I've watching this forum for quite some time. Played BGI, TOSC,BGII and TOB. First post at any forum, and I have to ask the question. If you need to modify the game in your favour, ie. gatekeeper, then why play it in the first place? Call me ignorant if you will, but isn't that cheating?

Yes... Its cheating... actually more like hacking...

as you will notice Animal, there are 2 types of people that play games, those that play to play, and those that play to power game. Power gamers get enjoyment from having no challenges, from seeing things do a splatter death at every turn, a real gamer will not use a program to modify the game to make it easier

I agree with you Animal. However, most of us dont use Shadowkeeper to cheat(i hope). It rovides many useful things such as Global Varibales, for checking on your romance progression. Also if an item goes missing, a quest item mind you, then you can use Shadowkeeper to get it back. I wanted to use it so i could make my next solo character look like a planetar/deva/solar, but i had the wrong version. Obviously some people will use it to give their party the ultimate items and make them virtually indescructible, but if thats fun for them, then ive no problem with it. What i do have a prolbem with is this stupid ass kepboard that doesnt type all the letters makin me go back and put them in god dammit! Anyways, hope i anwered ur question in a suffiecent manner

It is nothing like hacking.. the program hacked the code yes.. the users no nothing of how to hack, it is a program that has already done the work.. that is one of the things that makes me most mad, is when people are just plain cheating, and need help to do it, and then claim that they have hacked the game... there was once a time when the word "hacker" meant something, but now people use it like americans use the word "love" and it's lost it's meaning... but trust me, people who use programs such as gatekeeper are not hackers

Hmmm... Insightful. I suppose that everybody has their own idea of gaming. I found BGI much harder than BGII; BGI being more of the PnP game I remember from a kid. Thanks for the thoughts!

well shadow gate sux , cheating sux

why do people cheat ???

Actually, I think cheating is a lot of fun. What I usually do when I get a new game, it play it once without cheating, then restart it, give myself As much items/stats/level/wathever and then do it again, I get lot of fun out of doing this.

Warning: Possible Spoiler(s) ahead
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I've used GateKeeper twice now.
The first time was when Jahiera was cursed and the curse WOULD NOT go away after I finished the curse quest. Having her go around with stunted stats because of a game glitch sucked!

The second time was when I encountered the Shadow Dragon when trying to complete the Umar Hills main quest. It kicked my arse. Many, many times. I know, I didn't need to attack it, but it got to the point where I had to find out if it was AT ALL beatable. I put my Str to 25, gave myself 200+ HP, Grand mastery in Long Swords and AC -10.
It still took me several attempts. After I had killed it I loaded up my save game from before I adjusted everything and crept passed the dragon as you're supposed to.

I agree that playing the whole game with a mega-character would detract from it immensley.

I personally only use ShadowKeeper to change the appearance of my characters. For instance, if I have a Mage/Thief, it shows up in the game and in the inventory screen as a Thief. Now I always have multi-/dual-class Magi wear mage robes, but these won't show up on a Thief avatar, and rather than having my character run around as a half-naked Thief, I use ShadowKeeper to change his appearance to a Mage. I don't consider this cheating at all, the game doesn't get any easier from it. It's just working around what I see as an oversight in the game's design.