Baldur's Gate Level 4 Arcane / Mage Magic Spell Guide
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- Опубліковано 25 лип 2024
- This is the fourth installment of my arcane magic spell guide for the classic PC game, Baldur's Gate.
This video covers Level 4 mage spells. Some very strong buffs in this level, as well as a variety of situationally useful spells. Plus, we go deep into the stats/probabilities on Greater Malison!
The Level 1 spells video is here: • Baldur's Gate Level 1 ...
The Level 2 spells video is here: • Baldur's Gate Level 2 ...
The Level 3 spells video is here: • Baldur's Gate Level 3 ...
The BG2 Wiki page that I referenced that goes through the Polymorph Self forms in detail is here: baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/P...
This series will take an analytical / rule / power game oriented approach to discussing the strengths and weaknesses, and use cases, for each spell in Baldur's Gate, BG2:SOA, and TOB. The spells are assessed across the entire saga and mainly using the unmodded Enhanced Edition releases (so no SCS, although I do touch on SCS frequently)
Thanks to:
BG Reddit - / baldursgate
Davaeorn - ua-cam.com/channels/4kj.html...
BG Wiki - baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/B...
NearInfinity - github.com/Argent77/NearInfinity
0:00 - Intro
6:42 - Confusion (Rating: 3)
17:52 - Contagion (1)
21:06 - Dimension Door (3)
26:52 - Emotion: Hopelessness (2)
33:00 - Enchanted Weapon (1)
37:42 - Farsight (5)
46:07 - Fire Shield (Blue) (4) and Fire Shield Red (3)
59:48 - Greater Malison (6)
1:32:29 - Ice Storm (3)
1:37:32 - Improved Invisibility (9)
1:51:14 - Minor Globe of Invulnerability (7)
2:02:39 - Minor Sequencer (4)
2:11:35 - Monster Summoning II (1)
2:15:10 - Otiluke's Resilient Sphere (2)
2:25:55 - Polymorph Other (4)
2:33:04 - Polymorph Self (3)
2:47:06 - Remove Curse (2)
2:50:45 - Secret Word (6)
2:57:44 - Spider Spawn (2)
3:03:30 - Spirit Armor (4)
3:13:13 - Stoneskin (10)
3:25:53 - Teleport Field (3)
3:31:15 - Wizard Eye (3)
3:36:34 - Conclusion and Summary of Ratings - Ігри
Greater Malison is really good for Cleric/Mages since they can put both Cleric and Mage spells into Spell Sequencers. So they can put Doom and Greater Malison into a Sequencer and instantly reduce an enemy's saves by 6.
Continuing on my general comment about your guides : Greater malison will greatly improve your damage spells, if you play with a party instead of soloing. FIrst, let's note that in BG2, only 3 NPC out of the 15 recruitable companions can't use magic at all (and 4 out of 18 in EE if i remember right). Even then, these pure fighters can use a few magic items with damaging properties. Overall, almost every member in your party could throw damage spell, if you really want to. So, in one round, you could throw 5 or 6 damage spells, most of them with saves for half damage. In that scenario, if you cast malison with one mage in the first round, you then improve the chances by 20 % to do full damage for 4 or 5 other spells in the first round, then 5 or 6 more in the second round, and could do so every round, until Malison fades after 14 to 40 rounds, depending on the mage's level. I let you do the maths again :) The benefits are clear in my view, but only if you play with a party, and are not soloing the game of course.
Also, Greater Malison is the reason why Crowd Controls spells can become so good overall, and the one thing you didn't really speak about is, it's cumulative with all other sorts of modifiers, like a mage's specialty or other spells modifiers. Let's take the all mighty Sarevok for example.
Sarevok seems invulnerable to magic ? Well, if you cast Doom + Malison and use Chaos with an enchanter (like Xan :) ), that's a +12 modifier to the save : now Sarevok has 60% chance becoming confused (and hitting his pals instead of you) on the first chaos (83 % if you cast two Chaos, 93 % if you cast a third Chaos...).
You think Sarevok has too many hitpoints, and want to make a good laugh of him ? Well, cast Doom + Greater Malison with your party, then Polymorph other with a transmuter mage : Sarevok has now 40 % chance becoming a squirrel with 5 hit points ! The odds improve to 64 % if you cast a second Polymorph , and almost 80 % if you cast it a third time. And, because you control six people, you can cast Doom + Malison + a CC spell in the very first round, if you have at least 2 mages in your party + a cleric or druid. You just have to cast them in the good order, by knowing these spell's casting times.
Anyway, these were just some examples of why using Greater Malison (and CC spells overall) is so powerful, if you like crowd control spells AND are playing with a party of 6 people... and we're speaking here about an enemy with a base save vs spell of 1, which is NOT what most ennemies have, even in BG2... In an average fight, a Malison + a Web cast by Dynaheir (or your PC invoker) will have a +8 save modifier, which will have devastating results against most opponents in BG1 and BG2.
For these reasons, Malison is a 10/10 in my books, if you play with a party of 6.
Thanks again for these wonderful guides, and keep up the good work :)
I didn't watch this vid. I will not do it and I don't have a time to do it.
Never-the-less I will leave a thumbs up and subscribe. And I want to say, that I love you, whoever you are.
I hope your crown is very comfortable on your head king
Much appreciated!! Thanks for the positive words!
I already like the content and you actually showing the spells in action makes it 10x better
No prob! thanks for watching!
Your dismissal of confusion, with its -10% chance for save (and no friendly fire) is debatable. All the examples given are extremely situational. Ofc it does lose oomph as game progresses, but at the time you hit level 7? It's a game changer. I've been using it for 20+ years at this point and I'd suggest any newb to simply play with it and see how it goes.
Pro-tip, don't fire malison + confusion at engaged enemies, cast against approaching groups. When an npc lacks immediate targets it will almost immediately wander or (in case of enemy archers) chose their closest soft taget, usually enemy mages and such.
Polymorph Self is traditionally the spell you cast so you don't waste your other spells on trash. It lasts a long time so you can change yourself to fight through tons of minions and still have all your other spells for the boss fight. It's efficient, rather than powerful- especially when soloing.
It also works well as your final spell of the day, to contribute more than throwing darts for the last few fights before you rest.
Very valid point. Especially in the mustard jelly, you know you won’t die.
I will add that having items that add APR persist through the transformation so if your mage\thief wields two APR boosting items like Kundane and Firetooth and then transforms into an ogre the ogre will have 4 APR witch can be boosted to 8 apr with imp haste. The ogre can also backstab. Combine all that with Mislead and you have an Ogre that can backstab 8 times per round.
Big fan of the malison evaluation, that was great
Enchanted weapon does allow you to use tuigan bow or more bows than gesen/firetooth to spam ranged attacks in early SoA, or to push your boomerang dagger guy a bit before you get the +3 throwing dagger. Situational, but there are some tough encounters where the vast majority of the threat is melee, and between web/teleport field/etc you can keep them out of melee for most of a full turn...plenty of time to win.
Fireshield duels are funny, but make sure you're not on the wrong end of the trades.
Malison is incredible in some situations, and close to useless in others. If you can stack ST checks through sequencers (like blinding a dragon), putting this on first is the difference between ~92% vs > 99% to blind Firkraag on 6 casts for example (after lower resist, comparing doom + GM vs just doom)...4 of which can come from 2 mages with minor sequencer. It's better on parties with 2-3 arcane casters or more, and not great on parties with 1. As you say, also goes better with spells that further penalize ST (doom, spook, web stacks) rather than damage. Needs to be compared against # of rounds to just kill the target. One of the most broken ways to initiate fight is to spam webs, use log to confirm "held", then cast greater malison so that stacks of webs will result in constant failed checks. Other good use cases: multiple guys with minor sequencer + blind or spook (vs non-immune target) or weapons that apply ST checks being spammed via improved haste. Another use case is to summon lots of woodland beings, have arcane guy do malison, and then blow tons of hold person/monster/confusion spells at once from nymphs to make target spellcasters useless. 4 nymphs doing casting at 10% chance will only succeed 35% of time, while at 25% chance it's just under 70% (almost double). You often get better odds than this post-malison, though. Especially if it's Jan doing minor sequencers 2x spook at -8 penalty vs enemy that isn't immune to fear and you're getting -12 penalty compared to target's base save vs spell...something you can fire off immediately after malison to open the fight with 2 mages!
Otiluke is a weird spell that is mostly useless, but opens up some cheesy tactics like blocking doors with your allies and hitting enemies through your party member that's immortal for a turn - picture fights like chromatic demon or vs golems where they can't do anything while you just keep hitting them. There are also some odd interactions like moving while under the effect with a barbarian too, but mostly this is a niche spell that lets you make an immovable barrier in choke points.
Turning an enemy into a squirrel is basically just a kill spell, but can't be stuffed into minor sequencer or have the math flipped into player favor easily. IMO not worth using before you can improved alacrity blast target with tons of them.
Find familiar can only be used by charname, while polymorph self can be used by any arcane caster and will let your companions solve some BG2 fights even at fairly low levels for them.
Actually your spreadsheet conforts Greater Malison as one of the best spells in my view. It shows that the toughest opponents in the game, those who can consistantly kill you several times in a row if unprepared, those who barely get hit physically or even not at all, suddenly become touchable with 20% to 30% chance (if not immune to that spell) which is scalable to every party member which basically means that a party of 6 throwing an attack will have 1 or 2 guaranteed hit in average for the group on each attack, against an ennemy that was previously invulnerable.
The strength of this spell is that its scalability (profits all your party members and affects all the ennemies) cannot be dodged, and combines with other spells like doom for even more effect.
A group of tough ennemies will be rendered useless with a simple malison+chaos spell.
Sure its gains become less interestings against lower ennemies but those were easy to kill to begin with, and didn't need any major help in dealing with, contrary to high level opponents, you have plenty of tools (literally and metaphorically) to dispatch them.
This spell can make the difference between victory and defeat, in my view.
This spell advantages are not limited to a full party of mages, every other class will benefit from it too. Clerics and druids for their own spells, anyone that can use a wand or magical item, and even pure fighters will gain because of their equipement side effect will have higher chance of hitting. Yesterday in my game Korgan one-shot Kangaax with his mace of disruption (save vs death) a few seconds only after the demilich was targetted with greater malison.
Greater Malison affects *all* saves
Thanks for the comment!! I agree this is where GM shines, also I reference arcane casters in the video but yes you are correct it affects all saves. I guess it depends a lot on your strategies but for me, having a 20% chance of success and then trying 5-6 times to cast a bad effect on the enemy never seems to be as effective as killing the enemy with magic damage, especially because with AOE magic there is no need to remove all the spell protections. It is highly stylistic however and as I talk about a lot in the video, the spell is best against the tougher enemies. Happy playing!
@@WJ_24 but sir when you stack this one with other similar spells than you start destroying things that you couldn't before !
Thank you sir for another great video! Glad I found your series as I play on Switch and have no mods, so very helpful to see your analysis from the base game perspective.
Looking forward to level 5!
Thank you! Enjoy the switch version, this series is great on any device…
Such great content and so professionally produced. Thank you so much.
Thanks!!
To expand on why malison is great, it benefits not just you, but every party member's save dependent abilities. -4 is a 20% reduction in chance to save in absolute, not proportional terms, ie, if the enemy had a 50% chance to save, its a 30% chance to save, not 40%. Yes, this is really fantastic. Its AOE, party friendly, it stacks with other penalties, it lasts a long time, and the difference between saving and not saving is huge. Its either double damage, or the effect working at all vs not. Lets say you use a 3 skull trap sequencer or 3 horrid wilting contingency against a pack of enemies, as each enemy is saving 3 times, the application of malison before hand is almost certainly going to result in significantly more failed saves and a lot of extra damage. If you precast this before emotion hopelessness, for example, you are very likely taking out 1 or 2 more enemies from a pack. The difference between a dead or crowd controlled enemy and a non dead and non crowd controlled enemy is a lot.
If fighting enemy parties at mid to high levels, you are likely going to be casting several aoe spells that allow saves for both CC and damage, and 1 casting of greater malison will increase the average value of each subsequent casting a lot. You shouldnt view this as the adjusted chance for 1 save, because harder fights will involve dozens of enemy saves in many cases. Its one spell that makes every single other spell that allows a save much more effective on average. Across a party of with several divine and arcane casters, its a big deal. It also effects things like stunning fist, power attack or jan's ammo (which force a save on every attack).
Also, it doesnt really make sense to judge it in terms of average extra damage for a 10d6 spell. Firstly, 10d6 is really low. A triple skull trap sequencer is 60d6. More importantly, its never going to be 3.5 extra damage. Its a binary double damage, or enemy dies/is crowd controlled or not. The difference between save/not save is way more dramatic than 3.5 damage. A horrid wilting will do 45 more damage on average when a save is failed than when it is made. An enemy which fails a death or crowd control effect is taken out of the fight, vs nothing happening if they save. If you have several castings across several enemies, you are basically guaranteed to see more failed saves with malison.
I think general conclusion of just winning right away with more damage will hold. However, a lot of tough fights can be won at very high % using malison. The biggest barrier is usually getting rid of MR first, since malison won't bypass it. However, 3x lower resist --> greater malision + doom --> blind is a legit way to take down Firkraag. It's also good in fights where target doesn't have MR, since you can fire it off to initiate the fight and have 2nd guy + summons follow up with massed cc to win the fight in 1st round (easiest way to mass cc is woodland beings, probably from Jaheira, throwing out a bunch of confusions at further -2 penalty).
Regarding Fireshield; the real combo is with Protection from magical weapons. You surround yourself with enemies and pop PfmW without any AC every multiattack hits yet PfmW stops all damage. Mirror image and stoneskin mostly just serve to get off another PfmW if needed. In the original game I recall wading into the Vampire lair gathering them all hitting PfmW and sunfiring while they killed themselves on the shield, (both sunfire and the fireshield ignored magic resistance.)
The thing about enchanted weapon spell is that it makes Machine gun Mazzy a viable option when used in conjunction with the tuigan bow and quiver of plenty
Balor fell within 2 rounds of engaging combat with my berserker pc and machine gun Mazzy thanks to this spell
While I really enjoyed your in-depth analysis of Greater Malison, and I basically come to the same conclusions - especially regarding opportunity costs - I think you're missing one and a half important points: Spell Level and weapon effects.
1st: As a level 4 spell you can kinda substitute a level 5 or higher skill (Chaos, Finger of Death, ADHW, etc) and it can be used in Sequencers unlike higher tier spells.
2nd: there are commonly used CC effects, that have a high number of checks vs save, like Web
3rd: lack of offensive Spells in 4th level slot
4th: having on-hit effects on weapons (decapitation, MoD +2, etc) yield a high amount of checks in short time, since attacks are not limitied to 1 per round throughout most parts of the game.
Anyways, the conclusion is still correct: Only use it against more difficult opponents, in fights that last longer
Cheers, I like your style!
It is a fair point especially with the decapitation weapons. Goes to show how deep the game is!! Thanks for your friendly comment.
ogre form from polymorph self is actually pretty good for a mage/thief since you can backstab in this form (4d6+1 morning star + 18/00 strength, ouch)
spider can also backstab and is immune to web
You are an absolute legend. Thx you so much for all this sharing and work. I never did TOB yet. On vanilla I remember playing wizard eyes + project image in the underdark for sorc solo, was stupid OP. Ending bg1 with SCS right now, you changed my mind about far sight and minor sphere. can't wait to discover next videos. Take care mate, and good luck for lvl 5 hehe
Thank you!! Awesome comment . Yeah Wiz eye and project image or simulacrum is a great cheese to be sure :))) . It works best in areas with no doors to open, like the underdark.
nice one
Thanks!
A couple of days ago, I had an interesting idea, about combining otiluke with mislead. I did some initial testing, and as far as I can tell this particular combo messes with ai behavior hard. I'm going to continue testing it.
Lol. Commenters in the lab. Love it
I could see a use for Enchanted Weapon if you are doing the De'Arnise keep golem room early, that one golem tends to be tough to take down early in the game when you only have a couple of people that can hit it.
Even then though, it's easy to come back to later as long as you don't do something creatively silly like completing the quest and losing the chance to kill it for the experience.
Of course it's going to be a Stoneskin and Greater Malison fest, with a few caveats. Not many options overall at this level however.
Some of these spells have small windows where the are useful, like "Enchanted Weapon", if in early SoA you have some people missing some +3 weapons and the target are invulnerable to +2 and lower, this can be a life-saver (unlike what you said, there are some Golems early on). Or "Summon spiders", there's a small spot at middle SoA where the spider(s) will actually be useful, just make them avoid being hit and that 5APR can go home. Finally unlike you, I like confusion in early SoA, but that's true that you'll have better options later on and at some point, you'll be ill-advised to start a fight with this spell.
For me, there are some pretty good spells here. Greater malison is consistently great, and emotion hopelessness is a very powerful hard CC. It doesnt have the save penalty of confusion, but the effect is consistently good and predictable. AOE and party friendly is really nice. Slow is very good, but not a hard CC, and prevented by freedom of movement. Web is also prevented by freedom of movement, allows a save each round, and isnt party friendly. Stoneskin is obviously great.
Polymorph self is quite good, particularly early on. Mustard jelly is 100% MR. Offensively, gnoll is early access to a +3 weapon with flame damage for troll killing and decent attacks per round. Particularly fighter mages using DUHM bhaal power can be very strong fighters at low levels in BG2 with this form. Ogre is non magical, but does massive damage early on. Sword spider is huge APR with significant poison damage allowing no save, that can really stack up. Again, DUHM makes a big difference here. Not a spell you will use much at high levels, but its a good duration, and can get you through several fights at low levels when you have limited spell slots and bad gear, and 100% MR remains useful for a while.
Stacking fireshields can do pretty good damage to enemies that are high MR if you combine it with stoneskin, mirror image and protection from magic weapons. Its pretty niche though.
Minor globe is useful for safely dropping skull trap sequencers, though if not playing solo, I would rather use limited wish to cover the entire group.
Improved invisibility is a solid buff.
+3 weapon requirements are pretty common, a lot moreso than +4. Iron and adamantine golems, demons, higher level vampire, I believe greater wolfweres also. The other thing is, there are some pretty good less than +3 enchanted weapons like daystar that you might want to use against +3 to hit enemies. I very seldom use it, but its not 1 out of 10. Its certainly possible to encounter +3 to hit enemies where you have no +3 weapons (some of the vampire ambushes for example), or more likely, where you dont have many. Iron or adamantine golems can only be dealt with by warriors as a practical matter, and the more warriors which can actually hit them, the better.
Lots of great points here that I made in the video, but some I didn’t. I should try out Hopelessness more, it seems like a lot of enemies are immune and the rest save. Regarding enchanted weapon, you are making a valid point especially for ranged weapons, but I just find that unless you really don’t know where the +3 weapons are in the game, the party will always have enough people with good +3 weapons from early in BG2 that it’s impossible to justify sticking this spell. 1/10 was pretty brutal so maybe I will make another video or an amendment changing my view later!
On the poly self spell the spider is immune to the web spell. You can web a whole group of enemies then run in and eat them. Works even better with haste plus the poison.
It’s a cool idea, but mustard jelly is immune as well because of the MR, plus the immunity to normal weapons and all other magic. I’d take that over the spider any time…even in a web!
@@WJ_24 Mustard is better than spider over all. Just pointing out a way the other forms can be used. Also if you use summon spiders those are also immune to the web.
@@alurian3208 thanks for the wisdom!! Appreciate you
I see Spirit Armor and Stoneskin working together, especially on fighter/mages, since Spirit Armor means you'll get hit less often, so then your Stoneskins last longer. And compared to Improved Invisibility, the duration is much longer and it's harder to dispel, so it also helps longer with the ST bonus. Plus it's super useful on classes like Kensai or Archer that can't get Stoneskin, especially when you have to enter an area where avoiding melee is very difficult, like one of the caves full of trolls in SoD. I often have Baeloth learn this spell right after Stoneskin.
That is a good point particularly that you are less likely to have spirit armor dispelled. True sight and detect invis are all over the place in both base game and even more so SCS. I end up just finding, maybe it’s the SCS factor, I can never tell the difference from AC buffs. Enemies in late bg2 and TOB seem to hit 100% of the time whether I’m at -5 or -9 AC. Earlier in the saga, matters a lot more.
@@WJ_24 You really need to push AC for it to matter. Hit or get near the base cap of -20, then apply additional modifiers to get into the -30 or better range. At that point, stuff will miss most of the time...unless you're in SCS and they just pop a crit strike and hit you anyway. It's way more niche than having % damage reduction, protection from mwep, or more skins. But hey, if you know your enemy won't run crit strike to bypass it, you can send a guy up front with both great AC and damage reduction, have some +hp on hit or regen, and they'll probably be fine. There are easier ways to handle most fights where that'd be relevant, but swapping gear to AC stack isn't that bad.
Going from -5 to -9 is going to feel close to useless in fights where it's worth buffing up; a lot of enemies will still be hitting -9 AC on a roll of 2.
greater malison-doom-spook-chromatic orb
Grea content, glad ppl are still creating content about these classic infinity engine games. Btw is this the original none EE version? I like the UI much more than in the EE.
Thanks!! This is the latest EE downloaded from Steam. I think Beamdog has made various UI tweaks over time so it could look different. I also blew up the text size in the graphics options to make it easier to read in the video.
Another great video! I’m sure you’ll hear this a lot but I think you rate greater malison too low. For a party, which most people play, it’s an essential spell maybe 8/10. You also don’t lose a spell casting round since you wait just a second or two to cast your spells and they land moments after malison.
With my current SCS with IWD spells component no save run, a hard encounter in bg1 looks like this: my f/c casts -2 saves spell, dorn uses -1 ability, Edwin used malison, baeloth uses web and viconia hold person or other cc. Round 1 the enemy has -7 saves plus other debuffs so that web is at -9. It’s fantastic seeing CC actually work since the AI always rolls hot and to melt what are normally difficult encounters. The 20% extra chance from malison is always effective.
Thank you!! Yes for party play with a lot of casters yeah Malison gets a lot better. Where I still struggle with it is that so much of in combat spell casting, even for a party with 3-4 casters, is buffs, debuffs like true sight or anti spell protection / remove magic, and damage spells. For all this stuff, Malison is doing nothing for the first 2 categories and for damage spells you need to have naked enemies (no/low resistances) that are getting hit 5-7x by damage spells before the save difference matters. If the fight looks like this then you probably are winning anyway / killed everyone already by damage spell 4 or 5.
Now, if you instead spend a lot of time casting many different crowd control spells with multiple casters, then I agree with you totally, it’s much stronger. Very stylistic spell so hard to rate.
Enchanted Weapon is actually a great spell, if you’re on SCS. Arrows of Dispelling are nerfed to unenchanted arrows, thus cannot hit liches. A lich hit with Enchanted Weapons and an Arrow of Dispelling(+3!) has No Protections. None. Weapons, like the Rod of Lordly Might, with +1 to hit, but useful effects, can be used with this spell. So not useless!😮
Minor Globe is at best a 2. Not because it is an awesome spell, it is, but you can cast it on your WHOLE PARTY with limited wish. Same duration. 🐶. Minor Gobe is useful in BG1EE only. Switch to Limited Wish in BG2EE.
Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere will make a Barbarian or Undead Hunter immune to ALL damage. Barbarian Berserk and Undead Hunters are immune to Hold2 effect, so you can control your PC. Activate Whirlwind or Greater Whirlwind, and your Barbarian or Undead Hunter is not only immune to all physical and magic damage, they can hit really hard. They can’t move, but oh well. 🐶 cast on a friendly, ORS cannot be saved against. So unless they have high magic resistance, it will always work on a friendly.
Spider Spawn has two advantages. If you cast via scroll, with the Wand of Lightning cheese, you can summon 5 Phase Spiders. I’m not sure if the creature AI will phase in BG2EE, like in BGEE, but they should poison. A Sword Spider has APR of 5. One or two Sword Spiders buffed with improved haste, Strength spell and Invisibility can ambush (Farsight or Wizard Eye) a small group of mages or clerics. At 10 Attacks Per Round with Improved Haste, the spiders will automatically interrupt spell casting. 😮
Teleport Field, Web, Slow are all spells that work best in multiples. Having 3 or more mages cast Teleport Field, Web, and Slow in sequence, so they process multiple times per round, makes them far more effective. Teleport Field ignores magic resistance. No saves either. 😮. Useful against Drow, bosses, dragons, etc.
Cool notes and good ideas. It is fair to say I underrate enchanted weapon because talking about base game here, that is a good point about dispelling arrows!
WoL cheese...just too cheesy for me lol. I have definitely used it before with a potion of fire breath -- that does insane damage!!! It is too far on the cheating side of cheese for me though.
For teleport field, when I tried casting it multiple times, it had zero effect since every instance went off at the same time in the round, so nothing happened by stacking it. I tested that in base game. I don't know if it works that they stack in any install but they def did not in mine, that is one reason I rated that such a low rating. Web, I agree! Great to stack.
@@josephdunn3582 BG2EE 2.6 and higher has nerfed Wand of Lightning cheese. You can no longer select YOURSELF as target. This limits it to aimed scrolls and devices. 🙄
Try having multiple mages cast it sequence. 😮
I tried using resiliant sphere on the Dukes to save them from the Doppelgangers in my latest playthrough.
It unfortunately turned them hostile and I had to reload.
Lol. Figures. I guess otiluke’s sphere is still a piece of crap then. Thanks for the research!!
Amazing video again, thanks a lot! The essay on Greater Malison alone made it worth the wait :P
As a kid back in the early 2000s I had no idea what made a spell good. I recall spamming fireballs because they looked cool, and focusing mostly on offensive high level spells, but now that I'm older it's funny to see how much value there is in some of the lower level spells, and videos like yours only add to that knowledge base!
Thanks man. Yeah when I first played, just the scribing scroll mechanic was a lot to figure out and of course fireball seemed like the best spell of all time! It’s the depth of the rule set and the things that I previously overlooked that’s kept me coming back too. Happy gaming.
@@WJ_24 So I tried that idea where you Otiluke the Dukes, but when I try that everyone in the room turns hostile, including Sarevok. Maybe other steps are required first, like charm, but as is the sphere won't do anything positive in that particular situation xD
But isn't the point of Greater Malison and spells like that is to stack them together so your regular spells now kick ass ?
4 hours :D
Take it in installments bc it will take me a long time, potentially months, to do lvl 5 lol!
Contagion IGNORES MAGIC RESISTANCE in BG2EE. Unstoppable slow on golems, bosses and Drow? Yes please. 😮. Also, if you’re cheesy, using the scroll (it doesn’t scale up with caster levels, and scrolls cast at level 10) of Contagion with a Wand of Lightning, in BG2EE will allow you to hit 6 enemies with contagion. 😈. However, no save penalty. Using Pause between casting (game setting) will proc the spell 4 times. Still not great, but not the worst either. Spells that ignores magic resistance in the game tend to have no save penalties. Cast multiple times to take advantage of RND, because the enemies you want to cast this on, have magic resistance, and thus Greater Malison won't work on them. 🙄
Dude envokes a plantar in chapter 2 hmmmmm. Me senses cheating.
Lol yes for sure. I created a maxed out character called “tester” so I could easily memorize and have all the spells to demo them!
this video is kinda useless
There's a mod to remove the gray effect of stoneskin. If you're interested check out setup-bubb_disable_stoneskin_color. It also work for bg2 but i think you have to rename your exe temporarily for the patch to work.
It's a must have for all mages playthrough.
If you don't like exe patchs you can also force colors on your character when you cast the spell with near infinity, but every mages in the game casting the spell would be affected.
Thank you so much I will check this out!!! I have been looking for something like this for a while
I tried this and it doesnt work in my install :( oh well.
@@WJ_24 that's a shame :( it worked for me in both of my computers with and without scs installed. Worst case scenario you can add "set color" attributes on the use of the spell if you're familiar with near infinity.