Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 22: "Enemy At The 'Gate"

Warning: the final part of this post contains a lethal dose of screenshots, proceed at your own risk.

And thus, after a not-quite-final showdown at the Duchal Palace, the remaining Grand Dukes are saved, the party's collective names are cleared (sort of) and Sarevok is ousted and on the run, with us in hot pursuit.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - The Belated Part 21: "Call To Power"

We're in the home stretch of the game now.

One of the underlings of the nefarious Iron Throne, Sarevok, has successfully framed us for murder of his superiors (if by "framed" you mean "orchestrated the exposure of us killing his superiors"), and is now aiming for the leadership of the organization and, eventually, Baldur's Gate, and as an educated guess I'd speculate that the logical next step would be world domination. In the meantime we escaped incarceration in the Great Library of Candlekeep, fumbled through some catacombs, narrowly escaped petrification at the hands (or, erm, claws) of a pair of basilisks, and are now making our way towards Baldur's Gate to, once again, thwart the Iron Throne, because that's what we do.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 20: "Crime And Punishment"

Finally, after trials and tribulations (and bugs), we've come full circle. This is where it all began, and this is where it all ends (hopefully). Candlekeep. Iron Throne leadership. Us.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 19: "The Duke's Speech"

As I said, the solution to the gamebreaking bug I've run into may be available through sidequests, namely the pair of sidequests Scar, the Flaming Fist captain, presented us with back when we first met, on the bridge of Baldur's Gate. As those were, apparently, stealth missions, I was reluctant to do them, but it seems that I have no choice - most playthroughs I read mention Scar "leading" you to Lord Eltan, the guy I need the book from, which I can only assume is done through another "teleportation" to the required map, and may be the only way to access it, get the book and move the main quest forward. And. even if it doesn't work and this ends up my last BG post, it gives me something to write about.

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.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 17: "The Longest Journey"

While the Iron Throne representatives are, supposedly, scheming and plotting with representatives of an as-of-yet unknown third party in Candlekeep, I decide it's a good time to run some sidequests.

I'm not even doing it for the money, the state of party's purse/bank account pretty much allows us to buy anything we may ever want to buy. The logical next step would be having the financial security to buy everything we may want to buy, but we're not quite at this point yet. Still, I'm more worried about gaining levels. The last few bossfights we've had have proven to be extremely difficult and, while every battle in this game seems to have an equal chance of being a total pushover or completely steamrolling my merry band, I can't help but wonder if the problem lies in me not having done enough sidequests. Otherwise I would have never agreed for another quest about finding ogres in the woods while having only vaguest of directions to go on.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 16: "Divine Tragedy"

The evil acolytes of the Iron Throne lie defeated, and we plunder the treasures of the now-defenseless tower.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 15: "Devils Wear Prada"

Having STILL not found the local shopping center, we resort to wandering aimlessly around the city.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 14: "Bright Lights, Big City"

We finally reached Baldur's Gate, and are ready to embark on our next epic quest - looking for a shopping mall. We also have to find an Iron Throne base somewhere in the city, but we'll deal with problems as they come.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 13: "Bug Hunt"

Davaeorn lies defeated and we are free to take everything that isn't nailed down.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 12: "Mine Kampf"

We need to get a key to flood the mine. To get the key, we need to kill the Iron Throne lieutenant Davaeorn who runs things here, and is rumored to be located at the bottom of the mine, on level four. We are, presumably, currently occupying level two, the prison block. This is starting to feel like Dragon Age.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 11: "How Deep Does The Rabbit Hole Go?"

We brave the treacherous wyverns and raging hypocrites of Cloakwood and finally locate the Iron Throne fortress/mine, deal with numerous guards patrolling the exterior, take the only way in and get greeted by a miniboss.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 10: "Field Trip"

I apologize for the delay, as well as mishaps in formatting. Blogger's editing engine seems to be throwing a hissy fit today.


After we finally get through the spider infested part of Cloakwood, we move on to search for the mysterious Iron Throne base, rumored to be in the northwestern part of the enormous forest.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 9: "Demonic Spiders"

Let's see what I've accomplished so far: I was taken from my isolated home fortress life of constantly running errands by my stepfather Gorion, who got killed 10 minutes into the game, like a good RPG father should, picked up a bunch of shady characters to travel with, was attacked repeatedly by bounty hunters, killed a two timing bard chick, putting another bard out of a job, saved an idiot apprentice/talking chicken from a lifetime of pecking at things, went and solved an iron crisis caused by the laziness of Amnish Guard, killed everything southwest of Beregost, rescued a witch, murdered a Red Mage of Thay, killed a druid and wiped out a camp of mercenaries. And now I'm heading to Cloakwood to kill bandits some more, and neither of these actions help me to find who is responsible for killing my stepfather and hiring assassins to kill me.

Not that I'm complaining, all this mass murder is bringing me tons of experience points and money.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 8: "The One Where We Kill A Bunch Of Guys"

Now that we've killed the bandit contact in Beregost, it was time to trash their raiding camp in the north-eastern woods.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 7: "Revenge Of The Half-Ogre Gang 2: The Movie: The Game"

 Like I said, I'm coming down with a nasty cold and am having trouble putting together a coherent sentence but hey, it never stopped me before. Either way, this one is kinda lame.

With the damsel in distress rescued and the location of our next plot mission helpfully uncovered by a friendly Magus Ex Machina, it was time to pay a visit to Tazok's mercenaries. But first, I've had some unfinished business with a certain mountainous gang of half-ogres.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 6: "The Princess Is In Another Pit"

After Mulahey and his minions fall, we find ourselves alone with The Dungeon Boss Loot Chest. I don't even remember why we came here and who we just killed, but it doesn't matter - now comes the most exciting part of any role-playing adventure. Fighting dragons and saving kingdoms? Pah! The main life goal of any adventurer is getting decked out in the most expensive and enchanted gear and gathering enough gold to be able to sell all that gear and buy it back at the nearest inn (for 3x the price, of cource). As party members shake down kobold corpses for baubles and open the Loot Chest, I wonder if the containers can be trapped. The chest is not even locked and easily slides open.

And there it is. Suddenly, I can see why my party members insisted on coming here. It's all coming together now. It's like my entire adventuring life has been leading up to this moment. The moment when I open the chest and find the answer to all of my questions. I become still for a moment, breathless in the face of this overwhelming joy, my heart skips a beat and I close my eyes and open them again a second later, to make sure my imagination is not playing tricks on me. No. This is real and it is happening now. The Culmination of my trials, the Ultimate Answer.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 5: "Our First Official Dungeon Crawl"

I've put this off long enough. I've wandered the wilderness, got repeatedly murdered, rescued chickens, recruited mages; I did everything in my power to put this moment off, but now is the time to finally man up. Time to grow a pair, time to stand up and fight! Time to face the wretched horrors of the Nashkel Mines.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 4: "New friends are better than old ones"

After the usual routine: buy some overpriced healing potions (seriously, the damn things cost more than a ressurection), sell all the trophy baubles (whoever animated those skeletons sure had a taste for bling), nap on the cold hard stone of the mage tower because Thalantyr is an asshole; we finally set out for Nashkel.
We encounter no resistance on the road, but get to chat with some goofball noble looking guy from Neverwiner.

Let's Play Baldur's Gate - Part 3: "Where in the world is the half-ogre gang?"

Even though my party members repeatedly pester me to get with the program and go to Nashkel already, I decide to be thorough and do some sidequests first. After all, you are supposed to level up running side errands before you can take on the serious foes of the main plot, that's just how RPG's work. The plot calls us to the Nashkel mines and, judging by the rumors, they are overran with demons, but my group can't even take an ogre without losing at least one member.

Thus I decide to find the band of half-ogres to south-southwest and bring them to justice, which is to say slaughter them all in cold blood.