Quick question: Why are the costs for ring upgrades so cost-prohibitive? It costs 330k to convert 12 +1 eventually into one +4. It's not affordable unless you kill spawns as much as humanly possible. I mean 200k for a weapon is cool, but 330k for a ring seems high.

You could start the upgrade process with +2 rings. You find +2 rings in the game as well. It's not necessary to start with +1 rings and forge all the required +2 ones.

Thoughts on cheese and not-cheese:

1. Wish:rested is cheesy and should be nerfed to no longer re-memorize level 9 spells. Urrbody knows you can't wish for more wishes... standard protocol for genies in bottles. What kind of self respecting genie who prides himself on tricking clients, would allow for such a disgrace? The game becomes incredibly easy once your sorc hits 18. In the case where a party has more than 1 wisher, you dont even have to get lucky anymore. Infinite spells become a statistical near-certainty.

2. Using map structuring is part of strategy, and shouldn't be considered cheesy. You always fight on terrain, and there are always advantages/disadvantages at certain places. That is the definition of strategy. Of course, if you choose to stand your riflemen in straight lines in the open plain, wearing bright red coats, while opponents fire on you from the cover of trees/buildings, that's entirely up to you.

Standing dual wielders in front and 2h behind them is exactly the same as using a choke point (niether is cheesy imo). The enemy scripting is not smart enough to maneuver the monster around your front line to hit your relatively weaker staff/halberd characters even if there is ample space to. Therefore it is the same as holding a choke, as if enemy were physically unable to reach your 2hand fighters.

On the other hand, as a "Strategist" you always move your melee around some crappy enemies to kill a more dangerous target first. This is one of many things "enemies don't do to you" but you most definitely do to enemies. We all understand that it is impossible to make enemies behave as intelligently as humans, so encounters are improved to compensate for this.

This is exactly what makes IA so great. Enemies have more dangerous abilities, camps are stronger/more numerous etc. I saw some noob (Soros I think?) refer to it as "cheating enemies" but players who play for the challenge understand that this is necessary for our own enjoyment. IMO, the best encounter is one whose difficulty infinitely approaches but never reaches impossibility. EDE without a decked out Vagrant is the closest thing in existence so far to a perfect bg2 encounter.

If anyone would argue that some encounters would be made way too easy if a chokepoint is used, I'll use Torgal as an example. 2 melee trolls, melee golem, melee/caster torgal. It is a flaw in design, not a flaw in the player who utilizes the doorway. If the battle was meant to be fought vs all 3 extra enemies running amok, then Sikret can easily have the trolls and golem teleport in on your side of the door, or add some more dangerous ranged abilities/spells to torgal's arsenal (cast repeatedly if he can't reach you). However, flaws in game mechanics that CANNOT be circumvented using encounter design, players should "be their own police and avoid". For example running forever to drop combat and rest. However, even this can be solved to an extent. Sikret's design of the Planar Warden effectively nullifies the aforementioned method of abuse. (lasso+dogs spawning, impossible to drop combat)

To compensate for enemies being dumb enough to rush across a bridge while the other side is held firm by your party, enemies need more powerful ranged attacks that they will only use if they are unable to reach you in melee, and thus becoming a crucial target to kill first. You might even find some players forced to plow their way through a completely saturated chokepoint full of enemies in order to incapacitate that one ranged enemy, tables turned

3. Spawned mobs give too much xp, leads to over-leveled characters and disrupted game balance, especially going into ToB. The drops are ok, you can sell for gold or use them, it don't matter. There's no way you will ever have enough gold in this game anyways. But spawned xp is cheesy. A near 40 blade pre-ToB is pretty much a wrap on all of the ToB gaming experience. Although maybe ToB is just too easy, except EDE and maybe Sendai Enclave Lich. I haven't had a remotely challenging ToB even once out of 4 playthroughs.

Check the progress report for v6, you'll see Sikret is already going to address some of things you mention (Wish rest and respawning enemies).

I largely agree with what you're saying but with regard to (ab)using terrain I don't think it's the same as using characters with reach weapons behind better-armoured fighters in the front. If you run your party away until they are standing behind a doorway that only one enemy can get through at once then clearly you have got yourself a far larger advantage than what you gain from positioning more vulnerable reach-weapon users behind your front line.

Totally agree with this. Wish spell is the biggest cheese in entire game in my opinion. For example timestop+melee "cheat" is pretty fair compared to wish.



No, it is not the same. Not entirely. The point is to position fighter with long weapon behind dual-wielder so they both are able to hit an enemy, otherwise the dual-wielder will be blocked and useless in the fight. And imo, from my expierience with IA I must say that for example Skeleton Lords and Grandlords actually are smart enough to flank you if they have some space.




You know, there is a lot features in IA that I like very much, a couple that I don't like that much and a couple that I just love. For example Greater Elemental Golem fight: you may concentrate all your attacks on GEG and kill him/it (relatively) quickly ...OR...you may have some more fun with him/it, let it live a little longer, let it gated some more sidekicks...more xp, more cash, more FUN! That what it's all about, right? Ahhh....but it is a little risky, those golems don't hit you that often but when they are start hitting you....uuuuuuuuuu...painful.



And now the bad news ;]
SPOILER!

This exploit has been blocked in v6 since quite a long time ago.

Wait matti. What infinite scroll bag? All I have are those scroll cases you buy from merchants. They hold like 20 scrolls. I remember a simpler time when I could stash hundreds of scrolls in a case, including all those useless shadow thief correspondence scrolls (I kept every 'quest item' simply because I could 0_o)

I thought the bottomless bag component of EoU was incompatible or at least NOT RECOMMENDED according to the installation readme so I got rid of it around playthrough #3. Those scroll cases and gem bags are so annoying... I end up having to store diamonds, beljurils, 3 fire agates, etc on a shelf in the thief guildhouse because those bags are nearly useless without the EoU component. I'm at that point where I've played IA enough times to know what I can vendor and what I need to keep, but inventory space still owns me. I haven't seen such a noob inventory system since Diablo I.

Yes, bottomless bags should NOT be installed with IA. However, to abuse that exploit with infinite scrolls (which is blocked in v6) you didn't need to have a bottomless bag or a scroll-case.

Yeah I know, I never even had much option to use the scribing and alchemy anyways because I prefer multiclasses (F/T, F/I, or R/C which are pretty abusive in themselves, and are also sorta nerfed in v6 which is a great idea). I also grudgingly agree that my trusty ol' 27/24 Fighter/Illusionist should no longer be able to wish; it's more balanced and also easier on the character creation rolls. However, access to both Mage and Fighter HLA's will still make it worthwhile even without alacrity. A strong self buffable fighter that can still throw out high level arcane debuffs doesn't need to cast more than one spell per round anyways. My staple Vagrant protagonist won't change in v6 it seems, it's still gonna be able to solo tank 50 golems endgame without breaking a sweat.

Except for the fact that those golems are improved in v6.