A well-balanced quest mod for BG:EE?

Arunsun

I have been playing with a few quests mods, and recently installed Dark Horizons and DSotSC, and though I admire the quantity of work that was put into these mods (they are pretty much as big as TotSC), I find some of the items they allow to be utterly unbalanced, particularly DH that gives you, for example, a +3 scimitar that has 3 attacks per round and on-hit magic damage/stun litterally minutes into the game, after a not-so-hard fight, which would be a crazy-strong weapon even for SoA/ToB standards (imagine celestial fury with a base 3 APR). I very much appreciate the new NPCs though, they are pretty strong but not more than some of the vanilla one.

Well, anyway, I was wondering whether you guys could suggest some well-balanced quest mod, with challenging fights and strong - but not super OP - rewards. One such mod, in my mind, would be The Grey Clan. The fights are really quite tough but not unfair, and it's a shame it got stuck at Episode 1, but the items you get are just very slightly stronger than what vanilla BG/TotSC provides you with. The same goes for Stones of Askavar, and if I were to reproach anything to these mods it's that they give too much experience. But this is fixed using the component that reduces experience in EET.


Oh and, how good is Drizzt saga, by the way?


EDIT: Since it was moved from BG:EE mods to General Discussion, edited the title so that it is more clearly related to what I am talking about in the actual post

JuliusBorisov

Moving to General Discussion for bigger coverage.

PaulaMigrate

From your last sentence I assume you play EET?

Arunsun

PaulaMigrate said:

From your last sentence I assume you play EET?

A confusion on my part, thought EET meant EE Tweaks but actually I am just using the EET Tweaks mod, which has a component to reduce the experience you get, and I am not actually playing EET. I have and use SoD and BG2 as two different games, with the same mod setup as far as kits and tweaks are concerned (content mods are obviously different).

PaulaMigrate

In EET BG1 part you already listed the valid ones
- Grey Clan
- Stone of Askavar
- DSotSC

- NTotSC (on the level of DSotSC just a bit harder to follow the plot as its's not as straight forward as the above mentioned but runs all alongside the main plot)
- The Lure of the Sirine's Call (just adds a bit to lIghthouse area !!only install main component!!)
- Dark Horizons (don't pick up the items, just play the main plot and encounters)
- Drizzt Saga (play it close to the end of BG1 with improved party only - it starts off bad, the initial episode is horrible, just a long corridor with terrible monsters - it gets better once you get to the Icewind Dale like regions. You meet a *hooded man* (Initials *I*, has a sister in league with vampires - the mod is more than 10 years older than SoD, just to remind you. But the worst thing is that you rescue one of Drizzt's friends after the other and they are supposed to join your party, otherwise Drizzt leaves - I could only play that mod because I had Sandrah in my party who contains a tweak to send those guys to wait in Ulgoth's Beard after rescue. Without that tweak you end up with a full Drizzt party at the end.)
- Deep Gnomes (makes some former Aurora contents available in EET, the encounters in BG1 and in BG2 and the shops)
- Since I mentioned Sandrah above, she adds a sequel to Grey Clan in which you visit that Academy and face the head mistress who had transported out of part one's final fight. The sequel is only slightly harder than the final fight of the original. There is also a part three later in BG2 where you fight Xephistopheles-what's-his-name (a mean battle but you are close to ToB by that time).

Still missing for BG1 in EE are
- The Vault
- Secret of Bone Hill
Rumour has it that they are both worked on but little update was reported recently. Both are in the leage of Askavar.

The issue of additional xp is still something that is under discussion for EET for a long time. You also need to consider SoD. With all the above mods installed, I arrive at BG2 start about 1 or 2 levels higher than probably expected by vanilla. I usually compensate it by rotating party members. On the other hand it allows for something like Drizzt Saga to be included in my playthrough. In addition my BG2 part is just as well filled with big mods for which a more than average party is required. Another thing is to leave some powerful mod items where they are, even if it may be hard to resist the temptation.