can somebody tell me how to complete mazzy's quest?


... and what is the best weapon for an assasin character

<FONT FACE="lucida sans" SIZE="2" COLOR="#00ff00">which mazzy quest?theres a couple.

and personally, i like CF for my assassin and also blackrazor.</FONT>

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Mazzy's quest is really simple, amigo... just pay close attention to the dialog prompts, and try to be patient with time-wasting...

The best weapon for an assassin is the Tuigan bow, or any shortbow, hands down. You want to distribute a bit o' honey to everybody, right? Normal DnD tactics, being totally unlike the real world, involve hammering things until they drop, and then hammering something else, because there's no "wounded" status. As a poisoner, you want to do just the opposite, and treat a fight like the real world... get a single hit on every target in the room, and let the toothpaste do the work for you while you focus on those hard-to-reach spots...

Next up is anything you're inclined to backstab with...

<font color=deepskyblue>I look for weapons that do special damage in addition to the weapons damage. Celestial Fury and Blackrazor are certainly two of the best swords in the game, but it takes awhile to get Blackrazor.

Much to my own surprise, I'm currently using two daggers for my Backstab attacks.

The first is the Stiletto of Demarchess +2. There is a 20% chance per hit that the victim must Save or be Held for two rounds. Having his victims Held motionless appeals to my assassin. The other is Tor'Gal's Claw and is found after you defeat the Improved Tor'Gal in De'Arnise Keep (Improved bosses are available by downloading Weimer's Tactics Mod). This dagger has a chance to reduce the victims Strength by 2 with each hit - which could also make them unable to escape if their Strength drops low enough for them to be encumbered.

Two other nice daggers that are found early in the game are Neb's Nasty Cutter +2(loot from Neb in the Bridge District). It requires a Save vs poison or the victim suffers a total of 20pts of damage over the next 10 seconds. And Pixie Prick +3 (found in the Astral Prison holding Haer'Dalis). It requires a Save or the victim is put to sleep.

There are also several nice short swords that can be found early in the game. For a complete list, check out the GameBanshee site. It lists all the standard items in BG2, what they do, and where you find them.

Here is a list of the short swords available - BG2 Short Swords

And here are the daggers - BG2 Daggers

If you are interested in downloading any of the infamous "Weimer Mods", they can be found here - Weimer Mods</font>

[ 07-15-2003, 12:18 PM: Message edited by: Cerek the Barbaric ]

I have to second Russ's vote for the best weapon. The Tuigan bow gives you more shots per round which means more chances to deliver your poison ability. Sneak through to the back of an enemy group and use your bow to disable all the spellcasters while everyone else comes in from the front. Keep arrows of dispelling handy for annoying stoneskins, and for tougher foes, hit them with the double poison: arrows of biting + poisoned weapon.

For melee attacks, the most important thing is that you use a weapon that's reliable. You're going to be using poison weapon for all the really important backstabs, so get a weapon that you're going to hit with almost every time. If you backstab someone and they don't die, remember that you can just leave, let your poison finish the job for you. This works especially well for spellcasters. If you move away, they will try to cast something at you, which will fail because of the constant poison damage. If you stayed around to fight, a good cleric might get a couple good hits in on you before falling dead from the poison.

Don't forget Darts. How many times have you gone through your Bag of Holding to find a huge pile of Darts+1/Wounding/Stunning that you haven't gotten around to selling yet? Darts have an ApR comparable to (I think even higher than) the Tuigan Bow, and Darts of Stunning+Poison Weapon is a nasty combo, because the victim has to Save vs. Death AND Spells, or he's soon to be immobilized in one way or the other--if not both.

I'm a big cheater, so, that explains my cheesieness...i always give my assassin the Lifestealer dagger +4, that you can find on the "secret" NPC that was discussed a while back. It drains levels (yet another fun way to kill anomen!!) and its got that +4 thing goin' on dude...yeah, its pretty whicked. Top that off with that crazy bow thats the rage in this post and maybe a slot in "single weapon wielding" and you're golden

can you backstab still if you are weilding two swords at a time... i mean if yes does the damage count for them both?

Im pretty sure that the backstab only counts on the first hit you make, whether your main hand or off.

How is the sling for an assassin? Can you poison bullets?

Call me lazy, but I hate the fact that in order to use a bow and something in my off hand, I have to change inventory each time. So, I often like to go with the sling and a shield in my off hand -- makes for easy clicking.

You want to stick with the bow... even if you're getting one less atr, it's not the ATR that counts here, but the RANGE... with darts, you have to reposition yourself much too often, and that takes up time you could be spending shooting.

Don't get me wrong, I love darts... just never had much luck with them under the BG2 engine. If anybody has, I'd love to hear it...

THe darts +5 from the clock of the stars are pretty nice, even though they are in short supply. If my mage is really hurt, i'll have him go to a corner and throw some darts. I don't play with mages often. yeah, you can poison bullets, but why would you when arrows are so much better looking on your assassin...unless you're not playing with a halfling assassin...and arrows do more damage and short bows are a lot more numerous/powerful then slings, and there is 1 buckler +1. wa-frikkin-hoo

You can get better bucklers with the rogue rebalancing mod. It's really a rip how there is only a +1 buckler in the unmodded game.

I might change to arrows, but I'm pretty lazy and don't like having to constantly go into my inventory.

Do it man...its hot. My assassin, with his bow, had those funky poison arrows and when I fought a mage who I really hated (i.e. Tolgeiras) I repoisoned those poison arrows and after a casting of ruby ray of reversal and some luck, he wsa completely shut down of spells. Yeah...but they make saves a lot so...its not foil proof. and thanks for the mod details...i wanna try that thing

well, it actually goes like this: arrows do more damage than bullets, but slings do more damage than bows. the reason, you ask? slings allow bonus damage from strenght

well, it actually goes like this: arrows do more damage than bullets, but slings do more damage than bows. the reason, you ask? slings allow bonus damage from strenght </font>[/QUOTE]actually IIRC there is only one sling that add's your str bonus to the bullets damage, and getting three shots per round with the tuigan bow vs 1APR from a sling, the bow definitely has the edge.

<font color=deepskyblue>Jaheira just has a regular +2 sling, but she was doing 12-14 points of damage per hit on the Stone Golems.

Since she is also using +2 bullets, that is a total bonus of +4. Sling bullets do 1-4pts of damage....so the MOST she should have been able to do was 8 pts of damage.

Where did the other damage come from? Gauntlets of Ogre Power, which give +3 to hit and +6 to damage.

With the Gauntlets, Jaheira is actually doing 1-4 + 10 points of damage with each sling bullet. So slings do allow Strength bonus.

Now let's look at just a normal +2 bow (for those that my not have the Tuigen bow).

With two arrows per round (also +2). Now you are talking about 1-6 + 4 with each attack or a total of 2-12 + 8 each round.

So arrows have a potention of doing 10-20pts of damage each round.
Tuigen bow would give 12-27 pts of damage per round ((1-6 + 2 for arrows + 1 for bow)x 3).
Sling & bullets have a potential of doing 11-14 per round (if you have Gauntlets of Ogre Power).

No matter how you look at it, Arrows provide better potential for damage - if you're character can use them.</font>

Heh. Sorry, doesn't work like that. ;) Unlike Slings and Crossbows, a +X Bow usually doesn't grant +X damage, and a +X Arrow doesn't add +X damage. This holds true for both thre +2 Bow and +2 Arrow, in particular. So you're basically stuck with 1d6.

That's why Archers are so popular - they give Missile Weapons the extra damage they don't get, and although counterexamples can be found, this is the general rule of thumb.

As for Sling. ALL Slings excpet the Sling of Everard add the STR bonus while equipped with magical ammunition of some sort. That makes Sling + Powerful Character quite the combo, as you've noticed. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Erm... SixOfSpades, Darts give you three attacks per round, exactly the same as the Tuigan Bow.

I'll believe you, simply because I don't use Darts--I sell them. (And not because they're not useful, just because they're not, well, sexy. A pureclassed Thief could look cool using Darts, but nobody else.)

Is your comparison of the Darts' ApR and the Tugian Bow's ApR based on the same number of proficiency stars?

Yes. Try it out with Imoen.

He's correct six, darts have 3 APR. Still, if you dont want to have to change things in your inventory every time you want to use a shield, then darts may be the way to go. There are heaps of darts, and you could always use throwing daggers (not sure about APR on these) There are a few returning throwing daggers. These all allow you to use a shield (not that you'd really miss a buckler+1)

Just a thought: Could you use the helm which gives you 1xsimmulacrun/day, and a scroll of MMM (which have 5APR i think) to get poisoned +5 weapons with 5 APR which cut through stoneskin? It would be pretty cool.. not to mention powerful (although limited to 1 use/day)