Hi everyone,

I’ve been playing the 1998 original version of Baldur's Gate 1 (Vanilla), and I have to say, I find the aesthetic much more appealing than the sequels or the Enhanced Editions.

There’s something special about the original UI—the main menu, the journal, and the settings screens all have these beautifully detailed thematic backgrounds that feel so immersive.

I also personally love the original character sprites and paperdolls. Specifically, the female warrior's base model (when unarmored) features that classic 70s, 80s, and 90s retro high-cut swimsuit look, which I find very nostalgic and unique to that era of fantasy art.

I’m sharing three photos of these interface screens. Does anyone know if there's a way to extract or download these high-quality background arts directly from the game files?

Long live the classics!

BG was a big part of our relationship when we started dating. We decided to name our girl after Imoen!

Installed in Win98 from original CD and dived in.
First time playing with EAX enabled as well, very cool especially inside mines or caves.

Been asking myself this question for a while. What do your game experience thinks of it?

Rudri is a simple ratcatcher, making a few coins potting rodents with his sling for Winthrop, Reevor, and Dreppin. Despite having one of the most famous scholars in the Realms for an adoptive father, the young half-orc has proven stubbornly resistant to education.

It's bright and early on the second of Mirtul. Rudri has just woken up in the tavern's hay with a stinking hangover and some hurried instructions from one of the monks. Gorion, his foster father, wants to see him urgently.

everyone this is on a f/m/t. finally the highest roll of all time. i cannot believe it. cheers everyone. this guy is gonna be saved for sure

Hey y'all, I'm new to this series and BG1 just arrived in the mail, heck I'm so excited! Any advise for a newcomer? I'm thinking of perhaps playing a drow mage.

Posting while I wait for the 5 disks to install.

What’s the best way to arrange your stats in this game compared to in 5e and BG1?

So I've played a fair amount of BG3 and decided to go back to the earlier games. I obviously knew they'd be very different, but honestly I'm kind of lost on what to do. I'm still very early on, just got to Nashkel (I'm not sure if I'm remembering the name right) to investigate the mines and I honestly just don't know what I'm doing. Most of my time playing seems to be just wandering around, occassionally talking to people who don't have much to say and then stumbling into a combat encounter which is very confusing in and of itself. So at the moment, I'm a bit lost as to what my goals are or how I'm supposed to go about achieving them.

In regards to combat, I sort of understand how it works, but also a lot of the encounters just seem to resolve themselves, or else I end up dead really quickly (there's a bounty hunter in Nashkel I don't know how I'm supposed to beat). I've turned off a good chunk of the companion AI but i still don't fully understand what the strategy is beyond just tell them to start swinging at the enemies because magic seems too limited to be really useful beyond one encounter.

The companions I don't really understand either. Who they are, why they're there or how to utilise them. It's not that I'm not enjoying the game, I think for the most part I am, but honestly I'm just way out of my depth here and would really appreciate some advice and general guidance on what on earth I'm supposed to be doing. Thanks :)

Yeah, I’ve been reading Lilura’s blog again 😅 so even though I’ve just started an oBGT run which I’m determined to see through, it struck my fancy to start playing oBG1 in its engine instead of BG2’s—something I haven’t done since 1998.

On the one hand, the lack of SCS will make things a little easier; on the other, the lack of convenience features will make things a little harder. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m curious to play this alongside oBGT to appreciate the differences. My oBGT installation is also heavily modded, whereas oBG1 only has the BG1 Fixpack and Sounds of the Sword Coast.

All this while simultaneously playing through classic IWD for the first time. What a time to be alive!

Baldur's Gate was my first PC game back in 1999 and I have always come back to it for many reasons. But one of the main ones is the ambience of the game. Sometimes I'd come back to the game just so I could walk through the woods and hear some of the bird song and air moving through the trees.

Recently I was curious and started looking into modding tools. And then I decided to try and build something in the browser that would let you explore all the maps and NPCs the way they are placed in-game. Ambient sounds are played faithfully to how they are in the game.

I found out some fascinating stuff. Like how certain sounds only play at certain times. For example, there are a few sound bites of 'courtesans' goading potential clients that only play late at night in front of the Burning Wizard in Beregost. If there's anything I came away with from this project is that the attention to detail in this game is legendary.

Best on a desktop with sound on. (But works on mobile, too.)

https://bg1sandbox.redpine.software

So I played through BG1, I killed the BBEG, then came back and went to Ulgoth's Beard and then to Durlag's Tower. I intend on going to BG2 next. What is my motivation for finishing Durlag's Tower - is it going to improve what kind of character I can import? Or would it be ok to come to it later.

Greetings Travelers,

about 20 years ago Baldur’s Gate inspired me to start writing fantasy stories.
Many of my worldbuilding ideas actually started as fan-inspired concepts back then.

This map is my own interpretation of Candlekeep – the great fortress library of the Sword Coast. After all, Candlekeep is where the journey of the Child of Bhaal began, together with Gorion and Imoen (well, Gorion...).

One day I would love to recreate the original Candlekeep as faithfully as possible using Inkarnate.

Nothing to do with me. I just stumbled across it and had to share. It is everything I wish the EE cut scenes were.

So in baldurs gate 3, rogue trader (great game), pathfinder games, and most modern games there are load times. During those load times i usually stand up, get water, go pee, kiss my wife, etc.

This game has negative load times, hitting ‘L’ reloads my game instantaneously. I sometimes hit ‘continue’ and my butt almost leaves my seat to grab something but the game just starts, instantly, leaving me dehydrated. Help please, is there a mod to fix this?

Found myself thinking about it, and I found it really entertaining. Who would you guys cast?

Playing version 1.1.4315 (patch from early 1999) with some QoL components of the G3 Tweak Anthology installed (like item stacking). Works surprisingly well, no issues or bugs so far. Besides that I used cnc-ddraw to fix some rendering artifacts and lossless scaling to resize it from a 640x480 window to full screen.

I'm level 2 and just about to enter Nashkel for the first time. Encounters have been pretty fun so far, have definitely spent about 500 gold so far on healing potions which came in handy.

The game has no bags (for gems, scrolls, etc.), so I have designated my party members to mule duty as weapons dude, scrolls dude, potions girl, etc.

finally got around to finishing my favourite starting four! switched to oils for montaron this time. big thanks to mike sass for creating these original portraits back in the day: these have lived rent free in my head since i first played BG1 back when it came on five CD's.

For me it seems after all these years (since I first bought the 5 disc collection RAW in hand off a drug dealer at the skate park for 20 bucks) I will often go through my saved games and find I am usually just around clearing the main bandit tent. Cloakwood must kill my vibe. And then content overdose of Baldur's gate

It was tucked away on a shelf at the family home. These sorts of things were always neat and a bit of a lost art with some modern games