Enoch

There should be lots of in-City quests and XP still available, but I can't remember the degree to which following the main quest to Candlekeep cuts you off from that.

Same here. I found the gameplay elements emphasized by TotSC to be predominantly tedious. Way too much "creep forward 5 feet a at time and wait to detect traps," punctuated by an occasional "encounter difficult enough to more-or-less require cheese tactics." I've never gone more than 2 or 3 levels into the dungeony portion.

Maybe Bethesda wants to prolong the innocence of their baby before it's completely corrupted by deviants I think not. Bethesda releases games based on the presumption that the unpaid masses are going to finish it for them. ... with hentai-themed nude mods.

Isn't she the character who, if you get her talking a little, provides BG1's only mention of Jon Irenicus?

Gnolls are relatively low-XP, and that stronghold is tedious as hell. (Although, I also recall that one of the stat-boosting Tomes is down there.)

Look on the bright side-- it might turn out like the DA2 demo and save me $60!

I indeed would have loved that hammer. Carry it well, Deraldin. (Edit: Apart from the Basilisks, I recall that the Sirens on one of the far-west coastal maps are the other good source of mondo-XP this early in the game. Protect yourself from Charm spells, and they're quite low-threat.)

Indeed. (Anyhow, one of those rezzes shouldn't really count-- I paid for that out of my gambling winnings! And it's not like anybody else is volunteering to be a cleric.)

Thanks for the tips. I'm not very far along in Ch1 (haven't left town much at all). Although I imported my W1 save, so I've started with somewhat better equipment than the default.

That sounds like me in Arkham Asylum. There were apparently different combos, throws, takedowns, etc., that I could've been using, but I never really figured any of that out. In the end-boss sequence, I fat-fingered a few keys and somehow managed to pick a dude up to throw him for the first time (ostensibly at other opponents or environment hazards, I guess), and I had no freakin clue what was going on. Beyond that, the only things I needed to know were: 1) If there are gun-weilding dudes in a brawl-situation, they go down first; 2) Otherwise, take out the defenseless low-threat mooks first, while using the 'roll' function to avoid enemies with knives or a shock prod until you can focus solely on them; 3) if the going gets particularly tough, lay some explosive foam down for them to walk into. Edit: For my part, still early Chapter 1 in The Witcher 2. I'm at that familiar stage in a new-to-me RPG where there's a whole lot of stuff that I could buy, and I have a fair amount of cash to spend, but I have no idea how I should be prioritizing my purchases, so I'm sitting on all of it. My need to be efficient and to avoid wasting resources on books or recipes that I'm just going to stumble into, or upgrades to equipment that I'm going to find superior replacements for soon, tends to hold me back in games like this. (I also have no freaking clue how to do the arm-wrestling minigame-- none of the buttons I push appear to do anything at all.)

If I'm counting correctly, you don't need any help-- this should be the top post of p. 4. (Also, IIRC, that rogue cleric south of Beregost is the dude with the nice hammer. Probably one of the easier +2 weapons to get early in the game.)

Nice writeup, Tigs. Those fountains look sick, though. I recall there being a fix available for all the water showing up green. (Although that may have been for TuTu, rather than the BGTrilogy mod.) Also: Old? I'm only 32, dammit! That said, I call dibs on the Gauntlets of Dexterity, if I last that long.

Taking a break from my Shogun 2 campaign-- I just got through the Prologue of The Witcher 2. The Tutorial had me a bit scared regarding combat difficulty, but I decided to throw caution to the wind and start the game on Normal anyway. It's going fine so far-- haven't died once, thanks to plentiful Quenspam (and the "Difficult QTEs" option off). It takes me 5 minutes to beat a dude with a shield, but none of the encounters so far have been time-limited. The arena bit in the tutorial was tough mostly because it kept sending opponents in, so I couldn't take my time with them.

Somebody needs to refresh their recollection of AD&D 2E multiclassing. Because nobody else will volunteer for it, I suggest Enoch, the Lawful Neutral Priest of Helm. Somebody needs to keep you people in-line. With a hammer. If you're going with the more difficult tactical experience, feel free to twink him out with a few dual-classy fighter levels.

The In-Laws have left! Not that I don't generally like them, but a week is a looong time.

Actually, as I did pick up DE:HR in the aforementioned Amazon sale, but haven't gotten to playing it yet (thanks to Shogun 2, Frozen Synapse, and a strategy-gaming itch that needed scratching), I should ask: Is the DLC particularly worthwhile or indispensable?

In the U.S., at least, it was cheaper on Amazon last week ($9.99), as a download unlockable on Steam.

New Vegas is extra cheap today.

Should have taken the perk that allows you to fast travel even when over the weight limit. I only walked out with 3 gold bars. That was all that I could carry on my person without dropping anything else. Two to sell and one to keep as a souvenir. Why couldn't you just leave some excess stuff in the Bunker that starts the DLC, and come back for it later?

Well, I guess that's one way to get me to buy the GRA and pre-order pack DLCs...

And here I didn't think it was possible for you to be more English.

One of the better gift-giving "rules" I've seen is this: everybody gets either scotch or chocolate. Both can serve a very wide range of targeted price-points; it's pretty easy to figure out which people should get which; and most people would be very happy to receive at least one of the two. I've been over at my sister-in-law's house, where my wife's parents are staying. (They live in CA, while the S-i-L is only a half-hour's drive from here.) As I'm the only person in this crowd who generally enjoys cooking, I've spent a lot of time in the S-i-L's kitchen. Made some nice crabcakes this evening, with a pureed bell-pepper sauce. No better way to kiss up to the in-laws than to cook for them.

Yeah, I got And Yet It Moves in the last Humble Bundle (which I bought pretty much just for Crayon Physics) and haven't touched it yet. If I wasn't busy entertaining my in-laws, I'd probably be taking a look for the "Ooh, potential Free Stuff" factor. But it's a vicious cycle, as, in my experience, the Steam Gift Pile tends to give out inexpensive games that I'm unlikely to play. So far, I've won Lightfish (the video makes it look like good netbook fodder, but the system requirements are surprising) and Munch's Oddysee (which appears to be a 3D platformer, so I have zero interest). That said, Frozen Synapse has jumped to the top of my to-play list.

I bought it when it was $40-and-change as a daily deal in the Steam sale yesterday. Probably a mistake, given that I have plenty of other things to play at the moment and that I've already resolved to wait for further mod maturity before jumping in. But the game probably won't be widely available at that price for quite a while yet, and I might get the urge to go ElderScrolling in the interim, if Witcher2/ArkhamCity/Shogun2/DE:HR/FrozenSynapse fail to hold my attention.

So I just installed The Witcher 2 and played through the tutorial. **** is hard. Is there any reason not to play this game on 'easy'? (Also it struck me as odd that it auto-detected me for "low" settings on the PC I just built (i5-2500K; 560ti; 8GB RAM). Is the game known for a dodgy hardware query, or are the high settings just that high?)