Revision as of 11:37, 23 August 2009

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Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn is the next chapter in the Baldur's Gate series. The game is made by Bioware and uses the Infinity Engine. This page is a work in progress.

Irenicus's Dungeon

A Small Delay

After character creation, there is a slight pause before the initial starting cutscene. The game can be paused here. The most obvious use would be to drop all items if importing a character (either new game + or a full series run with a single character). A single spell could be cast before the cutscene plays, if desired. This brings up issues about when the timing will officially begin, as currently the first cutscene is not counted against a player's time.

Dungeon Level 1

The portal key in the mistress's room is required to proceed, so any route must be centered on getting the key. The mistress's room is full of traps, including a long duration poison. Mirror images will absorb a trap if they are hit. Any character can use the portal to the second floor at any time, as long as someone in the party is in possession of a portal key.

PC Jelly

One strategy is to use at least 7 mobs (NPCs + summons) and the PC to wall jump into the mistress's room.

• This requires the character to be a single class mage (unless imported) to have access to a polymorph self spell.

Sounds Familiar

Alternately, the PC can wall jump over the locked door to the sewer room with a more accessible Find Familiar spell. The PC then runs to the Mistress's room by conventional means.

• This route is slightly slower.
• This route does not include inviting Jaheria and Minsc.
• This route only requires the PC to cast a level 1 spell, so any class with arcane spells can be used.

Dungeon Level 2

Yoshimo will quickly initiate dialog with the party. He may be invited to join, which is recommended (more party members will almost always save time).

Route 1

In the next room are Mephits and Mephit Portals. The exit door can be unlocked by destroying all Mephit Portals, or wall jumped.

• Mephit portals are 100% immune to magic, and cannot be hit with bare fists (attack range is too short). They have 27 hit points each.
• After that room there is a Mephit that can cast a stun or blindness. There is a hidden floor trigger that will sometimes spawn goblins near this Mephit.
• There is a trap on the bridge after the very next door that does a large amount of physical damage.
• There is a shadow thief ambush just before the sewer hallway. This can be avoided by being invisible or hidden, or by talk locking the visible shadow thief before he initiates dialog.

Route 2

It is also possible to wall jump from the Mephit room to the sewer hallway near the exit. It it unknown exactly how many mobs are required to jump the wall, but it's somewhere between "a lot" and "a whole lot."

Route 3

There are a series of glitches can be used to skip the entire second floor. Explanation is as follows:

• Upon entering the second level of the dungeon, cast Farsight at the exit to the surface. Send the entire party back through the portal, to dungeon level 1.
• Next, a glitch is used to split the party between the first and second floors of the dungeon. Re-enter the portal, but this time pause the game during the "Loading" screen (not the autosave). The PC will remain on first floor, while the rest of the party will be on the second floor. Before unpausing the game, give the PC a command to move. This will break the teleport that would normally occur.
• Next, give someone an order to exit the dungeon (by clicking on the dungeon exit you uncovered earlier with farsight). Have the PC run down to Irenicus's dryad concubines, and refuse to help them. The dryads will charm Minsc, and he will be teleported to coordinates near the dryads. However, since Minsc is on the second floor of the dungeon, he will be teleported to the correct coordinates but on the wrong map. This happens to put Minsc at the dungeon exit. Since a party member was given a command to exit the dungeon and a party member exists at the exit, the game decides this is a legitimate exit attempt and the whole party (except Minsc) is taken to the rubble in Waukeen's Promenade.

Exiting the Dungeon

There is a two minute cutscene upon leaving the dungeon in which no actions can be performed. It is possible to break this cutscene to avoid it entirely.

Method

• A party member must be near the PC. Just before exiting the dungeon, the party member near the player character should be kicked out of the group. Ideally, after the autosave there will be a small pause, followed by the party member's dialog. This breaks the cutscene and allows actions to be performed immediately upon entering Waukeen's Promenade.
• If the party is given a command quickly after exiting, Imoen will not leave the party. Waukeen's Promenade will not have the fog of war removed. Irenicus and the shadow Thieves will not appear and fight.
• If the party is not given any commands, the cutscene tries to play itself out, although you can still perform any action. Waukeen's Promenade will have the fog of war removed. Imoen will be removed from the party and destroyed. A copy of Imoen will be created, and she will participate in the fight.

Warning of Difficulty

This trick is incredibly difficult to replicate, especially during a speedrun. It is unknown exactly what causes this to work sometimes and not others, but factors seems to be:

• Party positioning
• Camera positioning
• Certain maps (The map is created upon entering the level. Sometimes a certain map will cause the game to crash 90% of the time when this trick is attempted, and the trick will not work the remaining 10%).
• Time between kicking out a party member and exiting the dungeon.
• Time paused after giving the command to exit the dungeon.

Things that do NOT seem to have any effect are:

• Computer/CPU speed
• Cached data (playing the game from a cold boot vs having certain areas loaded in RAM)

It is recommended to make a small animal sacrifice to improve odds of success with this trick. Any rodent or livestock will do. Also, do not drink red Mountain Dew Game Fuel between attempts, as this trick has never been successfully performed while under its influence.

Keep in mind that a certain save game will give a 95% success rate when the exact same commands are given (load, pause, wait one second, exit, unpause). Nothing outside of that save game seems to affect its success rate.

The City of Amn

After leaving Irenicus's dungeon, the player and his party appear in Waukeen's Promenade, in Amn. The player's goal is now to get to Brynnlaw, home of Spellhold and the portal to the Underdark.

A Pearl To You

The first goal is to get 15,000 gold to join either the Shadow Thieves or Bohdi. The undisputed quickest way to achieve this goal is to use the inventory stack underflow trick. It causes a single gem to become 65535 gems, which can be sold for practically infinite gold.

Shop

Waukeen's Promenade is an excellent place to get all the items, spells, and other equipment needed to complete the game. There are many useful items at the Adventure Mart (Ribald, the bonus merchant, and the spell vendor in the back). Also in Waukeen's Promenade is a spell store, with a few spells that aren't at the Adventure Mart.

Coo!

Gaelan Bayle will talk to the party upon entering the slums.

Posibilities

It is possible to break the script that teleports the party to his house with cutscene breaking. Unless there is a way to glitch a chapter advancement, the game will not be completable until the player enters Gaelan's house and watches the cutscene at the end of his conversation. Should a method be discovered, this would cut out two otherwise unavoidable cutscenes, saving significant time.

Choices

The player has a choice to either work for the Shadow Thieves or Bohdi. Currently, siding with Bohdi is much faster due to how the quests are set up. The Shadow Thief quests are easier, which makes it useful for a single segment run. Whatever you choose, the end result will be a trip to Brynnlaw.

Bohdi Sucks

Bohdi's quests are very flexible.

• The first quest is to get a package from Mook. It can be pickpocketed or recovered from her corpse.
• The second quest is to EITHER: Kill or rescue a halfling from the top floor of the Shadow Thief guild hall, OR: Talk to or kill a noble. If he is killed, you also need to plant the Shadow Thief items in his fountain. Succeeding or failing these quests makes no difference; the quest is completed any way you handle it.
• The third quest it to kill Aran Linvail.

Mook

The package can be taken at any time after talking to Bohdi. The second quest cannot be started until the package is delivered to Bohdi (the quest characters are created after the turn in). Mook is a "blue circle" NPC until her dialog. She is susceptible to talk locking.

Rescue or Murder

Bohdi's next quest is either to "save" Palern Flynn from the top floor of the Shadow Thief guild hall (near Renal Bloodscalp) or to murder a noble in the government district and plant evidence of Shadow Thief involvement at the home. Should you fail at either of these tasks, either by the death of the hostage or by talking to the noble and warning him of the danger, Bohdi will not care and the quest will be complete. Currently, the fastest quest is the one involving hostage rescue. Mook, Aran Linvail, and Palern Flynn all reside in the docks, so with different area dialog to keep someone in your party, you can complete all three quests with a single trip to the docks.

Shade of Aran Linvail

The final quest Bohdi asks of you is to kill Aran Linvail, leader of the Shadow Thieves. It should be noted that you can complete this quest at any time, even before you retrieve the package from Mook.

There are three obstacles keeping you from Aran Linvail. First, his lair is locked from inside and only a special key can open it. The key is held by Gaelan Bayle. It cannot be pick pocketed, and any hostile actions toward Gaelan when you first meet him will cause him to run away for 24 hours. The only way known to kill him early is a combination of talk locking him and using a shapechanged Mind Flayer to intelligence Drain him. Otherwise, the player would need to make a second trip to the Slums.

While the key is the only way to open the doors to Aran's Lair, there is another way to enter. Due to some sloppy coding, the door in the eastern part of the docks can be bypassed. Simply move your mouse around the edge of the doorway until your cursor becomes the pointed finger. Click, and enter. The door is still locked, but the same sloppy coding allows the player to exit in the same manner they entered. This time, the cursor will be an arrow pointing through an open door.

The two other obstacles are the two locked doors between Aran and the player. These doors are easily wall jumped, but if necessary they can be opened. The first door is opened with a button on the opposite end of a spiked bridge. The button will cast flame strike on the user when pushed. The final door requires a key from Haz, a wizard of moderate power. He can be charmed with a Ring of Air Control and pickpocketed.

Aran is also a powerful Wizard, and comes with a group of cronies unless care is taken to avoid the floor trigger that spawns them. Aran will immediately cast mislead, rendering him invisible. He will then cast Cacofiend, and then invisibility a few more times for good measure. He can be charmed with a Ring of Air Control.

Come Sail Away

Upon turning in the final quest to Bohdi, the player is sent to Brynnlaw, home of the Asylum and the portal to underdark.

Brynnlaw

Welcome to Brynnlaw, home of pirates an prostitutes. A good speedrun will skip most of this area.

Entry to Spellhold

There are several ways to get into spellhold. The fastest and easiest seems to be to talk your way in.

Desharik

Desharik is the leader of the pirates on the island. To meet him you need to either pay 300 gold to the door guard, or complete some extensive quest and get a name drop. Since you should have infinite gold, the choice is clear. Next, you need to talk to Desharik. A charisma of 15 or more is needed to convince him that you're crazy enough to need to be sent to spellhold. Failing that, having either Yoshimo (since he's working for the same guy as Desharik) or Minsc (since he's... crazy) will also allow a quick entry into Spellhold.

The Wardstone

Alternately, a wardstone can be taken from a local Cowled Wizard, either by talk lock pickpocketing or off of his corpse. This is much slower, as you then need to walk all the way to Spellhold rather than being teleported in.

Spellhold

Upon entering, you are allowed to explore, before eventually being knocked out and taken prisoner, again, by Irenicus. That is, unless you're better at exploring than the designers intended.

To Underdark

There are two locked doors that must be wall jumped to get to the underdark and skip a huge portion of the game. The first is shortly before you meet Irenicus again, to the west of the cells. This will bring you downstairs. In the southern part of this floor, there is a hidden door with a portal behind it. Jump this wall and walk towards the portal. Note that the portal is not actually what sends you to Underdark; there is a floor trigger before the portal. This means you don't need to worry about having every party member nearby.

Underdark

The Underdark is home many mysterious monsters, including the drow. Luckily, you hardly have to deal with any of them to progress.

Svirfneblinsayswhat?

The first step is to get the light gem. You can explore all you want, but you're not getting out of underdark without visiting the silver dragon, and the only way in is with the light gem. The leader, Goldander Blackenrock hold this light gem at the local Svirfne... halfling village. . It can be pickpocketed, retrieved off his corpse, or you could complete a quest for him and get it nicely (yeah right).

Note: If you're willing to lose a party member over it, all quest items are transfered to the PC when a party member is kicked out. So a party member can grab the gem while the PC waits by the dragon's lair. The party member with the gem could be kicked, and the PC could instantly enter the lair.

Adalon the Observer

You have two speedrunning options when dealing with the Silver Dragon. You can talk to her, and she will turn you into a drow. This will allow you to bribe the drow guarding the exit to let you through. Or, you can attack her (or anything to make her hostile). This will open the door, but the drow guarding it will remain.

Notable Nasties

Invisibility will protect you from most of the dangers in Underdark, but beware the Saughin (fish people). They can see through invisibility, they can stun from range, and they can slow from melee. If you're lucky, you will only need to deal with three of them. If you're unlucky...

Should you survive long enough to get to the drow party near the exit without a disguise, they will make you wish you had one. A hidden rogue is constantly detecting illusions, which will not only break invisibility, but also some spell protections like blur and mirror image. The mage will begin to cast True Sight as soon as you are near. As a final obstacle, the exit is physically blocked by two high hitpoint and magic resistant skeletons. You can try to live long enough for them to move out of the way, or you can cast summon familiar over them, and have your familiar exit. If your PC and other party members are nearby, the whole group will exit. I hope you weren't saving that constitution point though, cause your enemies will have no qualms with following you through the door. This whole disaster can be skipped by just talking to the dragon and getting a disguise, but is it faster?

Overdark

Once on the surface, an elf will talk to you can put you through a bit of a cutscene. That is, if you let him. You can talk lock the specific elf who will initiate dialog and run away. This has an added benefit of allowing you to talk to Elhan before the Elf General. If you talk lock the general and initiate dialog with Elhan, he will try to have the Elf sages tell if you are speaking the truth. Since you never talked to General Sovalidaas, the Elf Sages never spawned. Thus, the dialog will break very early, and Elhan will act as if you participated through the whole thing. You won't get the abundance of stakes and holy water this way, but really, who needs 'em?

Suldanessellar

Your primary goal is to face off with Irenicus, who is attacking the elf city of Suldanessellar. The only known way to enter the city is with the Lanthorn, which is held by Bohdi in the Graveyard District.

Getting the Lanthorn

Bohdi holds the lanthorn in her coffin on the second floor of he lair in the Graveyard District. A stake is required to retrieve it.

Making Friends

Drizzt Do'Urden and his company will waylay you as you head back to Amn. Careful dialog choices can recruit him to help in the battle against Bohdi. Drizzt is more than capable of single-handedly wiping out Bohdi and her guards. A powerful ally indeed.

Stocking Up

Ribald at the adventure mart will now have an option to view a separate cache of items and scrolls. This includes several level 8 and level 9 that could be invaluable to completing the game. He is all the way in Waukeen's Promenade, so any new equipment would need to make up for the time lost by the detour. The trigger for Ribald's extended inventory seems to be if the chapter is 6. Should a way to skip chapters be found, Ribalds better items can be accessed even earlier.

The Graveyard

Upon entering the Graveyard, Bohdi will initiate dialog and summon four vampires. Bohdi can be talk locked to delay this. Also, if the player rests before Bohdi has a chance to initiate dialog, it will become daytime and the vampires will instantly die from the sunlight.

The Crypt

If you don't have a stake at this point, be sure to grab one from the locked chest right near the entrance. This chest also hold a scroll of Finger of Death, which may be very useful. There are lots of vampires here (go figure), and there are several ways to get around them:

• Killing them
• Hide in shadows or invisibility
• Protection from Undead scroll

Killing them would take a long time no matter how you do it, but it will unlock the door to Bohdi.

Hide in shadows or invisibility works fine, but to wall jump the locked door you'll usually have to survive a few seconds against the vampires.

Protection from Undead is the safest way. No vampire, not even bohdi, can do anything to a player protected from undead.

There is a door that will only unlock if all the vampires on the floor are killed. Wall jumping is a viable alternative to killing the vampires.

On the second floor Drizzt will be waiting if you recruited him. Unless the vampires on the above floor are killed, he won't move. He can be charmed with a Ring of Air Control. Bohdi will be waiting in the big room, and will try to initiate dialog. At the end of this dialog, several vampires and grim warders will appear to protect her. This can be avoided by talk locking her or by being protected from undead. When Bohdi reaches 1 hit point, she will force dialog (meaning her guards will come). After this, if she is still at one hit point (she's got a pretty decent health regeneration, so she won't always stay at 1 health), she will start another dialog and become vulnerable. After she dies, she becomes a bat and flies to her coffin. A stake in the coffin will give you the lanthorn.