Just got this in the insomnia sale and am having a blast. A few things are bothering me though and I would appreciate any help.


(Q.1) I love to take my time in games but heard this game has time specific quests. Are they strict or do I have plenty of time to do my own thing> Will I be punished for just wandering in the opposite direction?

(Q.2) I have heard that time specific quests are measured by in game days. Are there any that become missable after passing a certain part in the game. As in they are calculated by events rather than time.

(Q.3) Does the timer start once the quest begins or from the very beginning of the game?

As far as I can recall, any quests that you have a limited time to do are indicated as such, either by an NPC starting to nag you about it (in which case you can still carry on, but that NPC will have left your party and you may not be able to get them back) or by an explicit statement of how long you have (and I can only remember one example of the latter).

In Nashkel you can recruit a popular NPC called Minsc, who wants you to help him rescue his friend. Head in the relevant direction quickly - if you take too long over this quest, he'll not only leave the party but attack you.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

There are no, repeat no, time specific quests that do not relate directly to joinable NPCs, but even those can be easily circumvented.

Jaheira and Khalid, and Xzar and Montaron will complain continually, and eventually leave, if you don't go to Nashkel in timely manner. Solution: go to Nashkel and talk to Berun Gastkill, the mayor. Once you have done that, the quest itself can be completed at any time -- the timer is never checked again.

Minsc (picked up in Nashkel) will demand you hurry to rescue his 'witch', Dynaheir -- it IS a rescue mission after all. Solution: pick Dynaheir up first, or leave Minsc until you are ready to head over to the Gnoll stronghold. No. Only if you negate the quest/s by other reasons: killing a vital NPC, for instance. From the time you pick up the NPC/s involved -- from the initial dialog, to be precise.

Not quite true. There is one quest which must be completed within a certain time after you learn of it or you die. But it doesn't happen until quite a long way into the game, and the time limit is made very obvious.

I think I recall reading that almost all the time-limited quests have a ten day limit. I figure if anyone can confirm this, it would be you, Hickory. Is this information accurate?

You still have a reasonable amount of time: for plot purposes, I wanted to do the Nashkel quest and go to the next encounter before finding his friend (one of my other party members, who I was going to swap out with said friend, had a specific reason to be involved in that encounter), and he didn't start complaining in the time it took to do that. In another game, he did, though, when I did a bit more as well.

You are right... I stand corrected on that one. Thanks. No, that is not correct. The Jaheira/Khalid issue, specifically, has a four day timer. If you are still in chapter 1 when you pick Jaheira up -- this is a requirement, since she and Khalid will leave for good unless this quest is performed -- the global GoToNashkel is set to 1, to indicate that the quest has started, and then a global variable 'Jaheira' is set to FOUR_DAYS. That is per Jaheira's dialog.

Thanks for your help everyone. Really cleared things up for me. It doesn't seem nearly as bad as I thought. Seems as long as I just tackle each quest when they are accepted, I should be able to explore at leisure afterwards. As long as I don't spam rest during those quests, I should be fine.

Only issue I have now is I heard Shar Teel and Kivan permanantly leave if you remove them from the party rather than just stay there and let you add them back later. I can live with that though.

This is another misunderstood, and misrepresented issue. The only reason that any joinable NPC will leave for good is to do with happiness (at the party's reputation). There is a variable called, oddly enough, 'happiness' stored in every joinable NPC creature file. With good aligned NPCs this will rise when the party's reputation goes above 13, and sink when the party's reputation goes below 9. With evil aligned NPCs it is the inverse. With neutral aligned NPCs, the party's reputation has to go to extremes (I don't remember them offhand). You can see that neutral NPCs are easiest pleased. Now then, to the reason: when you dismiss an NPC a check is made with their 'happiness' counter, and if it falls above or below their alignment threshold for happiness, they will leave. The sole exception to this is Imoen, who as your lifelong childhood friend, will never leave you under any circumstances, even if you continually kick her out of the party.

Edit:
I forgot to add the actual thresholds for happiness. These are the reputation states that will cause an NPC to become 'unhappy' and leave for good if you dismiss them -- do not confuse with in-party happiness, as that's a different story altogether, to do with breaking points:

Good -- below 9
Neutral -- below 6
Evil -- above 12

NB: an NPCs happiness does not change 'on the fly', meaning when you pick up an NPC for the first time they are ambivalent. The party's reputation has to actually change before the NPC's happiness/anger changes. This means that (in theory) if you picked up a good aligned NPC at reputation 8, and your reputation never changed, they would still have zero happiness (not negative) if you then immediately dismissed them. However, a check is still made against party reputation for joining purposes, but without mods this is broken for evil aligned NPCs, who use the higher reputation checks -- silly mistake by the devs.

The tweak/fix pack adds a couple of opional changes: it fixes the bug regarding evil npcs sometimes not wishing to join you if your reputation is too low which Hickory mentioned, and makes neutral characters be happy, and play their 'happy' sounds praising your leadership and suchlike, when your reputation is close to 10. By vanilla, I understand that they'll never play them? Another silly mistake by the devs.

I am, technically, talking about the BG2 tweak and fix packs here, which are used if you're playing bg1 in the bg2 engine, but I suspect the BG1 ones will be the same.

Indeed. Exploring the wilderness areas is one of the most enjoyable things about BG1. Take your time, enjoy the scenery, talk to the various (and sometimes bizarre) non-recruitable NPCs and kill any monsters and villains you're strong enough to take on. :-)

Be warned that even with the aid of your journal it can be a bit difficult to keep track of the many side-quests.

Thanks everyone for your help. It may sound strange to say but your answers have taken a weight off my mind. I was having fun playing of course, but these issues were constantly at the back of my mind.

A tip for the side quests. Click on the map and create a notation where a certain person is. The journal sometimes does not go into detail where a certain quest giver is located. There's a few I always forget where they are located, but since I've started pinning a notation on the map, I usually complete them all.

That is not possible in BG1, unless you are using TuTu or BGT.

Is it recommended to use TuTu or BGT over vanilla? I am not that far in yet so restarting is still an option. I started on vanilla mainly to play instantly but don't mind putting in some effort to get it going. I also bought Baldurs Gate 2 in the sale and have it installed so BGT is an option.