GatorDeb

OK the phone is being difficult in adding stuff around spoiler tags. Part 2. I am not good with directions. My husband bought me a shirt that says Not all who wander are lost. But I am. A friend was giving directions and said go east and I told her I didn't do n s e W then she said go towards the sun and I thought that was the most brilliant (no pun intended) direction ever. You overestimate my sense of direction if you think it's zero.





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GatorDeb

Got Halsin. We're off to


Aaahhh back on a PC.

When I first see him in



Noonan

I assume you're playing on the easiest difficulty so shouldn't be an issue. That choice was hell for me. Maybe 6 hours fights/re-loading saves to take out all the leaders.

That choice will also make everyone in the camp outside of the sanctum aggro on sight as well. When you walk out, you'll be in a fight with 10+ enemies.

GatorDeb

G-d Mode, unlimited movement, unlimited items, unlimited gold, dice roll always 20, all abilities 30, level 12 for everyone instantly

I'm having the time of my life with this game. First CRPG experience of this type of game, never played a BG or like an Icewind dale type of game.

Noonan

Why even bother playing like that? Just read a book. You do you, though.

GatorDeb

Because the book won't let me play pawsies with the bear.

Noonan

I guess. Big part of these games is making choices based on what may be the outcome. Using a god mode eliminates that.

For example, I'm currently in a camp with gnome slavers. I want to save them but everything I've tried so far has resulted in a battle with literally the full camp of 20+ enemies. Now I have to decide if I want to try to tackle that fight so I can be the good guy or go with a different solution that won't result in my dying every time. You can just always do the "good" thing because fights are of no consequence to you. Part of the draw is that you can't always do the good thing because you're oftentimes vastly outnumbered by the bad guys.

nickdawgy

That’s what I’m saying. Imagine how fun it’d be if she actually had a challenge.

GatorDeb

I call 4 quests in 5 hours a challenge

nickdawgy

Dying sucks in games but how are you gonna get any better if you're cheating all the time? Just put it on easy mode. I'll do story mode if I want to finish the game sooner (if it's a rental for example) and that works just fine. Or if you're gonna cheat just make it marginally easier. Don't change every single aspect to make to easy. I mean crits on every roll is ridiculous.

GatorDeb

I transferred the BG3 files to a mem card and stuck it in the Ally and it just ran without having to do anything to Steam. I have figured out how to transport my save file back and forth but not how to share the save. It has cross-play but PC-PC is not what they consider Crossplay. More investigating to do. I prob will only be able to put in 2 hours a week on this because I only have one hour to game 5 days a week, and Speedstorm takes the other slots.

Noonan

Steam has cloud saves. You shouldn't have to do any of that.

GatorDeb

I think that what happens is that for some reason the .exe of BG3 will run without connecting to steam, so I just xferred and played it. I have to "install" it on the Ally by installing it to the folder and it will automatically find the file.

Noonan

Isn't the Ally a full Windows machine? Can't you just install Steam on it?

GatorDeb

Oh, I have Steam installed. I'm trying not to re-download a 100+ gig file, I have metered internet and that's 20% (200 gigs, I get 1.2 tb a month) of my monthly quota. So all I did is copy it to the sd card and ran it and apparently it will just run without checking in with steam. So I have to make steam "connect" with it by installing it to the folder it's already stored in.

nickdawgy

Why metered Internet? That would drive me crazy.

GatorDeb

Well I mean metered as in 1.2 TBs a month or 41 gigs a day. It's $50. I could go for unlimited at $100 but honestly we don't need it and there's no reason to re-download a 100 gig file twice when I can just transfer it to a memory card. I could probably swing it, it's the principle of the thing. I don't bring it out when the kids are out and one kid is home sick so it may be a couple of days until I get to it. It's not hard, I just haven't had time to tinker in there. The 5Gs (T-mobile, Verizon) are just not good in our particular house, so Cox is the only thing left, those were $50 unlimited. But we were getting FIVE Mbps with Tmobile and our Internet went down every day at 5p and became unusable. I told them I'm too old to point here, move antenna there, I want to plug a cable into the wall and forget about it (and we had Cox before so all connections were there already).

nickdawgy

I literally have 35-40 devices connected to the internet at any given time. The constant filming of the Ring doorbell alone would make metered hard for me.

GatorDeb

Have you ever looked how much you use? 1.2.tb is a lot. We also use a ton of devices. Other than not download a 100 gig game daily, we don't limit our usage.

I gave up and re-downloaded it they changed steam to this mobile version of it and all the instructions on how to point to the folder I had the files in didn't work anymore.

About 7 hrs 23 minutes in.


I gave up trying to do all missions and on this first playthrough just want to get to the end, I keep on getting stuck places and not being able to get to markers. Once I play it through once I can re-play it and just get stuck on a mission forever.

Decker

I've got the same deal as Deb. Even with all the Ring cameras, the only time I've come close to going over was when I 1) Bought a PS5, 2) Bought an XSX or 3) Added a new SSD to my PS5. Normal use doesn't come close to 1.2TB, but installing a bunch of games can do it (especially with auto-updates).
Deb, you can monitor your usage with the Cox app. And I get text message warnings at 75 and 90% of total use. As long as 75% comes in the last week of the data month, I know I'm fine.

GatorDeb

Yeah I check it daily specially when new games come out, husband works from home and I make sure I leave it padded with about 20 available gigs for him towards the end of the billing cycle. I pretty much try to average the 41 gigs a day. And not all games are 100 gigs. BG3 will keep me occupied for a while so now that I got it on the PC and the ally I prob won't download anything til Starfield (after cycle ends... that's another two devices to download that on Sometimes XBOX works better than Steam so for Speedstorm I downloaded it on PC XBOX, PC Steam, Switch, Ally XBOX, Ally Steam, so that was a data-busy day... there's not too many updates of that game though as they're able to do a lot of cloud-based updates that change things without a re-download).

2 BG3, six Speedstorms (the XBOX also updated), Pikmin 4, 4 Alexases, three tablets, a PC on pretty much 24/7, a lot of background Judge Judy and People's Court streaming while I do other stuff, work home computer, and I'm averaging 40.73 gigs a day so far, so under my threshold. I think it's safe to say my August gaming is spoken for so on a non-game download day we do like 18 gigs.

Noonan

I won't give details to avoid spoilers but I'd just like to point out that this game has excellent severed head physics.

GatorDeb

I still sadly haven't been able to play it on the Ally which sucks because I'm stuck here half an hour a day in line waiting for the kids. I have enable cloud saves checked on both and I have only a couple of saves but I can't get them to sync with each other, I have a save from 5 hours playtime from yesterday vs 7 hours today.

lwhy?

I've watched a few reviews for this and it looks great. Do you I need to be familiar with D&D or the previous Baldur's Gate games? I'm unfamiliar with both?

GatorDeb

Nope, I'm a complete noob to Baldur's Gate, Dungeons and Dragons, and crpgs in general and I'm having the time of my life. Buy it! I told my husband a side benefit is that I'll now be able to understand his D&D jokes.