[BG:EE MOD] Saradas Magic [RELEASED] V_1.1

Saradas

Dear friends, I'm proud to announce my creature!
I've worked hard on it for all the last summer, and now, after some thorough testing it's ready to be released.

I've personally translated it to English so, if you find any error feel free to contact me and I'll update the texts.

SO:
WHAT'S SARADAS MAGIC?:

Saradas Magic is a mod that introduces a new non-playable NPC, Saradas the archmage, which interactS in various ways with the Bhaalspawn's group.
You can find him in the temple inside the Friendly Arm Inn.
In addition to having several exclusive dialogues that take place as the plot takes shape, it offers:

- Identification at reduced price
- Cure the party when one or more members of the group are seriously injured
- An advanced artificial intelligence scripted by me that offers an epic fight even to the game's veterans
- A store with exclusive articles

In the latter, you can find 7 brand new arcane spells:

- Flawless Teleport
- Lashing Wind
- Gravitational Field
- Horrid transformation
- Drain Spell
- Spectacular Combustion
- Tenser's Supremacy

(The prices are not very cheap but you can still try to steal from the store :] )


The aim is to improve the tactical approach to the game as a magician, in the battles of the Sword Coast, creating dozens of new
devastating combinations.

Teleport behind an opponent and turn it into a pathetic zombie.
Summon a demon prince to tear your enemies apart.
Turn yourself into a fearsome Lich and drain the life out of your rivals up to send them into the abyss.
Crush the will of your enemies and then finish them off with a burst of spiritual energy.
Get the appearance of a dragon and lay waste wherever you go!
Turn the most dangerous of wizards to a meek kitten by stealing his spells or wrapping him in a burst of wild magic.



All this is possible thanks to the epic level spells, available for each school of specialization, and taught by Saradas:

- Spiritual Explosion (Invocation)
- Impenetrable Defense (Abjuration)
- Ego's Frailty (Transmutation)
- Summon Devil of Baator (Conjuration)
- Foreseeing the future (Divination)
- Absolute abnegation (Enchantment)
- Legion of shadows (Illusion)
- Deathly Hallows (Necromancy)
- Knowledge of the Scholar (Generalist)
- Shroud of wild magic (Wild magic)
- Dragonborn (Dragon Disciple)

(working on pure mages, multi-classed mages, dual-classed mages)


//--------------------------------------------------//

More info in the READ ME file. Enjoy!

Saradas


DOWNLOAD: http://www.mediafire.com/download/rg5cyypji1om22o/Saradas%20Magic%20ENG%20V_1.1.zip

Saradas

Some screenshots

Tome

This mod seems like a lot of effort has been put into it, thank you! Perhaps you could also add Saradas to BG:EE 2?

Saradas

Thank you this is my first mod ever for BG, and I have to say it was not very easy to make (3-4 months of work), but I enjoyed every minute of it
and I will no doubt rework the mod to put it in BG2:EE

Tome

That's great, I truly look forward to it! Glad to hear you enjoyed the process too.

Saradas

I'm reworking the mod for BG2:EE and I want to add a new feature, but I need help from the community.

Have you ever felt frustrated when, after a quest ends, you have to trash all the quest items involved because they become worthless dead-weight?
Well, Saradas likes to collect such things, and will give you a reward if you bring them to him.
I need your help to remember which quest items are still in your possession after the related quest ends.
One simple example can be the black stone to avoid the fight with the Black Dragon.

Since the game already offers tons of ways to make gold, which rewards would you enjoy the most?
- Exp points?
- Unique new items?
- Rare scrolls?

Post your suggesions

koteko

Nice work! Must be a great satisfaction to release your first mod I'll try the BG2 version when it comes out. Just a little advice though: don't make the new spells and the rewards too good, the challenge is what keep most players on the game.

To answer your last question, I would say make it a "unique" kind of trade: for example, if you bring him the black stone, he will (for a fee or a quest, I'd prefer the latter) install it on a circlet for mages (like the ioun stones) that gives some protection against black dragons (20% acid resistance, 10% magic resistance, something like that but not too good). Do it only for a few items, not for all of them. That's how I'd like to see this but you might have a different view

Good luck and keep us updated on your progress!

ps: in my experience, a beginner's advice is worth a lot to another beginner, as he went through the same problems. As the amount of sparse information is huge, have you by any chance selected a few precise tutorials on how to get started on this? In my case, I'm interested in BG2 modding is there's any difference with BG1. Also in italian is ok (I get it from the comments in your .d files that you are italian too, aren't you ). Any general/particular advice is more than welcome!

zurathan

i wanna ask a quick question.
did you mean conjuration with Invocation? if not where is conjuration.
if i know correctly, invokers are the mages studying evocation. its same word, i guess.
in my native language, if i check a dictionary, evocation and conjuration means same. your situation might be same.

Saradas

Thanks for your feedback @koteko
any advice is much appreciated, helps me improve my mod
Ok so your suggestion is to implement some unique not-overpowered items as rewards.
As far as I know there are very few differences between modding BG:EE and BG2:EE, but if you need some advices I'm here to help you.

@zurathan do you refer to any custom spell I created? or a specific epic spell? Invoker and Conjurer are two different schools. Don't confuse the word Invoker with the word summoner, because summoning is related to conjuration school.

descriptions: http://www.planetbaldursgate.com/bg2/character/classes/wizards/schools/#invocation

If you found a discrepancy in a spell I created, give me more details and I'll investigate it as soon as I can. If you are a Conjurer you will get the "Summon devil of Baator" epic spell;
if you are an Invoker you will get the "Spiritual Explosion" epic spell.

zurathan

Saradas said:

- Spiritual Explosion (Invocation)
- Impenetrable Defense (Abjuration)
- Ego's Frailty (Alterazione)
- Summon Devil of Baator (Evocation)
Saradas

then you need, just fix the typo in the post.
sorry i havent downloaded and tested the addon yet.
nice idea by the way. the whole addon. congrats.

Saradas

ooops thank you! my fault, that's not supposed to be evocation, but Conjuration. And I forgot to translate Transmutation from italian

koteko

Re-reading my post I made a quite confusing request :P I'll rephrase.

I have found plenty of tools, tutorials and forums around on BG1 and BG2 modding. Problem is, I haven't found one where it's explained how to create a small, self contained mod that can be easily compatible with other mods (by using WeiDu, I think).

They mostly are about specific things, but not on how to create a minimum, working mod in a quick way. Say, a mod that only change a line of a dialogue of an existing NPC and add a single item, or something like that. That would be useful to get started.

Wisp

@koteko
I wrote this back in the days, which is the bare necessities for turning an override-dump into an override-dump that is easily and safely uninstallable.

I suspect little has been written/preserved about your concerns is because there is not much to say about the easy stuff.

  COPY ~mymod/somedir/some.itm~ override
    SAY NAME1 ~Unidentified name~
    SAY NAME2 ~Identified name~
    // etc.

is not great material for a tutorial, though I suppose it would not be unhelpful either.

But for adding items you have ADD_CRE_ITEM, ADD_STORE_ITEM and various (more or less simple) ways of adding them to areas (and more fundamentally, COPY, SAY, ADD_ITEM_EFFECT etc.). Changing your single line of dialogue would depend on what you want to change and what you want to change it to, but there is, for example, SET_STRING, and, of course, all of the D language (which should be fairly well documented, provided you have all the insider knowledge of knowing where to look).

Saradas

you know, I think the best way to get started is to follow some basic tutorials while you do some reverse-engineering on an already released mod. that's why it took me 4 months to complete my mod :P I had to learn it all the hard way. If had to do it from scratch now, I would probably need only 1 month and a half.

if you already know how to create items with DLTCEP, move on to weidu commands and learn how to create .d .tra files

koteko

@Wisp: that's exactly what I was looking for, the whole thread is a treasure. A pity I had missed it. Thanks!

@Saradas: and that's exactly why I was bothering you with my question :P sadly I do not have enough time anymore to go the hard way. If the learning curve can be reduced, it's good to me, if it can't, I'll live with it

Saradas

Saradas said:

I'm reworking the mod for BG2:EE and I want to add a new feature, but I need help from the community.

Have you ever felt frustrated when, after a quest ends, you have to trash all the quest items involved because they become worthless dead-weight?
Well, Saradas likes to collect such things, and will give you a reward if you bring them to him.
I need your help to remember which quest items are still in your possession after the related quest ends.
One simple example can be the black stone to avoid the fight with the Black Dragon.

For now my list includes:

* Mask of King Strohm III
* Book of Kaza
* Harper Amulet
* Symbol of Amaunator
* Shaman's Staff
* Shadow stone of black dragon

if some of them are required for other purposes after the related quest is over, please let me know and I'll remove them from the list

Aaroniusv

Can I ask how did you go about creating this mod? I'd love to create a few custom spells to add to the game (just for fun). If you could direct me to some modding tools or a tutorial on how to mod for the enhanced edition that would be swell!~

Saradas

In order to create items or spells I use DLTCEP (some people use Near Infinity, matter of preference). Then, if you plan to publish your work you have to use Weidu.
If you want to make some funny spells only for yourself you can forget the Weidu part.
Here you can find some useful info about DLTCEP http://forums.gibberlings3.net/index.php?showforum=137

Lillyhime

I don't suppose you ever made a way for these spells to be transferred into BG2?

Krotos

Do you ever plan to make a version of this that would work with Icewind Dale and BG II?? The character and the spells in question work there fairly well as I have been toying around with it for my own amusement in Icewind Dale: EE, but it'd be nice to see an update directly from you.

Deltharis

@Krotos Saradas Magic already has a version for BGII - https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/25512/new-npc-saradas-magic-2-eng-v-1-6-now-for-tob

I'm not sure if the spells are the same, but I think that's the only official version you can count on.
Also, note that while that thread has 1.6 as the newest version shsforums appears to boast having a 1.7 release - http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/1139-saradas-magic-2/

Krotos

Deltharis said:

@Krotos Saradas Magic already has a version for BGII - https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/25512/new-npc-saradas-magic-2-eng-v-1-6-now-for-tob

I'm not sure if the spells are the same, but I think that's the only official version you can count on.
Also, note that while that thread has 1.6 as the newest version shsforums appears to boast having a 1.7 release - http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/1139-saradas-magic-2/

Thanks for the info!

I'm mainly looking for an IWD:EE version as I found these spells to be tons of fun. Also some additional mage encounter would be nice.

Saradas

Thank you for the feedback, Krotos. If you are having fun, consider trying a new mod I'm working on currently. It's still in "open alpha", but interested people can play it and give their feedback regarding balance and such.

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/703547#Comment_703547

this is the link to the mod's discussion page, I'll upload the mod soon enough and provide a link.

Blash

Are the added spells taken from PnP or invented?

Durandalis

Is this still compatible with 2.5?

Endarire

@Saradas
Is this EET-compatible? Seemingly, it's meant to be installed pre-EET according to the EET compatibility list.

DeusDelPuerco

Hey guys, i would like to use this mod seems pretty cool but i have no clue of how we instal it

Thanks

Endarire

@DeusDelPuerco
Download the mod into your BGEE directory then run setup-saradas_magic.exe. Follow on-screen prompts.

Endarire

What would be involved in making this mod fully EET compatible and also compatible with Saradas Magic II?

Endarire

Thankee to whomever updated Saradas Magic I to native EET compatibility. Alleluia!