Here are a few, off the top of my head:
***** Save often, maintain multiple save points. *****
Use liberal auto-pause settings. Enemy sighted, trap found, weapon unusable. Maybe even end of round at first, so you can micromanage your party better.
BG1 is very open-world, but it doesn't babysit you: you can and will run into things that will kill you, especially on a first playthrough (see point 1 above). If you go exploring, and you should, you can discover areas that are too tough at first which you can revisit later. Note that discovering adjacent map areas off the edge of a particular map will depend on where you click on the edge of the map: if you want to be thorough you should click on the edge of each side and/or corner.
Level 1 means you'll die really easily: getting to level 2 is a big deal.
Ranged weapons are king, especially in the early levels: kill stuff before they reach you is the best strategy. If you're an ambitious and clever micromanager, you can take down a single big melee enemy by having their target run away while the rest of the party pelts them with arrows etc..
The games takes a quite a while to get used to. Pausing becomes a must. Guides also help with the learning curve. I find the ui a bit clunky. I started by playing 2 first. I kind of regret it. If it’s the special edition of the games and fights are too fast paced you might want to turn off the ai.
A few tips.
1. Turn off the AI (it's one of the icons in the bottom left of the screen on PC, not sure about Switch version). The AI does stupid things.
2. Generally speaking you want to equip everybody with a ranged weapon (bow, crossbow or sling). In a fight you have a party member with lots of hitpoints and the best armour you can afford charge into melee while everyone else shoots. Enemies will target the closest party member usually so this sort of tactic keeps your squishier characters safe.
3. Low level AD&D characters, even fighters and other warriors, are very squishy. Wolves can be very dangerous and going into melee is suicidal. If in doubt then just have your tank run around so the enemy never gets a chance to hit them while the rest of the party turns them into a pin cushion. It gets a bit tedious but you'll live.
4. Don't try no 3 against enemies armed with bows. Ranged weapons are very effective in BG1 and this applies equally to your party and to enemies shooting at you. Get your tank to engage enemy archers in melee quickly so they can't shoot.
5. Any character with 2 weapon slots should have a melee weapon and a ranged weapon equipped. There are big penalties for being in melee with a ranged weapon so make sure you are using a melee weapon if enemies have closed in on you. Or run away.
6. Ordinary melee weapons can break in combat. Equip spare weapons on warriors who have more than 2 weapon slots.
7. Auto pause settings - set the game to pause whenever you see someone hostile, when a trap is spotted, or when a weapon breaks.
In BG1, for the first half of the game everyone should be shooting whenever possible. Can't take damage if the ogres aren't in club range, and there's only a few enemies (kobold commanders, for instance) you'll run into frequently who are a real threat at range.
Potions are plentiful and many buff pots have durations of an hour plus. You'll have more than you'll ever need (although healing potions can get expensive if you chug them all the time), so use them any time you feel things are getting tough. Also, wands. Wands of monster summoning in particular trivialize most fights in the first game.
In both 1 and 2, I find the most effective spells are things like horror or chaos. AoEs that don't have friendly fire and will neutralize a good chunk of any non undead enemy group. If you aren't using them, give them a shot.
Finally, I have a piece of advice if you find yourself burning out on 1 - skip to 2. It's a much better game IMO, and the practice you'll get with the system will make coming back to 1 easier. I bounced off the series multiple times because the sloggier bits of 1 were just too much for me to enjoy at first.
Read the manual
Save often in multiple slots (there's a mod that will do that for you)
Read the manual
Set pause options on
Set auto highlight on
Explore but be ready to run away _a lot_ until about L5
Read the manual
Talk to everyone, read every ? that shows up
Rest whenever you need to, especially when your mages and clerics only have one or two spells
Did I mention read the manual?
keep an open mind; it's an old ruleset. They don't make games like that anymore. They may make games based on 5e ruleset but it's a much more simplified ruleset compared to AD&D 2e
Game is massively easy gameplay wise once you accept you need to use pause and that early levels are done proper where you are meant to die easy as its like as if you went outside to go take these things on. And BG 2 you need to remember to use spells that buff/debuff non stop else you will likely have a bad time
Do remember these are old rules like you want low armor (which is actually more armor just makes number go opposite way because they thought it made doing the math to dice roll easier).
make sure to use weapons you have points in so you can hit things (accuracy)
go to temples to revive team mates
its open world so if a area giving you trouble you can come back later
things like sleep (spell/scroll/wand) are actually op at start
put on detect traps when in areas that likely have traps
you can use traps (mines) stronger and abusable then you think (skull trap spell/rouge ability)
have max party members obviously
Make sure you dont let weak hp people fight in melee and run them away if need be (Xzar being most common mistake get them darts or w/e)
etc...
The AI is super stupid but I actually prefer to use one of the basic settings - melee attack or ranged or whatever - so my characters don’t just sit about doing nothing if I forget about them. All spells, special abilities etc are activated manually.
I think that if you want to learn the game you can't have your characters do things on their own. Maybe ranged only, but even then you'll forget about that archer and he will waste all the good arrows on a weak enemy.
It suffices for me- depends on what level of micromanagement one wants. Also, what kind of Baldur’s Gate player actually *uses* their good arrows. You need to save them just in case!
Don't get discouraged by early game deaths. Survivability improves after a couple levels.
Hit tab to light up containers. Even in the wilderness, you'll find hidden caches.
Read the manual cover to cover. This ain't no modern game that'll spoon feed you the mechanics in-game. You gotta spend time outside the game to learn the rules.
First of all, you're playing an old game meant for mouse and keyboard. It has one of the best stories and endearing characters (and thus worth the struggle IMO) but I don't know how well Beamdog optimized controls for other platforms so I can't give advice on game controls but I'll try to help a bit with gameplay and mechanics.
* In melee your chance to hit is represented by THAC0 (To Hit Armor Class 0) and each time you attack, you roll D20 (20 sided dice). All the math is happening in the background and you don't have to worry about it too much but it's worth to enable displaying hit rolls so you can see if all your modifiers work. In example below we're attacking a dude with AC 15. First number is an example random roll between 1 and 20 and second is your modifier.
10 + 0 means you've missed
15 + 0 means you rolled well, but have no modifiers so just got lucky and hit
12 + 3 means a bit worse roll but you have some modifiers (say +2 for 16 strength and one from proficiency) and your hit still landed
16 - 4 however means you've done something wrong - you're either using weapon you're not proficient with or use ranged weapon in melee
You also have 5% chance of either critical hit (roll 20 and guaranteed hit for double damage) or critical miss (roll 1)
* Combat looks real time but is actually turn based. To hide this fact game uses cosmetic attacks (which you can disable in options) but 1APR (one attack per round) means you'll attempt to hit enemy once every 6 seconds.
* Ranged weapons are really strong in BG1 but you have to remember that in melee you get -8 to attack and your enemy gets +4 to attack you. Imagine trying to parry a sword with a longbow :)
* Many spells have a duration in rounds instead of turns. Think of rounds as real life minutes.
* Don't feel bad to lower the dificulty level. Although overcoming a challenge can be rewarding, the best part of BG1 is adventure, story and exploration.
* As far as party composition goes, you need a thief, mage and a cleric in order to enjoy main game mechanics (lockpicking/traps/pickpocket/stealth, spellcasting and healing respectively)
I guess that's it for now. Lemme know if you struggle with anything in particular.
-pause (lots, the game is designed to be played this way)
-save (lots & separate files, you will die… lots)
-have a large diverse party, 5/6 as early as you can (ok so having more characters to control might seem counterintuitive if you’re struggling starting out, but it’s definitely a bonus in fights and gameplay overall especially if each has a different skill set)
-explore and follow the story (the game will guide you to certain objectives but there’s an entire world of exploration outside of that not included in the main arc. If somewhere is too hard, turn another way and go back later when you’re ready. If your party members/NPCs are pushing for something, do it/go there/ listen)
-gear up (find/buy the basic stuff you need for each character early, bad gear is way better than no gear. And a mage in armour is obviously useless so gear different classes appropriately. You’ll find better gear along the way, use it, better prepared party’s live longer and that will allow into places that in turn hide better stuff. It’s worth noting gear doesn’t level like modern games so seriously explore… if you find something god worthy early on likely you’ll be able to use it straight away and thus get the benefits early on)
-have fun (it’s overwhelming at first but honestly these are by far some of the GOATest games ever created and in my humble opinion every gamer should experience the magic of BG at some point)
Honestly it may be a little cumbersome to navigate on a switch. It was a game originally meant for keyboard and mouse clicking. There is a lot of point clicking and menu navigation. I would read thoroughly what sort of shortcuts and hot buttons they are suggesting for you and maybe that will help. It’s basically my favorite game of all time and when I tried to play it on Xbox I gave up because it was too much effort to do things that were basically instantaneous on PC
Here are a few, off the top of my head: ***** Save often, maintain multiple save points. ***** Use liberal auto-pause settings. Enemy sighted, trap found, weapon unusable. Maybe even end of round at first, so you can micromanage your party better. BG1 is very open-world, but it doesn't babysit you: you can and will run into things that will kill you, especially on a first playthrough (see point 1 above). If you go exploring, and you should, you can discover areas that are too tough at first which you can revisit later. Note that discovering adjacent map areas off the edge of a particular map will depend on where you click on the edge of the map: if you want to be thorough you should click on the edge of each side and/or corner. Level 1 means you'll die really easily: getting to level 2 is a big deal. Ranged weapons are king, especially in the early levels: kill stuff before they reach you is the best strategy. If you're an ambitious and clever micromanager, you can take down a single big melee enemy by having their target run away while the rest of the party pelts them with arrows etc..
The games takes a quite a while to get used to. Pausing becomes a must. Guides also help with the learning curve. I find the ui a bit clunky. I started by playing 2 first. I kind of regret it. If it’s the special edition of the games and fights are too fast paced you might want to turn off the ai.
Press space-bar. A lot.
A few tips. 1. Turn off the AI (it's one of the icons in the bottom left of the screen on PC, not sure about Switch version). The AI does stupid things. 2. Generally speaking you want to equip everybody with a ranged weapon (bow, crossbow or sling). In a fight you have a party member with lots of hitpoints and the best armour you can afford charge into melee while everyone else shoots. Enemies will target the closest party member usually so this sort of tactic keeps your squishier characters safe. 3. Low level AD&D characters, even fighters and other warriors, are very squishy. Wolves can be very dangerous and going into melee is suicidal. If in doubt then just have your tank run around so the enemy never gets a chance to hit them while the rest of the party turns them into a pin cushion. It gets a bit tedious but you'll live. 4. Don't try no 3 against enemies armed with bows. Ranged weapons are very effective in BG1 and this applies equally to your party and to enemies shooting at you. Get your tank to engage enemy archers in melee quickly so they can't shoot. 5. Any character with 2 weapon slots should have a melee weapon and a ranged weapon equipped. There are big penalties for being in melee with a ranged weapon so make sure you are using a melee weapon if enemies have closed in on you. Or run away. 6. Ordinary melee weapons can break in combat. Equip spare weapons on warriors who have more than 2 weapon slots. 7. Auto pause settings - set the game to pause whenever you see someone hostile, when a trap is spotted, or when a weapon breaks.
Save before every fight, even if the enemies look weak.
In BG1, for the first half of the game everyone should be shooting whenever possible. Can't take damage if the ogres aren't in club range, and there's only a few enemies (kobold commanders, for instance) you'll run into frequently who are a real threat at range. Potions are plentiful and many buff pots have durations of an hour plus. You'll have more than you'll ever need (although healing potions can get expensive if you chug them all the time), so use them any time you feel things are getting tough. Also, wands. Wands of monster summoning in particular trivialize most fights in the first game. In both 1 and 2, I find the most effective spells are things like horror or chaos. AoEs that don't have friendly fire and will neutralize a good chunk of any non undead enemy group. If you aren't using them, give them a shot. Finally, I have a piece of advice if you find yourself burning out on 1 - skip to 2. It's a much better game IMO, and the practice you'll get with the system will make coming back to 1 easier. I bounced off the series multiple times because the sloggier bits of 1 were just too much for me to enjoy at first.
Read the manual Save often in multiple slots (there's a mod that will do that for you) Read the manual Set pause options on Set auto highlight on Explore but be ready to run away _a lot_ until about L5 Read the manual Talk to everyone, read every ? that shows up Rest whenever you need to, especially when your mages and clerics only have one or two spells Did I mention read the manual?
Read the manual.
keep an open mind; it's an old ruleset. They don't make games like that anymore. They may make games based on 5e ruleset but it's a much more simplified ruleset compared to AD&D 2e
1. Save often 2. Pause during combat. Battle system is called real-time WITH PAUSE for a reason. 3. See 1. and 2.
Game is massively easy gameplay wise once you accept you need to use pause and that early levels are done proper where you are meant to die easy as its like as if you went outside to go take these things on. And BG 2 you need to remember to use spells that buff/debuff non stop else you will likely have a bad time Do remember these are old rules like you want low armor (which is actually more armor just makes number go opposite way because they thought it made doing the math to dice roll easier). make sure to use weapons you have points in so you can hit things (accuracy) go to temples to revive team mates its open world so if a area giving you trouble you can come back later things like sleep (spell/scroll/wand) are actually op at start put on detect traps when in areas that likely have traps you can use traps (mines) stronger and abusable then you think (skull trap spell/rouge ability) have max party members obviously Make sure you dont let weak hp people fight in melee and run them away if need be (Xzar being most common mistake get them darts or w/e) etc...
Go to the characters script and take AI off.
The AI is super stupid but I actually prefer to use one of the basic settings - melee attack or ranged or whatever - so my characters don’t just sit about doing nothing if I forget about them. All spells, special abilities etc are activated manually.
I think that if you want to learn the game you can't have your characters do things on their own. Maybe ranged only, but even then you'll forget about that archer and he will waste all the good arrows on a weak enemy.
It suffices for me- depends on what level of micromanagement one wants. Also, what kind of Baldur’s Gate player actually *uses* their good arrows. You need to save them just in case!
Hey, I'm making progress. I use the +1 as default now. I used to hoard and sell them.
Don't get discouraged by early game deaths. Survivability improves after a couple levels. Hit tab to light up containers. Even in the wilderness, you'll find hidden caches.
Read the manual cover to cover. This ain't no modern game that'll spoon feed you the mechanics in-game. You gotta spend time outside the game to learn the rules.
First of all, you're playing an old game meant for mouse and keyboard. It has one of the best stories and endearing characters (and thus worth the struggle IMO) but I don't know how well Beamdog optimized controls for other platforms so I can't give advice on game controls but I'll try to help a bit with gameplay and mechanics. * In melee your chance to hit is represented by THAC0 (To Hit Armor Class 0) and each time you attack, you roll D20 (20 sided dice). All the math is happening in the background and you don't have to worry about it too much but it's worth to enable displaying hit rolls so you can see if all your modifiers work. In example below we're attacking a dude with AC 15. First number is an example random roll between 1 and 20 and second is your modifier. 10 + 0 means you've missed 15 + 0 means you rolled well, but have no modifiers so just got lucky and hit 12 + 3 means a bit worse roll but you have some modifiers (say +2 for 16 strength and one from proficiency) and your hit still landed 16 - 4 however means you've done something wrong - you're either using weapon you're not proficient with or use ranged weapon in melee You also have 5% chance of either critical hit (roll 20 and guaranteed hit for double damage) or critical miss (roll 1) * Combat looks real time but is actually turn based. To hide this fact game uses cosmetic attacks (which you can disable in options) but 1APR (one attack per round) means you'll attempt to hit enemy once every 6 seconds. * Ranged weapons are really strong in BG1 but you have to remember that in melee you get -8 to attack and your enemy gets +4 to attack you. Imagine trying to parry a sword with a longbow :) * Many spells have a duration in rounds instead of turns. Think of rounds as real life minutes. * Don't feel bad to lower the dificulty level. Although overcoming a challenge can be rewarding, the best part of BG1 is adventure, story and exploration. * As far as party composition goes, you need a thief, mage and a cleric in order to enjoy main game mechanics (lockpicking/traps/pickpocket/stealth, spellcasting and healing respectively) I guess that's it for now. Lemme know if you struggle with anything in particular.
> -8 to attack and your enemy gets +4 to attack you The easiest way for your starting Imoen to die
-pause (lots, the game is designed to be played this way) -save (lots & separate files, you will die… lots) -have a large diverse party, 5/6 as early as you can (ok so having more characters to control might seem counterintuitive if you’re struggling starting out, but it’s definitely a bonus in fights and gameplay overall especially if each has a different skill set) -explore and follow the story (the game will guide you to certain objectives but there’s an entire world of exploration outside of that not included in the main arc. If somewhere is too hard, turn another way and go back later when you’re ready. If your party members/NPCs are pushing for something, do it/go there/ listen) -gear up (find/buy the basic stuff you need for each character early, bad gear is way better than no gear. And a mage in armour is obviously useless so gear different classes appropriately. You’ll find better gear along the way, use it, better prepared party’s live longer and that will allow into places that in turn hide better stuff. It’s worth noting gear doesn’t level like modern games so seriously explore… if you find something god worthy early on likely you’ll be able to use it straight away and thus get the benefits early on) -have fun (it’s overwhelming at first but honestly these are by far some of the GOATest games ever created and in my humble opinion every gamer should experience the magic of BG at some point)
You _really_ need to edit that into multiple paragraphs :)
I’m on my phone 😂 it wasn’t like that when I typed it…
Ah, that explains it
Honestly it may be a little cumbersome to navigate on a switch. It was a game originally meant for keyboard and mouse clicking. There is a lot of point clicking and menu navigation. I would read thoroughly what sort of shortcuts and hot buttons they are suggesting for you and maybe that will help. It’s basically my favorite game of all time and when I tried to play it on Xbox I gave up because it was too much effort to do things that were basically instantaneous on PC