Solo: Where to Go First?

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Okay,

Just started a F/M/T solo. Out of the dungeon and thieving/reselling for mad cash to get the needed items from the adventurers mart...

Any thoughts on where to go first? I definitely need boots of speed and Celestial Fury... (how do you get that katana btw?)

-Caspian

 

EVERYWHERE! But seriously, some of the thieves' guild quests down by the docks are pretty easy. CF is in the temple district, but you might want to wait a little while before taking those guys on.

 

I usually do the Copper Coronet, Slaver's Dock and Lilacor first, while I'm in the slums. Also go to Jan's home and pick all his locks for experience. In the beginning, your character is a bit weak, so that's what I do to get all the experience that I can get. It might be a grind, but sleep often and magic missile / fireball everything to hell.

I'm paranoid about going away from the slums because you'll eventually get the Arbane Short Sword fight and the Poisoned man quest - both involves fighting parties of around 5. So I try to finish off the slums before going anywhere else.

 

Since you are in Waukeen's Promenade, why not do the circus first. That 18 Char ring will come in handy for your shopping expeditions.
Then since you have to go to the Slums, you can begin by getting rid of the Slaver ring running in the Copper Coronet.
Clear out the sewers and the tombs for ease in the future.
The Bridge District murders should be an easy task. You could also take to time to clear out Saerk's house there and try rescuing Haer'Dalis (Dont bother with the Planar Prison if you dont want to however).
Unless you dont have the Baldurdash fixpack (and hence can take advantage of the stupid Nalia stronghold bug), now is the time to retake the De'Arnise keep.

The North-Eastern most house in the Temple District holds the part with the CF. The entrance is right next to the sewer entrance in front of it. However that is a very tough fight, and you might want to put it on hold for later.

 

Beautiful. Thank you all for the quick feedback.
Shrikant, I actually did do the circus for the ring of Charisma and to get a bit o' experience. I'm going to get all my goodies from the Promenade and go rock the slums and go from there. So far I'm lovin' the solo adventure. So much faster, less to deal with, and my character is advancing like crazy!

 

@Shirkant
What's the stupid Nalia stronghold bug? :X

 

Get Nalia's stronghold, that is the fighter stronghold first, and then proceed to get the thief stronghold afterwords, resulting in having both strongholds at the same time! At least i think that's what he means.
Besides, the De'Arnise Keep is quite high on XP IIRC, and a certain flail makes the trip more than worthwile!

I would also suggest doing the Twisted Rune quite early. Just be sure to bring a scroll of protection from undead and a scroll of protection from magic, and unless i'm totally mistaken, all you have to worry about is an unequipped vanilla fighter, and if you have bad luck, a pit fiend. However, killing the mage ASAP should nullify that. Although, i'm not sure this will work as the pf.magic scroll might dispel the undead one, and if that's the case, you're going to fight a vampire too, and that's a wee bit harder. You'll see why you should do it when you loot the corpses, if you don't already know what's waiting for you down there. IMO it's worth the spent pf.magic scroll many times over!

@ Blog
Picking all the locks in Jan's home? is there even doors in there? Or do you mean the doors at Mae'vars?

 

@Thor

I think he means the chests and stuff that has a few potions and stuff in.

I take it your playing without mods and without the expansion? whats your character build, what weapons have you specialised in, what stats are high and how do you play your character? Those things should give you an idea of where to go... for example, when I play a F/M/T I usually focus on the thief side -but go for the mage stronghold (my fave )- backstabbing and setting traps to come out on top and using the other classes to make this easier and increase survivability (is that even a word?? ).

Despite how I play, like most people, your probably using this character like a F/M with thieving skills to do traps and locks... in any case I would say use 'Detect Illusions' thief skill instead of divination spells .... much better.

I would say do all city quests except the shadowthief ones and dont be afraid of multiple enemies... remeber you can always hide for a bit.
Then the Nalia quest, then Umar Hills to get Valygars body to open the Planar sphere, get the mage stronghold (IIRC more XP than the Thief one) then do the Shadow Thief quests. That would be my order anyway... but really do whatever you feel like it doesnt matter which order you do them except for Strongholds.

For celestial Fury... it can be easy to get if you hide in shadows/ use invis. potions alot to heal and get a few backstabs in, and take the mage down with breach and remove magic...oh and have stoneskins up to prevent Ketta backstabbing you

<and some minor tips below if you want them>

The Flail of Ages is a mage killer...

Azuredge (with Baldudash fixpack) is an undead asskicker... works suprisingly well against liches.

Far Sight with project image works wonders...

Sometimes allow NPCs to join party for a few seconds... such as Jan who gives you 11500 XP fort he pleasure of your company for a brief moment.

 

Yeah, it's a good idea to let NPCs join and then lead them directly to the Copper Coronet where you can then promptly dump them. Most will automatically go there when you dump them anyway. If you feel like it, you can teach arcane spells to some of the NPCs for 1/2 XP and then re-dump them over and over again.

P.S. If you're playing without Throne of Bhaal, STOP. You'll level up really quickly as a solo, and you can't get all those awesome High Level Abilities without ToB.

 

Before any of the NPCs awards you the chance to take over a stronghold, they check a variable to ensure that the PC does not already have a stronghold. However in the original game Nalia did not carry this check. Thus Caspian's F/M/T could take over Maevar's Guildhouse first, then clear out the keep and Nalia, being too stupid to check the variable, would offer the keep as fighter stronghold. This was the only way to have two strongholds without cheating.
Baldurdash fixpack takes care of this bug and now Nalia too checks the variable. If yours is an SoA only game you could install the SPFixpack instead, which iirc does not have that bugfix. (Well its too late now ofcourse.)

PS:
I say 'take over Maevar's Guildhouse' because the Planar Sphere is too hard to be tackled early.
If you are playing the game on WinXP, you will have to take Nalia into your party, atleast for the final battle against Torgal. Otherwise XP causes a bug due to which Nalia offers you a pittance as reward as against +10,000GP. Make sure to empty the Golem room before tackling Torgal if you want the items there.

 

@Blog: five guys is not a real problem since you can use magic in these encounters without risking interference from the cowled wizards. Depending on your alignement you can use Horror to tip the scale in your favour, these are not hard fights (Arbane's sword is quite useful for its abilities).

@Caspian: don't forget the cemetery, plenty of XP there and a nice sword in one of the tombs (Is it Namara? I can't remember its name!)
When soloing it's always the beginning that can be difficult after you get some levels it will become very easy.

 

Killing the solo idea, don't you think?

 

@Klorox:
Not really. If you just treat them as a source of XP and never let them out of the CC, they won't be involved in anything except giving you XP. Plus, you're getting all your competition off of the streets. Or you could just kill them like Valygar.

@Caspian:
Ooh, really important! Don't forget to go to the government sector to buy a magic license. Unless, of course, you want to fight the Cowled Wizards.

 

Fighting the Cowled Wizards is much more fun than coughing up 5000 gold and you get some good high level spells in the last encounter just make sure you save betwen each battle and dont let Zallanora dimension door away on the last battle as she has some good spells.....

<minor SPOILER>
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The only weird thing about this is if you kill khollonous Paac (sp?) before doing the mage stronghold, he/she will appear in one of the quests anyway which is a bit hard considering their dead.

 

Sweet feedback from everyone. Thanks for all the help. Just bought my magic license, cleared out the CC (couldn't find the gloves of pickpocketing, btw...I'm going to search the forum or walkthroughs), pickpocked Regen Ring and Ring of the Ram.

Debating where to go next? Slavers? Sewers? Thief Stronghold? Nalia quest?

Here's my character breakdown: Starting stats were 10, 19, 17, 18, 18, 8. Current stats w/ equipment is 19, 19, 17, 18, 18, 18 or 8 (Ring of Charisma is off when I'm fighting).

My F/M/T has 3 in Two weapon fighting, 2 in katana, 1 in flail and will soon have 1 in warhammer. Currently weilding 2 Katana's +1, five finger discount from Jayes.

Skills:
PP: 150 (My max. No need to go higher)
OP/FT: 100
MS/HS: Haven't advanced yet, have invis spell.
DI: Haven't advanced yet. True sight will come soon. Plus I have Detect Invis and I'm an Elf for secret doors.
Set traps: 65-ish (I am currently advancing this now to tackle dragons and parties and such).

@Feliniod: TOB is installed, no worries on XP cap. Got Jan and dumped him immediately for XP. Good call.

@Malovae: Haven't played around too much w/ backstab just yet, but my multiplyer is x4. I really should take advantage of it.

@Thor: In regard to the two strongholds...I haven't heard of this before. You're saying if I do Nalia's quest and then take over the guild house I get both strongholds? Are there any catches? Any thing I need to do/don't do, or people I should talk to/avoid talking to? I'll search the forums for this, too.

Random question: I could not put my familiar in my inventory for the entire first dungeon, and randomly cannot now that I'm out of the dungeon. Very often he is "busy" and cannot talk to me. I have no idea how to tweak that, but it's really annoyning. He's in there now and I'm not taking him out anymore. But it's a hassle, regardless.

Thanx everyone,

Caspian

 

Do you have the patch installed?... Baldurdash fixpack is also recommended. Both can be downloaded off this site The *someone appears busy* is a common ToB bug.

Oh and i'm not scolding or anything but if you have ToB installed you should post in that forum This will probably get moved there.

I still recommend advancing Detect Illusions as it will free up spell slots later that would normally be True Sights... also when you attack, then click on detect traps he will start attacking whilst detecting.... handy against mages (when your done hacking up their melee support all their illusion support will be down... true you could cast True Sight before battle but that will eventually run out and need to be recast, which is a pain). Its your choice but it is by far the handiest ability the thief has... pick locks excepted

 

Malovae,

Found the link for the fix patch. Thank ya, sir. Good word on DI. I'm going to move that up once I get my traps to 100%. Spell slots are precious.

 

If you have ToB installed then no.

 

Jathszu,

Yep. I just found the link to the TOB fix patch. Sa-weet.

 

no, theres a Baldurdash fixpack for ToB, heres the links:

Patch - http://downloads.bioware.com/baldursgate2/BGII-ThroneofBhaal_Patch_26498_ENGLISH.exe

Baldurdash - http://www.baldurdash.org/

I know Jathszu has just replied but im already finished searching the links so im posting anyway