otherwise I'd have to go through this every single time.

(EDIT: After some deliberation, I ended up deciding on Korgan.)

My protagonist, or "Charname" for this playthrough is named Vespero. (Ten points if you know where I got that from.) He uses the MALE002 sound set because it is awesome, and he started as Lawful Good for the initial reputation boost.

Now, naturally, given the task ahead of me here, I will be committing acts of powergaming. Horrible, disgusting and wanton acts of powergaming, possibly the most profound of which will be making Vespero a dual-classed Kensai/Mage.

For those of who you don't already know this, the Kensai/Mage is, by far and away, the cheesiest option you could possibly select for your character. The Kensai is an excellent kit in and of itself, with its only real disadvantage being its pitiful AC (can't wear armour or bracers). Not only does this basically set it up for a perfect synergy with the Mage (which also cannot wear armour) but it actually NEGATES the disadvantage in that once you start being a mage, you can wear mage robes.

Admittedly the AC on the best mage robes isn't that great (5) but that combined the the Kensai's initial -2, plus the protection offered by spells such as Stoneskin, pretty much means that you're going to be just as robust as a standard fighter, but you'll also do more damage and be able to CAST SPELLS. Why even bother with anything else? It almost feels like cheating, but as long as it stays as "almost", there's nothing I won't be stooping to in this play through.

Oh, but I won't be able to use bows. The horror.

In order to maximise my XP I'm going to be "importing" Vespero from Baldur's Gate (the first game) with the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion, so he'll be starting at level 8, rather than at 7, which is what the game starts a normal, not-imported fighter at. It also means that, yes, I will have the infamous Golden Pantaloons. That's right, we'll be Big Metal Suitin' it up once we get there.

In order to make things more interesting, and to accommodate my personal preferences, I will be installing a number of mods prior to this play through. Here's the list of the ones I decided on:

BALDURDASH: This isn't a "mod" as much as it is an unofficial patch. It fixes a vast number of bugs, glitches and potential exploits that were overlooked by Bioware's official updates. This is, of course, being added for the sake of game stability, and to prevent all temptation with regards to the aforementioned exploits. We all know that we're not supposed to have two rings of Gaxx, but it is oh so very sweet.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS: I like this mod. It adds a lot of little things, nothing too intrusive, but enough to make the game that much more enjoyable. If nothing else, Minsc deserves to have a side-quest of his own, which this mod provides.

The only component of this that I will not be adding is the one that adds Artemis Entreri to Bodhi's Lair, because I've heard that this can behave rather buggily at times…and frankly there isn't anything to it. He's just there with Bodhi and he tries to kill you. No dialogue, no snappy repartee between him and Drizzt should you choose to recruit him…nothing. It doesn't even make much sense.

QUEST PACK: Voice-acting aside, I like this one too. It's really quite similar to Unfinished Business, except that most of it consists of quests and additions designed solely by the modders, rather than things that were (supposedly) going to be in the game but got cut.

In all honesty, most of the stuff released by Pocket Plane Group ranges from "decent" to "pretty damn good". If you're looking for mods, they should be your first stop. You can't really go wrong.

ZYRAEN'S MISCELLANY: Just for the "Improved Statue of Riddles" component, which basically allows you to answer all 12 riddles in Bodhi's dungeon at once, rather than having to keep going back and clicking on every individual statue, because DAMN that's annoying.

BGII TWEAKS: The aspects of this mod are almost too numerous to list. I'll try and go through some of the more important parts that I'll be using, but as a rule of thumb, I won't be putting in anything overly unbalancing or that makes the game too easy.

All Items Identified: Let's be honest here. The whole aspect of having to identify items is just stupid and annoying. There are next to no cursed items in the game, if you've played through it a few times then you know what they are, and it's stupid to have to go to sleep for eight hours just so you can identify (and therefore use) the shiny new sword you just picked up because nobody's lore value happens to be high enough, and then go to sleep AGAIN because the Identify spell is otherwise useless and you want to cram some more Magic Missiles in there.

Infinite Stacking/Bags of Holding: Inventory management sucks. The ability to stack ammunition, potions, scrolls, etc. infinitely makes it suck a lot less. Also, "bags of holding" refers to things like scroll cases and ammo belts. These were an aspect introduced by the Throne of Bhaal expansion, but unfortunately, they weren't added to the Shadows of Amn portion. They really should have been.

Make +x/+y items consistent: If Daystar says it's a +4 weapon against evil creatures then it should damn well be a +4 weapon against evil creatures.

Happy Party: This one means that your party members will never complain about, or leave because of, your reputation, nor will they fight amongst themselves. I'm going to need this one since I'll be doing a lot of party switching, (I need to complete all the character-specific quests) and trying to keep my reputation in the middle so that nobody throws a hissy fit and runs off is going to be far too much hassle.

Multi-Stronghold: As the name suggests, this one allows you to pick up as many strongholds as you want, regardless (should you so choose) of your character's class. Gotta catch 'em all. Installing this one for the sake of the 100% completion factor. I didn't include this at first because I was concerned that it might be buggy, but what the hey. It's been out for a while and there's been plenty of time for problems to be ironed out. Risks must be taken.

BANTER PACKS: No gameplay elements in this one to speak of. This just makes your characters talk amongst each other more often, relieving the boredom somewhat when you aren't killing stuff.

OVERSIGHT: This one has a variety of components, but the one that most interests me is the one that corrects the alignments of all the creatures in the game. You wouldn't know it to play it, but apparently there are a vast number of people in the game that have alignments they really should not have; Paladins being neutral, for instance. This mod basically fixes the problem.

This might not seem particularly important, but bear in mind that there are certain spells or items that function differently or do not work at all depending on the alignment of what they're being used on. If I end up fighting Paladins and I decide to use Unholy Blight, I'd like it to work.

IMPROVED ANVIL: Ha ha ha no.

No.

Especially not for this,

Many have consigned themselves to the task of beating Baldur's Gate II without ever reloading the game, or at least seeing how far they can get. In fact, contests of this very nature continue to this day over at the official Bioware forums.

I, myself, have always considered Baldur's Gate II to be a fairly easy experience when you know what you're doing. With enough care, forward planning and encyclopaedic knowledge of the various ins and outs, it should be possible to get through a very large chunk of the game, or even beat it altogether, without ever seeing the "You Is Dead" FMV.

With this unwarranted self-confidence running rampant through my mind, I have decided to set myself to a slightly different mission.

I intend to try and beat Baldur's Gate II, not just without ever reloading, but in its entirety. From the beginning of Shadows of Amn to the end of Throne of Bhaal, I will complete every single side quest right down to the most piddling, pointless Fed-Ex missions (including those introduced by selected mods) and slay every foe right down to the most pathetic gibberling.

This, obviously, will have to happen within reason. A few aspects of the game are mutually exclusive (you can't work for both Bodhi and Aran Linvail, for instance) and some places (I think) have infinitely spawning enemies and so on. However, the general rule is that if it is possible to complete a quest or kill an enemy without either breaking the game or having to haxx it, it will be done.

Naturally, I wouldn't go announcing something like this if I had no intention of following up on it to some extent, so I will, of course, be posting regular updates chronicling my successes, failures, challenges, frustrations and strategies, all mixed in with whatever (hopefully) amusing commentary I feel is appropriate.

For me, this will be as much of a learning experience as a bit of fun. (As well as a desperate cry for attention, not that I'd admit to such outside of parentheses.) As someone who intends to get involved in BGII modding, which is still going after all these years, (albeit sluggishly) it'd probably be a good idea for me to know a lot more about the game than I currently do, and this seems like it'd be an enjoyable way of going about it.

Besides, despite having played the living hell out of BGII, I admit that I still haven't seen all of it by a long shot. (One of the hallmarks of an excellent game; never getting old.) In doing this I hope to finally get the most out of a game that I have enjoyed for years.

For you, this could be anything. It could be an amusing read. It could be insight into general tactics and information on things you've missed in your play through(s). It could be a roundabout review of whatever mods I end up installing. Or it could just be something you look at once and then ignore completely because it's boring or it's too long or you don't care or you want to spite me for some reason.

Nevertheless, whatever this tale may or may not do for you, I hope you enjoy it.



This began its life as a thread over at the GameFAQs forums, but after spending some time writing it, I decided to move it here, to its own blog, for a multitude of reasons that I need not go into.

Since there wouldn't be much point in starting again from scratch, everything up until Day 4, Hour 22 has been transferred directly from the original thread and touched up slightly. From then on, however, everything you see will have been written straight to this blog.