Baldur's Gate: The Zero Reload Saga

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.