try2handing

I bought the galleon when I got a strong impression that my party started to get strong no matter where I went. You know, there's usually a point in the game when you feel really confident in the overall power of your party, enough so that you wouldn't need to worry about walking 100 feet from a safe area. I played on Veteran but without level scaling, so the game started to feel really easy at some point quite early on for me. From a certain level enemies will start dropping exceptional gear. If your party are strong enough to fight these guys comfortably then just do one or two quests of that level and you'll get your money back in no time.

What happens? I suspect that little adventure of yours will end rather quickly. Possibly abruptly, too.

Perhaps, provided he can't quaff another potion of superior healing or pop a Spell Trigger with Mislead + Immunity Divination + Spell Deflection (or something along those lines) before you can actually finish him off. Next thing you know, it takes you another 3 minutes, 2 dead party members, 12 potions of extra healing, to finally get the guy's hp to 0.

Nope. I never, ever use or used Time Stop. There's just no need. Most 9th level spells are pretty useless, I would say. In fact, I have never even cast most of them. The ones I use are Spell Trap, Spellstrike and... that's it. Chain Contingency is good for creating fun combos. Black Blade of Disaster / Shapechange + backstab or Mind Flayer form's brain eating is good for the lol's, once in a while. And the occasional Gate or Wish for the added risk factor. I mean, the game is as fun as you choose to make it.

That has never been my problem because, 1) I stopped playing vanilla game after 1st playthrough, and 2) I adjust my spell usage so that it never boils down to who casts Time Stop first, so that there are OTHER things going on aside from Time Stop, so that I get FUN out of it. If everything a player does is doing everything just to cast Time Stop first, and he gets fun out of that, hey good for him. If he doesn't get any fun out of that, he's playing the game wrong, and it's a shame that he wouldn't bother to try and find ways to make things fun and exciting, since the game actually allows him to do that. If it's your 1st playthrough, you might play simply to win. From the 2nd playthrough onward, you play the game mostly to have fun.

Insect Plague type spells should not be subject to reflection. In terms of mechanics, they are like fireball - an aoe that won't center on a single target even if you actually click on it. You fight wizards with wizards if you want a badass duel with counters after counters, with you and the enemy taking turn countering each other round after round. For me this is a source of great joy in BG2 combat. The fun is not in "to kill enemies", but in the HOW. There was one time I did a 2v2 duel with Edwin and Aerie against 2 liches. Now THAT was some good fun. Or, I could've just backstabbed them both the moment they spawned, instantly killing them. But that would be lame as hell. Shame most players these days don't bother with the whole "style" thing.

It's just one of the elements thrown in to keep the sea traveling bit from getting too dull. It wasn't meant to be any deep moral dilemma. As such, there isn't much point in contemplating about it. It's little more than killing for money, a mercenary kind of job. From the role-playing PoV, you take the job if your character is the type that doesn't really care who lives or who dies as long as you make some profit. You don't do it if you're not that type. From the gameplay PoV, OF COURSE you do it cause why the hell not.

This is why BG2 needs to be played with Spell Revisions and Item Revisions. Some stuff are outright ridiculous in the vanilla game. Insect Plague, Kachiko's Wakizashi, Cloak of Mirroring, Project Image, PW Blind, Horrid Wilting, Carsomyr,... oof.

You could try switching between Full Screen/Windowed/Borderless Windowed first then try again with Print Screen. FRAPS is easy to get and to use. If you launch the game using GOG Client, F12 is the shortcut to take screenshot by default. Screenshots are stored in C:\Users\[Your User Name]\Documents\GOGGalaxy\Screenshots\. Or if you manage to activate NVIDA's ShadowPlay, the shortcut to capture screenshot is Alt+F1 by default.

The fighter can be decently fun when he's not a full tank. When I first got Serafen and gave him a Barbarian build relying on crit damage and damage increase at low health, it was fun. Let him get to low health then threw Barring Death's Door on him...mmmm. It was one of the few times that I actually got a strong sense of "having a legit AND fun build". But that was before I started to out-level everyone and things got somewhat less exciting.

It's not so much "disable it" but rather "avoid the worst of it". If your ship has faster movement rate, you can simply turn around and keep running away until you get out of ship combat (once the distance hits 600, IIRC). Or, do the opposite. Head straight toward the enemy ship by spamming option #1 every turn. When the other ship is within your range you can board them, and have yourself some good oldschool party-based brawl. Unless the enemy crew has overwhelming power, you should at least have a more pleasant time fighting them this way. Just make sure to recruit party members, equip them with decent equipment and level them properly. Or, you don't even have to manually rush at the enemy ship. Just select option #2 "Close to Board" when the ship combat starts. It does the charging part automatically for you. Your ship and crew will suffer damage - more than if you do this manually. Just don't do this too often in a short time, cause the ship and crew need time to recover. All in all, it's not THAT bad, though. Take it slow, recruit crew members, upgrade your ship, the ship combat will eventually get pretty fun.

Basically: "You'll finish it if you keep playing it. Sooner or later."

Do tell...sounds juicy *rubs hands* As Manveru said. I'd rather not give away too much spoiler. To be fair, by the time you get to the end of the expansion, your party are all godlike (without any cheese). But I'd understand if you dislike the idea itself, regardless of the difficulty issue. Would've been nice if the mod had given you the option to not install the final fight, because aside from that, it does add some nice things here and there, and fixes a few other things too. Just make sure you read through the Readme if you consider installing it.

The old game or the Enhanced Edition? The EE retains too many problems from original game for my taste but the new companions and their quests are still nice. The combat in the new content takes after the AI mods for the vanilla game, so it's much more enjoyable than vanilla combat.You should play with some of the more essential mods. They greatly improve the experience IMO. EE. Which mods are essential? - BG2 fixpack - Tweak pack (now The Tweaks Anthology) - Unfinished Business - Spell Revisions - Item Revisions - Ascension - Strategems These are a few that I like to have personally. The Fixpack fixes a wide range of bugs remaining in the official release of the game. I believe the EE already incorporated a number of its own bug fixes, but it probably didn't cover everything the Fixpack does. The Tweaks Anthology adds some QoL features and numerous other things that seek to improve the overall experience. Unfinished Business restores a number of contents that were cut from final release. Most of them are just some extra cool things here and there. Ascension was made by David Gaider, a designer of the game. His mod expands the story a little bit, adding more options to dialog. It basically tries to rectify the fact that too many things were cut from the final release of the expansion. As he put it, the mod tries to make the expansion "a little more fulfilling". It totally changes the final fight though, making it a lot harder, and some people don't like that, from what I've heard. Spell Revisions and Item Revisions seek to improve the overall balance of the game by tweaking spells and items. IMO they do an amazing job at that. They nerf or completely change things that were blatantly overpowered and easy to abuse, and buff things that were underpowered. The idea is that every item with a unique name should have something actually unique about it, not just having 1 or 2 point more in damage and to hit compared to a normal item. The net result is that combat has more depth and items/spells are more fun to use. Strategems is an AI mod that seeks to improve pretty much every single enemy you encounter in the game. At the very least, everyone will be smarter and their combat tactics make a lot more sense. They can anticipate a number of moves players might pull and react accordingly in a reasonably smart manner. Combat in general will be harder and in some instances a whole lot harder. The main idea is to keep combat challenging but fair though, rather than use some ridiculous tactics just to kill you. Spell Revisions and Item Revisions already adjust the AI to account for the changes in spells and items though, so if you're not keen on simply having harder combat, you can skip this one.

The old game or the Enhanced Edition? The EE retains too many problems from original game for my taste but the new companions and their quests are still nice. The combat in the new content takes after the AI mods for the vanilla game, so it's much more enjoyable than vanilla combat. You should play with some of the more essential mods. They greatly improve the experience IMO.