When I was a kid playing bg1, after countless failures I finally got good enough to get past level 2. I traveled around the game casting know alignment on everything and killing all the evil stuff. Well, it turns out the guard outside Candlekeep was classified as evil. I attacked him and found he was unkillable so I just ran away. Weeks later I got to the part of the main quest where you have to go back to Candlekeep and was unable to continue the main quest. I was so mad. That's what I associate know alignment with.
As a kid, I spent a long time learning how to kill that guard. If I remember correctly, the only way I found to damage him was with the poison effect from the dagger you can buy from the blacksmith in Beregost. It took a lot of stabs, but I finally downed him with my half-elf fighter/mage/thief. After checking out his loot, I reloaded and went on my way.
42:40 Just in case Chant wasn't good enough already, its +1 luck _guarantees_ that your mage's Mirror Images are always targeted before the real mage (at least tested in unmodded BG2EE). And sources of positive luck are scarce: the Wizard spell is ridiculously short, the Cloverleaf belt is only in SoD...
Using "draw upon holy might" right after casting "holy power" almost turns your cleric into a fighter; and you can still cast spells. Great combination if you have a small party with no fighter, or if you solo as a cleric/mage, or if you just want your cleric to step up and help your fighter towards the end of a tuff encounter.
Beat BG3 a few times now and I’m beyond ready to come back to the OGs, this guide is preparing me for my first time on SCS. Gonna roll a paladin, sounds like they aren’t too good but I’ll bring holy justice to the sword coast regardless
So here's a powerful bit of information I've just found out - you can cast hold person on yourself while invisible, and it doesn't break invisibility, while still applying the AoE hold. This only applies to the cleric hold person, the wizard one breaks invisibility. You can also use wands of monster summoning without breaking sanctuary, even though they break invisibility. You can also use wands of frost and lightning on yourself without breaking invisibility or sanctuary. It's far more useable with wands of frost though, lightning bolts tend to disappear if used in open spaces.
The Dava has spoken once more!! Bless you Dav, these guides are the most epic BG material on the internet, since the very early day. I mean it. Even the thread on the old forums were never so concise, accurate and perfected through experience. 8:20 Well, when you cast "Call Woodland beings", Barkskin can cover up the lovely thots of destruction/meat shielding :) Say, a paladin charname would not appreciate a summon to be half naked. "beast Claw" was huge for me in any IWD druid, mainly thanks to being able to hit magical enemies early on. But yes, in BG it is a whole different story. Spiritual Hammer ins IWD was pretty great, since you could use it as a ranged weapon. 22:26 Goodberries. Yummy yummy in my tummy since 1998
I'm pretty sure the thots get barkskin of their own! And besides if you cast barkskin on them and try to give them a peck on the cheek it's like making out with a tree. 0/10 would not bang. Yeah the IWD versions are a lot more useful I think. Goodberries shouldn't take up an action for the round, I want to shovel 50 in my mouth at once and heal for all my hp in bg1!
@@Davaeornlol lol Exactly man. But I think Cerend will be up to that... In werewolf form, he needs a good wooden surface to clutch his talons into... Baldur's Gate berries competitive eating: Someone has to make this mod!
47:40 on normal level i actualy DO use my priest as close combat unit they can be almost as tank as paladins if buffed, granted my paladins also die but that is what resurrection is for :D I dont send them against very strong opponents but they work
Stumbled across your channel only recently and really enjoying the awesome content for my favourite video game! I always considered myself pretty knowledgeable on these games having played them so much but you talking about different spell interactions plus watching your various runs has given me an even greater appreciation for just how complex and replayable they are
Charm Person or Mammal is a big RP spell for druids. I think it's useful to charm bears in the forest and use them to kill strong early-on enemies like ogres in those outdoor areas in BG1. It would be useful for packs of wild dogs or wolves also. Great series BTW!!
Detecting a trap without being able to disarm it is useful, because you can prepare your character for triggering it. Also, you can get around the traps at the end of third level of Nashkel mines. It may look impossible, but they won't trigger if you hug the wall.
If you know how to get around them you don't need detect traps at all, since you know where to go as is, a new player is going to probably assume that they can't get around them based on their width, it's only through playing that you know how shit works. If you don't have a thief you're gonna be in for a bad time regardless, and if you've played the game long enough it becomes really superfluous. Thanks for commenting friend!
Hope you enjoy it friend thanks for commenting sorry it took so damn long. This is the 4th iteration of it and I still need to rerecord the damn thing XD
@@Davaeornlol I do, right now :D. No need to apologize, your commentary on the spells is great entertainment and easily worth waiting for. One thing I'd personally prefer is if you'd switch back to ordering the spell evaluations by tier and not alphabetically. But maybe that's just me, and nitpicking anyway.^^
@@Gloriath1 It's so easy with mage because they're all right there, with tier I have to swap back and forth between companions to find them, since there are class specific spells etc, though I might do that for the next video considering I fucking forgot a a spell like an absolute moron.
Also, detect evil is a paladin special ability, which means that even in the paladin quest you really do not need to memorize this, since you should be a pally anyway to take it.
You may need a caster to cast Detect Evil/Know Alignment if you're Fallen. You're scripted to get your Paladin abilities back after saving Garren's kid but if you screwed up and fell after that point you can get your Paladin powers back completing that quest, but you need another caster to figure if the guy is the real deal or not.
Great, informative video as always. I do find myself using Find Traps fairly regularly as a convenience/utility spell. With it active your thief is freed up and able to stick to the shadows. It’s nice to get the notice when the ability procs to know your current location is free of traps. If you run it while having your thief also detect traps, you can potentially search for traps every 3 seconds rather than once a round allowing faster movement through heavily trapped areas.
I've been playing a fighter/cleric in the Xbox version. Its the first time I've played through properly. Draw upon holy might I use often, but if you'll excuse the pun, slow poison has been a god send. I've been enjoying your streams here on YT and I hope to see more and really hope you get tons more followers as you're good on the mic and seem to really appreciate your viewer base. I wish you well on your streaming journey and everything else you do.
I'm way late on this video, but I just wanted to point out that for an arcane caster of level >= 12, spook gets a penalty to saves of -6 and it's a level 1 spell. This is the first example of a penalty to saves better than that of silence, 15' radius that I can think of. I'm not comparing the two spells, which are very different and spook isn't even aoe. By they way, I love your videos on arcane and divine spells and on hlas!
Find Traps is useful because it stays active during combat even if your thief doesnt have Find Traps active. Useful for places like the Guarded Compound in BG2 -- you can have your Thief or Fighter/Thief do something else while you passively identify the traps
I actually like to use Resist Fire and Cold on my main tank in BG1 with Drizzt’s Scimitar (or a fire resist pot) just to open up fights. It makes it much easier to throw a bunch of fireballs from wands/the necklace of fireballs and/or arrows of detonation cause you dont have to worry about your main tank. Of course it pretty much only allows for 1 or 2 volleys because the spell wears off so damn fast, but its a wonderful fight opener
writhing fog seems like more of a crowd control spell for casters with the cold damage interrupting casters without elemental protection than anything else.
man these really are great. Hopefully one day a complete item guide. I would watch that over and over again just to hear your ideas and thoughts about all the unique items.
I'm gonna have to re record it I missed too much shit >< Recording it several times always makes my brain foggy. Hope you enjoy it though friend God bless!
I remember one time i went to watchers keep in chapter 3 got the deck of many things and i got silenced from it then i went back to the shadow thieves to progress the game and my char would not talk to them i was like what is going on, took me ages to figure it out lol.
I remember playing solo sorceror, I think, and doing the same thing. I can't remember if Amulet of Power still let me cast spells, but I'm pretty sure that even dispel magic doesn't help as the silence is treated as a curse. No way to talk to anyone for restoration either. Game is now softlocked, and I hadn't saved in a while.
@@richardfarrer5616 Interesting, you should have been completely immune to the silence but if you're using a different version I cant say for certain what happened
The only time I enjoy Goodberry is for the pure humour of the situation when there is a Wild Magic surge and they are created on an enemy I'm hitting with spells.
I play a dual-class Fighter/Druid atm and I found Flameblade (and Shillelag before it) useful for a particular stretch of the character; level 3 to 4 after becoming a Druid. I had 3 levels of Berserker, so my investment in dual-wielding wouldn't reactivate for another level, nor would my specialization in scimitars. But I still had Fighter HP and the Anhkeg Plate, so I kept this spell prepared for when I needed a little more umph on the frontline. This is just on Core Rules though.
I found Barkskin was pretty handy during the early-mid game for a Kensai, especially considering SCS's AI prioritizing of targets based on AC. Between a throwaway set of summons, enemies would almost always ignore the Kensai and let them rampage. I generally didn't swap the strategy due to Level 2 Divine having so many slots, and Level 4 Arcane having better usage. Come to think of it, Barkskin might actually be decent to throw on some crappy AC summons, because of the aforementioned excess spell slots.
Glad you found some good use of it friend! I personally find it too risky to rely on the AI following its algorithm properly as I've had far to many situations that belied what its supposed to do. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Goodberry is meant to be a downtime healing spell. It is great theoretically, because you can spend all slots to cast it for days and have 100's of goodberries.. then rest and mem your actual spells for combat and have almost infinite downtime healing. In the game it doesn't really work out that way.
I think I'm gonna have to play a party of 6 druids again. First time I did that, it never occurred to me to get into the fruit business. Let the kobolds keep their short swords -- I will make a fortune without even leaving town!
The only time I could see myself use "Find Traps" is in Boss rooms, where disarming the traps isn't needed but knowing where they are is nice. Like I want them to be visable instantly and use my thief for more important stuff like backstabbing. For example the final boss of IWD or Sarevok in the Bhaal temple.
I feel like Goodberry is the kind of spell that was added by accident while the devs were lazily copy-pasting spell descriptions from the PnP, and the slave-intern just coded it because it was there.
Find Traps is actually really good in specific situations. (assuming you don't play the game so much you know all of them) The point is to find traps during combat without idling your thief. In lots of places in BG2 you open doors, and there is a trap between you and the enemies. Or you go through a portal to find lots of enemies but you are surrounded by traps. In BG1 it is mostly a convenience to speed up the hallway width maze like dungeon crawls. Where triggering a lightning spell would zap your whole party. I use one of my Ranger / Paladin spots on this.
An interesting idea tbh but I think the better play is to just kite back to a room you know is safe than venture into a potentially deadly situation, to each his own though!
Nice vid your arcane guide helped me with my sorcerer run and if I ever use clerics a lot I will definitely use this guide. BTW you forgot the spells listed in the description
I mean, I don't even USE his vast knowledge, since I just A-move my modded uncapped solo Kensai/Mage/Thief on core rules into enemy base anyway, without regards to anything (while reload scumming on the occasional domination crit instant death, hacking them for 50 mindmg on the next try). But even then it's still cool stuff to theorise about.
I love using Find Traps to help my Thief find traps, the constant search is helpful during combat and it is nice to have an extra pair of eyes looking for the trap especially if your Thief isn't maxed out on Find Trap
I play core rules unmodded, I like to use Find Traps to help my thief- when they're not yet maxed they occasionally miss a trap or take a long time to find it, so the spell helps, especially with Druid/Shaman that don't get much better at level 2.
Level 2 divine definitely takes the spot as the spell list with the most useless spells They're not all bad but mostly situational. Most of them feel like they should be level 1 spells.
I've actually used Flame Blade... The description in the game is actually wrong, the game lists it as a magic weapon. After some editing, I created a non-magical weapon version of Flame Blade. I made it follow the in game description. :D Jahiera enjoyed smacking around mages. The elemental damage went through their stoneskin, and it chopped right through their Protection from Magic Weapons, after my edit.
23:26 my boys at druid grove literally printing money. In Dnd 5, there is this 3rd level spells that give the ability to druids to grow a plant with twice as much fruits or vegetables or whatever it provides. somewhere there is someone that really want to make druids agricultural CEOs
Goodberry is marginally useful if you want to top up the last few HP on a character outside of combat and don't want to waste a heal spell or potion, or rest spam. I'd argue that it's better than resist fire/cold, since healing potions are more valuable than cold resistance potions.
The thing is how many situations do you have like that, where you are A, incapable of healing, B, incapable of resting, and C, are capable of spamming an item over and over and over again round after round to heal to full. Either you're in combat in which case the goodberry won't do shit, or you're not in combat in which case you might as well just rest. If for some reason you can't do those things, you would still need to pre-emptively created a buttload of goodberries, If i want to heal kagain to full hp, I would need to rest and cast this spell a dozen times, just to heal one person. Even more if I wanted to heal the party. I just can't ever imagine a situation like this ya know? I suppose if you really REALLY wanted to be that guy, you can just pre-emptively make hundreds of them and chug them in place of potions while running, but fuck that lol
@@Davaeornlol You cast them in town while you are identifying things or something, and use them in the field to top up a character who is 1-3 HP from max, so that you don't waste a healing spell or potion. Kagain has passive regen so they are utterly useless to him. Since trying to minimize rests, or playing with alternate rest rules from the tweaks pack, is a plausible house rule (i.e. beyond just role playing), I think the spell has some use.
@@fwiffo1376 Perhaps, that definitely won't be enough for me to move them but I'm glad you found an enjoyable use for them, thanks for commenting friend!
I also use Goodberry to top off early in the game. When money is low and I want to save the heal potions for battle. Higher level I agree a waste of space.
Slow Poison many times gets interrupted if the caster is poisoned. Its worth is also hughly diminished by the fact, it is a Bhaalspawn-ability. DUHM can make you all sorts of things, not just fighting. Carry weight, bash locks, regenerate while sleeping. Btw, many spells interrestingly gain value/makes sense in a Solo Poverty Run.
If you aren't hasted you can time slow poison to always go off between ticks, it's only when you're hasted that it's impossible. You do get it as a bhaalspawn ability but it's still useful to have on a cleric, carry weight is tricky to use since it only lasts one turn, if you manage to not get ambushed and can leave in 60 seconds, great, if you do, you gotta drop shit on the ground. It's true you can bash locks and the regen is an excellent point I didn't mention. Spells do change quite a bit for solo, I just haven't played solo in ages because I did countless runs when I was a kid and it was just too easy and not nearly as fun as party management, plus you lose bants and story. Thanks for commenting friend!
Honestly, Find Traps isn't as bad as you say. Assuming you don't have every trap memorized, you have your thief detecting traps. He walks a few feet down the hall, stops for a round, walks a few more steps, stops again, walks slightly too far forward, triggers the trap, and dies. Or there's a fight going on and everyone's running around chopping each other's head off, and someone stumbles across a trap. Find Traps seems to work at a longer range or more frequently (I don't know the range of the thief skill), and it works when everyone is fighting. Okay, I guess I could have the thief find traps during combat by turning off the AI, but that's too much work. I'd put it at C tier, something I'd use a spell slot on in BG2 when I don't want to spend fifteen minutes walking down an empty hallway.
Ignore the slow on Writhing Fog, it does 10d3 damage at level 3!! In the original BG, on insane difficulty, the bandit camp is filled with targets waiting for this and a web spell, maybe a grease thrown in so you assure the slow, and 15 points of average damage is enough to take down most of those bandits. I can think of a ton of encounters I would want that combo before you get to the city proper and can get a wand of fireballs. Stacking web+cloud spells is a tactic you can take into ToB, and having yet another cloud to throw in the mix is really strong, especially considering how low tier shaman/druid spells are anyway. Also, who heals in combat? Cure Moderate Wounds is garbage. Any healing spell not CLW isn't worth memorizing until you get access to Heal. Even then, Heal is too slow for combat use. Chug pots after combat for all the healing you will ever need till then. The only reason to have a single CLW memorized is to take advantage of the fact that if you "rest till healed" with one memorized, it only takes 16 hours, and you only ever have to hit the rest button once. Greater Restoration is fast enough for combat, and is the only healing spell worth casting. Even Mass Raise Dead's huge radius isn't really worth it as your melee is most likely stacked near enough to one another to hit multiples in one cast of Greater Restoration, and your backline shouldn't be getting damaged in the first place.
We're not playing the same game m8. Shamans didn't exist in the original baldurs gate, it was added with the EE. The camp on SCS is full of black talon elites who have a lot more hp, the bandits included. However we usually just fireball them down anyway either with a sorc or with the wand of fireballs acquired from the ankheg lair, or just kill them with ranged autos, writing fog can do some damage in a web stack sure, but it's the worst one. Your front line can take too much damage for them to do their jobs, healing in combat happens all the time. Greater restoration is not aoe anymore, and it also properly exhausts the caster, so while aerie can chain cast it and who cares she does zero damage, anomen or others are going to become useless in combat pretty quick, this is especially dangerous in areas you can't rest in, like the illithid lair.
Aid is better than you think. The 1d8 hp is temporary hp that stacks with what you have. Early pvp which is most fights with humanoids especially at level 1 almost doubling your hp.
Maybe stating the obvious but you can cast Barkskin on enemies. All buffs have no save and bypass MR. Rangers and Paladins have a penalty to caster level so their barkskins are going to be 'stronger'. Lowering Firkraag's AC from -12 (-1 from dex) down to 4 (-1 from Dex) is quite a swing. But for that to be effective you have to know the monsters AC values. And if you're that deep into the game knowledge than you probably don't need this exploit.
Great vid again! About hold person: In bg1 u have sleep, command and if that doesnt work glitterdust which basically do the same. In bg2 u have better option with f.e. chaos. It also comes with meh AoE, no pen to save + fairly long casting time making me actually almost never use it. Am I missing something here?
Sleep won't work on humanoids above 5, which is really MOST human enemies you encounter, hold person takes over and is used for the rest of the game when sleep no longer works but it also works just fine when sleep does. Cloakwood for example, the iron throne guards are all level 6, so hold is the only aoe CC that will work on them (comamnd only hits one and you gotta kill like 50 guards before davaeorn, web is used a lot here too but I use hold person like crazy down here especially), the amazon ambush, the manlet ambush, sleep wont help here, just hold person. Cloakwood is by FAR the longest and most annoying part of BG1 and hold works really really well. Eventually you'll get wands of paralysis which are great for single or duo target fights, but hold is useful right when you get it and still works on enemies up to ravins ambush right before sarevok. I don't ever use it in bg2 but like sleep it's just so damn good in bg1 I can't help but rate it S tier. Thanks for commenting friend!
I *love* find traps. Yes, I bring a thief. Yes, I know where [almost] all the traps are by heart. And I also know that many traps are right in between the enemies. Like the web traps in Cloakwood, or every other trap in Durlaq's Penthouse. Typically my thief will stop looking for traps as soon as he sees an enemy, but the spell will continue looking, even mid-fight. I have the game auto-pause on find trap so I can quickly grab it as soon as it's revealed.
in BG1, I like giving Minsc or Jaheira one Goodberry spell- not because the spell is so good, but it's a nice free way to get party members at full hp, without risking overhealing.
The way to make Goodberry good, is if the berries could be stacked onto eachother, to maybe like 40 or higher There is no reason any spell should be bad
Also, love the videos man, top tier for a great game, has helped me out ridiculously with the mechanics....used to think alot of useless spells were good, then I took a Davaeorn to the brain
Not as well sadly, paladins are considered a level 1 cleric at 9, which means to cast as an 18 cleric and get that joocy +6 bonus, they would need to be level 27, also unlike clerics who get entropy shield and imperv sanctity of mind, paladins don't get any dispel protection, and since they're casting at a much lower level (because the game codes it that way) their spells are almost guaranteed to get dispelled. Typically as a pally or ranger you're spamming armor of the faith and if dispels are flying quick (fighting drow especially, the liches, etc) you really don't have time to DUHM over and over again since AotF takes priority 100%. It's still good though I should have mentioned it, I need to remake this video tbh I missed too much shit, when I re record a video more than once I'm pretty much GUARANTEED to forget to talk about stuff and it kills me...Thanks for commenting friend!
I like using find traps with Jaheira with Thief and move them one after the other in Durlag tower or centipede dungeon before Sarevok. I found it detects traps much faster. I played the game many times but I don't remember exactly where some trap is located. Not an A tier and prob neither a B tier but imo can be situationally good like a C tier maybe?
@@khairulbasirrudin732 Me too buddy, if you know anybody at larian drop my name so I can get some early access shit to put on the channel! God bless you friend stay safe in these troubled times!
Does the luck bonus on chant eliminate the possibility of critical misses? and RE; the saving throw penalty on silence 15, doesnt spook get for a massive saving throw penalty as well?
Spook does get a yuge saving throw I didn't consider it, you're absolutely right. I thought luck was a thac0 modifier but if it does eliminate crit misses that makes it really spicy indeed, I will test it some time today and get back to you. I'm fairly certain I've never heard alora get a crit miss before and she has passive luck so now I wonder...
i stack barkskin in IWD 2 EE with spirit armor because it adds 4 generic AC in that game while spirit armor gives me my base armor for an engagement on my mage fighter
I can think of only one time Goodberry was actually helpful. It's when you've just got your lvl2 spells and still don't have much of anything and can't afford a ton of healing potions. You can fill you book with those in a safe environment and chain cast them and repeat until you have a ton of them and they basically act as an early version of sequencer for healing only since you really don't want to fill you spellbook with shitty Cure Wounds spells but could use some free healing in between fights. They are useless during the actual fight but often times you don't want to risk sleeping in a dangerous environment and could use some light healing since at this point in the game you characters don't have much HP anyways. And yes in pnp a single berry acts as a full meal so it's there to prevent starvation. Unfortunately though you still NEED to have some actual BERRIES to enchant them. There's also a reverse spell called BADBERRY that turns normal berries into rotten ones ha-ha. Anyways dude, I'm currently binging through your videos and having an absolute blast! You're doing Oghma's work there! Thank you and have a happy day!
Οh, another thing about detect evil. I think its range is huge. It can be used as a scouting spell. Cast it and then watch the combat log for how many enemies make magic resistance checks or get their alignment found. It's not much, but at least it has a use for new players who do not know what is ahead. Also, you do not need to rely so much on a thief to scout and you can avoid whatever shit happens when a true sight is cast and your thief gets surrounded by drow in the underdark. But that's it.
True that works well for stuff set in place, but a lot of triggers spawn mobs mid movement, for example the shade lord dungeon, the liches will spawn based on triggers you walk over, so it's entirely possible to still be surprised, although this could potentially help prevent that in some ways. Thanks for commenting friend!
@@Davaeornlol Μy pleasure dude. I recently found your videos, and I am trully glad, man, just reinstalled the game myself. Version 2.5. With EE mod setup tool you can have as many mods as you like without shit hitting the fan.
@@michaelgoudis344 Yeah it's definitely nice in that regard, I could do without a lot of the changes they made but the few that are nice are indeed quite nice. God bless friend!
So, you're saying if Goodberry was called conjure gold nugget it would be S teir. 23:30 Now that I started playing SCS yeah posions are crazy, esp spiders (which you do mention)
@Davaeorn, 2 things: 1. Not melleing mummies? Doesn't your mellee warrior have ring of gaxx? 2. The divine guide playlist has many duplicate videos for some reason
Awwww yeah. I just started playing BG2 EE again, and burned through your Arcane guide last week. Watched the divine guide a few days ago and thought "Uhhh... where's part 2?" It's crazy how much of these tips I discovered as a young teen playing this game 20 years ago, but picking the game up again I had completely forgotten. Skeletons being badasses immune to magic? Web+Spiders for easymode encounters? I never made much use of Divine spells, so this is much needed. Thank you.
i thought of another quest from bg1 where detect evil/know alignment will aid a quest. when youre in the city and go into the manor where the two little twin girls live (i think laerta and louise are their names) you'll need to figure out which of the spellcasting adults has a possibly nefarious purpose. theres a lady druid and a dude mage (cant recall their names, hers begins with a v and his with a j i believe) anyway, you cast that beautiful spell and find out... *spoiler alert* the druid is the protector and the mage is the creepazoid. go figure. all this being said he's evil and she's neutral so you could just kill both for experience and loot and let the children clean up the bodies. god, i just wasted 5 minutes of my life.
Nice, I didn't realize you didn't complete the series for divine spells when I checked your arcane guides a few months ago for my Sorcerer. About Charm Person/Animal, maybe I just didn't know what I was doing and had a bad party but when I played IWD EE, the parts that gave me the hardest times was near the end of the game in some caves, you're up against a bunch of strong bears sometimes (I still pulled it off but I guess that spell could be useful there) but I know you're talking BG1-2 only here. I'm sure you've answered this plenty of times before but I didn't see it, what's the reason you don't include SoD in your playtrhoughs? Is it just cause you find it boring or you play out of nostalgia and it didn't exist back then, makes the story too long? I'm trying to get through it for the 2nd time, it definitely isn't on par with BG1/2 in my opinion but there are some very nice items that have interesting effects for specific classes (some of which I use a mod to be able to get back during BG2). Keep up the good work, your videos keep on being suggested to me in RUclips and makes me want to put my online games aside and keep on playing BG again : P. Wow... listening further down the video, great clarification on Chant, I always wanted to avoid using it because I misunderstood it and I thought it reduced the damage my own party was doing by 1 damage dice LOL.
Yeah chant is amazing, the reason I dont play SoD is mostly because it has unique scripts for enemies, so SCS doesn't work making the game a joke for the most part. Playing on insane adds more monsters but all that means is you just spam aoe. The story is lackluster and the creative licenses they took end up shitting on the end of bg1 and the beginning of bg2, it just doesn't feel like a labor of love to me, it feels like a cash grab by people who think they know better, which kills me because I don't know if anyone on the planet wanted another bg game more than I did. The story, the combat, the writing, all way under par. Everytime I try to play it I can't get more than a few hours in before quitting. I want to write up a really really long video about what sucks and what they should change but everytime I try I just don't even want to look at my computer anymore lol
@@Davaeornlol Haha, I understand. I love BG and only played it a fraction of what you've played. I was disappointed with SoD. I like divinity OS 1 and 2, they're great games but inferior to BG series in my opinion and am afraid BG3 will be good but feel more like a Divinity OS 3 more than a BG3 that fits well with the first two (hopefully I'll be wrong..).
With chant does the luck effect happen twice, once when enemy casts a spell and once when it hits you? So 6d6 is 6d5 for bad luck on the enemy when they cast fireball, but 6d5 becomes 6d4 because you have good luck when it hits you? It would make sense because it's a difference of 2 luck assuming you hit the enemy with it.
It does not apply twice. The modifier only applies to incoming non-physical damage or outgoing physical damage. There is no roll for outgoing non-physical damage. Besides, notice that 1d5 is a random value in {1,2,3,4,5} while -1 modifier on 1d6 is a random value in {1,1,2,3,4,5}
I just thought about being a cleric/thief and using find traps if your skill is very low but you can still disarm them. Using the thief skill sometimes takes a lot of time, using the spell could speed up things.
Disarm trap is based off your find traps unfortunately, so using the spell but having few if any points into the thief ability find traps means you can see them but can't disarm them lol.
@@Davaeornlol Yeah, I know I just meant it takes a while until your Thief actually finds the trap and Find Trap Spell works in intervals so it might be a faster solution sometimes. Of course you still need enough skill to disarm them yeah :D
I feel like Alicorn Lance could have been saved if it offered a 1-2 turn stun for defending the lance damage but, the ̶h̶o̶r̶s̶e̶... ehm unicorn still hit them...I can't believe I just typed out that the unicorn hit. But, that would make it tenable as it either hits for decent damage and then makes them susceptible for more damage or it would cause them no upfront damage but, it would make them way more susceptible to future damage for a short time and make them unable to cause any positive influence on the battle for a turn or two.
Hey man, loving the videos so far. Two things. One, can't you use charm person/mammal on wolves, including dire wolves, dread wolves, vampiric wolves, etc.? Not tested it but seems a useful application. Second, find traps - can't you use summons to activate floor traps once you've found them? Maybe that's something from the old game but I recall doing that back ~2000. Anyway, great videos!
Dread and vampiric are both classified as undead so they're immune unfortunately :(, as for the traps it's actually dependent on the trap itself. 90% of traps in this game will NOT trigger on summons but some do, puzzle traps for example will almost always trigger for summons (the lightning fireball spam in durlags, the flame strikes in the temple of amaunator, the crushing walls of spellhold, etc etc) but generally speaking most regular traps are not triggered, in the same way enemies won't trip them, summons won't either. Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
@@Davaeornlol Awesome, thanks for the clarification. Fantastic spell guides btw - still making my way through them but they've already helped a lot on my current SoA:EE playthrough (last time I played was 2002). Lots of sleepless nights here too as I have a 1 month old daughter and it's nice to have something to listen to while I'm sitting up with her! Out of interest, have you done an NPC-tier list or thought about doing one? Trying to decide on my lineup and would be really interested in your ratings.
Find traps has some decent uses actually. A few tough fights have traps interspersed among the monsters. Finding traps in combat is a pain but disarming isn’t.
The only one that comes to mind would be the guarded compound, and even then those are pretty easily avoided unless you're super heavy melee, and even then I don't really have an issue using an actual thief. I think if you could actually disarm the traps, it would be pretty great. As it stands though, pretty trash spell imo.
Flame blade i believe has the highest elemental damage of any melee weapon in the game. As such if you are hitting a stoneskin it will do the most damage - does this increase concentration check? (flail hits a bunch of times though). Also is nonmagical so will hit through protection from magical weapons i think? Cant say i use it much lol. If strength bonus's apply i would rate this as one of the higher level weapon summons. Wish it was a scimitar though, used to be classed as a small sword (which they could put points into for daggers or something?)
Most summon weapons just ignore profs completely, as for getting through PFMW, that spell is usually cast by liches who are immune to non magical weapons by default, the others will cast imp mantles. I don't think damage itself is the concentration check but aside from bg1, if you're able to hit a mage at all, stoneskin or not, he's gonna die in 2 seconds anyway. You have so many apr it doesn't matter what weapon you're using they just die in seconds. The only thing keeping them alive is their damn immunities XD. I think the summon weps need a buff tbh :(. Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
When I was a kid playing bg1, after countless failures I finally got good enough to get past level 2. I traveled around the game casting know alignment on everything and killing all the evil stuff. Well, it turns out the guard outside Candlekeep was classified as evil. I attacked him and found he was unkillable so I just ran away. Weeks later I got to the part of the main quest where you have to go back to Candlekeep and was unable to continue the main quest. I was so mad. That's what I associate know alignment with.
Oof that sounds brutal, thanks for commenting friend!
Well, I guess you can say you were RPing that crazy paladin dude in city of Baldur's Gate, who attack your party if you had somebody evil in it :)
@@Kipa2 Haha must cleanse the sword coast of all EVIL!!!
Haha
As a kid, I spent a long time learning how to kill that guard. If I remember correctly, the only way I found to damage him was with the poison effect from the dagger you can buy from the blacksmith in Beregost. It took a lot of stabs, but I finally downed him with my half-elf fighter/mage/thief. After checking out his loot, I reloaded and went on my way.
By Moradin's hammer! My Sunday is saved!
By tempus strapping buttocks!
Level 1 - ruclips.net/video/jxUBLrWzK30/видео.html
Level 2 - ruclips.net/video/rb49jQYeI1s/видео.html
Level 3 - ruclips.net/video/hLzI4HMsqLU/видео.html
Level 4 - ruclips.net/video/9CTBDXn3LEA/видео.html
Level 5 - ruclips.net/video/mRLqZGjJGqc/видео.html
Level 6 - ruclips.net/video/XoiFvfLspYk/видео.html
Level 7 - ruclips.net/video/_C4yhD6EdUQ/видео.html
Level 8 - ruclips.net/video/rv1F0H52eGA/видео.html
Thank you for the guides !!!
It's finally here! I've been looking forward to a continuation for this series all year!
same :)
It's been a long time coming, 2 is pretty boring but 3 should be fun. God bless!
Same here! I don't care if its boring..Just continuing my love affair with BG1 & BG2
42:40 Just in case Chant wasn't good enough already, its +1 luck _guarantees_ that your mage's Mirror Images are always targeted before the real mage (at least tested in unmodded BG2EE). And sources of positive luck are scarce: the Wizard spell is ridiculously short, the Cloverleaf belt is only in SoD...
Iwd bard says hello
I hate the slow on chant. because I play anoman
Finishing 100% achievement playthroughs of both bg1 and bg2 in lieu of bg3, these guides and your playthroughs have been godsend.
Glad you're enjoying them friend God bless!
I was considering doing the same but I have so much things to play and it'd take literal months
Using "draw upon holy might" right after casting "holy power" almost turns your cleric into a fighter; and you can still cast spells. Great combination if you have a small party with no fighter, or if you solo as a cleric/mage, or if you just want your cleric to step up and help your fighter towards the end of a tuff encounter.
I don't like risking it but you definitely can, good point. Thanks for commenting friend!
If it gave fighter APR like spell revisions it would be close. That said dual wielding helps
@@lolmatt9 Priest of Lathander has a special ability to give plus one apr though!
@@295Phoenix that kit sucks
@@295Phoenix dat shit dogwater bruh
The goodberry druid factory strategy had me laughing uncontrollable for way too long.
Think of the gph
Love me some good berries - we need better berries next in the next DnD game if there ever will be one!
errrr do you mean baldurs gate 3 and they actually are better in that @@andrzejkulakowski
@@jhealey48 i have never tried bg3, maybe someday, is it good?
Beat BG3 a few times now and I’m beyond ready to come back to the OGs, this guide is preparing me for my first time on SCS. Gonna roll a paladin, sounds like they aren’t too good but I’ll bring holy justice to the sword coast regardless
So here's a powerful bit of information I've just found out - you can cast hold person on yourself while invisible, and it doesn't break invisibility, while still applying the AoE hold. This only applies to the cleric hold person, the wizard one breaks invisibility.
You can also use wands of monster summoning without breaking sanctuary, even though they break invisibility.
You can also use wands of frost and lightning on yourself without breaking invisibility or sanctuary. It's far more useable with wands of frost though, lightning bolts tend to disappear if used in open spaces.
Nice that would be useful at times for bg1 for sure.
Ive been waiting for a continuation of the Divine Guide great guide keep it up!
2 is pretty boring but 3 should be a lot of fun, God bless friend!
All your Baldur's Gate guides are amazing! Thank you!
Thank you for continuing this series! Loving it
Thanks for watching buddy!
The Dava has spoken once more!!
Bless you Dav, these guides are the most epic BG material on the internet, since the very early day. I mean it. Even the thread on the old forums were never so concise, accurate and perfected through experience.
8:20 Well, when you cast "Call Woodland beings", Barkskin can cover up the lovely thots of destruction/meat shielding :) Say, a paladin charname would not appreciate a summon to be half naked.
"beast Claw" was huge for me in any IWD druid, mainly thanks to being able to hit magical enemies early on. But yes, in BG it is a whole different story.
Spiritual Hammer ins IWD was pretty great, since you could use it as a ranged weapon.
22:26 Goodberries. Yummy yummy in my tummy since 1998
I'm pretty sure the thots get barkskin of their own! And besides if you cast barkskin on them and try to give them a peck on the cheek it's like making out with a tree. 0/10 would not bang. Yeah the IWD versions are a lot more useful I think. Goodberries shouldn't take up an action for the round, I want to shovel 50 in my mouth at once and heal for all my hp in bg1!
@@Davaeornlol lol Exactly man. But I think Cerend will be up to that... In werewolf form, he needs a good wooden surface to clutch his talons into...
Baldur's Gate berries competitive eating: Someone has to make this mod!
@@squashedeyeball I would be down to eat good berries competetively, you can only eat one every 6 seconds tho. Would be pretty boring!
@@Davaeornlol A little rough on the jaw for sure :) But the taste, it's worth the suffering
47:40 on normal level i actualy DO use my priest as close combat unit they can be almost as tank as paladins if buffed, granted my paladins also die but that is what resurrection is for :D I dont send them against very strong opponents but they work
Stumbled across your channel only recently and really enjoying the awesome content for my favourite video game! I always considered myself pretty knowledgeable on these games having played them so much but you talking about different spell interactions plus watching your various runs has given me an even greater appreciation for just how complex and replayable they are
Thanks for the help! A few spells I over evaluated and a few I missed out completely on how good they were. Thanks!
Glad you enjoyed them friend thanks for watching!
Charm Person or Mammal is a big RP spell for druids. I think it's useful to charm bears in the forest and use them to kill strong early-on enemies like ogres in those outdoor areas in BG1. It would be useful for packs of wild dogs or wolves also. Great series BTW!!
Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
Detecting a trap without being able to disarm it is useful, because you can prepare your character for triggering it.
Also, you can get around the traps at the end of third level of Nashkel mines. It may look impossible, but they won't trigger if you hug the wall.
If you know how to get around them you don't need detect traps at all, since you know where to go as is, a new player is going to probably assume that they can't get around them based on their width, it's only through playing that you know how shit works. If you don't have a thief you're gonna be in for a bad time regardless, and if you've played the game long enough it becomes really superfluous. Thanks for commenting friend!
Yippiiie yie yay, that's the thing I was waiting for! New subscriber here, mainly for watching you ranting about spells, great stuff. :-)
Hope you enjoy it friend thanks for commenting sorry it took so damn long. This is the 4th iteration of it and I still need to rerecord the damn thing XD
@@Davaeornlol I do, right now :D. No need to apologize, your commentary on the spells is great entertainment and easily worth waiting for. One thing I'd personally prefer is if you'd switch back to ordering the spell evaluations by tier and not alphabetically. But maybe that's just me, and nitpicking anyway.^^
@@Gloriath1 It's so easy with mage because they're all right there, with tier I have to swap back and forth between companions to find them, since there are class specific spells etc, though I might do that for the next video considering I fucking forgot a a spell like an absolute moron.
Great Videos, but 6 druids each making 250 Goodberries per hour gives you 1500 Goodberries per hour.
Too true, my brain was absolutely fried after recording this 3 times already and I spoke like a moron. I need to re do it fresh tomorrow.
Goodberries and Know aligment are absolutely amazing smells:))
"Ive got a blade with your name on it". LOL. Good stuff! Thank you for this!
Thanks for watching friend!
Also, detect evil is a paladin special ability, which means that even in the paladin quest you really do not need to memorize this, since you should be a pally anyway to take it.
True, I mentioned that in the first 2 videos and forgot it in this one, It kills me I had to re record it so many damn times...
You may need a caster to cast Detect Evil/Know Alignment if you're Fallen. You're scripted to get your Paladin abilities back after saving Garren's kid but if you screwed up and fell after that point you can get your Paladin powers back completing that quest, but you need another caster to figure if the guy is the real deal or not.
@@howdoilogin Indeed. Good point.
Great, informative video as always.
I do find myself using Find Traps fairly regularly as a convenience/utility spell. With it active your thief is freed up and able to stick to the shadows. It’s nice to get the notice when the ability procs to know your current location is free of traps. If you run it while having your thief also detect traps, you can potentially search for traps every 3 seconds rather than once a round allowing faster movement through heavily trapped areas.
Interesting! Thanks for commenting friend!
I've been playing a fighter/cleric in the Xbox version. Its the first time I've played through properly. Draw upon holy might I use often, but if you'll excuse the pun, slow poison has been a god send. I've been enjoying your streams here on YT and I hope to see more and really hope you get tons more followers as you're good on the mic and seem to really appreciate your viewer base. I wish you well on your streaming journey and everything else you do.
Thanks a lot buddy glad you're enjoying the game and the channel. Best of luck in life and adventures and thanks for watching and commenting friend!
I'm way late on this video, but I just wanted to point out that for an arcane caster of level >= 12, spook gets a penalty to saves of -6 and it's a level 1 spell. This is the first example of a penalty to saves better than that of silence, 15' radius that I can think of. I'm not comparing the two spells, which are very different and spook isn't even aoe.
By they way, I love your videos on arcane and divine spells and on hlas!
Thanks for watching and commenting buddy!
Find Traps is useful because it stays active during combat even if your thief doesnt have Find Traps active. Useful for places like the Guarded Compound in BG2 -- you can have your Thief or Fighter/Thief do something else while you passively identify the traps
Interesting idea, thanks for commenting friend!
I actually like to use Resist Fire and Cold on my main tank in BG1 with Drizzt’s Scimitar (or a fire resist pot) just to open up fights. It makes it much easier to throw a bunch of fireballs from wands/the necklace of fireballs and/or arrows of detonation cause you dont have to worry about your main tank. Of course it pretty much only allows for 1 or 2 volleys because the spell wears off so damn fast, but its a wonderful fight opener
Good strategy 👏
writhing fog seems like more of a crowd control spell for casters with the cold damage interrupting casters without elemental protection than anything else.
man these really are great. Hopefully one day a complete item guide. I would watch that over and over again just to hear your ideas and thoughts about all the unique items.
Item guide soon
Great vid. These are basically mandatory for playing this game effectively lol
Been looking forward to this. Cheers
I'm gonna have to re record it I missed too much shit >< Recording it several times always makes my brain foggy. Hope you enjoy it though friend God bless!
Sweet! I've been looking forward to this one since Christmas.
Hopefully the rest will follow shortly!
If anomen is one of the best tanks in the game and a melee fighter then how would draw upon holy might not benefit him?
fiiinaly! I am stoked beyond belief for this video series
Thanks for watching friend!
Thanks I've been looking forward to this
Thanks for watching friend!
I remember one time i went to watchers keep in chapter 3 got the deck of many things and i got silenced from it then i went back to the shadow thieves to progress the game and my char would not talk to them i was like what is going on, took me ages to figure it out lol.
Its hilarious lol, thanks for commenting friend!
I remember playing solo sorceror, I think, and doing the same thing. I can't remember if Amulet of Power still let me cast spells, but I'm pretty sure that even dispel magic doesn't help as the silence is treated as a curse. No way to talk to anyone for restoration either. Game is now softlocked, and I hadn't saved in a while.
@@richardfarrer5616 Interesting, you should have been completely immune to the silence but if you're using a different version I cant say for certain what happened
The only time I enjoy Goodberry is for the pure humour of the situation when there is a Wild Magic surge and they are created on an enemy I'm hitting with spells.
I play a dual-class Fighter/Druid atm and I found Flameblade (and Shillelag before it) useful for a particular stretch of the character; level 3 to 4 after becoming a Druid. I had 3 levels of Berserker, so my investment in dual-wielding wouldn't reactivate for another level, nor would my specialization in scimitars. But I still had Fighter HP and the Anhkeg Plate, so I kept this spell prepared for when I needed a little more umph on the frontline. This is just on Core Rules though.
Nice thanks for watching and commenting friend!
Glad to see the series continue! GJ Dav!
Finally indeed, hoping to reliably get a video a week in addition to old uploads. God bless friend!
I found Barkskin was pretty handy during the early-mid game for a Kensai, especially considering SCS's AI prioritizing of targets based on AC. Between a throwaway set of summons, enemies would almost always ignore the Kensai and let them rampage. I generally didn't swap the strategy due to Level 2 Divine having so many slots, and Level 4 Arcane having better usage. Come to think of it, Barkskin might actually be decent to throw on some crappy AC summons, because of the aforementioned excess spell slots.
Glad you found some good use of it friend! I personally find it too risky to rely on the AI following its algorithm properly as I've had far to many situations that belied what its supposed to do. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Aww yiss!! Thank you!
Now just don't make us wait months for the next part ;)
I'm hoping to get 1 a week out until theyre done!
finally! thank you man! beed waiting for this for a long time
Bless you friend!
ALL HAIL THE KING FOR HE HATH RETURNETH'D
HAIL TO THE KING BABY
Goodberry is meant to be a downtime healing spell. It is great theoretically, because you can spend all slots to cast it for days and have 100's of goodberries.. then rest and mem your actual spells for combat and have almost infinite downtime healing. In the game it doesn't really work out that way.
It also stopped you from starving in actual D&D which also doesn't translate well sadly.
I think I'm gonna have to play a party of 6 druids again. First time I did that, it never occurred to me to get into the fruit business. Let the kobolds keep their short swords -- I will make a fortune without even leaving town!
EXACTLY, and it's 1500 goodberries not 1250, MATH MAJOR HERE BOYS
Guy's laying down the Gospel and Viconia is accusing him of being idle with his time LOL
IKR Viccy get it together
The only time I could see myself use "Find Traps" is in Boss rooms, where disarming the traps isn't needed but knowing where they are is nice. Like I want them to be visable instantly and use my thief for more important stuff like backstabbing. For example the final boss of IWD or Sarevok in the Bhaal temple.
I feel like Goodberry is the kind of spell that was added by accident while the devs were lazily copy-pasting spell descriptions from the PnP, and the slave-intern just coded it because it was there.
right lol
Find Traps is actually really good in specific situations. (assuming you don't play the game so much you know all of them)
The point is to find traps during combat without idling your thief.
In lots of places in BG2 you open doors, and there is a trap between you and the enemies.
Or you go through a portal to find lots of enemies but you are surrounded by traps.
In BG1 it is mostly a convenience to speed up the hallway width maze like dungeon crawls.
Where triggering a lightning spell would zap your whole party.
I use one of my Ranger / Paladin spots on this.
An interesting idea tbh but I think the better play is to just kite back to a room you know is safe than venture into a potentially deadly situation, to each his own though!
19:46 I did my first, blind playthrough without a thief. Durlag's was an absolute nightmare.
Nice vid your arcane guide helped me with my sorcerer run and if I ever use clerics a lot I will definitely use this guide. BTW you forgot the spells listed in the description
I mean, I don't even USE his vast knowledge, since I just A-move my modded uncapped solo Kensai/Mage/Thief on core rules into enemy base anyway, without regards to anything (while reload scumming on the occasional domination crit instant death, hacking them for 50 mindmg on the next try).
But even then it's still cool stuff to theorise about.
I didn't get a chance to do them yet it's really late, I will be uploading them soon!
I love using Find Traps to help my Thief find traps, the constant search is helpful during combat and it is nice to have an extra pair of eyes looking for the trap especially if your Thief isn't maxed out on Find Trap
I play core rules unmodded, I like to use Find Traps to help my thief- when they're not yet maxed they occasionally miss a trap or take a long time to find it, so the spell helps, especially with Druid/Shaman that don't get much better at level 2.
Love these videos! Hope everything is going well for you!
I'm living the dream everyday friend God bless!
Level 2 divine definitely takes the spot as the spell list with the most useless spells They're not all bad but mostly situational. Most of them feel like they should be level 1 spells.
Definitely.
I've actually used Flame Blade...
The description in the game is actually wrong, the game lists it as a magic weapon. After some editing, I created a non-magical weapon version of Flame Blade. I made it follow the in game description. :D
Jahiera enjoyed smacking around mages. The elemental damage went through their stoneskin, and it chopped right through their Protection from Magic Weapons, after my edit.
That sounds spicy! Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
23:26 my boys at druid grove literally printing money.
In Dnd 5, there is this 3rd level spells that give the ability to druids to grow a plant with twice as much fruits or vegetables or whatever it provides. somewhere there is someone that really want to make druids agricultural CEOs
Goodberry is marginally useful if you want to top up the last few HP on a character outside of combat and don't want to waste a heal spell or potion, or rest spam. I'd argue that it's better than resist fire/cold, since healing potions are more valuable than cold resistance potions.
The thing is how many situations do you have like that, where you are A, incapable of healing, B, incapable of resting, and C, are capable of spamming an item over and over and over again round after round to heal to full. Either you're in combat in which case the goodberry won't do shit, or you're not in combat in which case you might as well just rest. If for some reason you can't do those things, you would still need to pre-emptively created a buttload of goodberries, If i want to heal kagain to full hp, I would need to rest and cast this spell a dozen times, just to heal one person. Even more if I wanted to heal the party. I just can't ever imagine a situation like this ya know? I suppose if you really REALLY wanted to be that guy, you can just pre-emptively make hundreds of them and chug them in place of potions while running, but fuck that lol
@@Davaeornlol You cast them in town while you are identifying things or something, and use them in the field to top up a character who is 1-3 HP from max, so that you don't waste a healing spell or potion. Kagain has passive regen so they are utterly useless to him. Since trying to minimize rests, or playing with alternate rest rules from the tweaks pack, is a plausible house rule (i.e. beyond just role playing), I think the spell has some use.
@@fwiffo1376 Perhaps, that definitely won't be enough for me to move them but I'm glad you found an enjoyable use for them, thanks for commenting friend!
I also use Goodberry to top off early in the game. When money is low and I want to save the heal potions for battle. Higher level I agree a waste of space.
Slow Poison many times gets interrupted if the caster is poisoned. Its worth is also hughly diminished by the fact, it is a Bhaalspawn-ability.
DUHM can make you all sorts of things, not just fighting. Carry weight, bash locks, regenerate while sleeping.
Btw, many spells interrestingly gain value/makes sense in a Solo Poverty Run.
If you aren't hasted you can time slow poison to always go off between ticks, it's only when you're hasted that it's impossible. You do get it as a bhaalspawn ability but it's still useful to have on a cleric, carry weight is tricky to use since it only lasts one turn, if you manage to not get ambushed and can leave in 60 seconds, great, if you do, you gotta drop shit on the ground. It's true you can bash locks and the regen is an excellent point I didn't mention. Spells do change quite a bit for solo, I just haven't played solo in ages because I did countless runs when I was a kid and it was just too easy and not nearly as fun as party management, plus you lose bants and story. Thanks for commenting friend!
@@Davaeornlol Note: Poverty is where you don't use items/wear equipment.
@@AmityvilleFan Niche indeed!
Honestly, Find Traps isn't as bad as you say. Assuming you don't have every trap memorized, you have your thief detecting traps. He walks a few feet down the hall, stops for a round, walks a few more steps, stops again, walks slightly too far forward, triggers the trap, and dies. Or there's a fight going on and everyone's running around chopping each other's head off, and someone stumbles across a trap. Find Traps seems to work at a longer range or more frequently (I don't know the range of the thief skill), and it works when everyone is fighting.
Okay, I guess I could have the thief find traps during combat by turning off the AI, but that's too much work. I'd put it at C tier, something I'd use a spell slot on in BG2 when I don't want to spend fifteen minutes walking down an empty hallway.
Hey to each his own, I still think it's pretty terrible though :)
Ignore the slow on Writhing Fog, it does 10d3 damage at level 3!! In the original BG, on insane difficulty, the bandit camp is filled with targets waiting for this and a web spell, maybe a grease thrown in so you assure the slow, and 15 points of average damage is enough to take down most of those bandits. I can think of a ton of encounters I would want that combo before you get to the city proper and can get a wand of fireballs. Stacking web+cloud spells is a tactic you can take into ToB, and having yet another cloud to throw in the mix is really strong, especially considering how low tier shaman/druid spells are anyway.
Also, who heals in combat? Cure Moderate Wounds is garbage. Any healing spell not CLW isn't worth memorizing until you get access to Heal. Even then, Heal is too slow for combat use. Chug pots after combat for all the healing you will ever need till then. The only reason to have a single CLW memorized is to take advantage of the fact that if you "rest till healed" with one memorized, it only takes 16 hours, and you only ever have to hit the rest button once. Greater Restoration is fast enough for combat, and is the only healing spell worth casting. Even Mass Raise Dead's huge radius isn't really worth it as your melee is most likely stacked near enough to one another to hit multiples in one cast of Greater Restoration, and your backline shouldn't be getting damaged in the first place.
We're not playing the same game m8. Shamans didn't exist in the original baldurs gate, it was added with the EE. The camp on SCS is full of black talon elites who have a lot more hp, the bandits included. However we usually just fireball them down anyway either with a sorc or with the wand of fireballs acquired from the ankheg lair, or just kill them with ranged autos, writing fog can do some damage in a web stack sure, but it's the worst one. Your front line can take too much damage for them to do their jobs, healing in combat happens all the time. Greater restoration is not aoe anymore, and it also properly exhausts the caster, so while aerie can chain cast it and who cares she does zero damage, anomen or others are going to become useless in combat pretty quick, this is especially dangerous in areas you can't rest in, like the illithid lair.
Yes! Finally!
God bless you friend thanks for watching!
Aid is better than you think. The 1d8 hp is temporary hp that stacks with what you have. Early pvp which is most fights with humanoids especially at level 1 almost doubling your hp.
It's a level 2 spell mate how the fuck u getting it at level 1.
@@Davaeornlol I know didn't think about it. I'm more used to playin tabletop
@@Davaeornlol Consumables is how you get it at level 1.
@@brandonstrife9738 I heard it's really useful in table top because it has versatility as a clutch heal, it just doesn't translate well to bg XD
@@brandonstrife9738 You'll have to explain that to me afaik I don't remember seeing aid on a scroll
Maybe stating the obvious but you can cast Barkskin on enemies. All buffs have no save and bypass MR. Rangers and Paladins have a penalty to caster level so their barkskins are going to be 'stronger'. Lowering Firkraag's AC from -12 (-1 from dex) down to 4 (-1 from Dex) is quite a swing. But for that to be effective you have to know the monsters AC values. And if you're that deep into the game knowledge than you probably don't need this exploit.
finally! thx!
God bless you friend!
Great vid again! About hold person: In bg1 u have sleep, command and if that doesnt work glitterdust which basically do the same. In bg2 u have better option with f.e. chaos. It also comes with meh AoE, no pen to save + fairly long casting time making me actually almost never use it. Am I missing something here?
Sleep won't work on humanoids above 5, which is really MOST human enemies you encounter, hold person takes over and is used for the rest of the game when sleep no longer works but it also works just fine when sleep does. Cloakwood for example, the iron throne guards are all level 6, so hold is the only aoe CC that will work on them (comamnd only hits one and you gotta kill like 50 guards before davaeorn, web is used a lot here too but I use hold person like crazy down here especially), the amazon ambush, the manlet ambush, sleep wont help here, just hold person. Cloakwood is by FAR the longest and most annoying part of BG1 and hold works really really well. Eventually you'll get wands of paralysis which are great for single or duo target fights, but hold is useful right when you get it and still works on enemies up to ravins ambush right before sarevok. I don't ever use it in bg2 but like sleep it's just so damn good in bg1 I can't help but rate it S tier. Thanks for commenting friend!
I *love* find traps. Yes, I bring a thief. Yes, I know where [almost] all the traps are by heart. And I also know that many traps are right in between the enemies. Like the web traps in Cloakwood, or every other trap in Durlaq's Penthouse. Typically my thief will stop looking for traps as soon as he sees an enemy, but the spell will continue looking, even mid-fight. I have the game auto-pause on find trap so I can quickly grab it as soon as it's revealed.
I love your content. I don’t use the Icewind Dale spells, but it seems like Beast Claws might be useful on Jaheira in BG1.
in BG1, I like giving Minsc or Jaheira one Goodberry spell- not because the spell is so good, but it's a nice free way to get party members at full hp, without risking overhealing.
The way to make Goodberry good, is if the berries could be stacked onto eachother, to maybe like 40 or higher There is no reason any spell should be bad
During the goodberry get-rich-quick scheme...I just couldn't stop laughing, made my day, thank you haha
Its the 300 iq play
Also, love the videos man, top tier for a great game, has helped me out ridiculously with the mechanics....used to think alot of useless spells were good, then I took a Davaeorn to the brain
Paladins also make good use of DUHM.
Not as well sadly, paladins are considered a level 1 cleric at 9, which means to cast as an 18 cleric and get that joocy +6 bonus, they would need to be level 27, also unlike clerics who get entropy shield and imperv sanctity of mind, paladins don't get any dispel protection, and since they're casting at a much lower level (because the game codes it that way) their spells are almost guaranteed to get dispelled. Typically as a pally or ranger you're spamming armor of the faith and if dispels are flying quick (fighting drow especially, the liches, etc) you really don't have time to DUHM over and over again since AotF takes priority 100%. It's still good though I should have mentioned it, I need to remake this video tbh I missed too much shit, when I re record a video more than once I'm pretty much GUARANTEED to forget to talk about stuff and it kills me...Thanks for commenting friend!
I like using find traps with Jaheira with Thief and move them one after the other in Durlag tower or centipede dungeon before Sarevok. I found it detects traps much faster. I played the game many times but I don't remember exactly where some trap is located. Not an A tier and prob neither a B tier but imo can be situationally good like a C tier maybe?
So hyped for BG2 where I will get draw upon holy might and become an absolute gigachad paladin with 25 str dex con among other things
Good berries..Good berries..Come and get your berries!
GOODBERRYS HERE
Hahah tried hard to control my laughter here. Its 2am here in Malaysia..Looking forwars to you dominating in BG3.
@@khairulbasirrudin732 Me too buddy, if you know anybody at larian drop my name so I can get some early access shit to put on the channel! God bless you friend stay safe in these troubled times!
@@Davaeornlol they opened an office here in Malaysia..I applied for the job 😁
@@khairulbasirrudin732 Get it buddy! Good luck!
Does the luck bonus on chant eliminate the possibility of critical misses? and RE; the saving throw penalty on silence 15, doesnt spook get for a massive saving throw penalty as well?
Spook does get a yuge saving throw I didn't consider it, you're absolutely right. I thought luck was a thac0 modifier but if it does eliminate crit misses that makes it really spicy indeed, I will test it some time today and get back to you. I'm fairly certain I've never heard alora get a crit miss before and she has passive luck so now I wonder...
I will discover the truth!
i stack barkskin in IWD 2 EE with spirit armor because it adds 4 generic AC in that game while spirit armor gives me my base armor for an engagement on my mage fighter
I can think of only one time Goodberry was actually helpful. It's when you've just got your lvl2 spells and still don't have much of anything and can't afford a ton of healing potions. You can fill you book with those in a safe environment and chain cast them and repeat until you have a ton of them and they basically act as an early version of sequencer for healing only since you really don't want to fill you spellbook with shitty Cure Wounds spells but could use some free healing in between fights. They are useless during the actual fight but often times you don't want to risk sleeping in a dangerous environment and could use some light healing since at this point in the game you characters don't have much HP anyways. And yes in pnp a single berry acts as a full meal so it's there to prevent starvation. Unfortunately though you still NEED to have some actual BERRIES to enchant them. There's also a reverse spell called BADBERRY that turns normal berries into rotten ones ha-ha.
Anyways dude, I'm currently binging through your videos and having an absolute blast! You're doing Oghma's work there! Thank you and have a happy day!
Thanks for watching and commenting friend I'm glad you're enjoying them!
Οh, another thing about detect evil. I think its range is huge. It can be used as a scouting spell. Cast it and then watch the combat log for how many enemies make magic resistance checks or get their alignment found. It's not much, but at least it has a use for new players who do not know what is ahead. Also, you do not need to rely so much on a thief to scout and you can avoid whatever shit happens when a true sight is cast and your thief gets surrounded by drow in the underdark. But that's it.
True that works well for stuff set in place, but a lot of triggers spawn mobs mid movement, for example the shade lord dungeon, the liches will spawn based on triggers you walk over, so it's entirely possible to still be surprised, although this could potentially help prevent that in some ways. Thanks for commenting friend!
@@Davaeornlol Μy pleasure dude. I recently found your videos, and I am trully glad, man, just reinstalled the game myself. Version 2.5. With EE mod setup tool you can have as many mods as you like without shit hitting the fan.
@@michaelgoudis344 Yeah it's definitely nice in that regard, I could do without a lot of the changes they made but the few that are nice are indeed quite nice. God bless friend!
Me and my wife Jaheira literally making our first 15% deposit with Goodberries to buy a house.
So, you're saying if Goodberry was called conjure gold nugget it would be S teir. 23:30
Now that I started playing SCS yeah posions are crazy, esp spiders (which you do mention)
55:20 lol ouch. I wonder how colourful your reaction was when you found out.
WHOOPS
@Davaeorn, 2 things: 1. Not melleing mummies? Doesn't your mellee warrior have ring of gaxx? 2. The divine guide playlist has many duplicate videos for some reason
You don't get ring of gaxx for a loooooong time while you encounter mummies almost 10 minutes into the game.
Awwww yeah. I just started playing BG2 EE again, and burned through your Arcane guide last week. Watched the divine guide a few days ago and thought "Uhhh... where's part 2?"
It's crazy how much of these tips I discovered as a young teen playing this game 20 years ago, but picking the game up again I had completely forgotten. Skeletons being badasses immune to magic? Web+Spiders for easymode encounters?
I never made much use of Divine spells, so this is much needed. Thank you.
Thanks for watching friend the rest of the series is coming soon!
i thought of another quest from bg1 where detect evil/know alignment will aid a quest. when youre in the city and go into the manor where the two little twin girls live (i think laerta and louise are their names) you'll need to figure out which of the spellcasting adults has a possibly nefarious purpose. theres a lady druid and a dude mage (cant recall their names, hers begins with a v and his with a j i believe) anyway, you cast that beautiful spell and find out...
*spoiler alert*
the druid is the protector and the mage is the creepazoid. go figure.
all this being said he's evil and she's neutral so you could just kill both for experience and loot and let the children clean up the bodies.
god, i just wasted 5 minutes of my life.
Is draw upon holy might worth using on a Paladin as well or only fighter/cleric?
Epic
I feel the same about slow poison. The only indispensable lvl 2 spell.
Nice, I didn't realize you didn't complete the series for divine spells when I checked your arcane guides a few months ago for my Sorcerer. About Charm Person/Animal, maybe I just didn't know what I was doing and had a bad party but when I played IWD EE, the parts that gave me the hardest times was near the end of the game in some caves, you're up against a bunch of strong bears sometimes (I still pulled it off but I guess that spell could be useful there) but I know you're talking BG1-2 only here. I'm sure you've answered this plenty of times before but I didn't see it, what's the reason you don't include SoD in your playtrhoughs? Is it just cause you find it boring or you play out of nostalgia and it didn't exist back then, makes the story too long? I'm trying to get through it for the 2nd time, it definitely isn't on par with BG1/2 in my opinion but there are some very nice items that have interesting effects for specific classes (some of which I use a mod to be able to get back during BG2). Keep up the good work, your videos keep on being suggested to me in RUclips and makes me want to put my online games aside and keep on playing BG again : P. Wow... listening further down the video, great clarification on Chant, I always wanted to avoid using it because I misunderstood it and I thought it reduced the damage my own party was doing by 1 damage dice LOL.
Yeah chant is amazing, the reason I dont play SoD is mostly because it has unique scripts for enemies, so SCS doesn't work making the game a joke for the most part. Playing on insane adds more monsters but all that means is you just spam aoe. The story is lackluster and the creative licenses they took end up shitting on the end of bg1 and the beginning of bg2, it just doesn't feel like a labor of love to me, it feels like a cash grab by people who think they know better, which kills me because I don't know if anyone on the planet wanted another bg game more than I did. The story, the combat, the writing, all way under par. Everytime I try to play it I can't get more than a few hours in before quitting. I want to write up a really really long video about what sucks and what they should change but everytime I try I just don't even want to look at my computer anymore lol
@@Davaeornlol Haha, I understand. I love BG and only played it a fraction of what you've played. I was disappointed with SoD. I like divinity OS 1 and 2, they're great games but inferior to BG series in my opinion and am afraid BG3 will be good but feel more like a Divinity OS 3 more than a BG3 that fits well with the first two (hopefully I'll be wrong..).
@@NoNamesWereAvail Yeah we'll have to see. Fingers crossed!
Should you just let your back line sit there when their not using spells or let them use slings?
With chant does the luck effect happen twice, once when enemy casts a spell and once when it hits you? So 6d6 is 6d5 for bad luck on the enemy when they cast fireball, but 6d5 becomes 6d4 because you have good luck when it hits you? It would make sense because it's a difference of 2 luck assuming you hit the enemy with it.
It does not apply twice. The modifier only applies to incoming non-physical damage or outgoing physical damage. There is no roll for outgoing non-physical damage.
Besides, notice that 1d5 is a random value in {1,2,3,4,5} while -1 modifier on 1d6 is a random value in {1,1,2,3,4,5}
I just thought about being a cleric/thief and using find traps if your skill is very low but you can still disarm them. Using the thief skill sometimes takes a lot of time, using the spell could speed up things.
Disarm trap is based off your find traps unfortunately, so using the spell but having few if any points into the thief ability find traps means you can see them but can't disarm them lol.
@@Davaeornlol Yeah, I know I just meant it takes a while until your Thief actually finds the trap and Find Trap Spell works in intervals so it might be a faster solution sometimes. Of course you still need enough skill to disarm them yeah :D
@@Davaeornlol thanks for the reply tho, I didn't expect you keep tabs on 2 year old vids still :-P Great content mate, all the best!
I feel like Alicorn Lance could have been saved if it offered a 1-2 turn stun for defending the lance damage but, the ̶h̶o̶r̶s̶e̶... ehm unicorn still hit them...I can't believe I just typed out that the unicorn hit. But, that would make it tenable as it either hits for decent damage and then makes them susceptible for more damage or it would cause them no upfront damage but, it would make them way more susceptible to future damage for a short time and make them unable to cause any positive influence on the battle for a turn or two.
Hey man, loving the videos so far. Two things. One, can't you use charm person/mammal on wolves, including dire wolves, dread wolves, vampiric wolves, etc.? Not tested it but seems a useful application. Second, find traps - can't you use summons to activate floor traps once you've found them? Maybe that's something from the old game but I recall doing that back ~2000. Anyway, great videos!
Dread and vampiric are both classified as undead so they're immune unfortunately :(, as for the traps it's actually dependent on the trap itself. 90% of traps in this game will NOT trigger on summons but some do, puzzle traps for example will almost always trigger for summons (the lightning fireball spam in durlags, the flame strikes in the temple of amaunator, the crushing walls of spellhold, etc etc) but generally speaking most regular traps are not triggered, in the same way enemies won't trip them, summons won't either. Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
@@Davaeornlol Awesome, thanks for the clarification. Fantastic spell guides btw - still making my way through them but they've already helped a lot on my current SoA:EE playthrough (last time I played was 2002). Lots of sleepless nights here too as I have a 1 month old daughter and it's nice to have something to listen to while I'm sitting up with her! Out of interest, have you done an NPC-tier list or thought about doing one? Trying to decide on my lineup and would be really interested in your ratings.
@@Phi1500 Class and comp tier list is next on my list, congrats btw on the girl!
I wonder how much you can make with 1 less druid and jan making his flashers.
Find traps has some decent uses actually. A few tough fights have traps interspersed among the monsters. Finding traps in combat is a pain but disarming isn’t.
The only one that comes to mind would be the guarded compound, and even then those are pretty easily avoided unless you're super heavy melee, and even then I don't really have an issue using an actual thief. I think if you could actually disarm the traps, it would be pretty great. As it stands though, pretty trash spell imo.
A few of the fights in the bg2 tob keep caused issues as spawn on top of units surrounded by traps. But very situational.
To comment about a spell having a bigger save penalty than silence, there is spook. It's -6 penalty at lvl 12+, and even -8 for an illusionist.
Flame blade i believe has the highest elemental damage of any melee weapon in the game. As such if you are hitting a stoneskin it will do the most damage - does this increase concentration check? (flail hits a bunch of times though). Also is nonmagical so will hit through protection from magical weapons i think? Cant say i use it much lol. If strength bonus's apply i would rate this as one of the higher level weapon summons. Wish it was a scimitar though, used to be classed as a small sword (which they could put points into for daggers or something?)
Most summon weapons just ignore profs completely, as for getting through PFMW, that spell is usually cast by liches who are immune to non magical weapons by default, the others will cast imp mantles. I don't think damage itself is the concentration check but aside from bg1, if you're able to hit a mage at all, stoneskin or not, he's gonna die in 2 seconds anyway. You have so many apr it doesn't matter what weapon you're using they just die in seconds. The only thing keeping them alive is their damn immunities XD. I think the summon weps need a buff tbh :(. Thanks for watching and commenting friend!
I knew chant was good, but not that good. Great guide as usual.
Goodberry pyramid scheme. I'm here for it
If you're interested I know a guy