Baldur's Gate 3: Quicksave is my favourite spell

[karaddin]

A warning on spirit guardians if you're playing on tactician: there's a whole chunk of the game you'd think would be weak to radiant damage (a huge chunk of act 2 for example) which actually have a thorns style buff only for radiant damage so you can do a lot of damage to yourself by accident if you're not paying attention.

I managed to one shot my MC at 120hp with a crit smite on one such enemy.

[Luzifer's right hand]

They knew that people would use that spell for Shadowheart focused content I guess.

[Heartofice]

9 hours ago, karaddin said:

A warning on spirit guardians if you're playing on tactician: there's a whole chunk of the game you'd think would be weak to radiant damage (a huge chunk of act 2 for example) which actually have a thorns style buff only for radiant damage so you can do a lot of damage to yourself by accident if you're not paying attention.

I managed to one shot my MC at 120hp with a crit smite on one such enemy.

Funny because on Balanced difficulty Spirit Guardians is my main weapon through most of Act 2. So many enemies are basically immune to everything except radiant damage. The Halsin portal fight felt impossible till I used it and a couple of fireballs. 

Edited October 19, 2023 by Heartofice

[karaddin]

7 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Funny because on Balanced difficulty Spirit Guardians is my main weapon through most of Act 2. So many enemies are basically immune to everything except radiant damage. The Halsin portal fight felt impossible till I used it and a couple of fireballs. 

I really struggled the first time on balanced, struggled on tactician the 2nd time but breezed through it the 3rd. I guess I did improve over time lol

[David Selig]

44 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Funny because on Balanced difficulty Spirit Guardians is my main weapon through most of Act 2. So many enemies are basically immune to everything except radiant damage. The Halsin portal fight felt impossible till I used it and a couple of fireballs. 

Spirit Guardians works great on Tactician too in that battle.

Spoiler

IIRC in Act 2 it's only during the Gauntlet of Shar where there are plenty of enemies who have Radiant Retort (the thorns effect when you hit them with radiant damage). That's where I got Shadowheart killed spectacularly because I forgot that Turn Undead does Radiant damage after the cleric reaches level 5. Realising during the first battle against the enemies with Radiant Retort there that everyone except my main character had Morningstar's Radiance active due to the bug where the companions keep getting it after you swap them in the party wasn't fun either.

[karaddin]

I'm pretty sure it's also the

Spoiler

Shadow cursed enemies in the town - like the ones in the town square above the little Shar shrine.

Also the Shar Temple in act 3 (that's where I exploded myself) and maybe the House of Hope? That might have been a different buff I'm forgetting though.

 

[Jace, Extat]

Been playing this with my cousin- fantastic multiplayer to campaign through. 

Having a lot of fun despite having to turn the difficulty down because we keep wandering into areas where my drow bard keeps getting One Shotted. 

The struggle is real. We've wandered our way into the underdark and had to fight every motherfucker down there. Next time, who knows. 

Good game. Great multiplayer.

[Heartofice]

I seem to be in a tough spot.

I’ve finally gotten round to assaulting Moonrise Towers and am at the first fight with Ketheric Thorm. 
 

Problem is, by the time I got here I’d used up all my spell slots, my party is kind of beaten up and I can’t even swap characters out because I can’t go to camp. 
 

On top of that Thorm hits like a mountain, he one-shotted my fully armoured and protected paladin, and all the other skellys seem to have a vindictive tendency of never missing.

On top of that, the Nightsong just gets beaten up before I can even help her.

Outside of just starting the Moonrise assault all over again I’m not sure what to do

[Heartofice]

Scratch that! I tried again and passed in about a minute! 
 

Just ignored everything and buffed the Nightsong, she took out Thorm and I just managed to survive the rest. 
 

Ugh

[Werthead]

Nightsong is a massive glass cannon, she hits hard but goes down like a sack of shit. If you can buff the hell out of her when she's available, she can clean up like anyone's business.

Amusingly:

Spoiler

Her total and utter focus on obliterating whatever is evil in front of her makes her completely heedless of things like "collateral damage," which is a handy way of explaining why she doesn't just join the party and wipe everything out for the rest of the game with ease.

 

[Ser Lany]

My offspring bought this for me. It is my first video game other than Pokermon, and I am totally obsessed. I've been dying to talk to people about it.  I haven't logged on here in forever (most of the people I talked to most are on fb) and I wasn't sure I could get into my account still.

Even on explorer mode, I had a rough time at the beginning and kept restarting without getting through act 1.  A large part was due to my daughter and SIL telling me I missed things I needed to do (they were so wrong, actually, and I've passed them in the story, twice.

After about a dozen false starts, I finally made it all the way through act 2.  I didn't know at the time there was an act 3.  LOL.  You can guess what option I allowed, since my game ended there.   

My next play-through I got stuck without a way to blow up the steelworks (I now know my mistake and I could have done it, I just screwed up on a save somewhere)

After that, I was able to play all the way through and win the game.  I was so excited.  Total play time at that point was a bit over 400 hours.   (I did say obsessed)

Throughout all my games, I play a Half-Drow female (even wrote a 2 page background story for her and everything.) Shadowheart, Wyll and Karlach have been my favorite companions, using the others for their story line parts only. In the game I won, I never even bothered to rescue Lae'zel. I should have. Tried several class options in the beginning, but ended up with rogue as my favorite. Plus then I didn't need Astarion in my party except a few times for his story.

I think the thing that amuses me the most are the romances.  In the one the ended prematurely, I accidentally romanced Gale. I like magic, I didn't realize at first what was up.   I'm so dumb. But I figured why not. Wyll keeps ignoring me  

Romanced Karlach a couple of times early on, but it never worked out. On the best ones, I couldn't find the infernal iron, so I'd focus on that, and she'd friend zone me.

The Wyll romance is stupid.  I put a lot of work into it and finally, we progress pass a tiny kiss, but you have to agree to marriage first and afterwards, you are back to the tiny kisses. I did however LOVE the ending for Wyll, Karlach and my character. 

I'm currently trying things outside my comfort zone. I switched from rogue to bard (even though they start off with the ugliest clothes) and I've sidelined Wyll, Karlach and Shadowheart. Still not playing with Astarion.  He is my least favorite companion, so he sits in camp until his story lines are up. I don't know if I can do an evil play though, but I might try a selfish one where I ask for rewards for helping people. I also want to play on the Balanced level, 

Halsin spoiler: 

Spoiler

I didn't know you could break the shadow curse and have Halsin join you in act 3, but upon learning this was possible, I made it my goal for this playthrough. I also wanted to romance him.  Both those things took a lot of extra work, but they were well worth it. Most amusing romance ever. He's down with the Drow twins too, bonus. But something happens to your armor settings and we came running out of the brothel naked. I laughed so hard. Nearing the end of this playthrough and I'm excited to see what ending we get.

edit to fix spoilers and typos

Edited November 9, 2023 by Ser Lany

[Heartofice]

The romance stuff in BG3 is just nuts. I only wish I was so attractive as my character in this game! It's like even being slightly nice to any man or woman will mean they fall in love with you and will make an awkward pass at you. I had pretty much made it official with Shadowheart, only for Wyll and Gale to both try it on, only to be rejected and heartbroken. 

[Ser Lany]

26 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

The romance stuff in BG3 is just nuts. I only wish I was so attractive as my character in this game! It's like even being slightly nice to any man or woman will mean they fall in love with you and will make an awkward pass at you. I had pretty much made it official with Shadowheart, only for Wyll and Gale to both try it on, only to be rejected and heartbroken. 

 I wish you could just say yes to everyone, in the same play through.  (there's the Lany you all know and love  )

They look so sad when you turn them down.

ETA: I just realized I have only 2 posts, not the thousands I should have. weird.

Edited November 9, 2023 by Ser Lany

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Ser Lany said:

 I wish you could just say yes to everyone, in the same play through.  (there's the Lany you all know and love  )

They look so sad when you turn them down.

ETA: I just realized I have only 2 posts, not the thousands I should have. weird.

You can romance everyone with a mod. https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/1529

[Jace, Extat]

Speaking of romances, I had to fight off the Illithid Emperor who was shirtless and making a pass at me. 

I told Squidward to keep swimmin

[Ser Lany]

1 hour ago, Jace, Extat said:

Speaking of romances, I had to fight off the Illithid Emperor who was shirtless and making a pass at me. 

I told Squidward to keep swimmin

Me too. Being nice to weirdos always did get me into trouble

[Ser Lany]

Decided to take off the training wheels.

"Balanced" is HARD.    You get fewer hp and the bad guys all get more.  I'm also taking a lot more long rest to recoup spells, but I've made it as far as the underdark so far

[Heartofice]

19 minutes ago, Ser Lany said:

Decided to take off the training wheels.

"Balanced" is HARD.    You get fewer hp and the bad guys all get more.  I'm also taking a lot more long rest to recoup spells, but I've made it as far as the underdark so far

The game is very hard until you realise some of the things you can be doing to make it easier.

Generally have kept Gale in every party I have, because having spells like Fireball or Grease or Confusion can completely make the difference between an easy or hard fight. I used to just rush in and do melee attacks with my fighters, but that makes the odds far too even. 

Plus I respecced Shadowheart to be more of a healer, that helps.

[Jace, Extat]

Gale? That junkie snailed off outta my party ages ago.

[Corvinus85]

I started a new playthrough. Never finished Act 1 the first time. This time I went with the easiest difficulty because I simply don't get the complexities of the combat. Hopefully I'll have more fun this time around. I did have fun with stuff outside of combat the 1st time.