Deck of Many Things Strategy – Baldur’s Gate II

This guide is a collection of strategies for the Deck of Many Things in Baldur’s Gate II. These tips were provided by GameBanshee users.

The First Encounter

You meet the gambling Cambion Aesgareth in the maze of the third level of Watcher’s Keep. He’s big, has a huge sword and probably has more teeth than he knows what to do with. But he’s friendly. Gamble with him and you can get a number of interesting things.

You have the option of drawing 3 times with him. The first two, he will allow you to gamble experience or hp permanently. I suggest wagering the EXP, as you can always gain it back by slaying a few monsters here and there. I’m missing the exact numbers for HP and exp, send them to me and your name could be in here!

There are 2 possible effects in each draw, both for you and for him. Your draw is worth a specific number of ‘suit’ points. The more points, the higher the suit. If your suit points are higher than his, you win the gamble. If you tie, he wins.

1st draw:

You:
Plague – Gambler is Cursed – 1 point
Strife* – Gambler is Slowed – 3 points

Him:
Triumph – 1 point
Construct – 4 points

2nd draw:

You:
Strength – Gambler’s str and con are reduced to 6 – 6 points
Guile – Summons 6 assassins to play with – 2 points

Him:
Defiance – 2 points
Empress – 3 points

3rd Draw:

You:
High Priestess – Silence on gambler – 4 points
Emperor – Permanent Mind Shield – 5 points

Him:
Wheel

If you play for the gem in the second round, you can win the gem from him. If you do, however, he will go hostile on you and attempt to kill you, since he does want to get out of there.

There is NO way to win the last draw. The Cambion will always draw the wheel on the third, and will walk away with the gem. Unless, of course, you kill him and his cronies, and take the deck yourself. You can also pickpocket the Cambion for the Deck as well, and this will not affect what happens when you play with him. Once you have the deck in your possession, you move on to…

The Second Encounter

Here’s how the deck as an item works. *’ed cards are considered Bad Draws. The previous draw affects the subsequent draw. Note that some of the other draws can be pretty bad too, but they’re not considered BAD in terms of subsequent drawing. Once you have drawn a BAD card, you will have to continue using the BAD draw list. This means that if you draw a good, then bad card, your third draw will be from the bad list.

First draw (random):

• Donjon* (Imprison user, save at -4)
• Ruin* (Party loses all gold)
• Euryale (permanent -1 to all saves, no save. ha ha.)
• Flames (Gate in a Balor and 4 fire elementals to play with)
• Gem (Get a rogue stone, king’s tear, sapphire, diamond, ruby and emerald)
• Jester (User gets 50,000 exp)

Second Draw (if first draw was a BAD card):

• Void* (Disintegrates user, save at -4)
• Key (Get a powerful magic item, I think it’s a ring of protection +3)
• Star (Get +1 to one stat, depending on class (fight/barb/pal/ranger str, mage/sorc int, thief/bard dex, monk/cleric/druid wis)
• Rogue (User is dire charmed and attacks the party until dead. Cannot be dispelled, so kill the person and raise him/her)
• Sun (party gains 300,000 exp)
• Vizier (User gets a mantle spell that lasts 24 hours)

Second Draw (if first draw was a NOT a BAD card):

• Void* (see above)
• Magician* (user turned into a rabbit. Cure with remove curse)
• Knight (summons 4 demon knights to duke it out. They do not drop equipment once killed)
• Rogue (see above)
• Sun (see above)
• Vizier (see above)

Third Draw (no BAD cards yet). Note that this is the final draw you can pull.

• Skull (Gates in a Death Shade to play with. He attacks with +5 weapons, dispels magic with each hit, 100% magic resist, resists most attacks, sees invisible and attacks fast. Only tries to kill the user, and once the user is dead, leaves)
• Moon (+10 hp permanently)
• Talons (user permanently blinded until remove curse is cast)
• Fool (user’s Wisdom lowered to 3 + confusion (no save). remove curse to restore wisdom, dispel to fix the confusion)
• Comet (5% fire resist permanently)
• Erinyes (+1 to all stats for 24 hours, also called the Fates)

Third Draw (Bad card happened sometime along the way)

• Skull (see above)
• Throne (party gains 1,000,000 exp)
• Moon (see above)
• Fool (see above)

Draw again? Deck dissappears. By the way, if you want to cheat, you can play with the global variables to manipulate what kind of draws you get, though you still get an equal chance in each case. The global variable is DOMTdraw. A value of 0 means no cards drawn yet, 1 means 1 drawn, etc. If the variable value is 3, it will auto-dissappear whenever you draw another one. The global to see if you’ve gotten a BAD card draw is BadCardDrawn. 1 meaning yes, 0 meaning no. If you don’t mess with the global variables, if you cheat in a deck of many things (item code: deck), your first draw (from the second (cheated) deck will make the deck dissappear (DOMTdraw = 3).

Optimally, you probably want that 1,000,000 exp, you’ll go for a bad card in the first draw (and survive, hopefully), then go for either Star, Sun or Key in the second draw, then the Throne in the third. However, I did notice that there are only 4 possibilities on the third draw after having drawn a bad card before. Perhaps those are undisclosed happenings, but I haven’t seen it yet. Perhaps that was what DaveG was talking about before, that the strategy guide missed, because everything else shown in here is listed in the guide. If you want to cheat, you can set the global variable BadCardDrawn to 1 before you even start drawing, so you can get a good card (jester) in the first draw, and still get to those other cards in the subsequent ones.

Written By: Setsuna