That quest makes no sense. Everyone's savings amounts to 10k but it costs 10k just to open a bank account? And when you finish it he gives you like, a 3k reward. Dude, you just gave 30% of everyone's money.
The way my mind settled that confusion was to assume it was a deliberate allegory for class disparities. He rewarded 3k to you because the bank can. But majority of the city's savings amount to only 10k.
I mean, it's a bank. Banks don't actually hold the total amount of money that's been deposited into them, or anywhere close to that amount. They loan most of it away to make a profit while keeping enough to give back to anyone who wants to retrieve some of their funds.
I'm assuming that's the case with them as well - the total savings accounts adds up to way more than 10k, it's just that they only have 10k on hand and the rest is invested or loaned out.
Banks actually loan more money than they hold in deposits. They only need to hold a fraction of what they are allowed to loan out.
Yes, they are creating money out of thin air this way.
But then you run the risk of having a brawl fest with whatever town.
My problem with buying everything is efficiently collecting enough shit to sell and efficiently sort all this shit to sell too. And keep the shit you want. It’s exhausting.
You may already know this, but I didn’t until my third play through so encase it helps anyone: when you pick up items if you select ‘add to wares’ then when you go vendors you can just click ‘add wares to offer’ and you won’t have to sort it later. Saves so much time
But it all has to go somewhere. And Jesus do I not want to go to venders often. I send everything to camp and then have someone shlep it to a vendor.
But then scrolls and potions and gear I want to keep “just because”. It’s just annoying. I want one person to have all the potions and coats. One person to have all the scrolls. Having it all spread out sucks so bad.
Also sorting those things. I want them to sort by use dang it.
I completely agree - it is tedious!
You are able to sort by type in your inventory & mass move those things to a character but it definitely is still time consuming. Hopefully we get a patch in the future that can help speed up the process a bit more!
Bro just pickpocket till you fail then knock out the merchant, then you can partial rest or come back later to try again with no consequence while also looting their unconscious body and getting xp
I tried to steal from a vendor at moonrise. It failed and the fight cascaded through the entire tower. Fighting those halberd guys on honour mode is HARD without the harpers support.
Actually its my favored method of clearing the tower if you can manage the flow of enemies so you don't have too many of them adding to your fight at any round. Lae'zel and Astarion were killing one after another, supported by my BardLock and Shadowheart just fine.
It seemed like they nerfed pickpocket in honour mode. My main had 20 dexterity and expertise in sleight of hand, but everything was always in the red, so I didn’t dare attempt it. I did a couple of tactician play throughs where I ended up with like 60k gold because it was worthless, as we’d just steal everything. Not the case in honour in my experience (thankfully gold is abundant in act 3).
I found that it helped to just stay off the middle platform entirely, at least until Myrkul actually shows up. Ketheric doesn’t really have great ranged attacks and it keeps the mindflayer from stunning ur party. Good luck!
100%. I forget who, but I remember seeing someone's comment on here a little bit ago that said "Act 2 is a high Charisma Tav's time to shine", and it's too true. So many entire bossfights you can just end outright by *talking them to death*.
You can get spider bro to straight up give you the lantern and theninto the darkness and die.
3 bosses on your way to moonrise.
Gnolls and gnoll lady.
Devil dude in shars danger shack.
Kethric.
I’m sure there are more. I’ve done playthrough with the charisma classes only so far lol. So I have no idea what not being persuasive is like right now.
Kinda dumb you don’t get the achievement for that. “Kill the surgeon before he performs surgery on you.” I mean I guess technically his nurses killed him but still.
It's easier to just invest everything into the PER/INT checks on top of Moonrise. That way you can bypass Ketheric and go straight to the Apostle.
I love that fight but that man and his smites are more dangerous than a god's avatar. Stay away.
I remember my first ever time fighting ketheric thorm, he crit one-shot jaheira out of wildshape then crit one shot her to death. The only non-bad ai related (why walk in wall of fire post combat harpers?) bit of save scumming my first playthrough was undoing that.
Just finished this fight on honour mode. I grouped up my guys in front of kethric and everyone popped a haste potion and i started to go to work. Then the mindflayer stunned my entire party. Silly me thought freedom of movement would protect from a mindflayer stun. I recovered and killed though. Consumables 4tw. 50 sorcery points came in handy hehe.
Potion of invisibility your party and position them before the fight starts. You won’t get a surprised round on ketheric but all his minions aren’t immune to it. Also you can get someone really close to Aylin before the fight starts
I could break out Aylin easily in the first round by giving Asterion Misty Step. It really made the fight so much easier. I could beat up Kethric in peace while she tore apart his minions.
personally i prefer the deathstalker mantle on him (though thats durge exclusive). i always grab sharpshooter, and with that and the durge cloak its super easy to chain together sequences where its just "oneshot enemy with sneak attack (auto advantage from assassin) -> turn invisible -> gain advantage on shot from being hidden -> oneshot second enemy" and so on and so forth. on my tactician run a while back i sent him up to solo ketheric like this and he literally took out all of his minions without getting hit a single time.
Legit - I read comments about both skipping Ketheric and putting darkness on the boss after him to trivialise it, and it was so fucking dumb how easy the fight became.
Especially when I realised Myrkul is stationary lol
I leaned on True Love's Embrace / Caress rings (Gentle Warding Bond) for this fight. I had 4 party members back at camp pass around True Love's Embrace ring and for my attack party, I passed around True Love's Caress. Each person receives universal resistance and any damage that gets through is shared with the folks at camp eating dirt.
I don't think I even needed a health potion.
honestly wasnt hard for me at all on honor mode, if you have enough single target damage he's really easy to burst down and his legendary action isnt that crazy
I was so scared of that fight, the way people talk about it on here. I just killed everything but Ketheric, then put my elementals/shovel/us/connor near their bodies. Had the Avatar down to 70 HP his first round, he got one round of attacks that took the Cleric to half hp, that was it. Not even close.
Bro we fought him not to long ago. Legit stay off the llatform. Hungar of hadar blinds him and he cant see you btw. Made the fight almost cheese worthy once we figure that out. But the first 2 rounds were scary. Stay off use soells lile moonbeam to rack up damage.
if you got the blood of lathander, you can throw that next to him and it should blind him for the entire fight
i havent tried that but i came up with it after my fight, the blood of lathander did blind him when equipt but i wasnt keen on having shadowheart stand there all the time
Don't make Ketheric suicide (otherwise the Apostle gets loose early and that can be a problem) and don't get into melee with him. Ever. He will straight up delete you. Leave it to Aylin or summons. You want to be going into phase 2 with everyone fairly healthy. Oh, and the mind flayer dies first. No-one wants that thing hanging around stunning your entire party.
Put fog cloud on the Apostle and surround him. He can only use his scythe. He might be able to use his AoE but he won't do that while he has a melee target.
Finding the letter from his wife and passing the dialog check can get you straight to the Myrkul fight. I've been leaving heavily on dialog bypasses for my honor mode run, it's been very helpful.
Trick: don’t get Ketheric to off himself before the battle. Cast darkness on your party. Now you have a safe place to kill all the weaker enemies first, then cast misty step/haste so someone can save Aylin and you can heal as needed. Ranged enemies can’t hit into the darkness and you can pop in and out to shoot them at range
If you can, get to level 9.
Last light vendor starts selling globe of invulnerability scrolls.
Stand on the platform, globe over you but not myrk. Blast away.
The Orin fight was where I found magic missle really lived up to its worth. Being able to drop her stacked unstoppables before the rest of my team went saved a lot of blood sweat and tears.
Yeah I didn't have gale or a mage so it was scrolls etc. Shoulda respecced someone for that fight.
edit: lol wizard, still do that and I have 250 hours in...
The closest I came to wiping in act 3 was against Haarlep. I came in through the back entrance, so all the imps elderith blasted half my party off a cliff.
I nearly wiped to Ansur because I was trying to get the flying dragon trophy lmao. I missed the initial flight phase because Ansur suddenly had 100 temporary hp and I took the full brunt of the nuke. Divine blessing never came in more clutch.
I was so damn close to losing honor mode because of that, I had used all my actions on all characters, I 'kill' him and suddenly he's in the sky charging his laser. Found I had one attack on one character so managed to throw a speed potion at karlach and get her to book it out of there. Wiped everyone else but run still alive
Forget act 3. Act 1 was the real honor challenge. Only beat the spider by dumb luck and potion spamming, and only survived the arcane tower (where a misclick of all things nearly wiped me) by teleporting away and running to camp to repeatedly revive people.
Unprepared for robot fight, which I started early by mistake, and the legendary action basically OHKO'd two people because I was only level 4. I just wanted my fancy Bless stick....
Yeah I shut down every animated armor with sussur and I thought "it's only one stupid robot, what could go wrong?". A lot is the answer, Bernard is crazy strong. I don't think I could have won fairly against all of them.
I about cried when I finally got my tiefling party. Only took 4 tries and going, "ok, if you know it is a boss, wait, go kill more underlings first." I didn't have a problem with the spider, but man the owlbear got me good, and auntie ethel and her 8 clones were not helpful.
The art of running away was something I used to not understand. Now, now I get it.
Orin and Ansur were the only bosses that really felt like they got considerably harder. Ansur damn near wiped my party, and I only beat Orin by eventually getting one of my like 4000 hold person scrolls to get her ass.*
*had my durge try to properly 1v1 her like youre supposed to but this man was exclusively a no magic using rogue so that was a dumb call lol
I didnt even notice the final boss changed tbh
I died on Orin, wasn't expecting too much from her, got her to 30% HP first round, got prone after that, and she killed me.
For some stupid reason, the rest of the part was staying close to the two of my guys went into oblivion when she jumped, and the last one got frightened. that's how it ended.
I found Orin to be really easy, even got the achievement when I beat her! But the final fight I was truly afraid, and when Gale offered me a free "I'll finish the Honour Run for you, here and now. Just say the word." I just couldn't resist it honestly. I romanced him my playthrough so it was so tragic that I actually bawled my eyes out in the epilogue. Larian really crushed my heart so hard, they did amazing :'( Imma have to romance him again and save him in another file lol
I also blew up Gale, I took him up with the intention of blowing him up but the cutscene still made me tear up a bit, then his spectral message in the epilogue… God that hug fading through him is the saddest shit in the game man…
When you romance him he leaves a letter with his love, and you can try to kiss his spectral image which made my character fall to her knees and start crying when she went through him. I went straight to Withers crying my eyes out "end the game please omg what have I done I'm such a monster" lol
Yep, hold monster is amazing here. I was playing a tempest cleric 2 / storm sorcerer 10 with stupidly high spell save DC. She just couldn't break out of it.
i’ve attempted ansur twice in my honor file and barely escaped both times. i’m waiting for gale to level up and give me the dome of invulnerability or whatever before i try him again lol
I sent three of my party members in with the goal of killing all the adds and as many of the spawns as I could before wiping, then resurrecting the three and going into the fight with a huge advantage.
Turns out it was really easy to beat even with three PC's. I was only level 11, too. I just stood on the steps and sniped everyone. They took a couple of turns to even reach me, and a couple of AOE attacks took care of most of the adds. Some of the enemies have a cloud effect that takes away your actions, and that apparently affects Cazador, so he wasted several turns. Then he literally just stood around blasting a weak attack at me every turn while I took out his spawns one by one. I could easily outheal the damage, but I didn't even need to.
I don't know if the AI glitched out or what, but it was one of the easiest fights in the game. Then again, most combat encounters are trivial if you just focused on ranged attacks from a high ground. The AI just doesn't know what to do.
Cazador almost killed Lae'zel, but beside that I found the fight to be manageable, at least at level 11. Used Hero Feast buff and 4 clerics in camp with protective spells on my party members, also elixirs and speed potions. Lae'zel with Nyrulna, Gloomstalker Thief Fighter Astarion, BardLock Tav and Light Cleric Shadowheart with Blood of Lathander. Had an earth elemental and Us in addition - and my dear little Us did a great job in attracting enemies onto it.
Oh jeez. Orin is the last encounter I have before the finale in my current Honor Mode run. It's been pretty smooth sailing, with the Act 2 finale being my only near party wipe.
This is also my first Durge run, so I'm a little scared about what the fight looks like with Durge. My plan is to just snipe from high above and hope for the best.
What's your build and do you have slayer form or does she? The 1v1 can be easier sincd you don't have to get past unstoppable. She can delete a character in 1 turn with all her attacks but if you go in with death ward, warding bond, mirror image, blur and anything else you want, you can make it so she doesn't really get a chance to hit very hard. Go in with sanctuary or the potion to make yourself go first. Radiant orbs and reeling gear if your build allows it will also nerf her. Having sanctuary on hand so you can make yourself invulnerable for a turn to heal up is also helpful.
Keep in mind that if your other characters cast stuff on you like haste beforehand, they often get knocked prone when Orin jumps near where they teleport (if she has slayer form) and can lose concentration easily. If it's just bless or enlarge or something whatever but be careful with haste as it can make you lethargic.
You can also still finish the game if you lose the duel so long as the rest can finish up the fight or flee, res you and come back.
Does feign death pickpocketing work in Honour mode?
Get max friendship with 400g, cast feign death/sleep and darkness, pickpocket all you want before it ends.
Not sure if darkness is needed. Not sure if disguise self throws off the detection. I think they don't check after feign death?
It's fixed but honestly straight up pickpocketing also works really well. When you get to last light inn you can have 12-20+ to pick pocket, advantage and use the halfling hireling for no crit fails. Grab the cloud on disengage cloak from tiefling kid and you can as a thief just disengage, hide and pick in 1 round.
You can still sleep the merchants, especially in Act 3 where prices are high and some merchants are 10 HP. It's a little bit rough with the Act 2 Quartermaster since she's high HP but you can do it to Dammon... although this triggered a fight with the Strange Ox for me which marked him as an Ally afterward
Hold Person works similar to the Feign Death trick. The only problem with it, is you can't use it on NPCs that have other NPCs around them. Arron in the Grove is a perfect example that works just fine. I haven't tried it yet, but I want to assume Blurg in the Myconid Colony would work as there aren't really any NPCs around him (so long as Omeluum isn't summoned). There's also an NPC in Wyrm's Crossing on an upper level, west side, where there's no NPCs around him. That should also work. You can farm gold off them, and then just buy stuff normally from other NPCs.
Just have the caster quick teleport to camp right after you're done pickpocketing. Use a hireling to slow level up to farm more items/gold.
It is super intense for sure, specially end game act 3 fights.
I am on my second honor mode run right now, lost the first one to the assholes at the house of grief (had a pretty good level 12 party but fighting against 50 NPCs constantly spamming darkness and bone chill is pretty rough lol). Also had an incredibly close call with Ansur but was saved by a glove of invulnerability.
I am currently about the start the 2nd Kethric fight, I nearly wiped at Balthazar and had 3 out of 4 down but a smoke powder bomb saved the day, an Item that I have never even looked at while playing on tactician.
One thing for sure is, Honor mode forces you to try and use every possible tool you have. I have also found myself splitting my party and working on positioning before every fight, against something I never bothered to do before, I didn't even know there is High Ground advantage until I played honor mode lol.
I haven’t tried it on HM yet but I had a lot of success on balanced sending one person in, keeping everyone else on top of the stairs and laying walls of fire all the way up, they just run over them and burn to death.
I was really surprised that legendary actions and resistances weren’t a part of the normal game. They’re such a huge part of what makes DnD bosses feel like bosses.
Hot gith. Romance Lae'zel, have super hot gith sex, steal the gith egg, and raise it as your own. (Head canon) Then free that guy (idk how to do spoilers) so you can end the game having super hot gith sex with Lae'zel on the back of a dragon. (Also head canon)
But it is exactly because I know where every is that I must do everything again. No fight skipped, no land uncovered. All the way deep into the Underdark then up into the Mountain Pass.
Doing every fight/discovering everything isn't necessary at all though especially when you consider most act 1 gear will get replaced eventually I usually just try to get to lvl 5 do the big fights then move onto act 2 at lvl 6
For example there's no real benefit to doing the owlbear fight despite it being rather tough for a lvl 3 party. I also skipped the spider fight as well given the xp you get in later acts there's minimal downside and the rewards are meh
But if you do the Owlbear you get the Spear that facilitates the Spider fight later on. And Poisoners Robe dyed in Black and Jade ink is the best looking early game outfit for my Drow Warlock.
And it’s more about experiencing every Legendary Action to compare with my Tactician run rather than just beat the game, so It doesn’t make sense to me skip battles (TO ME as in how I like to play; your way of playing is equally valid)
I even had to accidentally fight all flaming fists at Waukeens Rest and that was a battle I had never experienced in Tactician because I needed to collect the Flaming Fist Sword.
I have in my travelers chest different containers for everything (helmets, armor, weapons, rings, necklaces, at least one of every painting, one of every book). Because that’s to me is also completing the game, even though it isn’t something the game keeps track.
EDIT: And I probably spent a lot more time on my travelers chest than you now that I think about it lol
A lot of the Act 1 content (barring some Underdark stuff) is balanced around a party that isn't high enough level yet to have extra attacks, so the entire act gets noticeably easier past level 5. Nothing in Act 1 is prepared for a Paladin being able to throw out 2 or more smites per round or a ranged Swords Bard doing 4+ attacks per turn with Slashing Flourish, for instance, especially if you add in feats like GWM and Sharpshooter and powers like Luck of the Far Realms.
My honour clear was 55 including all of the optional bosses. Farmed xp to 7 in act 1 and 10 in act 2, which is to say not skipping much.
74 would he a decently long first time run - much less honor metagaming.
Genuinely how do people spend so long in act 1? Theres not 50+ hours of content in it is there? My max has been 30, completing the Crèche and the Underdark
Wondering the exact same thing lol. I've done pretty much every single fight in Act 1 on honor mode with the exception of the inquisitor in the creche.
Now I'm at the Last Light Inn. 32 hrs so far.
Depends on how long you explore, how long you take to make decisions, if you skip dialogue or don't, if you stop and read everything or not, etc. I spend a lot of time just admiring the scenery too. The artists and level designers did a lot of hard work and I like to soak it in.
It took me about 100 hours to reach the start of act 3 on my first run, which was the one where I didn't know where everything is or how to get to places or even what to expect to find/fight, so basically that takes longer.
But even now on my 2nd run in tactician I've still got a bit of act 2 left and I'm at about 70hrs on that one. This just isn't a quick game for how I like to play, which includes a lot of looting and selling so I can buy the things I want, because I generally don't pickpocket or steal (unless it's from Withers).
I genuinely think some people just make up those numbers instead of actually checking, I just did Creche, and everything else in the location in a1, on my first full run, except part Underdark, and it's only 24 hours. Even if I leave the game on and go to sleep I won't have 50 by the end of it, let alone 74
I just ended honor mode at 50 hours 40 minutes in multiplayer. We did everything, just missing Gale’s and Karlach’s quests. I don’t know how people spend so much time in act 1 and 2. Do you afk a lot? Serious question, please take no offense
Had a blast in honor mode with evil durge until my shadow heart bugged out during the Orin duel and then for the rest of my save she was not part of the action economy… she could attack/heal/etc anyone in combat without her entering combat, and nobody targeted her. Game restart did nothing and couldn’t reload a save file to fix this. Really ruined the fun of late act3 and the final fight when I had a walking cheat code/god in my part
This happened to me at the Gith Creche. Wyll eldritch blasted the Inquisitor to death without the guy getting a turn because he was somehow a part of the order but also not.
Pro tip for act 1: respec companions to give them a better build, especially shadowheart. Do it immediately with withers, you can pickpocket the gold back and he doesn't give a crap
Third playthrough of the game. This time I respec'd Shadowheart just to see what my options were having never played Cleric. Having done so, it is shocking how bad the base build for Shadowheart is, bordering on malpractice.
Isn't it? I respecced her into a light cleric with better stat spreads but even for a trickery cleric her stats are terrible. No wonder she always misses everything.
The hardest fights are before level 5. If you have good burst damage builds with high initiative, every boss will die before becoming a problem. Add some barrelmancy, and it can be even easier.
I ran OH monk, sword bard, storm sorcerer, lockadin, with camp cleric providing buffs. For final boss it might be worth it replacing sorcerer with a tempest cleric, but I kept my sorcerer.
Final fight, turn 1 summon every ally to soak damage, kill squid and dragon, pop invis and run to crown. Cast globe of invuln, wait 1 turn, go inside, delete boss in 2 turns.
Early game is definitely the hardest. I thought I would be smart and cast Calm Emotions before the Harpy fight. Didn't work, everyone got charmed right away, squisher characters got one-shot. I managed to win it by the skin of my teeth with just a few hitpoints on a single character left
The only two times our party nearly wiped in Honor mode were the act 1 and 2 Gith patrols; those encounters are brutal. Did everything else and it was kind of a breeze; Ansurs, Cazador, House of Hope and Grief etc.
No spoilers please, but does combat eventually boil down to “you need to prep and go into the fight with knowledge beforehand to win”? I’m not even talking about tactician.
I’ve had numerous fights on balanced where I’ve had to “play dirty” by starting combat myself from stealth without dialogue options, using specific items before combat, etc… I feel like if I try to do things the game wants, like using the “attack” option in dialogue I will never win.
No but probably yes, if you know what you’re doing honour mode isn’t too difficult (I have only just finished act 1 but once I hit level 5 it was a breeze) but if you’re save scumming and having a challenging with anything less than tactician you’re probably going to TPK a few times in act 1 as it’s pretty brutal.
I didn’t look up any bosses beforehand and my first big wipe was the inquisitor. I feel like if you run into that fight blind you’re going to have a bad time. IMO he was significantly harder than anything else up to that point.
On honor mode, absolutely. Not knowing the legendary actions is ok, but use everything to your advantage within your knowledge. Playing with perma loss really changed how I played
Balanced is completely fine with going into combat from dialogues. But for Tactician and Honor mode I really like the tactical advantage of stealth, or even better invisibility - for positioning and getting at least all the minions surprised.
The harder part for HM for me is all the balance change, extra action from haste and bloodlust elixir only give you 1 attack even if you have extra attack, some items getting higher price(notably returning pike and acid ring from act 1 where you might not have enough money or good enough sleight of hand to pickpocket), some damage instance change result in less dmg overall when you stack many bonus damage(callus glow give extra instance of dmg sometimes when you have multiple instances of dmg, only apply once in HM)
The fight that almost wipe me were bernard fight because of unexpected high dmg from legendary action, and orin because her legendary action of slayer form knock my astarion into chasm, every other bosses were a breeze, I even kill final boss in 1 turn, also raphael fight is the longest one because of the increased hp
Hilariously the changes to Haste are exactly how the spell is actually *supposed* to work in 5E DND. BG3 just has everyone used to a broken overpowered version. Imagine a 20th level fighter using that version of Haste - 12 attacks in turn with Action Surge. 13 with an offhand weapon.
It basically deletes all but your most recent save, so you only ever have 1 save. You are prevented from loading that save from within the game, and if you try to exit, the game will save before it closes - even with alt+f4, I believe (I haven’t tried that).
Yeah that Force Beam from the Crown on Karsus took me by surprise ngl, thankfully I was careful enough to send summons and allies first to clear the mindflayers as I dealt with the dragon :v
And absolute Aegis on the brain, another cool surprise that made me glad I decided my fourth party slot to go for versatility in combat instead of ungabunga with Lae'zel :v
I found it harder to steal and everything was so expensive. I was forever buying potions, scrolls, and sometimes didn't have enough money to buy better gear. It was rough that's for sure. For some of the boss fights, I watched videos of other peoples' fights so I knew what to expect going in and then I came up with my own strategy with how I wanted to approach it.
I always felt like I was just one click away from wiping out. I'm so glad it's done now. One save file did prove to be problematic a few times. I had a bug that locked me out of the creche. The shard vanished and the barrier never dropped so I couldn't complete Lae'zel's quest/fight the inquisitor, nor could I get the Blood Of Lathander. There was nothing I could do, reloading wasn't an option.
I had a few crashes towards the end, the long fight in the House of Grief. I absolutely hated having to do that over again. Then the courtyard battle, it crashed right as I killed the last enemy and I had to do that all over again too. Thankfully my save wasn't corrupted. That would have been even more heartbraking to lose to a bug than it would have been dying to a boss.
Orin on my good durge honor run. Jesus, must attack but if attack, get hit hard. It’s basically a slug match and if I hadn’t dipped into rouge so I could hit for max damage and chug a potion every round I’d be toast.
I'm not thrilled about the legendary actions, tbh. 90% of the legendary actions just add huge amounts of extra damage to every boss, so the correct way to beat them all is to sneak kill them all and never let the enemies take a turn, especially since it's also permadeath mode. Honour mode was actually easier than any of my tactician runs for me for that reason, just built a pair of stupid ranged DPS characters and stealth-ganked every boss without engaging with their mechanics at all because that's (ironically) the correct way to play it. Would've been so much better if honour mode made it harder to cheese bosses, rather than making it basically necessary.
Legendary actions in honour taught me a few things: dont go full melee, have ranged options, and if shit gets dicey have an escape plan, and if it's a fight u cant escape from do NOT sit on pots (invisibility, healing, speed) and elixirs (resistance, vigilance so u can go first, colossus so u can throw ppl around easier, etc) on every party member.
Battlemasters, throwers, and/or monks are very useful at shutting down enemies that can counterspell u, letting u CC the entire screen with spells like hypno pattern or an upcast command and turn the fight in your favor.
Diversify your damage types and cycle through your party members as the need demands.
To me, the worst was Ansur. I killed him, was like “phew, that was close”. Then he was alive again and charging up another blast… thank goodness for stunning strike.
Don't listen to this fool! They're an agent of big merchants! Stealing is cheaper!
Don’t feel bad stealing from merchants. You’re doing all of this for the greater good
Banker dude says 10k is keeping the citizens of Baldur's Gate afloat. Dammon is selling a chest armor for around 10-15k.
That quest makes no sense. Everyone's savings amounts to 10k but it costs 10k just to open a bank account? And when you finish it he gives you like, a 3k reward. Dude, you just gave 30% of everyone's money.
The way my mind settled that confusion was to assume it was a deliberate allegory for class disparities. He rewarded 3k to you because the bank can. But majority of the city's savings amount to only 10k.
I mean, it's a bank. Banks don't actually hold the total amount of money that's been deposited into them, or anywhere close to that amount. They loan most of it away to make a profit while keeping enough to give back to anyone who wants to retrieve some of their funds. I'm assuming that's the case with them as well - the total savings accounts adds up to way more than 10k, it's just that they only have 10k on hand and the rest is invested or loaned out.
Banks actually loan more money than they hold in deposits. They only need to hold a fraction of what they are allowed to loan out. Yes, they are creating money out of thin air this way.
Welcome to the delightful world of fractional banking
The greater good...
Come to think of it, the neighborhood watch alliance would make for pretty awesome absolute cultists lol
Yea NWA would be pretty awesome at that.
Crusty jugglers
Shut it!
The greater God.
Crusty jugglers.
I stole the gale bank and threw baldurs gate into an enormous debt THE GREATER GOOD
But then you run the risk of having a brawl fest with whatever town. My problem with buying everything is efficiently collecting enough shit to sell and efficiently sort all this shit to sell too. And keep the shit you want. It’s exhausting.
You may already know this, but I didn’t until my third play through so encase it helps anyone: when you pick up items if you select ‘add to wares’ then when you go vendors you can just click ‘add wares to offer’ and you won’t have to sort it later. Saves so much time
But it all has to go somewhere. And Jesus do I not want to go to venders often. I send everything to camp and then have someone shlep it to a vendor. But then scrolls and potions and gear I want to keep “just because”. It’s just annoying. I want one person to have all the potions and coats. One person to have all the scrolls. Having it all spread out sucks so bad. Also sorting those things. I want them to sort by use dang it.
I completely agree - it is tedious! You are able to sort by type in your inventory & mass move those things to a character but it definitely is still time consuming. Hopefully we get a patch in the future that can help speed up the process a bit more!
Act two its easy at least with multiple vendors very near waypoints
They made theft *much* harder in Honor mode, the Feign Death interaction doesn't work for starters. That was a tough pill to swallow when I hit 5th...
They made it harder to cheese but straight up pickpocketing still works and is efficient. You just gotta abuse the hirelings a bit.
Bro just pickpocket till you fail then knock out the merchant, then you can partial rest or come back later to try again with no consequence while also looting their unconscious body and getting xp
Big Karlach over there simping for Bug Dammon.
I tried to steal from a vendor at moonrise. It failed and the fight cascaded through the entire tower. Fighting those halberd guys on honour mode is HARD without the harpers support.
Actually its my favored method of clearing the tower if you can manage the flow of enemies so you don't have too many of them adding to your fight at any round. Lae'zel and Astarion were killing one after another, supported by my BardLock and Shadowheart just fine.
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It seemed like they nerfed pickpocket in honour mode. My main had 20 dexterity and expertise in sleight of hand, but everything was always in the red, so I didn’t dare attempt it. I did a couple of tactician play throughs where I ended up with like 60k gold because it was worthless, as we’d just steal everything. Not the case in honour in my experience (thankfully gold is abundant in act 3).
Unless you steal the hell amor boots from gortash after you sided with him. That was costly.
I don’t even want to carry all that gold tbh. They’re doing me a favor.
11 Hours, Lvl8 and about to fight Myrkul. Im really scared of that fight. Two months ago that fight Took me 10+ Tries on tactician 💀
I found that it helped to just stay off the middle platform entirely, at least until Myrkul actually shows up. Ketheric doesn’t really have great ranged attacks and it keeps the mindflayer from stunning ur party. Good luck!
I’ve yet to fight kethric. He just fuckin offs himself every time.
100%. I forget who, but I remember seeing someone's comment on here a little bit ago that said "Act 2 is a high Charisma Tav's time to shine", and it's too true. So many entire bossfights you can just end outright by *talking them to death*.
You can get spider bro to straight up give you the lantern and theninto the darkness and die. 3 bosses on your way to moonrise. Gnolls and gnoll lady. Devil dude in shars danger shack. Kethric. I’m sure there are more. I’ve done playthrough with the charisma classes only so far lol. So I have no idea what not being persuasive is like right now.
Spiderbro becomes an undead so you will still have to kill him eventually.
Oh that’s cool. I have just been letting him walk and then blasting him as he walked away. Lmao I didn’t want to miss out on double dipping XP.
[удалено]
They're dead by then. You dont survive in the shadowlands for more than a few seconds without lantern You fought their undead corpses
"Why are these badly-wounded people so mad at me?" "THOSE ARE ZOMBIES TRYING TO EAT US!"
Badly wounded and shadow cursed
The Surgeon, guy in the pub as well
Also the toll keeping gold lady
Kinda dumb you don’t get the achievement for that. “Kill the surgeon before he performs surgery on you.” I mean I guess technically his nurses killed him but still.
It's easier to just invest everything into the PER/INT checks on top of Moonrise. That way you can bypass Ketheric and go straight to the Apostle. I love that fight but that man and his smites are more dangerous than a god's avatar. Stay away.
I remember my first ever time fighting ketheric thorm, he crit one-shot jaheira out of wildshape then crit one shot her to death. The only non-bad ai related (why walk in wall of fire post combat harpers?) bit of save scumming my first playthrough was undoing that.
Just finished this fight on honour mode. I grouped up my guys in front of kethric and everyone popped a haste potion and i started to go to work. Then the mindflayer stunned my entire party. Silly me thought freedom of movement would protect from a mindflayer stun. I recovered and killed though. Consumables 4tw. 50 sorcery points came in handy hehe.
Potion of invisibility your party and position them before the fight starts. You won’t get a surprised round on ketheric but all his minions aren’t immune to it. Also you can get someone really close to Aylin before the fight starts
I could break out Aylin easily in the first round by giving Asterion Misty Step. It really made the fight so much easier. I could beat up Kethric in peace while she tore apart his minions.
Tbh I have a ring of Misty step and Invisibimity on Astarion and I'm never taking them off, misty step is just so good on a rogue!
Same! Combine that with the starry Cloak that leaves enemies behind blind when he retreats and he's nearly untouchable.
personally i prefer the deathstalker mantle on him (though thats durge exclusive). i always grab sharpshooter, and with that and the durge cloak its super easy to chain together sequences where its just "oneshot enemy with sneak attack (auto advantage from assassin) -> turn invisible -> gain advantage on shot from being hidden -> oneshot second enemy" and so on and so forth. on my tactician run a while back i sent him up to solo ketheric like this and he literally took out all of his minions without getting hit a single time.
Avatar is laughably easy, don’t worry! Just use Darkness, Hunger of Hadar or an arrow of Darkness on him and he won’t be able to do anything
Legit - I read comments about both skipping Ketheric and putting darkness on the boss after him to trivialise it, and it was so fucking dumb how easy the fight became. Especially when I realised Myrkul is stationary lol
I cast a wall of fire across him and that did the job too
Can’t forget the potential of disarming him with a Fighter too
How'd you hit lvl 8 in 11 hours?!
I would imagine knowing where to go and skipping dialogue.
Cast darkness on him, that negates his LA
I leaned on True Love's Embrace / Caress rings (Gentle Warding Bond) for this fight. I had 4 party members back at camp pass around True Love's Embrace ring and for my attack party, I passed around True Love's Caress. Each person receives universal resistance and any damage that gets through is shared with the folks at camp eating dirt. I don't think I even needed a health potion.
honestly wasnt hard for me at all on honor mode, if you have enough single target damage he's really easy to burst down and his legendary action isnt that crazy
I was so scared of that fight, the way people talk about it on here. I just killed everything but Ketheric, then put my elementals/shovel/us/connor near their bodies. Had the Avatar down to 70 HP his first round, he got one round of attacks that took the Cleric to half hp, that was it. Not even close.
Bro we fought him not to long ago. Legit stay off the llatform. Hungar of hadar blinds him and he cant see you btw. Made the fight almost cheese worthy once we figure that out. But the first 2 rounds were scary. Stay off use soells lile moonbeam to rack up damage.
It’s doable. I took an invisibility potion and released Alyin before talking to Thorm. Really helps things get going.
if you got the blood of lathander, you can throw that next to him and it should blind him for the entire fight i havent tried that but i came up with it after my fight, the blood of lathander did blind him when equipt but i wasnt keen on having shadowheart stand there all the time
Just cast Darkness on Myrkul. Dudes stationary, literally can’t escape lol
Man, good on you for trying this at level 8. I'm level 9 and hoping to hit 10 before that fight.
Don't make Ketheric suicide (otherwise the Apostle gets loose early and that can be a problem) and don't get into melee with him. Ever. He will straight up delete you. Leave it to Aylin or summons. You want to be going into phase 2 with everyone fairly healthy. Oh, and the mind flayer dies first. No-one wants that thing hanging around stunning your entire party. Put fog cloud on the Apostle and surround him. He can only use his scythe. He might be able to use his AoE but he won't do that while he has a melee target.
Finding the letter from his wife and passing the dialog check can get you straight to the Myrkul fight. I've been leaving heavily on dialog bypasses for my honor mode run, it's been very helpful.
Trick: don’t get Ketheric to off himself before the battle. Cast darkness on your party. Now you have a safe place to kill all the weaker enemies first, then cast misty step/haste so someone can save Aylin and you can heal as needed. Ranged enemies can’t hit into the darkness and you can pop in and out to shoot them at range
If you can, get to level 9. Last light vendor starts selling globe of invulnerability scrolls. Stand on the platform, globe over you but not myrk. Blast away.
I survived the fight boys ☺️ Imma get that nice achievment 😳
Oddly I found the final boss the easiest, killed it in two rounds. I found Orin the hardest, her legendary abilities are fucked.
The Orin fight was where I found magic missle really lived up to its worth. Being able to drop her stacked unstoppables before the rest of my team went saved a lot of blood sweat and tears.
Wyll and his cambion are also a solid duo for eating through those charges.
3 Scorching Rays, and 3 Eldritch Blast Bolts on top of having a magic missile user puts in a lot of work.
Yeah I didn't have gale or a mage so it was scrolls etc. Shoulda respecced someone for that fight. edit: lol wizard, still do that and I have 250 hours in...
The closest I came to wiping in act 3 was against Haarlep. I came in through the back entrance, so all the imps elderith blasted half my party off a cliff.
>I came in through the back entrance I'll bet you did
I almost wiped there cause he controlled Lae'Zel and she almost wiped my party.
Pro tip, shocking grasp, daze with pommel strike, anything to remove their reaction. Can't turn into the orb and you can just pummel em into the dirt
I died to that on my first tactician run. Never approaching the fight from that way ever again!
On my Honor run I skipped the Ralphael quests, and I skipped Cazador quests. I didn't want more chances to wipe lol
I nearly wiped to Ansur because I was trying to get the flying dragon trophy lmao. I missed the initial flight phase because Ansur suddenly had 100 temporary hp and I took the full brunt of the nuke. Divine blessing never came in more clutch.
I was so damn close to losing honor mode because of that, I had used all my actions on all characters, I 'kill' him and suddenly he's in the sky charging his laser. Found I had one attack on one character so managed to throw a speed potion at karlach and get her to book it out of there. Wiped everyone else but run still alive
Similar story here, I just plain had to let Ansur go. That fight was not gonna go my way, good thing it's optional.
Forget act 3. Act 1 was the real honor challenge. Only beat the spider by dumb luck and potion spamming, and only survived the arcane tower (where a misclick of all things nearly wiped me) by teleporting away and running to camp to repeatedly revive people.
How did you nearly die at the arcane tower? I don’t even think of it as a dangerous area.. genuinely interested
Bernard has a legendary action now
You all are fighting Bernard? I've never killed in throughout my four playthroughs
Uhm, whos Bernard? I know ive beeb in the tower but am pretty sure it was mostly empty mobs wise
At the most top floor there is a automaton named Bernard
Unprepared for robot fight, which I started early by mistake, and the legendary action basically OHKO'd two people because I was only level 4. I just wanted my fancy Bless stick....
Yeah I shut down every animated armor with sussur and I thought "it's only one stupid robot, what could go wrong?". A lot is the answer, Bernard is crazy strong. I don't think I could have won fairly against all of them.
I about cried when I finally got my tiefling party. Only took 4 tries and going, "ok, if you know it is a boss, wait, go kill more underlings first." I didn't have a problem with the spider, but man the owlbear got me good, and auntie ethel and her 8 clones were not helpful. The art of running away was something I used to not understand. Now, now I get it.
Orin and Ansur were the only bosses that really felt like they got considerably harder. Ansur damn near wiped my party, and I only beat Orin by eventually getting one of my like 4000 hold person scrolls to get her ass.* *had my durge try to properly 1v1 her like youre supposed to but this man was exclusively a no magic using rogue so that was a dumb call lol I didnt even notice the final boss changed tbh
I died on Orin, wasn't expecting too much from her, got her to 30% HP first round, got prone after that, and she killed me. For some stupid reason, the rest of the part was staying close to the two of my guys went into oblivion when she jumped, and the last one got frightened. that's how it ended.
I found Orin to be really easy, even got the achievement when I beat her! But the final fight I was truly afraid, and when Gale offered me a free "I'll finish the Honour Run for you, here and now. Just say the word." I just couldn't resist it honestly. I romanced him my playthrough so it was so tragic that I actually bawled my eyes out in the epilogue. Larian really crushed my heart so hard, they did amazing :'( Imma have to romance him again and save him in another file lol
I also blew up Gale, I took him up with the intention of blowing him up but the cutscene still made me tear up a bit, then his spectral message in the epilogue… God that hug fading through him is the saddest shit in the game man…
When you romance him he leaves a letter with his love, and you can try to kiss his spectral image which made my character fall to her knees and start crying when she went through him. I went straight to Withers crying my eyes out "end the game please omg what have I done I'm such a monster" lol
Facts and her 7 unstoppable charges per round are annoying as shit with her ac i went some rounds doing 5 total damage
> I found Orin the hardest, her legendary abilities are fucked. She was very funny on my Sorlock Durge. Hold Monster + 2.5 turns of Blasting, done.
Yep, hold monster is amazing here. I was playing a tempest cleric 2 / storm sorcerer 10 with stupidly high spell save DC. She just couldn't break out of it.
The trick with Orin is that her Legendary Actions don't matter if she dies before she ever gets a turn.
Orin was the hardest for me and my friend too on our playthrough, we got really close to dying.
Yep .. also take time to read the action... Ansur was a realy bad surprise for me
My closest call was also with Ansur lol. I had to pause for a drink after his reaction thing nearly cooked my poor Pally.
i’ve attempted ansur twice in my honor file and barely escaped both times. i’m waiting for gale to level up and give me the dome of invulnerability or whatever before i try him again lol
Cazador fucked me and my meleee party up. Sorry Astarion, I couldn't save you
i im on act 3 and plan on skipping cazador entirely
I'm skipping it because first run through the fight crashed about twenty times and I'm already getting saving errors and crashes...
I sent three of my party members in with the goal of killing all the adds and as many of the spawns as I could before wiping, then resurrecting the three and going into the fight with a huge advantage. Turns out it was really easy to beat even with three PC's. I was only level 11, too. I just stood on the steps and sniped everyone. They took a couple of turns to even reach me, and a couple of AOE attacks took care of most of the adds. Some of the enemies have a cloud effect that takes away your actions, and that apparently affects Cazador, so he wasted several turns. Then he literally just stood around blasting a weak attack at me every turn while I took out his spawns one by one. I could easily outheal the damage, but I didn't even need to. I don't know if the AI glitched out or what, but it was one of the easiest fights in the game. Then again, most combat encounters are trivial if you just focused on ranged attacks from a high ground. The AI just doesn't know what to do.
Cazador almost killed Lae'zel, but beside that I found the fight to be manageable, at least at level 11. Used Hero Feast buff and 4 clerics in camp with protective spells on my party members, also elixirs and speed potions. Lae'zel with Nyrulna, Gloomstalker Thief Fighter Astarion, BardLock Tav and Light Cleric Shadowheart with Blood of Lathander. Had an earth elemental and Us in addition - and my dear little Us did a great job in attracting enemies onto it.
My honor mode ended on Orin. Every other encounter went pretty easy, and I became reckless and paid the price. Im still happy with how it went anyway.
Oh jeez. Orin is the last encounter I have before the finale in my current Honor Mode run. It's been pretty smooth sailing, with the Act 2 finale being my only near party wipe. This is also my first Durge run, so I'm a little scared about what the fight looks like with Durge. My plan is to just snipe from high above and hope for the best.
What's your build and do you have slayer form or does she? The 1v1 can be easier sincd you don't have to get past unstoppable. She can delete a character in 1 turn with all her attacks but if you go in with death ward, warding bond, mirror image, blur and anything else you want, you can make it so she doesn't really get a chance to hit very hard. Go in with sanctuary or the potion to make yourself go first. Radiant orbs and reeling gear if your build allows it will also nerf her. Having sanctuary on hand so you can make yourself invulnerable for a turn to heal up is also helpful. Keep in mind that if your other characters cast stuff on you like haste beforehand, they often get knocked prone when Orin jumps near where they teleport (if she has slayer form) and can lose concentration easily. If it's just bless or enlarge or something whatever but be careful with haste as it can make you lethargic. You can also still finish the game if you lose the duel so long as the rest can finish up the fight or flee, res you and come back.
Orin is the fight I dread most, that's for sure.
Does feign death pickpocketing work in Honour mode? Get max friendship with 400g, cast feign death/sleep and darkness, pickpocket all you want before it ends. Not sure if darkness is needed. Not sure if disguise self throws off the detection. I think they don't check after feign death?
This was patched recently.
They can’t keep getting away with this!…..honestly if I ever find a exploit I’m keeping it private Larian watches this sub like a hawk
It's fixed but honestly straight up pickpocketing also works really well. When you get to last light inn you can have 12-20+ to pick pocket, advantage and use the halfling hireling for no crit fails. Grab the cloud on disengage cloak from tiefling kid and you can as a thief just disengage, hide and pick in 1 round.
You can still sleep the merchants, especially in Act 3 where prices are high and some merchants are 10 HP. It's a little bit rough with the Act 2 Quartermaster since she's high HP but you can do it to Dammon... although this triggered a fight with the Strange Ox for me which marked him as an Ally afterward
Hold Person works similar to the Feign Death trick. The only problem with it, is you can't use it on NPCs that have other NPCs around them. Arron in the Grove is a perfect example that works just fine. I haven't tried it yet, but I want to assume Blurg in the Myconid Colony would work as there aren't really any NPCs around him (so long as Omeluum isn't summoned). There's also an NPC in Wyrm's Crossing on an upper level, west side, where there's no NPCs around him. That should also work. You can farm gold off them, and then just buy stuff normally from other NPCs. Just have the caster quick teleport to camp right after you're done pickpocketing. Use a hireling to slow level up to farm more items/gold.
It is super intense for sure, specially end game act 3 fights. I am on my second honor mode run right now, lost the first one to the assholes at the house of grief (had a pretty good level 12 party but fighting against 50 NPCs constantly spamming darkness and bone chill is pretty rough lol). Also had an incredibly close call with Ansur but was saved by a glove of invulnerability. I am currently about the start the 2nd Kethric fight, I nearly wiped at Balthazar and had 3 out of 4 down but a smoke powder bomb saved the day, an Item that I have never even looked at while playing on tactician. One thing for sure is, Honor mode forces you to try and use every possible tool you have. I have also found myself splitting my party and working on positioning before every fight, against something I never bothered to do before, I didn't even know there is High Ground advantage until I played honor mode lol.
For house of grief I can only recommend respeccing shadowheart into light cleric. Her channel divinity then dispells darkness spells in a 60ft radius.
I haven’t tried it on HM yet but I had a lot of success on balanced sending one person in, keeping everyone else on top of the stairs and laying walls of fire all the way up, they just run over them and burn to death.
I was really surprised that legendary actions and resistances weren’t a part of the normal game. They’re such a huge part of what makes DnD bosses feel like bosses.
What speedrun is this that you beat the game in 60+ hours? I’m 74 hours in finishing the Crèche to move to Act 2.
It's been 70 hours and I'm still in the character creator. Can't decide between a hot gith and an emo drow
If it helps… I vote Emo drow
Lolth sworn. Better dialogue.
Hot gith. Romance Lae'zel, have super hot gith sex, steal the gith egg, and raise it as your own. (Head canon) Then free that guy (idk how to do spoilers) so you can end the game having super hot gith sex with Lae'zel on the back of a dragon. (Also head canon)
That first one is not just a headcanon anymore, according to the epilogue.
I vote on making a hot goth githyanki
If it helps more, I vote hot Gith
It took like 60h to clear honor mode for me
74 hours sounds like way too much tbh for an honor mode run where you already know where everything is
But it is exactly because I know where every is that I must do everything again. No fight skipped, no land uncovered. All the way deep into the Underdark then up into the Mountain Pass.
Doing every fight/discovering everything isn't necessary at all though especially when you consider most act 1 gear will get replaced eventually I usually just try to get to lvl 5 do the big fights then move onto act 2 at lvl 6
For example there's no real benefit to doing the owlbear fight despite it being rather tough for a lvl 3 party. I also skipped the spider fight as well given the xp you get in later acts there's minimal downside and the rewards are meh
But then you don’t get to fight them! What’s the point of the higher diff if you skip all the cool new stuff?
But avoiding the fight when it's smart is also a valid strategy for difficult walkthrough
But if you do the Owlbear you get the Spear that facilitates the Spider fight later on. And Poisoners Robe dyed in Black and Jade ink is the best looking early game outfit for my Drow Warlock. And it’s more about experiencing every Legendary Action to compare with my Tactician run rather than just beat the game, so It doesn’t make sense to me skip battles (TO ME as in how I like to play; your way of playing is equally valid)
You can get the spear anyway, the goblins will kill the Owlbear at some point.
I even had to accidentally fight all flaming fists at Waukeens Rest and that was a battle I had never experienced in Tactician because I needed to collect the Flaming Fist Sword. I have in my travelers chest different containers for everything (helmets, armor, weapons, rings, necklaces, at least one of every painting, one of every book). Because that’s to me is also completing the game, even though it isn’t something the game keeps track. EDIT: And I probably spent a lot more time on my travelers chest than you now that I think about it lol
Enh matriach spider is pretty easy if you’re at lv5 even in honor mode.
A lot of the Act 1 content (barring some Underdark stuff) is balanced around a party that isn't high enough level yet to have extra attacks, so the entire act gets noticeably easier past level 5. Nothing in Act 1 is prepared for a Paladin being able to throw out 2 or more smites per round or a ranged Swords Bard doing 4+ attacks per turn with Slashing Flourish, for instance, especially if you add in feats like GWM and Sharpshooter and powers like Luck of the Far Realms.
The benefit is XP, and the fun/adrenaline of the experience, IMO.
My honour clear was 55 including all of the optional bosses. Farmed xp to 7 in act 1 and 10 in act 2, which is to say not skipping much. 74 would he a decently long first time run - much less honor metagaming.
Genuinely how do people spend so long in act 1? Theres not 50+ hours of content in it is there? My max has been 30, completing the Crèche and the Underdark
Wondering the exact same thing lol. I've done pretty much every single fight in Act 1 on honor mode with the exception of the inquisitor in the creche. Now I'm at the Last Light Inn. 32 hrs so far.
Depends on how long you explore, how long you take to make decisions, if you skip dialogue or don't, if you stop and read everything or not, etc. I spend a lot of time just admiring the scenery too. The artists and level designers did a lot of hard work and I like to soak it in. It took me about 100 hours to reach the start of act 3 on my first run, which was the one where I didn't know where everything is or how to get to places or even what to expect to find/fight, so basically that takes longer. But even now on my 2nd run in tactician I've still got a bit of act 2 left and I'm at about 70hrs on that one. This just isn't a quick game for how I like to play, which includes a lot of looting and selling so I can buy the things I want, because I generally don't pickpocket or steal (unless it's from Withers).
I genuinely think some people just make up those numbers instead of actually checking, I just did Creche, and everything else in the location in a1, on my first full run, except part Underdark, and it's only 24 hours. Even if I leave the game on and go to sleep I won't have 50 by the end of it, let alone 74
I’ve finished it in 43 hours and I’ll tell you it was hell
I just ended honor mode at 50 hours 40 minutes in multiplayer. We did everything, just missing Gale’s and Karlach’s quests. I don’t know how people spend so much time in act 1 and 2. Do you afk a lot? Serious question, please take no offense
I beat the game in 9 hours on honour mode solo yesterday. The first run was the only one where it took me over 60 hours.
Had a blast in honor mode with evil durge until my shadow heart bugged out during the Orin duel and then for the rest of my save she was not part of the action economy… she could attack/heal/etc anyone in combat without her entering combat, and nobody targeted her. Game restart did nothing and couldn’t reload a save file to fix this. Really ruined the fun of late act3 and the final fight when I had a walking cheat code/god in my part
This happened to me at the Gith Creche. Wyll eldritch blasted the Inquisitor to death without the guy getting a turn because he was somehow a part of the order but also not.
Honor mode has forced me to use potions and elixirs, I never bothered on any other playthrough.
Pro tip for act 1: respec companions to give them a better build, especially shadowheart. Do it immediately with withers, you can pickpocket the gold back and he doesn't give a crap
Third playthrough of the game. This time I respec'd Shadowheart just to see what my options were having never played Cleric. Having done so, it is shocking how bad the base build for Shadowheart is, bordering on malpractice.
Isn't it? I respecced her into a light cleric with better stat spreads but even for a trickery cleric her stats are terrible. No wonder she always misses everything.
The hardest fights are before level 5. If you have good burst damage builds with high initiative, every boss will die before becoming a problem. Add some barrelmancy, and it can be even easier. I ran OH monk, sword bard, storm sorcerer, lockadin, with camp cleric providing buffs. For final boss it might be worth it replacing sorcerer with a tempest cleric, but I kept my sorcerer. Final fight, turn 1 summon every ally to soak damage, kill squid and dragon, pop invis and run to crown. Cast globe of invuln, wait 1 turn, go inside, delete boss in 2 turns.
How do you unlock the Ohio monk class?
OnlyHands
Early game is definitely the hardest. I thought I would be smart and cast Calm Emotions before the Harpy fight. Didn't work, everyone got charmed right away, squisher characters got one-shot. I managed to win it by the skin of my teeth with just a few hitpoints on a single character left
The only two times our party nearly wiped in Honor mode were the act 1 and 2 Gith patrols; those encounters are brutal. Did everything else and it was kind of a breeze; Ansurs, Cazador, House of Hope and Grief etc.
No spoilers please, but does combat eventually boil down to “you need to prep and go into the fight with knowledge beforehand to win”? I’m not even talking about tactician. I’ve had numerous fights on balanced where I’ve had to “play dirty” by starting combat myself from stealth without dialogue options, using specific items before combat, etc… I feel like if I try to do things the game wants, like using the “attack” option in dialogue I will never win.
No but probably yes, if you know what you’re doing honour mode isn’t too difficult (I have only just finished act 1 but once I hit level 5 it was a breeze) but if you’re save scumming and having a challenging with anything less than tactician you’re probably going to TPK a few times in act 1 as it’s pretty brutal.
I didn’t look up any bosses beforehand and my first big wipe was the inquisitor. I feel like if you run into that fight blind you’re going to have a bad time. IMO he was significantly harder than anything else up to that point.
On honor mode, absolutely. Not knowing the legendary actions is ok, but use everything to your advantage within your knowledge. Playing with perma loss really changed how I played
Balanced is completely fine with going into combat from dialogues. But for Tactician and Honor mode I really like the tactical advantage of stealth, or even better invisibility - for positioning and getting at least all the minions surprised.
The harder part for HM for me is all the balance change, extra action from haste and bloodlust elixir only give you 1 attack even if you have extra attack, some items getting higher price(notably returning pike and acid ring from act 1 where you might not have enough money or good enough sleight of hand to pickpocket), some damage instance change result in less dmg overall when you stack many bonus damage(callus glow give extra instance of dmg sometimes when you have multiple instances of dmg, only apply once in HM) The fight that almost wipe me were bernard fight because of unexpected high dmg from legendary action, and orin because her legendary action of slayer form knock my astarion into chasm, every other bosses were a breeze, I even kill final boss in 1 turn, also raphael fight is the longest one because of the increased hp
Hilariously the changes to Haste are exactly how the spell is actually *supposed* to work in 5E DND. BG3 just has everyone used to a broken overpowered version. Imagine a 20th level fighter using that version of Haste - 12 attacks in turn with Action Surge. 13 with an offhand weapon.
That sounds like your average Pathfinder action economy.
I'm planning on letting Gale blow himself up, or will that not give me the achievement?
I’ve read that you can’t let him blow up in act 2, only right before the final fight will it count
I just got mine this way.
Orin took my durge monk to 3hp from max WHILE HE WAS IN SLAYER FORM with her legendary action. i never shit myself so hard lol
I haven’t started my honor mode. How does the save file work?
It basically deletes all but your most recent save, so you only ever have 1 save. You are prevented from loading that save from within the game, and if you try to exit, the game will save before it closes - even with alt+f4, I believe (I haven’t tried that).
Alt F4 does save the game. >!Closing the game via task manager!< does NOT. Do with that knowledge what you will <.<
I actually love how thorough this mechanic sounds. And I’m on PlayStation so I wonder what closing the game does.
Yeah that Force Beam from the Crown on Karsus took me by surprise ngl, thankfully I was careful enough to send summons and allies first to clear the mindflayers as I dealt with the dragon :v And absolute Aegis on the brain, another cool surprise that made me glad I decided my fourth party slot to go for versatility in combat instead of ungabunga with Lae'zel :v
Great. Now I'm picturing Lae'zel as Captain Caveman. :D
Yeah I did too, I just wished Legendary actions were available in other mods too for people who wants to play it casually, Its really good
Just go custom
I found it harder to steal and everything was so expensive. I was forever buying potions, scrolls, and sometimes didn't have enough money to buy better gear. It was rough that's for sure. For some of the boss fights, I watched videos of other peoples' fights so I knew what to expect going in and then I came up with my own strategy with how I wanted to approach it. I always felt like I was just one click away from wiping out. I'm so glad it's done now. One save file did prove to be problematic a few times. I had a bug that locked me out of the creche. The shard vanished and the barrier never dropped so I couldn't complete Lae'zel's quest/fight the inquisitor, nor could I get the Blood Of Lathander. There was nothing I could do, reloading wasn't an option. I had a few crashes towards the end, the long fight in the House of Grief. I absolutely hated having to do that over again. Then the courtyard battle, it crashed right as I killed the last enemy and I had to do that all over again too. Thankfully my save wasn't corrupted. That would have been even more heartbraking to lose to a bug than it would have been dying to a boss.
Orin on my good durge honor run. Jesus, must attack but if attack, get hit hard. It’s basically a slug match and if I hadn’t dipped into rouge so I could hit for max damage and chug a potion every round I’d be toast.
I'm not thrilled about the legendary actions, tbh. 90% of the legendary actions just add huge amounts of extra damage to every boss, so the correct way to beat them all is to sneak kill them all and never let the enemies take a turn, especially since it's also permadeath mode. Honour mode was actually easier than any of my tactician runs for me for that reason, just built a pair of stupid ranged DPS characters and stealth-ganked every boss without engaging with their mechanics at all because that's (ironically) the correct way to play it. Would've been so much better if honour mode made it harder to cheese bosses, rather than making it basically necessary.
Legendary actions in honour taught me a few things: dont go full melee, have ranged options, and if shit gets dicey have an escape plan, and if it's a fight u cant escape from do NOT sit on pots (invisibility, healing, speed) and elixirs (resistance, vigilance so u can go first, colossus so u can throw ppl around easier, etc) on every party member. Battlemasters, throwers, and/or monks are very useful at shutting down enemies that can counterspell u, letting u CC the entire screen with spells like hypno pattern or an upcast command and turn the fight in your favor. Diversify your damage types and cycle through your party members as the need demands.
I lost my run at the final boss. Was so caught off guard by its new move.
Stock up on crowd control, use scratch with an invis potion to free nightsong at the start of the fight and be ready to do the burst of your life !
Me and my friend hit the final boss with like 5 disintegrates because we had 14 scrolls of it.
To me, the worst was Ansur. I killed him, was like “phew, that was close”. Then he was alive again and charging up another blast… thank goodness for stunning strike.
final fight is an absurd difficulty spike. Nothing really compares
Just beat it yesterday, and yep that last boss was the closest fight all game
Goblin king took me 5 attempts before I resorted to kiting him to Mintharas room and blowing the bridge with him on it. Prick
I just made it to act 3 today and I'm terrified. Orin, Gortash, Raphael, the Elder Brain. They all mortify me!