Here we come across an interesting little instance of idiocy. In the top right room here, the slavers have got a Maximum Security Chest; that is, one that’s both locked and trapped. Said chest contains fourteen gold coins and a minor magical scroll. Fair enough. However, right next to that, there are over three hundred gold coins, some magic arrows, a healing potion and another magical scroll, all of which are just lying on a table.
Do excuse my presumption, dear fellows, but I think it's distinctly possible that you might have got that backwards. Unless you just really like scrolls of Protection from Evil; but I don’t see how they would do you much good considering you’re the evil ones. Maybe slavery is just a dangerously competitive business.
Anyway. Before we fight the second group of slavers here, we have Jan cast "Invisibility 10’ Radius", rendering everyone in the party, as you might have guessed, invisible. By doing this, we can move our hard-hitters in close to the enemy wizards without being noticed, allowing us to murder the hell out of them before they can fire off a single spell. With them gone, the feeble fighters and archers are easily dealt with.
No particularly noteworthy loot from this battle; just a Cloak of Protection +1, which is going to Jan since Vespero already has a Ring +1.
When we return to the Coronet, Hendak demonstrates his telepathic talents by determining that we have wiped out the slavers before we even open our mouths, and rewards us with a nice sum of gold and “Kondar”, the bastard sword that acts as a +3 weapon against shape-shifters.
I cannot emphasise enough how useless this weapon is to us. Not only is nobody in the party proficient with bastard swords to begin with, but there are…what, maybe two shape-shifters in the entire game? That's a generous estimate, because I certainly can't think of any off the top of my head. Even then, by the time you come across them, you’ll probably have several weapons that are +3 against everything and have additional useful effects to boot.
Still, at least it’s worth a decent amount.
Even better, though, thanks to that sweet, sweet Quest XP, Vespero is now a level 9 mage. Only one more to go before he can regain his Kensai abilities. Oh god, it’s so close now. I can taste it. It tastes like awesome.
In other news, we just hit the 15000 gold mark, which means that both the Shadow Thieves and the vampires are now clamouring for our attention. We basically tell Valen to take a hike when she approaches us with her offer, though. We won’t be siding with the vampires, since Keldorn will run off in a huff if we do. Besides, storming the Shadow Thief stronghold is a friggin’ nightmare.
Immediately after that, though, we get approached by another shady, hooded woman who demands that we hand over all our money or die. Really, lady? Really? You want to try and mug all six of us with our armour and weapons equipped, ready and plainly visible?
OK. Your funeral.
Just kidding. You’re not getting a funeral. Your corpse is going to lie there and rot in the street, because THAT’S HOW WE ROLL IN AMN.
Where to next? I think we shall return to the Docks district to tangle with Xzar and those crazy Harpers for another hefty helping of easily obtained XP and some nifty magical gear. But that, loyal readers, is for another update.
This is Lorph Halys, and you’ve been reading Baldur’s Gate: The Zero Reload Saga. Thank you, and goodnight.
We’re still at that early stage of the game where a combination of Web and Stinking Cloud is pretty lethal. With a Greater Malison thrown into the mix, this group of slavers doesn’t stand a chance; if they’re not ensnared by sticky filaments then they’re knocked out cold by noxious fumes. I think Korgan and Keldorn maybe got hit once, but that was it.
Now we just have to deal with the trolls in the adjoining room.
You know what I hate about trolls? They’re bugged. Seriously. Whenever you knock them down to one hit point, they’re supposed to collapse so that you can finish them off with acid or fire…which seriously tries one’s patience in and of itself. It just means you have to keep stopping to switch someone’s ammunition to the fire arrows that are always conveniently strewn around when there are trolls in the area, then switch it back so that you don’t waste them on other enemies.
What’s really a problem, though, is that trolls seem to forget the “collapse at one hit point” behaviour all too easily. It takes the troll a while to actually realise that it’s supposed to fall down, and if you happen to hit it during that short space of time, it’ll forget to do so again. And again. And again. Therefore, unless you intentionally let up for a while or just miss a lot of blows in a row, you will be pounding on them FOREVER.
The thing is, I didn’t realise this at first, which made trolls into absurdly difficult enemies for the measly amount of experience you get for killing them. Normally they’d be “glass cannon” monsters; hard-hitting, but easy to take down. With this bug effectively making them invincible, though, the “glass” part rather gets omitted, and they just become unstoppable Game Over dispensers. You have no idea how much I hated going through the de’Arnise keep until I figured this out.
A question, though; what were a pair of trolls doing in here with a little girl?
Actually, scratch that. I don’t care what they were doing; I just want to know why the hell they hadn’t eaten her yet. I mean, they completely ignore this easy meal in favour of some well-equipped adventurers by whom they are outnumbered three-to-one. Why? I know trolls aren’t exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer, but they’re not THAT stupid.
Well, whatever. Here, we rescue the girl and…
…*sigh*. And give her 100 gold coins out of the goodness of our hearts.
Keldorn made us do it. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
Once Korgan is done complaining about it (I know how he feels, but we need the reputation boost), we head on up to clean this place out.
Nah, not yet. Like I said, we’re only doing this to get Keldorn, since we’re REALLY not up to taking on beholders yet. (I.e. We do not have the Shield of Balduran.)
On our way to the sewers, we came across that lady who tries to convince the priest of Talos into thinking that he got drunk one night and knocked her up, so that she can scam cash out of him.
For those who do not know, Talos is the god of storms. He’s a violent, foul-tempered son of a bitch, and so is everyone in his clergy. With that in mind, this woman is extremely lucky that she and her daughter didn’t get taken into the temple and have their skulls caved in with a hammer. I mean, there are priests of Lathander (the happy love god of light) just up the street and you target the worshippers of the BATSHIT GOD OF LIGHTNING AND WANTON DESTRUCTION?
And of course she’ll try and pull exactly the same thing on Vespero if he decides to talk to her. We all remember Vespero’s portrait, I trust?
Good lord. We‘d be performing a public service by ridding the world of this child-exploiting bitch, but of course attacking her turns the whole district hostile, so we’ll have to stay our blades. But by god if it isn’t under protest.
Anyway. After a quick dip into the sewers to recruit Keldorn, we now move back to the Slums to take a quick dip into the other sewers so that we can retrieve Lilarcor, the talking sword. Why the temple district needs its own separate set of sewers, I don’t know. Maybe they don’t want the holy crap being mixed in with the common crap or something.
Speaking of holy crap; holy crap! Korgan and Viconia just levelled up. Viconia now has level 5 Cleric spells to play with, and Korgan earned himself another proficiency point.
So hey, now that I think about it, why don’t we go and finish off those nasty slavers while we’re down here? Apparently a reputation of 14 isn’t good enough for Lathander’s clergy, and we can pump it up twice by finishing this quest. Let’s kick some butt. For goodness.
Off to the Temple district to drag a noble and stalwart paladin into our sociopathic shenanigans. Unfortunately, there’s no way to access the sewers without stumbling across the blind prophet Gaal and the idiots he’s preaching to.
And they ARE idiots. I mean, yeah, Gaal’s argument that the gods don’t really do much for anyone unless their character sheet says “Cleric” on it isn’t a bad one, and any religious cult that claims to offer better might at least be worth looking into, but all of this should be mitigated by the fact that you have to GET YOUR GODDAMNED EYES TORN OUT FIRST. “Oh, hey, that’s cool. I don’t mind being blinded for the rest of my life, as I have full confidence that you will follow up on all your vague and unsubstantiated promises!”
It’s not as if he isn’t up front about it either. He actually says “Yeah, if you want in, you’re going to have to lose the eyes. It’s just our thing,” during his pitch. Or something like that, anyway. I’ve seen this scene so many times that I don’t even bother to read the text anymore. I just click until it’s over.
Now, as those of you who have actually played the game will no doubt know, you’ll normally be approached after this incident by a priest of Helm, who basically DEMANDS that you get your ass over to the temple right this second because Helm wants you to do something for him. But you know what? No. If that is how Helm asks for favours then I would like to cordially invite Helm to suck my quarterstaff. You guys are high level clerics, so fix your own damn problems.
However, since we have the multi-stronghold mod installed (and since Vespero is good-aligned) we are instead graced with the presence of a priest of Lathander, who’s a little more polite in his request. We’ll need to talk to him before we can pick up Keldorn anyway, so we might as well go and see him now.
When we talk to him, he mentions that our reputation is “far from clear.” Excuse me? My reputation happens to be 14 out of 20, jerk. Granted, I’m not quite the messiah yet, but that’s still better than average.
Of course, he might be going by how Vespero’s actually been behaving rather than what the “reputation” value on his character sheet says, but…well, screw you if that’s the case. What’s on my sheet is gold to you, you pompous ass. You’re a lowly NPC. You don’t know jack. I AM THE PROTAGONIST, YOU HEAR?
Anyway, we have a chat with him, which essentially boils down to this;
“How do I know this isn’t an actual god they’re worshipping and you guys aren‘t just being insecure cocks?”
“It isn’t. We aren’t. Also, there‘s a reward.”
Well, that’s all Vespero needs to hear! Let’s massacre those damn dirty cultists!
One thing I like about reporting your findings to Aegisfield is that the issue of all the flayed corpses lying around in Rejiek’s basement is the one your character mentions last. As if it’s not important.
“How do I know he was the murderer? Well, this old, senile guy told me that he found this leather on the murder scene, and a prostitute said she smelled something funny. Oh, and there was a fuckload of dead people in his cellar, plus this tunic made of human flesh. Dunno if that helps at all, though.”
And of course he immediately rewards us with a hefty sum of gold without so much as going to check if a single word we said is actually true, let alone launching an actual investigation. Is it really any surprise that this city is so utterly rife with criminals?
Anyway. We're not going to be putting together the proper, magical Human Flesh Armour, so there's no point in holding on to this icky tunic. Therefore, we’re just going to go ahead and ditch it. Even if I wasn’t concerned that my more moral party members (Jaheira) would object to me killing Adalon for the dragon‘s blood component, and if doing so didn’t break a quest, there isn’t anyone in the party that it’d be worth giving the completed Human Flesh +6 to anyway. The only people we have that can wear it are Korgan and Viconia, and there are better suits of armour available for both of them.
We’re going to get creative, though. Rather than just dropping it in the street like with any other item we don't want and can't sell, we’re going to break into the house of some innocent civilians and plant it in their wardrobe. That’ll be a nice surprise for the kids. Vespero’s behaving like a veritable goddamned Santa Claus, and it‘s not even close to Christmas. I think he deserves a reputation boost for that act of charity.
No?
Fine then. Go ahead and stifle me with your phoney morality system. See if I care.
Where are we going to head to after we’ve rested? Good question. I don’t think there’s an awful lot more we can do right now that won’t result in Quest XP, so I think it’s high time we stop tentatively licking at this game's chocolate exterior and delve right into its gooey, caramel centre. In the next update, we'll be recruiting Keldorn and starting on a mission to rake in some real experience. Don't miss it. Even if it means waiting another year.
This is Lorph Halys, and you’ve been reading Baldur’s Gate: The Zero Reload Saga. Thank you, and goodnight.
On the way to the tanner’s we get a nice little banter. Viconia asks Korgan if he’s ever interacted with her Drow house, and he responds that yes, he burned it to the ground and urinated on the ashes.
I suppose that’s about the best you can expect from someone with a Charisma score of 7.
Into the establishment of Rejiek Hidesman, the man behind the gruesome murders that have been taking place in this district. Once again we find ourselves deprived of the clever option (subduing him immediately, taking him to the garrison and then presenting the evidence we found) and simply have to proclaim “WE KNOW IT WAS YOU WHAT DONE IT!”, thereby giving his plot armour ample time to activate and allowing him to escape.
Yes, plot armour. You know what I’m talking about. That inexplicable invincibility that certain NPCs mysteriously develop whenever the game decides you aren’t allowed to kill them yet. There is a rather sneaky way around this involving the use of Time Stop and Shapechange, but sadly, we’re not even close the level we’d need to be at in order to use those spells.
We follow Rejiek into the basement, taking care to disable Party AI so that nobody goes chasing after him and blundering into the traps strewn around here. Good news, though; the experience we got from disarming said traps was enough to push Vespero up another level, bringing him ever closer to release from dual-class related suckage.
Also, Viconia blurts out “I swim in memories in a place such as this”. In this murky, dilapidated basement filled with flies and flayed corpses. That pretty much sums up everything you need to know about Drow culture, right there.
We’re in for a fight when we head downstairs, so we take the opportunity to buff up beforehand. Vespero’s going to stay upstairs for the moment, because as squishy as he is right now, the last thing we need is him getting backstabbed by the assassins down here.
By the way, have I mentioned yet that enemies being able to BACKSTAB YOU FROM THE FRONT is a load of festering bullshit? Because it is.
We have Jan enter stealth mode (surprisingly, he gets it on his first attempt) and head downstairs, where he is accosted by a mage in Rejiek’s service in spite of the fact that he isn’t supposed to be visible. The fact that he openly converses with someone in the room sure doesn’t tip any of the other enemies off about his presence, however, giving him plenty of time to launch a Bruiser Mate at the assassin to stun him.
Which doesn’t work. Damn.
Jan hightails it back upstairs. The Ghasts follow us, but the assassin seems to stay put, which works in our favour. Korgan and Jaheira score a couple of solid criticals and the Ghasts go down without much trouble.
Now to deal with the assassin. Jebus, but this guy’s a lot tougher than I remember him being. Almost as soon as I get downstairs, he backstabs Korgan before I can do anything about it, then proceeds to slice Jaheira RIGHT the hell up, leaving her in critical condition. I mean, damn. The woman’s AC is at -3, for god’s sake. THIEVES ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE TERRIBLE THAC0.
Anyway, we still managed to off him without losing anyone, so now it’s time to loot those crates and get out of here. As always, we get the first component of the mighty bow of Gesen down here, as well as some useless Hide amour, scrolls of Monster Summoning, Improved Invisibility, Project Image…
…wait, what? Project Image? AWESOME. This is one of the most overpowered spells in the game, and I’ve never got this scroll down here before. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever found this scroll at all; I’ve always had to buy it from a store. What a stroke of luck. This is going straight into Vespero’s spell book. Not that he can use it yet, but still.
Time to go. We’ll make a quick trip to report our findings to Aegisfield, then head to the Five Flagons for some rest. Need to keep those spell slots filled.
...would still smell like guril berries.
On the way to interview our second witness, I decided, on a whim, to speak to one of the unnamed children on the street here. Here’s what she had to say:
“MY MOTHER SAYS THAT DARK ELVES SHOULD BE HANGED UNLESS THEY’RE NAMED DRIZZT!”
And I didn’t paraphrase that at all. That’s a word-for-word quotation. No joke.
…I got nothing. I mean, damn. Even Vespero is satisfied by this and resolves to make a point of NOT killing her when he gets his Kensai powers back. Godspeed, kid. You’re going places.
Anyway. We're now going to see the harlot known as Rose Bouquet, who claims to have smelled something unusual at the scene of the murder.
I get the feeling that this young lady has taken a leaf out of old Rampah’s book, because she’s charging us 20 gold just to talk to her. Not quite as steep, granted, but still. If that’s her going rate for brief chit-chats then I’d hate to think how damage we'd have to inflict on our wallets to actually get her out of her obnoxiously bright clothes.
That said, this price is completely non-negotiable, and since there’s no option available to take the “piñata” approach, (that is, tying her to the ceiling and hitting her with sticks until she breaks and spills information) we’re just going to have to swallow our cheapskate nature and pay her fee.
Basically, our task here is to go to the nearby merchant and bring back things to sniff that might be what she smelled at the murder scene; guril berries. Now, obviously there’s the berries themselves and the tannin the merchant gives us, but I don’t think we’re really given the opportunity to take advantage of this. For example, what if I happen to think that Jaheira’s slender, athletic thighs smell like guril berries? You’d better give those a sniff. No? Are you sure? Try her neck, then. Oh, well, how about Viconia’s tunic? Maybe you should take it off her so that you can get a really good whiff. Take your time, there’s no hurry.
...hey, look, I paid twenty gold for this, alright? I just want to get my money’s worth.
Anyway, she reckons it was the tannin, which means the tanner did it, which means that we’re dealing with the most incompetent murderer ever.
Seriously, what were you playing at, Mr. Hidesman? Were you even trying? As if leaving flayed corpses in the middle of the street for the guards to find wasn’t bad enough, you apparently think it’s a good idea to sprinkle a bunch of tannin around the murder scene, thereby implicating everyone in your line of work. (And you're the ONLY person in your line of work in the whole city.)
On top of that, you somehow manage to louse up completely and leave an ENTIRE ELEPHANT HIDE lying near the victim. Just…what? God only knows how you managed to drop something like that and not notice, but forget that. The more pertinent question is "Why did you bring it with you in the first place?" What possible purpose could it have served? “OK, going out to murder a hobo, better make sure I’ve got everything I need…knife, gloves, dark clothes, ELEPHANT HIDE, yep, all set.”
Honestly, at this point, I don’t know who’s worse; the murderer himself for leaving such an obvious trail of clues or the city guard for somehow missing it all and needing us to clean up the mess. I’m half-tempted to abandon this side-quest out of sheer contempt for everyone involved, but the lure of XP is too strong to resist.
Let’s just go.
This might be just my paranoia kicking in, but I think this man is a lot smarter than he lets on. Why? Well, look at what he does halfway through your conversation with him. He asks for a hundred gold coins before he’ll give you the piece of evidence you‘re looking for. A HUNDRED.
Now, if he tried to do this under any other circumstances, we’d be snapping his spine and wiping his arse with his beard, but in this case, he gets away with it because he has a quest item.
You can barter him down until you eventually get the elephant hide (which is what he’s offering) for free, but I’d be willing to bet that a good number of players didn’t realise this at first and simply gave him the money right away, just in case refusing to do so would deny them an important item. I, for one, did exactly that on my first few times through the game.
Also, look at the amount he asks for. One hundred. That’s a lot of money, but it’s not a high enough figure that anyone would really be concerned about parting with it, given the amount of wealth you find yourself rolling in only an hour or two after starting the game. Had he asked for something really ludicrous like, say, five thousand gold, then your suspicions might kick in and you’d start thinking “Come on, there’s no way I have to pay that much just to finish a stupid quest."
But he doesn’t. He keeps the figure high without going overboard, the cunning swine, and then once he’s got your cash he retires to his mansion of wall-to-wall prostitutes, kicks back, enjoys a goblet of fine, elven wine and marvels at how easy it is to part adventurers from their riches just by dangling a worthless macguffin in their faces.
Then again, my theory is shot down somewhat by the fact that he accepts, without question, our claim that we don’t have a single penny to offer him, in spite of the fact that we’re obviously lugging around a veritable armoury of shiny magical gear.
Or maybe he just noticed the psychotic glint in Vespero’s eye and decided it’d be best not to push his luck.
Anyway, on to collect exhibit B.
Remember when I said I was going to be winding down the update schedule?
Well, I wasn’t kidding.
Seriously though. Has it really been almost a year since I updated this thing? How time flies when you forget about inconsequential Internet journals and start busying yourself with things that might actually have some bearing on your future.
So, what’s the story here? Are we back or are we not back?
Well, for now, the answer is yes. I can’t confirm that we’ll be returning to regular updates on a long-term basis since I’m going to be running my own business in a few weeks, and as you can imagine, that’s going to take up a hefty chunk of my time, particularly in the beginning stages. Once things get settled down a bit, we’ll see what kind of schedule I’ll be operating on; with any luck, I should at least be able to cough up a few updates during weekends.
Let’s not focus too much on the future, though. Live for the moment. For now, this blog is back in action. I hope your shrivelled, black hearts can forgive my extended absence, or at least grudgingly put up with it enough to become faithful readers once again.
With that out of the way, let’s look back at the game.
Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control, my old saved games are no longer usable. As such, I’ve had to try and retrace my steps from a new game, using Shadowkeeper to tweak everything to be as close to the way it was as possible. Bear in mind that I’ve probably missed a few things, however, so if you, being the eagle-eyed supermen that you are, happen to spot any inconsistencies, at least you’ll know the reason for it.
Now. Where were we?