IndiraLightfoot

cRichards: Please make the clickable area for the transition bigger. As it is now, you need to click the round icon specifically. It would be nice if it was a bigger click-trigger (the rest invisible, of course). EDIT: And if I may, I'll reiterate my suggestion of making more standard icons like that, so we don't get to see a door when we click on the ogre cave, for instance.

I second this. I'm playing BGEE right now, and that function is part of the very backbone of the action UI, so please leave it be, OE.

2 Mirtul, 1368, in the words of Indira Lightfoot: ”We made sure that the agitated guard was gone, and then we rested at Candlekeep Inn, the very place I had looted. The only resourceful watcher in the keep told me about his cousin’s letter. Iron shortage is striking the south hard, it seems. I was trying to follow up on that, but couldn’t, because those awful seagulls shrieking all the time. The only words I wedged in were: ’Use them filthy birds for moving target practice. You sure could use the archery skill improvement. By the way; we need money. Need any help?’. Then I went inside the barracks, after he muttered something about Fuller having missed so many times that he needed more crossbow bolts.” ”We had an idea where those bolts could be, but no sooner had we left the barracks when I saw some coins glittering in a water barrel. Nice! However, the gatewarden didn’t think that it was a worthy pursuit, and said we’d better pay Gorion a visit instead. He had been asking for us. Gah! We’re not his little helpers. Unfortunately, our three little dwarves think we are Reevor’s servants instead. Anarchon insisted that we should help him kill rats. Poker’s eyes widened just by the prospect of it, so we had no choice.” ”Why didn’t those two spoiled fat-cats in there just eat them? Something’s weird with those felines. And 5 gp for that? I’ll let you meet Moradin’s hammerfall in your sleep, next time, Reevor. And Phlydia and Dreppin really ought to deepen their relationship, instead of keeping hiding books in hay, instead of rolling in it. And, really, his cow is sick again? I tell you what made him sick. It’s them two playing farmer and wife, and speaking of such drab couples. A nobleman treatened me with Candlekeep’s constabulary if I discussed trinkets with his wife yet again. How adorable!” ”For the third time, we went back to that forsaken inn, this time to look in every nook and cranny for some bolts for Fuller. Poker was juggling Anarcons warhammer, forgetting it’s not the same thing as his light one-handed axe, and wouldn’t you know it? It hit that whimsical elf Firebead right in the knee, and he got surprisingly mad for being an elf, almost as raging as Furia. Anarcon managed to smooth things over, thankfully, but Winthrop wasn’t helping with his ’his hit’s clean as an elven arse’.” ”We were to look for them bolts in the bunkhouse, or so we thought, because another shankman assualted us without qualms. Great outlook on life, that. Furia got a huge gash over her hip, and wasn’t happy, upon which Tulippa uttered with the saddest of timings: ”Don’t worry about me.” She is demented. Well, at least her magic missiles made short work of Garbos. What genuine man has his name embroided on his collar? Fishy fellow.” ”After Sparkur healed our over-heated Furia, we went to the sick house, and Tulippa managed to flirt her way to a free potion. That priest of Oghma is like wax in her hands. Oh, and Karan barged in and said that there are people in Candlekeep set on killing me. Yeah? No kidding! Give me new tidings. When Karan left, I took the opportunity to open the priest’s safe drawer and steal another potion.” ”Outside, Imoen, that pesky child that always gets under my skin ran up to me, and I told her to do Winthrop’s beds instead. She called me a ’rumduke,’ though. She’s witty, I’ll give her that. Then the old fool Gorion got hold of me, and said that I should pack immediately and leave. Our lives are out stake. But first he reckoned that it was a good idea to get some equipment from Winthrop. That’s when I realized that I could buy new bolts for Fuller there.” ”Said and done. After using up all our booty for some new weapons, and of course, one expensive piece of armour. Anarcon got his way and had a nice chain mail all by himself, whereas we get to arm our bodies with sack-cloth. At least, Fuller was happy for the bolts. He didn’t notice they were different than the ones he lost, after I’d dipped them into one of those barrels the Gatewarden hate and then scraped them along the garden wall.” ”Gorion ushered us out on the eve, but we didn’t get far into the night. Some frightening armoured man had his eyes set on me. He called me a mere ’ward’ that he wanted handed over, like a commodity. His ogre minions were mean beasts, and a wizard shot a quick spell at me, almost ripping off my shoulder in the process. Gorion screamed at me, while he was keeping this motley crew at bay, telling me that I should flee. At that point, I was already leaving him to his fate.” ”My little gang hunkered in the bushes, as if peeing, and we sat silently like that for hours, until birds started to chirp and Imoen snuck up and demanded to join our band. I told her to go back to Winthrop, and be his hotel keeper, while the three dwarves couldn’t stop sniggering, and she was very upset, thinking we’d been friends all this time. I only said that over the years so that I could get her to steal things for me when I didn’t have the time. Sad, really. Friendly Arm Inn, Jaheira and Khaleid. No thanks! If they were Gorion’s friends, I’ll stay miles and miles away from that place.”

Deep wounds, Poison and other DOTs should be transformed into diminishing returns over time (preferably pretty quick). Right now, they can cause a lot of pain, especially if some of your party members get cornered somewhere crammed.

Heh! I thought this was on purpose, some drunk adventurer had to take a leak and forgot his tools there.

I’ve just started a new playthrough of BG1. Except for trying out the BGEE a few hours at launch, when it was very buggy. it has been several years since I played it. I spent a good two hours or so creating my party for this playthrough, using the core rules, normal difficulty. I knew I wanted to do a different playthrough, so for the very first time, I’ve made up a party of all ”madmen and maniacs”, in essence, of Chaotic Neutral alignment, according to BGEE, ”the most difficult alignment to play”. I needed a roleplaying challenge. Since I know most companions anyway, I rolled up a full party from the get-go by picking multiplayer. So, what would fit a CN-party (well one char is actually NE)? What kind of roleplaying? My immediate thought was a party that don’t care much for people or their property. So, I went with a band of sneaky thugs and spell slingers, all interested in stealing pretty much anything and burning gold pieces like it was firewood. So, these guys are crazy, to be sure, but they are still smart and clever when it comes to their own selfish goals, riding roughshod over any law and reasonable decency. There will be blood, and this band of adventurers will hardly notice it. However, with one exception, they are not actually the forebearers of wisdom and charisma. In order to haul all this loot, I’ve made them strong too. Their leader is obsessed with objects and breaking and entering. She also loves a good sword fight, preferrably with a long sword in each hand: Indira Lightfoot, the human swashbuckler. She’s accompanied by three dwarves: -Sparkur, a NE priest of Talos, lover of storms and mayhem. He only heals those in Indira’s gang because he sees them all as a vehicle for his service to Talos. His wisdom and ambition makes him the grey eminence, the real leader behind Indira, pulling strings. He loves the mace and shield setup. -Anarcon, a charismatic fighter-wizard slayer, a hater of mages and book-readers, including libraries like that in Candlekeep. With his warhammer and crossbow he’s out to eradicate those elements in favour of ale, stonework and piling glittering hoards to defend. -Poker Swiftshaven, another fighter-wizard slayer, basically just Anarchon’s right-hand man. Poker lacks all charisma and wisdom, but he’s strong as an ox, and can keep on going for hundred miles. He’s obsessed with his onehanded axe. He uses it like a knife, really. He eats with it, and he uses it to do Anarcon’s biddings. As things would have it, Anarchon, has managed to enroll two Elven sorcerers in his quest to kill all mages and sages. And they both share his passion for bashing in top hat spectacles with a vengeance: -Tulippa, the sorcerer. She has cold and suave. She’s almost systematic in her unique approach to body language. She slides over floors, like some floating apparition. And she has this thing for herbalism and plants, and sometimes even potions. Her only weapon is a set of darts, which she’s decent at, but no more. -Furia, the dragon disciple. She says that she has dragon blood coarsing through her veins, but nobody believes her. She’s taken for a weird scorceress with a temper, throwing tantrums now and then, that’s all. Like Tulippa, her only weapon is a bunch of decently aimed darts. She’s eager to prove everyone wrong, that she didn’t pick up fire-breathing at some roadshow. In the words of Indira Lightfoot: ”Our adventure had already started when we decided that Candlekeep was the foulest place in the entire world. Everything about it was futile, except one or two items, of course. It’s not exactly like they use their things for anyting, anyway. So, I decided to relieve them of a few items. I told my party to remain downstairs in Candlekeep Inn, occupying patrons there, and that stupid innkeeper, while I went upstairs for some well-deserved enrichment. Two guests were asleep in the first two rooms, so those were easy pickings, even the locked drawer." "Then I snuck deeper in, but it was far too light for my liking. I failed to hide in shadows, and to make matters worse, in one of the rooms, the lock was jammed. Even with an old lockpick, it was useless. Then I stepped into a room, where a seemingly wealthy, but banal, individual, was pondering over something insignificant. It didn’t say much. In fact, he even had a hard time looking me in the eye. So, once when he looked away, I sneezed in order to misdirect him, and managed to pick the lock to his chest. He didn’t notice, he just stood there." "Next time his glance wandered off, I opened the lid and helped myself to a ring and a pouch full of gold, but now he did see me, and began howling like a pierced pig. I rushed for the stairs with my new ”findings”, only to meet a watchmen on the landing. He growled ”halt!”, but I swept passed him in my black clothing and hood, unrecognizable. When I came down into the tavern, the rest of my party knew that time was of the essence, so we bid farewell in haste and left the sorry excuse for an inn.” In the words of Sparkur: ”Our thieving madwoman for a leader was done cleaning out that awful establishment, so I suggested going over to the priest quarters. We had guards passing us, not knowing of our unlawful deeds just a minute ago. Everywhere, there are men in robes that claim to be offering us tuition, but they are nothing but fools, pawns in a power game they’ve already lost. I shouldered one of those fellows so hard, he’ll wake up with a bad bruise on the morrow. One of the cows we passed dropped some dung while we passed it, so I repaid it in kind and flicked a booger onto its beady eye. It mooed in frustration. I ushered everybody inside the priest house, when disaster struck! A lackey stepped out of the shadows." "Furia told him to leave us be, as we had more pressing concerns, and she meant it. He tried to shock us with his declaration of his intention of killing us, but we already knew that, and began arranging for his swift demise in earnest. Furia cast sleep, Tulippa a magic missile, and I went for my beloved bolt of lightning. Our magic users both did what they should, and the shankman went down, and Anarcon struck him in the head with is staff. Unofortunately, at the same time my lightning bolt ran him through, and then it was reflected against the opposite wall at a very bad angle, so it came back at us in an instance." "Next thing I know, I woke up at the temple of Oghma, and I saw the rest of my party get revived, one by one. If it hadn’t been for the unwordly quick Indira - How she managed to escape all that electricity I’ll never know - we’d all been dead for good by now. Almost all our stolen gold went down the drain for paying the stingy priest, though. I suppose I owe Lightfoot for this. Some adventurers we are. So far, we’re just a bunch of unlucky sods.” I hope you enjoyed it, and this is actually what happened, for real, pretty hilarious. You don't get a worse start than this!

No time for enemy pictures, sorry.

My impressions after over three hours of mostly combat and exploring in Dyrford Crossing and then down in the Ruins below, which I almost cleared. I played on Easy, and really tried to use all the characters various abilities. I picked a cipher for my main. Thumbs up for: -More visible character models/critter models. They don't look like ghosts no more, but I still think they can be a bit clearer yet. -All the art, all the new icons. Fantastic. -Most of the sounds and the music, still top notch (except some spell effects and those whining arrows/bolts). -I managed to complete quests for the first time and level up once. Yay! But that sound when levelling. Help! Also, the screen blinks after levelling. -No more overlapping marker circles, and no more dog-piling, thank god. -The cipher. I had loads of fun with it. Great class! Thumbs down for: -Combat sometimes take far too long, with too much swish-swooshing. Some enemies, seemingly normal down in the ruins, took a beating for 20 minutes, and they still stood up fighting. Similarly, my party took their beating on them for that long. Utterly bizarre, It's like the game has 1,000 hp on critters, and each hit lands 1 in damage. I swapped all kinds of weapons, slashing, crushing, used all spells. It barely made a difference. One fight, I just had to leave out of sheer boredom. -The marker circles have turned rigid, and they don't shuffle, so exploring in crammed dungeons and in interiors are hell right now. -The loot. Some of it is random, but still nearly nothing was useful for my party after several hours of combat, that's really bad. -Deep wounds (too fast, and hard to counter intuitively), obviously not as deadly as before, but if you get locked in some tight corner, it will be. It caused my first death, at least, which was fun. -Fighters are still boring compared to all the rest. The priest and the wizard, even the rogue, are like oodles of fun in comparison. -Something is still wonky with locks, using Mechanics and lockpicks. It's not at all reliable. -The inventory UI and the shaky picking up of items are making less and less of an impression. I'd love to see such stuff improved. -Some of the lighting and eye vision is weird. I had an Amauan walk in a dark pool of water with beetles in a cave. I have no problem with it being dark there, but shouldn't that character be able to see it? Is such a vision system even in yet? Hmm.

A number of guards in Dyrford Ruins are named "*missing string*" - it also shows up in the combat log.

Varying sizes of letters in the word ”Loading” is still there on loading screens, for instance.

See title of this thread.

I can confirm this as well.

I was moving lockpicks between two party member inventories, and then I tried putting them as a quick item. I got a message "system error", IIRC, and then when I was putting them back in the inventory, the numbers had been reduced by two, and they couldn't be found elsewhere, in any invo, or stash, or on the floor.

Yes. I can confirm this with stone beetles as well.

Crossbow bolts flying, as well as arrows, sound like birds whistling. It’s too shrill and too monotonous. It needs at least three alternate sounds each.

As a cipher I invested in mechanics and athletics. I levelled her up to level 5. It all worked fine in the village. I opened a chest with high mechanics and all. And I had lore for something in a dialogue and it worked fine. But in the ruins under the stone slab in Dyrford Crossing, all of her talents stats suddenly got lowered big time: Lore 1, Athletics 5, Mechanics 4… She had like 7, 15, and 10 in these before! And it says ”(base)” after it.

The cipher has an angel icon to the right of the rest of the ability icons. It gives me no info when moused over, and when clicked on, it does nothing. It doesn’t show up in the combat log. It can't be activated. What is it?

Consecrated ground has a nagging tingly sound that I’d prefer gone. Inderdiction sizzles equally annoyingly.

I was in Dyrford Ruins, fighting the two guards and a cultist just outside the apparatus room. I was playing on Easy. I had a party of six, and overall, I reckon, fights had taken longer this time around, with a lot of swish-swooshing (grazing, non-effective weapon messages, etc). As an aside: The misses in D&D IE games pale in comparison to the near-misses in V278. It makes the fights über-boring. Well, the fight took far, far too long. 20 minutes, and thw two guards were still standing, one injured and one badly injured. I got tired of it all, and ordered my entire party to just leave in the midst of combat. Said and done. Unfortunately, pathfinding issues had the two guards trapping the BB wizard, and they slaughtered him. He didn't just die. He was gone, portrait and all. Ouch! Well, I kept ordering my party to leave those near-invincible two guards, but they caught up with the BB rogue, and killed her too. However, she didn't die and get eradicated. She just kept on coming back from the dead. I counted to 22 times! I had her use escape, but they always caught up and killed her. Her health was 10, and stamina 1, for each new life she got. The 23rd time she actually died like the BB wizard, for good, and her portrait was gone. The remainder of my party reached the exit and went up to the Dyrford crossing. Most stuff looked OK, except for a pointer icon, saying that the BB fighter was off somewhere else, while he was not. He was in my party walking to the compass card area transition. Then I used the map to reach the village. Heh! Then my main character was gone. No trace of her!!! The rest of my party walked around, all BB party members, and they could talk to NPCs and interact. Everythingwas normal besides the pointer icon that said the BB fighter was off somewhere else. This is the most bizarre bug so far for me.

Indeed! I died for the first time during this beta, (nice I got to see the death screen. Yay!) due too deep wounds (still hate it!) and pathfinding in a crammed space, making my party get locked in by cultists in Dyrford Ruins. Well, they died, to cut the story short. Funnily enough, the party all begins to rise from the dead in three seconds, before the death screen popped up. It certainly raised some hopes. However, after death, my party had its weapons and shields from the inventory following them, like little pets!!! And this went on even when I moved in-between areas, like for hours! Wherever I went, my weapons went with me. It's a load game issue, to be sure.

I've played the beta for over three hours, mostly in combat and exploring, and I can say this pathfinding issue is a major thing. The rings around characters/npcs/enemies don't shuffle away appropriately when you give an order to a specific character, so must stuff in the game becomes blocked or only available after major move-arounds of the party or the poor enemies.

I think they are very aware of that and I think that they regret immensely not being clearer during their KS. Then again they wouldn't have made as much of the KS if Josh was upfront about his feelings on BG and what he wanted to change. Time will show if they made a mistake with how they handled the KS. Definitely agree with this. Helm might blow things out of proportion a lot of the time but I just think he's a very, very, VERY big fan of the IE games and maybe BG in general which would reflect my own feelings on the matter. He's a really passionate guy and likely doesn't want Obsidian Entertainment to screw this game up so he LOUDLY proclaims what he deems is wrong with said game. I agree with some of his sentiments. Obsidian damn well better have known what they were getting into with that kickstarter. They didn't promise just a really good game that sorta resembles the IE games. No, they promised a spiritual successor to them. Yes, a successor to what was perhaps considered by many a golden age of crpgs. No pressure there Obsidian no pressure at all and yet every interview I hear or see there doesn't actually seem to be any with perhaps the exception of Feargus who basically said "we will see." What I do see is a game that's sort of based off the IE games yet hits me with none of the nostalgia of them. Close to everything is incredibly different from what I remember. I see some of the elements of them hidden away in the back but they certainly aren't at the forefront and instead I see degenerate game systems in place that remind me that I may never get that experience I once had (Josh might dislike degenerate gameplay but i loathe degenerate game systems). Only time will tell if this thing ends up being the "successor" or not. In a nutshell, a hard nutshell!

khermann: Your post right there would fit right in under the "Do they even listen"-thread right now, just saying.

Yeah. Some of it wasn't clear enough, at least, or it should have been clarified ASAP. When stuff like that gets left hanging, strange things happen when dreams and expectations all of the sudden collide with reality and concrete design decisions.

I can't argue with that. And knowing Helm, he's intensely aware of that fact. Still, lots of things happen in the last months of a CRPG. Just take a look at D:OS. The amount of systemic changes made during a similar timespan was staggering. Bluntly put: If OE doesn't deliver what many of their backers had hoped for, they have failed their Kickstarter vision, and that will bite them in the rears big time.