(No longer supported) Shar-Teel NPC mod (SoD)

elminster

In the link below you will find a mod that will allow players to take Shar-Teel as a potential party member in Siege of Dragonspear.

She is only acquirable during the games prologue. You can find her in the Flaming Fist's headquarters in one of the jail cells.

She has only limited dialog during the game (and it is all in modal form, so no overhead text). This will make her stand out compared to other NPC's. I hope to add more dialog for her in the future and maybe look into converting more of her banter to the overhead text format SoD uses.

So bear in mind that this mod is still very much a work in progress.

Also, if you are starting a new game in SoD and wish to dual class her I've scripted her so that she should allow a degree of flexibility with this. Once you dual class her (and return to the main game screen) you should find her gaining some experience. Whether or not she does (and by how much) is based on Player1's XP. If you do want to benefit from the XP (when it comes to dual classing) you'll need to do it while you are still in the main floor of the Flaming Fist headquarters.

(to be clear here you can't level her up from the XP boost she gets when she joins your party, and then dual class her, and expect the extra xp)

http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/1164-sharteel-npc-mod-for-sod/

elminster

So yea. There are some things about the mod that will need to be worked out. One of them is pacing (which I kind of forgot about ). I'll be releasing a patch probably sometime tomorrow to address it. At the moment I imagine a lot of the dialog is going to be happening very quickly. Especially if you rest frequently.

Grammarsalad

I've always liked Shar-Teel

elminster

In case anyone is wondering there are four ways you can (hopefully heh) get her out of jail to then add her to your group (not counting Ctrl+Q of course)

- Have a high amount of strength and threaten the guard.
- Have a high amount of charisma and convince the guard to let her free.
- Charm the guard and ask that she be freed.
- Get a forged letter from Narlen in the same area as the sorcerous sundries. You'll need to get a blank letter from the palace to do so. You then show the guard this letter to get her out.

Contemplative_Hamster

Elminster: Thank you. I love this. Shar-Teel is one of my favourites. Once in BGT, I had her along all the way through the final battle in TOB. I'll try this soon.

AWizardDidIt

Shar-Teel is great so I approve. Look forward to checking this out

DJKajuru

@elminster , does shar teel keep the same items she may have had in my bg1 party?

elminster

DJKajuru said:

@elminster , does shar teel keep the same items she may have had in my bg1 party?

She starts with nothing. Any items she did have (if you are importing) should be in the players chest.

Ulb

Looks very interesting, do you plan on adding EET support for this mod?

DJKajuru

elminster said:

DJKajuru said:

@elminster , does shar teel keep the same items she may have had in my bg1 party?

She starts with nothing. Any items she did have (if you are importing) should be in the players chest.

Thanks, I'm usually afraid of losing my npc's items so I guess I'll take her items before finishing the prologue dungeon.

elminster

Ulb said:

Looks very interesting, do you plan on adding EET support for this mod?

I don't see why it wouldn't work with EET.

Ulb

Maybe chapter numbers are different for the SoD part of EET, I haven't payed too much attention to that so I'm not sure. *edit* thinking about that, that will probably also be taken care of by the EET installer..

Other than that I guess it will probably work when installed on BG1 before EET.
If you wanted you could of course add support for a BG2-EET installation though that's probably a lot of extra work for a tiny bit of convenience for EETers.

swit

elminster said:

Ulb said:

Looks very interesting, do you plan on adding EET support for this mod?

I don't see why it wouldn't work with EET.

correct, mod can be installed on BG:EE and than should work fine after EET is installed on BG2:EE. There is no need to change anything. I've just added it to compatibility list.

Mod sounds very promising btw. I'm actually happy that you didn't follow overhead text format that SoD uses for banters. For those who play the game at 60 FPS overhead banters are unreadable.

elminster

Were people finding the game not give journal entries or crashing on them when using the NPC?

In any event I noticed a bug tonight regarding this. I've (hopefully) since fixed it. So I would encourage anyone looking to use this mod to get this latest version.

Zaghoul

Not sure if this is a bug or not. My first run up to SoD I had shar teel romanced in BGEE. After transferring to SoD she would not respond when clicked on when I met her again. My second run through BGEE I kept her out of party and after transferring to SoD she DID talk and join the party. When dropped however she would not respond to me again, so could not add her back.

sansserif

@elminster need help

elminster

@sansserif have you used modmerge?

sansserif

@elminster I uninstalled it, do I need modmerge for this?

elminster

Yes since you are running the game from Steam you need modmerge.

WarChiefZeke

Great addition, Shar-Teel is such a B.A character and when dual classed is deadly and fun to use. Will definitely be trying this out

elminster

Yea she doesn't have that many banters at the moment (partly because they aren't easy to write, and partly due to time). I'll post an update for her whenever I get Eve of War out .

Zaghoul

@elminster Still something off with the mod. She does not speak when approached. Again, it happened after having her in the party in BG, and into SoD. Romance active when left BG as well from BGNPC project. The last time I did not have her in party on purpose for all of BG she joined just fine in SoD.

Any more reports on this activity. It seems to be tied to having her in the party previously.

If it is any note, After trying to talk to her the game slows WAY down, like characters are under a slow spell kinduv slow. So something is tiggering/not triggering. Sure would like to use her in both BG and SoD.

Any clues to this?

elminster

Thanks I'll check it out.

elminster

Yea I can see what you mean.

elminster

@Zaghoul There were a few scripting issues with her that I've hopefully addressed in the update I just put out (which is attached).

That said, the update won't help people who have already been in the Flaming Fist headquarters (with the mod installed). If you want to still use her spawning in another of her (her creature file in sod is k9sharte) might be an option but it could be problematic. I might be able to correct your save if you are still the prologue and can access her.

Zaghoul

@elminster I updated and started SoD again. This time she talked so it seems to be fixed. Thanks greatly.

One other issue involves dual classing her. I dual classed her to thief before leaving FFHeadquarters as suggested, but she did not gain any extra experience after the dual process and returning to main screen, stayed 1st lvl.

She was 8th level fighter and CHARNAME was running about 380k or so. Seems like maybe she would have gained some levels as thief according to the description, correct?

Any reports on this happening yet?

elminster

Had Shar-Teel been in your party before? Because she starts out at 7th level (before any level up) in the mod. That feature is really more for players who had not had her in their party (to let them decide how to build her).

Zaghoul

@elminster Right, had her in BG, took her to 8th, before moving to SoD. OK, I think I understand now. At least she kept her 8th lvl fighter status, thief at 1st should move up pretty fast in SoD then.

I was just checking with you to make sure I was not experiencing something strange. Regardless, I am just happy to have the chance of having an evil thief to continue with my experimental run with this wondrous pale master class.

Thanks again for the quick response and the quick fix Nice.

elminster

To be honest its going to be awhile into SoD before she regains her thief levels then. Playing on core will help for that (because there will be more enemies). But you could also just console in experience for her as well (its 110,000 for her to get to level 9)

Zaghoul

Yep, but it will be fun, non of that console stuff for me, I gots to work for that exp. Core plus not having a full party of 6 definitely helps as well.

Arcanis

My first necropost!
I'm not sure this is allowed - if not sorry mods x_x

But I recently decided to play Baldurs Gate anew in what little free time I have and thus I wondered if @elminster is still planning to write some more for this mod or is it more or less finished for the forseeable future?

I want to use her for my evil cleric run