Icewind Dale Quest Modding has a lot of potential if there was more focus for it.

Kaliesto

IWD allows a lot more flexibility for custom areas, and not too much interference exists in IWD.

Also considering the fact that IWD actually does not cover some interesting areas that exist in the north. I urge modders to bring some focus to this if they want, it would be a nice break from the more warmer lands that is BG.

IWD has so much potential if we can get modders interested to do stories for this game since BG1+2 is quite over saturated at the moment.

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argent77

It is doable. I have expanded my Djinni Companion mod to be compatible with Icewind Dale some time ago, including a small storyline.

You have to take care of several details, however, such as spells working differently, or that IWD does not make use of party reputation or HLAs. And you have to consider that the game does not have a designated protagonist.

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ineth

subtledoctor said:

would that matter for stuff like the Colors of Infinity adventures

Isn't the party supposed to be "stuck" in the Spine of the World for most of the game, due to the avalanche blocking the path to the North, and unnatural snow storms blocking the path to the South?

When Arundel first asks you to help him find the source of the troubles that plague Kuldahar, if you take the "evil" answer (saying that you don't care about their stupid village), he'll respond with something like: Well, even if you only care about yourself you'll still want to do help us fix this, because otherwise how will you get out of here.

So it wouldn't really make sense to allow players to just travel to new worldmap regions in warmer climates (like those added by the White Queen and Innershade mods from the CoI series).

On the other hand, the Tales of the Deep Gardens mod from that series would fit in fine, because (except for the short Athkatla intro) it all happens underground.
Though of course that mod adds a bunch of new spells, so would "spells working differently" as @argent77 mentioned, pose a problem?

AstroBryGuy

Well, you could deal with it the same way that IWD does... insert an NPC who will Wind Walk the party to another locale. Maybe add someone inside the Luremaster's castle who will send the party to Phlan to help with clearing the old monster-infested city.

For more self-contained quest mods (e.g., a small dungeon), add a customer in the bar/inn who will let the party know the location to a secret cave that is supposed to be full of riches (or something like that) which activates the location on the world map.

argent77

You also have to bear in mind that the Icewind Dale story plays about 90 years in the past. This is especially important for quest or NPC mods which may reference events or characters from BG1/BG2.

ineth

@AstroBryGuy

Right, the expansion uses the convenient "teleportation" plot device. (Twice actually - once to get to Lonelywood and back, and once to get to the Luremaster's castle and back).

But if this is used too often in the same game, it gets a little silly...

Kaliesto

Yeah I didn't consider the plot-points of IWD1, but would IWD2 work better? (If I'm not mistaken IWD2 was made differently though).

ifupauline

Isn't the spine of the world big enough to find areas for side quests?

ineth

@ifupauline: Definitely. I just meant that when porting an existing BG2 mod which adds maps set in temperate climate, some additional work is probably needed to either change them to a tundra climate, or add a plot device like teleportation to explain the discrepancy. But the teleportation excuse is already used twice in the base game...