Released in 1998, Baldur's Gate follows the tale of an orphaned child being raised in the scholar community of Candlekeep. One night, he is ambushed by a man named Sarevok and his stepfather sacrifices his life to protect him. The journey begins as he sets forth to discover why Sarevok sought him out, and to exact revenge for his stepfather's murder.
Runs using the 'Tales of the Sword Coast' expansion:
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0:16:35 by Julien Langer, done in 9 segments.
Author's comments:
Special thanks goes out to clone rizzo for discovering the polymorph glitch! This run wouldn't be possible without this particular glitch.
A more detailed explanation follows:
Nothing exciting is happening here. I decided to start a new segment after the cutscene because it is very annoying to do the character generation + cutscene over and over again.
Note that I use Charm as my first spell since I do not go to Beregost to get Algernon's Cloak.
I utilize the first major glitch here: Potion Duping. Here's how it works: Drink some other potion (like a health potion) and immediately give the command to drink the potion you want to dupe. Then pick up the potion in your inventory and hold it. The stack count will be reduced by one but the potion doesn't disappear! Do this again to produce an unsigned integer underflow.
The rest of this segment is made up by getting to the Ice Island as fast as possible.
I use my charm spell to charm Garan and steal his Dimension Door scroll. This is the only place to get this scroll before BG-City.
I introduce another glitch I discovered in this segment: Dimension door abuse. Normally Dimension Door is one of the most useless spells in the game. However if you leave the area immediately after casting the spell you'll be teleported to the exact position at which you clicked in the first area. This is great because it saves much walking in the game. Note that I pick up the scroll aftercasting the spell. It's a similar glitch like potion duping.
This particular use of the glitch in this segment places me directly in front of the boss of this dungeon.
I rest here for two reason: First to be able to cast Charm again, second Dezkiels protective spells will wear off. Without his spells active he can be charmed and the cloak, required to leave the island again, can be stolen from him.
I use the Dimension Door glitch to get into BG. Note that I'm still in Chapter one and that the bridge is still raised. A watchful viewer will probably wonder why the stack count of the Dimension Door Spell is 1 and not zero. The game resets the count of all stacks with an amount of zero to one when saving the game.
Sell:
1111 Scrolls of Dimension Door
Buy:
I now fetch Imoen at the north Beregost road where I placed her in the second segment.
Then I dual class her to mage and teleport both characters into Candlekeep using the Dimension Door glitch.
Imoen casts Dimension Door and leaves the library. Outside she'll be placed at the back of the library which saves some walking. You might wonder why I entered the library with Imoen just to leave it immediately again. Well, the library can only be entered by the whole party but can be left with a single character. After I placed Imoen near the wall I pull of the polymorph glitch discovered by clone rizzo. The idea is to place monsters or other (N)PCs around your PC and then polymorph into a creature which takes more space.
The game will then place the PC at the nearest free space which happens to be outside Candlekeep since all the other space around Imoen is occupied by monsters.
What follows is some extreme script breaking. Normally the gatewarden will teleport you into the prison after talking to him and Tethoril will teleport you into the crypt after the cutscene.
I discovered a bug which will prevent the NPC and the party members to be teleported away.
For this to work you have to give ALL but your main character the command to enter another area. Then you have to talk (with the main character) to the NPC which whose script would teleport you and pause the game immediatly after the dialog AND give your main character some other command like walking somewhere else. Then unpause the game and voila, nobody is teleported away. Note that this does _not_ work if you talk to the NPC with another PC than your main character. That's why I placed Imoen outside Candlekeep and not my main character (which would be faster if it would work).
I use this glitch the first time to avoid getting teleported into the crypt. The dialog with the gatewarden will set an important ingame variable: If I now talk to Tethoril he will offer me to teleport me into the crypt. The Dialog with Tethoril will also set some important ingame variable which will activate the trigger outside Candlekeep which normally triggers chapter 7.
By now you should get an idea about what follows now: I talk to Tethoril once while glitching the game to not teleport me away. Then I walk over the chapter trigger with Imoen.
The drawback is that this trigger does not set the chapter to 7, it merely increases the chapter counter by one. That's why I have to repeat this glitch 5 times and after the sixth time I let myself by teleported into the crypt.
You might wonder why I use the crypt to get out of Candlekeep and not the polymorph glitch. Well, the crypt is actually much faster than using that glitch.
I sleep on the North Beregost Road to regain my memorized Charm spell and then use the Dimension Door glitch to reach Slythe fastly.
This Segment is quite random (as almost all segments in this run) since the third arrow has to be fired at the exact right moment to disturb Krystin's Mirror Image spell.
It's important that I kill Krystin and Slythe while he is hostile (that's why I step back and hide in the shadows after I fired a few arrows).
Without those XP points I wouldn't reach thief level 5 and would not have backstabbing damage x 3 which is required for the fight against Sarevok.
Also note that I use the "force talk glitch" on Slythe: If you use the "talk" button on a neutral person he will just stand there and do nothing for one round or so. This can be repeated several times as long as the NPC doesn't approach you (and Slythe will do this if you're not invisible).
You might notice that my character "jumps" slightly while leaving the undercellar. This is actually not a problem of the video but of the game. It's some extremely rare glitch that sometimes happens. I don't really know why and when this occurs.
I use a slightly modified version of clone rizzos tactic here: Firstly I place my target guard at a different position which seemed to make things easier and secondly I use the force talk glitch to make the dukes stand still instead of Otiluke's Sphere like clone rizzo did. The doppelgangers then go down quite easily after a few Arrows of Detonation.
In the thieves guild I use the dimension door glitch to almonst completely skip the maze and in the maze I use this glitch again to be placed next to the Temple of Bhaal. The rest of this segment is the usual backstabbing tactic to kill Sarevok.
Single-segment 0:24:30 by Julien Langer.
Author's comments:
It's definitely improvable but I was getting so very annoyed by the randomness of this game that I thought better to submit this run than nothing. A new BG SS run was long overdue anyhow.
Character Generation:
Obviously Dex and Con are most important. I go for 18 strength mainly to be able to carry lots of duped potions.
In previous runs charisma was very important, but thanks to the potion duping charisma has become unnecesary.
While in Beregost I also grab Algeron's Cloak and go for some shopping.
Sell
150 Oils of Speed
Buy
The Amulet and Bracers really help against some of the randomness in this game like random encouters with bandits.
Mistakes:
On Level 2 a kobold was blocking my way so I had to kill it with my wand.
Mulahey also goes down easily with the wand. I use the "force talk" glitch here: If you use the "talk" button on a neutral person he will do nothing for one round, even if you attack him. This can also be repeated several times (like I did against Slythe later)
Also noticed that I skipped visiting Beregost a second time? Well, it's completely pointless to kill Tranzig and I really don't know why we always did this in previous runs. Killing Tranzig will only reveal the bandit camp on the map, it isn't required if you enter the camp through Larswood.
In the camp I get the Potion of Perception which is later required to disarm some traps in Cloakwood Mines. I use the Potion of Absorbtion, obtained in the Nashkel mines, to avoid being damaged by the lightning trap on the chest.
My character is simply too fast for these traps :)
That's why I charmed the guards as blockers and used some arrows to finish him.
Not only that this tactic is slow, I also had some problems coordinating the guards during this attempt. Really embarrassing :)
On Level two I get the dispel magic scroll. With the help of this scroll Daeveron goes down really easily. And I finally get my first level up (well to be exactly, 2 level ups for each class) after killing Daeveron.
I introduce another major glitch I discovered here: Dimension door abuse. Normally Dimension Door is one of the most useless spells in the game. However if you leave the area immediately after casting the spell you'll be teleported to the exact position at which you clicked in the first area. This is great because it saves much walking. Note that I pick up the scroll after casting the spell. It's a similar glitch like potion duping.
This particular use of the glitch in this segment places me directly in the upper left corner of this area which isn't directly accesible from BG East. I then zone up BG NE and go to the Iron Throne.
In BG SW I buy a fourth Potion of Invisibilty. It isn't normally required but nice to have to be prepared for some randonmess (or stupid mistakes in the case of this run as you'll see later).
Here's how it works in 4 steps:
In the crypt I use the dimension door glitch two times.
Killing Slythe is pretty easy with the force-talk glitch and some arrows, though this particular attempt was pretty bad because a lots of arrows missed.
In the thieves guild I use the dimension door glitch to almonst completely skip the maze and in the maze I use this glitch to be placed next to the Temple of Bhaal.
I did a somewhat funny mistake during the fight against Sarevok: I tried to backstab him with my Arrows of Detonation. Well, obviously that didn't work too good and I only survived with 3 HPs :). Luckily I bought the fourth Potion of Invisibilty in BG SW so I was still able to complete the game (I guess I had some serious luck there).