As I’m slowly growing bored as well as coming to an end to my 3rd novel (which should be the last in this series that I’m writing), I’m starting to divert my attention (meaning having an impossible time concentrating) on other activities. Since Diablo 2’s revival hasn’t looked all that great (as expected), I’ve been thinking about another Baldur’s Gate 2 run. One of the things that I’ve been wanting to do is a full Baldur’s Gate run with the prior two games. However, since I’m attempting to save money that doesn’t seem to be an option. But with that in mind, I’m slowly considering trying a half-elf ranger/cleric led good party.
The end goal of this party with EE Keeper modding will look like this:
- Leader Half-Elf Ranger/Cleric: Specializing in War Hammer/Flail and 2-weapons style
- Imoen Elf Wizard Slayer/Mage/Thief: Specializing in Long Sword/Short Bow
- Nalia Elf Kensai/Mage/Thief: Specializing in Long Sword/Katana
- Aerie Elf Berserker/Mage/Cleric: Specializing in Maces
- Mazzy Halfling Undead Hunter: Specializing in Two Handed Swords (Yes, a halfling!)
- Jaheira Half-Elf Berserker/Druid: Specializing in Scimitars
So this party might be all female. I think I might’ve tried something similar before but can’t remember what I used for the leader. The idea would be that I would avoid all the romance drama and just focus on the main quests as well as a few key NPC quests. Alternatively, the leader could be male just to do the romance plot. In that case, I would go with Aerie for once since I want to see the child born and the fact that Jaheira’s romance plot tends to get bugged and just takes way too long.
The most difficult part of this party is Mazzy just because you have to go out of your way to obtain her. If I wanted to skip her, I would just take Keldorn for a paladin/Holy Avenger wielder. Since usually I do the Umar Hills temple ruins quest late in the game, I end up forgetting about Mazzy. But the benefit of taking Mazzy is less drama with evil party members in doing NPC quest completion.
I think with this run, I will do some of the newer NPC quests like Hexxat because of the XP bonus as well as the early Bag of Holding in form of Hexxat’s casket. Because of my party composition, I can substitute out Keldorn or Mazzy to do quests like Hexxat’s early on.
The party composition through the acts might look something like this:
Chapter 1:
- Leader, Imoen, Jaheira, Minsc, Yoshimo
Chapter 2:
- (Circus/Waukeen’s Promenade) Leader, Jaheria, Minsc, Aerie, Yoshimo
- (Slums) Yoshimo -> Nalia
- Anomen -> Hexxat (when ready for her first Graveyard quest) back to Anomen after her quest is over and you retrieve the Bag of Holding object
- Anomen -> Keldorn in the sewers
- Keldorn -> Mazzy (might have to get some levels just to reach the temple; but upon obtaining Mazzy, we leave the Temple Ruins until later). Hopefully, by this point you also do Keldorn’s NPC quest to knock it off the radar
- We probably will skip out on Korgan and Edwin because of their conflicts with other NPCs. If you want Edwin, you’d have to boot out Minsc but I would only suggest this if you are ready to clear the Graveyard
- We will use Minsc’s spot as the rotation spot with other NPCs since we already have one ranger and that Minsc does not have an NPC quest. We will accept quests like Rasaad and Cernd once we get to Trademeet and finish up all the major quests there.
- Dorn might be interesting as long as we don’t have Keldorn or Anomen in our party. I don’t recall The Visage helmet being exclusively usable to him or if other characters can use it (beyond thieves with Use Any Item abilities). But you would have to deal with the reputation penalties anytime you recruit him. Also, based on my last play through, his Throne of Bhaal quest bugged out badly so I’m less inclined to try him at all.
Chapter 3:
- Replace the rotation spot with Yoshimo.
Chapter 4:
- Get Imoen back.
Chapter 6:
- Possibly get Mazzy here if you did not want to go through the hassle of recruiting her earlier
For Throne of Bhaal, you could replace Nalia or Imoen with Sarevok just to try and get his alignment changed. In my last play through, I was unable to get to that point as I ran out of time. In fact, I failed finishing up the second half of the romance quest with Viconia probably because I did a good portion of the Watcher’s Keep in Shadows of Amn and that her remaining romance points depended upon finishing up major quests from the Watcher’s Keep.
One thing though about the next run is figuring out how many NPC quests I want to do. The Enhanced Edition NPC quests were quite buggy or just painful. There’s a few that were decent for additional experience. However, in general the bugginess and poorly thought out implementation make me wary of going through all those pains. I might try the Rasaad Throne of Bhaal quest just because I ended up skipping out due to having Viconia in my party, which prevented me from finishing it up. Other than that, I don’t feel overly compelled for many of these. Maybe using a fully empowered Neera might be fun for novelty since I won’t have Edwin and can give her stuff like the Staff of Magi.
Either way, maybe when I’m two more chapters into this current novel that I’m working on, I’ll figure this out.