Sounds like early level BG to me haha, the amount of running away I did on my way to the inn...

Yea, I tried (and failed/reloaded) the githyanki encounter, and also another in that area with some gnolls (several times). I'm exploring more of the map in an attempt to gain a few levels and hopefully not get totally rekt in the process. Oh man... Ox, that's some crazy stuff in your screenshots. Sounds pretty awesome. I've already been planning out another run at this game and leaning into the evil side.

Err... spoiler regarding a certain one-horned character


I did manage to pull off a few good fights, like an enormous spider in a certain area. That fight was tough... in the very last round it knocked out 2 of my party members, and everyone else was pretty badly injured. It was very satisfying.

Oh, I failed to mention that as a cleric one of my spells is talk to animals. It's actually pretty cool. I'm glad I picked it up. It's not game breaking or anything, but pretty neat being able to converse with any animals you stumble into.

Adding two pics.

Yeah exactly I'm still getting the hang of the combat rules of 5th edition tbh, and regularly get my ass kicked. I feel like I need to do a better job in finding a good balance/combos of actions and bonus actions. Some of them are obvious (dash to a higher spot and then attack ranged from there), others not so much. I particularly struggle to find good combos for my melee characters so far, so I'm considering taking a level from another class like cleric. As for that gihtyanki fight, I thought the game communicated pretty clearly that they would be out of your league. They literally arrive on a red dragon and look totally badass. So I just steered clear from them. I did like that spider fight Satis mentioned!

Yeah, the heinous stuff didn't get much better in the meantime. I just spent some time torturing someone for information I already knew, just for the fun of it. When you play with The Dark Urge, you gain inspirations from inflicting cruelty so it gave me a nice little boost. I also had my first NPC walk out on me for a decision I took (and probably also because I said that I relished drinking the innocents' blood alongside an evil leader after we raided their stronghold)...she said that I had gone made and asked herself why she didn't see it before. I can't disagree with either of those statements.

Lol @ Satis' farmer tan. There must be a way to adjust your appearance after character creation at some point I think. I don't have the animal speaking feat so what did I have to say in the game?

Whoops, a second party member turned on me. This one even attacked me so I had to kill him. I'm down to two recruitable NPCs right now, after I also refused to help another one earlier in the game and didn't see her again. Man, this game feels like the perfect old school RPG with amazing polish and quality of life upgrades. I love that there are actually consequences to my actions.

There are a lot of unexpected situations you can get into which could potentially change a LOT, and I've told myself that unless it was unintentional (accidentally pick up an illegal item or something) or ends up in an unwinnable flight, I'll roll with it. I might be breaking the game, who knows, but so far so good.

Who are your favorite NPCs so far? From the 'starting roster', let's say.

It's been that long since a proper DnD style game that I suppose we've all slipped into 'bad' gaming habits. I know we all do replays occasionally (or for me, re-attempts to actually finish one...) but we're so used to "Here's your wizard. Cast unlimited spells until you run out of mana. Chug a potion. Cast unlimited spells" that having to remember that actually you might need to ration or combine actions to get the best out of them is a bit alien. Definitely fun though; I've been playing IWD2 since I finished the first one many, many years ago and it's taken some adjustment.

Keep us entertained with more depravity please Ox!

I had that animal whispering perk in Original Sin Satis, always fun to chat to the animals. Some just don't wanna talk but I do remember in the first town in OS there were a couple of oxen pulling a cart that have a proper conversation with you. Seems Ox is chatty

Haha... yea, that Ox actually had some things to say and some sort of secret. Unfortunately, I failed the roll to get him to actually open up to me, so I don't know what's going on or how big of a deal it is. I'll have to try again in a later playthrough. I'm still exploring the rest of the map and staying far away from those gith. Perhaps I'll do better at level 5 (when I get there) then I did at level 3 previously. I sure hope so.

Some cool non-spoilery observations

Potions of hill giant strength can be bought in the druid grove and replenish in the vendor every long rest. When you drink one, they also last until a long rest. Pretty nice to have that kind of strength on someone that does melee (even just occasionally) but isn't very strong typically. Like say a thief type with a backstab.
Speak with animals also lasts until a long rest, as does the summon animal companion or whatever.
I was afraid I'd run out of food if I constantly long rested, but I have so much food it's becoming a weight issue, so that fear was unfounded. Of course, then you lose those buffs previously mentioned
You probably know this, but some Cleric spells that give a buff require concentration, like Bless and Aid I think. You can only have one active per cleric. I found that out the hard way.

Please add your own pointers, especially you Peltz. I suspect you are WAY ahead in the game and have probably figured out a ton more stuff.

I did recently kill me some and looted a circlet or something that gives 17 intelligence. It's giving me bonuses to some rolls, which alone is pretty cool. I hope there are more items like this to find. That fight was actually pretty easy as well. I saw them pretty far ahead of time, so I positioned my cleric and ranger on a roof top and used poison on my weapons. I was able to incapacitate/block the creatures in such a way that I was only fighting one at a time, which was great. I like that a little bit of planning and setup can make a huge difference.

Send all your food to camp, absolutely no point in hauling it with you since you only use it in camp and the camp box is directly linked with the rest mechanism. Make sure you have access to blind effect, wether its the spell darkness or pets who poke eyes and they can blind every turn wo rest, this will make huuuge difference in fights. You should have two damage dealers in your group, the other two should be helping these two to max their combat prowess. Or get a paladin and just annihilate everything.

For sure! I will say, the turn based system (as opposed to the 'real time turn based' system of BG1&2) makes it feel like you can do less than you could in those games, but it's just because actions are now clearly delineated by the turns. In the earlier games you also couldn't use skills or cast several spells over a short period of time, it just felt "quicker" because there was no clear distinction between turns. The more I learn about the combat and the skills, the more fun i'm having with it. In addition to Peltz' tips I will also echo Satis in that positioning is SO important here. I've taken the habit of "scouting ahead" with the camera and/or a rogue and it's helped me a lot. Also, be careful when picking fights when you're surrounded and in a tactically poor position. Even a small group of goblins can cause you some pain if they get the drop on you. Sometimes it pays to talk your way out of it and then attack from a better position.

Having said all that: some things feel a bit OP. A goblin firing an acid or fire arrow can one shot many lower HP characters because of the insane damage it does, for example. Thankfully those are pretty rare to come by, and I guess it makes sense for goblins to be dangerous archers considering their size and tactics. But still.

@ Satis don't rogues use dexterity for their damage modifier when they use a finesse weapon? Or do you have your rogues use strength-based weapons? Either way, good to know about the potion lasting until the next long rest!

@ Peltz thanks for the "send to camp" tip, I didn't even know about it and like Satis I was hauling around a shitton of food.

Small update on my run: I've basically murdered everyone I've encountered in the game so far, except for Shadowheart and Asterion. I worked together with a deliciously evil drow for a while, but when we had accomplished our goal she came on to me for what I thought was sex but rapidly turned into a pretty weird situation, and I backed out which didn't make her happy. She then tried to murder me in my sleep, so I had to kill her and her whole posse too. Since there's barely anyone alive to tell me what's going on, I'm sort of semi blindly puzzling everything together from items and journals I find, and by opening doors using keys I found on dead bodies.

So apart from some ethnic cleansing, nothing particularly new to report on the evil depravity front!

Minor very early game spoiler:

Find Withers and you can recruit thralls to fill your empty spots. Unless you somehow managed to kill him as well. He's in a tomb with undead pretty much at the starting place after the crash.

I guess you guys skipped the pathfinder games. They operate under a different license than regular dnd but the difference is not that big.

I actually find the game a bit boring and poorly paced. The biggest issue how the story is trying to convey a feeling of urgency but the game world doesn't support this as you are free to explore every shelf and barrel. So far from the companion side only two storylines have been interesting, that of wyll and karlach as they are somewhat tied and that of Lae'zel. The others I don't really give a fuck. Astarion is the very definiton of annoying. So far only Karlach dialogue has gotten a burst of laughter out of me. Anyway i'm hoping things get better once the city of Baldur's Gate opens up.

The team I roll with mostly is beastmaster as me, wyll as warlock, karlach as barbarian tank, and lae'zel warrior dps. Most fights are doable so far, not a whole lot of strategizing needed - I see face, I hit said face. . Lae'zel is especially dangerous with 20ish damage per hit and she can attack twice, or when i use the extra action skill then 4 times. My BM can match/outdo that normal damage when I get lucky and hit with the sneak attack and then immediately follow with the second attack+second hand attack. Wyll is the pincushion as ranged enemies love attacking casters but he's got plenty of ac and hp and with a retaliatory spell can really fuck up someone's day.

I guess the power of jade is stronger in me than I thought.

lol. Initially I found Astarion really annoying, but he grew on me a bit. When we had a discussion about which party member's blood I'd prefer to drink, it really amused me. Also when I told the monster hunter who he was and he was like... wtf?

@ox .. regarding thieves and dex... shit, you're probably right. I'm probably wasting those strength potions.
@peltz .. I only recently learned about not having to haul around all that food. Thanks for sharing... I was carrying so much unnecessary weight around.

Regarding that strength potion, unfortunately my easy source of potions is...er... gone. No more quick source of health, greater health and strength potions any more. Which is unfortunate, for sure. I'm still in the first map, murdering goblins in a base of theirs. I was just walking around talking to them, but after a failed "read mind" attempt everyone went hostile, so I had to put them down. Drow poison worked to knock out the Ogre, which was very nice, so then I just mowed through everyone else. I've taken to using colour spray, since it's got a convenient area attack and blinds creatures. The hit point limit is unfortunate, but what's to be expected from a level 1 spell.

Speaking of levels, my characters are all level 4 now, getting fairly close to 5.

Yeah Astarion grew on me as well...and not just because he's ok with all the evil shit I do. His backstory actually seems pretty interesting and I'm curious about how it will develop. As you can imagine, I have little insight in the stories of most of the other characters, but honestly all of them seemed intriguing enough (from the little I've seen so far from them).

@ Peltz yeah I used withers to recruit a wizard thrall. He's been pretty good and sort of the missing link in my ensemble (fighter, cleric, rogue and now wizard). It's interesting (but cool) that you are rolling without a 'real' mage (sorcerer, wizard). I know Wyll can hold his own but he probably doesn't have access to the same range of spells, but I could be wrong of course. I especially enjoy being able to do good AoE damage now with fireballs and the likes - none of my other party members could really do that effectively, which was a pain when fighting large groups of weaker enemies or just enemies clumped together.

I think I just made it out of Act 1 after playing feverishly for a few days Needless to say, the trail of blood I left behind me is...something to behold. I'm a bit worried about saying too much more because it might spoil things for people who are a buit further behind in terms of progress, but I'm having a blast. I feel like I'm really getting the hang of the combat and am now pretty easily carving my way through very difficult fights, fights that you aren't even necessarily supposed to trigger if you play like a normal human being. But I have spent a lot more time in act 1 than most because of my genocidal sprees and lack of direction as well.

To be clear: I don't usually just attack groups for no reason. I'll end up saying the wrong thing, or they'll demand something from me that I won't do, and then the shit hits the fan. Oh, on the NPC front: minor early game spoiler but

Lol @ your spoiler. This isn't really spoilery, but related to yours I guess


As for the party member stories, I'm actually intrigued by most of them. Astarion, as you mentioned, seems to have a pretty interesting back story. Shadowheart has become really interesting once you learn some of her little secrets. Lae'zel may be the least interesting of the bunch, and she's an illithid hunting githyanki that's born in space and asteroids and between the planes. Plus the whole silver sword, red dragon thing. So... pretty interesting anyway.

Besides that, I haven't played with Wyll, but I'm sure he and that other character would be a lot of fun. I definitely plan on taking those two on my next playthrough. I'm really glad that Larian seems to have put quite a bit of effort into your companions stories.

As for my progress, my whole party is past level 5. I have a ton of side quests I haven't completed yet. Now that I've , I plan on cleaning up some loose ends, then heading back into the under dark. I still need to finish clearing a temple as well.

A few more small things

• Shift-C will make your whole party hide/unhide
• G will group/ungroup everyone, so you can move/position them independently
• For most fights now I break apart my group and move them all into position independently. If someone gets noticed and goes into combat, I'll then fight. This usually gives me a major advantage.
• Shove is incredible, and with a bit of work is virtually over-powered. Tossing people/creatures off of cliffs never gets old.
• I feel silly for not realizing this earlier, but you can quick travel to portals from anywhere. Just open the map. No need to run to a portal in order to travel to another portal.

Speaking of shoving, I got into a fight in a temple and had positioned all my people in the rafters. My plan was to rain down arrows/bolts and just wreck everyone. Anyone that came up the ladder would then be subject to Lae'zel beatdowns. Unfortunately, one of the creatures at the bottom had some sort of force pull ability and just yanked 3 out of 4 of my characters down, causing them to take significant falling damage in the process. I still won, but it was an interesting reversal.

I've started romancing Shadowheart. No nude drow-on-elf sex yet. Funny because Lae'zel seemed to get a bit jealous.

I didn't even kill Lazael the first time! She ended up getting herself killed another way after I didn't help her right after the crash...because I told her I'd only help her if she asked me nicely. She flat out refused. Later, when I went back to see if she had changed her mind, she was gone. And then the next time I met her she died before i could help it, and I had to resurrect her.

It's pretty amazing how many permutations there are to each situation tbh...and how much freedom you have to approach things, especially with the possibility of resurrecting, speaking with the dead, reading minds, disguising yourself, etc etc. Not to mention the environmental/combat options! Things like fly, misty step, hide, throw, etc. Hell, you can pick up some enemies and throw them at others/over cliff edges. Like Satis I have also laughed pretty hard a few times when I used spells or skills to toss enemies off cliffs and bridges, so much fun. Sometimes it's even amusing to see one of your own, full health, carefully placed characters arc over a cliff edge and instantly die.

I agree with Satis that they did a really good job with the characters' stories (for now anyway). Definitely not as jaded as you Peltz. Satis, you're gonna love the underdark I think...it's very pretty, huge and quite dangerous, so be careful. But at level 5 I think you should be ok.

Hahaha @ that Shadowheart face....honestly, before I read what you wrote, I thought it was Lazeal with Shadowheart's haircut That's how weird it looks.

Btw the voice acting for the companions is top notch too. Especially Astarion is spot on.

I'm gonna have to take a break from playing for a day or 3 but looking forward to starting act 2 and being a monster.

Astarion gonna Astarion

Nice. Astarion is definitely a personality. I agree though, it does sound like there are an absolute ton of options, all kinds of crazy stuff you can do. I've been using talk to animals for a while, which can get you some interesting information and encounters. I more recently started using speak with dead, which is pretty interesting as well. I need to use that more often I think. I also recently got misty step on a couple of my characters... that skill is awesome. I can get my archer to high ground instantly, or get Astarion out of a bad situation.

I had started on the underdark at around level 3 and was doing ok until a bulette absolutely wrecked my party. I decided to come back later, which I now have. My first encounter with a bulette went in my favor, but I did have some help . Currently exploring the under dark and murdering stuff.