Recently, I started my second campaign in Baldurs Gate in addition to the campaign I play with my wife in co-op. My wife and I opted for the easiest difficulty in our playthrough since neither if us ever played similar game.
This time I felt like it would be such a breeze since I already know a bit more about the game and DnD in general. I opted for the balanced mode with my new character and started going through Act I and boy oh boy do I get wrecked almost everywhere. Multiple of my characters already died and I had to revive them.
Characters
Including Gale, which in turn triggered cool mini-quest to revive him, but the magic aura around his dead body killed Astarion multiple times.
I feel very scared going into each combat and trying to plan as much in advance as possible (keep in mind I mostly know what awaits me there, because I’ve gone through Act I already).
Where I got wrecked
I got wrecked at the church before you get to Whithers, I got wrecked by the hyenas and gnolls by the caravan road, I got absolutly wrecked by the Paladins of Tar and
I just don’t know what am I doing wrong.
My party
I play as high elf paladin and most of my encounters so far I’ve had Astarion, Gale, and Shadow in my party. I feel like the only actually useful member is Astarion. I probably don’t know how to utilize Gale well enough and my Tav paladin just feels like a paper-thin wall between the enemy and the rest of the party.
Are these early encounters in Act I intentionally challenging so that the game “force-teaches” you to utilize everything at your disposal and will it get easier later on or am I just on the wrong path with my character and my party? Honestly, I can’t imagine going through the goblin camp in this state.
Do you have karmic dice on? On the lowest difficulty with karmic dice the enemies tend to hit and crit more often since they get the same +hit you do. Turning that setting off will make your rolls more random which means you can have good and bad streaks but the enemies are less likely to crit you every other hit.
Those three fights are the “big ones” in act 1, probably as hard as the goblin camp, what level were you when you did them?
The easiest difficulty make combat a faceroll (which is a great way to experience the story, if that’s your primary goal); balanced makes you care about what level you are for the encounter, positioning, and your party make-up; Honour makes you think about terrain, party make-up, item use, damage types, and resource management.
Your ranged characters shouldn’t be close enough together that they can be hit with an AoE, and ideally, they are somewhere that gives advantage.
Party make up
Shadowheart is mean and stupid, and she’s also easily replaced as long as anyone else in the part has “Guidance”.
I think I was level 3 for the church and level 4 for the other two fights.
party
I mainly carry Shadow because of the Guidance and I want to try romancing her (so I can build up the approvals) but otherwise my paladin Tav can heal as well. I might try switching her for Lae’zel or Karlach.
::: spoiler Just south of the druid grove there’s a hill you can climb up that has an amulet that gives Guidance. If that’s your only reason for including Shadowheart, that might be a good alternative. :::
If you are going to keep Shadowheart, I’d recommend respeccing her to switch subclasses (I’m a fan of Tempest cleric, but there are several good options) and fixing her stats (like choosing either STR or DEX rather than splitting both).
None of that cleric nonsense.
Make her a vengeance paladin. She’ll hit like a truck and can still heal. Also thematically she’ll still have the sharran choices as she is identified as a paladin of shar (the only one in the game).
Make your paladin a 2h smiteadin with a bard dip for college of swords maneuvers. Yes bring karlach and laezel and all 3 of you single-target 2h shredder your way through the enemies.
Assassin astarion is a monster and can usually sneak attack kill targets in one shot. Especially if you go the ranged route and add the extra base damage from that one ranged feat.
Once gale has fireball you can trade him out for astarion and just huck those things around as much and as often as you can and rest every time he’s out. He’s also really good at magic missile spam with those electricity items.
Most importantly, you should always prioritize killing one enemy at a time so that you’re quicker to remove them from the turn order and prevent them from doing damage on their turn. Basically never split damage with your single target party members.
Well, that level makes sense for the fights.
I’m on my first honour play though, just hit level 11, and my party is the same as yours, but swapping the person who is stupid and mean for the second person you mentioned.
It might be a matter of changing battlefield positioning, or focusing on “action economy” if you’re not already. Unless you are doing an AoE, someone with concentration needs to be interrupted, or there is an odd mechanic, it’s best to kill enemies one by one. That means one less person is attacking you each round, and this advantage grows each person you kill off.
Respec shadowheart into a war or tempest cleric, trickery is without a doubt the worst subclass in the whole game.
Remember that gale grants allies immunity to his evocation spells, so don’t worry about AOE with those
one big simple tip i can give you: Respec shadowheart. literally just pick a different type of priest. maybe knock her strength down a little. i like life domain, but plenty of the others are good too.
otherwise, just try to play with the environment more. be ok with not hitting the enemy sometimes. hide around corners and behind doors, shoot from high shadows, use the area of effects as well as you can. sometimes you can cheese the hell out of fights in ways the game encourage.
all that said, paladin starts week, shadowheart’s default loadout just IS week, rogue starts week, and with wizard you gotta find the spells that work for you. some of them are bad and the class starts with so few spell slots…
try getting the staff from the waukeen’s rest quest reward, the amulet of magic missile from blurg and like a couple other “lightning charge” items and give all that to gale and start spamming “magic missile” you’ll feel strong.
Hey mate.
Getting wrecked is no shame at all.
I got absolutely wrecked by the bandits in the ruis too. Then I reloaded, discovered what use an oil keg can be, and won the fight.
Same with the Goblin camp, or the (second) attack on the Grove (which was far easier after moving some objects)
It’s incredible how much easier a fight turns out if you contemplate for half a minute and the restart.
On the other side I decided to not reload, after one of the characters got killed in camp, because opposite to losing a fight, It was my decision to watch the outcome - which was worse.
PS: I am doing it the other way than you did. I started in August alone in balanced mode, and are halfway through act2 by now. And started a co-op playthorugh together with my wife in easy mode two weeks ago.
