Its good to see you're uploading these regularly again, I've learnt a lot from these guides. There aren't that many resources online about these games made by people who actually know what they're talking about.
Or by people who are relaying the information to the uninitiated. A lot of discussions on the old boards (Sorcerer’s Place for example...which still has the BEST guide for BG2) are a bit high curve knowledge. I’m glad I discovered this channel in my recommendations, because so far I’ve had a few interesting conversations with our boy here. It’s good to talk shop with someone who loves these games as much as I do.
I just want to say I appreciate the shit out of you man. I have learned so much from your guides, looking forward to the rest of Divine guide. I'm running a cleric/ranger as my main for my first good run, I'm new to the game, but not DND, and still your guides help out tons.
Death ward works to block the "you turn into ghast and get perma'd" effect from Aec'Letec in BG1. It might be the only time that it's useful in 1st game, but it's worth swapping into memorized slots for that fight. Good for both picking off the cultists, and for putting on several party members alongside a bunch of other buffs to blow him up.
the true BG power gamer on youtube! Thank you for your uploads! I have been playing this game for years and never learned so much from your videos! Bless you Davaeorn!
I cannot wait for BG3. I've been spamming videos about BG1 & BG2 to mentally prep for early access BG3. For the last couple days I've been playing these videos in the background while I'm working. Appreciate the long watch time for these and the detail.
Defensive harmony on the shaman is were its at. You have 4 lvl 4 spells at the end og bg1 especially if you have the selunes ring that gives you plus 1 to all 1 to 4 spells. I also always play with 3 front liners. So maybe fir me its good You just cast it instantly in combat or pause the game and have your cleric and mage buff while your shaman also casts buffs so you can get them all on at once
Yeah, I had 2 clerics and one would take protection from evil+some situational buff and the other 2 of this spell. Nice to instant cast it in the middle of party as the fight starts while having cast chant etc pre combat.
I cast Holy Power first, then Righteous Magic and follow it up with Draw Upon Holy Might. It makes Anomen an absolute beast in Shadows of Amn, dual-wielding with a THAC0 of -12/-8 and extra AC with that DEX bonus and HP in the 200s. He still takes a ton of damage, but with Defender of East Haven flail and Armor of Faith spell, you can really have him go to town!
Blood Rage: Because in Icewind Dale all of your characters are player characters it refers to all of your party. So you can use it on all of your party. It just wants to clarify that it cannot be cast onto enemies.
One of the best things about this guide is listening to him describe the bad spells and figure out ways to use near infinity to make the bad spells better. Just removing berserk from blood rage makes it an s+ spell. I also removed the inability to walk with a circle of bones, and now I love the spell so much. But stay away from your party or friendly npcs.
I find defensive harmony awesome in Baldur's Gate 1. Any time you go through a door and there's enemies right there, so your squishy mages are open to attack suddenly, fire defensive harmony off instantly to give everyone the armour boost. Normally your tank will have enough armour to be fine without it though. Great, for things like the werewolf boat on the island. Very underwhelming for something like the final battle of BG1.
Unfailing Endurance is one of those situations where a spell gets imported into a game in which it has no use. In Icewind Dale though fatigue is much bigger issue. Easy to get into a situation when nobody can hit anything because they're too tired. And if you try to rest, you usually get ambushed and just get into an even bigger trouble.
Yeah that's a good point, they followed the same route in SoD and it would have actually been useful to mention there. Thanks for watching and commenting as always friend!
Bless you Dav!! I hope you're doing good man. Looks like I missed a glorious RE2 stream... I hope to make to the next episode of Gimli. Seeing this notification made my day. 12:58 You're the best Dava :) Yeah, these non magic zone dispel everything you've pre-cast. Which makes the Tahazzar suicidal on no reload scs insanity, for anyone whose name is not Davaeorn. 21:34 These beetle are good in mid game IWD. But in BG I would take "Summon Woodland Waifus"...
You're not alone, I usually play evil too. Edwin & Korgan are just too damn good to pass up! Kagain is nice to have along for BG1 sometimes too, and Viconia is a great cleric even if she did use CON as her dump stat. I think the worse quest rewards overall are balanced out by evil guys getting the best NPCs. Plus, you can still bring all the neutral folks anyway, which means almost everyone who matters can still come along. One thing I noticed by the way - You said that 10d4 damage from Spirit Fire is the same damage as Smashing Wave, but actually there is a rather big difference between 4d10 and 10d4. 10d4 is 10-40 damage, 4d10 is 4-40. Much higher minimum damage on the spirit fire would make the damage output on the spell much more reliable, though this is probably counterbalanced by the save vs breath/save vs spell difference.
I usually try to have Negative Plane Protection memorized in early BG2 because right out of Irenicus dungeon I don’t have the Amulet of Power and don’t have the upgraded Mace of Disruption, so unless I’ve got a protagonist who can berserk or cast boon of Lathander, Minsc and Korgan are the only ones who can melee vampires. If I’m playing a good party and don’t want to put up with the evil murder dwarf, I am down to only Minsc. And … much as I enjoy his company, the big dummy just isn’t up to meleeing more than one vamp at a time, if that. And when you’re travelling through the city there’s a couple of unavoidable early vampire encounters that I’m always scared shitless of.
I’ve played a Thief/Mage so many times over since it’s my style, but this rundown of spells is making me certain to do some type of Fighter/Cleric for my next run, never played that combo
Defensive Hamrony is sometimes a nice additional buff if you play solo and your skelies have some trouble. But ye, that's it. C-tier. Good idea on how to test if Holy Power worth it. I just never came to look at it seriously, although for solo in ToB melee is mandatory I think. At least sure I do if I can reload and try again to make Harm work.
I think cleric shit on its own is lackluster but combining with other spells makes them a lot stronger, which makes sense considering it's really designed as a support role.
I use Defensive Harmony all the time with clerics because Holy Power and Cure Serious are the only others I use regularly. The quick cast time makes up for the short duration and Recitation doesn't exist in my version of the game.
If anyone's watching this, Static Charge is not Call Lightning. It goes off once every TURN. So you'll only realistically get the damage once or twic per fight.
Spirit Fire is amazing in Icewind Dale (accidentally, I assume, seeing as shaman class was made for Baldur's Gate). There's one location there in which almost every enemy is a spectral undead (and it's a high density of enemies too). With double damage this spell is practically a Horrid Wilting.
Nice! Beamdog really made an effort to try to bridge BG and IWD I wonder if the shaman class design was part of that intention as their spells are definitely more IWD than BG.
🤣 i can relate to this hard. Learned so much watching these vids. It’s pretty complicated getting into it. Played these games when I was 12. Coming back to it now after 15 years was confusing af
Regarding Star Metal Cudgel, Jaheira is a Fighter/Druid and starts BG2 with two proficiency points in clubs (which is more than other weapons she has points in). It's still not a great spell, as you pointed out..., but if you're going to have anyone cast it, it would probably be her. Also, Smashing wave vs the beast master guy in the Copper Coronet is juicy. All that enemy bottle-necked in a 5-foot corridor.
Oh yeah it's spicy as hell, smashing wave is a lot better than I originally thought it was going to be. Really anything that is SvB is yuge. Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
I find blood rage is great for scouting and opening up encounters pop a summon use improved haste. Add sanctuary and scout then pop blood rage on your summon to distract whatever your fighting while you prepare everything else
Yeah the thing is, that's a lot of spells for a summon that if left alone, is gonna die in 2 seconds anyway. The elementals early don't have shit for hp, monster sum is a joke, animate dead can't zerk, I just cant think of what summon to put it on that will A. contribute, B, be worth all the spells being cast on it to buff it, and C, won't die stupidly fast without a party there to split damage ya know?
I see your point it won't work well on the higher difficulties but I find on core rules you pop this on a ogre berzerker from monster summoning or sword spider from spiderspawn
I actually like the Shaman, however, I have some strange bug that locks out my shaman-only spells when I go into Watcher's Keep that I haven't been able to figure out. I tried reinstall, uninstall mods, etc.
In 3e Holy Power and Rightous Magic were the breed and butter of any clericzilla, which outshined the base fighter class, because you also got the additional attacks per round of the fighter. www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/divinePower.htm www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/righteousMight.htm With a tad of modding, Holy Power can be adjusted to work like it does in 3e.
Help: With "Call Woodland Beings", my nymph has a "Heal" spell ready to cast, but it *always* performs no healing when used. Her other spells all work fine. This happens on both vanilla BGEE (Android) and on BG2EE + SCS (PC)
@@Davaeornlol I'm a friggin' idiot. It's the symbol for Barkskin, not Heal. My eyes refused to see such a crappy spell. (PS: your videos inspired me to try Insane + Hardcore/NoReload. I just died on Dragomir this morning!)
Been playing around with a Shaman on SCS and I actually think Spirit Fire may be a little bit better than you think. The reason for that is because it's a level 4 spell it gets around Minor Globe of Invulnerability which almost every mage on SCS has up. That makes it a really good spell for interrupting mages. They can sit there with their mirror images and globes and stoneskins up but spirit fire will go right through all of that. It will admittedly fade a lot in usefulness in bg2 when every mage puts up protection from magical energy, but I think in bg1 it's actually pretty decent. There's not a lot of ways to deal with minor globe of invuln other than spell thrust but even if you thrust an enemy mage you still have to then cast a few more spells to start getting through his images and hitting him. Spirit fire will hit immediately and while the damage isn't great it is enough to be a threat to bg1 mages and interrupts as well.
I am running a cleric fighter. Defensive Harmony is a nice filler spell. I stack a lot of buffs on them and it works pretty well. On core my guy soloed the Balor in the underdark with a bunch of the cleric buffs stacked.
I was just thinking about blood rage and maybe it would be applicable in the black pits since like in iwd, you can create your entire party. I will have to try this out though.
Dav, you really need to make SCS guide and what parts you install. For example, "Thorn Spray" deal 4d10 damage in your video, but in unmoded game it is 2d10, AND in SCS (Stratagems of Mystra) it is 4d12, increasing to 5d12 at 9th level and to a maximum of 6d12 at 11th level. Or "Impervious Sanctity of Mind" lvl7 Divine spell. Your guide show that it's duration is 8 hours, but again it is different in unmoded and "Stratagems of Mystra". Are you using different mods or what?
Defensive Harmony is most effective for tanks. Say, your fighter is getting hit only on rolls of 17+. Defensive Harmony can cut the damaging attacks in half.
Farsight has some uses against enemies that can detect invisibility. You summon a goofball, cast insect swarm or another spell like that on the goofball, and have the goofball walk into the enemy before the rest of your party. Pretty cheesy though.
I think you should add another disclaimer at the beginning of those videos -- "We play with Kagain/Korgan in our party". You claim Negative Plane Protection is mostly useless, but you don't start the game with Amulet of Power or Mace of Disruption, so if you don't have a berserker/ barbarian/undead hunter, you do need that spell until you can get one of those items. And you have to go through some vampires in order to get the Mace.
I mean, you will have amulet of power before fighting any vampires with the exception of the one fledgling assuming you go into the crypts. You only need to kill 3 or 4 lowbie vampires before getting the mace. The only pack of vampires you would fight that would require anything more than 1 lesser restoration would be the pack in windspear and good luck fighting 10 vampires 4 of them ancient with just negative plane protection. You can also use pfmw to tank them as well via bard or mage, or send in a bunch of summons. There's plenty of ways to deal with vampires but NPP is definitely not one of them. By the time you really need it, you have items for it, and until then, it's not gonna cover you at all. Thanks for commenting and watching friend!
Whats the difference between Neutraliza Poison and Resist Poison? Its ambiguity and overlap shit like that I hate about the BG spellcasting system, which I otherwise stand in awe of.
Looks like I've been playing it all wrong when it came down to my cleric spells as I always stacked the Harmony spell and thought Negative Plane Protection was one of the rare "must have" spells haha. I've played through BG1 when it came out, BG1 EE / BG2 EE a few times and SoD/IWD EE once all on core rules and my last BG1 EE and current SoD is for the first time on SCS Tactical. I wasn't very impressed with BG1 SCS tactical difficulty for the most part except for 3-4 encounters I've done where I probably wasn't high level enough for yet and maybe kobold commando ambushes when trying to sleep early on that would all immediately snipe my sorcerer, about 2/3rd of the game I could just put everything to sleep with my Sorcerer and get free XP. I'm starting to think that my current party might not be that great nor fun to complete SoD/BG2 with (Stalker, Berserker, Blade, Sorcerer, Dorn, Cleric/Thief). Stalker was great for BG1 (I tried Fighter/Thief for the first time last BG2 playthrough and was impressed at how great it was late game) but will probably get boring and weak through BG2 even with the SoD bracers that I have to get +1 backstab multiplier. Berserker, I wanted to try out their dmg resistance stacked with the BG2 flail that adds even more to see if it'd be really nice but it might still be bad. Blade is because I never played a bard before, it's nice with the versatility and I killed Drizzt in BG1 for his weapons but still feels a bit weak at lvl 11 and seems like it'll mostly turn out to be a weaker version of a fighter/mage. My sorcerer is being boring by taking the "must have" spells and basically just applying AOE debuffs onto enemies or taking all the magic defense breaker spells to counter enemy mages (supposed to be super important with BG2 SCS?). I find Dorn to be rather weak to be honest, I mostly want to see his quest line for BG2/ToB (90hp compared to my Stalker 131 hp and Berserker 153 hp) Finally, the Cleric/Thief I just find very boring but needed some heals and trap removal... Watching your videos, I have the feeling that pure warriors like I often have in my parties aren't very good. I never really tried figher/mage duals/multi except for one solo BG1 core rule run with a kensai/mage. I enjoy mage spells (usually prefer sorcerer because I don't know the game by heart to know what to stack in my spellbook yet) and I like melee (backstab or paladin/fighters type). I never seem to have much fun with cleric/druid/shaman (I probably don't know them well enough and don't use their spells right) but often feel the need to have at least 1 for some healing and some buffs/debuff removal. Your spell videos might make me reconsider what other kind of party I could make for a full saga playthrough as I think I lost interest partly due to not being very excited with what my party would develop into this time around for BG2. It feels like several classes are either strong in BG1 and then fade out and become weak later in BG2 or the complete opposite (like some pure fighters being quite strong in BG1 while multi-classes only starting to become truly strong half way or late BG2).
I'm going to be doing a class / kit guide at some point in the near future that might help with that. If you wanna play a backstabby boi I'd go shadowdancer dual, hide in plain sight is a lot of fun to play with. Stacking pure fighters is usually bad idea, since you only get one flail of the ages/foebane combo and if you're playing on insane, hardiness isn't enough to keep your face pretty. Blade is literally a weaker fighter mage I feel the exact same way, it's still strong tho, and arguably the best tank in the game. I found sorc to be pretty boring for the same reason, you're forced to take all the defensive spells or you die, and if you dont have extra mages to do spell breaking you gotta take those too, so you turn into a spell chucker that doesn't really do anything fun at all. Dorn is shit, 19 strength is great for the core game on core rules but he doesn't have the con to do anything higher than that. SCS adds a lot of fun to divine casting, putting them almost on par with mages (druid especially). Still you don't need to min max too hard, pick what you find fun and go from there, my first complete run on stream was as a blade with in game companions. Good luck either way friend and thanks for watching and commenting!
@@Davaeornlol Nice, I'll definitely keep an eye out for those class/kit guides! I was wondering about Shadowdancer, haven't tried one yet (I only had regular thieves and a fighter/thief once in the past) but it was the reduced backstab damage that was making me hesitate, I'll be curious to see how you propose to build it. One of my core runs for BG2, I went with a mostly non-magical party and it was cool (Dark Moon Monk, Keldorn, Wizard Slayer, Archer, Fighter/Thief I think and Shaman) but I don't expect this to work anymore with SCS Tactical and up. My Wizard slayer only started being decent at the very end of ToB with higher magic resistance, I didn't think about the possibility of having him be dual with thief to remove his big penalties back then (I'm also curious about Kensai/Thief) and while my Monk was basically a god late game on core rules, I understand your point saying armor/hardiness isn't enough to make him viable on harder SCS settings with no helm (it wasn't that fun to play anyways and complete garbage through all of BG1). I want to try to play more around the dual kits as well as multi, I'm just a bit scared to end up having a very weak party and unfun experience if I have more than 1-2 of them in my group and do a full saga run without extensive knowledge of SCS. I also am not sure I understand the point of Dual fighter/mage unless you solo. I mean, you play as a fighter in BG1, then have some downtime and then end up playing as a mage instead later on but end up being a "gimped" mage considering a regular mage or sorcerer would do a better job at it and I'm guessing the poor THAC0 from dual at 7 and other penalties will make the kit not very viable to be a melee fighter anymore (while multi could do it better)?
About Blood Rage -- "player characters" should mean any party member, not just the main character. That's how it works it works in Icewind Dale, where there is no main character and all party members are created by the player. Maybe the modder did not account for that. Even if that's the case though, you can play Baldur's Gate with a custom made party as well. That aside I started wondering if that spell wouldn't be a way to make use of those Summon Animal spells. Especially if you manage to get a bear, with 3 attacks per round those offensive bonuses could do some work. And you don't have to worry about the downsides (just because you're a druid doesn't mean you _actually_ care about animals). Also, would it work with charm spells/abilities? Let's say Minsc recruits a standard black bear into your party, then you cast Blood Rage on it, and suddenly it's no standard bear anymore -- it's a really crazy bear! Make it move next to some bandits/assassin's that want to talk before fighting, cast the spell and see much damage it does before they can take it down. That also brings up the question of how would it interact with the insane difficulty damage modifier -- if the rage breaks the charm, would it make the victim attack your enemies with double damage (since it's become an enemy creature)? Or it based on who is receiving the damage?
The insane modifier works only for your 6 party members it doesn't affect anything else, so if jan is charmed and gets hit by a fireball he's taking double damage, if you kick jan from the party however he will take normal damage, summons don't take insane damage. There's actually a druid spell called animal rage designed just for animal companions but it's a bit different than blood rage that they get at level 5. The issue with blood rage is it doesn't work on lawful companions too, which sucks big time, because kagain is lawful evil, keldorn is lawful good, ajantis is lawful good, anomen is lawful neutral (if he fails his trial chaotic but even then he's a spellcaster, you really don't want him losing control). Korgan has actual beserker rage, minsc, dorn, jaheira, are wayyy to squishy to lose control in a fight, you never would want to lose control of an actual spellcaster (bard included) so what the fuck do you cast this ability on in baldurs gate? Khalid? A summoned monster is really it tbh but it just comes across as cheesy as killing shit off screen with cloud spells which I guess you can do but I just don't like it tbh. You do make a good point that I didn't consider custom companions from a multiplayer game because then you have a perfectly legitimate excuse to use it, but for the base game I struggle to find a place for it. Thanks for commenting as always friend!
D, I was thinking...Blood Rage and Exaltation! Not for Korgan obviously, but for Minsc, even Keldorn, using Improved Haste, Exaltation, then casting Blood Rage would make them like Korgan. The Exaltation would keep them in control, and Blood Rage, in particular with the 22 Strength belt, would push them into 24 strength. Pop Armor of Faith and Hardiness, for Valygar and Minsc, would turn them into unstoppable juggernauts for 2 turns. 😮😮😮. While using Blood Rage on the Greater Were-Bears is good, this might be better, because you're retaining control. (Cast Blood Rage when the Were-Bears are near their target. They immediately jump to strength 24. 😮) (True, they do lose their regeneration, but you can do this when they need that extra push for tougher enemies)
Having trouble with Static Charge and I'm not sure if it's my version or whether it's working as intended. I'm using the standalone version of iwdification from G3. The main issue is that the range "visual range of caster" in the spell description doesn't match what I've noticed. I usually have to be standing at least half of that closer to the closest enemy in order for it to fire. If I'm standing back with my bow users or mages, it doesn't fire. I'm currently on the most recent Beamdog PC version of BG2EE
I run a similar, fairly minimal mod setup to you, and some of these spells function very differently from how you describe them here. For example, Smashing Wave does next to nothig. It's not a wave, it doesn't travel, and only occasionally creates a puddle/splash on top of a targeted creature. I say occasionally because most of the time it literally does nothing. It has to be bugged. Then there's thorn spray, which says there's no saving throw, but in my game the enemy makes a vs death save and avoids all damage. Pretty weak stuff.
I use animal summoning when I have no summoning wand, just to sacrifice him to demogorgon statue to fight those 5 demon knight. They drop girdle of 22 strenght (used for the super hammer) and a two handed sword that drains enemies thac0.
Eh, Spirit Fire seems fine to me for what it is. Probably wouldn't be worth it if you actually had to burn a spell pick for it, but Shamans just get it for free anyway and it's basically a baby Fireball. Very useful for decimate groups of enemies in BG1, even more so when abusing line of sight, and you get a ton of casts due to the Shaman's Sorcerer-style spell slots. Keep in mind I'm not playing on the same hardcore settings you're using, but at least without modded in difficulty settings it's a perfectly useful spell to have IMO.
Man, your videos are dope, looking forward for level 5! One question: I noticed the healing spells in your installation are quite more powerful (for example, Cure serious wounds should heal just 17hp, not 4d8+1/level). What mod did you install to alter them? I don't think it's SCS, I also play with SCS and my healing spells are unaffected.
If you install the IWD component of SCS it will boost them to the IWD variants. If you're playing with an older SCS or dont have the IWD component they'll be unaffected. Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
ב"ה With a Mage/Cleric, when I want to do some combats with my project imaje, I usually use Farsight from the cleric list because my mage spells in level 4 tend to be more powerfull. Besides, some enemies see invisible creature and will just kill a wizard eye so farsight is a must if you want to keep your party away and fight with your projected image. Holy Power make your clerics a lot better with their slings, which is what they usually use when not casting spells. Since slings deal more damage with high strength, they can contribute a little bit more in combat that way, especially viconia with her high dexterity that combined with that THAC0 boost would hit pretty often.
True, holy power just doesn't last more than a fight or two and I have other spells id need to stock level 4 with. Late game you can take all the holy power you want since you get spells for days though. Fair point with project image I typically never use it.
arent those woodland being supposed to be pure druids? spell selection they get are from priest, mage and the druid spell book i think it goes against the class game mechanics. poison spell i think ive seen something similiar on other games which is like a ranged attack (not a spell) from insects with a chance to poison after the initial damage has landed - good against mages i guess. they get worst class poison save as well as thiefs, lack of constitution and all.
They get nothing but divine spells to my knowledge, I might not be thinking clearly right now but im 99% sure they're all divine spells cleric druid shaman only. Yeah poison is weird for sure. Thanks for commenting friend!
@@Davaeornlol confusion spell? well unless its a lvl7 priest one which you get on lvl 14. what lvl is a dryad? mass cure is actually fairy potent +20 heal at least. but then she has no lvl6 spells. unless confusion was never meant to be lvl7 for clerics. are there any good mod to strait things up on spells? like make every spell useful and valid, scaling with lvl.
Also how many front lines do you usually run? Ever since my first run I've always played with the 3 in front 3 in back formation. Basically the horizontal version of the starting formation and I usury have 3 front liners and 3 back line. 2 fighter type classes 1 cleric or druid usually also front line 1 mage 1 thief 1 random. Either cleric or archer or 2nd mage. Now that I've started taking fighter thiefs like montaron and getting rid of Imogen that 5th slot could be replaced with something else.
In bg2 do all clerics and druids get instant access to all their respective spells upon reaching a certain level? I am at a point where Jaheira has access to level 6 spells but her spell book is limited & I haven't seen a good portion of the spells you are talking about.
He's using a mod called IWDification which adds spells from the game Icewind Dale. He seems a little scatterbrained in this video when it comes to telling us who gets access to each spell, so he obviously forgot to mention which spells are modded in. The spells that are from IWDification are: Blood Rage, Cloud of Pestilence, Giant Insect, Produce Fire, Recitation, Smashing Wave, Star Metal Cudgel, Static Charge, Thorn Spray, Unfailing Endurance and Wall of Moonlight.
Correct, upon reaching the level to cast level 3 spells, they will immediately have access to all level 3 spells but only those available to their class. If you aren't seeing the spells im talking about you might not have the IWD component of SCS installed.
It does! but you're better off using everard from a distance, Kangaxx likes to spam prismatic spray and that's an excellent way to say goodbye to jaheira forever since her saves are so shit.
Regarding Poison lvl 4. Minor Globe is only for lvl 3 and under spells, so if you can malison someone, then poison, it at least is a direct counter to Minor globe. I can see it being useful against low level mages imo. Unless Minor turning will deflect it, and Remove magic only being level 3, with the globe up, might be a counter again.
You are underrating giant insect, A tier at least. In bg 1 they are S tier. Idk what their claws hit at, but it seems like at least +2. Their claws are that the main reason I take Faldorn. That, and of course insect plague.
Hi @Davaeorn Great videos. Really informatic. Any chance you could do a Cleric/Ranger playthrough? A lot of what you say about these spells having to be used in melee would not be the case with a melee Cleric/Ranger, right?
If i was a cleric ranger I wouldn't want to replace my weapons with the summoned ones. I'd probably be dual wielding flail of the ages and DoE. I wouldn't ever want to summon a wep to replace them, as for bg1 I still probably wouldn't want to go melee anyways tbh. Multiclasses get boned pretty hard HP wise until early SoA
Depends on your mods / patch and the type of free action you're using. In bg1 the ring doesn't cancel haste, in bg2 it does (at least in my version, specifically talking about edventars gift). Flail of ages, etc, all have different interactions, you gotta play with your mods / patch and see how it goes. I also use some tweaks from teak pack but nothing haste specific but that doesn't mean something isn't being touched behind the scenes.
@@Davaeornlol BG2EE SCS tactical difficulty, version idk, latest i guess. Custom party of 5, 6th slot for story NPC 4 would be to small to get my class wishes covered, 6 is too much. Pathfinding sucks sometimes and i dont want to park my precious heroes: Cavalier Fighter/Thief (Multi) Cleric -> Mage (Dual) Archer Sorcerer What would your custom 5 party look like in SCS?
@@Davaeornlol Eventually you could answer this: Why the hell is the acid arrow considered enchanted +1 in comparison to ice and fire arrows. Thats above my understanding. They should be all similar in my opinion. I am close to mod them myself via Near Infinity, if i could find the entry which determines enchantment level. I am a modder myself, but only now i get into BG2 modding, mostly visual stuff and some minor things.
@@nobedience If I was trying to make the ultimate party, 3 berserker dual at 9 to mages, 1 cleric mage multi, one thief mage multi, and one barb. Barb tanking demons in watchers keep alone makes it more useful than bers mage (highest damage output in game class combo) cleric mage for cleric spells + mage defenses, thief mage for dealing with traps +mage defenses. If I was going to make a party I think I would enjoy playing the most? Barb, archer, Fighter/Cleric, Fighter/Thief, Fighter/Druid, Inquisitor. No arcane magic, every class a fighter ethos.
@@nobedience Beats me, why some rats were equipped with +2 fire arrows that can one shot pretty much anyone with a little luck when most of the iron thrones gold is going to the bandits is beyond me as well.
Updating as I watch. Easier then taking notes. Defensive Harmony would be so much better if it provided even just a +1 to Saving Throws. I feel like it’s casting time helps with the problem of low AC bonus. That said, my mod config includes a mod that adds more Cleric Kits, and some of those kits use Fighter THAC0 and HD with some limits (kit by kit basis) that lets Clerics get a little more beefy for frontline. Spells like DH are much more reliable in these cases NPP should have been like PfE 10’ or last 5r+1/lvl. Even if they had slapped a max duration, that’d be so much better. Produce Fire doesn’t render a cap on damage does it? So a say 25 caster could do what, 1d4+25? Not bad.
Yeah for sure it's just so underwhelming for a level 4. It caps at 20 which is still decent but fire is very commonly resisted by then. Again just really underwhelming for anything but clearing trolls
Davaeorn I may look into some tweaking to Defensive Harmony. I understand enough about the engine to modify spells. But I’ll have to be careful with the opcodes for AC and Saves. Real easy to make a spell effect waaay overpowered.
@@BioHunter1990 Tbh I wouldn't let it modify saves as you already got too many spells that do that, by itself that's fine, but when you stack em all up you got saves for days
Davaeorn that is a good point. Though I kinda look at it as “another tool in the toolbox”. What sorta improvement might you recommend to make DH better? I think you’ve established that flat AC is pointless on SCS/Insane, so there needs to be something more...backstab immunity? Crit hit immunity? Also, with backstabs being instant chunking, I’m guessing things like Enkidu’s Full Plate can be useful? I’d view it as something useful to stuff away for prep.
@@BioHunter1990 Yeah I typically swap to enkidus for fights with thieves in ToB generally though you go for something with resistances to elements or magic because it piles up really quick. There's a million things they can do for DH to make it better but it's also hard to do without making it too strong in combination with the others. I suppose just making it a positive luck modifier (party only) would make sense and give it enough of a boost to make it useful, as combining it with chant would greatly reduce damage taken.
Initially I always skipped Defensive Harmony. Then I used it every fight having an extra cleric for MC. My cope was that it might save you some HP when you eliminate some enemies in the first 6 rounds. Also the AI uses it so maybe there's something to it. Nope, the original AI is scripted to help you win and the spell is not really doing much. So I'm back to skipping it
I have to disagree on clubs being a particularly bad weapon. The base damage being 1d6 averages 1 point less compared to most 1 handers that warriors use, which isnt huge. Its crushing damage, and can backstab, the only other weapon of this kind being quarterstaves which are 2 handers, and its usable by thieves, druids, clerics and their multiclasses. Its baseline properties are fine. The main issue though is itemisation. Its average BG1, with a +2 club in cloakwood being the best (EE only, I think baseline BG1 has no magic clubs), certainly not the best, but a bland +2 weapon is equal or better than many other weapon types, and its obtainable quite a bit earlier than the +2 axe or halberd for example. There are clearly stronger weapons in BG1, but its not the worst. In BG2, its very solid. The blackblood is 1d6+6, 3 points being acid, which is very rarely resisted, kills trolls and goes through stoneskin. This is significantly stronger damage wise than most categories of 1 handers, and does the same average damage as stonefire or frost reaver, doing a better type of elemental damage. Combine this with its other baseline properties, and its clearly better in 1 hand than the axe in BG2, which is hardly a bad weapon. Also, this can be obtained very early. In the same questline, you get an ok +2 club with damage over time if dual wielding is a concern. In TOB, the club of detonation is severely held back by how common fire resist is and consequently isnt very good. If fire resist isnt an issue however, its damage is actually very good compared to most 1 handers (the 30% chance of an extra 15 fire damage averages 5 points of damage, on top of the 1d6+10 its already doing, this is actually close to flail of ages damage (admittedly without the slow), and with high APR, 30% chance is high enough that its quite reliable). It also has a low chance of fireballing, which can be a nice damage boost, or can be a significant liability if you dont have resist energy up on your meele. Overall, its great on enemies vulnerable to fire, and pretty bad otherwise. By TOB standards, you can make it pretty early (requires watchers keep level 5 only). If I was only able to specialise in 1 weapon, it wouldnt be the club. But for characters without grandmastery, particularly if they have proficiency restrictions like druid or cleric multiclasses or want to backstab, the club easily warrants a 2 pip investment for SOA and early TOB before you can craft the +5s and +6s (blackblood is still competitive until then). You mention warhammers and bastard swords as some of the stronger weapons. In SOA, Crom Faeyr is obtained so late it would be more reasonably considered a TOB weapon, as thats when you will get the great majority of its mileage, and the hammer of thunderbolts is significantly worse (lower damage, usable by fewer characters, no backstab, and no elemental damage), and still usually takes longer to acquire. Bastard swords are total trash in BG1 and SOA, whith the +3 +1 fire damage sword being significantly worse than blackblood, and obtained far later, and the best bastard sword being +1 in BG1 (there are literally 3 fights where the sword of balduran is useful once youve obtained it). Foebane +5 is great and can be made very early by TOB standards, so its a good proficiency for than section of the game alone.
You hit the hammer on the head my friend, the problem is itemization, and its itemization is terrible. The damage is part, but the fact is, every other 1h is superior in its role. Foebane is 100% mandatory for a in ToB. Elite fire giants can literally do 500 damage before mitigation in a round, if you're fighting 2 at once, you can take literally 1k damage in 6 seconds. To overcome this, you combine hardiness, DoE, and foebane with imp haste. Blackrazor doesn't do the same role as well but its ok in comparison. Flail of the ages isnt used for the head damage, it's the slow that matters. Slowing down planetars chasing after squishy targets, slowing a balor that's teleporting around, slowing firestorm cast time, etc etc. It's an absolutely amazing weapon. Crom faeyr I only mention because what it gives in comparison is massive. Hammer of TB does 2d4+3 which is less than 1d6+3+3 blackblood yes, but crom faery itself will one shot golems, and give such a tremendous thac0 boost (damage too). Axe of the unyielding decapitates in addition to its other effects, when it comes to clearing enemies, it's far superior. You can also find 2 +3 axes in bg2, both doing elemental damage, in addition to a throwing axe that can also be used in melee with an effect on par with the mace of disruption, in addition to ANOTHER throwing axe, all but one of these can be acquired before you even leave athkatla. I agree that bastard sword optimization is shit, but you don't go for it right out the gate, you grand mastery in something else (korgan for example has axes) and after you hit gm, you dump every point into bastard sword for ToB. In bg1, the club is on par with the others, varscona you get right out the gate so it's really hard to argue for anything but LS here but LS sucks after bg1 let's be honest. You get hammer +2 off basillius, axe +2 in bg city so the club is acquired literally at the same time. The best thing you can say here is the club is on par, and does crushing damage (always a huge plus) but really melee is irrelevant in bg1, archers and magic reign supreme. In bg2 axes give you a ton of toys to play with, flail of the ages is the undisputed best 1h by far because of the slow effect. I think you're underplaying it tbh, if flail of the ages did no elemental damage at all, I would still use it over blackblood. Slow is absurdly overpowered, and it ignores MR so you can hit planetars and all sorts of other bullshit that you wouldn't be able to normally. Planetars early on are extremely dangerous and with FoA you can go toe to toe with them. As I mentioned before you got axes for days, longswords are niche as hell but the ones you get have nice abilities on them (immunities, double damage to dragons, etc) Id say blackblood is ok here, it's not nearly as good as flail, and its almost as good as axes (axes you can throw, in addition to the power of azureedge) they're slightly better than war hammer, and definitely better than bastard sword but as I mentioned, you dont have GM in BS right now, that comes later. When ToB rolls around, detonation is at the bottom of the list, I can't disagree more with the statement that watchers keep 5 is early. I would say that's at the very end of the game. In addition, as I mentioned prior, Crom faeyr, foebane, FoA, axe of the unyielding, these are all acquired long before club of det is and they are far superior to the club, and you have to sacrifice a ring of fire resistance on top of it to upgrade it which annoys me to no end. If you are a fighter, you want foebane, if you are a ranger, you want foebane, if you are a paladin, you want foebane and the purifier. If you are a blade, you want crom faeyr for the ridiculous thac0 boost you desperately need for having thief thac0. If you are a DD or barb or some other tanky son of a bitch you want flail of the ages and axe of the unyielding, to be honest, everyone wants flail of the ages just to get the slow up, it's so damn good it's insane. If you are a fighter druid or druid, you want earth elemental transformation, not club of det. If you are a cleric, you don't want to melee at all, if you are a fighter cleric, you want flail of the ages, if you are a thief and want to backstab, you want staff of the ram or some katana (hindos doom you get at the same time as club of det). If for some weird reason you want to use a 2h you want the ravager, which you will get the same time as club of det. I can't think for the life of me, a time where I would ever want to use clubs as a proficency. At best its on par, at its worst, it's pretty damn bad. Its not the clubs fault, it's black isle and bioware for giving them horrendous optimization. Thanks for watching and commenting friend! Edit: I forgot to mention, weapons that can be used by restricted classes like druid cleric etc, tend to be worse for that reason. It's supposed to make fighters better. They realized they went overboard with that and tried to buff them up (like warhammers doing 2d4 instead of 1d4 +1) but club got missed.
@@Davaeornlol In SOA, the blackblood is a very competitive one handed weapon, and it will account for a sizeable chunk of any play through.I wouldnt sink 5 points into it, but its definitely a reasonable pick for anyone restricted to 2 pips or less, because you have enough proficiency points by TOB to specialise in several weapons. Its also one of the best options for stalkers, swashbucklers (and rogues in general), clerics and druids, and any of their multiclasses in SOA. No, its not the flail of ages, but you have a 6 man party, and only 1 flail of the ages. Depending on how many warriors you have, you will quickly run out of better options than blackblood in SOA. As I say, as strong as Crom Faeyr is, its much more relevant to TOB than SOA given when you acquire it. And in BG1, with the rules you play, yes its going to massivly favour ranged, but if comparing it to other meele weapons, its simply very average. I wouldnt say its bottom of the barrel. The one area melee is very relevant in BG1 is high missile resistance, particularly when combined with magic resistance, and crushing damage is usually what you want here (like skeleton warriors for example). Also, the 3rd area of cloakwood is not literally the same time as the cloak and helm inn, its quite a lot earlier. I certainly wouldnt argue that in TOB, clubs are a good choice. They arent. There are far too many things against which it functions as a +5 weapon with no other bonuses. When fire resist isnt an issue, the damage is excellent, but as you say, there arent other bonuses. Its still not as bad as you say however. It depends on the order of play, but only having to do Watcher's keep does make it a weapon that can be available for most of TOB. You compare the club of detonation unfavourably to the upgraded versions weapons you say can be obtained earlier, but its only the unupgraded versions which are obtained earlier in a realistic play order. Axe of the Unyeilding +5 requires watchers keep AND marching mountains. The axe of the unyeilding +3 is clearly a weaker weapon than the club of detonation +5. Its average damage per hit is 11 lower, and 2 lower THAC0. +1AC and 1hp regen per round isnt enough to make up for this. Even for the upgraded version, decapitate is a 10% chance, and allows a save vs death at -4. So for this to be good, the target has to be dangerous, at high health, and fail their save. At all those probabilities together, and this benefit is going to be pretty marginal in practice. Even the upgraded version of Hindo's Doom is far weaker than Detonation +5, and that requires Watchers Keep AND Abazigal's Lair. 1d10+4 is moderately more damage for backstabs than 1d6+5 on average, but then you factor in the +10 fire damage on average, and even on backstabs, it will be lower average damage. On all other weapon swings, its not even close. Katana is actually a much better contender for being the worst weapon in TOB, where celistial fury is still the best Katana for the great majority of TOB, which unfortunately cannot even hit several important enemies. Sure, many classes are going to do much better with Foebane, Crom Faeyr or Flail of Ages, but A), some classes cannot use them, B) they cannot backstab, and C), you cannot outfit a full 6 man party with these 3 weapons. That will fill the weapon slots for 1.5 dual wielders. Beyond these weapons, the upgraded versions of the other 1 handers are mostly obtained later, and the club is a lot more competitive with them.
@@notalefty999 Yes you can't use flail of the ages on everyone but you don't need to either. Your mages cant use these weapons at all, if you run multiple mages your need for good weapons dwindles significantly. If we assume you have at least 1 mage, you're down to 5. So frontline fighter pure dps, foebane. Main tank (berserk mage, fighter druid, pure druid, blade) you take crom or earth eletransformation. Thief if you wanna backstab you take staff of the ram, but you can't melee as a thief, you just can't, you're gonna die. So you gotta get that one auto off and BAIL, so hitting with the highest damage you got, IE staff of ram, or hindo, and get out. Club doesn't work for these 3 chars at all, if you got a mage, he cant use it anyways, so that's 4 chars not using it, and we haven't even talked about flail of the ages yet, or axe of the unyielding. If you got a cleric and you insist on using him for melee, and you dont have crom, or flail, then you can think about the club of det, but why the hell would you want your cleric to be in melee anyways? They're not as good of a tank as a wizard, they are dangerous to throw in the fray. I don't understand what party composition you could possibly have where you would want to dump points into club. You can argue club is better than sword for bg1 and you might be right, but I can get a +1 flail at level 1, just north of the friendly arm inn and that wep is DAMN fine for killing skeles, it also lets me use flail of the ages in bg2. There is nobody but jaheira or a mixed fighter druid mid level that I could see clubs being useful for, and even then, as soon as you get earth ele xform you never use a club again. If we were to argue about club over dagger or short sword I would agree with you, but you can't afford to sink points into club as a fighter, I wouldn't as a cleric fighter, I wouldn't as a thief, I wouldn't as anything really. I do agree katanas were gutted hard, they did that on purpose because they do 1d10 base (dumb as all hell I don't know which weeb designed them) but I would definitely use celestial fury over club of det, 100%. The stun is too damn strong. I'm streaming right now so I can't keep talking but I'd be happy to discuss it further. Thanks for commenting friend!
You shit on defensive harmony but I use it every fight lmao (pure cleric) but it’s instant cast so I always just start off with that and then cast my other shit after. It doesn’t last long but the start of the fight is the most important to me. If you have a strong start it snowballs into a clean finish. Bad start vice versa I get smoked. I will have fights where my whole party died and it’s not close, redo the fight and make a few changes and win not even taking damage lol (insane, core) idk might not be helping but it makes me feel better
I use it too I can't help it XD. It IS underpowered for its level though (either that or chant prayer etc are all OP as shit, which to be fair, they are). Yeah going from no cleric buffs, to PfE10ft, chant, prayer, DH, makes a big difference indeed. Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
Animal Summoning is only useful in one place. In BG II, in the underdark, you need to sacrifice something to gate in the demon knights that drop Soul Reaver. Other than that, this spell totally sucks.
It's technically going to affect the same amount of enemies over the course of a thousand scenarios, but what I mean by that is the 33% happens once as opposed to individual, which means upon casting it on say, 10 people hit with a malison (making it very likely to fail their saves), it's going to hit them all or none. There is a difference between the two, the math doesn't play into it. The scenario that can't exist, is the one where you cast this and only a few have to roll to save, they all do, or they all don't. Take the saving throw out of the equation and you get the following. 1/3 of the time ALL your enemies will be doomed, as opposed to, every cast, 1/3 of your enemies will be doomed. Mathematically speaking you're not wrong, but the way it actually plays out is very different. This spell, like dispel magic, becomes an all or nothing, either it works, and ALL the spells are gone(or in the case of this spell, doomed), or it doesn't work, and it does nothing. I might be doing a poor job of explaining this, but yeah. Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
@@Davaeornlol Oh, so it's a bit different, I get it now. In that case, the chance for an individual monster to get affected is the same, but because the 33% is over the entire population, the expected number of monster affected in the population will remain the same but the variance will be larger, making the spell "riskier" but when it hits it hits harder with more monsters affected.
Shapeshifting in baldurs gate is garbage. The damage you deal is terrible and base thac0 is not modified enough to be remotely decent. Greater werewolf form is a VERY powerful shapeshift, far beyond doggo and bear form from a regular druid, and you miss all the fucking time with it, despite it boosting your strength well beyond a regular fighter. It's bad even in SoA and it only gets worse as the game progresses (just to clarify, the defenses it grants are excellent, it's the thac0 that makes it horrendous for dealing damage). If you could combine shapeshifting with the cleric spell holy power it would actually be pretty great, but the lack of a thac0 modification just puts shapeshifting in the ground. As for ironskins you won''t get it until the end of bg1, an up until then you're d8 hp so bg 1 is right out for melee, an in bg2 you're just so much more damn effective as an offensive caster than a meleer, those skins disappear REALLY fast until you get entropy shield, but even then their damage is just horrendous. Fighter druid is definitely better in that regard but then you're not shape shifting at all.
I think they misclicked when they made Call woodland beings not a level 5 divine spell and animal monster summoning a divine level 3 spell emirite yo. I wanted to say level 1-2 really but you'd have to put monster summoning I II III at 2,3,4 respectively or so then, which is not the case No, I take that back. They mistyped when they made Call woodland beings a level 4 divine spell, instead of fucking *6*, not five, because mass cure is a level 5 spell. So basically for a level 4 slot, you are getting a level 5 spell AND a summon with other spells? That's not just 'pretty busted'. THAT'S BOTH IRONICALLY AND UNIRONICALLY BROKEN AND MAKES NO SENSE
@@Davaeornlol Can I just emphasize one more time the fact, that Mass Cure is level 5 spell, but you can summon a spell level 4 chick that basically grants it? Just imagine for a second that there exists an arcane level 4 spell called "Call Zhentarim Smartass" that conjures an Ogre Mage that has a Cloudkill or Animate Dead spell memoriezed, along with some others. Let that skink in for a bit. At a mage level 7, you have access to Cloudkill or Animate Dead. And you don't even need to cast it yourself. THAT'S WHAT THIS IS in a mage analogy Granted I don't know if you consider Mass Cure S or A tier (yet, wink wink) but still. BRUH
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
I can’t imagine playing the games without these. It’s almost like I get to unlock new episodes as my characters level up.
Lol thanks for watching and commenting friend!
S tier :
- Call Woodland being
- Smashing Wave
- Static Charge
- Protection From Evil, 10’ Radius
- Recitation (stacks with Prayer & Chant)
A tier :
- Death Ward
- Neutralize Poison (for Greater Mummy only)
- Cloud of Pestilence
- Lesser Restoration
B tier :
- Cure Serious Wounds
- Giant Insect
- Produce Fire (for Trolls)
- Protection From Lightning
- Thorn Spray
- Cause Serious Wounds
- Free Action
- Holy Power (A tier for Cleric-Fighter)
- Mental Domination
C tier :
- Animal Summoning
- Cloak of Fear
- Defensive Harmony
- Farsight
- Negative Plane Protection
- Poison
- Star Metal Cudgel
- Wall of Moonlight (better for all good party)
- Spirit Fire
- Blood Rage
- Unfailing Endurance
Bro these are mvp, I watched and it’s hard to transcribe
Its good to see you're uploading these regularly again, I've learnt a lot from these guides.
There aren't that many resources online about these games made by people who actually know what they're talking about.
Thanks buddy and thanks for watching and commenting!
Or by people who are relaying the information to the uninitiated. A lot of discussions on the old boards (Sorcerer’s Place for example...which still has the BEST guide for BG2) are a bit high curve knowledge. I’m glad I discovered this channel in my recommendations, because so far I’ve had a few interesting conversations with our boy here. It’s good to talk shop with someone who loves these games as much as I do.
I know after listening to him I want to argue with post from like 10 years ago. Man I can't believe I ever memorized a fire spell in my life.
These -walls- videos contain the worlds knowledge!
Based candlekeep scholar.
I just want to say I appreciate the shit out of you man. I have learned so much from your guides, looking forward to the rest of Divine guide. I'm running a cleric/ranger as my main for my first good run, I'm new to the game, but not DND, and still your guides help out tons.
Glad you're enjoying them friend best of luck in your runs and thanks for watching and commenting!
Death ward works to block the "you turn into ghast and get perma'd" effect from Aec'Letec in BG1. It might be the only time that it's useful in 1st game, but it's worth swapping into memorized slots for that fight. Good for both picking off the cultists, and for putting on several party members alongside a bunch of other buffs to blow him up.
Without a doubt my most favourite gaming youtuber. Love your format, professionalism and passion. Its infectious.
Hey I love you buddy thanks for watching and commenting!
@@Davaeornlol 9:00 touching my party's members ;)
the true BG power gamer on youtube! Thank you for your uploads! I have been playing this game for years and never learned so much from your videos! Bless you Davaeorn!
Bless you too buddy thanks for watching!
I cannot wait for BG3. I've been spamming videos about BG1 & BG2 to mentally prep for early access BG3. For the last couple days I've been playing these videos in the background while I'm working. Appreciate the long watch time for these and the detail.
I'm glad you enjoy them friend thanks for watching and commenting
After you've done the spell guides, I would love to see a class & kit guide!
Soon.tm
I second that.
@@Gloriath1 Soon.tm
I third this notion, all those in the room say 'aye'.
Aye
Defensive harmony on the shaman is were its at.
You have 4 lvl 4 spells at the end og bg1 especially if you have the selunes ring that gives you plus 1 to all 1 to 4 spells.
I also always play with 3 front liners.
So maybe fir me its good
You just cast it instantly in combat or pause the game and have your cleric and mage buff while your shaman also casts buffs so you can get them all on at once
God bless friend thanks for watching!
Yeah, I had 2 clerics and one would take protection from evil+some situational buff and the other 2 of this spell.
Nice to instant cast it in the middle of party as the fight starts while having cast chant etc pre combat.
I cast Holy Power first, then Righteous Magic and follow it up with Draw Upon Holy Might. It makes Anomen an absolute beast in Shadows of Amn, dual-wielding with a THAC0 of -12/-8 and extra AC with that DEX bonus and HP in the 200s. He still takes a ton of damage, but with Defender of East Haven flail and Armor of Faith spell, you can really have him go to town!
Indeed! Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
My fave was watching you undergo a blood rage while describing Blood Rage. Let’s be honest, we all come here for those moments. 😂
Blood Rage: Because in Icewind Dale all of your characters are player characters it refers to all of your party. So you can use it on all of your party. It just wants to clarify that it cannot be cast onto enemies.
ah thx buddy.
"Easiest upload of my life."
So easy baby
One of the best things about this guide is listening to him describe the bad spells and figure out ways to use near infinity to make the bad spells better. Just removing berserk from blood rage makes it an s+ spell. I also removed the inability to walk with a circle of bones, and now I love the spell so much. But stay away from your party or friendly npcs.
I find defensive harmony awesome in Baldur's Gate 1. Any time you go through a door and there's enemies right there, so your squishy mages are open to attack suddenly, fire defensive harmony off instantly to give everyone the armour boost. Normally your tank will have enough armour to be fine without it though. Great, for things like the werewolf boat on the island. Very underwhelming for something like the final battle of BG1.
Unfailing Endurance is one of those situations where a spell gets imported into a game in which it has no use. In Icewind Dale though fatigue is much bigger issue. Easy to get into a situation when nobody can hit anything because they're too tired. And if you try to rest, you usually get ambushed and just get into an even bigger trouble.
Yeah that's a good point, they followed the same route in SoD and it would have actually been useful to mention there. Thanks for watching and commenting as always friend!
Bless you Dav!! I hope you're doing good man.
Looks like I missed a glorious RE2 stream... I hope to make to the next episode of Gimli.
Seeing this notification made my day.
12:58 You're the best Dava :) Yeah, these non magic zone dispel everything you've pre-cast. Which makes the Tahazzar suicidal on no reload scs insanity, for anyone whose name is not Davaeorn.
21:34 These beetle are good in mid game IWD. But in BG I would take "Summon Woodland Waifus"...
Yeah how can anything compete with waifu summon really. Bless you buddy I hope you're well
@@Davaeornlol Cheers Dav! I hope that everything is ok and may god bless you and all your loved ones man.
You're not alone, I usually play evil too. Edwin & Korgan are just too damn good to pass up! Kagain is nice to have along for BG1 sometimes too, and Viconia is a great cleric even if she did use CON as her dump stat. I think the worse quest rewards overall are balanced out by evil guys getting the best NPCs. Plus, you can still bring all the neutral folks anyway, which means almost everyone who matters can still come along. One thing I noticed by the way - You said that 10d4 damage from Spirit Fire is the same damage as Smashing Wave, but actually there is a rather big difference between 4d10 and 10d4. 10d4 is 10-40 damage, 4d10 is 4-40. Much higher minimum damage on the spirit fire would make the damage output on the spell much more reliable, though this is probably counterbalanced by the save vs breath/save vs spell difference.
True! We also get the mancoat and there isn't shit good has that can compete with that. Thanks for watching and commenting buddy!
I usually try to have Negative Plane Protection memorized in early BG2 because right out of Irenicus dungeon I don’t have the Amulet of Power and don’t have the upgraded Mace of Disruption, so unless I’ve got a protagonist who can berserk or cast boon of Lathander, Minsc and Korgan are the only ones who can melee vampires. If I’m playing a good party and don’t want to put up with the evil murder dwarf, I am down to only Minsc. And … much as I enjoy his company, the big dummy just isn’t up to meleeing more than one vamp at a time, if that.
And when you’re travelling through the city there’s a couple of unavoidable early vampire encounters that I’m always scared shitless of.
I’ve played a Thief/Mage so many times over since it’s my style, but this rundown of spells is making me certain to do some type of Fighter/Cleric for my next run, never played that combo
Wow I never knew of the "big five" weapon classes. That's super useful to know!
I literally made it up on the spot but it still stands!
It was funny seeing you come to terms with Defensive Harmony.
I too always took it.
I want to like it I really do...
Bloody good man. Keep up the good work bud.
Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
YESSSSS YOU DA MAN finally its getting there!
WE'RE DOING IT
@@Davaeornlol SO exited!
@@lirondavidoff2494 Me too buddy me too.
Defensive Hamrony is sometimes a nice additional buff if you play solo and your skelies have some trouble. But ye, that's it. C-tier.
Good idea on how to test if Holy Power worth it. I just never came to look at it seriously, although for solo in ToB melee is mandatory I think. At least sure I do if I can reload and try again to make Harm work.
I think cleric shit on its own is lackluster but combining with other spells makes them a lot stronger, which makes sense considering it's really designed as a support role.
I use Defensive Harmony all the time with clerics because Holy Power and Cure Serious are the only others I use regularly. The quick cast time makes up for the short duration and Recitation doesn't exist in my version of the game.
How about Blood Rage on the Horn of Valhalla summon or Efreeti summon them calm with Exaltation afterwards?
I've tried exaltation with berserking effects it doesn't seem to work.
@@Davaeornlol That sucks as the spell description seem to suggest that it does...
@@changliu3915 I think the game classifies a variety berserk effects differently sadly
It is thanks to this series that I found your channel!
Could not get why my spells don't do shit
I'm glad you're enjoying it mate thanks for watching!
Hell yeah. Just in time for me to dual class into Cleric for the first time. Thanks man your guides are awesome. 🤘
Thanks for watching and commenting friend good luck!
I have never even considered mage/cleric before. Now I want those sweet sequencers
Great video as always. I really enjoy these!
Thanks for watching and commenting buddy!
It is here!
AT LAST
If anyone's watching this, Static Charge is not Call Lightning. It goes off once every TURN. So you'll only realistically get the damage once or twic per fight.
Spirit Fire is amazing in Icewind Dale (accidentally, I assume, seeing as shaman class was made for Baldur's Gate). There's one location there in which almost every enemy is a spectral undead (and it's a high density of enemies too). With double damage this spell is practically a Horrid Wilting.
Nice! Beamdog really made an effort to try to bridge BG and IWD I wonder if the shaman class design was part of that intention as their spells are definitely more IWD than BG.
Davaeorn: Up next is Cloak of Fear
Me: I like Cloack of Fear
Davaeorn: Cloak of Fear is dogshit
Me: Oh
GOTTEM
🤣 i can relate to this hard. Learned so much watching these vids. It’s pretty complicated getting into it. Played these games when I was 12. Coming back to it now after 15 years was confusing af
Regarding Star Metal Cudgel, Jaheira is a Fighter/Druid and starts BG2 with two proficiency points in clubs (which is more than other weapons she has points in). It's still not a great spell, as you pointed out..., but if you're going to have anyone cast it, it would probably be her.
Also, Smashing wave vs the beast master guy in the Copper Coronet is juicy. All that enemy bottle-necked in a 5-foot corridor.
Oh yeah it's spicy as hell, smashing wave is a lot better than I originally thought it was going to be. Really anything that is SvB is yuge. Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
I find blood rage is great for scouting and opening up encounters pop a summon use improved haste. Add sanctuary and scout then pop blood rage on your summon to distract whatever your fighting while you prepare everything else
Yeah the thing is, that's a lot of spells for a summon that if left alone, is gonna die in 2 seconds anyway. The elementals early don't have shit for hp, monster sum is a joke, animate dead can't zerk, I just cant think of what summon to put it on that will A. contribute, B, be worth all the spells being cast on it to buff it, and C, won't die stupidly fast without a party there to split damage ya know?
I see your point it won't work well on the higher difficulties but I find on core rules you pop this on a ogre berzerker from monster summoning or sword spider from spiderspawn
I actually like the Shaman, however, I have some strange bug that locks out my shaman-only spells when I go into Watcher's Keep that I haven't been able to figure out. I tried reinstall, uninstall mods, etc.
I'm surprised SCS doesn't make Defensive Harmony like in IWD, where the bonus was 4, and I used to cast it all the time.
I'm not sure their reasoning for some of the changes they made tbh. Tough to say.
In 3e Holy Power and Rightous Magic were the breed and butter of any clericzilla, which outshined the base fighter class, because you also got the additional attacks per round of the fighter.
www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/divinePower.htm
www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/righteousMight.htm
With a tad of modding, Holy Power can be adjusted to work like it does in 3e.
Nice, thanks for commenting buddy
Since i nearly always make a custom party and use a lot of melee i actually use defensive harmony.
Yeah that's the only time you'd really get some good use out of it. Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
Help:
With "Call Woodland Beings", my nymph has a "Heal" spell ready to cast, but it *always* performs no healing when used. Her other spells all work fine.
This happens on both vanilla BGEE (Android) and on BG2EE + SCS (PC)
I have no idea why she has a heal, that would be very very powerful. Might be some weird bug Idk :O
@@Davaeornlol I'm a friggin' idiot.
It's the symbol for Barkskin, not Heal.
My eyes refused to see such a crappy spell.
(PS: your videos inspired me to try Insane + Hardcore/NoReload. I just died on Dragomir this morning!)
@@alexanderlloyd1393 Ah lol
Just came home with a pizza to find this. My day is made!
AWW YISS
Been playing around with a Shaman on SCS and I actually think Spirit Fire may be a little bit better than you think. The reason for that is because it's a level 4 spell it gets around Minor Globe of Invulnerability which almost every mage on SCS has up. That makes it a really good spell for interrupting mages. They can sit there with their mirror images and globes and stoneskins up but spirit fire will go right through all of that. It will admittedly fade a lot in usefulness in bg2 when every mage puts up protection from magical energy, but I think in bg1 it's actually pretty decent. There's not a lot of ways to deal with minor globe of invuln other than spell thrust but even if you thrust an enemy mage you still have to then cast a few more spells to start getting through his images and hitting him. Spirit fire will hit immediately and while the damage isn't great it is enough to be a threat to bg1 mages and interrupts as well.
I am running a cleric fighter. Defensive Harmony is a nice filler spell. I stack a lot of buffs on them and it works pretty well. On core my guy soloed the Balor in the underdark with a bunch of the cleric buffs stacked.
I think you actually (unironically :D) thought about every possible option and effect combo that can occur.
Thanks buddy I try my best but I miss shit all the time. Everytime I make one of these I end up remaking it because I leave shit out like an ape >
I was just thinking about blood rage and maybe it would be applicable in the black pits since like in iwd, you can create your entire party. I will have to try this out though.
thank you for these
Thanks for watching friend!
Dav, you really need to make SCS guide and what parts you install.
For example, "Thorn Spray" deal 4d10 damage in your video, but in unmoded game it is 2d10, AND in SCS (Stratagems of Mystra) it is 4d12, increasing to 5d12 at 9th level and to a maximum of 6d12 at 11th level. Or "Impervious Sanctity of Mind" lvl7 Divine spell. Your guide show that it's duration is 8 hours, but again it is different in unmoded and "Stratagems of Mystra".
Are you using different mods or what?
Defensive Harmony is most effective for tanks. Say, your fighter is getting hit only on rolls of 17+. Defensive Harmony can cut the damaging attacks in half.
Farsight has some uses against enemies that can detect invisibility. You summon a goofball, cast insect swarm or another spell like that on the goofball, and have the goofball walk into the enemy before the rest of your party. Pretty cheesy though.
Definitely cheesy but who doesn't like grilled cheese or pizza now and then!
I think you should add another disclaimer at the beginning of those videos -- "We play with Kagain/Korgan in our party". You claim Negative Plane Protection is mostly useless, but you don't start the game with Amulet of Power or Mace of Disruption, so if you don't have a berserker/ barbarian/undead hunter, you do need that spell until you can get one of those items. And you have to go through some vampires in order to get the Mace.
I mean, you will have amulet of power before fighting any vampires with the exception of the one fledgling assuming you go into the crypts. You only need to kill 3 or 4 lowbie vampires before getting the mace. The only pack of vampires you would fight that would require anything more than 1 lesser restoration would be the pack in windspear and good luck fighting 10 vampires 4 of them ancient with just negative plane protection. You can also use pfmw to tank them as well via bard or mage, or send in a bunch of summons. There's plenty of ways to deal with vampires but NPP is definitely not one of them. By the time you really need it, you have items for it, and until then, it's not gonna cover you at all. Thanks for commenting and watching friend!
In IWD:ee I couldn't target anyone with static charge. The druid just starts casting and I have no idea where it'll hit.
Def would make more sense tbh XD Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
Whats the difference between Neutraliza Poison and Resist Poison? Its ambiguity and overlap shit like that I hate about the BG spellcasting system, which I otherwise stand in awe of.
Looks like I've been playing it all wrong when it came down to my cleric spells as I always stacked the Harmony spell and thought Negative Plane Protection was one of the rare "must have" spells haha. I've played through BG1 when it came out, BG1 EE / BG2 EE a few times and SoD/IWD EE once all on core rules and my last BG1 EE and current SoD is for the first time on SCS Tactical. I wasn't very impressed with BG1 SCS tactical difficulty for the most part except for 3-4 encounters I've done where I probably wasn't high level enough for yet and maybe kobold commando ambushes when trying to sleep early on that would all immediately snipe my sorcerer, about 2/3rd of the game I could just put everything to sleep with my Sorcerer and get free XP.
I'm starting to think that my current party might not be that great nor fun to complete SoD/BG2 with (Stalker, Berserker, Blade, Sorcerer, Dorn, Cleric/Thief). Stalker was great for BG1 (I tried Fighter/Thief for the first time last BG2 playthrough and was impressed at how great it was late game) but will probably get boring and weak through BG2 even with the SoD bracers that I have to get +1 backstab multiplier. Berserker, I wanted to try out their dmg resistance stacked with the BG2 flail that adds even more to see if it'd be really nice but it might still be bad. Blade is because I never played a bard before, it's nice with the versatility and I killed Drizzt in BG1 for his weapons but still feels a bit weak at lvl 11 and seems like it'll mostly turn out to be a weaker version of a fighter/mage. My sorcerer is being boring by taking the "must have" spells and basically just applying AOE debuffs onto enemies or taking all the magic defense breaker spells to counter enemy mages (supposed to be super important with BG2 SCS?). I find Dorn to be rather weak to be honest, I mostly want to see his quest line for BG2/ToB (90hp compared to my Stalker 131 hp and Berserker 153 hp) Finally, the Cleric/Thief I just find very boring but needed some heals and trap removal...
Watching your videos, I have the feeling that pure warriors like I often have in my parties aren't very good. I never really tried figher/mage duals/multi except for one solo BG1 core rule run with a kensai/mage.
I enjoy mage spells (usually prefer sorcerer because I don't know the game by heart to know what to stack in my spellbook yet) and I like melee (backstab or paladin/fighters type). I never seem to have much fun with cleric/druid/shaman (I probably don't know them well enough and don't use their spells right) but often feel the need to have at least 1 for some healing and some buffs/debuff removal. Your spell videos might make me reconsider what other kind of party I could make for a full saga playthrough as I think I lost interest partly due to not being very excited with what my party would develop into this time around for BG2. It feels like several classes are either strong in BG1 and then fade out and become weak later in BG2 or the complete opposite (like some pure fighters being quite strong in BG1 while multi-classes only starting to become truly strong half way or late BG2).
I'm going to be doing a class / kit guide at some point in the near future that might help with that. If you wanna play a backstabby boi I'd go shadowdancer dual, hide in plain sight is a lot of fun to play with. Stacking pure fighters is usually bad idea, since you only get one flail of the ages/foebane combo and if you're playing on insane, hardiness isn't enough to keep your face pretty. Blade is literally a weaker fighter mage I feel the exact same way, it's still strong tho, and arguably the best tank in the game. I found sorc to be pretty boring for the same reason, you're forced to take all the defensive spells or you die, and if you dont have extra mages to do spell breaking you gotta take those too, so you turn into a spell chucker that doesn't really do anything fun at all. Dorn is shit, 19 strength is great for the core game on core rules but he doesn't have the con to do anything higher than that. SCS adds a lot of fun to divine casting, putting them almost on par with mages (druid especially). Still you don't need to min max too hard, pick what you find fun and go from there, my first complete run on stream was as a blade with in game companions. Good luck either way friend and thanks for watching and commenting!
@@Davaeornlol Nice, I'll definitely keep an eye out for those class/kit guides! I was wondering about Shadowdancer, haven't tried one yet (I only had regular thieves and a fighter/thief once in the past) but it was the reduced backstab damage that was making me hesitate, I'll be curious to see how you propose to build it. One of my core runs for BG2, I went with a mostly non-magical party and it was cool (Dark Moon Monk, Keldorn, Wizard Slayer, Archer, Fighter/Thief I think and Shaman) but I don't expect this to work anymore with SCS Tactical and up. My Wizard slayer only started being decent at the very end of ToB with higher magic resistance, I didn't think about the possibility of having him be dual with thief to remove his big penalties back then (I'm also curious about Kensai/Thief) and while my Monk was basically a god late game on core rules, I understand your point saying armor/hardiness isn't enough to make him viable on harder SCS settings with no helm (it wasn't that fun to play anyways and complete garbage through all of BG1). I want to try to play more around the dual kits as well as multi, I'm just a bit scared to end up having a very weak party and unfun experience if I have more than 1-2 of them in my group and do a full saga run without extensive knowledge of SCS.
I also am not sure I understand the point of Dual fighter/mage unless you solo. I mean, you play as a fighter in BG1, then have some downtime and then end up playing as a mage instead later on but end up being a "gimped" mage considering a regular mage or sorcerer would do a better job at it and I'm guessing the poor THAC0 from dual at 7 and other penalties will make the kit not very viable to be a melee fighter anymore (while multi could do it better)?
About Blood Rage -- "player characters" should mean any party member, not just the main character. That's how it works it works in Icewind Dale, where there is no main character and all party members are created by the player. Maybe the modder did not account for that. Even if that's the case though, you can play Baldur's Gate with a custom made party as well.
That aside I started wondering if that spell wouldn't be a way to make use of those Summon Animal spells. Especially if you manage to get a bear, with 3 attacks per round those offensive bonuses could do some work. And you don't have to worry about the downsides (just because you're a druid doesn't mean you _actually_ care about animals).
Also, would it work with charm spells/abilities? Let's say Minsc recruits a standard black bear into your party, then you cast Blood Rage on it, and suddenly it's no standard bear anymore -- it's a really crazy bear! Make it move next to some bandits/assassin's that want to talk before fighting, cast the spell and see much damage it does before they can take it down.
That also brings up the question of how would it interact with the insane difficulty damage modifier -- if the rage breaks the charm, would it make the victim attack your enemies with double damage (since it's become an enemy creature)? Or it based on who is receiving the damage?
The insane modifier works only for your 6 party members it doesn't affect anything else, so if jan is charmed and gets hit by a fireball he's taking double damage, if you kick jan from the party however he will take normal damage, summons don't take insane damage. There's actually a druid spell called animal rage designed just for animal companions but it's a bit different than blood rage that they get at level 5. The issue with blood rage is it doesn't work on lawful companions too, which sucks big time, because kagain is lawful evil, keldorn is lawful good, ajantis is lawful good, anomen is lawful neutral (if he fails his trial chaotic but even then he's a spellcaster, you really don't want him losing control). Korgan has actual beserker rage, minsc, dorn, jaheira, are wayyy to squishy to lose control in a fight, you never would want to lose control of an actual spellcaster (bard included) so what the fuck do you cast this ability on in baldurs gate? Khalid? A summoned monster is really it tbh but it just comes across as cheesy as killing shit off screen with cloud spells which I guess you can do but I just don't like it tbh. You do make a good point that I didn't consider custom companions from a multiplayer game because then you have a perfectly legitimate excuse to use it, but for the base game I struggle to find a place for it. Thanks for commenting as always friend!
D, I was thinking...Blood Rage and Exaltation! Not for Korgan obviously, but for Minsc, even Keldorn, using Improved Haste, Exaltation, then casting Blood Rage would make them like Korgan. The Exaltation would keep them in control, and Blood Rage, in particular with the 22 Strength belt, would push them into 24 strength. Pop Armor of Faith and Hardiness, for Valygar and Minsc, would turn them into unstoppable juggernauts for 2 turns. 😮😮😮. While using Blood Rage on the Greater Were-Bears is good, this might be better, because you're retaining control. (Cast Blood Rage when the Were-Bears are near their target. They immediately jump to strength 24. 😮) (True, they do lose their regeneration, but you can do this when they need that extra push for tougher enemies)
Having trouble with Static Charge and I'm not sure if it's my version or whether it's working as intended. I'm using the standalone version of iwdification from G3. The main issue is that the range "visual range of caster" in the spell description doesn't match what I've noticed. I usually have to be standing at least half of that closer to the closest enemy in order for it to fire. If I'm standing back with my bow users or mages, it doesn't fire. I'm currently on the most recent Beamdog PC version of BG2EE
I think it was nerfed by SCS at some point for being too strong. Quite a few spells taken from IWD were tweaked.
@@Davaeornlol ok, I checked it out in NI and see the range was set to 30.
Nice
Thanks for falling for my clickbait again buddy!
I run a similar, fairly minimal mod setup to you, and some of these spells function very differently from how you describe them here. For example, Smashing Wave does next to nothig. It's not a wave, it doesn't travel, and only occasionally creates a puddle/splash on top of a targeted creature. I say occasionally because most of the time it literally does nothing. It has to be bugged.
Then there's thorn spray, which says there's no saving throw, but in my game the enemy makes a vs death save and avoids all damage. Pretty weak stuff.
Weird stuff tbh, to be fair this video isn't exactly the most recent version of SCS
I use animal summoning when I have no summoning wand, just to sacrifice him to demogorgon statue to fight those 5 demon knight. They drop girdle of 22 strenght (used for the super hammer) and a two handed sword that drains enemies thac0.
Eh, Spirit Fire seems fine to me for what it is. Probably wouldn't be worth it if you actually had to burn a spell pick for it, but Shamans just get it for free anyway and it's basically a baby Fireball. Very useful for decimate groups of enemies in BG1, even more so when abusing line of sight, and you get a ton of casts due to the Shaman's Sorcerer-style spell slots. Keep in mind I'm not playing on the same hardcore settings you're using, but at least without modded in difficulty settings it's a perfectly useful spell to have IMO.
Man, your videos are dope, looking forward for level 5! One question: I noticed the healing spells in your installation are quite more powerful (for example, Cure serious wounds should heal just 17hp, not 4d8+1/level). What mod did you install to alter them? I don't think it's SCS, I also play with SCS and my healing spells are unaffected.
If you install the IWD component of SCS it will boost them to the IWD variants. If you're playing with an older SCS or dont have the IWD component they'll be unaffected. Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
ב"ה
With a Mage/Cleric, when I want to do some combats with my project imaje, I usually use Farsight from the cleric list because my mage spells in level 4 tend to be more powerfull. Besides, some enemies see invisible creature and will just kill a wizard eye so farsight is a must if you want to keep your party away and fight with your projected image.
Holy Power make your clerics a lot better with their slings, which is what they usually use when not casting spells. Since slings deal more damage with high strength, they can contribute a little bit more in combat that way, especially viconia with her high dexterity that combined with that THAC0 boost would hit pretty often.
True, holy power just doesn't last more than a fight or two and I have other spells id need to stock level 4 with. Late game you can take all the holy power you want since you get spells for days though. Fair point with project image I typically never use it.
arent those woodland being supposed to be pure druids? spell selection they get are from priest, mage and the druid spell book i think it goes against the class game mechanics. poison spell i think ive seen something similiar on other games which is like a ranged attack (not a spell) from insects with a chance to poison after the initial damage has landed - good against mages i guess. they get worst class poison save as well as thiefs, lack of constitution and all.
They get nothing but divine spells to my knowledge, I might not be thinking clearly right now but im 99% sure they're all divine spells cleric druid shaman only. Yeah poison is weird for sure. Thanks for commenting friend!
@@Davaeornlol confusion spell? well unless its a lvl7 priest one which you get on lvl 14. what lvl is a dryad? mass cure is actually fairy potent +20 heal at least. but then she has no lvl6 spells. unless confusion was never meant to be lvl7 for clerics. are there any good mod to strait things up on spells? like make every spell useful and valid, scaling with lvl.
Also how many front lines do you usually run?
Ever since my first run I've always played with the 3 in front 3 in back formation.
Basically the horizontal version of the starting formation and I usury have 3 front liners and 3 back line.
2 fighter type classes
1 cleric or druid usually also front line
1 mage
1 thief
1 random. Either cleric or archer or 2nd mage.
Now that I've started taking fighter thiefs like montaron and getting rid of Imogen that 5th slot could be replaced with something else.
I generally want 2 tanks 4 front liners 2 back line but not always works out because no reload means sometimes the tank you really wanted is gone XD
Lvl4 already? Yeah baby, yeah!
Or as we Germans would say: Ja Säugling, ja!
Hell ja
you're gonna love the trickster wild hunt spells in the righteous hahahaha
"Nobody plays evil but me"
who the hell doesn't play evil? Korgan, Vicky and Edwin are OP. Add Jan and you have the best party
Research says 80% of the rpg playerbase won't actually play anything but good, in all of their playthroughs. It's pretty crazy tbh.
In bg2 do all clerics and druids get instant access to all their respective spells upon reaching a certain level? I am at a point where Jaheira has access to level 6 spells but her spell book is limited & I haven't seen a good portion of the spells you are talking about.
He's using a mod called IWDification which adds spells from the game Icewind Dale. He seems a little scatterbrained in this video when it comes to telling us who gets access to each spell, so he obviously forgot to mention which spells are modded in. The spells that are from IWDification are: Blood Rage, Cloud of Pestilence, Giant Insect, Produce Fire, Recitation, Smashing Wave, Star Metal Cudgel, Static Charge, Thorn Spray, Unfailing Endurance and Wall of Moonlight.
Correct, upon reaching the level to cast level 3 spells, they will immediately have access to all level 3 spells but only those available to their class. If you aren't seeing the spells im talking about you might not have the IWD component of SCS installed.
Does star metal cudgle lets Jaheria hit Kangaxx?, 'cos thats the only thing I can see it being useful for
It does! but you're better off using everard from a distance, Kangaxx likes to spam prismatic spray and that's an excellent way to say goodbye to jaheira forever since her saves are so shit.
@@Davaeornlol so it hits Kangaxx, and gets rid of Jaheira forever. Where is the downside?
@@sloopjohnbable Shit you're right.
Regarding Poison lvl 4. Minor Globe is only for lvl 3 and under spells, so if you can malison someone, then poison, it at least is a direct counter to Minor globe. I can see it being useful against low level mages imo. Unless Minor turning will deflect it, and Remove magic only being level 3, with the globe up, might be a counter again.
Cool idea thanks for watching and commenting friend!
I’m really looking forward to level 5, 6 and 7😀
Soon.tm
What mod is it that makes the cure spells variable instead of fixed as they are in the base game?
You are underrating giant insect, A tier at least. In bg 1 they are S tier. Idk what their claws hit at, but it seems like at least +2. Their claws are that the main reason I take Faldorn. That, and of course insect plague.
The problem is the damn things can't be controlled :( at least not in the version im using.
Hi @Davaeorn Great videos. Really informatic. Any chance you could do a Cleric/Ranger playthrough? A lot of what you say about these spells having to be used in melee would not be the case with a melee Cleric/Ranger, right?
If i was a cleric ranger I wouldn't want to replace my weapons with the summoned ones. I'd probably be dual wielding flail of the ages and DoE. I wouldn't ever want to summon a wep to replace them, as for bg1 I still probably wouldn't want to go melee anyways tbh. Multiclasses get boned pretty hard HP wise until early SoA
Free action doesnt cancel any haste if you put haste first.
Depends on your mods / patch and the type of free action you're using. In bg1 the ring doesn't cancel haste, in bg2 it does (at least in my version, specifically talking about edventars gift). Flail of ages, etc, all have different interactions, you gotta play with your mods / patch and see how it goes. I also use some tweaks from teak pack but nothing haste specific but that doesn't mean something isn't being touched behind the scenes.
@@Davaeornlol BG2EE SCS tactical difficulty, version idk, latest i guess.
Custom party of 5, 6th slot for story NPC
4 would be to small to get my class wishes covered, 6 is too much. Pathfinding sucks sometimes and i dont want to park my precious heroes:
Cavalier
Fighter/Thief (Multi)
Cleric -> Mage (Dual)
Archer
Sorcerer
What would your custom 5 party look like in SCS?
@@Davaeornlol Eventually you could answer this: Why the hell is the acid arrow considered enchanted +1 in comparison to ice and fire arrows. Thats above my understanding. They should be all similar in my opinion. I am close to mod them myself via Near Infinity, if i could find the entry which determines enchantment level.
I am a modder myself, but only now i get into BG2 modding, mostly visual stuff and some minor things.
@@nobedience If I was trying to make the ultimate party, 3 berserker dual at 9 to mages, 1 cleric mage multi, one thief mage multi, and one barb. Barb tanking demons in watchers keep alone makes it more useful than bers mage (highest damage output in game class combo) cleric mage for cleric spells + mage defenses, thief mage for dealing with traps +mage defenses. If I was going to make a party I think I would enjoy playing the most? Barb, archer, Fighter/Cleric, Fighter/Thief, Fighter/Druid, Inquisitor. No arcane magic, every class a fighter ethos.
@@nobedience Beats me, why some rats were equipped with +2 fire arrows that can one shot pretty much anyone with a little luck when most of the iron thrones gold is going to the bandits is beyond me as well.
Yet another reason to hate Negative Plane Protection. Limited wish NPP is a repeatable wish, on the ENTIRE PARTY. Unbelievable. 😵💫
ikr
Hmm afaik you can only summon one woodland being at once? :-)
42:00 "I don't wanna get into melee as a Fighter in Baldur's Gate 1"
Sad but true
Most of these are only from IWD. Not applicable to original BG
Updating as I watch. Easier then taking notes.
Defensive Harmony would be so much better if it provided even just a +1 to Saving Throws. I feel like it’s casting time helps with the problem of low AC bonus.
That said, my mod config includes a mod that adds more Cleric Kits, and some of those kits use Fighter THAC0 and HD with some limits (kit by kit basis) that lets Clerics get a little more beefy for frontline. Spells like DH are much more reliable in these cases
NPP should have been like PfE 10’ or last 5r+1/lvl. Even if they had slapped a max duration, that’d be so much better.
Produce Fire doesn’t render a cap on damage does it? So a say 25 caster could do what, 1d4+25? Not bad.
Yeah for sure it's just so underwhelming for a level 4. It caps at 20 which is still decent but fire is very commonly resisted by then. Again just really underwhelming for anything but clearing trolls
Davaeorn I may look into some tweaking to Defensive Harmony. I understand enough about the engine to modify spells. But I’ll have to be careful with the opcodes for AC and Saves. Real easy to make a spell effect waaay overpowered.
@@BioHunter1990 Tbh I wouldn't let it modify saves as you already got too many spells that do that, by itself that's fine, but when you stack em all up you got saves for days
Davaeorn that is a good point. Though I kinda look at it as “another tool in the toolbox”. What sorta improvement might you recommend to make DH better? I think you’ve established that flat AC is pointless on SCS/Insane, so there needs to be something more...backstab immunity? Crit hit immunity? Also, with backstabs being instant chunking, I’m guessing things like Enkidu’s Full Plate can be useful? I’d view it as something useful to stuff away for prep.
@@BioHunter1990 Yeah I typically swap to enkidus for fights with thieves in ToB generally though you go for something with resistances to elements or magic because it piles up really quick. There's a million things they can do for DH to make it better but it's also hard to do without making it too strong in combination with the others. I suppose just making it a positive luck modifier (party only) would make sense and give it enough of a boost to make it useful, as combining it with chant would greatly reduce damage taken.
Does death ward protect v mind flayers?
Fraid not unfortunately. Although some people insist it does so it might do so with a mod.
is recitation a spell added by a mod?
Correct, SCS adds IWD spells to bg for you and enemies.
Again great video, thanks for this! I like wall of moonlight much more than you but I don't play evil parties
Yeah if you're not evil its much more useful, there's a lot of tight undead corridors so it's definitely worth taking for those
epic!
epic!
When are you doing divine level 5?
Should be out tmr depending on how long youtube takes to process
Initially I always skipped Defensive Harmony. Then I used it every fight having an extra cleric for MC. My cope was that it might save you some HP when you eliminate some enemies in the first 6 rounds. Also the AI uses it so maybe there's something to it. Nope, the original AI is scripted to help you win and the spell is not really doing much. So I'm back to skipping it
I was using Static Charge, then Jaheria got petrified. The Static Charges suddenly started hitting my party. FYI. RIP
Holy shit that sounds brutal lol. I can honestly say that's never happened to be me before. Thanks for commenting friend!
Probably, that spell is to cast haste and not getting fatigued. BTW dav you are a norom
I have to disagree on clubs being a particularly bad weapon. The base damage being 1d6 averages 1 point less compared to most 1 handers that warriors use, which isnt huge. Its crushing damage, and can backstab, the only other weapon of this kind being quarterstaves which are 2 handers, and its usable by thieves, druids, clerics and their multiclasses. Its baseline properties are fine.
The main issue though is itemisation.
Its average BG1, with a +2 club in cloakwood being the best (EE only, I think baseline BG1 has no magic clubs), certainly not the best, but a bland +2 weapon is equal or better than many other weapon types, and its obtainable quite a bit earlier than the +2 axe or halberd for example. There are clearly stronger weapons in BG1, but its not the worst.
In BG2, its very solid. The blackblood is 1d6+6, 3 points being acid, which is very rarely resisted, kills trolls and goes through stoneskin. This is significantly stronger damage wise than most categories of 1 handers, and does the same average damage as stonefire or frost reaver, doing a better type of elemental damage. Combine this with its other baseline properties, and its clearly better in 1 hand than the axe in BG2, which is hardly a bad weapon. Also, this can be obtained very early. In the same questline, you get an ok +2 club with damage over time if dual wielding is a concern.
In TOB, the club of detonation is severely held back by how common fire resist is and consequently isnt very good. If fire resist isnt an issue however, its damage is actually very good compared to most 1 handers (the 30% chance of an extra 15 fire damage averages 5 points of damage, on top of the 1d6+10 its already doing, this is actually close to flail of ages damage (admittedly without the slow), and with high APR, 30% chance is high enough that its quite reliable). It also has a low chance of fireballing, which can be a nice damage boost, or can be a significant liability if you dont have resist energy up on your meele. Overall, its great on enemies vulnerable to fire, and pretty bad otherwise. By TOB standards, you can make it pretty early (requires watchers keep level 5 only).
If I was only able to specialise in 1 weapon, it wouldnt be the club. But for characters without grandmastery, particularly if they have proficiency restrictions like druid or cleric multiclasses or want to backstab, the club easily warrants a 2 pip investment for SOA and early TOB before you can craft the +5s and +6s (blackblood is still competitive until then).
You mention warhammers and bastard swords as some of the stronger weapons. In SOA, Crom Faeyr is obtained so late it would be more reasonably considered a TOB weapon, as thats when you will get the great majority of its mileage, and the hammer of thunderbolts is significantly worse (lower damage, usable by fewer characters, no backstab, and no elemental damage), and still usually takes longer to acquire. Bastard swords are total trash in BG1 and SOA, whith the +3 +1 fire damage sword being significantly worse than blackblood, and obtained far later, and the best bastard sword being +1 in BG1 (there are literally 3 fights where the sword of balduran is useful once youve obtained it). Foebane +5 is great and can be made very early by TOB standards, so its a good proficiency for than section of the game alone.
You hit the hammer on the head my friend, the problem is itemization, and its itemization is terrible. The damage is part, but the fact is, every other 1h is superior in its role. Foebane is 100% mandatory for a in ToB. Elite fire giants can literally do 500 damage before mitigation in a round, if you're fighting 2 at once, you can take literally 1k damage in 6 seconds. To overcome this, you combine hardiness, DoE, and foebane with imp haste. Blackrazor doesn't do the same role as well but its ok in comparison. Flail of the ages isnt used for the head damage, it's the slow that matters. Slowing down planetars chasing after squishy targets, slowing a balor that's teleporting around, slowing firestorm cast time, etc etc. It's an absolutely amazing weapon. Crom faeyr I only mention because what it gives in comparison is massive. Hammer of TB does 2d4+3 which is less than 1d6+3+3 blackblood yes, but crom faery itself will one shot golems, and give such a tremendous thac0 boost (damage too). Axe of the unyielding decapitates in addition to its other effects, when it comes to clearing enemies, it's far superior. You can also find 2 +3 axes in bg2, both doing elemental damage, in addition to a throwing axe that can also be used in melee with an effect on par with the mace of disruption, in addition to ANOTHER throwing axe, all but one of these can be acquired before you even leave athkatla. I agree that bastard sword optimization is shit, but you don't go for it right out the gate, you grand mastery in something else (korgan for example has axes) and after you hit gm, you dump every point into bastard sword for ToB. In bg1, the club is on par with the others, varscona you get right out the gate so it's really hard to argue for anything but LS here but LS sucks after bg1 let's be honest. You get hammer +2 off basillius, axe +2 in bg city so the club is acquired literally at the same time. The best thing you can say here is the club is on par, and does crushing damage (always a huge plus) but really melee is irrelevant in bg1, archers and magic reign supreme. In bg2 axes give you a ton of toys to play with, flail of the ages is the undisputed best 1h by far because of the slow effect. I think you're underplaying it tbh, if flail of the ages did no elemental damage at all, I would still use it over blackblood. Slow is absurdly overpowered, and it ignores MR so you can hit planetars and all sorts of other bullshit that you wouldn't be able to normally. Planetars early on are extremely dangerous and with FoA you can go toe to toe with them. As I mentioned before you got axes for days, longswords are niche as hell but the ones you get have nice abilities on them (immunities, double damage to dragons, etc) Id say blackblood is ok here, it's not nearly as good as flail, and its almost as good as axes (axes you can throw, in addition to the power of azureedge) they're slightly better than war hammer, and definitely better than bastard sword but as I mentioned, you dont have GM in BS right now, that comes later. When ToB rolls around, detonation is at the bottom of the list, I can't disagree more with the statement that watchers keep 5 is early. I would say that's at the very end of the game. In addition, as I mentioned prior, Crom faeyr, foebane, FoA, axe of the unyielding, these are all acquired long before club of det is and they are far superior to the club, and you have to sacrifice a ring of fire resistance on top of it to upgrade it which annoys me to no end. If you are a fighter, you want foebane, if you are a ranger, you want foebane, if you are a paladin, you want foebane and the purifier. If you are a blade, you want crom faeyr for the ridiculous thac0 boost you desperately need for having thief thac0. If you are a DD or barb or some other tanky son of a bitch you want flail of the ages and axe of the unyielding, to be honest, everyone wants flail of the ages just to get the slow up, it's so damn good it's insane. If you are a fighter druid or druid, you want earth elemental transformation, not club of det. If you are a cleric, you don't want to melee at all, if you are a fighter cleric, you want flail of the ages, if you are a thief and want to backstab, you want staff of the ram or some katana (hindos doom you get at the same time as club of det). If for some weird reason you want to use a 2h you want the ravager, which you will get the same time as club of det. I can't think for the life of me, a time where I would ever want to use clubs as a proficency. At best its on par, at its worst, it's pretty damn bad. Its not the clubs fault, it's black isle and bioware for giving them horrendous optimization. Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
Edit: I forgot to mention, weapons that can be used by restricted classes like druid cleric etc, tend to be worse for that reason. It's supposed to make fighters better. They realized they went overboard with that and tried to buff them up (like warhammers doing 2d4 instead of 1d4 +1) but club got missed.
@@Davaeornlol
In SOA, the blackblood is a very competitive one handed weapon, and it will account for a sizeable chunk of any play through.I wouldnt sink 5 points into it, but its definitely a reasonable pick for anyone restricted to 2 pips or less, because you have enough proficiency points by TOB to specialise in several weapons. Its also one of the best options for stalkers, swashbucklers (and rogues in general), clerics and druids, and any of their multiclasses in SOA.
No, its not the flail of ages, but you have a 6 man party, and only 1 flail of the ages. Depending on how many warriors you have, you will quickly run out of better options than blackblood in SOA. As I say, as strong as Crom Faeyr is, its much more relevant to TOB than SOA given when you acquire it.
And in BG1, with the rules you play, yes its going to massivly favour ranged, but if comparing it to other meele weapons, its simply very average. I wouldnt say its bottom of the barrel. The one area melee is very relevant in BG1 is high missile resistance, particularly when combined with magic resistance, and crushing damage is usually what you want here (like skeleton warriors for example). Also, the 3rd area of cloakwood is not literally the same time as the cloak and helm inn, its quite a lot earlier.
I certainly wouldnt argue that in TOB, clubs are a good choice. They arent. There are far too many things against which it functions as a +5 weapon with no other bonuses. When fire resist isnt an issue, the damage is excellent, but as you say, there arent other bonuses. Its still not as bad as you say however.
It depends on the order of play, but only having to do Watcher's keep does make it a weapon that can be available for most of TOB. You compare the club of detonation unfavourably to the upgraded versions weapons you say can be obtained earlier, but its only the unupgraded versions which are obtained earlier in a realistic play order. Axe of the Unyeilding +5 requires watchers keep AND marching mountains. The axe of the unyeilding +3 is clearly a weaker weapon than the club of detonation +5. Its average damage per hit is 11 lower, and 2 lower THAC0. +1AC and 1hp regen per round isnt enough to make up for this. Even for the upgraded version, decapitate is a 10% chance, and allows a save vs death at -4. So for this to be good, the target has to be dangerous, at high health, and fail their save. At all those probabilities together, and this benefit is going to be pretty marginal in practice. Even the upgraded version of Hindo's Doom is far weaker than Detonation +5, and that requires Watchers Keep AND Abazigal's Lair. 1d10+4 is moderately more damage for backstabs than 1d6+5 on average, but then you factor in the +10 fire damage on average, and even on backstabs, it will be lower average damage. On all other weapon swings, its not even close. Katana is actually a much better contender for being the worst weapon in TOB, where celistial fury is still the best Katana for the great majority of TOB, which unfortunately cannot even hit several important enemies.
Sure, many classes are going to do much better with Foebane, Crom Faeyr or Flail of Ages, but A), some classes cannot use them, B) they cannot backstab, and C), you cannot outfit a full 6 man party with these 3 weapons. That will fill the weapon slots for 1.5 dual wielders. Beyond these weapons, the upgraded versions of the other 1 handers are mostly obtained later, and the club is a lot more competitive with them.
@@notalefty999 Yes you can't use flail of the ages on everyone but you don't need to either. Your mages cant use these weapons at all, if you run multiple mages your need for good weapons dwindles significantly. If we assume you have at least 1 mage, you're down to 5. So frontline fighter pure dps, foebane. Main tank (berserk mage, fighter druid, pure druid, blade) you take crom or earth eletransformation. Thief if you wanna backstab you take staff of the ram, but you can't melee as a thief, you just can't, you're gonna die. So you gotta get that one auto off and BAIL, so hitting with the highest damage you got, IE staff of ram, or hindo, and get out. Club doesn't work for these 3 chars at all, if you got a mage, he cant use it anyways, so that's 4 chars not using it, and we haven't even talked about flail of the ages yet, or axe of the unyielding. If you got a cleric and you insist on using him for melee, and you dont have crom, or flail, then you can think about the club of det, but why the hell would you want your cleric to be in melee anyways? They're not as good of a tank as a wizard, they are dangerous to throw in the fray. I don't understand what party composition you could possibly have where you would want to dump points into club. You can argue club is better than sword for bg1 and you might be right, but I can get a +1 flail at level 1, just north of the friendly arm inn and that wep is DAMN fine for killing skeles, it also lets me use flail of the ages in bg2. There is nobody but jaheira or a mixed fighter druid mid level that I could see clubs being useful for, and even then, as soon as you get earth ele xform you never use a club again. If we were to argue about club over dagger or short sword I would agree with you, but you can't afford to sink points into club as a fighter, I wouldn't as a cleric fighter, I wouldn't as a thief, I wouldn't as anything really. I do agree katanas were gutted hard, they did that on purpose because they do 1d10 base (dumb as all hell I don't know which weeb designed them) but I would definitely use celestial fury over club of det, 100%. The stun is too damn strong. I'm streaming right now so I can't keep talking but I'd be happy to discuss it further. Thanks for commenting friend!
OH HELL YEAH
OH BABY
You shit on defensive harmony but I use it every fight lmao (pure cleric) but it’s instant cast so I always just start off with that and then cast my other shit after. It doesn’t last long but the start of the fight is the most important to me. If you have a strong start it snowballs into a clean finish. Bad start vice versa I get smoked. I will have fights where my whole party died and it’s not close, redo the fight and make a few changes and win not even taking damage lol (insane, core) idk might not be helping but it makes me feel better
I use it too I can't help it XD. It IS underpowered for its level though (either that or chant prayer etc are all OP as shit, which to be fair, they are). Yeah going from no cleric buffs, to PfE10ft, chant, prayer, DH, makes a big difference indeed. Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
Animal Summoning is only useful in one place. In BG II, in the underdark, you need to sacrifice something to gate in the demon knights that drop Soul Reaver. Other than that, this spell totally sucks.
Yeah it's pretty sad tbh
33% then save, and save then 33% is mathematically identical, just saying.
It's technically going to affect the same amount of enemies over the course of a thousand scenarios, but what I mean by that is the 33% happens once as opposed to individual, which means upon casting it on say, 10 people hit with a malison (making it very likely to fail their saves), it's going to hit them all or none. There is a difference between the two, the math doesn't play into it. The scenario that can't exist, is the one where you cast this and only a few have to roll to save, they all do, or they all don't. Take the saving throw out of the equation and you get the following. 1/3 of the time ALL your enemies will be doomed, as opposed to, every cast, 1/3 of your enemies will be doomed. Mathematically speaking you're not wrong, but the way it actually plays out is very different. This spell, like dispel magic, becomes an all or nothing, either it works, and ALL the spells are gone(or in the case of this spell, doomed), or it doesn't work, and it does nothing. I might be doing a poor job of explaining this, but yeah. Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
@@Davaeornlol Oh, so it's a bit different, I get it now. In that case, the chance for an individual monster to get affected is the same, but because the 33% is over the entire population, the expected number of monster affected in the population will remain the same but the variance will be larger, making the spell "riskier" but when it hits it hits harder with more monsters affected.
@@vladimirtchuiev2218 Exactly, I just woke up so I did a bad job sorry about that >
@@Davaeornlol Don't sweat it, the probability math in play here is not intuitive, and probably isn't that important in the grand scheme of things.
caw!
Why not melee with druids? They've got Iron Skins and shapeshifting.
Shapeshifting in baldurs gate is garbage. The damage you deal is terrible and base thac0 is not modified enough to be remotely decent. Greater werewolf form is a VERY powerful shapeshift, far beyond doggo and bear form from a regular druid, and you miss all the fucking time with it, despite it boosting your strength well beyond a regular fighter. It's bad even in SoA and it only gets worse as the game progresses (just to clarify, the defenses it grants are excellent, it's the thac0 that makes it horrendous for dealing damage). If you could combine shapeshifting with the cleric spell holy power it would actually be pretty great, but the lack of a thac0 modification just puts shapeshifting in the ground. As for ironskins you won''t get it until the end of bg1, an up until then you're d8 hp so bg 1 is right out for melee, an in bg2 you're just so much more damn effective as an offensive caster than a meleer, those skins disappear REALLY fast until you get entropy shield, but even then their damage is just horrendous. Fighter druid is definitely better in that regard but then you're not shape shifting at all.
I think they misclicked when they made Call woodland beings not a level 5 divine spell and animal monster summoning a divine level 3 spell emirite yo. I wanted to say level 1-2 really but you'd have to put monster summoning I II III at 2,3,4 respectively or so then, which is not the case
No, I take that back. They mistyped when they made Call woodland beings a level 4 divine spell, instead of fucking *6*, not five, because mass cure is a level 5 spell.
So basically for a level 4 slot, you are getting a level 5 spell AND a summon with other spells? That's not just 'pretty busted'. THAT'S BOTH IRONICALLY AND UNIRONICALLY BROKEN AND MAKES NO SENSE
Yeah it's stupidly strong, druid is such ass 1-2 but 3-7 HOO boy do they smoke clerics there.
@@Davaeornlol Can I just emphasize one more time the fact, that Mass Cure is level 5 spell, but you can summon a spell level 4 chick that basically grants it? Just imagine for a second that there exists an arcane level 4 spell called "Call Zhentarim Smartass" that conjures an Ogre Mage that has a Cloudkill or Animate Dead spell memoriezed, along with some others. Let that skink in for a bit. At a mage level 7, you have access to Cloudkill or Animate Dead. And you don't even need to cast it yourself. THAT'S WHAT THIS IS in a mage analogy
Granted I don't know if you consider Mass Cure S or A tier (yet, wink wink) but still. BRUH