Hello,

Playing BG Vanilla. Trying to roleplay lawful neutral character. Dualled Imoen at 7 to fit with BG2 (planning to import character).

Figured I'd find a thief in Baldur's Gate while Imoen regained sufficient XP. However, could only find evil thief and my rep was 20. (Now 19). Also, from RP perspective couldn't really see how I'd drop any of my longstanding companions (canon party).

Have just gone through Candlekeep and plot forcing me into the 'trap filled' tunnels beneath Candle Keep. I have no thief and Imoen is still about 35,000 xp short of regaining her thief levels.

Have I messed up? Is it reasonable to complete the tunnels section without a thief?

Thank you

You can find a thief in Baldur's Gate. Her name is Alora. She is a halfling, and she is good aligned. She can be found in the Hall of Wonders -- go at night!

There's also Skie Silvershield (Neutral aligned) provided you have Eldoth in your party. He is evil aligned, but can be sent to play with basilisks if need be.

But even if you don't have a thief at the end of BG1, don't worry because BG2 gives you Imoen back as a Thief/Mage. I won't say any more than that, in case of spoilers.

To be honest, you did not need to dual Imoen in BG1, (in fact it's a bad idea), because -- unless you are playing BGT -- none of your party get carried over to BG2 'as is', only your imported character.

It is feasible to do the Candlekeep tunnels, provided you have a cleric or druid (Jaheira) with Find Traps spell -- there are LOTS of traps, and they are DEADLY. It can be done; don't give up.

Personally -- and I offer this mainly as thoughts for people who haven't gotten very far in the game yet and are considering dualling Imoen -- I had her dual-classing process complete by the time I got to the city. I started it off with her as a level 7 thief shortly after the bandit camp, and I leveled her up as a mage through the Firewine Ruins, Cloakwood Forest, and all of the remaining wilderness areas that I still hadn't explored. I should add that all of these areas together did not offer all of the xp I needed. Although one of the great things about the game is that it doesn't require any level grinding, I did quickly raise her several levels by camping out in the Ankheg fields north of the Friendly Arm Inn, which I believe is the only place in the game where you can successfully grind experience in a short time. As in, about 10,000 xp for each character per real-world hour.

I'm not saying this to discourage you though, because you will be fine. I had to go through Firewine's trap-filled labyrinth without a thief, and after some initial frustration, I actually had a fantastic time with it. I soloed the whole dungeon with my Monk using a carefully selected handful of potions -- I believe it was stone skin, frost giant strength, and fire resistance and/or shock absorbtion, but you can obviously tailor it to the specific obstacles you're facing. I assume you don't have a Monk, but any tank character should serve as well. The key is using a single buffed character to disarm all the traps -- don't take your whole party through them, or you have to buff all six of them. You'll want to keep your healers and a stack of healing potions on hand as well, but again, the nice thing is that you'll only have to heal one character who's taking significantly reduced damage.

EDIT: I was also going to suggest summoned monsters to trigger the traps, but a quick search gives me the impression that this doesn't work.

Another option is sending Dynaheir protected by mirror image and other spells through the traps.
Memorize some knock spells for opening locks.

But this is awesome. How could you have messed up?!

Thanks all - very much appreciate the feedback and suggestions.

I'm not sure if I can leave Candlekeep as long as I do so before meeting the Iron Throne people or reaching the top floor? Might be worth doing so if I can. Will then either pick up the thief as per Hickory's suggestion or go find a lot of potions to try and get through the dungeon without. (Or even take a short trip to the Ankheg area with just my main and Imoen!).

I suspect I missed a fair amount of XP by not exploring the city thoroughly. But from a RP perspective it seems very difficult to justify going into a lot of private property (lawful neutral remember) without very good reason.

The plan has been to export my main into BG2 once finished. I did play quite a bit of BG2 10 years ago. I thought it would be best from RP perspective to bite the bullet and dual Imoen, even though leaving her as a thief would have made things much easier.

One final question. Once you enter the trapped areas under Candlekeep, how far through BG 1 are you?

If you think you can beat 2-3 Ankhegs at a time with two characters, more power to you, but I'd bring everyone. The extra xp per character won't save you any time if you have to spend tons of time recovering between combat. At least bring Jaheira so that you can heal. One thing I'll note is that Ankhegs, being animals, are very susceptible to incapacitating spells like sleep, so memorize as many of those as possible while grinding there. Almost at the end of the main game (there's Candlekeep, and then there's the final chapter back in the city) -- but if you're going to play the expansion quests too, that's quite a bit more content to consider.

Slight necro, but there's also the flesh golem cave where you find the manual of bodily health. Resting there spawns a goelm two times out of three, for substantial xp.

Nice, thanks for the tip!