16407 réponses à ce sujet

[The Fred]

Well, I've decided that, whilst I'll keep this game going, I'm going to have a go at another, brand new character with a different set of mods. After looking at SCS, it actually seems that some of the components I would have liked to install (Faster bears, Candlekeep-be-gone, reduced reputation gain, tougher spiders, etc) don't actually require TuTu or BGT to function. However, it wouldn't let me install them regardless, so I'm thinking of trying to rip those bits of code out (hopefully the SCS folks won't mind), or just recreating the mods from scratch. That's a job for another day, however...

Instead, I set up my install like so:
BG1Tweak (CoM) - Alternate Portraits
Dark Horizons (including L40 ruleset)
BG1 Mini-Quests and Encounters
Stone of Askavar
The Grey Clan Episdoe 1
BG1 Unfinished Business (all)
BG1 Tweaks (G3)
- Weapon animation tweaks, IWD casting graphics, icon improvements
- Cloakwood available before Ch 4
- Reveal city maps
- Universal clubs
- No XP cap
- Allow thieving/stealth/spellcasting in armour
- 3rd Ed Druid alignment restrictions
- Add save penalties for high-level casters (BETA, all spells)
- Taerom makes additional Ankheg armour
- Give NPCs (all) BG2 stats, make Jaheira Neutral Good.
- Make Khalid a Fighter/Mage
- Give NPCs (all) legal stats
Druid Power (a mod of my own making which removes druid spells from clerics and gives druids Dispel Magic and Strength of One) -> Fix All NPCs (BETA)
A mod of my own making which increases the stack sizes of items

So, this could be interesting (especially if a beta mod screws up). All I need to decide now is what character to use. With all the druid mods, a druid or cleric/ranger might be nice (or cleric->ranger) but I will probably take Khalid and Jaheira again thanks to Khalid as a fighter/mage (which sounds fun) and Jaheira's higher (BG2) dex. So, I probably don't want to go druid or fighter/mage, mage is too risky for me for a no-reload, maybe fighter->thief (I rarely play backstabber, could make a nice change, but then the stealth penalties from the tweak pack might hurt)? Any suggestions?

Modifié par The Fred, 25 mars 2011 - 11:32 .

[Wierdo]

@Grond0: your idea to dual from a fighter-type to a specialist mage seems a little awkward to manage, and dare I say a tad dodgy as well? But it is hard for me to say that to someone like you who likes to make the game so hard/challenging for one's self. You put my own efforts "in the shade" by comparison.

I figure that it suits the game balance to only dual into a basic mage, rather than a specialist one. My own plan to dual Annakin to mage after he gets to level 12 as a berserker, which would be in BG2. Sure, it would be nice to be able to specialise him as well, but frankly the dude will be a raging powerhouse anyway as a berserker/mage.

[Gavn]

Update:

Orkai's party cleared the Nashkel mines without any difficulty. Mulahey went down with barely a fight - who would have known so many creatures were susceptible to Viconia's "Command" spell? The remaining Kobolds and Skeletons were dispatched casually, and the group continued on.

The group explored different areas near the Firewire ruins, and then finally made the plung into those dark passages. Imoen disarmed the traps, and the party emerged in Gullykin. A group of mercenies attacked them outside of Gullykin, but were no match for Orkai's band of adventurers.

Trouble did brew on the "Mine Exit" map. Imoen, who was ordered to stealth near a group of bountyhunters so that Ewdin could cast a sleep spell, took it upon herself to auto-attack and get herself killed. Needless to say, it's a massive oversight on Bioware when stealthed characters auto-attack, therefore, after a little consideration, I decided to reload and not count it, because this is either an obvious bug or oversight and either way makes no sense.

All the party has left to do is clear out Ulcaster and head up to find the Bandit Camp...

[Wierdo]

Gavn wrote...

Update:

Orkai's party cleared the Nashkel mines without any difficulty. Mulahey went down with barely a fight - who would have known so many creatures were susceptible to Viconia's "Command" spell? The remaining Kobolds and Skeletons were dispatched casually, and the group continued on.

The group explored different areas near the Firewire ruins, and then finally made the plung into those dark passages. Imoen disarmed the traps, and the party emerged in Gullykin. A group of mercenies attacked them outside of Gullykin, but were no match for Orkai's band of adventurers.

Trouble did brew on the "Mine Exit" map. Imoen, who was ordered to stealth near a group of bountyhunters so that Ewdin could cast a sleep spell, took it upon herself to auto-attack and get herself killed. Needless to say, it's a massive oversight on Bioware when stealthed characters auto-attack, therefore, after a little consideration, I decided to reload and not count it, because this is either an obvious bug or oversight and either way makes no sense.

All the party has left to do is clear out Ulcaster and head up to find the Bandit Camp...

It is certainly an irritating problem - the default BG scripts all do that.

The SCS "ease of use" script overcomes this - stealthed or invisible character will not attack automatically. ALL of Wierdo's party use it. Prior to this script, it was a painful routine to always turn AI off when in stealth mode. It is especially useful in this latest challenge as Wierdo's party goes around invisible a lot of the time (a tactic I picked up when I last played BG2, as the modded-game's ambushes can be fairly devastating in the early parts of the game). Makes me wonder what some of the quest-related NPCs think about the party that appears and disappears from no-where (that is, if they actually had a brain of their own)!

I lost one of Wierdo's party on that same map (I think - or one close by) to a pair of Ankhegs, which did a kind-of "double tap" on her with acid spitballs, doing around 35hp damage. Wasn't really "fair" I guess, but then life often isn't and the monsters frequently suffer worse from Wierdo's party. I decided not to raise her as she was a self-generated PC, but may bring her back for BG2 or TOB if we get that far (the party theoretically left her at the Jovial Juggler in Beregost, keeping company with the hunky paladin Bjornin). Part of the problem was that I wasn't careful enough. She auto attacked and closed in to melee range - rather than hanging back, providing missile support and leaving melee to the main fighter.

There is no issue or whatever with getting NPCs raised from the dead, or even PC-made non-protagonist characters for that matter (although I chose not to in my earlier example). This is pretty cheap for low-level chars (price goes up with levels). For example, in my current game, Xan has proved his predictions of doom to be accurate and died three times - although that was in his early days and he hasn't died for quite some time now.

[Grond0]

Wierdo wrote...

@Grond0: your idea to dual from a fighter-type to a specialist mage seems a little awkward to manage, and dare I say a tad dodgy as well? But it is hard for me to say that to someone like you who likes to make the game so hard/challenging for one's self. You put my own efforts "in the shade" by comparison.

I figure that it suits the game balance to only dual into a basic mage, rather than a specialist one. My own plan to dual Annakin to mage after he gets to level 12 as a berserker, which would be in BG2. Sure, it would be nice to be able to specialise him as well, but frankly the dude will be a raging powerhouse anyway as a berserker/mage.

Shouldn't be a problem - it should take about 2 minutes to set the character up with extra memorized spells at level 1 and less than a minute to alter numbers of memorized spells at future levels.  However, if I do find it irritating I could just leave the spell numbers as those of a pure mage - as I would not be dualling to get extra spells anyway.
 
What do you mean by 'dodgy'.  In game mechanics terms there should be no issue as the game engine permits one kit.  Thus a berserker / wild mage would not be possible, but a fighter / wild mage is no more of a problem than a berserker / mage.  I have played the latter before, incidentally and am not interested in trying this again - I tend to get into difficulties in BG2 when I get bored with the need to buff and my concept of the wild mage is a character which casts fewer spells, but is always slightly on the edge because of the danger inherent in those few.  The inability to specialise on your second class is not caused by the game engine, but is a restriction of the interface used in BG2.  As noted in my earlier post this restriction did not exist in BG1 and I don't understand why it was added (could have just been an oversight, although the designers may have deliberately nerfed it as a means of reducing the advantage of dual class over single class). 

If you mean it's against the rules I already said that I'm a bit uncomfortable about it myself in that I normally conform to the rules within the game.  However, the rules in my game are already hugely changed from vanilla BG1 - many of the changes make the game more difficult, but some make it easier, e.g. increased stack sizes, free action now protects against stun, green amulet has constant effect rather than using charges.  Normally where I've made changes it's because they fit within my concept of the game or were implicit in the original game, but not correctly implemented (for instance dwarves now get their correct racial benefits, monsters now act much more according to their intelligence under SCS, there is a priest of Shar kit for Viconia).  I think allowing specialisation of the second class of a PC rather than the first is much less of a change to the game than those introduced by many mods.  I suppose my touchstone is "would I accept this if it were in a mod" and the answer in this case is yes - in fact I already have done as level1 NPCs allows this for NPCs.

Modifié par Grond0, 26 mars 2011 - 06:56 .

[The Fred]

Indeed, both of my dualed mages are specialists, Pallyn a Cleric/Conjurer, and Imoen a Thief/Illusionist. I can see that allowing both classes to have kits, or even the second one to have a kit in certain circumstances, might open up balance issues given the fact that BG2 has many more kits, but specialist mages were always allowed in BG1. The only issue is that wild mages don't exist in BG1, so applying a BG1 rule to them does seem a tad beyond what's intended - however, it's an experiment, and I'm sure it can't make more difference than DH giving me a +3 +1d3 scimitar in the Coast Way.

[The Fred]

Enter Mullir
Chaotic Good Human Fighter, stats 18/60, 18, 18, 11, 10, 10
2 points in Long Sword and Bow

My intention is to get this guy to L3 to put three stars in long swords, and then dual to Thief for stealth and backstabs. Fighter is a relatively safe character to start with due to the extra health, and the advantage is that both Fighter and Thief level quickly. So, I will only need 9000 XP to be done dualing. I've done all the safe quests in Candlekeep and Beregost, and am about to head to High Hedge for Melicamp. Hopefully I'll get that XP which will level both Mullir and Imoen up, but we'll see.

Just for the record, I use Sword Coast Keeper again to move Immy's points from Stealth to Find Traps. I kind of wanted to move Short Swords to Long Swords, too, but I think that's probably too much of a change.

[Wierdo]

@Grond0: For all the reasons you just mentioned, I was reluctant to make the comment. You made some good points. The best point you raised is that your character would have only one specialisation, and that does seem to be fair & right to me as well.

Now that I've read your comments (and The Fred's) I can see that it would also be quite reasonable (in my own game) to hack Imoen into a thief/conjuror similar. My intention has always been to get her to 12th level as a thief (or as close as possible) before BG2 and to dual her at the start of BG2. Indeed, she starts as a thief/mage in BG2, which means that I'll have to hack her experience anyway to raise her thief level and probably lower her mage level considerably. As Imoen already has considerably more experience than her auto-generated BG2 counterpart, this shouldn't be a problem.

In fact, when (if) Wierdo gets to BG2 she'll have a problem because even though Imoen will be a better thief, her thief abilities will be unavailable to her as her mage level will be much lower. Wierdo is a good thief for sneaking and pickpocketsing, but isn't so good with locks and traps.

[The Fred]

It actually seems to me that specialist mages are more powerful in BG1, where there aren't enough spells that you actually miss out on anything key. It's nice to have someone who can cast Identify, but Divination can easily be shelved (though towards the latter half, Detect Invisibility does come in handy) and Necromancy, though a good school generally, actually features very few spells in BG1 (Larloch's becomes obselete after L3ish, Animate Dead is great for Clerics, but Mages can just use Monster Summoning, and all the touch spells are only really any good for Fighter/Mage or maybe Thief/Mage types). So, with one Conjurer and one Illusionist, I'm not really missing out on much, but I am gaining +2 spells per level across my two Mages.

[Wierdo]

Yes, very cool.

With a specialist mage, you can get maximum benefit from the Ring of Cheese found near the FAI. It doubles 1st level spells, which means 4 1st level spells for your newly hatched bhaalspawn specialist mage.

The illusionist school is probably the best specialist. I don't find that I miss much in BG1 or BG2. The only necromancy spells I really miss are Spirit Armor (a Shield spell is almost as good for AC, and it stops magic missiles as well) and good-old ADHW (which is a loooong way off yet).

Conjurors come a close second, because not being able to cast Detect Invisibility (or True Sight in BG2) can be a big handicap in some circumstances, especially when dealing with thieves, mods and SCS mages. But there are scrolls/items, and if there are other mages (even clerics) in your party then it doesn't matter so much.

[Gavn]

Speaking of brining NPCs back for BG2 .. is there a mod that allows me to have NPCs from BG in the first dungeon of BG2? I guess I could always do a multiplayer game and generate characters similar enough to them but... that's kinda lame.

[Flamedance]

There's a mod that places Branwen in Chateau Irenicus. I'm not aware of mods for other Bioware npc's. If you use BGT, you can of course use the console to clua them in.

[The Fred]

Wierdo wrote...
With a specialist mage, you can get maximum benefit from the Ring of Cheese found near the FAI. It doubles 1st level spells, which means 4 1st level spells for your newly hatched bhaalspawn specialist mage.

This is why I don't use the Ring - at least not until I'm at a stage to have acquired the other one already. Having four spells at 1st level is a nice enough boost, but at 2nd you jump right up to six, which is probably more powerful than a ringless L3 mage. I have been using DH items mercilessly, though.

Anyway, instead of doing Melicamp with Mullir, I instead had a poke around at the SCS code. It took a while, but I seem to have Faster Bears, More Realistic Wolves and Dogs, Smarter Deployment and Harder Spiders more or less working, some a little differently from SCS but mostly more or less how they did it (I did just nick the code). So, I've installed all of those apart from Wolves and Dogs (I feel that it's early enough in the game that it's OK to add mods, and these make the game harder, anyway) since I'm not happy with the way wolves are now acting - I don't know whether it's SCS-intended or me, but they seem *very* passive and generally just run away all the time unless I attack them.

Most of the other SCS components don't look as though they'd be directly poratable to vanilla BG1, though it should be straightforward to create very similar versions of some of their components.

[Wierdo]

@The Fred: I use the ring, but I don't use any DH mods. it is only 1st level spells anyway. more magic missiles ;D

[The Fred]

I decided to do a little more on the Adventures of Pallyn before (temporarily) shelving it, because I wanted to try out the Stone of Askavar. Well, I found the first group of bandts who were surprisingly accompanied by a hard-hitting stone golem. The fight was fun, despite Khalid nearly dying, but the ensuing conversation with the NPC at the carnival was not - it seems whoever wrote this has never heard of full stops. Whilst I'm not going to pass judgement on it just yet, I figured I'd get really annoyed if I read any more right now, so I went to my new game instead.

Mullir and Imoen headed to high hedge, where an unfortunate encounter with some gnolls left both of them nearly dead. Imoen hurriedly chugged a healing potion (which turned out to be unnecessary) and we headed back to Beregost to rest for a few days. Then, I decided to check out the Red Sheaf for this Tulbor guy (BG1 Quest Pack) but was attacked by someone apparently after a bounty on my head! We split up, but a lucky hit nailed Imoen.

I fled, and managed to scrape together enough coins to have her raised (by finding three in a sack - no joke). With a grand total of one gold piece between us (it's that sad) we camped out rather than go to an inn. Then, we returned and, between a good shot from Mullir and a use of Imoen's wand, finished the guy off (it was like a day later, but I guess he likes his drink).

We went back to High Hedge, avoiding a bear speeding amiably past us, killed a skeleton and went south, where we resued Melicamp. Unfortunately, Thalantyr couldn't save him (damn, could have used that XP) but on the upside, Imoen got to L2 and Mullir is close. With no healing, this run is turning out to be a fair challange, but hopefully I'll be able to get to Nashkel for the Bhaalspawn powers soon.

[Wierdo]

The Fred wrote...
 I'm not happy with the way wolves are now acting - I don't know whether it's SCS-intended or me, but they seem *very* passive and generally just run away all the time unless I attack them.

Maybe that is *too realistic*  - For example, why would the local wildlife hunt you down unless you are weak or injured?

[DMWW]

I'm thinking of trying to rip those bits of code out (hopefully the SCS folks won't mind)

"the SCS folks"=me, and I'm fine with it. (Very early versions of SCS were coded for BG1, but it's too damn irritating to write complex code in - anyway, I'm fine with TUTU.)

The Fred wrote...
Anyway, instead of doing MeI'm not happy with the way wolves are now acting - I don't know whether it's SCS-intended or me, but they seem *very* passive and generally just run away all the time unless I attack them.

It's intentional, yes (they should attack about 20% of the time). Wierdo's right: it's about realism. Wolves and dogs just don't behave that way. (As always, if you'd rather they behaved that way anyway, just don't install it.)

[The Fred]

OK, cool. Compared with the BG2 engine, BG1 does lack quite a few things, and there are a bunch of things which just can't be done with it. However, it seemed like a few of the components didn't actually need BG2 features (Wolves and Dogs used a single OR - easily fixed - and Harder Spiders lacked a BG2 spell to copy off, but I made my own which just holds for 2 rounds. Had to use a different projectile, though).

As for Wolves and Dogs, I like the realism, but I also want to feel theatened by wolves. They're damn scary creatures, after all. I was considering some sort of check based on the number of wolves and of party members so that whilst they wouldn't attack a full party, they might go for a lone character. The mod *is* fairly realistic, but as Wierdo says, perhaps *too* realistic (that's not at all a criticism, mind).

[Grond0]

Wierdo wrote...

With a specialist mage, you can get maximum benefit from the Ring of Cheese found near the FAI. It doubles 1st level spells, which means 4 1st level spells for your newly hatched bhaalspawn specialist mage.

For even greater cheese use it with a sorceror.  In a previous game Edwin was a sorceror and wore both rings of wizardry at one stage.  I think it worked out that he was walking round with 32 1st level spells towards the end of the game - that's a lot of magic missiles!

[Grond0]

Wierdo wrote...
I can see that it would also be quite reasonable (in my own game) to hack Imoen into a thief/conjuror similar. My intention has always been to get her to 12th level as a thief (or as close as possible) before BG2 and to dual her at the start of BG2.

I would certainly agree with you there, but I wouldn't like you to think I've finally made up my mind about wild mages.  I think the case for being able to dual into a kit is very strong, but I also think there's a bit of an issue about whether the wild mage is truly a kit.  It was implemented that way in the game engine, but it could be argued it's more akin to a separate class (in the same way as a sorceror).  Having not played one for real yet it's hard to know how good the wild mage really is, but my feeling at the moment is that a fighter / wild mage is not powerful enough to unbalance a no-reload game (and therefore should be allowed).  The answer might well be different if reloading were allowed as the tensions are different.  I'm just envisaging the situation at the moment where the party are under severe pressure and the wild mage tries to summon some help - say a skeleton warrior - but what actually turns up is an angry pit fiend.  That's quite a strong balance to the advantages of the class!

[The Fred]

That's true - dualing to a specialist mage is allowed in BG1, but kits and wild mages never existed back then. So, there's no way of telling whether it would have been considered balanced. That said, even if they *are* more powerful, the unpredictability probably makes them dangerous enough for a no-reload, as you said.

[Gate70]

Obb, LG human male cavalier. I hope his knees hold up.

(stats with ankheg armour and unidentified b sword +1)

** b sword, ** long sword

Without Gorion to guide me I am struggling with my moral decisions and Imoen is not helping. For instance, was it right to strike down a Flaming Fist mercenary to rescue a drow cleric called Viconia, then to invite her to travel in 'safety' with us.

An assassin called Tarnesh fails to stop us meeting Khalid and Jaheira to discuss this further. I hoped Khalid would know how to use a bow but no such luck, and as for Jaheira we somehow manage to out-run her.

Good riddance.

Or not. Even from a distance she is annoyingly loud and I realise we must let her tag along or lose Khalid. If only there were another way.


Khalid is unhappy, but I'm too busy checking out a new recruit to be bothered.


I decide to show Khalid how Jaheira was in no danger at all.

Oops.

I'm using a sword and shield while Khalid is relying on two swords. Viconia has a sling and Imoen a shortbow (barring death Kivan, Minsc or Coran will be filling one or two longbow slots).

Modifié par Gate70, 26 mars 2011 - 09:16 .

[Gate70]

(oops duplicate post)

Modifié par Gate70, 26 mars 2011 - 09:12 .

[Jeff W]

DMWW wrote...
"the SCS folks"=me, and I'm fine with it. (Very early versions of SCS were coded for BG1, but it's too damn irritating to write complex code in - anyway, I'm fine with TUTU.)

I didn't realize that you're the SCS creator. I hope you don't take my complaining too seriously as I think it's a great mod, even if it was frustrating my first time through. 

Started a new char(Boris CG Gnome Fighter/Illusionist 18/97, 18, 18, 19, 2, 4) and bringing him up to speed quickly. I changed a couple things in the installation, but overall it will probably be even harder than last time because I introduced BG2 Spells. I did remove all of the archery nerfs, though.

I think I just need to change my party composition and tactics and i'll be able to deal with the scs challenges. I am also going to allow myself to re-assign thief skills--this time I'll have at 1-2 thieves with 100 detect illusions to deal with the ubiquitous improved invisibility+mirror image combo that completely crushed me last time. I was thinking about picking up Faldorn for insect plague, but it would take forever to level her up because her highest incarnation has only ~20,000 xp.

I just hit level 5/5 with ~50,000 xp after doing some solo big game hunting (firebead elvenhair, greywolf, 9 sirines, ogre clan on the sword coast). I might hit mutamin's garden before assembling a my team nucleus of Montaron and Viconia. 

I discovered that you can kill Firebead Elvenhair with no reputation loss or anyone going hostile:





It's hard to find decent folk nowadays. He's not trivial to kill, but it can be done so reliably(twice, lol) with L1 Fighter/Mages using Blindness and Composite Long Bow even in a no-reload game. 

Modifié par Jeff W, 26 mars 2011 - 09:42 .

[The Fred]

Poor Firebead! That's monstrous!
Actually, I believe it's possible to kill him with just ranged weapons in vanilla by running up and down the stairs to dodge his spells. It's funny that he doesn't remember you killing him the first time, though.

Meanwhile, Mullir lost out on Melicamp's XP (poor Melicamp bit the dust... again. Not a good omen considering the only other no-reload I've not yet died in was the one when he survived) but still managed to get to L2. After travelling to Nashkel, off the beaten track to avoid bandits (especially since people have started trying to kill me), I got enough XP from Noober, babysitting some monsters of a different variety, and saving a boy from a baby wyvern, to level Imoen up to L3. One thing I think is a bit generous about the Quest Pack is the fact that you can keep the wyvern's head, which is worth 1000 gp or something from Keldeth Omar at the Song of the Morning Temple (though in my last run, I used it to make a Wyvern Head Helmet from the CoM Forge mod - a powerful item which would probably have been balanced if I'd had to kill an actual wyvern to get it).