Hi folks,

After many years of reading raves of PS:T, I'm finally ready to play the game. Bought it on GOG, read the mod guides, and cleared my gaming calendar.

First up I'm going to do the recommended mods from here:
https://thunderpeel2001.blogspot.ca/2009/01/planescape-torment-fully-modded.html

And here:
http://www.moddb.com/games/planescape-torment/downloads

And following this for the starting stats:
WIS: 18
INT: 17
CHR: 13
CON: 9
STR: 9
DEX: 9

However, before starting, I wanted to check in to get some tips from any PS:T veterans. You see, this isn't technically the first time I played the game. I actually found a pirated copy way back in 2008 (before GOG had the game I believe?) and tried playing it. I got several hours in before ultimately stopping, and I remember being frustrated because I felt like I was always missing tons of content and I wasn't sure what I "should" be doing next. For example, I remember doing several of the quests in the main city only to discover that there was a whole other party member literally just sitting in a bar in a part of town I hadn't been to yet. He would now have been under levelled when compared to the rest of my party. That was quite frustrating.

Once I start actually playing the game, any tips for how best to proceed without getting overwhelmed with quests and feeling like I'm "missing out" on things? I seem to recall this was a big problem I had with RPGs back in the '90s. Call it handholding if you like, but I love how clear, simple and direct modern day RPGs like Skyrim or The Witcher 3 are. I always feel like I'm in control and I never feel like I'm accidentally missing out or doing things in the wrong order.

Perhaps I should be more direct with my request: is it recommended to finish the quests I get one at a time, trying not to take on new ones until I finish my current quest, or is it better to run around and collect as many quests as I can and then try to do several at the same time?

Any other tips would be appreciated. Thanks!

Accept that missing some stuff isn't bad, you're not supposed to be a walkthrough hugging robot.
Write your own story instead.

The order in which you do your quests and how many open quests you have doesn't matter. You can even solo the game and ignore most of the quests if you desire without much trouble.

Don't worry about picking up party members late, XP is shared among your party so you don't loose XP and aren't weaker because of this. You could tell the other party members to wait and kill some monsters with your under lowest level characters but this isn't necessary at all.

There isn't really such a thing as doing things in the wrong order in a game where you can travel freely between different areas. There is a point where the story becomes more linear, and one sidequest early on that can only be properly completed before you reach a certain major plot event, but in both cases you're explicitly warned about those limits. So there's no need to rush with the sidequests, just do them whenever you feel like it'll be interesting. You're not supposed to be doing everything: solve things the way that makes sense for your current character, you can replay the game later with a different approach.

You also don't have to worry about party members being underleveled, since, as kmonster said, you can always just level-grind. Plus, your party will always be a few levels below you, since TNO gets experience bonus from high Wisdom which only applies to him. Multiclass characters like Dak'kon level up even slower because they further split their share of experience between their classes. This is normal and nothing to worry about, they'll still get enough levels to become powerful once you get further into the game - because EXP rewards get higher over time.

yea there are a few power level spots later in the game you can hit if you want if you really want to level up a tad. Your party levels aren't that important, you are far more important and can really solo the game if you want, so what level your party is at really doesn't make a difference.

Wisdom, intelligence and charisma are very important stats. Dex 13 is important if you want to catch people pickpocketing you, etc. If your playing as a mage you can raise charisma with friends spell, or some items as a non-mage, so that is not super important if you can boost it to higher levels when needed, but Wisdom and Intelligence high at the start, very important. After that you want to boost all into constitution for very good health and regen by later game.

You'll want 12 levels of mage at some point if you want to use the wish scroll later on (+2 stats). Thief levels raise super fast so if you hit a point you are fine with your fighter/mage levels, pump everything else into thief at that point. You'll level up super fast, gain tons of stat raises to get your lesser strength and dexterity, etc up very high, plus have max thief skills.

I personally specialize as a warrior at levels 7 and 12 to get more attacks per round, vastly helpful as either/both a fighter or thief. If your going mostly as a mage, then you'll want to specialize as a mage at those levels. I find thief specialization lacking compared to warrior.

Thanks for the replies, everyone!

I just figured it would help to check in and see if there are any tips before starting, and it seems the biggest factor is choosing the "right" character stats to start with, as not doing so will limit some options in the future.

As for quests, in RPGs I typically like to do them one at a time, not opening up more branches and filling my quest log until I've completed the quest I'm currently working on, but it's good to know that it's not a big issue int his game.

Looking forward to finally digging in to this game.

If anyone else has advice or tips for a first playthrough, please let me know. Thanks!

The main things have been said, start with high intelligence and wisdom. At least one of these tend to be dumpstats in similar-ish games, so it's an important thing to know about it. Opens up the game a lot more.

Beyond that, just delve into the gameworld. Read the text, there is lots of it. It's a unique game, and loved for a reason. It's probably *the* game I would love to play blind again. Just marvellous. Really looking forward to the Kickstarter spiritual successor, though they probably have impossible expectations to meet.

with how quests and locations are in this game, it makes a lot of sense to collect as many quests from 1 location as you can, move on to the next location, do the same, and collect as many as you can (at least in the Hive), before even starting to complete them. This will allow you to collect the companions and get them all the XP from the quests, as well as save lots and lots of time backtracking with multiple quests that have steps in 1 location.

Thanks, that's good to know. I typically don't like this method as it leads to less clear storytelling and is more confusing, but if it'll save me lots of time backtracking then I'll do it. Thanks for saving me some time!

I actually don't think you'll find it confusing or less clear in the story at all. It's amazingly well woven/structured/delivered.

I understand how that can happen in some games, especially bigger RPGs (like TES games or FalloutNV and whatnot), and have experienced it too, but, not in Torment!

I would actually caution you before taking too many quests. Unless you keep taking notes you may quickly forget where you took a given quest and where the person of the quest is located. So take a few, solve them, take a few and solve them again.

In the first part of the game there are not that many companions to get anyway. And the maps are not that big. Just remember to enable "always running" in options to save time.

I also don't like this approach of getting as many quests as possible as it break my immersion in the game. It feels to mechanical. But that just my personal opinion.

Use more than one savestate, especially when you're in trouble make a new save instead of overwriting the old one.

Thanks, I'll be careful to not overload myself. So far I'm about 5 hours in and it's going well.
Thanks for the heads up. I'm always careful to have many, numbered, descriptive saves. Hopefully there won't be any issues. I just wish it put your most RECENT save at the top of the list so I don't have to scroll down, heh.

I'm 5 hours into the game and so far there is a LOT of reading - it feels like of the 5 hours I've played I've spent maybe 4.5 hours just reading text - for example that guy in the Smoldering Corpse bar that tells you about the planes, I was reading his stuff for like 30 minutes!

Just wondering if the game's pace smooths out a bit - I don't mind reading, but would prefer if it was spaced out, some exploring, some fighting, some reading, instead of hours of reading followed by some moving around, then hours of reading again.

Any thoughts on how the pace proceeds as the game continues?

There are places where there is a lot of reading. Smoldering Corpse bar is one of these places. It can take hours to go through all the dialogue there. And there are other places where you will spend quite a bit of time reading. But remember you don't have to talk to every single person if you don't feel like!

To pace yourself don't be in the mindset that you have to read everything and complete everything. There is so much information to absorb in the first playthrough that you will feel overwhelmed. There is no way around it. The game is really deep and has lots of background stories and information about the world. That's why it is so beloved by fans and that's why it has such a high replaying value.

Remember, it is OK to miss some things. Basically try for now steering yourself towards the main quest (which for now is finding Pharod). Keep doing side-quests and talking to random people WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE and not because you think you have to. You can always come back to talk to people later except once you progress enough (I don't want to give you any spoilers so I will not write more than that).

In general there is not much fighting involved at least till you push the Pharod's quest a bit. But even then fighting is secondary. Only towards end of the game (say after 75-80%) fighting becomes a major part of the game.

Thanks for the comment! I typically like going into games and try to do everything, but in RPGs like this, especially with so much reading, it can be a bit much - perhaps I'll try to think of this as the first of more than one playthrough and try not to absorb everything all at once.

Spent another hour talking to everyone in the bar and I think I've finished with them all now - think I'll try to go find Pharod and see where things go from there.

Thanks for the advice - I'll try to take it easy on the completionist approach. I don't care that there's minimal combat and more roleplaying, I just ran into a section of the game where I was reading tons of text and not even moving around and it was getting to me. So far I'm enjoying the game and loving the writing - excited to see where it goes!