Mage / thief solo play is ideal funfactor: 1. remove xp cap(im also change backstab table to end at 7x) 2. choose: elf, mage / thief / alignment for find familier(ferrel) which has 50% pickpocket in bg1 + pick identify or magic missle. 3. put all skills at level 0 to open locks which will allow you to open the high loot chest in candlekeep tavern. You will also find some spells for xp and usage here. And choose longsword + short bow. 4. talk to firebead mage exactly 30 times for 300 gold. 5. you now have considerable money ammount if selling what you dont need. This allows you to buy katana + helm, shield, armor, arrows, shortbow. But we wont be buying katana due to we will have a +2 scimitar very early. So we will just buy 2 cheap longswords. Elves got taco bonus with longswords. Now do the 2 quest for xp. Book in haystack and hulls potion. 6. talk to gorion, end up outside candlekeep. Party immoen, steal all items and ditch here. Take road to xantar etc and steal all their stuff same way, pick up diamond which sells for 500gp. And Get loot from gorion battle. (Belt really Nice vs winterwolves etc). 7. travel to next map, pick up the +1 ring. Go to friendly arm in(north). 8. immidiate when entering map, go right and pick up hidden ring to double lvl 1 wizard cast. And open map east. Then do quest for flamedance ring, only kill the relevant one, espesially if legacy of baal difficulty. Open ankegg map after having the ring, go there and talk to fishermen. Kill them. Take bowl etc and loot house. Now take road north and save etc to bypass ankeggs. Travel to baldurs gate bridge area. Go north at east side and give bowl to waterlady for 2500xp and level up. 9. travel back map where u found ring+1 and go south to bergeost. Here you will use find familier to pickpocket cloak of charming etc. loot whatever you can, you wont be strong enough to kill mages etc yet. Also talk to firebead 30 times again for another 300gp. Kill spiders in house and pick up quest items. Sell all unrelevant for space and coinz. 10. go to high hedge, go to wizard house and buy protection from petrification and invisible spell(2). If you manage to kill Skeleton on the way for its head, you can keep it for quest(chicken). 11. travel east to temple area. Buy all scrolls of stone to flesh. Open map east. If u previous could not afford all scrolls in friendly arm inn temple Prior, you can do that now. Then travel to durlags tower. Use a invisibility scroll to Get to the top of the tower(via level 1, 2 and mind the trap Prior to exiting at level 2). 12. Charm the first greater basilisk on top of roof. USE protection from petrification on both of you. Let it turn the other greater basilisk to stone for 7000xp. Cast stone to flesh, rinse and repeat until you run dry of stone to flesh scrolls. Now charm the other one as well. Level up and make sure you have enough find traps, and hide in shadow and open locks. You should have enough now as you have around 300-500k xp now. Disarm the trap at the column and pick up the +2 scimitar and enough level to become profience with it. I know this is not the fastest way, but its really fun and usefull and you dont have to sell usable gear. Now you can use invisibility, find traps and open locks to Get great gear from durlags tower. And then go sell and buy spells like(skull trap, haste, ghost armor, magic missle etc). Next steps would be to do whatever you like, drizzt is holding 2 x +3 scimitars, and ghost of ullcaster has the robe of neutral archmagi. Dno where the best short bow is, but you dont have to stress with xp :p
@@Redjoy123 thanks, other stuff which is Nice: To get cloak of balduran, either u or familiar has enough pickpocket to steal it without rep lost, if not charm here and have here attack the guard. It will kill here for no rep loss. Guard will turn red, but just charm it as well if annoying. Later you get loads of stone to flesh scrolls. So you can do the basilisk method on those two on top later another like 50-60 times xD Earlier i have farmed ankeggs, but that takes time espesially on legacy of baal. I have also farmed sirenes, but that was only once. Dno how, but everytime i rested in lighthouse area like 8 of them spawned. So that was like 16k xp each time, but on other run true only one at the time has spawned. If one dont want to abuse charm method on basilisk, the friendly ghast can let you farm mutamin garden very well for a good xp start. In bg2ee there are some exploits as well. If not patched you can pickpocket kangaxx for ring of gaxx Prior to him becomming red. Then get another one once he is dead. Firecrag is neutral very long. So basicly u can cast stuff like pierce magic etc Prior to engagement. On solo play you might Even be high enough level to do this with clones. And you can use a planetar to start casting ressurection on him Prior to dying such that he will be revived and you can farm him for xp. You can also use clones to avoid summoning caps. So u can have several planetars etc. planetars also gives xp if u kill them, and they dont Even turn hostiles so cheaky way of getting xp as well xD And for new players using mages, dont underestimate skulltrap, skulltrap can be stacked with rest inbetween such that Even on legacy of baal you can have like 12-16 skulltraps up Even if u just can cast 4 each day. And then lure enemies to them. This is gonna be very usefull vs the werewolf in the boat. Invisibility, misslead, haste, Improved haste, stoneskin, emotion: hopelessness, and greater malison are inzanely strong spells. Skulltrap has a very long progressional damage, and can be used very tactical. And with minor globe of invulnerability you Are immune to it. If you target urself via picture enemy will not have magic res vs it as well. Meanwhile misslead will make u invisible Even when attacking or casting spells etc, just ditch the clone in a safe location and you can run around and have fun. Backstab works as well with it. Combination of greater malison and hopelessness is great to make pretty much all but undead and super strong creature to sleep. While sleeping Even a mage with bad taco can hit them very consistent. In bg2ee u can get xp for talking with rijec skin tanner more than once. U can also have familiar to pickpocket rift device or drow equipment to smugle them past killzone. My last playtrue was with a selfmade banshee kit mage. Which cannot use wepon of any type. Neither armor, helms, gloves or wands. So it could not use rift device vs eye of beholder, but i was so high level that he was very easy anyway. Meanwhile i did not smuggle rift device out i kinda regret that now cause i struggle with kangaxx xD i basicly need more levels to abuse a large ammount of clones to bring him down xD i have a shapechange spell, which can use wepons. So i can stack up with that xD
Traps are awesome which is why I solo Thief Bounty Hunter kit. He can throw his special snare traps and they never hurt you if you are under 100 only fail to spring. Just go into stealth, find enemies, break LOS, throw special snare trap near the location where enemies were spotted and profit :D After having enough money buy the lost item amulet and explosive potions and cheese the game. Stealth, find enemies, break LOS, throw special snare, fireball (lost item amulet), explosive potion near the enemy location and profit. No need for armor, weapons etc... The fact that you can kill drizzt, shandalar and do the basilisk garden at LEVEL 6 Solo (without Korax) is just insane. Thats 67.000 EXP in a single run.
Agreed, and they don't lose much at all with getting only 20 skill points compared to 25. Bounty Hunters are very useful since traps can be fairly OP (i.e. amazing).
@@Redjoy123 Yup but its sad to see that people on the internet rave more over swashbuckler like this kit always gets voted over bounty hunter or shadowdancer which to me is just huh? I tried all the kits and swashbuckler to me is the worst out of thief kits. Its kinda supposed to be fighter/thief without benefits of a fighter or a thief (backstab) and you are supposed to use him in melee but without helmet and AC doesn't protect you from 20 rolls which occur much more often then advertised.
On my last playtrue on legacy of baal mode i ended bg1ee with 1.2 mill xp on my solo char xD that was without any exploit. I did not Even use mutamin garden ^^ just wanted to try without those powerups for once. Did quests, ankegg and sirens for early xp. But was hard due to legacy of baal mode :p I did have some custom spells that helped me a lot though ^^
@@greatdude7279 yes backstab is the single most fun function of thief :) I made a kit, it was a mix of assassin, bounty hunter and swashbuckler, with invisible innate spell on lvl 6 and 12 or smt. It had: All the special traps Taco/damage/ac bonus each 5th level or so. Shadow step Plague wep. Really fun kit to play, did on legacy of baal solo. It had one single nerf: Could not use bow/ranged of any kind. Was still hard. People did often not go down with backstab in one hit. So vs mages i had to precast plague wep, hide in shadow, backstab, plague wep would hinder their defensive spellcast while i turned invisible or shadow walker to hide again and backstab again xD The cleric with all the skeletons was hard as well. So many ranged, so high damage etc.
@@gel87Kjetil " yes backstab is the single most fun function of thief" Not really traps are the biggest factor why to play a thief and utility. Backstab on a thief is meh since thieves dont get any proficiency bonuses this means if your weapon does 4 damage you will deal 16 (quadra) damage + strength damage bonus which is 23 damage in the end. Fighter/Thief on the other hand can backstab for 35 damage using same weapon because their specialization and weapon style bonus gets factored in. So if you want to backstab play a fighter thief. The thing is APR > backstab multiplier. Backstab multiplier only factors in weapons damage and proficiency bonuses and adds strength bonus after the damage calculation. Backstab is a good opener however you can get better result by playing swashbuckler going into stealth and attack with 3 APR.
pickpocketing is amazing in BG2. most of the random guards in atakalah (the main city) carry high end mage scrolls. you can seriously add some firepower to your mage books in BG2 via pickpocketing guards
I suppose just don't open containers that were locked when others are in the room. Honestly, I'm a pansy when it comes to this. I might do a psychotic evil run where I just try to break into everything, regardless of other NPCs being in the room and then either knock them unconscious or pay an investment into Bhaal's bank.
@@Redjoy123 ok, i didn't know that i can hit npc and make them unconscious. I thought there is a way to just steal with hiding in shadows that I do wrong and that's why guards are always called.
Yeah! It's a bit of a shock when you see it! They get wrecked throughout much of the game except when you use them for backstabbing or kiting with shortbows. It's wild that they are just better than Mages in combat, but not by much.
@@Redjoy123 even in first edition and 2nd edition table top. Like the odds of even getting a chance to do backstab is so low depending on ur DM. Like you'd think thieves would know how to fight :/
It's because they are skilled in non combat arts. Just like a wizard is skilled in magic and a fighter is skilled in combat, a thief is skilled in lockpicking, sneaking, and climbing. In early dnd, you get experience points for finding treasure.
@@Ravum true but early d&d was also heavily dungeon crawl focused. It just always felt weird to me that the ruffian/ASSASSIN, described in game as “extremely deadly” will likely lose a fight 1 on 1 lmao. Miss ur assassination roll and ur back stab roll, die while trying to fight or get away. Even if u hit ur backstab, you likely won’t kill, then end up dying while trying to finish off or getting away. Keep in mind that assassin was one of the first sub classes in 1st edition. So it’s just weird that their fighting ability was still bad
@@sonic-bb If it can fight as well as a fighter, there's no reason to have fighters. Think of it this way: All classes are derivatives of either fighter or magic user. Those two are the pinnacle of their respective areas of expertise. All other classes have some combination of the abilities of those two classes or weaker versions of what they have and extra utility in some way.
Mage / thief solo play is ideal funfactor:
1. remove xp cap(im also change backstab table to end at 7x)
2. choose: elf, mage / thief / alignment for find familier(ferrel) which has 50% pickpocket in bg1 + pick identify or magic missle.
3. put all skills at level 0 to open locks which will allow you to open the high loot chest in candlekeep tavern. You will also find some spells for xp and usage here. And choose longsword + short bow.
4. talk to firebead mage exactly 30 times for 300 gold.
5. you now have considerable money ammount if selling what you dont need. This allows you to buy katana + helm, shield, armor, arrows, shortbow. But we wont be buying katana due to we will have a +2 scimitar very early. So we will just buy 2 cheap longswords. Elves got taco bonus with longswords.
Now do the 2 quest for xp. Book in haystack and hulls potion.
6. talk to gorion, end up outside candlekeep. Party immoen, steal all items and ditch here. Take road to xantar etc and steal all their stuff same way, pick up diamond which sells for 500gp. And Get loot from gorion battle. (Belt really Nice vs winterwolves etc).
7. travel to next map, pick up the +1 ring. Go to friendly arm in(north).
8. immidiate when entering map, go right and pick up hidden ring to double lvl 1 wizard cast. And open map east.
Then do quest for flamedance ring, only kill the relevant one, espesially if legacy of baal difficulty. Open ankegg map after having the ring, go there and talk to fishermen. Kill them. Take bowl etc and loot house. Now take road north and save etc to bypass ankeggs. Travel to baldurs gate bridge area. Go north at east side and give bowl to waterlady for 2500xp and level up.
9. travel back map where u found ring+1 and go south to bergeost. Here you will use find familier to pickpocket cloak of charming etc. loot whatever you can, you wont be strong enough to kill mages etc yet. Also talk to firebead 30 times again for another 300gp. Kill spiders in house and pick up quest items. Sell all unrelevant for space and coinz.
10. go to high hedge, go to wizard house and buy protection from petrification and invisible spell(2). If you manage to kill Skeleton on the way for its head, you can keep it for quest(chicken).
11. travel east to temple area. Buy all scrolls of stone to flesh. Open map east. If u previous could not afford all scrolls in friendly arm inn temple Prior, you can do that now. Then travel to durlags tower. Use a invisibility scroll to Get to the top of the tower(via level 1, 2 and mind the trap Prior to exiting at level 2).
12. Charm the first greater basilisk on top of roof. USE protection from petrification on both of you. Let it turn the other greater basilisk to stone for 7000xp. Cast stone to flesh, rinse and repeat until you run dry of stone to flesh scrolls. Now charm the other one as well. Level up and make sure you have enough find traps, and hide in shadow and open locks. You should have enough now as you have around 300-500k xp now. Disarm the trap at the column and pick up the +2 scimitar and enough level to become profience with it.
I know this is not the fastest way, but its really fun and usefull and you dont have to sell usable gear. Now you can use invisibility, find traps and open locks to Get great gear from durlags tower. And then go sell and buy spells like(skull trap, haste, ghost armor, magic missle etc). Next steps would be to do whatever you like, drizzt is holding 2 x +3 scimitars, and ghost of ullcaster has the robe of neutral archmagi. Dno where the best short bow is, but you dont have to stress with xp :p
Good guide!
@@Redjoy123 thanks, other stuff which is Nice:
To get cloak of balduran, either u or familiar has enough pickpocket to steal it without rep lost, if not charm here and have here attack the guard. It will kill here for no rep loss. Guard will turn red, but just charm it as well if annoying.
Later you get loads of stone to flesh scrolls. So you can do the basilisk method on those two on top later another like 50-60 times xD
Earlier i have farmed ankeggs, but that takes time espesially on legacy of baal. I have also farmed sirenes, but that was only once. Dno how, but everytime i rested in lighthouse area like 8 of them spawned. So that was like 16k xp each time, but on other run true only one at the time has spawned.
If one dont want to abuse charm method on basilisk, the friendly ghast can let you farm mutamin garden very well for a good xp start.
In bg2ee there are some exploits as well.
If not patched you can pickpocket kangaxx for ring of gaxx Prior to him becomming red. Then get another one once he is dead.
Firecrag is neutral very long. So basicly u can cast stuff like pierce magic etc Prior to engagement. On solo play you might Even be high enough level to do this with clones. And you can use a planetar to start casting ressurection on him Prior to dying such that he will be revived and you can farm him for xp. You can also use clones to avoid summoning caps. So u can have several planetars etc. planetars also gives xp if u kill them, and they dont Even turn hostiles so cheaky way of getting xp as well xD
And for new players using mages, dont underestimate skulltrap, skulltrap can be stacked with rest inbetween such that Even on legacy of baal you can have like 12-16 skulltraps up Even if u just can cast 4 each day. And then lure enemies to them. This is gonna be very usefull vs the werewolf in the boat.
Invisibility, misslead, haste, Improved haste, stoneskin, emotion: hopelessness, and greater malison are inzanely strong spells.
Skulltrap has a very long progressional damage, and can be used very tactical. And with minor globe of invulnerability you Are immune to it. If you target urself via picture enemy will not have magic res vs it as well. Meanwhile misslead will make u invisible Even when attacking or casting spells etc, just ditch the clone in a safe location and you can run around and have fun. Backstab works as well with it. Combination of greater malison and hopelessness is great to make pretty much all but undead and super strong creature to sleep. While sleeping Even a mage with bad taco can hit them very consistent.
In bg2ee u can get xp for talking with rijec skin tanner more than once.
U can also have familiar to pickpocket rift device or drow equipment to smugle them past killzone.
My last playtrue was with a selfmade banshee kit mage. Which cannot use wepon of any type. Neither armor, helms, gloves or wands. So it could not use rift device vs eye of beholder, but i was so high level that he was very easy anyway. Meanwhile i did not smuggle rift device out i kinda regret that now cause i struggle with kangaxx xD i basicly need more levels to abuse a large ammount of clones to bring him down xD i have a shapechange spell, which can use wepons. So i can stack up with that xD
Your videos are great guides
Traps are awesome which is why I solo Thief Bounty Hunter kit.
He can throw his special snare traps and they never hurt you if you are under 100 only fail to spring.
Just go into stealth, find enemies, break LOS, throw special snare trap near the location where enemies were spotted and profit :D After having enough money buy the lost item amulet and explosive potions and cheese the game.
Stealth, find enemies, break LOS, throw special snare, fireball (lost item amulet), explosive potion near the enemy location and profit.
No need for armor, weapons etc...
The fact that you can kill drizzt, shandalar and do the basilisk garden at LEVEL 6 Solo (without Korax) is just insane. Thats 67.000 EXP in a single run.
Agreed, and they don't lose much at all with getting only 20 skill points compared to 25. Bounty Hunters are very useful since traps can be fairly OP (i.e. amazing).
@@Redjoy123
Yup but its sad to see that people on the internet rave more over swashbuckler like this kit always gets voted over bounty hunter or shadowdancer which to me is just huh?
I tried all the kits and swashbuckler to me is the worst out of thief kits. Its kinda supposed to be fighter/thief without benefits of a fighter or a thief (backstab) and you are supposed to use him in melee but without helmet and AC doesn't protect you from 20 rolls which occur much more often then advertised.
On my last playtrue on legacy of baal mode i ended bg1ee with 1.2 mill xp on my solo char xD that was without any exploit. I did not Even use mutamin garden ^^ just wanted to try without those powerups for once. Did quests, ankegg and sirens for early xp. But was hard due to legacy of baal mode :p
I did have some custom spells that helped me a lot though ^^
@@greatdude7279 yes backstab is the single most fun function of thief :)
I made a kit, it was a mix of assassin, bounty hunter and swashbuckler, with invisible innate spell on lvl 6 and 12 or smt. It had:
All the special traps
Taco/damage/ac bonus each 5th level or so.
Shadow step
Plague wep.
Really fun kit to play, did on legacy of baal solo. It had one single nerf:
Could not use bow/ranged of any kind.
Was still hard. People did often not go down with backstab in one hit. So vs mages i had to precast plague wep, hide in shadow, backstab, plague wep would hinder their defensive spellcast while i turned invisible or shadow walker to hide again and backstab again xD
The cleric with all the skeletons was hard as well. So many ranged, so high damage etc.
@@gel87Kjetil
" yes backstab is the single most fun function of thief"
Not really traps are the biggest factor why to play a thief and utility.
Backstab on a thief is meh since thieves dont get any proficiency bonuses this means if your weapon does 4 damage you will deal 16 (quadra) damage + strength damage bonus which is 23 damage in the end.
Fighter/Thief on the other hand can backstab for 35 damage using same weapon because their specialization and weapon style bonus gets factored in.
So if you want to backstab play a fighter thief.
The thing is APR > backstab multiplier.
Backstab multiplier only factors in weapons damage and proficiency bonuses and adds strength bonus after the damage calculation.
Backstab is a good opener however you can get better result by playing swashbuckler going into stealth and attack with 3 APR.
pickpocketing is amazing in BG2. most of the random guards in atakalah (the main city) carry high end mage scrolls. you can seriously add some firepower to your mage books in BG2 via pickpocketing guards
Ya know, I think you’re right, I know I’ve seen them drop pretty powerful scrolls so that doesn’t surprise me at all.
Good for EXP farming too lol.
how to steal from containers without being seen?
I suppose just don't open containers that were locked when others are in the room. Honestly, I'm a pansy when it comes to this. I might do a psychotic evil run where I just try to break into everything, regardless of other NPCs being in the room and then either knock them unconscious or pay an investment into Bhaal's bank.
@@Redjoy123 ok, i didn't know that i can hit npc and make them unconscious. I thought there is a way to just steal with hiding in shadows that I do wrong and that's why guards are always called.
man i dont understand why thieves suck so bad at combat in early d&d
Yeah! It's a bit of a shock when you see it! They get wrecked throughout much of the game except when you use them for backstabbing or kiting with shortbows. It's wild that they are just better than Mages in combat, but not by much.
@@Redjoy123 even in first edition and 2nd edition table top. Like the odds of even getting a chance to do backstab is so low depending on ur DM. Like you'd think thieves would know how to fight :/
It's because they are skilled in non combat arts. Just like a wizard is skilled in magic and a fighter is skilled in combat, a thief is skilled in lockpicking, sneaking, and climbing.
In early dnd, you get experience points for finding treasure.
@@Ravum true but early d&d was also heavily dungeon crawl focused. It just always felt weird to me that the ruffian/ASSASSIN, described in game as “extremely deadly” will likely lose a fight 1 on 1 lmao. Miss ur assassination roll and ur back stab roll, die while trying to fight or get away. Even if u hit ur backstab, you likely won’t kill, then end up dying while trying to finish off or getting away.
Keep in mind that assassin was one of the first sub classes in 1st edition. So it’s just weird that their fighting ability was still bad
@@sonic-bb If it can fight as well as a fighter, there's no reason to have fighters.
Think of it this way: All classes are derivatives of either fighter or magic user. Those two are the pinnacle of their respective areas of expertise. All other classes have some combination of the abilities of those two classes or weaker versions of what they have and extra utility in some way.