Hi,

Just got both BG1 and 2 EE in the sale. Before I start playing I was wondering if anyone could tell me the essential mods to get for both, if indeed there are any.

Also Is it possible to do all the companion side quests in one play through, or am I best to stick to a set few?

Finally can i import my BG EE character in to BG2 EE?

Thanks

Kirin

I don't think, that there are mods necessary for the Enhanced Editions. Most things the mods for the standard do are already included in the Enhanced Editions plus some more things.

I play it through the first time and I noticed that it is not really possible to play through all sidequests for all characters in one run. The game is divided into chapters. If you proceed to the next chapter, all previous side quests you didn't finish before are wiped out. I can't even see what quest is part of the mainquest and what are sidequests in the logbook. But most of all you can not take every character with you, who you meet in the first two chapters (I'm now in chapter 3). You are limited to 6 chars in your party. You can meet the other chars again later on and make them rejoin your party by at the same time throwing out other chars but the previous quests remain gone. The bad thing is that some characters are related with an other character. If you throw out one character who is related with an other character in your party, the other character will leave your party too.

I think that you can import your characters from BG1 EE to BG2 EE. Anything else wouldn't make sense. But as already said, I'm still im my first playthrough of BG1 EE too, so I didn't tried that out yet.

In BG1 most of the companion subquests are very simple. Only the companions introduced in EE have more elaborated quests, though in my opinion these are of questionable quality.

In BG2 all companions have rather long and interesting subquests. While theoretically possible, I don't see how you could finish them all in the first playthrough unless you are using guides and you are willing to sink really really long time into the game. The issue is that often in order to move the plot further some time has to pass in game and some of the quests (expecially romance) are quite long. So you will end up waiting for a dialogue to trigger.

In BG1 my favorite companion for the good party are Imoen, Kivan, Coran, Minsc, Dynaheir and one additional character depending on the class of my main character. For the evil party we have Edwin (the best spell-caster in the game) and Kagain (dwarf-warrior). I still usually try not to go pure evil so I can have neutral characters in my party.

In BG2 my favorites are Edwin, Minsc, Jaheira or Viconia (for good and bad party respectively), Keldorn or Korgan (again, good vs evil).

But you should try for yourself and see which characters you find most useful. I personally, never care to have the additional new companions in my party as they really annoy me. Similarly, some will say that Aerie in BG2, who is cleric-mage is an awesome character to have in your party, but again she annoys me so I rarely take her with me.

What I didn't find out yet is, if the characters, you don't take with you or leave behind, also level up after some time, because if they don't automatically level up, it wouldn't make sense to take low level characters with you later on and leave high level characters behind.

You dont lose any quests. They just move to previous chapter section which you can navigate in the journal. There is only one point in the game where "some" of the previous quests become unreachable. And you dont have to take the companions to do their quests in BG1. You can do all except one with any party.

Ok thanks. Didn't know that.

What, no Minsc in your party? Boo!