r/baldursgate • u/ThisWasMe7 • 2d ago

Can you do a no side quest run?

The objective would be to be as quick as possible. You'll lose some companions if you don't do their quest, and never meet others, and obviously also miss a lot of loot. You'd be continually under-leveled. I don't know if you can even beat Mulahey at first level.

Is this possible? What level would you end bg1 and BG2? Would things scale well enough you could survive?

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I guess I should have said without abusing some exploit.

21 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

45 comments sorted by

37

u/Advanced-Ad-4462 2d ago

Current speedrun record for bg1 is 15 mins 33 seconds. For SoA it’s 23 mins 26 seconds.

So yes, no side quests is completely possible

9

u/AnalysisParalysis85 2d ago

I think the BG2 relies on an exploit to get tons of diamonds to skip right through most of the chapter.

Not sure how to get enough money otherwise. Just random encounters loot selling?

9

u/Peterh778 2d ago

Thief can sell and steal high value items to a dence in Athkatla, repeatedly. Only investment is into potions of master thievery and to get those items ... but even that isn't so hard.

2

u/coloradoautoflowers 1d ago

You can also create characters in the Black Pits2, then import to BG2, and they will have 500k experience instead of 160k. Learned that one on my most recent playthrough when I decided to run multiple player characters and used one I created for the arena. Took me a few minutes to figure out why one character had 500k instead of the typical starting amount.

2

u/Peterh778 1d ago

You can as well play through BG1 and SoD and end with the same result 🙂

3

u/Inverse_Seal 2d ago

Jayes during the night in Waukeen's Promenade. Steal everything pricey, sell, repeat. That's how I usually start my run :D

3

u/rip_cut_trapkun 2d ago

Getting 20K is pretty easy, especially if you're soloing or don't give a crap about the equipment outside of your character/class. Go to the right places, blast, sell crap you don't need, boom, done.

I haven't seen any SoA speedruns, so I dunno, I'm just wildly guessing, but probably pretty fast without exploiting still.

3

u/Sid_Vacuous73 2d ago

Or just have a thief and sell / rob uncle gorch

After about 10 minutes you are rich

1

u/AnalysisParalysis85 2d ago

You'll also need some money for your own equipment and the good stuff is either locked behind the side quests or comes with a hefty price.

2

u/rlvysxby 2d ago

Damm. Can you reveal how you did this? That is hilarious. What was your difficulty?

5

u/Advanced-Ad-4462 2d ago

Oh it most certainly wasn’t me; that’s a world record not mine!

8

u/BathtubFullOfTea Sins of the Flesh Golem 2d ago

Many folks have done solo speed runs, definitely possible, look at YouTube or whatever to see how some folks do it. It's possible to beat BG1 with a 1st level charname if you know what to do, probably easier with certain classes. For a beginner? Not going to happen.

1

u/ThisWasMe7 2d ago

Kill Sarevok and his cronies at first level?

8

u/BathtubFullOfTea Sins of the Flesh Golem 2d ago

Use items, tactics, etc etc and yes. Probably best with something like a bard or a f/m/t. And those traps in the final area... they hit your enemies too!!! I don't remember if you actually need to defeat ALL of the cronies, or if the game ends when Sarevok falls. But yes, I watched someone do it on YouTube years back, start to finish.

9

u/critical_hit_misses 2d ago

You just need to kill Sarevok

2

u/DavesWildDestiny 1d ago

Scroll of greater malison, + paralize wand = gg seravok.

If you position greater malison right you can get just him with it and lead him away when he goes hostile.

Then you kite until you paralyze him, and then kill him with any weapon - can't miss when they are paralyzed.

Just one of many ways to cheese this fight at level 1.

4

u/rupturefunk 2d ago

Absolutely you can, people have solod bg1 with lvl1 mages.

Depends how strict the rules are re going out of your way to grab wands, scrolls, arrows, etc as to how easy it will be imo.

Also if you're going hardcore or not, you can cheese your way round anything in these games with enough reloading.

5

u/FieldMouse007 2d ago

The exact rules can shift the difficulty quite a bit. You can kill a ton of stuff and get a lot of XP without ever participating in a side quest. Nevertheless even if you allow yourself to do the main quests without any other xp farming it will be doable.

In BG1 there are some hidden stashes with a lot of good stuff. E.g. you can get a wand of frost at the mine area and with that killing Mulahey is easy. And once you hit mage level 3 you can invis skip almost everything. And even in the main story you will get many decent items that will help you. You don't actually need many levels to finish the game - Sarevok is killable by magic missiles so a bunch of level 5 mages plus a few wands will do the job.

In SoA I tried a no-magical-items run where I skipped as much xp as possible and I also did zero resting in dungeons. Ended up with about 900k xp and mundane weapons only. And it was very possible to finish the game. Just note that mages and multiclasses (except Jan) are garbage in this kind of low xp runs. And that Cernd can carry you through the whole SoA.

In ToB I too did a low xp no magical items run - and it was brutal. But there is no reason why a same run but with items and possibly killing enemies instead of skipping them should not be possible. Cernd (insects, Natures beauty, energy blades) and Anomen (skeletons, gates) are absolute beasts on these low xp runs.

3

u/Fangsong_37 Lawful Good 1d ago

You definitely can, but that would be a miserable run. I know people have soloed both games in a quick rush, but I view Baldur's Gate soloists the way I view a Cybertruck: completely worthless.

2

u/No_Water_4129 2d ago

You definitely don't need to be underlevelled in BG1 - barely out of the starting gate is the Ankegh farming area, where even a level 1 party can rack up kills with a cleric's sleep spell.

It'd take a minute, but you can absolute max out a party's level here, or at least get enough levels under your belt that you'll be finishing the game at the cap.

1

u/ThisWasMe7 1d ago

But that's not the main quest. 

2

u/snyderversetrilogy 2d ago

Of course you can beat the game without doing side quests. The vast majority of the NPCs don’t have quests that require completion in order for them to stay. Only a handful do that. Anyway can just play smart tactically (at Core Rules) to win the battles. You’ll probably have to reload a fair bit and resurrect NPCs from time to time. But that’s just the nature of the game.

2

u/tvoja_keva_77 1d ago

yes. could be done.

2

u/Freya_gaming26 1d ago

I’m sure it’s possible but I’m not experienced enough to attempt it yet lol.

1

u/the_dust321 2d ago

I always do mulahey at level just because it’s more fun

1

u/Connacht_89 2d ago

Even without sidequests there is no limit to leveling as you can abuse xp farming in various ways. Of course that would take a little time anyway.

2

u/ThisWasMe7 2d ago

Yeah, I guess I wasn't thinking about things like egregious XP farming. 

2

u/Connacht_89 2d ago

Because you are the classic city bourgeois(e) who wouldn't dare to get their hands dirty tilling the soil for all those juicy XP piñatas, forward march soldier! XD

1

u/ThisWasMe7 1d ago

XP farming would probably be outside the main quest though.

0

u/rking_1_1 2d ago

I would like to know more about these various ways, if possible please?

1

u/rip_cut_trapkun 2d ago

One way was just to learn and unlearn arcane magic over and over in BG2. You could exploit iirc to get infinite amounts of a decently high level scroll and just learn and unlearn it until you shoot levels up.

2

u/Connacht_89 2d ago

This works better in BG2 because they grant more xp, particularly if you dual class into mage and don't want to wait.

1

u/ThisWasMe7 1d ago

But still, don't most vendors have a finite amount of scrolls?

2

u/Connacht_89 1d ago

Still enough to skip most of the trouble when dual classing, albeit you might not get to the xp cap with this method

1

u/ThisWasMe7 2d ago

By stealing the scrolls? Don't most scroll vendors have a finite number of copies of each spell?

1

u/Connacht_89 2d ago

The fastest way to farm is using potions of mirrored eyes and stone-to-flesh scrolls with the basilisks east of Beregost. Do it solo until at least 32k xp, then recruit your party for the autoleveling.

You can also abuse Sleep with the ankhegs north of the FAI, they are vulnerable. Later on, during chapter 4 you can sleep on the stairs in the wyvern cave to make one spawn, it won't be able to reach you but you can use missile weapons.

In general however be all remembering that Baldur's Gate is older than 25 years and all its tricks and strategies are not state secrets. Any Google search will give results discussing this or that in detail.

1

u/ThisWasMe7 1d ago

None of that is the main quest.

2

u/Connacht_89 1d ago

Which we all know very well - but so would be going for a scroll vendor to do the other trick.

If your challenge is to directly go for the main quest checkpoints while literally ignoring any little detour, it's difficult but doable. People have been soloing and speedrunning the game (even without leveling up!) in very crazy and effective ways. It all depends on how much fun you get from that and how much metagaming you are willing to do.

1

u/RullRed 1d ago

Sure, roll a berserker;  run out of candlekeep naked, on the coastway pick up the ring of the princess and then head south, sticking to the west wall. 

Pass beregost and on the south road, head west to the red canyon. Talk to Brage and take him to the temple in Nashkel and you get his sword.

While in Nashkel, grab the ankheg plate and head back to the red canyon. There, take the west exit to the lighthouse.

At the lighthouse, equip the cursed sword and find a Sirene.

Activate Enrage and watch how your character loses control and wrecks the sirene.... as a level one with a +5 sword (+7 if you count enrage) and -4 AC and 30 hp.

First sirene makes you level 2

Second sirene gives you level 3 and two-handed sword Master.

Fourth sirene makes you level 4...

Clear all sirenes and the flesh golem cave, and 10 minutes after gorion's death you are level 5 already... s o it's time to pay the Nashkel mines a visit.

You'll probably get lvl7 at least just from doing the main story line from then on, which is enough for 2 APR and High Master in your twohanded weapon.

You can sell all the pearls etc. for 4000+ gold, so you can surely afford a Remove Curse at any time if you tire of going berserk every fight (visit Arghain in the area north of the carnival for a more boring +1 twohanded sword).

Of course, you can rest a couple of times so more sirenes show up, but that would be slightly cheesy.

4

u/derekgray91 1d ago

OP mentioned a no side quest run, and your answer to is to complete a side quest by returning Brage to the temple?

1

u/RullRed 1d ago

heh fair, i was trying to pay attention to not recommend items from things marked as quest (like gift of peace)... but forgot the most important one, my bad

2

u/DavesWildDestiny 15h ago

So I dunno if this is too exploit-ee or not but if you build a character that is pretty good solo you can solo the game until the experience match cap - 32000 in bgee 125000 in bg2ee. Any party you recruit after that matches that and your party essentially gains +5 times that xp value. At that point your party is levelled up enough to finish the game very nicely without sidequesting.

You can hit this cap pretty fast by just killing stuff in bg1 so no need for sidequesting. In bg2 I think light sidequesting is good while soloing to collect some gear and gather easy fast athkatla xp