Tale

Baldur's Gate II I am now a victim of betrayal most foul. Curse my trusting nature, I say! What could possibly have possessed me to bring that character along even though I never used him at any other point. I'm certain things would have gone differently if I had not. I art the fool.

The old Star Wars EU operated on a tier system. Movies, television, everything else, and then a few more items to be totally disregarded, like SWG. In that order. The only "fully canonized" level of that was the movie one, known as G-canon. Telvision (T-canon) seemed to be pretty close. But the stuff below that was disregarded with wild abandon. The fun thing here is the T-canon raised a few elements of lower canon. The Dark Sun and Falleen appeared in The Clone Wars. The cartoon almost had an appearance by Revan, in fact, but it was scrapped. George Lucas never cared about the EU. And you don't have to look any further than his stance on cortosis to see that. Doesn't exist anywhere in the movies, doesn't exist in the cartoons, but the EU was built on the stuff. They tried including it in the cartoon and Lucas told them no.

Oh, just because I have 17 reputation I'm suddenly too good for you, Dorn. Jerk. I just want to kill someone to lower my reputation. And I know if you point them out for me they won't be related to another quest. It's win/win, buddy.

Right now, officially, the only things considered canon in Star Wars are the films and the upcoming products, IIRC. EU stuff was never canon to begin with. It was just EU stuff. I think lots of people, myself included, entertained other delusions back before the prequels came out, but once they did, Lucas was making it clear. He didn't care about the EU. Note that prior to the prequels, everyone thought that dark side users would explode on death because Palpatine did. And that the Clone Wars were fought against crazed clones. And Boba Fett has like three origin stories. The big change that occurred with the EU recently is that no more EU stories are being produced. the prequels are based on novels from what i ve heard, and for some reason, they kept out of the movies all the parts that were relevant to a sensible plot for example the escape from naboo in the first movie, was supposed to be done by hiding the ship in the sensor shadow of an enemy cargo ship and sneaking past. in the movie to make it more spectacular, they made a frontal assault and then ran for it Someone was lying to you.

Bungie just made Destiny for both consoles, so I'm not sure what their relationship is with Microsoft anymore. The new Halo (and the last Halo as well as Anniversary) aren't made by Bungie.

This is actually only my second full-run of BG2. Lots of stuff I remember still, especially the frustrating bits (you want me to fight two stone golems and a clay at the same time with only two people that can hit them, what?!). For everything else there's Jan Jansen, who I never used before.

Perhaps, but the druid spells, man! Ain't no party like a druid party in IWD. Baldur's Gate gives me a bad taste for Druids. Jaheira's fine as a character, but her weapon proficiencies are pure crap. I'm sporting +2/3 daggers at this point in BG 2 and she's got a +1 scimitar. I think the first time I played through Throne of Bhaal, I might have finally found her a +2 club.

It is every citizen's responsibilty to protect glorious Arstotzka from terrorism. To deny this is treason.

I think I've settled on a party composition for IWD. Throwing a bunch of eccentric characters I've played over the years into one party. First up are my converted 4e characters. The brother-sister Paladin-Warlock Sorcerer Mage team. They're Tieflings Drow a human and a half-elf, because blasted elves can't be Paladins. The Kobold Gnome Warlord Fighter. The only time in my history of RPGs I've used spears. The party thief originated in Neverwinter Nights as my booksmart rogue. Originally built like a mage by focusing on skill points and UMD, now he's just a pretty standard thief with some pointless stats. Filling the last two spots are a token cleric and a mage/fighter. I need a healer and a mage with two-hander swords sounds more interesting than a ranger or Barbarian.

I started up Icewind Dale just to create my party and I can't believe how spoiled I've been by EE and Tutu. No sorcerer? No style proficiency? You're throwing me off my game here, people!

Thread is past the limit, let's move to a new one. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68476-discussion-the-poe-beta-xp-system/

It was a prostitute's shawl. It's easily possible that Kominski was a John, but not the killer.

Old thread. Am I right in that the discussion has turned into "what is a gamer?" Well alrighty then. I always fancied the idea that a "gamer" was anyone who engaged with the gaming subculture. They visit forums or chat about games with other people. But I was never married to it. And I think I'm missing the context everyone's involved in there.

New thread.

I got the collector's edition for the first game. It came with a batarang, which was a hunk of scratched up plastic permanently attached to a badly balanced stand that kept falling forward. Never again.

Powered through a lot of BG2: EE and still have so much left to do. I hit Haer'Dalis and Keldorn's introductions in particular and have to say that I miss the spectacle these games are giving me. Visiting other worlds and lost underground temples. What do the fancy 3D RPGs have? Long tunnels of the same texture? Blah I say!

I liked it up through Brotherhood.

I hate the planar sphere, but it's a love-hate thing. I simply love planehopping, visiting new and crazy worlds, with feral halflings and demons, fighting tough monsters. But you're locked inside and I have so many bad memories of running into enemies I don't have the equipment to defeat. Things are going better this time since I know to expect it, something I didn't the last two times. And the only character who is struggling to fight is Jaheira, because a +1 scimitar isn't cutting it, and +2 scimitars are rare as heck.

I'm doing quests in Baldur's Gate 2 simply in the order that will get them to stop griping at me. I think I'll grab Keldorn and do his little graveyard quest, the second I step out of the Copper Coronet, Minsc complains for the third time that I haven't investigated Umar Hills. And immediately after that, Keldorn who has only just joined the group so I could do his graveyard quest, complains that I'm not hunting down Valygar. Get off my back, people!

It's definitely not an issue of bisexuality, because the heterosexual Ashley in Mass Effect did that to me. I have to echo that it seems Bioware romances are treated as the default interactions, because when I finally managed to turn Ashley down, this somehow turned on the Liara romance, and when I turned that one down, it turned Ashley back on. The nuclear option was required.

Max finally came home yesterday and on a related note, $2,000 left home. He's loaded up on 8 medications, I'm not sure if that includes the prescription food or not. Some of which require three times a day so I have to take an hour off work in the middle of the day to give it to him. Which isn't really a problem for me. The scary thing is that if he hadn't been throwing up that one day, I never would have known anything was wrong. And unless he starts throwing up again, I still won't.

And that's why I never memorize lightning bolt. Ever.

The reasoning would be that they're basically right, because all of the mages in the game do turn out to be abominations or madmen. Except the sibling. In the attempt to make everyone seem like they had a good argument, they went too far in justifying their worst accusations.

There are weapons that can kill Karoug. A couple of Bastard Sword +1/+3 v Shapeshifters are in the game and the second one is in Ulgoth's Beard. Adding a second sword to the game with the expansion and placing it in Ulgoths Beard is basically saying, you need this sword. I did find it odd that there was a second sword since I already had it for one of my characters, but realised it might be useful against werewolves later on. Even if you didn't find the second one in Ulgoths Beard by raiding one of the houses, you should have picked up the first one earlier in the game (Cloakwood or Baldur's Gate City depending on who you sided with in Cloakwood). The name of the bastard sword gives you a hint it'll probably be effective against werewolves since it has a bonus against shapeshifters. The bastard sword in Ulgoth's Beard is in the room immediately after the Greater Werewolf fight. And I've never heard about there being another on the island. You can know the dagger can hurt him just fine and it's shortly before the fight, but that alone won't give you the DPS to beat him. Even three backup mages with magic missile can run out before it dies, especially if you use any on other werewolves with him. They need to update BG2:EE to 1.3, I find myself missing some features of BG:EE. The quickloot is slightly better, tabbing tells you the names of all visible characters so you don't have to hover over them individually, and learnable spells have a green hue.

It's unreasonable to expect anyone to be prepared for the Greater Werewolf fight at first shot without reading up on it. It regenerates too fast and is immune to anything but a small dagger from a previous room and a sword from the next one. Unless you've b0een stocking up on missile wands or explore connected rooms in the middle of fights, you won't have the DPS to outdo his regeneration. People will be lucky to even realize it's regenerating before they've wasted a good portion of their attack spells. The demon's a bit better, but if you let him respawn even once, it's pretty much over. And there's not much reason to realize he will do that.