I was level 9 when finishing Act 2 (exactly where you are now) so I think you're right on target. I wouldn't want to go to Act 3 any lower than that, except on Explorer, but I won't be playing that way.

As I mentioned earlier I'm also playing Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. I'm playing on Core difficulty and frankly it's a bit of a b!tch It's quite difficult. It's complex and dense. Enemies make attacks and do things like steal levels and drain attributes. My party is level 4 and I've sunk 30 hours in to it so far. In BG3 I rather sail through with the occasional reload to try a different approach. In Pathfinder it is a lot of reloads, sometimes because my party was wiped, and sometimes just to see if I can come out the other side without my party being completely gimped by losing so much during the fight. For example one of my fighters has 19 strength. I fought a battle against Shadows, and managed to win, but that character had 5 strength when it was over. Ugg. So I fought that battle five or six times until I came out with her at 15 strength, which is bad enough. Some of my struggle is due to just not being experienced enough with this game, although I did play Kingmaker. There is much to learn.

I defeated Thorm (the first match up) and am now in the Mind Flayer colony trying to track him down. I'm about halfway to level 10. What a fricking great game this is!

Nice work, he's a persistent bugger though. Ketheric is one of the most satisfying characters to defeat however. He really has it coming

The end of Act 2 is rather epic.

Baldur's Gate is now just around the corner. Good adventuring.

There was one thing I completely missed in the colony you're in



Sounds like you are running a warlock in your party PM? You've spoken of Cloud of Daggers, although maybe other classes can have that spell. If you don't have it I'd suggest picking up Counterspell as a reaction. My main has it and I think it is a massive help in battles where the enemy attempts to open up with one of their heavy hitter spells. Counterspell negates it entirely and this can shift the battle in your favor on the first turn. Denying a strong AoE at this point is a big advantage.

Speaking of reactions..... early on I took Hellish Rebuke which I like a lot. But from about level 7 to level 12 I lost it. I think it is a bug, but for all that time Hellish Rebuke didn't trigger once. I suspected it was being crowded out by taking the charm illithid. So I disabled that in the reactions tab. Charm sucks anyway since it only charms the target against the caster, not the party. Anyway, in the past couple of days Hellish Rebuke is working again. Maybe fixed in an update. Reactions are one of my favorite things about the combat in BG3 and I suspect we will start to see these in every new RPG. Opportunity Attacks have always been a thing, and the reactions system takes it to a new level.

I'm playing as Gale so I have both a wizard and a warlock in my party since I've been using Wyll a lot. Both Gale and Wyll have the cloud of daggers spell. And regarding counterspell, Gale doesn't have it but Wyll does and yes it does come in handy.

Right on Panzer. And you should definitely keep it for Act 3!

Last night I played a little of each of my current runs, one in Act 3 at level 12 on Balanced, and one in Act 1 at level 2 on Tactician.

In my Balanced run I have never used a scroll. Isn't that weird? Just never needed it, and all of my characters are swamped with scrolls in their inventory. But in tactician, this is the sort of thing I'll probably need to take advantage of. Tactician raises the challenge enough that the player needs to use every advantage. Throwables, scrolls, and all items and tools become that much more valuable.

But I do have the experience of the first run in my pocket and can make better choices this time around. I know what I want, what to discard, which abilities and spells to choose, how to focus my character builds and make them more efficient, at least early on.

In the Tactician run I just made a fighter. I won't be a fighter later, but I reasoned this was the best choice for the beginning of the game. Once Withers is recruited you can be whatever you want to be. But in the first couple of levels you won't have many spells, skills and abilities, and those you have are relatively weak and have low accuracy compared to what they will be later on. So a fighter makes a lot of sense. Action Surge at level 2 is a big advanatge and a fighter gets more hitpoints which aids survivability in the first few levels. So yeah, I'd recommend anyone playing for the first time starts as a fighter. Before too long (by level 4 anyway) you'll be able to completely respec in to whatever class you want to be. Kicking it off as a fighter gives you a nice start.

One very distinct addition or change made in BG3 is the rest system. Original Sin 2 doesn't have this, instead things are gated by the Source mechanic, with most spells and abilities limited per encounter. But as soon as that battle is over, they refresh to use right around the corner.

BG3 instead introduced the rest system, with short and long rests. It's further gated by needing camp supplies. Playing on tactician raises the number of supplies needed to 80 (double the 40 on balanced). I hadn't expected this, and while this is far from insurmountable (you can always buy them if needed I suppose) it is much more limiting. I finally did my first long rest when I hit level 3, and now I've got no supplies left! Anyone considering a tactician run will want to know this I think. It was easy to keep enough on hand on balanced, but requiring double that amount is a big step.

I got Withers in the new run and it's time to spec my main in to whichever class I want to play, but I can't decide. It's clear that the first run set me up well for this increased difficulty. For example in the battle in the dank crypt were you find Withers, the first time I played it it gave me some trouble. I was new, didn't know the game well yet, and it was a tough fight. This time around that battle was won without taking damage. Tactician may up the ante, but that's just what I want having grown accustomed to the game's mechanics and systems. But I still wonder if I'll sing that same tune when I fight the hardest bosses. Or how will the goblin camp battle go when now all enemies hit twice as often and throw so many bombs. In the balanced run I was not so concerned about resistances, but in tactician I feel I should focus more on these.

I've been mixing in some comments here about Wrath of the Righteous which I'm also playing. The party has hit level 5 in the first act and it's getting it's hooks in. It's certainly more difficult than BG3 (Core versus Balanced), and not just the combat, but the systems, the leveling. The freakin' choices! The underlying mechanics are more intricate, how everything meshes. How important it is to use the right abilities because that enemy is immune to whatever you have in your hand, and if you didn't build it right you are stuck. Quite unforgiving really. Enemies are drain-happy. Get hit by a shadow and lose 5 strength. Get hit by a wight and lose three levels. It's pretty brutal. It can be restored, but it really sucks to come out of a tough fight and your party is like half as strong as it was before the battle. Tactical reloads are essential in this one, for me anyway.

Multiclassing is especially dense. In BG3 I felt no compunction about diving right in. In Wrath, a poor multiclass could end your run. The way difficulty spikes means you can't go forward with poor characters. And on Core, there is no respec. That is a nice safety net in BG3, as I found when I built a cleric/paladin, and was able to change it again when I realized it just doesn't work well. You can respec on lower difficulties in Wrath evidently. On Core there is no auto-level for companions either, so your party carries on your choices, good or bad.

Party size in Wrath is six, and there are a number of pets and other hangers on, so you can enter battles with like 10. One has a pet leopard. I approve of this.

I'm well into Act 3 and still exploring Rivington. That entire excursion through the circus was a lot of fun with a very interesting twist at the very end.

I have yet to go in the circus. I passed by on my way to the lower city, intending to return, and then got distracted by shiny things. I'll have to pop in there and see what it is all about.

I've hit level 4 in the tactician run. Still have my main spec'd out as a fighter, but I think I'm going to swap it to a pact of the blade warlock with a Paladin multiclass starting at level 5. Pact of the blade lets you bind any weapon, and it then uses the spellcasting stat for attack and damage rolls. Which means you can max Charisma and dump others and still have eldritch blast, powerful spells AND melee attacks. Seems like it could be very strong so I want to experiment with that.

I've been sinking more time over the past week in to Pathfinder and I have to admit defeat. I played Act 1 on Core difficulty and managed it well enough, even if it was difficult in spots.. But now that I'm in Act 2 I said screw it and dropped the difficulty to Daring.The fights were very hard and required tactical reloads and a lot of pre-fight buffing. And it demands you have optimized builds. I could win these battles with enough tries and favorable rolls, but it was too much of a slog. Core will be good for a second run should I do so. I've been playing these games for nearly 30 years and I'd have to put this down as probably the most challenging one of them all, and Core is just the third highest difficulty. I need more experience in the game to succeed consistently at that setting.

My main dilemma right now is juggling to find the time to use all of my available team members. There are a couple which I've barely used.

I didn't worry about that, instead saving them for other runs. I felt no need to do them all. Wyll and Gale I essentially ignored. Halsin too. Karlach I did some of.

I did save Wyll's father, but that was more to see if I could and have him as a final battle ally.

I'm a completionist by nature when I play any PC game so I think I'm just trying to explore all of the available storylines for my team members even though I know I'll be replaying the game eventually.

Yes, you are

Luckily this game is good enough to want to do all of that.

Looks like they're gonna add a new race in an future update.

LOL that was hilarious

That video was very well done!

Not much talk here about this game, certainly no build theory or ability discussion, which is a shame since there are so many possible choices and combinations that it would be fun to talk about.

But what I wanted to talk about in this post is how effective that assassin and gloomstalker build is. Has anyone else tried this?

One of the hardest fights in the game is the Lorroakan fight, which comes in Act 3. This dude is very strong, with some serious abilities, not least of which is a counter/reaction he has, is it called Elemental Retort? You hit him, and he strikes back. Hard.

But when I fought him, Astarion as an assassin 5 / gloomstalker 5 / fighter 2 smoked Lorroakan on the first turn, before anyone else got to go. Boss.

Lorroakan's reactions nearly killed Astarion, since he gives as good as he gets. My warlock main has counter spell and got to use it once when Astarion was shooting, other wise I think Astarion would have gone down instead. Denying him that one reaction was enough to have him barely survive. To take Lorroakan out in one turn is fantastic, and that's what this multiclass can do. Give it a try.

I've been level 12 now for a while and I still have several side quests to finish in the Lower City before I'll be ready to take out Orin or Gortash. I went ahead and played nice with Gortash for now so I'll be going after Orin first. I've now put 173 hours in the game.

I was playing nice with both of them too, but now they both despise me, Gortash because I did the underwater prison rescue and he did not approve of such insolence. Ah, what are ya gonna do?

I still have to fight both of them, plus Astarion's final battle in his companion quest.

I wrapped up Astarion's quest line and that final battle was tough but the final battle to wrap up Shadowheart's quest line was even harder.

On my second playthrough now. Did something change in an update? Leveling up seems to happen much faster now, I'm barely halfway through Act 1 and I am already level 4.

I decided to play the exact same character this second time - I just love her too much I don't feel like making vastly different decisions either, I thought the story in my first playthrough was perfect. The only thing I will be doing differently will be some side quests (apparently I missed a few) and experiment with companion builds. I have made Astarion a bard this time, which seems to fit my playstyle better. In my first playtrhough I never found a good spot for Wyll in my party, so I want to do that this time. I do feel I have got much better at the game, even the spider cave fight (which I abandoned first time) now seems manageable.