Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 18: "Bookworm Adventures"

I apologise for the delay, caused by laziness lack of sleep timetravel anomalies.

We are at the gates of Candlekeep, the fortress-library which was the tutorial home of my Player Character's childhood. Inside, the insidious forces of the Iron Throne are negotiating with their as-of-yet unknown, but nonetheless sinister, allies. And we can't get in because the guard is asking for a valuable book as an overly-specific, yet awfully vague entrance fee. Can't we just pay in cash, and let YOU pick up whatever books you want on your own time? Kinda busy saving the world here, pal. No? Fine! We'll be right back.

28 hours later, we're in Baldur's Gate scouring every bookstore we can find, taking everything that has letters on it. Turns out it's actually easier to buy enough weapons and armor to arm a battalion of marauders than it is to stock a half-decent home library, which, I guess, is in accordance with the "medieval" theme. I briefly consider buying all of the cursed scrolls from Lucky Aello's Discount Store and making a "book" of my own, but it'd probably be cheaper to just buy every single book in Baldur's Gate.

Not that there is an abundance of books on the shelves, but I know a few recently vacated houses and Iron Throne offices where we can look.

We check out the (ex)Thieves Guild but, apparently, burglars and thugs aren't big fans of literature, as we don't find anything. We search the late wizard Ramazith's home (I guess it's true that the murderer always returns to the crime scene), ascending his nine-story ladder, trying not to make eye contact with the monsters we couldn't be bothered to kill, only to find a bunch of boring history books. Even the Iron Throne library doesn't bring us anything.

All these books on the shelves? Decorative.

In desperation, we start breaking into noble mansions and confiscating every tome we can find, inquisition-style. And the first mansion we try brings a sudden surprise - a gang of ogre magi attacks us, claiming to have been offered a ten thousand gold bounty by "the son of Murder". It just goes to show: when you need to find a band of ogre magi, you spend hours searching forests and farmsteads and return with nothing, but when a band of ogre magi needs to find you, you practically jump into their hands.

Of course, the fight with three mages turns into another annoying clusterfuck. Everyone is getting feared and stricken by lightning, Resist Fear doesn't work, etcetera, etcetera. Reload, buff, haste, try again.
Finally, we search Tremain Belde'ar's house. He and his wayward son still haven't returned from their fun trip to parts unknown (probably the Infinite Pain Dimension), so we freely rifle through his stuf (again) and find ONE book which doesn't have the word "History" in it's title, so it has to be rare.

People of Baldur's Gate really love History.

I send the party to check Ragefast's house, just to be sure, predictably find nothing but Stephanie Meyer books and old issues of the Mad magazine, and hike back to candlekeep with our one decent trophy. And once again, the bibliophile tell us to go find something better for him to read. Fine! We'll go to Beregost.

We visit the ol' Thalantyr, who even offers us a ring made from the cursed claw of an ancient beast, but no books!

At this point I gave up and Google'd, and it turns out that you need to recieve the "tome of great value" from none other than the Grand Duke Eltan. Oh joy of joys, he is the duke I couldn't get to because ladder doesn't fucking work, no doubt due to some gamebreaking bug. Frankly, I don't know what to do. I'll try to patch the game, find some sort of a fix or use debug tools, but if I won't succeed I'll have to abandon the LP and try a different game. Bummer.