What a week it has been. Bumped into a friend whom I have not contacted for a decade. We were gaming buddies, and those were the days of counter-strike, diablo 2, and BG2 (has it really been 10 years? Kinda scary thinking about it. Seems like yesterday). Anyway, this dude is still playing BG2 with IA5, and he could'nt stop raving about it, so I decided to fire up my old BG2 discs (very scratched, but surprisingly still playable).

Well, I started off thinking, how hard could it be? After all, I did play tactics. All those guys complaining about difficulty must be 12-16 yr olds who have never played contra or ninja gaiden etc etc. Buncha wimps. So imagine my pleasant surprise when the suna seni encounter, ordinarily a walk over, decimated my entire party. Thats when I started browsing SP and BWL forums for more info, and boy have I learned alot, but still, I fear, not enough.

Well, armed with my meager new knowledge, I'm starting a new game that will hopefully make the game easier, and this time I'm sticking like glue to the suggested quest order. My usual play style is melee heavy, which seems to fit well with the play style of IA5 from what I've read, so thats cool.

So, what party would you guys recommand for the easiest time for a first time IA player? It doesnt have to be bioware NPCs since the dialogue has gotten old years ago. And since weapons have been revamped, and many weapons made inaccessible early game (I'm gonna miss celestial fury), who should use what weapons?

Thanks a million for whatever help you guys can give. This is the hardest game I've played since Godhand, though its a action game

I would suggest something along the lines of:

1. Vagrant (PC!) - Axes, Longswords, Clubs, Flails...
2. Dwarven Berserker OR Barbarian OR Kensai - Two-Handed Swords, Staves, Halberds...
3. Human Berserker -> Cleric - Hammers, Flails, Maces...
4. Dwarven Fighter / Thief - Short Swords, Daggers, Clubs...
5. Gnome Fighter / Illusionist OR Half-Elf Blade - Katanas, Bastard Swords, Flails...
6. Sorcerer - Staves, Daggers...

Characters 1, 3, 4 and 5 should switch between dual-wielding and shield use as the situation requires.

I had a fantastic time with that party (the Kensai and F/I version). I'm not a veteran, however, so take my advice with a pinch of salt.

Note that you may want to use Anomen for slot 3 and Imoen for slot 6; it won't make a huge difference either way.

Good Luck!

Welcome, ksshan!

I'm glad to hear that you are enjoying the mod. There are lots of similar topics in the mod's forum. Check them for more opinions and suggestions.



I would really advise against using dwarves and gnomes in the party if you are looking for a genuine challenge. These races have cheesy bonuses to their saving throws which have been fixed in v6. But as long as you are playing v5, it's best that you be your own policeman and avoid using them. I don't recommend using a blade either, because this character is nerfed in IA v6. Playing a blade in v5 won't give you any useful tactical experience to be useful in v6.

If I may just say 1 thing about this, since I believe this is "somehow" strangely linked to my use of dwarves - I personally do not consider +5 saves to be "cheese". It is straight from AD&D. Overpowered? Maybe. Cheese? No.
One thing which beats saving throws is "Apsolute immunity to certain ill effect". Like for example immunity to confusion - Lirarcor, Equlizer etc.
Take Valygar NPC as an example.
End game - Immune to: Fear, Charm, Confusion by equipment (+ some extra resistances)
Immune to Imprisonment in a blink (lasts longer then Enrage. And heals you!!!)
Heal - as - hit weapon
Beats +5 save vs spell, death and wand by long and far....

So. If you want a real challenge in IA -don't play Vagrant with 18 WIS. Don't take Valygar. Don't take any ranger in your party. Don't make your protagonist a good-aligned warrior.
If you're a really awsome player, don't give any arcane spellcaster 18 WIS.
If you are a starter, I'd recommend:

Vagrant protag
Berserker for 1 handed wpns (dwarf )
kensai or Barbarian for 2-handed wpns
some cleric, whatever. Thief-cleric dual if you can't live without a thief. I can, and I like Helm kit.
sorcerer with 18 WIS
Conjujer or Necromancer but I don't like Necro so I'd take Conjujer. Or Nalia. Any mage with customisable spelbook is actually. You might miss an important spell if you take 2 sorcerers.

Valygar gains those immunities near the end of the game, while short races gain those excessive bonuses to their saving throws right from the beginning. The comparison fails, Kerkes! I'm afraid.

To be fair, the OP did ask for the party which would give him the easiest time (using v5, I assume). I stand by my suggestion in that respect. But if we extend the domain of discourse (so to speak) to include future v6 games of the OP, then surely you're right, and it would be best for them not to get used to the transient advantages of Dwarves, Gnomes and Blades in the first place.

Fair points, Zarathustra!

Hmm...my thread seems to have gotten sidetracked, but no matter. Firstly, I never use dwarfs or gnomes. Just dont like the look of them. Also, I dont use bards. Never did like them. So no issues there. I'm gonna read through the whole forum again to get a better idea of party composition

I feel you ksshan. I played world of warcraft before this with all alts 2300+ arena rating on the best battlegroups. I also have over 400 consistent actions per minute from years of starcraft, warcraft, violin, piano and trading desk at a large hedge fund. In short, I pretty much thought I owned at anything related to computer games or strategy. But when I decided to sample this mod, I quickly found myself in the back seat of a short bus sharing juiceboxes with all the other noobs. Ain't gonna name no names, but it seems that SOME distinguished developers have been experienced tacticians for so long, they've forgotten what it's like to be a complete noob.

I would suggest this group composition: Still a pretty abusive party, but will let you develop tactical skills fastest I think. Urrbody loves watching a newbie learn and master something they are already good at themselves. amirite?

Half elf Vagrant
Half elf Fighter/Thief (or half orc barbarian if you want to use perception/thievery/power potions on nalia to do traps and stuff)
Human Berserker 9-Cleric
Valygar
Nalia
Imoen

If you want easymode, godly, overpowered, cheesy, and will no longer work that well in v6

lawful good Half elf Vagrant Club/Flail/Axe/Longsword 18 18 19 7 18 12
lawful evil Dwarf Fighter/Thief Dagger/Hammer/Shortsword 18 17 19 7 7 16
lawful good Gnome Fighter/Illusionist Staff/Halberd 18 18 18 10 17 3 +1 wisdom from WK4
lawful good Half elf Ranger/Cleric Club/Flail/Mace/Hammer 18 18 18 7 18 3
chaotic good Half elf Bard Everything+ 18 18 16 10 7 18
Imoen Human Sorceress Staff Static

Multiclasses, gnomes, dwarves, bards, and wish will all be nerfed in v6. This group comp abuses every one of these things. You'll have access to all of the best items, best spells, best HLA tables, and all additional content except extended planar sphere (provided you dont cheat and cause bugs)

Wow! I didn't realize that "short people" are so cheeesy...;]

Spent quite some time today reading through SP, G3 and BWL forums today. I just have to say this, if the fights in IA are half as interesting as the fights OVER IA, then this is one heck of a mod indeed.

I also read most of the online journels, and also used SK to browse through the many new items. Here are some of my thoughts. Funny eh, considering that I've only played the game for just over an hour?

Firstly, yeah, Sikret likes rangers. He likes valygar, and I bet his favourite character in LOTR is Aragorn. He makes a few nifty items usuable only by rangers (Flail of defending and wounding/boots of improved haste), and suddenly many people are up in arms. Why is that? I didnt see that kind of outrage against Valen, who is even more powerful since her bonuses are innate. In fact, I daresay a well-played f/m is still more powerful. Its just that the gap has been closed since this is sikret's mod and he like rangers. Ultimately, its the player's choice. I don't like rangers, so I'm not using a vagrant. Simple as that.

Same goes for some other items. +3 spells/level a day from a robe? A 2d8 dmg longsword with more bonuses then a dog has fleas? I don't like it, so I'm not going to forge them. It seems many players are upset because they want their favourite characters, be it thief or f/m or blade whatever, to be able to use those items but are not allowed to, so they get all flustered. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure the game is perfectly playable even with vanilla weapons. Sure it will be more difficult, but weren't you looking for a difficulty enhancing mod when you installed IA?

With all that said, this is my planned party

F/M (flails/belm)
Sorc
thief7/mage
ranger/clerc (multi) (flail and club)
berserker7/cleric (hammer/club with shield)
berserker (staff and halberd)

That way, I have plenty of arcane power, 1 1/2 divine casters, and 4 melee capable characters. No idea who should be the protagonist though. Any idea?

When Valy gets immunities depends on your luck/playing skills. It does not have to be this late. Short races gain ONLY saving throws.
But, as you said, discussing this is pointless. Any Anvil player is intelligent enough to judge for himself what is cheese and what is not. For me, Vagrant with 18 WIS with JD, imp haste etc. is cheese, for example. Dwarves are not.
Using a tactic such as:
"hey, it's Kaol!! Let's remove Poseidon Wrath so he casts his ADHW on a character and quickly re-equip it so he doesn't get hurt!" is cheesy.
Seeing a Chain Con of 3xFoD heading for your mage, pausing the game and equiping all +2 items on him so that he makes the save is.
Seeing a Dragon's Breath in air and quickly running away is.
Removing/reequiping various items such as Equilizer etc.
About 100 more such things which I am not going to write down.

All this is cheese for me.
Any player who uses this, is, of course, free to play as he likes. Any anti-cheese method is rather useless for as long as scripts are made in a manner : "....HasItemEquiped...". If you want to cheat, you'll cheat, and there's nothing to stop you. Not nerfing of dwarves, not nerfing of multiclasses, not playing a Vagrant/bard whatever. Cheating is (and by the way, it should be, even tough I do not approve of it) in hands of the player, as well as viewpoints of "cheese". So, nobody can tell me - "what you use is cheese" and expect me to buy this. I may as well say - "What you use is cheese - in my world."


oh yea.
sorry for posting this in this thread, ksshan.

@Kerkes

I wasn't trying to tell you how to play the game. It was YOU who suddenly felt that this was all about you and jumped in.

Why don't you decide that when you are at the point in the game when you have to make the decision whether to forge those items or not?

Saying you don't like the items you have read about in the readme or in an editor after having only played the mod for one hour is somewhat premature in my opinion. Sure they would be overpowered if they were to be used in the vanilla game or other mods, but perhaps when you see the enemies you will be facing at the end of IA you will realise that in IA they are not overpowered after all (and by 'see' I don't mean looking at some .cre files in an editor but actually playing the mod and encountering them).

I don't regard the" little people" bonus as cheese at all - I regard it as a justifiable reason to play them. Why else would you play a dwarf for example? just for the animation? Playing a human already has advantage over demi humans in IA. A human can be ANY class and can dual class at any stage giving him a large advantage over a multi class demi-human (fighter/mage excepted). There are plenty of items and spells that can make the "little people" bonus superfluous in any event (Chaotic Commands, Free Action, Lilicor , Shield of Harmony , potions etc.) so I think the retention of such a bonus to be hardly game changing let alone cheesy. The omission/nerfing of it does IMHO throw the balance of the game off and turns dwarfs into short humans who can't even be mages. A dwarf Beserker, Barbarian or Kensai is a fearsome opponent but hardly tougher than a Vagrant or Riskbreaker. If you plan on nerfing the "little peoples" saves at least consider expanding available classes for them (dwarf riskbreaker or vagrant)

They will still gain a +1 bonus to their saves. The +5 bonus was excessive as it would mean that the character was wearing a +5 protection item from the very beginning of the game (which was quite absurd).

The discussion about the short people is over (and more so in a topic which has a different purpose).

Vanilla weapons are randomized in IA. But they're also nerfed so when you finally find one it is usually a pile of useless junk. ;] "Wow! I found Mana Bow +4 after challenging fight! Kewl, gonna shoot some groundhogs in Umar Hills. And then I will smack the undead groundhogs with my mace of disruption, hope it will work on them. (crossed fingers)" But they're always good for extra cash.

Vagrant should be your prot. for your first IA runthrough. I know that you don't like rangers but you better start to like them, coz vagrant has two very good quests in IA, not only tactic-wise but also role-playing wise and the final battle in one of this quests is just too cool for words.


And a... here's a little spoiler:

SPOILER!


Fights in IA are much more interesting than fights over IA. But I must say, as a simple forum member, that for example this temujin dude from G3 "what do you think about the mod you don't even play" stupidity was even harder than Elite Nishuruu.

Here I quote from Clown's latest report while play-testing IA v6. For those who may not know, Clown is one of the very competent IA-testers.



Just to let everyone (matti and others) know that we are addressing the balance issues properly and the worries about overuse of the wish spell and relative power of swanmays and vagrants have been also addressed to in v6.

Definitely Sorc protagonist Ksshan.

Extended Planar Sphere content is pretty fun, and so is EDE for single class mages. The rest of those classes dont have anything special as far as content goes. Single class mage protag might be slightly more difficult (ie when you screw up early-mid game and get PW deathed), but overall, it's not that bad. The most important thing is you get to see more content, which is what playing a tactical mod is all about. Also, you might want to sample an in-game character. Some of their quests are more difficult now as well, and are worth doing at least once. Join/kick after you're done.

Alright, I got my tankers, my warriors, my healers, and my mages, but I still need a thief. Question is, of course, how to go about creating one. Based on past threads, it seems a multi f/t is the best option. But I'm thinking, since thieving skills dont need to go higher then 100, is it better to create a f/m/t instead? That way, I'll have some extra spells for the character to tank it out and cast some buffing/debuffing spells as well, at the cost of some thaco(2 behind the f/t according to my calculations) and a small loss in thieving skills. What do you guys think?

Should I go for the f/t, or f/m/t?

Give a list of your other paty members so that people can give their opinion with a more accurate information at hand. Your latest party composition included a thief(7)-->mage. Perhaps you have changed your mind.

The F/T is generally considered better than the F/M/T because the latter's level progression is too slow. Your other good options are to either pick Nalia or to make a human Swashbuckler dualled (at level 10) to either cleric or mage or fighter (depending on your other party members' classes). This is for v5, of course.

Having only played through the SoA part of IA, i vote for f/m/t since the things you get from from that far outweigh what you loose.

The only real concern is that i think that triple multiclasses get high level abilities rather late but i think that having stoneskin, pfmw, SI and other spellcasting goodies are a much better bonus then earlier high level abilities.

This is true. Improved Anvil adds as much new content to the game role-playing-wise as it does tactics-wise.

In v5, vagrant rangers have access to the maximum number of new quests compared to other classes, single class mages stand second.

In v6, vagrants have access to one more new big quest, but necromancers and druids will also have access to a lot more new quests. There is also one new big quest in v6 which is available to all three classes (single class mages, single class druids and single class rangers). These are all listed in the first post of the progress report for IA v6 topic.

So, yes, matti is right; if you are looking for more new quests, vagrant is the best choise for your first IA v5 run-through. In v6, it will be harder to say which one will be the best to try first, because all three (vagrant, necromancer and druid) will have access to a lot of new content.

Don't double and triple multiclasses all start getting HLAs at 5,100,000XP?

That means when you hit 14/14/16 you instantly get two HLAs, one for mage and one for warrior. F/T also gets HLA at 5.1mil xp so you'll start at around 16F/20T. Since you're going to get around 12.2 million xp throughout the game, you will end up with around the same number of HLA's by the final exam, EDE. However, F/M/T wastes less levels in thief, in exchange for mage spells and abilities, and you are only a slightly weaker fighter 21/19/24 vs 27/31. Fighters gain no extra combat bonuses past 22 anyways. Sure your remove magic will only consistently work at 1%, but you get an extra set of those precious level 6 buffs. Also, you wont need to wait so long to be able to use scrolls. Finally, FT is dwarf, while FMT is halfelf, and you've decided not to use short races anyways, so your best choice is clearly FMT.

F/M/T is a waste in IA. You may have F/T and for exemple Sorcerer or Blade instead of him. F/M/T in IA (with 6 or 5 person pary) is, imo, mediocre fighter, crappy mage and mediocre thief. Not worth at all, imo, even with HLA's. Heh, and when will he start recieving his HLA's? In Abaz lair?

In IA v5, multi-class characters start to gain HLAs in a more realistic way than the vanilla game. While single (and dual) class characters start to gain HLAs at (about) 3,400,000 xp, multi-class characters start gaining HLAs at (about) 5,100,000 xp. In v6, this has changed to be even more realistic by differentiating between double-class characters and triple-class characters. Quote from the "Progress Report for IA v6" topic:


Thus, in v5, an F/T and an F/M/T still start to gain HLAs almost at the same time, but this has been fixed and changed in v6.

Take Valygar NPC as an example.
End game - Immune to: Fear, Charm, Confusion by equipment (+ some extra resistances)
Immune to Imprisonment in a blink (lasts longer then Enrage. And heals you!!!)
Heal - as - hit weapon

In IA he has some new feature, as i know he didn't get that, what i am missing???

The first few immunities come from Valygar's upgraded armour.
The immunity to Imprisonment comes from activating the IA ranger HLA 'Contact with Nature', which any ranger can select once as a HLA choice (replaces Tracking).
Valygar's upgraded weapon has the ability to heal him a few hp when he scores a hit.

EDIT: Actually the immunity to Fear is from the weapon as well, not the armour.

I have two question about IA


1. I got Hear'dalis but in his char sheet doesn't have any rasistance, are those removed by IA or something else?



2. Search engine doesnt work properly for me when i type one word work but two or more always got no result any idea.


Thanks


p.s. sorry for bad eng

Perhaps you have confused between Valygar in v6 and Valygar in v5, eh?



1- Yes, naturally.

2- If you are asking about the forum's search engine, when you type two words, it probably search for both or even perhaps for both word exactly in the order you have typed them. Baronius may be able to give a better answer. This is not a question about IA though.

But in game without mods he gets some resistances to crushing, slashing ... am i wrong??





p.s maybe would be double post so let delete mod that one before this one, thanks.