exploits you manage to resist (cheesey spoilers)

[Armen]

so what exploits have you managed to wean yourself off?

personally, i no longer do the game-breaking early-cheap-and-infinite-improved-invisibility-with-the-ring-of-air-control-and-a-gem-bag thing

i only really drink potions of mastery thievery in the promenade to get one of each spell and a bunch of arrows of dispelling now . . . . and maybe some full plate . . .

improved kitthix and shield of balduran are proving trickier to resist . . .

[wellard]

Ok I am game .... explain the above for someone who has forgotten a lot about this game.

[Armen]

i assume you mean the first one

in the adventurer's mart you can buy a 'ring of air control' that casts 'improved invisibility' one per day - pretty good - you can also buy a 'gem bag'

the exploit is that if you put 'use X per day' items like this ring in the gem bag then it out it 'recharges' it - meaning that you can keep using it over and over again (even more abuse is possible once you get the bag of holding)

[SixOfSpades]

I don't stack potions anymore--before, when I went shoplifting, I'd just chug 3 or 4 Potions of Master Thievery, so even Nalia would instantly become the smoothest cutpurse in the world. Then I decided that was cheap, so I decided to make the potions nonstackable. I'll still do 1 Master Thievery + 1 Perception + Gloves, but that's it.

Same thing for raising INT ( 1 Genius + 1 Mind Focusing ) and Fire Resistance ( 1 Potion +1 spell + 1 Ring, etc).

Edit: Upon reconsideration, I actually do stack Master Thievery potions, but in a very limited way--if there's a merchant that I know I'm going to be killing later on (such as those in Ust Natha), I'll Master Thievery the hell out of my Thief, have them shoplift absolutely everything of interest/value, and immediately dump everything they stole into a nearby container. Then, I don't touch that equipment until the merchant I stole it from is dead. This nicely approximates my killing the merchant and thus gaining free access to their wares. If there's something that I want to use right away (like the Sentinel Shield), then I'll either steal it "honestly" (without stacking potions), or just pay cash.

[ocellis]

I never tasted the Spelltrap cheese, but mostly because Wish is delicious enough to bind me to its brand of spell recharging.

I also refrained from using the offhand ranged melee attack cheese.

Project Image i can't resist, though...

[wellard]

All this cheese .... and so little understanding by me. Thanks for the explanation Armen, maybe the others could enlighten me too

[el_kalkylus]

Pre-knowledge is an exploit of the game, but what can you do? It's not like new Baldur's gate type of games are released every week. The way I go about is to have someone scout ahead in shadows before I start buffing my chars with spells or attack enemies with spells/wands/items before my scout sees an enemy. I don't like to attack groups that are not hostile unless I'm playing very evil, but if I'm evil I need to be consistently evil.

I don't use wands of summoning at all - it summons too many critters to act as meat shields makes life too easy.

Camping too much feels like cheating to me. I don't know why, but it always has. I try to camp as little as possible. When I run out of spells I go with what I have, and sometimes it's a challenge to come up with a good combination of spells.

I agree that the effect of a potion should stack only once, except for potions like healing for example. Pick pocketing points loses their values because of this. I'm guilty of using this cheat, but I like not doing it as it is time consuming to steal anyway.

The items Staff of Power or Staff of Magi, I don't even look at. Bonus CD items like Shield of Balduran or Robe of Vecna feels way too powerful yet I use them in many games anyway. It's nice to be able to have casting speed of 0. I shouldn't use Crom Faeyr either, but I can't resist!

Spells or combination of spells I don't use:
Project image
Wish
Blade barrier+sanctuary/invisibility and stand next to groups of monsters.
Time Stop + tranform into a mindflayer
Chain contingency + 3 implotions (only cleric/mage)
Cumulative effect of greater malison or lower resistance spell. You can just throw a few greater malison and follow up with emotion, and then you have everyone lying on the ground. Or lower the resistance of a dragon a few times and kill it with magic missiles. That's cheesy.
Cast fire resist on yourself + wear an item with fire resist, then each time you get hit by a fireball, you'll actually heal! So a tactic is to have full fire immunity and run into monsters and start throwing fireballs. You can do the same thing with other elements, but I preferred fireballs.
Skeletons are too strong with their magical immunity and high hit points. Summon five of them when you're higher than level 15, and you'll have great meat shields. They're good at offense as well. Same goes for walking swords.

I haven't figured out Vampiric Touch spell, but I know that it greatly increases hit points sometimes. It is not 36 points max like the description says. My fighter/thief/mage with 90 hp got 210 hp after one vampiric touch today for example. It's not too cheesy, so I use vampiric touch all the time.

... that's all I can think of for now.

[Armen]

i guess i've never really got enough into the high level arcane magic explots as i'm more of a fighting, stealth and divine magic player (perhaps i should solo a sorcerer sometime)

for what it's worth i think that the 'exploit' research that went into working out the magic cheese feels very similar to me to the research that high-end mages would 'actually' do so i don't worry about them too much

i'm on pretty shaky ground at the moment anyway having just started an anti-paladin game - my only defence is that i've decided not to dual her . . .

i agree with el_kalkylus about 'too much camping' being a bit distressing too - especially when soloing an evil fighter who's already taken damage and triggers a poison trap in chateau irenicus - hit 'rest' and 10 days later you wake up all better - takes a bit of justifying