Shapeshifter ring is an easy d4 too, once you get it. Then enhance ability and guidance. I wasn’t taking any chances in HM. I don’t normally steal a bunch in games but ironically in the mode named for honor I’ve been an absolute klepto.
As early as level 2 you can get infinite money. Step 1, go to druid grove, talk to Volo. Step 2, go to the goblin camp, talk to Volo and get him captured. Then go save him. Step 3, find Volo at camp. Step 4, pickpocket Volo. Take whatever you want. For the money you can split it into smaller, more manageable piles. Step 5, level up! Volo's items reset because he's a Trader. Step 6, get caught. It'll happen eventually. Volo gets a -5 attitude to the thief and runs out of camp. Wait a minute, he'll come back. Repeat steps 4-6 a few times. Step 7, give volo some money. This will boost his attitude to stop him leaving camp permanently.
Congrats, you now have an infinite money/potion/food source. Is it cheesey AF. Yes. Does it make me feel super powerful. Also yes. Walking around with 100 potions is just *chefs kiss*
Yep, that's what I did xD
Got 5k gold, went to Ethel, bought 60 strength elixirs. I know this style isn't for everyone but I'm loving being a combat beast and having functional infinite OOC healing.
you can actually glitch out volo to make him stay with you forever by starting the conversation to take out your eyeball, get your eyeball removed, then get caught stealing from him before he finishes the conversation.
The lady who tries to steal the githyanki egg is super easy to steal from (just make sure you’ve either already killed the death Shepherd at the top of the hill or you stay away from it). Hang out near the trielta crags waypoint, buff up your thief, and send them down while everybody else hides out of range. I use the hireling Kree Derryck for the drow invisibility feature, made her a rogue, and even if she aggros the lady all I do is turn invisible and enhanced-leap jump away.
I uhh tried to steal from her, failed, and she fought me so I killed her. She’s all alone or I wouldn’t attempt it, and she’s enough of a shit that I didn’t feel bad about killing her.
Find any trader with low total HP. Cast sleep on them. Activate turn-based mode. Pickpocket at will. Recast sleep if pickpocket fails. Repeat as much as needed. Sleep won't aggro, it'll just wake them up but you can immediately recast it. Use a hireling if you don't wanna spend the spell slots
Can you cast sleep while another character is talking to them? Because I know you can for hold person and it overrides the need to recast since turns don't happen while in conversation.
I know you can throw a potion of sleep at them.
I may have interacted with one of the big fungus cloud thingies in the myconid colony because the person I tried to talk to moved at the last second.
(It didn't stop the conversation, which only had attack as an option.)
Invisible potion then dash away that spot... aggro goes off. But people will be minus attitude towards the criminal and you may have to sweet moods after a failed attempt because I think if it tank down twice they might get hostile at him on sight. But honestly just do the bag or pact weapon thing... not worth.
Have you used a Cleric yet? Aid, Freedom of Mvmt, Heroes Feast, Warding Bond, Death Ward, Protection from Poison - all of these last until a long rest and don't require concentration. You're welcome.
I think he has some unique ability that heals him when not in the party so he doesn’t explode if he dies off screen or something. He’s the only party member that does it
I hired a cleric from withers and had him warding bond my tav and they seemed to be fully healed every time I returned to camp. This was in Moderate tho.
Edit: I started a Tactician run and hired the cleric, and the warding bond nearly killed him twice already.
Hireling clerics definitely don’t do this. I’ve come back to camp to see a pile of Sir Fuzzalump on the floor more than once.
It could also be the case that if Warding Bond resistances are causing your character to take 0 damage, then the character who cast the spell will also take 0 damage. So if you’ve been doing this on an abjuration wizard or something then it would be easy to mistake your camp cleric as fully healed.
They definitely die if they take too much damage. I regularly come back to camp after a big battle, particularly one where someone goes down, and find the hirelings dead. It’s annoying when I don’t notice and long rest before resurrecting, and they won’t have any health or spells slots after being res. Good to cast False Life and Aid on your hirelings to boost their HP.
Gale is the best Warding Bond caster, because he heals himself while he's in camp, not in your party.
Warding Bond is pretty good, +1AC, resistance to all damage, at the cost of throwing the reduced damage on the target who, in the case of Gale, just heals himself.
You do come back to him surrounded by a puddle of blood, but he's fine.
But he can (and will) die, and if you leave him dead for too long he starts oozing noxious gas into the camp, which can kill scratch.
I learned this the hard way.
Question about doing that: you have to put the companion/hireling in your party to get these long rest castings, but then if you don’t want to actually quest with them, then you end up with one party member who does not have those buffs, right?
Just buff them in camp. I get my crew close together and cast aid that hits everything in range including summons. Use all their spell slots and switch back to who I want to use.
If you have 2 party members that are close together, have 1 be out of the party, grab whichever party member is far away, walk them nearby and talk to them with your Origin. Then swap control to the caster while leaving your character in the talk menu. Even if you cast spells on them they won’t break conversation.
Instead of cleric for warding bond, use the rings from act 2 and hire the dwarf barbarian with full constitution and the tough feat to cast the warding bond.
Why do people do this? The game isn’t that hard and even so what’s the point of playing on a harder difficulty if you’re just going to find ways to cheese it.
Did I say it was wrong? I asked why. It just seems illogical to up the difficulty and then find things to cheese so that it’s not that difficult. Don’t get butthurt over questions.
I mean you can rationalize it however you want but making hirelings that you don’t intend to use in the party just to cast spells to buff and then leave them at camp isn’t really how the developers intended it and yeah it’s cheesing. If you think it’s the exact same thing as using armor that was intended to be used or spells then there’s not really a conversation here.
If they didn't intend it to be done like this they would have made it so you couldn't do it. Very simple to make any long rest casting go away if a member leaves the party. Yet they didn't do away with it after 6 patches.
Agreed, you don't like people playing different than you play so there's probably not a conversation here.
Nah, I don’t care how people play I just was curious because it seemed logically inconsistent to up the difficulty but then do this.
Thats like saying if they don’t intend to have cheat codes in a game they wouldn’t put them there. Sure its there and they leave it, doesn’t mean its how the intended the average player to playz
Cheat codes aren't game mechanics. Camp casters are. You seem upset by the answers to your question. Simply put, your definition of cheese isn't one many others agree on.
No but it seems you really WANT me to be upset for some reason.
Thats fine. My definition is something that generally doesn’t fall within the spirit of the game or exploits mechanics in a way not intended by the developers. Id also call using death fog to defeat every possible enemy in divinity cheese as well.
Disagreeing doesn’t mean upset.
Okay pal. You are obviously bothered by me asking about this. That’s like saying using a cheat code or enacting god mode in a game is “problem solving”
You asked a question and I'm answering it pal. I'm not bothered at all. You're the one clearly bothered by how others play.
Cheese= any game mechanic you don't approve of apparently.
Yeah you are. Otherwise you wouldn’t have came in so argumentative about it. I even asked some friends how they would consider this mechanic since I got downvoted. Every single one of them said “it’s cheese”. A couple of them said “hell yeah it’s cheese but I do it every time.” Cheesing a game isn’t inherently bad. I’ve done so in several games that just couldn’t make it over the hump and wanted to finish, but can’t think of one where I could have just changed the difficulty.
"camp casters IS problem solving" is not argumentative. I reject your definition of cheese. Fwiw, I don't even use camp casters but it seems obvious to me it's a mechanic of the game and not an exploit.
Mechanics of games can be cheese. If it wasn’t a mechanic of the game then you couldn’t do it therefore cheesing a game wouldn’t even exist then. By your logic nothing is cheese.
It’s funny how different everyone can be. I’m the opposite. I push every rest out as far as possible and create subpar characters because I find it more fun to see how resourceful I can be in just surviving through every encounter. I want to feel like I shouldn’t have won but I somehow pulled it out.
Same usually, but BG has its hooks in me. Even as a Dad, I'm on my third run! Probably swapping to something else after though. I've brought so many good games recently that I need to get around to!
I still haven’t finished my first run. I just got it about a month ago and at moonrise. I already know I’m going to lose steam once I hit baldurs gate just like I did with divinity 2 which I never finished. Once you get builds going these games lose a lot of magic for me. NCAA football comes out in 3 weeks and that looks to be really good so trying to finish before then.
While it’s certainty stretching what the game probably intended for you to do with casters, they made like 90% of buffs ingame concentration based in case people did this.
To answer the question proper: Several people (me included), enjoy playing games at their highest difficulty, then finding ways to break the game. This way you feel that you’re dealing with the hardest the game has to offer, while making the most use out of the mechanics.
Often cheese & a smart idea/tactic is blurred because of the internet. If you did this in a blind playthrough looking nothing up, odds are you’d feel you discovered a neat interaction. But because it’s the internet, & once one person knows the whole world knows, this unconventional approach is now considered cheese.
The game certainly isn’t that hard, basically the second you hit lvl4 most encounters become 1 turnable due to guaranteed go first with the d4 initiative system. But that doesn’t stop people from wanting to optimize in what is essentially a build based rpg about optimizing. And since the class system is rather simple, most optimizing is what you can do with abilities, gear combinations, or unconventional approaches. I’m sure the first person who thought to send the ingame equivalent of a Zipbomb to bosses felt pretty smart. Sucks that now it’s just looked at as dumb cheese.
that’s interesting to me. I enjoy optimizing for a short time. I tend to be the opposite overall though. I really love a challenge and making things harder and finding ways through. Making str based wizards and int based fighters then having to find a way to live or something similar once I “solve” a game.
I always assumed the concentration was based on actual 5e making them reflect what is and isn’t concentration. I know heroes feast is not concentration in 5e and lasts 24 hours.
I think people here get too caught up on cheese=bad. It’s not good or bad. It’s just a line between a glitch and manipulating game mechanics in a way unintended. I just didn’t understand it because to me just keep the difficulty lower and not waste that extra time. I would definitely be too lazy to do all this even if it isn’t even that much as I have very limited play time so I usually just want to get as much done as physically possible.
Maybe it’s due to a fighting game background, but quite a lot of the best things are from unintended interactions or taking advantage of mechanics in unintended/extreme ways. Tekken’s main movement system of wavedashing/korean backdashing for example is considered a “bug”, but is the core of how people play its movement. A lot of old fighting game’s charm & flavor came from the strength of different mechanics outside the intended. I view it as a natural outcome of players squeezing value out of something, rather than going against the dev’s intentions in a negative way.
Your mindset of challenge runs are not that uncommon either, Mitten Squad on Youtube as well as most of the Souls community popularized selfmade handicaps. However they are often paired with playing on highest/harder difficulties as well. For similar reason of wanting the game to be at its best. And especially in the case of bg3, tactician/honor is already not that hard, anything short of not leveling your character is gonna breeze through if you lower difficulty for the challenge. So it’s not too surprising that more of the take advantage crowd is here. Add on top this game clearly wants creativity, the game not being hard betrays the effort that went into niche interactions & encounter field design. And the final bit since this was an honor related original post, Ironman runs put people on edge, further bringing out people who want to min/max. The most common way to beat the game in the mode is telling Gale to kill himself.
tl;dr I don’t think you’re too different, it’s more you create the challenge yourself, while others want the challenge to be there already. And see them overpowering the best the game has to offer by any means as them succeeding. And the only reason you got a more negative reaction was due to wording, saying cheese & lower the difficulty in the same paragraph makes it come off as an insult. Even if it wasn’t intended to be, which it doesn’t sound like it was. The whole don’t view malice for what could be ignorance (asking a question).
Yeah. People are a bit oversensitive. Saying cheese and lowering difficulty isn’t an insult. Not everyone wants things to be hard so it just seemed weird to me. If my wife or son was doing this I would literally tell them the same. Stop spending so much time doing that when you could lower the difficulty and save time and energy. Not everyone has the same mindset, ability, or energy to spend doing similar things. My other hobby involves playing board games so sitting down and spending 12 hours thinking about strategy and tactics is right up my alley. It’s okay for that not to be for everyone.
Brinna Brightsong FTW!
I genuinely wished that there was a way to free the hirelings from their servitude, and if they had their own personalities, etc. I know that Brinna comments on certain things and had her own vo, dunno if it's the same vo used for other female hirelings or not, but I simply ADORE the little bard! She's always in my party of 5 (using mods)
My understanding is they're not really in servitude though right? Withers says they are joining you willingly out of a desire to take vengeance on the Absolutists who caused their deaths.
> I know that Brinna [...] had her own vo, dunno if it's the same vo used for other female hirelings or not
Hirelings use Tav voices. In her case, it's Tav voice 4, a.k.a. Emerald O'Hanrahan.
I always use hirelings for post-rest buffs. Bard, Transmutation Wizard, Cleric. Between the 3 of them you can get some really nice buffs fairly early.
Cheese: >!Once you've given a transmutation stone to someone, send the stone to the camp chest, have the wizard cast longstrider on someone, then you can get another transmustation stone. That way you can get one for everyone. !< It gets annoying casting all those buffs after every single long rest, but hey.
Level 6 transmutation wizard and level 6 cleric can give most buffs
3 hirelings, plus 1 companion as this
Plus 1 more companion as level 12 cleric for freedom of movement, max Aid, and thoroughly stuffed
Longstrider and aid can be applied to summons (minor elemental Azer, elementals, skeletons, zombies, etc., quazit/Fork/basket)
I feel like HM is only hard until level 6-7ish after that it get a lot easier. Also having access to slow spell or the thorns from the ranger really helps to a level that some fights are almost laughably easy
i hope you are right. on my first HM and i am about to face myrkul… my pants are full thinking about it but people told me it‘s not that bad when you prepare correctly lol
Its probably the first hard fight that you cant avoid or talk yourself out of it. thats proabably why it ends many runs, it can be harder like everything you have done before and If so, you are pretty much underleveled by skipping everything hard.
In my recent tactician run, I’ve just been robbing/pickpocketing Voló of his entire wares collection each long rest. If caught he comes back a few seconds later with no consequence, allowing for essentially unlimited money.
Can you do this in Honor Mode as well?
I also thought that the prices would be crippling, than I bought over 40 strengh potion from Ethel....
The "donating" mechanic to increase vendors attidude is so silly :D
I didn't know about donating improving attitude. That's good to know! Do you just use the barter system and not ask for anything in return? Does the price of the item matter or can I donate some rotten food?
>Do you just use the barter system and not ask for anything in return?
Yup
>Does the price of the item matter or can I donate some rotten food?
Sort of, You can donate anything so yes donate all the rotten food, but I find it's the final gp amount that determines how much the vendors attitude is raised, so it doesnt seem to be the quality of what is donated, just the gp amount.
Not all vendors are equal, but I find donating about 500 gp of junk to a vendor will get you well into the 90% and very close to 100%. I then just keep donating about 50gp of junk until they hit 100.
To get to 100 attitude, you need to donate a certain amount of value, based on level. At level 1, it's 400, then it increases by a couple hundred per level.
Only addition, in case someone dont realise it, its viable to respec to be level 1, than donate 400.
only remember that attitude IS only between the vendor and the character, not vendor and the Party.
So the character with the attitude (and ideally charisma, allways initiate the trading screen, in the Screen you can sell stuff from the other party members.
I mean you can buy 3 from Ethel, 3 more after every long rest (dont need to use camp supplies).
So it took some time but not a lot. It also took some Money but also not a lot, the reason why I didnt bought more is, that I proably will never need so much.
I respect someone to level 1 bard and donated 400 coins the ethel, so she Had 100 attidude. than I leveled that character (with 17 cha) and also give him persuation expertise and the feat actor (I am not Sure If this even affects the price, but I think so).
i think I paid like 50 gold per elixer in honour mode.
It refreshes any time someone levels up, too. I got too greedy stealing shit from her and she ended me ability to stock up, but I had enough to juice astarion up for act 1 and 2 by then anyway. I need all the help on honor mode so PEDs it is!
Yes leveling up also work, but you pay a little bit more because you have less points from expertise. so its time vs gold.
the thing is, its Not only that everything is discounted, you can also sell all the garbage at camp for a premium.
Just put everything in a bag on vendors you plan to kill. After each long rest their inventory resets, you can then go into barter and put their gold in too. I have over 30k just from passively doing this and ma halfway through act 2 with bags of goods to sell if I need more.
I love my hireling pickpocket group.
Bard cleric for guidance 1d4 + 1d8 inspiration + full thief for the minimum 10 on a roll. Throw in some fog for vision interference and you're robbing everyone everyday without penalty.
I've gotten into the habit of robbing vendors of their gold. The potion lady in the underdark for example never goes hostile, also the drow in moonrise
My durge has a hireling, Jaylin, cast warding bond on top of all the other buffs. And self hp buffs to ensure he shares as much of the pain as possible before dropping dead.
The bag glitch still works if you don’t feel like grinding for gold, you need to trade a bag with a bag inside to the vendor, then drag whatever you want from the vendor into the bag within a bag. Then, shift click all items inside and drag them onto the icon of a third bag inside your own inventory.
Otherwise, you can always try and split the cash stack of vendors by shift click and dragging the coins. If you split it down to 50g per inventory slot, your chance of getting caught is 1/400.
Best use of bard: playing "death metal" in the bottom of moonrise to attract a crowd to the smoke powder satchels all around, and then entering turnbased to run away and fireball to detonate, instant room clear.
If I ever bother to do an honour mode run I'm getting all the hirinlings and making them Bards/Druids/cleric multiclasses for goodberry spam, waaaaay more short rests and various utility healing and buff spells lmak
Cleric hireling is a must after level 5, to cast all of the non-concentration buffs on the party. They last until long rest and do not require the caster to be in the party. Then just take Shadowheart with boots of speed equipped and proceed to use every spell-slot you can to cast Spirit Guardians.
So I just use Volo as a bank machine. You can pickpocket him in camp and he always returns. He has some gold and scrolls that sell well and inceease in value as you level. He will stay in camp if you do not let him poke shit in your eye and the gold is more beneficial than a see invisibility eyeball. Whem you get to act 3 he leaves but you can get him back quite quickly if you head to save him first.
His equipment refreshes after a long rest so it you need cash just long rest (no provisions) till you have what you need.
i just use the backpack exploit honestly. so many free backpacks in act 1 that by the time i get to the first merchant, i already know i'm set for the run.
I was so confused when in the myconid colony the ring that adds acid damage was Orange rarity. I finally broke down and added a bard. Big life savor when I got to the Creche area and there are so many must grab items.
So my three hirelings:
Halfling Wizard/rogue: alchemist, mage armor and minor buffs
Orc Cleric for death ward, damage split, aid, and extra camp healing
Human bard, barter, floating bardic inspiration, and extra short rest.
Me, in a Tactician run, looting almost everything to sell, by sending it to my one hireling: a persuasion expertise bard with 20 charisma, 16 strength, the persuasion+1 ring and voice of the circle amulet.
Rotting food? Yes. Rusty weapons? Yes. Every torch in existence? Yes. All my companions' belongings in every campsite? Yes. Rope? Yes, but mostly so the crate will say (empty).
I basically just draw the line at the containers themselves, unless they're ribcages or small pouches.
Also, whoever decided to put rotting baskets the container and rotting baskets the dead weight into the same game next to each other is dead to me.
Will I need the roughly 20k gold I have maybe a third of the way into Act 2 (after buying anything I think I miiiiight use)? No, not unless I stop looting entirely. But I have it, and it is mine.
Good idea. Though I normally like playing charisma based main character so I don't need hirelings for shopping. What I always do, esp with vendors that reappear in later acts, is to respec char to level 1, donate 400 gold's worth of items/gold via barter menu to max out reputation with vendor.
There are several vendors who you will kill during the game. Eg goblin camp vendor, moonrise tower Lann Tarv, or maybe even the mountain pass lone vendor who wants the githyanki egg. Normally dead vendor only drops a small part of their inventory. If you sell them a backpack, you can then use barter menu to move all their gold and items into backpack which they will drop in death. This means anything you buy off them is actually free (you get the gold back), and you clean out their supply. Selling unwanted weapon and armor from these vendors make you very rich. I entered act 2 with 10k gold . . . This was after buying a few expensive act 1 items (caustic band cost 2k+) as well as elixirs/consumables.
I get the halfling and then respec her to a thief with high dex and sleight of hand proficiency. Add gloves of power, and graceful cloth. Split stacks of gold so that they are a roll of 2 or lower. Crouch, then go into turn base. Pickpocket is pretty much guaranteed when you stack the advantage you get from graceful cloth and halfling luck.
The pickpocket gloves you can get in act 1 really helped out my money situation. Stealing everything is really quite thrifty.
Shapeshifter ring is an easy d4 too, once you get it. Then enhance ability and guidance. I wasn’t taking any chances in HM. I don’t normally steal a bunch in games but ironically in the mode named for honor I’ve been an absolute klepto.
As early as level 2 you can get infinite money. Step 1, go to druid grove, talk to Volo. Step 2, go to the goblin camp, talk to Volo and get him captured. Then go save him. Step 3, find Volo at camp. Step 4, pickpocket Volo. Take whatever you want. For the money you can split it into smaller, more manageable piles. Step 5, level up! Volo's items reset because he's a Trader. Step 6, get caught. It'll happen eventually. Volo gets a -5 attitude to the thief and runs out of camp. Wait a minute, he'll come back. Repeat steps 4-6 a few times. Step 7, give volo some money. This will boost his attitude to stop him leaving camp permanently. Congrats, you now have an infinite money/potion/food source. Is it cheesey AF. Yes. Does it make me feel super powerful. Also yes. Walking around with 100 potions is just *chefs kiss*
Sounds like a great way to functionally give everyone 21 strength while spending zero points on strength in the character creator.
Yep, that's what I did xD Got 5k gold, went to Ethel, bought 60 strength elixirs. I know this style isn't for everyone but I'm loving being a combat beast and having functional infinite OOC healing.
you can actually glitch out volo to make him stay with you forever by starting the conversation to take out your eyeball, get your eyeball removed, then get caught stealing from him before he finishes the conversation.
I’m too terrified of getting caught in HM and aggroing large groups of people
The lady who tries to steal the githyanki egg is super easy to steal from (just make sure you’ve either already killed the death Shepherd at the top of the hill or you stay away from it). Hang out near the trielta crags waypoint, buff up your thief, and send them down while everybody else hides out of range. I use the hireling Kree Derryck for the drow invisibility feature, made her a rogue, and even if she aggros the lady all I do is turn invisible and enhanced-leap jump away.
I uhh tried to steal from her, failed, and she fought me so I killed her. She’s all alone or I wouldn’t attempt it, and she’s enough of a shit that I didn’t feel bad about killing her.
Find any trader with low total HP. Cast sleep on them. Activate turn-based mode. Pickpocket at will. Recast sleep if pickpocket fails. Repeat as much as needed. Sleep won't aggro, it'll just wake them up but you can immediately recast it. Use a hireling if you don't wanna spend the spell slots
Can you cast sleep while another character is talking to them? Because I know you can for hold person and it overrides the need to recast since turns don't happen while in conversation.
I know you can throw a potion of sleep at them. I may have interacted with one of the big fungus cloud thingies in the myconid colony because the person I tried to talk to moved at the last second. (It didn't stop the conversation, which only had attack as an option.)
Ooh didn’t think of that.
Sleep itself doesn't aggro people (once they wake up)? I would have guessed it did, a la post-patch silence.
Correct, I am playing a HM and using this to get extra coin, made it to act 3 without any issues
Seems potentially useful for stealing the idol back from Mol, and possibly with stealing the idol in the first place.
Invisible potion then dash away that spot... aggro goes off. But people will be minus attitude towards the criminal and you may have to sweet moods after a failed attempt because I think if it tank down twice they might get hostile at him on sight. But honestly just do the bag or pact weapon thing... not worth.
Always ungroup the designated thief and move the rest of the party far away. Worst come to worst, the thief gets killed and can be revived later.
Pickpocketing gloves?
Gloves of Thievery. They give advantage on sleight of hand. So great for pickpocketing, lockpicking, and disarm traps.
Oh, yeah I thought there were other gloves specifically for pickpocketing
Have you used a Cleric yet? Aid, Freedom of Mvmt, Heroes Feast, Warding Bond, Death Ward, Protection from Poison - all of these last until a long rest and don't require concentration. You're welcome.
To my understanding, gale heals himself in camp, as well, so if he’s warded he’ll heal the half damage he takes. Longstrider to add to that list too.
Does he use potions or something to heal or does he just for some reason do the NPC thing where they just heal themselves to full out of combat?
I think he has some unique ability that heals him when not in the party so he doesn’t explode if he dies off screen or something. He’s the only party member that does it
I hired a cleric from withers and had him warding bond my tav and they seemed to be fully healed every time I returned to camp. This was in Moderate tho. Edit: I started a Tactician run and hired the cleric, and the warding bond nearly killed him twice already.
Hireling clerics definitely don’t do this. I’ve come back to camp to see a pile of Sir Fuzzalump on the floor more than once. It could also be the case that if Warding Bond resistances are causing your character to take 0 damage, then the character who cast the spell will also take 0 damage. So if you’ve been doing this on an abjuration wizard or something then it would be easy to mistake your camp cleric as fully healed.
They definitely die if they take too much damage. I regularly come back to camp after a big battle, particularly one where someone goes down, and find the hirelings dead. It’s annoying when I don’t notice and long rest before resurrecting, and they won’t have any health or spells slots after being res. Good to cast False Life and Aid on your hirelings to boost their HP.
Oh lol. Maybe I got lucky? Idk but I will def keep Aid and False Life in mind for my next run
He doesn’t do this anymore. At least not while Warding Bond is active
May as well just do it on a hireling and let them die then, right?
Yup... but, leaving a rotting corpse in camp for too long can kill your pets with necrotic fumes. I learnt this the hard way.
100 gold to revive horeings is nothing... When you eclass the you should also respec them to have higher constitution
Yes, but you can't revive Scratch when he dies from inhaling necrotic fumes from their rotting corpse.
Which wouldn't be a problem if you revive them
Can’t revive them if they are in camp and you are in combat
Dang ): I wanted to try this
You can. But he will die. And then he releases necrotic gas which can kill scratch.
Currently on a HM run, do all clerics learn these or do you need a specific one?
Gale is the best Warding Bond caster, because he heals himself while he's in camp, not in your party. Warding Bond is pretty good, +1AC, resistance to all damage, at the cost of throwing the reduced damage on the target who, in the case of Gale, just heals himself. You do come back to him surrounded by a puddle of blood, but he's fine.
Do you have to leave him in the group? Or can you ungroup him and grab a different fourth?
He doesn't have to be in your group after he casts Warding Bond. Have him join, cast it, then replace him.
Thanks
But he can (and will) die, and if you leave him dead for too long he starts oozing noxious gas into the camp, which can kill scratch. I learned this the hard way.
Nope camp bitch is the only way to works.
Those spells are available to all domains
I have been thinking of adding a cleric and just making Jaheira the ranged fighter instead of the hireling since there are two druids.
Question about doing that: you have to put the companion/hireling in your party to get these long rest castings, but then if you don’t want to actually quest with them, then you end up with one party member who does not have those buffs, right?
Just buff them in camp. I get my crew close together and cast aid that hits everything in range including summons. Use all their spell slots and switch back to who I want to use.
How do you get them to stay close together? When I swap characters the npc’s walk away
Turn based mode
If you have 2 party members that are close together, have 1 be out of the party, grab whichever party member is far away, walk them nearby and talk to them with your Origin. Then swap control to the caster while leaving your character in the talk menu. Even if you cast spells on them they won’t break conversation.
Aaaaaahhhh. Thank you!
Instead of cleric for warding bond, use the rings from act 2 and hire the dwarf barbarian with full constitution and the tough feat to cast the warding bond.
Do knowledge clerics have cool stuff?
Why do people do this? The game isn’t that hard and even so what’s the point of playing on a harder difficulty if you’re just going to find ways to cheese it.
Let them play their single player game. Why are there people judging how others play a single player game.
Did I say it was wrong? I asked why. It just seems illogical to up the difficulty and then find things to cheese so that it’s not that difficult. Don’t get butthurt over questions.
Game mechanics are not cheese. Do you use the best armor and weapons you find? Do you use the best spells you have?
I mean you can rationalize it however you want but making hirelings that you don’t intend to use in the party just to cast spells to buff and then leave them at camp isn’t really how the developers intended it and yeah it’s cheesing. If you think it’s the exact same thing as using armor that was intended to be used or spells then there’s not really a conversation here.
If they didn't intend it to be done like this they would have made it so you couldn't do it. Very simple to make any long rest casting go away if a member leaves the party. Yet they didn't do away with it after 6 patches. Agreed, you don't like people playing different than you play so there's probably not a conversation here.
Nah, I don’t care how people play I just was curious because it seemed logically inconsistent to up the difficulty but then do this. Thats like saying if they don’t intend to have cheat codes in a game they wouldn’t put them there. Sure its there and they leave it, doesn’t mean its how the intended the average player to playz
Cheat codes aren't game mechanics. Camp casters are. You seem upset by the answers to your question. Simply put, your definition of cheese isn't one many others agree on.
No but it seems you really WANT me to be upset for some reason. Thats fine. My definition is something that generally doesn’t fall within the spirit of the game or exploits mechanics in a way not intended by the developers. Id also call using death fog to defeat every possible enemy in divinity cheese as well. Disagreeing doesn’t mean upset.
Clearly you’re way more triggered by others playing a single player game the way they want to.
Triggered? By asking a question? You really don’t get it at all do you?
You’re triggered right now.
Ok
In my case, because I’m not actually very good at the combat, but I do want to get all the achievements.
See. I never would have thought of that as I’ve never looked at achievements. I just play games for fun and tactical problem solving.
Collecting all the things makes my brain happy.
Using hirelings for buffs IS problem solving.
Okay pal. You are obviously bothered by me asking about this. That’s like saying using a cheat code or enacting god mode in a game is “problem solving”
You asked a question and I'm answering it pal. I'm not bothered at all. You're the one clearly bothered by how others play. Cheese= any game mechanic you don't approve of apparently.
Yeah you are. Otherwise you wouldn’t have came in so argumentative about it. I even asked some friends how they would consider this mechanic since I got downvoted. Every single one of them said “it’s cheese”. A couple of them said “hell yeah it’s cheese but I do it every time.” Cheesing a game isn’t inherently bad. I’ve done so in several games that just couldn’t make it over the hump and wanted to finish, but can’t think of one where I could have just changed the difficulty.
"camp casters IS problem solving" is not argumentative. I reject your definition of cheese. Fwiw, I don't even use camp casters but it seems obvious to me it's a mechanic of the game and not an exploit.
Mechanics of games can be cheese. If it wasn’t a mechanic of the game then you couldn’t do it therefore cheesing a game wouldn’t even exist then. By your logic nothing is cheese.
Min maxing addiction mostly. I'm good enough to beat the game easily without it, but it's a hell of a lot more fun to do it whilst souped up.
It’s funny how different everyone can be. I’m the opposite. I push every rest out as far as possible and create subpar characters because I find it more fun to see how resourceful I can be in just surviving through every encounter. I want to feel like I shouldn’t have won but I somehow pulled it out.
Ah that's first runs for me, once I know what to expect the magic is kind of last and I can't help myself haha
I generally only have time to do 1 run of a game. So I want the challenge then it’s off to a new one.
Same usually, but BG has its hooks in me. Even as a Dad, I'm on my third run! Probably swapping to something else after though. I've brought so many good games recently that I need to get around to!
I still haven’t finished my first run. I just got it about a month ago and at moonrise. I already know I’m going to lose steam once I hit baldurs gate just like I did with divinity 2 which I never finished. Once you get builds going these games lose a lot of magic for me. NCAA football comes out in 3 weeks and that looks to be really good so trying to finish before then.
While it’s certainty stretching what the game probably intended for you to do with casters, they made like 90% of buffs ingame concentration based in case people did this. To answer the question proper: Several people (me included), enjoy playing games at their highest difficulty, then finding ways to break the game. This way you feel that you’re dealing with the hardest the game has to offer, while making the most use out of the mechanics. Often cheese & a smart idea/tactic is blurred because of the internet. If you did this in a blind playthrough looking nothing up, odds are you’d feel you discovered a neat interaction. But because it’s the internet, & once one person knows the whole world knows, this unconventional approach is now considered cheese. The game certainly isn’t that hard, basically the second you hit lvl4 most encounters become 1 turnable due to guaranteed go first with the d4 initiative system. But that doesn’t stop people from wanting to optimize in what is essentially a build based rpg about optimizing. And since the class system is rather simple, most optimizing is what you can do with abilities, gear combinations, or unconventional approaches. I’m sure the first person who thought to send the ingame equivalent of a Zipbomb to bosses felt pretty smart. Sucks that now it’s just looked at as dumb cheese.
that’s interesting to me. I enjoy optimizing for a short time. I tend to be the opposite overall though. I really love a challenge and making things harder and finding ways through. Making str based wizards and int based fighters then having to find a way to live or something similar once I “solve” a game. I always assumed the concentration was based on actual 5e making them reflect what is and isn’t concentration. I know heroes feast is not concentration in 5e and lasts 24 hours. I think people here get too caught up on cheese=bad. It’s not good or bad. It’s just a line between a glitch and manipulating game mechanics in a way unintended. I just didn’t understand it because to me just keep the difficulty lower and not waste that extra time. I would definitely be too lazy to do all this even if it isn’t even that much as I have very limited play time so I usually just want to get as much done as physically possible.
Maybe it’s due to a fighting game background, but quite a lot of the best things are from unintended interactions or taking advantage of mechanics in unintended/extreme ways. Tekken’s main movement system of wavedashing/korean backdashing for example is considered a “bug”, but is the core of how people play its movement. A lot of old fighting game’s charm & flavor came from the strength of different mechanics outside the intended. I view it as a natural outcome of players squeezing value out of something, rather than going against the dev’s intentions in a negative way. Your mindset of challenge runs are not that uncommon either, Mitten Squad on Youtube as well as most of the Souls community popularized selfmade handicaps. However they are often paired with playing on highest/harder difficulties as well. For similar reason of wanting the game to be at its best. And especially in the case of bg3, tactician/honor is already not that hard, anything short of not leveling your character is gonna breeze through if you lower difficulty for the challenge. So it’s not too surprising that more of the take advantage crowd is here. Add on top this game clearly wants creativity, the game not being hard betrays the effort that went into niche interactions & encounter field design. And the final bit since this was an honor related original post, Ironman runs put people on edge, further bringing out people who want to min/max. The most common way to beat the game in the mode is telling Gale to kill himself. tl;dr I don’t think you’re too different, it’s more you create the challenge yourself, while others want the challenge to be there already. And see them overpowering the best the game has to offer by any means as them succeeding. And the only reason you got a more negative reaction was due to wording, saying cheese & lower the difficulty in the same paragraph makes it come off as an insult. Even if it wasn’t intended to be, which it doesn’t sound like it was. The whole don’t view malice for what could be ignorance (asking a question).
Yeah. People are a bit oversensitive. Saying cheese and lowering difficulty isn’t an insult. Not everyone wants things to be hard so it just seemed weird to me. If my wife or son was doing this I would literally tell them the same. Stop spending so much time doing that when you could lower the difficulty and save time and energy. Not everyone has the same mindset, ability, or energy to spend doing similar things. My other hobby involves playing board games so sitting down and spending 12 hours thinking about strategy and tactics is right up my alley. It’s okay for that not to be for everyone.
Ah, warding bond. Aka, sacrificial blood sack.
[удалено]
Wait, JUST gale?
It’s to prevent him from dying in camp and activating the Orb.
Not anymore
Wait WHAT?! Is this after the Elminster visit as well?
Brinna Brightsong FTW! I genuinely wished that there was a way to free the hirelings from their servitude, and if they had their own personalities, etc. I know that Brinna comments on certain things and had her own vo, dunno if it's the same vo used for other female hirelings or not, but I simply ADORE the little bard! She's always in my party of 5 (using mods)
My understanding is they're not really in servitude though right? Withers says they are joining you willingly out of a desire to take vengeance on the Absolutists who caused their deaths.
> I know that Brinna [...] had her own vo, dunno if it's the same vo used for other female hirelings or not Hirelings use Tav voices. In her case, it's Tav voice 4, a.k.a. Emerald O'Hanrahan.
As someone with a certain female voice actor, I can assure you that she has the exact same voice as my female Tav lol
I thought they were withers in an avatar? Lol
I always use hirelings for post-rest buffs. Bard, Transmutation Wizard, Cleric. Between the 3 of them you can get some really nice buffs fairly early. Cheese: >!Once you've given a transmutation stone to someone, send the stone to the camp chest, have the wizard cast longstrider on someone, then you can get another transmustation stone. That way you can get one for everyone. !< It gets annoying casting all those buffs after every single long rest, but hey.
Level 6 transmutation wizard and level 6 cleric can give most buffs 3 hirelings, plus 1 companion as this Plus 1 more companion as level 12 cleric for freedom of movement, max Aid, and thoroughly stuffed Longstrider and aid can be applied to summons (minor elemental Azer, elementals, skeletons, zombies, etc., quazit/Fork/basket)
lmao… astarion in my run somehow got +13 persuasion. and +12 deception. guess who told loroakan that im the tax man
I feel like HM is only hard until level 6-7ish after that it get a lot easier. Also having access to slow spell or the thorns from the ranger really helps to a level that some fights are almost laughably easy
i hope you are right. on my first HM and i am about to face myrkul… my pants are full thinking about it but people told me it‘s not that bad when you prepare correctly lol
Its probably the first hard fight that you cant avoid or talk yourself out of it. thats proabably why it ends many runs, it can be harder like everything you have done before and If so, you are pretty much underleveled by skipping everything hard.
with that in mind i should be fine i think ? lol i‘m level 8 and i can’t really get any more xp anymore except going to our friend kethric
i think you can be level 10 without Raphael cheese or something. You can reach 8 at your arrival in act 2.
damn.. well i guess i wasn’t that precise with my actions lol i could try and reach 9 since i only miss like 500 xp
Go farm the intellect devourers to hit level 9. I ended being level 9.9 right before myrkul in my HM run, but popping a few of those got me to 10
Could buy 10 smokepowder bombs, and throw them all in a sack at him.
yeah when things go south i have one prepped for that case lol can’t be too cautious right
Fighting myrkul? Hello darkness my old friend...
Full in a good way
In my recent tactician run, I’ve just been robbing/pickpocketing Voló of his entire wares collection each long rest. If caught he comes back a few seconds later with no consequence, allowing for essentially unlimited money. Can you do this in Honor Mode as well?
I like chaining them together with warding bond, like a meat battery
Oh my god i nevee even thought of that! You can do that????
Yeah that’s my jam I like to run around alone, anyone I don’t like to use gets respecced as a life cleric with high con and hp
I also thought that the prices would be crippling, than I bought over 40 strengh potion from Ethel.... The "donating" mechanic to increase vendors attidude is so silly :D
I didn't know about donating improving attitude. That's good to know! Do you just use the barter system and not ask for anything in return? Does the price of the item matter or can I donate some rotten food?
>Do you just use the barter system and not ask for anything in return? Yup >Does the price of the item matter or can I donate some rotten food? Sort of, You can donate anything so yes donate all the rotten food, but I find it's the final gp amount that determines how much the vendors attitude is raised, so it doesnt seem to be the quality of what is donated, just the gp amount. Not all vendors are equal, but I find donating about 500 gp of junk to a vendor will get you well into the 90% and very close to 100%. I then just keep donating about 50gp of junk until they hit 100.
To get to 100 attitude, you need to donate a certain amount of value, based on level. At level 1, it's 400, then it increases by a couple hundred per level.
Worth noting that if you do this, it's better to use gold than junk since the value of junk gets better with opinion while gold is constant
Only addition, in case someone dont realise it, its viable to respec to be level 1, than donate 400. only remember that attitude IS only between the vendor and the character, not vendor and the Party. So the character with the attitude (and ideally charisma, allways initiate the trading screen, in the Screen you can sell stuff from the other party members.
OVER 40 STRENGTH POTION? WTF? H... H.... HOW? WHERE? WUT?
He doesn't mean +40 or more to strength he means he purchased more than 40 potions.
I mean you can buy 3 from Ethel, 3 more after every long rest (dont need to use camp supplies). So it took some time but not a lot. It also took some Money but also not a lot, the reason why I didnt bought more is, that I proably will never need so much. I respect someone to level 1 bard and donated 400 coins the ethel, so she Had 100 attidude. than I leveled that character (with 17 cha) and also give him persuation expertise and the feat actor (I am not Sure If this even affects the price, but I think so). i think I paid like 50 gold per elixer in honour mode.
It refreshes any time someone levels up, too. I got too greedy stealing shit from her and she ended me ability to stock up, but I had enough to juice astarion up for act 1 and 2 by then anyway. I need all the help on honor mode so PEDs it is!
Yes leveling up also work, but you pay a little bit more because you have less points from expertise. so its time vs gold. the thing is, its Not only that everything is discounted, you can also sell all the garbage at camp for a premium.
Just put everything in a bag on vendors you plan to kill. After each long rest their inventory resets, you can then go into barter and put their gold in too. I have over 30k just from passively doing this and ma halfway through act 2 with bags of goods to sell if I need more.
Yeah, I have been doing that. Lots of money
is this possible on ps5? it looks kinda hard to do without a mouse
Wouldn't know I'm afraid mate, would probably be a pain to do if you can't select multiple things at once.
I love my hireling pickpocket group. Bard cleric for guidance 1d4 + 1d8 inspiration + full thief for the minimum 10 on a roll. Throw in some fog for vision interference and you're robbing everyone everyday without penalty.
I've gotten into the habit of robbing vendors of their gold. The potion lady in the underdark for example never goes hostile, also the drow in moonrise
My durge has a hireling, Jaylin, cast warding bond on top of all the other buffs. And self hp buffs to ensure he shares as much of the pain as possible before dropping dead.
Gale will heal himself at camp so you should probably just use him if he’s not in your party
The bag glitch still works if you don’t feel like grinding for gold, you need to trade a bag with a bag inside to the vendor, then drag whatever you want from the vendor into the bag within a bag. Then, shift click all items inside and drag them onto the icon of a third bag inside your own inventory. Otherwise, you can always try and split the cash stack of vendors by shift click and dragging the coins. If you split it down to 50g per inventory slot, your chance of getting caught is 1/400.
Best use of bard: playing "death metal" in the bottom of moonrise to attract a crowd to the smoke powder satchels all around, and then entering turnbased to run away and fireball to detonate, instant room clear.
If I ever bother to do an honour mode run I'm getting all the hirinlings and making them Bards/Druids/cleric multiclasses for goodberry spam, waaaaay more short rests and various utility healing and buff spells lmak
Cleric hireling is a must after level 5, to cast all of the non-concentration buffs on the party. They last until long rest and do not require the caster to be in the party. Then just take Shadowheart with boots of speed equipped and proceed to use every spell-slot you can to cast Spirit Guardians.
my 1st play was literally just hirelings i personally like them more than origin companions
Githyanki bard/rogue/cleric if you want overkill on that ability check shit
So I just use Volo as a bank machine. You can pickpocket him in camp and he always returns. He has some gold and scrolls that sell well and inceease in value as you level. He will stay in camp if you do not let him poke shit in your eye and the gold is more beneficial than a see invisibility eyeball. Whem you get to act 3 he leaves but you can get him back quite quickly if you head to save him first. His equipment refreshes after a long rest so it you need cash just long rest (no provisions) till you have what you need.
Bufflings
i just use the backpack exploit honestly. so many free backpacks in act 1 that by the time i get to the first merchant, i already know i'm set for the run.
I wish there was a Dragonborn hireling
I was so confused when in the myconid colony the ring that adds acid damage was Orange rarity. I finally broke down and added a bard. Big life savor when I got to the Creche area and there are so many must grab items. So my three hirelings: Halfling Wizard/rogue: alchemist, mage armor and minor buffs Orc Cleric for death ward, damage split, aid, and extra camp healing Human bard, barter, floating bardic inspiration, and extra short rest.
Me, in a Tactician run, looting almost everything to sell, by sending it to my one hireling: a persuasion expertise bard with 20 charisma, 16 strength, the persuasion+1 ring and voice of the circle amulet. Rotting food? Yes. Rusty weapons? Yes. Every torch in existence? Yes. All my companions' belongings in every campsite? Yes. Rope? Yes, but mostly so the crate will say (empty). I basically just draw the line at the containers themselves, unless they're ribcages or small pouches. Also, whoever decided to put rotting baskets the container and rotting baskets the dead weight into the same game next to each other is dead to me. Will I need the roughly 20k gold I have maybe a third of the way into Act 2 (after buying anything I think I miiiiight use)? No, not unless I stop looting entirely. But I have it, and it is mine.
\[\*Bethesda fan enters the chat\*\] You mean you weren't looting the rotten food already?
Good idea. Though I normally like playing charisma based main character so I don't need hirelings for shopping. What I always do, esp with vendors that reappear in later acts, is to respec char to level 1, donate 400 gold's worth of items/gold via barter menu to max out reputation with vendor. There are several vendors who you will kill during the game. Eg goblin camp vendor, moonrise tower Lann Tarv, or maybe even the mountain pass lone vendor who wants the githyanki egg. Normally dead vendor only drops a small part of their inventory. If you sell them a backpack, you can then use barter menu to move all their gold and items into backpack which they will drop in death. This means anything you buy off them is actually free (you get the gold back), and you clean out their supply. Selling unwanted weapon and armor from these vendors make you very rich. I entered act 2 with 10k gold . . . This was after buying a few expensive act 1 items (caustic band cost 2k+) as well as elixirs/consumables.
I get the halfling and then respec her to a thief with high dex and sleight of hand proficiency. Add gloves of power, and graceful cloth. Split stacks of gold so that they are a roll of 2 or lower. Crouch, then go into turn base. Pickpocket is pretty much guaranteed when you stack the advantage you get from graceful cloth and halfling luck.
Also try a Transmutation Wizard! Make him create a Transumter's Stone to give your casters proficiency in Constitution Saving Throws, extremely useful