Playing the Series for the first time together: which mods for which?

Dark_Ansem

I am playing for the first time the games as a whole: which mods are a must-have?

small addendum: everything that adds more of Irenicus is welcome

Erg

My two cents:

I love mods and I can't play anymore without them, but if you are playing for the first time, and you have the Enhanced Edition, don't use any mod.

If you have the original games instead, just use the Fixpacks, Widescreen and Bigger Fonts mods for your first playthrough.

You will most likely be playing this games more than once, so plenty of time to try mods later on

Dark_Ansem

I've played the originals before, yes, but first time overall for both enhanced editions together.

Time4Tiddy

No mods at all so you can see all the "enhanced" additions before you start adding mods. There are a lot of little quests, dialogues and interactions you'll get that were never in the vanilla versions due to bugs or unfinished programming. For example, the neutral characters now have "happy" comments when you get high rep - so you'll hear a lot of "original" dialogue from the NPCs that wasn't in the game before.

Dark_Ansem

oh ok then. a good idea all the same.

GamingFreak

BG2 Tweaks is a must. An absolute must. Some of the stuff in the tweaks is pretty much cheating, but some are there to just avoid a headache (like letting you run with any party without them leaving due to reputation scores, or keeping them from fighting each other to the death).

Rogue Rebalancing is also really good, if you want to play a thief/bard at all. It kind of makes them a bit too powerful, but no more powerful than pretty much any other class by the end of the game. That's the only two mods I can think of, honestly.

Big_Murray

GamingFreak said:

BG2 Tweaks is a must. An absolute must. Some of the stuff in the tweaks is pretty much cheating, but some are there to just avoid a headache (like letting you run with any party without them leaving due to reputation scores, or keeping them from fighting each other to the death).

I'd consider that pretty much cheating as well, to be honest.

Time4Tiddy

I dunno, the party dynamics are kind of a critical part of the game. Especially with new characters who have new conflicts. If it's a first playthrough, you probably want to have a little bit of that for the experience of it.

Dark_Ansem

I wonder if there will be either a complete update to fix the mechanics or a 3.5 rules update!

booinyoureyes

rogue re-balancing is great though. pure thieves kinda sucked b4

Dark_Ansem

more suggestions?

Real

GamingFreak said:

BG2 Tweaks is a must. An absolute must. .

I second this. There are many changes you can make in the tweak pack and you can decide the changes you want and the changes you don't want. Want to play a female Gnome and still be able romance Viconia? Now possible. For completely new players, they may not know what they want yet. However, the OP has already played through vanilla BG2 and may have some idea of what they want in the game.