Baldur's Gate: The Zero Reload Saga

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.