Howdy Folks
So it turns out playing Baldur's Gate - Dark Alliance on the hard difficulty is, well.....BLOODY HARD!
The new PC Remaster comes with an unlockable extreme mode which I'm pretty sure becomes available once you complete the games main story. Extreme mode increase's the base difficulty by 10 times.
I figured playing through the story on hard difficulty would be a good way to prepare for an extreme playthrough in the future. Now I'm not so sure I'll even get to the end of the game on hard mode.
In this post were going to be looking at level 3 which is The Crypt. The Dark Alliance storyline is classic Dungeons and Dragons and here in The Crypt is where things start to really get interesting and the difficulty level jumps up considerably from the previous 2 sewer levels.
First things first , lets recap how we got down to The Crypt.
This post covers the beginning of our story and arrival in Baldur's gate
@celticheartbeat/rtuapyup
Basically their is a new thieves guild in town, they mug our character stealing all her money. We take refuge at the Elfsong tavern and find out the thieves guilds lair is most likely in the sewers.
In the safety of the Elfsong Tavern.Ethon the cellar keeper is the guy in red with the keys.
After proving our worth to the Innkeeper by clearing out an infestation of giant rats we get the key to the sewers.
gif made by me.Our Sorceress uses burning hands to kill the last few rats...Dracarys!
Upon obtaining the sewer key we find out Ethon the guy who normally collects wine from the cellar has gone into the sewers to look for us and hasn't come back. It turns out he's been captured by the thieves and we need to rescue him.
I made an abridged video where I zoomed the camera in at certain points to make viewing a bit more cinematic.
This video shows our journey from obtaining the sewer key in the Elf song Tavern all the way up to defeating The Bugbear General boss and obtaining the key to free Ethon and head down to level 2 of the sewers.
Along the way we take out an army of Kobolds, a GIANT sewer rat who has been feeding on said Kobolds and eventually The Bugbear General.
One of the highlights here was learning to use Magic Missiles to defeat a small army of 16 spear throwing Kobolds...
Gif by me :).Another one bites the dust...only 5 to go and I have no mana potions left...
You can watch the whole Kobold spear army fight here.
The story cutscene in the video above is a little glitchy so I've cut it out and re-encoded it here.
In this cutscene the leader of the thieves guild , a suitably villainous character named Karne is instructing the Bugbear General to guard the prisoner and keep him unharmed. A lowly thief comes in with an artefact wrapped in cloth. He has been instructed to take this artefact to a place called The Chamber of Ashes in The Crypt and leave it there.
To get to The Crypt we need to head down to level 2 of the sewers. Here we find a hell of a lot of Ooze/slime type monsters. The main objective of this level is to find 3 levers which open the 3 sewer grates leading to The Crypt.
The first of 3 levers needed to open the sewer grates leading to The Crypt
With the 3 sewer gates open we can now access The Crypt entrance.
This level was difficult but not the most interesting to record footage of so again I made an abridged version of events that basically shows the jump in difficulty from the end of level 1 to the start of level 2 then just finding the 3 levers and opening the gates to The Crypt.
As we first enter The Crypt we get another cutscene,Karne has to explain to his master lord Xantum that Ethon , their prisoner has escaped. Here is the full cutscene.
After this brief dialogue between Karne and Xantum we find ourselves in a room with some undead roaming around.
In the next room we can run passed a few undead and we meet a terrified priest named Fayed who is trapped down here.
Fayed goes on to explain some more about what is happening down in the crypt. Here is his dialogue.
The Orb that the thief was bringing down to the Chamber of Ashes has caused the dead to start raising and turning anyone who comes in contact with it into the living dead! Its some dark necromantic arts and we need to put a stop to it!
This was a fun dungeon to work through. My main problem at the start was not having enough healing and mana potions. Towards the end of the dungeon I had acquired enough potions to start burning through it.
We eventually kill enough undead to get into the room with the 3 Urns needed to open the gate to level 2 of The Crypt.
Along the way I hit level 4 and raised my intelligence from 17 to 18 and also upgraded burning hands to level 3.
There is a stair set that leads up to the graveyard next to the church and onto the streets of Baldur's Gate
In the next video we will find out what horrors level 2 of The Crypt has in store for us.
▶️ 3Speak