Does anyone have tips for bauldur's gate 1-2 and fallout 1-2

I want to play fallout 1&2 and baldur's gate 1&2 but i am worried i will not be understand the mechanics

I can't help you with the Fallout series: haven't played them myself either.

But I have played all the way through Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, all the way up to Throne of Baal.

First things first: mods. The Baldur's Gate series is old now, and doesn't support most modern screen sizes. For a comprehensive guide to modding the everlasting shit out of Baldurs Gate, look over here. I found that guide invaluable when I first played the Baldurs Gate games. One of the best things the article describes is a way for you to play Baldur's Gate 1 in the Baldur's Gate 2 engine. It makes the original Baldur's Gate look better and it stitches both games together so that you Never. Have. To. Stop. Playing. HNNGG.

Secondly: carefully pick which class to play. Mages start out extremely weak but end up as some sort of demigods. The downside is that you will probably be very frustrated during the first few hours of playing the game. Mages can only cast a very limited amount of spells and have to rest before being able to use them again. So most of the time your mage will just be standing there while his or her party members get kicked in the shins by evil necromancers or whatever. To make mages more useful, I recommend equipping them with either darts or a sling. The same goes for most caster classes such as clerics.

Warriors, paladins and other melee classes are generally more straightforward to play, although you may want to keep a close watch on their 'armor class'. The golden rule with the armor class stat in the Baldur's Gate series is: the lower the better. So if for instance your paladin has an armor class of -9, that is a good thing. If you want to know the armor class of one of your characters, hit the 'i' - key to view his or her inventory and look for the shield icon next to his or her character portrait.

Speaking of the 'i' - key: the Baldur's Gate games have a lot of keyboard shortcuts which might be useful to remember. You can hit 'o' to go to the options menu, hit 'q' to quicksave', hit 'L' for your quest log, hit 'w' to see your characters' wizard spells and hit 'p' to view his or her priest spells. Tab reveals useable objects or items.

If you are stuck, there are a lot of guides and walkthroughs to get you through the game. You may want to have a look at sites like gamebanshee.com for comprehensive walkthroughs. It also helps to speak to all named characters you encounter. Most of them are part of quest lines or have interesting things to say about where to go next.

And last but not least: companions. You can have a party of up to six companions, and I would recommend you to have at least one dedicated healer and two tanks in your party. I also strongly recommend that you recruit a man who goes by the name of Minsc. Seriously, go look for a big bald man with a pet hamster.

I hope this helps you in some capacity.

(Fallout 2)

Tag Small Guns. All the speech skill in the wasteland will do dick against a group of angry slavers or radscorpions.

When you get to The Den, find a guy named Flick. Kill him. He's usually carrying some decent early level firearms and gear. No karma loss either.

Stay the hell away from chems. A Jet addiction is the LAST thing you need.

There's a car for sale in the Den, provided you've got parts and cash. Get it ASAP. Carry weight restrictions in this game are harsh and the trunk of that car becomes invaluable.

Quicksave

Pause

Save

@ischar25: What about morality in baldurs gate

You may want to skip baldur's gate 1. The beginning is super slow and boring, not because of the writing, but because playing a D&D game where you start at level 1 sucks. BG2, however, is incredible. Also, get the widescreen mod + other fixes from http://www.gibberlings3.net

Don't skip Fallout 1 though, thats different. Fallout tips: agility is probably the most important ability, it gives you action points. Small guns is a great skill, especially early game. Later going for either big guns or energy weapons is good too. For using guns, perception is the 2nd most important ability, its accuracy basically. Aimed shots are great. Pickpocketing is fantastic. Get the bloody mess perk/trait

The Baldur's gate games are boring. That's just my opinion, though.

In fallout 1 the first thing you should do is get the water (you'll know what I'm talking about as soon as the game starts really- it's not a spoiler to say that). After you finish that then the time limit goes away and you can go and do whatever you want. I mention it because you can go and do whatever you want even with the time limit but if you do the time limit will run out really fast. That's really the hardest part about the game- it's not hard to understand beyond that. Just play and have fun.

Oh and Fallout 2 has a ton of game breaking bugs where if you do something you can't progress the game. So save a lot and in different slots and have different slots for like every 5 minutes or an hour differences or something like that.

For fallout, this applies to both.

Agility and intelligence are BY FAR the most important stats. Take small guns as your primary combat skill, they're viable and plentiful throughout the entire game. Speech is pretty badass, you can (and i have) beat both games without killing a single thing. (well, i tech'd my way into beating 2's final boss but i didnt directly kill him....)

Fallout 1, its damn near impossible to keep Dogmeat alive through the whole game, i wouldnt recommend trying to save scum everytime he dies because it'll get frustrating quick.

Fallout 2, followers are extremely powerful and useful, use them. Oh and don't take Jet or give jet to cassidy.

dont listen to him. Its frustrating but do it just because dogmeat owns. Savescum like hell to save a cool dog.

Armor class is different than D&D games today.

Back then, there was something called THAC0 or To Hit Armor Class 0. Unmodified, you needed a 20 to hit armor class 0. So if armor granted you AC 7, you needed an unmodified roll of 13 to get hit. Your Rings of Armor +2 actually decreased your armor class. So if your AC was 0, your AC became -2. Which meant that you'd need a modified 22+ roll to hit your target.

I'm also going to suggest skipping Baldur's Gate 1. It's brutally hard because you're a level 1 scrub. It's even worse if you're playing a mage, as a leaf that falls on you can potentially kill you if you roll poorly.

Basic tips for Baldur's Gate:

Try to get Dex and Con to 18 regardless of your class. The character creator lets you reroll infinitely so there's no reason not to maximize these two scores and your primary score (strength for fighters, intelligence for mages, wisdom for clerics). There's no point in having less than 15 and most of the attributes don't get bonuses until 16. You can't even learn 9th level spells as a mage without 19 intelligence which you can worry about in BG2.

Low numbers are better. This includes THACO, AC, and saves.

Always equip the weapon you're proficient with even if you have a better weapon. Being nonproficient in an equipped weapon severely cripples your fighting ability.

Buffs/debuffs are the name of the game. Spells like prayer, bless, confusion, haste, slow, and doom are better than equal level damage spells. Summoned monsters are weak but their strength is in being HP sponges.

Ranged weapons are incredibly powerful. A fighter with master level proficiency in darts can attack like 5 times a second. Even with a bow, a ranged attacker can interrupt any spellcaster. Magic ammunition is also the cheapest magical equipment in the game so it's easy to buff up ranged attackers.

But isn't there a second time limit that starts after you get the water? That was just plot 1 of 2 in Fallout. I seem to remember there was a second hidden time limit in unless they patched it out.

@lawgamer: No, there's only one timer.

@clonedzero: I have never lost Dogmeat playing Fallout. I do savescum games, though.

To each his own on how they want to handle it. On more difficult fights I would keep him away and sometimes have him attack on the last hit or something. He's cool to have around and I don't remember having difficulty keeping him alive for the most part.

@cornbredx said:

Maybe it got patched out. It's been a loooong time since I played it, but I seem to remember if you took too long after the water, the Super Mutants would discover and invade Vault 13. It took a long time to happen though, so you kind of had to dawdle.

@lawgamer: That maybe a multiple ending thing. I don't recall having to do anything quickly beyond getting the water. If you don't get the water chip on time the game ends. I remember it being really frustrating the first time because it's the first main quest and it does not give you very long to get it.

I played it from release, mind you. I don't recall any patches for the first Fallout. This was before auto patching even existed. =P

People have already pointed out Agility & Intelligence for the Fallout games, though you can also play low Intelligence and get some pretty good dialogue options. Ignoring everything else, definitely get Agility (and probably tag Small Guns).

The suggestions for the widescreen mod for Baldur's Gate are on the money. I like 1280 x 720. It's playable while looking very nice. It still looks good at higher resolutions, but everyone looks like ants.

For the first game, I'd go fighter and focus in archery. Ranged is very powerful in the first game.

Then, in the second game, you can switch classes to wizard if you wish. You'll keep your HP while you level, and once you're wizard level exceeds your fighter level, you'll also get your fighter abilities back. This make you a great back line shooter & spell caster. The typical switch is after fighter level 9, but you generally start BG2 at level 7 or 8, and honestly it's probably better to just switch after the first dungeon. Each level takes a lot more experience points to reach, and reaching wizard level 8 or 9 is relatively much quicker than going for wizard level 10 to get your fighter abilities back.

Other than that, for both games: Explore.

These are not fun games to try and rush through, or play optimal builds through. They're take your time, poke the scenery, discover cool shit kind of games. Enjoy.

@stoodspoon:

Morality is not really a thing you decide via choices so much as each character will have an alignment that determines the kind of actions they personally would do. You will also choose an alignment for your character and you can sometimes be penalized or have new options open to you based on what alignment you or your companions are. It is possible to pretty much ignore this, but beware if you are aligned "good" and you end up going on murdering sprees of innocent people you will probably have some problems. "Evil" aligned character will probably be perfectly fine with this, however.

The whole system works on 2 axes, Lawful - Netural - Chaotic and Good - Neutral - Evil. So you end up with 9 possible alignments. Lawful Good, Netural Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil, Netural Evil and Chaotic Evil. The idea being that the one axis of Lawful -> Chaotic tells you about how that character feels about laws and order in general (regardless of right/wrong). While the other Good->Evil axis tells you where their morality lies. So a Chaotic Good character will generally be doing "good" things, but might not choose to follow all the laws (e.g. Robin Hood). While a Lawful Evil character will be down for whatever helps them personally (stealing, murder), but not necessarily overthrowing the government (e.g. a corrupt official). The neutral ones are a lot harder to make examples of, but the general rule is that Chaotic Neutral is generally used for actually insane characters, and True Neutral characters really care about the balance of good and evil all the time (druids often fall here).

That's a lot of over-simplification as the alignment thing can actually be much more complicated (Paladin class characters must be aligned "Lawful Good" for instance), but that's the general idea.

No way man, you can't give him commands in FO1 so he'd just mindlessly rush right up itno minigun fire or into a deathclaws face. Plus the forcefields in the mutant base fry him and thats damn near impossible and tedious to get him past alive. Hell its his canon death story-wise, dying to a forcefield lol.

@clonedzero: Hmm. It's been awhile- I don't recall that.

Fallout 1 & 2: INT + Speech and energy weapons as soon as you start to find them. Try to find a car. Barter like crazy (stim-packs are the real deal).

FO1: Pickpocketing was very useful early in the game.

F02: Restoration project mod is a good add on. Science is very useful.

@cornbredx: You might be thinking of FO2 Dogmeat, who was a god damn BEAST.

When playing a "straight game" of Fallout 2:

• Small Guns is a must.
• Having a high speech skill is really important since you will come across a lot of situations where talking works a lot better than shooting
• When you start the game, make sure you do every quest you can in Arroyo, Klamath and the Den as soon as possible. Those quests are typically easy and will give you a good 3-4 levels of experience that are really good to have at the beginning of the game and will set you up for more difficult stuff later where you would normally get your ass kicked otherwise.
• When you get to New Reno, pay attention the mob families and try not to piss anyone off right off the bat. Save often. New Reno is probably the most important area in the game, so messing something up there can totally screw you out of a good ending later on. Be careful.
• When you get the chance, take the job shoveling cow shit. It gives you a speech perk and it's free experience.
• Spend some time as a Caravan Guard. It's fun, it gets you lots of experience, lots of caps, and you end up getting some good loot off the guys you kill. It's also good for reaching areas that you haven't traveled to yet.
• Don't do Jet. Just don't. Try not to get addicted to Mentats either.
• It's easier to kill the slavers than barter with them or become one of them. Kill them all unless you're an asshole.

Now for the game-breaking stuff:

• Stealing and Sneaking are great because it allows you to totally bypass everything. Watch some speed runs of the game and you'll understand why sneak/steal is so important and how to use it.
• When you get to New Reno early on, travel to the west-most portion of the city and find the gun store. It's pretty easy to kill the owner and his dogs without anyone noticing and take the entire stock of the store. This is pretty much game breaking when done in the beginning because of how good the loot is. Make sure you do it when he has some good stuff like Leather Armor and Magnum Pistols. Once he's dead he can't respawn so make it count the first time.
• While in the gun store in New Reno, go down into the basement and look for the guy walking around down there. He will upgrade any weapons you have for free (assuming they can be upgraded).
• If you want the most powerful armor in the game, head south-west along the coast line to reach Navarro. With a high enough speech skill you can fake your way in (or kill the guard) and get the Enclave armor. You can do this as early as you want but you run the risk of being intercepted by an Enclave Patrol on the way there that will kill you, If you manage to do that, this armor is game breaking early on and is all that you will need for the rest of the game.
• It is really easy to steal from the shop keepers in San Francisco. They usually have lots of caps and generally have extremely powerful weapons for sale. It's easy to run in, pickpocket them, use that money to buy stuff, pickpocket them again to steal the money, and then come back in a few days and do it again when their stock replenishes.
  
  Watch this speed run. It shows some really good ways to totally cheese the game.

@rayeth: @stoodspoon: You can use alignment chart pictures (which you can google image search for) to understand alignments better. Here's one that compares it to Lord of the Rings characters. I did not create it- I just found it on google.

Some of these charts are better than others and some people (like me) won't agree with several of them. This one is close enough, though.

@cornbredx Yeah, that was in the original version. I'm pretty sure they patched that second timer out in version 1.1.

Before the patch, after you got the water to Vault 13, you had 500 days of time before the mutants overran the Vault and ended the game. If you told the water merchants about the vault, the time was reduced to 400 days.

@stonyman65: Yeah, why enjoy and explore the game world. Just naming places and locations is bit spoilerish given that you start in village that knows so little about outside world.

@stonyman65: Man, I really don't recall that at all haha

I need to play it again. There's never enough time.

Fallout 2 - Early Power Armor

It makes the going significantly easier if you have trouble, and should allow you to explore stuff you wouldn't normally see when playing though "pure."

Pure is a really weird word for that.

Fallout 2 is the shit though, really fun.

@charlie_victor_bravo: Dude, the game came out in 1998. The window for spoilers ended a long time ago. If you haven't played the game by now you're ass-out on that. That's like calling people out for Final Fantasy 7 or Metal Gear Solid spoilers.... If you've been playing games for any amount of time you know all of this stuff already.

And I didn't spoil anything. I just named 3 locations and how to cheese the game. I didn't say a thing about any of the main quests or encounters.

I would HIGHLY recommend NOT using this. It'd ruin your experience with the game.

@stonyman65:

Dude 1: "Hey Dude 2. I got this movie on a Blu-Ray. It is Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. I have not seen it yet - I hear it is very good. ...But is there lots of gore - since I plan to watch it with my niece...?"

Dude 2: "Nah, I have seen it. The woman at start who you think is the main characters dies in shower after like 15 minutes. In the end you see that motel keepers mom is just a corpse. So he was dressed as her the whole time and heard her voice only in his mind. "

Same with the games. And I believe stoodspoon did not ask what is the most efficient way of making the game as dull as possible ("2i am worried i will not be understand the mechanics?").

I have the absolute best advice you will ever receive about Fallout 1 & 2.

Read the manuals.

:D

There's no morality. There's alignment but that only affects a few rare spells and items. There's a reputation system that gives you penalties/bonuses to shops and some characters will react to your reputation (evil characters leave if it's too high, opposite for good characters). You can be a "good" character and steal and kill.

Planescape: Torment, which you should try playing at some point, does have a fluid alignment system where your actions change your alignment.