That Shar-Teel of a mess...

Aasimar069

I wonder what the devs have been expecting when they poorly redesigned this character for BG:EE

Currently she has the following weapons proficiencies:

two-weapons : **
Long sword: *
Dagger : *

In the original game, she had a two handed sword, and was given the opportunity to use either a crossbow or a long bow.

That was great because since she had a poor constitution, but good strength and dexterity she was made to be a DPS (two handed swords range allow to hit from the back row) AND a good archer (since there is no Kivan nor Coran for an Evil party).


Now, we have a long sword / dagger (WTF !!!) fighter that is being forced to attack at close range...

With this fuching dagger proficiency, she cannot really use the potential bound to her great strength...


Is there a way the devs could seriously rethink their character design, or at least give use the opportunity to choose the proficiency by ourselves ?

EDIt : My mistake (it is a two-weapons proficiency), but still it does not change the mess.

elminster

She starts out with specialisation (**) in two weapon style proficiency, but none in two-handed weapons.

szb

Just because an npc doesn't have the best possible choices from a powergaming view doesn't mean it should be changed.

Quartz

LOL wow, that really does screw her over. How silly.

Glokta

Good thing i picked up Xzar instead of Shar-Teel as i intended for my 6th party member

elminster

Personally I have her with ** to longswords, *** to two weapon style and * to daggers. Ideally I'd have her with *** to long swords, but its not the end of the world.

Mortianna

Maybe they did that to hint at dual-classing her to Thief. I can imagine Shar-Teel dual-wielding Varscona and the Dagger of Venom while hiding in shadows.

Aasimar069

Sorry for my mistake, I have edited my post accordingly.
English is not my first language...

Jaxsbudgie

I like it! I'd say it represents her character and role well! I currently have both her and Dorn as my front liners, he deals more damage but less often, she deals constant damage but slightly less. She is specced as a high damage, bad tank character.
Her proficiency points also work well with dualling her into Thief.

Freche

szb said:

Just because an npc doesn't have the best possible choices from a powergaming view doesn't mean it should be changed.

From a RP point of view one would think that a fighter like Shar-Teel would hone her skills to become as good as possible.

elminster

Mortianna said:

Maybe they did that to hint at dual-classing her to Thief. I can imagine Shar-Teel dual-wielding Varscona and the Dagger of Venom while hiding in shadows.

Yea I guess they figured they'd keep her different than Dorn, not the person wielding the big two hander anymore. Some fighter somewhere had to take daggers. Besides, there are more +2 daggers in the game then there are +2 long swords

(I'm not counting the harrowing since it is only +3 vs the undead )

. It is something different anyways.

Deucetipher

It's pretty easy to tweak proficiency with Near Infinity. I ended up sliding the dagger prof to longsword to get more utility out of dual classing her.

Aasimar069

Is there a tutorial to use near infinity with BG:EE (I have not done this yet - i don't know if this is easy) ?

I could change her dagger proficiency to bows so that she's not as crappy as currently.

DarkDogg

Thats bad.
Shar-Teel was a good ranged-fighter too.

Prof in a dagger - LMAO!

Haven't noticed yet this enchantments ingame :-)

ryuken87

I had her dual wield long swords in my last Tutu game and she was a beast, getting around 30% of the kills in a five person party. Dagger of Venom is pretty beastly too.

Aasimar069

she will wield scimitars and long swords

Deucetipher

Note: Do this at your own risk. Screwing around in Near Infinity can be bad for your game.

This is for a permanent change. If you want to change it just for your save, Shadowkeeper is easier. NI can change your save as well.

This will change Shar-Teel's proficiencies for every new game you run.

1.
Download the latest version of Near Infinity. Older versions won't be able to find Dialog.tlk
http://sourceforge.net/projects/nearinfinity/files/nearinfinity/NearInfinity-1.33b21.1/NearInfinity.jar/download

2.
put a copy of bgconfig in your 00766 folder. I grabbed mine from my Tutu folder, but BG2, bg2ToB should work as well

3.
Back up Chitin.key and dialog.tlk. Dialog.tlk is in the lang folder

4.
Run Near Infinity. You may need to download java first

5.
Click "Game" then "open Game"

6.
Navigate to chitin.key and open it in Near Infinity. The file path should be something like:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition\Data\00766\chitin.key

7.
In the side panel, click the CRE folder.

8.
Select SHARTE.CRE. This is Shar-Teel's level 2 spawn. SHARTE4.CRE is her level 4 spawn, etc. Change whichever ones you like. I only changed the level 2 spawn.

9.
There will be a box on the main page labeled Effects. Inside this box you will see "Modify Proficiencies (233)" three times. These are her current proficiencies.

10.
You can open them by either double clicking or selecting view/edit. Do so until you open a window that in its fifth line (labeled Proficiency), second column read PROFICIENCYDAGGER.

11.
Click on that line. This will make the box at the bottom display a list of proficiencies.

12.
Select the one you like. Press Update Value.

13.
Close the window. Exit out of the program. NI will prompt you to save. Do so. It will save to your override folder. If you ever wish to undo this, simple delete SHARTE.CRE from your override.

14.
You're done! Begin a new game.

Aasimar069

Thanks for this tutorial :-)

Quartz

Deucetipher said:

2.
put a copy of bgconfig in your 00766 folder. I grabbed mine from my Tutu folder, but BG2, bg2ToB should work as well

@Deucetipher

Cannot find this for the life of me. I tried NearInfinity the other day and it wasn't working 100% so this must be what I was missing.

(I previously played BGVanilla if that helps.)

JuliusBorisov

Shar-Teel with the Dagger of Venom having x4 backstab with 4 proficiency points (1 from the start, 1 at level 3 fighter, 1 at level 4 thief, 1 at level 8 thief) is a beast! I use her that way and it's amazing.

And her constitution is not bad at all - it's the same as 14 in terms of HP/level. She has very high strengh - that what makes her the best assasin of all BG1 NPCs, a unique thief.

SpaceInvader

Deucetipher said:

Note: Do this at your own risk. Screwing around in Near Infinity can be bad for your game.

This is for a permanent change. If you want to change it just for your save, Shadowkeeper is easier. NI can change your save as well.

This will change Shar-Teel's proficiencies for every new game you run.

1.
Download the latest version of Near Infinity. Older versions won't be able to find Dialog.tlk
http://sourceforge.net/projects/nearinfinity/files/nearinfinity/NearInfinity-1.33b21.1/NearInfinity.jar/download

2.
put a copy of bgconfig in your 00766 folder. I grabbed mine from my Tutu folder, but BG2, bg2ToB should work as well

3.
Back up Chitin.key and dialog.tlk. Dialog.tlk is in the lang folder

4.
Run Near Infinity. You may need to download java first

5.
Click "Game" then "open Game"

6.
Navigate to chitin.key and open it in Near Infinity. The file path should be something like:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition\Data\00766\chitin.key

7.
In the side panel, click the CRE folder.

8.
Select SHARTE.CRE. This is Shar-Teel's level 2 spawn. SHARTE4.CRE is her level 4 spawn, etc. Change whichever ones you like. I only changed the level 2 spawn.

9.
There will be a box on the main page labeled Effects. Inside this box you will see "Modify Proficiencies (233)" three times. These are her current proficiencies.

10.
You can open them by either double clicking or selecting view/edit. Do so until you open a window that in its fifth line (labeled Proficiency), second column read PROFICIENCYDAGGER.

11.
Click on that line. This will make the box at the bottom display a list of proficiencies.

12.
Select the one you like. Press Update Value.

13.
Close the window. Exit out of the program. NI will prompt you to save. Do so. It will save to your override folder. If you ever wish to undo this, simple delete SHARTE.CRE from your override.

14.
You're done! Begin a new game.

Using ShadowKeeper is a lot shorter...

Deucetipher

@quartz

It took me a bit to figure it out. I'll see what I can do

EnterHaerDalis

The proficiencies for the NPC's in BG:Tutu and I guess BG:EE are simply horrendous ( although I Can't get out of Friendly arm inn in EE without crashing), alot of NPC's are destroyed by the changes

bengoshi said:

Shar-Teel with the Dagger of Venom having x4 backstab with 4 proficiency points (1 from the start, 1 at level 3 fighter, 1 at level 4 thief, 1 at level 8 thief) is a beast! I use her that way and it's amazing.

And her constitution is not bad at all - it's the same as 14 in terms of HP/level. She has very high strengh - that what makes her the best assasin of all BG1 NPCs, a unique thief.

so you dual Shar Teel at level 3 to thief then?

I never even think to do that lol, I just kicked her ass out in place of Ajantis. I'm using Coran for a backstabber but his triple bonus only got me 15 damage with Varscona haha.

Deucetipher

@quartz
ok that was easy. Just duplicate your baldur.exe file and rename it bgconfig. It doesn't actually use any info from the file, just uses it as a marker to id the game.

Deucetipher

@SpaceInvader

It is, and I noted that at the beginning. I do it this way so I can do it once and forget about it afterward. Any new game I run after this will automatically have this change incorporated. I like to play no reload, so I end up starting games pretty often.

I also used NI to mark Dorotea's Elven Chain as droppable.

Aasimar069

So with Shadowkeeper you can modify a CRE file, IIRC...

That would be easier and quicker.

Does it works properly with the last version currently existing ?

SpaceInvader

Deucetipher said:

@SpaceInvader

It is, and I noted that at the beginning. I do it this way so I can do it once and forget about it afterward. Any new game I run after this will automatically have this change incorporated. I like to play no reload, so I end up starting games pretty often.

I also used NI to mark Dorotea's Elven Chain as droppable.

Me too
You can edit the .cre file with ShadowKeeper too, not just the saved game.

Deucetipher

Ugh, that means I muddled through setting up Near Infinity for no good reason. I suck.
Ah well, NI let's you do some pretty crazy stuff. I'm sure I'll find something to do with it



@Aasimar069
There is actually a tutorial around here for setting up SK, but I don't recall quite where it is.

Found it:

Shin said:

It works here. Basically if you follow CamDawg's tutorial in this thread: http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/6950/player-how-to-getting-mods-to-work-on-bgee/p1 to link your dialog.tlk and then similarly use mklink /J to link your main game directory with the new save directory location, it should work out.

That actually reminds me why I went through the trouble of setting up NI. I have the wonderful Win7 bug that marks every folder as read only. While it doesn't matter for 99% of what anyone does, apparently unpacking biffs to a folder is blocked by the read only flag.

The_New_Romance

Kivan is also a candidate for Shadowkeeper... halberds? Seriously? Spears, if anything. But no, he's got to have halberds because someone put a new powerful halberd in the game.

Helias

The weapon proficiencies of Shar-Teel are curious, I agree. But you can make a sense of them by dual-classing her to a thief, as other here have suggested. She's only a very mediocre fighter/tank. But dualclassed she's one of the most useful thiefs. Perhaps the best even, because you can design her thieving skills yourself and not be stuck with the unfortunate presets for the likes of Montaron or Coran.

Aasimar069

That's true, but therefore, I would not keep her with two weapons fighting when dualing her to thief. She'd better have a long sword / scimitar to backstab (or short sword +3) and have a max in long bow, so that she can be my "evil" Coran with the book of dexterity.