Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear

2016-04-13 08:06:05 pm

The game has been out for a bit, so I think its about time a thread was opened on it. This is definitely a rougher undertaking than the last couple of EE runs as they've made it in Infinity Engine 2.0, which takes away a lot of the exploits that were used in previous ventures. Out of all the old exploits used, only poly-porting seems to work, and only helps with speed at one point in the game (Chapter 9). Cutscene breaking is still possible, but as I said, the scripts are really rigid and end up softlocking the game (the Skie cutscene is a perfect example of this), but most cutscenes can be skipped by pressing escape now, so that's an improvement. This run is going to be pretty vanilla unless things get cracked soon, but I've had little luck in my own searching.

I've been toying around with a route. I think that like the original BG run, F/M/T is the best choice here, as combat is pretty much unavoidable late into the game. Doubled up with the lack of higher level spells, we cant be creative and have to rely on tried and true backstabbing and buffs. Still, to skip chapter 9 we need arcane spells, so F/M/T ends up ahead in my book. Base spells dont really matter, just Find Familiar, Identify, Knock, Mirror Image and Haste will take you through the whole game. Need to get a lot of pickpocket in order to afford everything you need in the late game, so get it up to around 145, rest in hide in shadows. Nice thing about FMT is we start with the gauntlets of ogre strength, so get minimum strength with the rest in dex, con (16) and charisma (there seem to be a lot of checks, but I cant get near infinity to work to check the dialog strings for some reason). 2 stars in Long Sword, 2 in Single Weapon and 1 in short bow, this sets you up with decent equipment (Varscona +2) that lasts until the final battle.

Now a brief chapter outline (Except for 10 which has a ton of shopping)

Epilogue (of BG1): Take the valuable items from everyone, equip the 3 invis potions and the necklace of missles, use Dynaheir to haste, boot everyone before talking to the first guy (charisma check to skip fight). Head to second floor, open the door to the boss, rest for 16 hours (removes her stone skin). Cast haste on yourself, invis pot and backstab the main mage (CHR check to end combat), grab the oil of speed on her desk before leaving.

Chapter 7: Use the oil of speed, grab items worth around 15000 gold from the chest, kill the assassins and then head downstairs. Instead of leaving immediately, go to the Elfsong Inn district, get the glasses from the hippie guy and then head to Sorcerer's Sundries and buy 25 arrows of det, all the oils of speed and invis pots, 1x master thievery, 1x perception, and one scroll of polymorph self. Go back to the ducal palace and end the chapter.

Chapter 8: Haste your way to the upper right, getting Edwin to rob him of his wand of monster summoning, remove him afterwords. Trigger the cutscene, hide during the battle (around the corner behind the tent) and take the opportunity to summon your familiar. After all the dialogue head back to camp and end the chapter by going east.

Chapter 9:

Chapter 10: Longest one. Use the goggles and get the genie merchant. If you have around 200% pickpockets you wont fail to steal his stuff. Sell everything you have, and steal everything of value (Balduran Cloak/Helm, etc). The ring he has is pretty good, and so is the necklace, so use both of those. The hat and the sword give +3 movement speed so equip those for the long running sections. Once all of this is done, head to the fence, sell everything you wont use and buy all of his invis potions, and the exploding arrows. Go to the provisioner, get his potion bag, buy all the invis potions, oils of speed, heroism pots, power pots, invulnerablity pots, clarity pots, storm giant potion, cloud giant potion and his stoneskin scrolls. Talk to the commanders, rest near the dwarf to get the bwoosh faster (saves a TON of det arrows later), head to the eastern map and leave immediately to the left to go to the underground cavern map. Attack the guards near the fort to get a fight going and move them out of place, pop an invis pot and head into the cavern. In the cavern, place the bwoosh and then use knock on the door at the northwest, sneak past the guards (have to go into melee range to make them move) and head up. Just backstab Hepheraan and then go back to camp once the mission has triggered. After the meeting, grab Corwin and give her 15 det arrows. Pop your oils of speed before the fight starts and choose the archers first, wizard slayers second and assassins third. The strategy is pretty simple, just use det arrows until everyone is dead, but only use 3 each max. Between waves, leave the MC near the fire and grab shit with Corwin On the final wave, there is one person who is slightly out of visual sight of the Orok, you can have the MC and Corwin unload det arrows on him and skip all the dialogue and the annoying sanctuary spell the Orok casts. Keep Corwin after this part.

Chapter 11: If the Bwoosh was in place, the front gate will blow up. Send corwin to the inner gates and have the MC rush to the angel. Accept the 1 on 1 combat and backstab her. She should die in 2 or 3 hits, but if you want to be sure get a fire giant strength potion or an oracle scroll to combat her sanctuary. Head into the castle, cutscenes and end.

Chapter 12: Run past the first screen. On the second screen use some of the det arrows to kill the annoying invis spotting demons, then simply backstab the rest. Once the demon summons his boys near the gate, attack the 2nd from the right with the rest of the det arrows, then kill the stragglers with backstabs. Get the +3 Longsword from the demon and head into the elevator room and rest. While you're going up the elevator, use the various potions to buff yourself while killing the demons that spawn. On the top floor get Caelar to join your party and give her the potions (give her the storm giant one) as well. As a general rule you can just kite the boss if you need to heal with potions, otherwise try to have the MC tank with stoneskin (Caelar is a level 15 fighter and pretty much does all the damage here) or if Caelar is tanking try to backstab. Generally I'd kill the lesser demons first, as they can cause trouble for the MC. This fight is pretty rough, might be worth it to get Corwin some +3 arrows to speed things up here.

Chapter 13: One backstab from the +3 longsword should kill the Skie demon. Go through the dialogue as quickly as possible and finish the game.

This route is a pretty rough draft, but it gets the job done. There are certainly some things I've overlooked. As always, any discussion is welcomed.

Thread title:

I've been toying around with a route. I think that like the original BG run, F/M/T is the best choice here, as combat is pretty much unavoidable late into the game. Doubled up with the lack of higher level spells, we cant be creative and have to rely on tried and true backstabbing and buffs. Still, to skip chapter 9 we need arcane spells, so F/M/T ends up ahead in my book. Base spells dont really matter, just Find Familiar, Identify, Knock, Mirror Image and Haste will take you through the whole game. Need to get a lot of pickpocket in order to afford everything you need in the late game, so get it up to around 145, rest in hide in shadows. Nice thing about FMT is we start with the gauntlets of ogre strength, so get minimum strength with the rest in dex, con (16) and charisma (there seem to be a lot of checks, but I cant get near infinity to work to check the dialog strings for some reason). 2 stars in Long Sword, 2 in Single Weapon and 1 in short bow, this sets you up with decent equipment (Varscona +2) that lasts until the final battle.

Now a brief chapter outline (Except for 10 which has a ton of shopping)

Epilogue (of BG1): Take the valuable items from everyone, equip the 3 invis potions and the necklace of missles, use Dynaheir to haste, boot everyone before talking to the first guy (charisma check to skip fight). Head to second floor, open the door to the boss, rest for 16 hours (removes her stone skin). Cast haste on yourself, invis pot and backstab the main mage (CHR check to end combat), grab the oil of speed on her desk before leaving.

Chapter 7: Use the oil of speed, grab items worth around 15000 gold from the chest, kill the assassins and then head downstairs. Instead of leaving immediately, go to the Elfsong Inn district, get the glasses from the hippie guy and then head to Sorcerer's Sundries and buy 25 arrows of det, all the oils of speed and invis pots, 1x master thievery, 1x perception, and one scroll of polymorph self. Go back to the ducal palace and end the chapter.

Chapter 8: Haste your way to the upper right, getting Edwin to rob him of his wand of monster summoning, remove him afterwords. Trigger the cutscene, hide during the battle (around the corner behind the tent) and take the opportunity to summon your familiar. After all the dialogue head back to camp and end the chapter by going east.

Chapter 9:  [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RThl7W-DM8Y[/url]

Chapter 10: Longest one. Use the goggles and get the genie merchant. If you have around 200% pickpockets you wont fail to steal his stuff. Sell everything you have, and steal everything of value (Balduran Cloak/Helm, etc). The ring he has is pretty good, and so is the necklace, so use both of those. The hat and the sword give +3 movement speed so equip those for the long running sections. Once all of this is done, head to the fence, sell everything you wont use and buy all of his invis potions, and the exploding arrows. Go to the provisioner, get his potion bag, buy all the invis potions, oils of speed, heroism pots, power pots, invulnerablity pots, clarity pots, storm giant potion, cloud giant potion and his stoneskin scrolls. Talk to the commanders, rest near the dwarf to get the bwoosh faster (saves a TON of det arrows later), head to the eastern map and leave immediately to the left to go to the underground cavern map. Attack the guards near the fort to get a fight going and move them out of place, pop an invis pot and head into the cavern. In the cavern, place the bwoosh and then use knock on the door at the northwest, sneak past the guards (have to go into melee range to make them move) and head up. Just backstab Hepheraan and then go back to camp once the mission has triggered. After the meeting, grab Corwin and give her 15 det arrows. Pop your oils of speed before the fight starts and choose the archers first, wizard slayers second and assassins third. The strategy is pretty simple, just use det arrows until everyone is dead, but only use 3 each max. Between waves, leave the MC near the fire and grab shit with Corwin On the final wave, there is one person who is slightly out of visual sight of the Orok, you can have the MC and Corwin unload det arrows on him and skip all the dialogue and the annoying sanctuary spell the Orok casts. Keep Corwin after this part.

Chapter 11: If the Bwoosh was in place, the front gate will blow up. Send corwin to the inner gates and have the MC rush to the angel. Accept the 1 on 1 combat and backstab her. She should die in 2 or 3 hits, but if you want to be sure get a fire giant strength potion or an oracle scroll to combat her sanctuary. Head into the castle, cutscenes and end.

Chapter 12: Run past the first screen. On the second screen use some of the det arrows to kill the annoying invis spotting demons, then simply backstab the rest. Once the demon summons his boys near the gate, attack the 2nd from the right with the rest of the det arrows, then kill the stragglers with backstabs. Get the +3 Longsword from the demon and head into the elevator room and rest. While you're going up the elevator, use the various potions to buff yourself while killing the demons that spawn. On the top floor get Caelar to join your party and give her the potions (give her the storm giant one) as well. As a general rule you can just kite the boss if you need to heal with potions, otherwise try to have the MC tank with stoneskin (Caelar is a level 15 fighter and pretty much does all the damage here) or if Caelar is tanking try to backstab. Generally I'd kill the lesser demons first, as they can cause trouble for the MC. This fight is pretty rough, might be worth it to get Corwin some +3 arrows to speed things up here.

Chapter 13: One backstab from the +3 longsword should kill the Skie demon. Go through the dialogue as quickly as possible and finish the game.

This route is a pretty rough draft, but it gets the job done. There are certainly some things I've overlooked. As always, any discussion is welcomed.

mrprmiller

2016-04-13 09:23:16 pm

Everyday is puppies and sunshine...

It shows how much I've been paying attention. Smiley

I didn't even realize it was released! FANTASTIC to see someone working on this. Cheesy

Jiseed

2016-04-19 01:54:06 pm

Couple of discoveries to share. For whatever reason, Imoen in the Ducal Palace has a stack of 80(!) Oils of Speed that we can pickpocket off of her, making it unnecessary to ever cast haste past the epilogue. This means we can skip leveling up as well.

The Hephernaan backstabbing, which was pretty unreliable, can now be skipped by having two characters simultaneously initiate dialog. His circle doesn't turn red immediately, and the second dialog is what triggers chapter progression. So by using the familiar (who doesn't trigger cutscenes anymore), we can position him next to the boss and talk while using the over encumbered dialog trick with our main character (remove the ogre str gauntlets) in order to not trigger the cutscene and bypass the need to backstab. Thanks go out to Smilge for this one, I remembered the over encumber trick thanks to reading his old BG2 submission.

Its possible to skip some waiting in the Allied Camp as well. By entering the camp after you've done the Hephernaan stuff, theres usually a guy who tells you to meet the commanders at dead man's pass. However, if you're quick enough, you can bypass this conversation by quickly exiting to dead man's pass once you've first entered the allied camp. This screws things up in the following battle, as Duncan doesnt appear to wish you luck, and it also seems to eliminate the wait time on the last phase of the "defense". This is a good 20 seconds saved. I wish I understood why this worked.

You can also skip most of the combat in the first part of Avernus. You only need to kill the invis spotting demons at the start with det arrows. Once they're dead, you can go invis and it'll count as you being out of combat (despite the demons following you to the entrance of the tower, wonderful AI there). Once Thrix spawns, you can take advantage of the fact that his dialog is hard triggered to go off despite the fact that you can manually talk to him beforehand. This makes it so he'll give you the "you won" speech despite never even attacking the monsters he summons, simply by talking to him once he spawns and just waiting for the second dialog. Its important to note that to enter into the tower, you HAVE to be out of combat, so the safest way to get past this part is to be far away from the invis spotting monsters (the goop guys and the eriynes). You can accomplish this by again doing the over encumber dialog trick to talk to thrix from a distance, then being out of sight of the monsters he summons (use an invis potion after though, those demons at the start will still come after you). Once the door opens and you can click to enter, just click and wait, as the game cant remove the flag to enter once its already been activated, so the monsters cant stop you.

Lastly, a very small thing that saves a bit of time. When talking to Imoen near the end of the game (where you meet up with the canon BG2 party), you can immediately pause after the first dialog and then initiate dialog again to skip her walking down to the other party members.

As of now there are two major things I want to find out. First, if we can get a pair of boots of speed from anywhere BESIDES Bridgefort. Second, if there's possibly a way for us to "win" the character trial at the end without losing time, as going with the guard cuts out 2 lengthy cutscenes and about 20 seconds of travel time.

The Hephernaan backstabbing, which was pretty unreliable, can now be skipped by having two characters simultaneously initiate dialog. His circle doesn't turn red immediately, and the second dialog is what triggers chapter progression. So by using the familiar (who doesn't trigger cutscenes anymore), we can position him next to the boss and talk while using the over encumbered dialog trick with our main character (remove the ogre str gauntlets) in order to not trigger the cutscene and bypass the need to backstab. Thanks go out to Smilge for this one, I remembered the over encumber trick thanks to reading his old BG2 submission.

Its possible to skip some waiting in the Allied Camp as well. By entering the camp after you've done the Hephernaan stuff, theres usually a guy who tells you to meet the commanders at dead man's pass. However, if you're quick enough, you can bypass this conversation by quickly exiting to dead man's pass once you've first entered the allied camp. This screws things up in the following battle, as Duncan doesnt appear to wish you luck, and it also seems to eliminate the wait time on the last phase of the "defense". This is a good 20 seconds saved. I wish I understood why this worked.

You can also skip most of the combat in the first part of Avernus. You only need to kill the invis spotting demons at the start with det arrows. Once they're dead, you can go invis and it'll count as you being out of combat (despite the demons following you to the entrance of the tower, wonderful AI there). Once Thrix spawns, you can take advantage of the fact that his dialog is hard triggered to go off despite the fact that you can manually talk to him beforehand. This makes it so he'll give you the "you won" speech despite never even attacking the monsters he summons, simply by talking to him once he spawns and just waiting for the second dialog. Its important to note that to enter into the tower, you HAVE to be out of combat, so the safest way to get past this part is to be far away from the invis spotting monsters (the goop guys and the eriynes). You can accomplish this by again doing the over encumber dialog trick to talk to thrix from a distance, then being out of sight of the monsters he summons (use an invis potion after though, those demons at the start will still come after you). Once the door opens and you can click to enter, just click and wait, as the game cant remove the flag to enter once its already been activated, so the monsters cant stop you.

Lastly, a very small thing that saves a bit of time. When talking to Imoen near the end of the game (where you meet up with the canon BG2 party), you can immediately pause after the first dialog and then initiate dialog again to skip her walking down to the other party members.

As of now there are two major things I want to find out. First, if we can get a pair of boots of speed from anywhere BESIDES Bridgefort. Second, if there's possibly a way for us to "win" the character trial at the end without losing time, as going with the guard cuts out 2 lengthy cutscenes and about 20 seconds of travel time.

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