Hey duders!

So, over my many, many years of playing RPG games, I feel remiss that I somehow missed this one. I've played every genre, every style, but I somehow missed the original Infinity Engine games. I think I tried this as a kid, but it was too hard and I gave up

Now, I've tried a LOT of modern CRPG's, like Div 2, Tyranny, PoE, Solasta, and none of them have quite "stuck" because they get kind of boring near the end. I hear that BG2 is just the absolute pinnacle and gold standard of the IE games, so I'm going to give it a real go

Does anyone have any advice then? It can be as broad or niche as you want, as long as it'll help me. I have a lot of experience with D&D's 4th and 5th edition, but barely any with the 2e from BG2

I'm thinking about starting as a pure archer, cause I hear the damage is insane, and it's pretty easy to get started with

I look forward to hearing over 20 years of advice!

Pure archers are better in BG1 than 2. They're definitely still good in 2, but not quite the laughably overpowered class they were in 1.

Also, this is all assuming you're playing the Enhanced Edition. If you're not, the only reason to stick with the original versions is for any mods that aren't available in the Enhanced Edition. Or maybe you want the original game's balancing.

Quicksave often. There is no more important piece of advice when playing these games than save early and save often. Make hard saves often, too, as you may need to go back a few at some points. You can usually dig yourself out of any situation, but it's good to have a back up in case you don't want to.

If you're playing on PC, go to your My Documents folder, go to Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition, right click Baldur.lua, edit with notepad, push ctrl f and search for "show aoe", and change the 0 in this line to a 1 and save and quit:

SetPrivateProfileString('Game Options','Show AOE','1')

This turns on area of effect indicators for spells, very handy for not hitting your own party members with your fireballs. Sorry, old school players, I am not keen on having to eyeball my spell AOEs, that isn't fun. If you're playing the console versions of Baldur's Gate, this is on by default.

If you've got the patience, I also recommend playing Baldur's Gate 1 first. That game certainly has its... uh... quirks, but of all the CRPGs I've tried to play over the past year and a half, it falls squarely in second place, right behind Pillars of Eternity 2. Once you get the hang of BG1, it's incredibly easy to pick up and put down. I beat it once this year, almost beat it a second time, and lately I've been considering another run. If you want to play BG1 at all, I'd recommend playing it now because the very beginning of 2 spoils the big twist of 1.

Mages will always be squishy, but the further you get into BG2, the more powerful and the more useful mages will be.

Don't be afraid to stick to the Normal difficulty for now. Use mob fights to practice your tactics and techniques so that when things get tough, you'll have a few ideas up your sleeve. Also convenient - in Normal, you can't fail to learn a spell. If you plan on playing on a higher difficulty, then always quicksave before learning a spell.

While talking about difficulty, remember that these games came with an infamously thick manual and they expected you to have the goddamn thing handy. It's not as complex as that sentence makes it seem - this isn't a college course on Autocad or something - but don't be afraid to tab out and Google something if you have questions.

I'm going to keep this as vague as possible, but it's spoiler-y nonetheless - take Yoshimo to Spellhold, but don't get too attached to him.

You need to be able to pierce magical barriers of several different varieties. Find spells that can do this early on.

Haste is one of the most useful spells in the game. As soon as you can, grab it.

You need to be able to do acid or fire damage before going to the De'Arnise keep.

When you roll a character, pick what class you want and redistribute points accordingly. Your primary stat for whatever class you're picking needs to be 18. That said, on Normal or Core Rules you can probably get by on anything reasonable. Charisma is largely a dump stat, so if you need to steal stats from anything, make it Charisma. However, if any stat goes below 1, it's death for that character. Best case scenario, you don't have any stats less than 10.

You should never be without a thief, and his or her Find Traps ability should be at 100.

Multi-classing and dual-classing are two different things. Only humans can dual-class - they level one class up to the point where they want to stop, then they restart at level 1 with a different class and they can't use anything from their first class until their second class is one level higher than their first class. There are reasons for this and ways to exploit it, but if you want to take on two classes at once your first time through I'd suggest multi-classing.

Neutral characters won't abandon you as far as I know. Good characters will abandon you if your reputation falls below 2. Evil characters will abandon you if your reputation goes above 18.

The lower your AC (Armor class) and the lower your THAC0 (To Hit Armor Class 0), the better.

Infravision is utterly, entirely, and completely useless in these games. Just don't take it.

There's a keybind called "Quick Loot" that will allow you to look at all loot that enemies drop in your vicinity without having to click on each and every one. I have this bound to Z, make sure it's bound to something and use it often. Makes looting so much easier.

You can get a Bag of Holding pretty early on that will greatly assist with inventory management. There's a woman named Clara in a corner of the first inn you go to (Copper Coronet) and talking to her can start a quest that will end in a special one of these. This is kind of a difficult quest starting out so you might want to wait a level or two, but I think it's worth trying right off the bat.

Cernd sucks.

Since a lot of the non-character stuff is covered above, I'll talk about some of the classes I've found make the game better to play.

Berserker is a great class because I BELIEVE you're still in complete control of your character while berserk (unlike party member Minsc who loses control, but is the greatest party member in any game ever, especially if you take Aerie with you), and without giving anything away: when you're berserk it makes you immune to a HOST of status ailments that are ALL OVER THE PLACE later in the game.

If I had to pick a best all around class in the game, it's anything from the Rogue tree. I've always liked Swashbuckler, but that's because the stealth mechanic in these games has never quite worked as it should. But as someone above said: you should always have a thief in your party (and if it's you, that's not going to be a problem) because Find Traps in invaluable, but so is lockpick. This is a game from the '90s, they did not CARE if you didn't see all of their game your first playthrough, so quests will be locked behind unbreakably locked doors, or sometimes just the conclusions of quests.

Third would be: it's a weird class to play, but you can be a werewolf and no one cares. You can go around in your werewolf form, and no one reacts any differently to it. Your natural attack in that form is one of the strongest in the early game, and you're borderline unstoppable if you grow the transformation ability, even in late-game.

Finally: this game is beholden to its roots to an almost comical touch. Later battles are sometimes incredibly difficult, but anyone can be brought back with the right spell or potion. UNLESS they exploded and their portrait disappeared from the left side of the screen, then they're gone forever. Characters are pretty fragile to start out with, so remember: you can always rest as long as enemies aren't around. It advances the game clock forward, but that's where the comedy comes in: you can rest between every encounter, and there's very rarely a penalty for it, if ever. Also if you know you're going into a battle that has a conversation beforehand, you can line the entire room with endless traps which will trigger the moment a battle starts. Just another reason to have a rogue on-hand at all times.

A lot of side stuff, especially romances in the game are complicated, weird, and glitchy. As said above: don't be afraid to look stuff up if you think something's gone wrong. And SAVE OFTEN.

Dan Simpson's FAQs are still kicking around and are incredibly comprehensive. If GameBanshee is around still they had really great detailed walkthroughs if you're running out of momentum and need a checklist and detailed maps of each area to blast through.

Looking at the different magical items a head of time and specing out your party with the goal of using each of the top tier ones is a good plan. ie. Just dont make everyone use the same weapon.

Paladin (Inquisitor or Cavalier) is a great first character (2-hand, Great Sword, Paladin's get +5 Carsomyr, best weapon in the game).

Mages are powerful but I personally hate using them. Micro'ing every fight gets boring for me and the sheer number of spells to manage at high level play in BG2 and ToB is not fun for me; and if your mage isnt constantly unloading top tier spell strategies its significantly less effective then a tough melee character, which is something people often omit in discussions regarding class effectiveness. I tend to make everyone a bad ass melee character that can dps and tank with Viconia Best Girl as my Cleric to ward away level drain and Heal.

My favorite PC is a Fighter/Cleric Dual Class Human, but that's a bit better if you carry a character through BG1 via an import. BG1 is 10% as good as BG2 is and I would not recommend playing it unless you are a big fan. There is more story in the prologue of BG2 then all of BG1. Dual Classing is also really complicated as there are certain breakpoints with the starter class that have different pro's and cons depending on what you're going for and each class has a different XP cap per level while also sharing the same total XP per character. So there is a bit of a meta to ensure you don't take an extra level or two in one class and potentially lose out on more important levels with another. TLDR; a Paladin is just the simpler version of the Fighter/Cleric propped up with the best weapon in the game, which is what I'd recommend for a first time playthrough.

Clerics are really important if you are new to the game as they have lots of protective spells that will stop things like Wights and Vampires from level draining you. One spell, decent duration basically changes the game from Extra Hard to Easy. I personally prefer Cleric's to mages because I find their magic is more defensive and longer lasting and the base character is still a capable melee combatant if built right and can contribute even if you start slacking off with using their spellcraft potential.

Also look into the modding scene. A decade of quality of life features have made a good game better than perhaps everyone remembers. I know the rerelease stole a ton of that stuff but it’s worth checking up on.

@sombre: I think you tweeted this at me and I didn't reply, sorry!

It's been a couple decades since I played this but I remember having a great time as a two-handed Barbarian. Imoen will take on most of the spellcasting chores as the game wears on so I felt pretty comfortable making a highly-aggressive character as my lead.

The one thing I think I can remember as a strategic choice was to load up your spelllcasters with the Bear's Endurance and the related Strength spell and cast them on your frontline characters every time after you rest. They last forever in this version of D&D and are a pretty important way to increase damage and HP for your characters, especially early on in the game!

I would actually recommend starting with BG1. You characters are much weaker but in that way you kinda ease into the gameplay as you level up while BG2 throws a lot at you both story and gameplay wise right at the start.

Other than that I would kinda recommend at least looking into some basic character building stuff, you're gonna be stuck with those choices. Multiplayer is a lot of fun if you have a friend that wants to join, you split the characters between you but it's probably easier to get the hang of things playing solo.

Gonna echo a lot of what people have said here, in regards to both looking at guides and also class choices. It's game over if the main character dies, so it's not a terrible idea to pick a martial class when you're figuring stuff out. No need to mess with dual classing or multi-classing if you don't want to, though I'm personally partial to the Fighter/Mage/Thief triple multiclass disaster.

I also think the first Baldur's Gate is worth a look, not just so you can import your character through the entire saga (including that weird midquel expansion?) but also because BG1 is a fucking great game in its own right. The first couple hours are going to be rough because low-level AD&D is rough, but it'll also help you get a more gradual handle on the game's systems than the starting dungeon in BG 2 allows for.

The original Baldur's Gate is such a weird game in comparison to it's sequel. It was always a little hard for me to get into it.

It has that... playing some amateur DMs ramshackle campaign feel to it that is sort of charming in some ways though. Even if it's not really for me.

Baldur's Gate 1 is kind of a weird game in comparison to the rest of the Infinity Engine games and their current-era successors. It's so much more open-ended and so much more willing to let the player stumble into some bullshit that insta-kills them because they weren't prepared for the level that area is intended for. It's a game that bounces between "boring lawnmowering away fog of war" and "great quest design" more often and more quickly than anything else I've ever seen. I can definitely understand why people would suggest skipping it in favor of its much better paced sequel or the linear but super-refined dungeons of Icewind Dale.

Still, I kinda love it? Unlike BG2 or even Icewind Dale, I find BG1 super easy to pick up and put it down. It has a lot of character and class options and a lot of spells and such, but it's never overwhelming. It has a lot of quests but most of them are short, simple affairs. It rarely locks you into an hour-long thing, whereas the entire middle third of BG2 is one disaster pushing you along after another. Pillars of Eternity is loaded with a complex, interwoven story all about its worldbuilding, Divinity Original Sin 2's combat takes so long, and both Pathfinder games have absurdly complex rulesets. I can just fire up BG1 and dive in for thirty minutes or three hours and feel like I've done something significant either way.

(aside: I am aware that BG1 does sometimes lock you into long things, but it's not all that often and it's usually well sign-posted, also the adage "save often" can help).