What does tales of the sword coast add

The Wards party soon find themselves fighting against those who were trapped on the islands dungeon, eventually recovering the cloak and managing to return with it. Heading to the towns docks, the party encounters Mendas, a strange man who seeks help for an expedition to track down the ship used by Balduran. After returning with a sea chart that had been found by a local guild in Baldurs Gate, the party travel across the Trackless Sea, only for a storm to shipwreck them on an island.

Discovering a village of people living there, the Wards party learn from the villages chief that they suffer from werewolf attacks, to which the party agree to help deal with them, learning that the creatures reside in the wreck of Baldurans ship. Venturing towards it, the group encounter an elven mage residing in a cave, who reveals the truth behind the incident aboard Baldruans ship, and that the villagers are not what they seem to be.

Defeating what turns out to be wolfweres, the party returns to the village to find that all the villagers were actually werewolves, forcing them to fight through them, including a Loup Garou, in order to escape the island. Returning to Ulgoths Beard, the group soon learns that Mendas is a werewolf and had sent them out to help him bring back the village chief, his mate, along with the villagers, in order for them to roam free across the Sword Coast.

Upon learning of what the Ward did, Mendas transforms into a Loup Garou and attacks the party, but is ultimately defeated. In the towns inn, the party encounter a dwarf by the name of Hurgan Stoneblade, who asks them to help him recover an item from the dungeons beneath Durlags Tower called the Soultaker Dagger. Agreeing to help, the party travel to the ruined tower for a guided tour, just as a powerful Demon Knight claims control over the ruins and its dungeon, forcing the party to fight past several creatures while overcoming the traps and puzzles set up by Durlag, eventually defeating the Demon Knight and recovering the Soultaker.

Upon returning to Ulgaths Beard, the group are accosted by a member of a cult, who steals the Soultaker from them. Expansion packs for other genres tend to just extrapolate events after the completion of the original product, extending the storyline. But RPG expansions, including Tales of the Sword Coast, opt to incorporate the new adventures directly within the chronology of the original game.

Since RPGs typically end with your protagonists triumphing over some form of ultimate enemy, adding-in, as opposed to adding-on, new areas and quests has been rationalized on the grounds that it would be anticlimactic to extend the story. But this design constraint seems artificial, especially when add-ons for games in other genres, such as Starcraft: Brood War, are story-driven and yet manage to capably continue their original plots.

RPG developers do face additional logistical problems, but it still would have been more interesting if the plot of Baldur's Gate had been continued in this expansion, since reentering a stagnant gaming world just isn't as engaging. There are four discrete new areas of significantly varying sizes, and they can be explored in any order.

The action centers around Ulgoth's Beard, a new suburb of the medieval metropolis of Baldur's Gate. While the original game notably lacked a really substantial dungeon crawl, Tales of the Sword Coast provides a real doozy, complete with dozens of devious traps and deadly denizens.

There are also a couple new islands to explore and one brief quest that will take you back into the city of Baldur's Gate. The new areas are immersive and graphically detailed and are at least as interesting as any of the areas in the original game. The new quests, while still relatively straightforward, are frequently more complex than those in the original game and require you to solve puzzles instead of just hacking and slashing your way to victory. If you've already completed the main game, you're given the convenient option to start the expansion on the outskirts of Ulgoth's Beard with your party in exactly the condition it was in prior to the game's conclusion.

Your party can freely transverse between the main game and the expansion pack territories, but realistically you'll need an experienced party, or one that is extremely well equipped, in order to hazard most of the new areas. While Baldur's Gate featured a few difficult battles sprinkled throughout the game, Tales of the Sword Coast is almost universally challenging. If your party is lacking a master thief, its progress will slow to a crawl in Durlag's Tower, where it will be constantly assailed by lethal traps.

If installed during an ongoing Baldur's Gate game, Tales of the Sword Coast will seamlessly blend into the main story line. Ulgoth's Beard is a small town with great adventuring possibilities. Outside the inn of Ulgoth's Beard stands a mage called Shandalar.

Shandalar forcefully teleports the party to a desolate Ice Island, ordering the player to retrieve his cloak for him at the island. Player is forced to fight off other, already insane prisoners of the Island Dungeon in order to escape it. At the docks of Ulgoth's Beard, the party encounters Mendas , who asks the party to accompany him in traveling the Trackless Sea.

The ship is wrecked on a mysterious island, which player is set out to escape. There are people on the island who are suffering from the Werewolf attacks. The player helps them, only to discover that these people are in fact Wolfweres, a vice versa-form of Werewolfs. The player fights through the island lycantrophic population, including the greatest of Werewolves, Loup Garou.

Upon the return to Ulgoth's Beard, it is revealed that the men who sent player on journey are Loup Garou too, and they are about to avenge their brethren. In the inn of Ulgoth's Beard, the dwarf Hurgan Stoneblade approaches the party, asking the player to find the Soultaker Dagger at the bottom of the dungeons of Durlag's Tower. Several other characters implore the player to visit Durlag's Tower, including a mother looking for her missing son, and Ike who offers a guided tour of the dungeon complex.

The Durlag's Tower proves to be a dangerous place full of traps, monsters and loot. There, the party has to defeat a powerful Death Knight in order to complete the tasks.