Realistically how much of Acts 1 & 2 can you skip?

[tattuvamasi]

It seems to me like you can probably just bypass all this content. Like just skip the grove and goblin camp, jump right down to the underdark from the spider cave underneath that ruined town. It's pretty easy to talk your way through in a couple of conversations and wind up in Act 2. Then taking the evil path and siding with Balthazar skips most of the fighting and takes you right to the final dungeon, or taking the good path and siding with Jaheira and Aylin, you get a bunch of allies for the final fight.

BUT if I do this I am probably gonna be very underleveled. And, I am not gonna have very many of the unique bonuses from quests and such. On the other hand I will have good gear available at lower level than usual.

So. my question is, how viable is this? Do you still get some XP for skipping main quest content? Probably not gonna be doing this on honour mode, but I have usually got the difficulty set on tactician except for balanced character power.

[Quillithe]

Act 1 is entirely optional though XP is going to be a problem.

All you technically need to do is just walk through the zone though.

Act 2 I believe requires the trials of Shar and the final section.


A glitchless speedrun will probably reveal how much you really need to do

https://youtu.be/juqmZ2gP8JU

[Panda]

The word “skip” is an opposite for the word “experience”, you won’t have items related to quests, your level probably will be less by 4-6 instead of 10 in the end of act 2.

If you switch to the adventurer difficulty I guess it’s ok, you can even skip whole act 3 by one shooting Orin and befriending Gortash, use Gale and invisibility to skip entire final battle.

The question is - whats the point of this, just download and use some1’s save if you don’t need first 2 acts.

[Dorian Gray]

There is a good number of things you will miss though. (just from Act 1 ...)

Off the top of my head.... without giving away too much....

* parasites
* perm buff
* another perm buff
* book - which confers a couple of perm buffs
* unique items
* NPCs
* quest line intros

[doug]

Why?

Act 1 and 2 are the parts where everything makes sense and you can't accidentally find yourself at a dead end by exploring too much too early.

[belgix]

You can skip almost all but one easy way to get experience is to try a pacific run for Act 1 & 2. You don't need to fight to get XP and every time you manage to solve a problem pacifically you get as much as XP than fighting your way into the game.