nevermind already solve this problem.
he dies if you cast true strike and kills all skeletons.
Now to the finale
Seems like old Belhi is still vulnerable to Time Stop. My other girl has sword of days.
And he dies.
Maybe the problem was that I played on insane half of game or maybe its because of hlas and time stop abusing but final fighr was easy. Now to the heart od winter!
Congratulations for beating the game!
By the way, if you found Belhifet easy, you probably won't find most of the rest of the game too hard. The next time you play this mod, I recommend you play without HLAs.
There are several big problems with including HLAs in this mod.
1. It makes the party significantly more powerful without making the enemies any tougher. This mod was balanced for parties without HLAs.
2. Yet at the same time, it cannot serve as an "easy mode" because it doesn't make the game any easier before you get HLAs.
3. It makes multi-classed characters even more unbalanced. Whereas a single-classed fighter gets 11 HLAs by max level, a fighter/mage/cleric gets 55.
My plan for HLAs is to give some of them to characters in other ways than choosing one on level up. I was considering turning some of the cleric and druid HLA spells into regular 7th-level spells. I could probably simply give bards Use Any Item at some level.
Have you considered in making Belhi invulnerable to timestop? I mean even Demogorgon had that.
I actually played with HLA from from home rules mod. that means my f20/m19 has 1 Whirlwind and 1 alacrity (innate), and my 27sorc has only one alacrity (but 6 timestops) .
And use any item is 100% useless.
So I think problem is not strictly with number of hlas.
Cheesy ways that I found are
Yxionomei warps at your party at closed doors and gets killed easily (maybe its fixed already)
spear of kerish + whirlwind = enemy is stunned until dies.
spam webs + free action for 1\3 of game
sorc spams time stop and fighter with sword of days help him. and fighter can use vailor helm too.
you can survive that cold bomb skeletons if you ran on previous level.
knife that gives alacrity on hit is a cheat for kensage
fire salamandra respawns and drops fire res pots. You can max easy (I dont do it)
spellstike makes mage combat easy, but enemy don't use it.
not even infernal bones can survive triple bolt of glory
I don'n test it but backstabbing with kai katana should kill a lot of things
As always game becomes much easier then you can cast protection from magical weapons and improved haste
And optimal party combination for this is
2 f/m
1 c/f (range weapon)
sorc
also if you use spell revisions
don't use prismatic mantle - still breaks balance
with dispel screen you can have a 100 magic res and dispell immunity (but absolute dispel still works)
true strike is a must for f/m
OlvynChuru, I have to say, thank you for your awesome mod! You did a great thing
@kensai
Have you considered in making Belhi invulnerable to timestop? I mean even Demogorgon had that.
I actually played with HLA from from home rules mod. that means my f20/m19 has 1 Whirlwind and 1 alacrity (innate), and my 27sorc has only one alacrity (but 6 timestops) .
And use any item is 100% useless.
So I think problem is not strictly with number of hlas.
Cheesy ways that I found are
Yxionomei warps at your party
spear of kerish + whirlwind = enemy is stunned until dies.
spam webs + free action for 1\3 of game
sorc spams time stop and fighter with sword of days help him. and fighter can use vailor helm too.
you can survive that cold bomb skeletons if you ran on previous level.
knife that gives alacrity on hit is a cheat for kensage
fire salamandra respawns and drops fire res pots. You can max easy (I dont do it)
spellstike makes mage combat easy, but enemy don't use it.
not even infernal bones can survive triple bolt of glory
I don'n test it but backstabbing with kai katana should kill a lot of things
also if you use spell revisions
don't use prismatic mantle - still breaks balance
with dispel screen you can have a 100 magic res and dispell immunity (but absolute dispel still works)
true strike is a must for f/m
OlvynChuru, I have to say, thank you for your awesome mod! You did a great thing
Thanks for your feedback!
Have you considered in making Belhi invulnerable to timestop? I mean even Demogorgon had that.
I could do that.
And use any item is 100% useless.
No, it's not. I was actually worried it would be too powerful. For example, it lets a non-monk equip the Force of Lightning bracers and get two additional attacks per round.
Yxionomei warps at your party
I intended Yxunomei to teleport to your party.
spear of kerish + whirlwind = enemy is stunned until dies.
The Spear of Kerish offers a save on the stun, and it only deals cold damage (which a lot of enemies are immune to). It's still a good weapon, but I think it's reasonable. Normally you shouldn't even have Whirlwind in the first place. I could probably disable the stun if the target is immune to cold.
spam webs + free action for 1\3 of game
Yeah, webs are really good. I'm not sure what to do about them, and I prefer not to nerf things.
I intended the Sword of Days to be used that way. That's the point! However, I'm not sure what you mean by "vailor helm." Vhailor's Helm is not in the game, unless you added it with another mod. Neither is the Robe of Vecna, which you mentioned earlier.
you can survive that cold bomb skeletons if you ran on previous level.
That's okay. It's another way to deal with them.
knife that gives alacrity on hit is a cheat for kensage
The Mage Dagger +4 is quite good, yes.
fire salamandra respawns and drops fire res pots. You can max easy (I dont do it)
I should probably just not let them respawn.
For the record, I'm fine with there being ways of getting unlimited stat-increasing items, as long as it's tricky to do so (e.g. staying alive in the Belhifet battle and killing his undead summons for stat-increasing books) or if it's so late in the game that it doesn't matter much.
spellstike makes mage combat easy, but enemy don't use it.
Were you using another mod that buffs Spellstrike? With this mod alone, Spellstrike just removes spell protections.
not even infernal bones can survive triple bolt of glory
Bolt of Glory is fine the way it is. I actually made Apocalyptic Boneguards weak to magic damage so that you could hit them hard with spells like Wall of Moonlight and Bolt of Glory. On the other hand, I didn't intend them to be that easy. So I'll probably change them.
I don'n test it but backstabbing with kai katana should kill a lot of things
I guess, but it's nothing special. The Kai Katana deals 12 base damage, while other weapons deal more base damage than that on average. It can be quite good if you dual-wield it with a weapon that uses many dice for base damage.
Version 3.3 is out! The main change is that if you're using mod NPCs, their stats are permanently increased by 2. Since Improved Heart of Fury Mode lets PCs roll up to 20 in each stat at character creation rather than 18 (and since just about every creature in the game gets higher stats in this mod), it's only fair for mod NPCs to have higher stats as well.
The mod NPCs affected by this are:
Holvir, Korin, Nella, Severn, and Teri from IWD NPC by @kulyok
So I'd been re-rolling a lot to get a party with a perfect balance (these higher stats made me greedier ). I'm playing on normal difficulty, but man, I'm having a really hard time taking out the orcs in the middle of the first cave (my 6 party members are at around level 2-3 and I'm having a total party wipe everytime). I wonder if I should increase the difficulty to insane (with no damage increase) in order to make it easier. Does the increased XP gain make a significant difference?
So I'd been re-rolling a lot to get a party with a perfect balance (these higher stats made me greedier ). I'm playing on normal difficulty, but man, I'm having a really hard time taking out the orcs in the middle of the first cave (my 6 party members are at around level 2-3 and I'm having a total party wipe everytime). I wonder if I should increase the difficulty to insane (with no damage increase) in order to make it easier. Does the increased XP gain make a significant difference?
I would assume the increased XP gain does make significant difference, but that's okay. When I playtested the game, I did it on Insane with the increased XP on (though with double damage on). But play on whatever difficulty you want. I won't mock you for playing on an easier difficulty.
Also, it looks like I STILL haven't balanced the orc cave right if you're having that much trouble! For the record, I did not intend the orc cave to be especially hard (there are parts of the mod I intended to be really hard, but not this one). In the next patch, I will be weakening the orcs further.
Also, it looks like I STILL haven't balanced the orc cave right if you're having that much trouble! For the record, I did not intend the orc cave to be especially hard (there are parts of the mod I intended to be really hard, but not this one).
Ha ha, the thing that makes that part hard is the large number of archers in the middle of the cave. I sent in my shadowdancer to backstab one, then used my mage, bard and ranger/cleric to cast sleep, stinking cloud and entangle respectively, while the others focused on killing the orc elites. I think I'll have to try a few more times, but the swift volley of arrows kept decimating my party. I'll give it another try this evening with the same party, and if it doesn't work, I'll try on insane next time.
However, I'm really enjoying this mod. This provides me an entire new way to play the game.
So here is 2 ideas.
First, is it possible to rewrite weapon restrictions to make it more smarter.
For example that katana with vorpal effect - is it possible to make it normal +6 katana and vorpal effect only if char had 25 wis? Or something like that.
Second is it possible to make a weapon with power (+thaco + dmg) that depends on char level?
Sorry if this counts as offtopic
So here is 2 ideas.
First, is it possible to rewrite weapon restrictions to make it more smarter.
For example that katana with vorpal effect - is it possible to make it normal +6 katana and vorpal effect only if char had 25 wis? Or something like that.
Second is it possible to make a weapon with power (+thaco + dmg) that depends on char level?
Sorry if this counts as offtopic
I guess I could do those. As for your second idea, could you be more specific? How would it interact with multiclass levels?
So here is 2 ideas.
First, is it possible to rewrite weapon restrictions to make it more smarter.
For example that katana with vorpal effect - is it possible to make it normal +6 katana and vorpal effect only if char had 25 wis? Or something like that.
Second is it possible to make a weapon with power (+thaco + dmg) that depends on char level?
Sorry if this counts as offtopic
I guess I could do those. As for your second idea, could you be more specific? How would it interact with multiclass levels?
How about +1 dmg +1 thaco every 5th level?
About mulyiclass - maybe count higher level of one of their classes. (So 10/9 f/m only get +2 dmg and thaco)
How about +1 dmg +1 thaco every 5th level?
About mulyiclass - maybe count higher level of one of their classes. (So 10/9 f/m only get +2 dmg and thaco)
That's all possible, but it means the weapon will be +0 until level 5, +1 until level 10... that's quite weak for this mod. Maybe it would be better for a different mod (a special weapon for a specific NPC or something).
* I made it so that after you beat Belhifet, you can go straight to the expansion without starting a new game.
* And after you beat Icasaracht, you are sent to the tavern in Lonelywood where you can talk to Hobart and start Trials of the Luremaster.
Note: This mod is balanced such that you should finish the base game before going to Heart of Winter, and you should complete Heart of Winter before you go on to Trials of the Luremaster.
* A new component is added: Modify Fighting Styles. This component improves the fighting style bonuses and lets a character take up to five points in a fighting style (only if the character could normally take the maximum number of points in the style).
Details on fighting style bonuses:
SINGLE-WEAPON: This fighting style is for characters who do not wish to use a shield but want some bonus when using a one-handed melee weapon.
Proficient (1 slot): The wielder gets a +1 bonus to THAC0, a -1 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 19 or 20 when using a one-handed weapon.
Specialized (2 slots): The wielder gets a +2 bonus to THAC0, a -2 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 18 to 20 when using a one-handed weapon.
Master (3 slots): The wielder gets a +3 bonus to THAC0, a -3 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 17 to 20 when using a one-handed weapon.
High Master (4 slots): The wielder gets a +4 bonus to THAC0, a -4 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 16 to 20 when using a one-handed weapon.
Grand Master (5 slots): The wielder gets a +5 bonus to THAC0, a -5 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 15 to 20 when using a one-handed weapon.
TWO-HANDED: This fighting style allows the character to use a two-handed melee weapon and receive special bonuses.
Proficient (1 slot): The wielder gets a +2 bonus to damage rolls and a -1 bonus to Speed Factor.
Specialized (2 slots): The wielder gets a +3 bonus to damage rolls, a -2 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 19 or 20 when using a two-handed weapon.
Master (3 slots): The wielder gets a +5 bonus to damage rolls, a -3 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 19 or 20 when using a two-handed weapon.
High Master (4 slots): The wielder gets a +6 bonus to damage rolls, a -4 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 18 to 20 when using a two-handed weapon.
High Master (5 slots): The wielder gets a +8 bonus to damage rolls, a -5 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 18 to 20 when using a two-handed weapon.
SWORD AND SHIELD: Anyone can pick up a shield and get its basic protection bonuses, but by spending slots on this fighting style, an adventurer can maximize the benefits received.
Proficient (1 slot): The wielder gets a +1 bonus to AC against all weapons, and an additional +2 bonus to AC against missile weapons.
Specialized (2 slots): The wielder gets a +2 bonus to AC against all weapons, and an additional +4 bonus to AC against missile weapons.
Master (3 slots): The wielder gets a +3 bonus to AC against all weapons, and an additional +6 bonus to AC against missile weapons.
High Master (4 slots): The wielder gets a +4 bonus to AC against all weapons, and an additional +8 bonus to AC against missile weapons.
Grand Master (5 slots): The wielder gets a +5 bonus to AC against all weapons, and an additional +10 bonus to AC against missile weapons.
TWO-WEAPON: This fighting style allows the character to use two melee weapons at the same time with fewer penalties. A character wielding two weapons without a slot in this fighting style would incur a -4 penalty to attack rolls with the main weapon and a -8 penalty with the off-hand weapon.
Proficient (1 slot): The wielder's penalties are reduced to -2 with the main weapon and -6 with the off-hand weapon.
Specialized (2 slots): The wielder's penalties are reduced to 0 with the main weapon and -4 with the off-hand weapon.
Master (3 slots): The wielder's penalties are reduced to 0 with the main weapon and -2 with the off-hand weapon.
High Master (4 slots): The wielder gets no penalties from wielding two weapons.
Grand Master (5 slots): The wielder gets no penalties from wielding two weapons and gets a +1 bonus to AC while doing so.
* I weakened the orcs in the prologue cave. The orcs now have reasonable THAC0 for their level, and there are fewer orc archers in the fight in the center of the cave.
There are various other changes as well. Check the change log in the first post!
However, you shouldn't need to start a new game. The changes in how you go to the expansion only affect the scripts near the end of the game. If you're in the middle of the game, you'll be fine just continuing.
So hey, I finally managed to beat the orc caves! I played on the latest version this time, and it is very well balanced now, and still retained the challenge it should. I played on Insane with no extra damage (although there were still extra mobs, like 4 ogres instead of 1 in the last cave), and the increased XP made quite a difference, especially because of the considerable HP bonus per level, which was a key to surviving the attacks.
Entanglement, Sleep and to some extent, Hold Person, were crucial. Ranged attacks did the rest.
Another thing I appreciate a lot in the latest version is the fact that you've made it possible for a party to move directly to the HOW expansion after defeating Belhifet, and so on for TOTLM, without losing money and containers. In my opinion, you should make a separate mod just for this one life-saving fix. That would be really helpful.
A few things I've been thinking:
* How about making multiple Turn Undead auras stack with each other to determine what level of undead monsters can be affected? At intermediate levels, between the fear and death thing, you can also make it so that a moderate level of turn undead does lingering magic damage (level based) to undead, instead of outright destroying them. You can also have other effects as you think fit. As a countermeasure, you can make the undead more resistant to turn effects by giving them a higher turn undead level.
* Making Bless and Curse (and so on) stack? Not sure how that would affect the end game balance, but this would actually make those spells useful in the scenario of this mod.
* Rebalancing some of the kits? Giving them some additional powers and maybe some other disadvantages along with it. (Druids and Shapeshifters could use some love, since I think none of their shapeshifting forms have anything better than +2 weapons.)
* I like the changes you made with the fighting styles. However, it seems that for classes like Paladins, I could take a 3rd pip in Two Handed style during character creation but not during leveling up. Seems like a glitch. I'm not sure what should be the expected behaviour.
* Also, how about a new fighting style for ranged weapons? Since all other fighting styles are only melee exclusive.
* How about making multiple Turn Undead auras stack with each other to determine what level of undead monsters can be affected? At intermediate levels, between the fear and death thing, you can also make it so that a moderate level of turn undead does lingering magic damage (level based) to undead, instead of outright destroying them. You can also have other effects as you think fit. As a countermeasure, you can make the undead more resistant to turn effects by giving them a higher turn undead level.
This is a great idea, but as far as I know there is no way to implement this without EEex (or some really awkward BCS scripting). I could make a component to do something like this which would only be installable if the player has EEex installed.
* Making Bless and Curse (and so on) stack? Not sure how that would affect the end game balance, but this would actually make those spells useful in the scenario of this mod.
That actually sounds pretty reasonable, given how short those spells last.
I'm generally worried about giving players really powerful offensive buffs (the prime examples are Emotion Hope and Emotion Courage, which together give the entire party +5 damage, +3 THAC0 and +2 saving throws for an entire hour in the base game). The problem is that since there's no reason not to put on these buffs in basically every fight (once you get them), I have to balance the enemies given that the party is almost certainly going to have these buffs. So more powerful buffs means more powerful enemies.
I think it's preferable to have fewer good buffs while balancing the game to be beatable by a less-buffed party - this way you won't have to spend as much time putting on buffs before each fight.
Nevertheless, having Bless and Curse stack would be fine.
* Rebalancing some of the kits? Giving them some additional powers and maybe some other disadvantages along with it. (Druids and Shapeshifters could use some love, since I think none of their shapeshifting forms have anything better than +2 weapons.)
Druids are already quite good. Spells like Spike Growth and Wall of Moonlight are great. As for their shapeshift forms, if their weapon enchantment isn't high enough to hit a particular enemy, you could use one of the many weapons in this mod with a high enchantment. Also, the +2 weapon of the Shapeshifter Werewolf form is sufficient to hit any enemy before Chapter 3 unless they have Mantle or a similar spell up (even Yxunomei can still be hit by +2 weapons). And later on a Shapeshifter will get their Greater Werewolf form, which has a +4 weapon.
For the record, here's my stance on shapeshifting balance. I do not think a shapeshifted druid should be as good at fighting as a fighter, because druids already have other advantages over a fighter, particularly their whole arsenal of spells. It's fine for a particular shapeshift form to be better than a fighter in some ways: more attacks per round, more damage per hit, higher resistances, regeneration, or other abilities. But no one shapeshift form should be better than a fighter in all of these ways.
* I like the changes you made with the fighting styles. However, it seems that for classes like Paladins, I could take a 3rd pip in Two Handed style during character creation but not during leveling up. Seems like a glitch. I'm not sure what should be the expected behaviour.
I think I've found the problem. I'll try to fix this in the next patch.
* Also, how about a new fighting style for ranged weapons? Since all other fighting styles are only melee exclusive.
Ranged weapons already have the advantage of being able to hit people from far away. If I want to buff ranged weapons, I'd rather do so by including more interesting ammunition.
And later on a Shapeshifter will get their Greater Werewolf form, which has a +4 weapon.
Is this +4 weapon for the Greater Werewolf form added by this mod? Because, as far as I know, they only had a +2 weapon, at least in BG2. (Not sure about vanilla IWD.)
And later on a Shapeshifter will get their Greater Werewolf form, which has a +4 weapon.
Is this +4 weapon for the Greater Werewolf form added by this mod? Because, as far as I know, they only had a +2 weapon, at least in BG2. (Not sure about vanilla IWD.)
Yes it is! I've powered up all the druid shapeshift forms. I want the abilities of each class to be useful, and if I didn't power them up, their pitiful stats would be overshadowed by the stats the druid would have normally. The Greater Werewolf form is easily the best of the forms (since a Shapeshifter don't have as versatile shapeshifting as a regular druid, the forms they do have should be really good). Here are its stats:
- Don't try to solo the game unless you really know what you're doing.
Yes, this is crazy , but I just couldn't resist the temptation of soloing a character with theoritical max stats in this mod. Same difficulty. Insane with no increased damage. Chose a FMC over a FMT because cleric spells would play a big role in soloing, even though I will not be able to use a large variety of weapons. This is how my character looked at the start.
Now, well, the fire beetles under the inn were simply a death pit for a solo character. I had to wait. And rise in power. So I went about doing the other town quests and gain XP.
First kill:
And with that, I got level 3 cleric spells, among which was Protection from Fire. And sooo...
127 Fire Resistance! Now it was a simple matter of plummeting the poor beetles to death. They were intelligent enough to not use their fire attacks on my now-fire-immune character.
Next was the goblin fish party. Two casts each of Animate Dead and Sleep did the trick.
And now I return the fish and decide to take some rest.
I intend to carry on this solo playthrough along with my main playthrough, so that I can first gauge the difficulty with my party and then use the meta-knowledge to make it a bit easier. Let's see how far I am able to go.
Go for it! And don't feel ashamed about playing a fighter/mage/cleric starting with 20 in all stats. If you're soloing THIS mod, you'll need all the help you can get.
I've actually tried a similar solo playthrough of the mod, where I soloed as a kensai/swashbuckler who could use any item and started with maximum proficiency in all weapons and fighting styles. It ended up being about the same difficulty as a regular playthrough of the mod with a party of six.
It might be possible to solo the first few chapters with a single-classed Avenger. That's among the best single classes in the game. They can deal with encounters by putting down a bunch of Webs and then casting multiple Spike Growths.
Well by golly, I'm super hyped for this, just installed it.
Quick question, however:
What's the best party?
Call me cheap or a power-gamer or whatever, but I want the most out of my playthrough.
In the vanilla game, if you just run through the game with 5 F/M/C's and a F/M/T you can pretty much dominate the game.
Is it the same here? Any proficiency points I absolutely should get?
Just trying to get the "bang for my buck," as the kids say.
Thanks in advance.
Avengers are probably the best characters early on in the game, but they're less good later on. Later on, fighter/mage/clerics and fighter/mage/thieves are still really good. Just keep in mind that if you play with a team of fighter/mage/clerics and fighter/mage/thieves, you won't have anyone with really high-level spells for a while. You probably won't have anyone who can cast 6th-level mage spells until late Chapter 4 or early Chapter 5 (that's if you play on Insane with double experience, which I recommend).
As for proficiencies, pick whatever you want. I tried to have there be good weapons of all weapon types. If a weapon type is particularly bad, I'd like to improve those weapons.
At any particular point in the game, not every weapon you'll find will be equally powerful. But weapon types that get less powerful options at one point in the game might get better options later.
A quick message to say thanks for the mod, i just finished TotL with my party on insane difficulty, and had a great time !!
I am a long fan of improved anvil for BG2 but was always disappointed that it was pretty impossible to use magic to blow thing up. You managed to make a relatively well balanced mod that is very hard (double damage is pretty punishing) and where both magic and melee are necessary. Every one of my character was very useful throughout the entire game, except for maybe a portion of the late game where my barbarian was getting destroyed in melee until i found additional equipment.
Last fight was very good and required thorough planning, although I'm pretty sure it would have been nearly impossible without 2 arcane casters, at least on insane.
All in all, I had a great time, so thanks a lot for making me enjoy this game once more
cheers
my party :
Barbarian
Dwarven defender
Archer
F/M/T (ended level 30/24/30)
Cleric/ranger (with druidic spells)
Cleric/mage
Version 3.5 is out! The main change is that I've made some of the minor battles in Dragon's Eye and Upper Dorn's Deep easier. Dragon's Eye is just packed with enemies (there are about ten encounters in the first indoor area of Dragon's Eye alone), and I wanted you to be able to clear multiple encounters before having to rest.
Although I made the minor battles easier, I kept the big battles just as hard or harder. I also added some new enemies to some fights:
You can download the latest version of the mod here.
@Doxy Go for it! In the long run, this mod will be tougher than the normal Heart of Fury Mode, but it's easier in the beginning, and much, much less tedious; a basic Orc Archer in the prologue only has 30 HP and AC 3 (as opposed to 110 HP and AC -5 on the normal Heart of Fury Mode).
Hi there. This mod is absolutely awesome. It totally changes gameplay, it is challenging and surprising, but... My team is: berserker, dragon disciple, archer and... shapeshifter. Now I'm in Dragons's Eye 1st level, im playing on level impossible. The game started to be very easy since my shapeshifter is 13. level and can shape into greater werewof. Immunity from normal weapons causes enemies ignore him. When you cast invisibility on your other heroes,the enemies don;t attack shapeshifter. In my opinion, immunity from normal weapons is absolutely overpowered in ID1 and it should be removed.
BTW. Fantastic mod, I have so much fun playing it.
@hrothar I'm glad you're enjoying the mod! Good luck! Also, what do you mean by "level impossible?" Insane difficulty?
Giving the greater werewolf form protection from normal weapons isn't necessarily bad; I should just give some more enemies magical attacks.
The greater werewolf form is very good initially, but it doesn't improve over the course of the game, whereas your other party members will grow MUCH stronger.
Comments
I actually played with HLA from from home rules mod. that means my f20/m19 has 1 Whirlwind and 1 alacrity (innate), and my 27sorc has only one alacrity (but 6 timestops) .
And use any item is 100% useless.
So I think problem is not strictly with number of hlas.
Cheesy ways that I found are
Yxionomei warps at your party at closed doors and gets killed easily (maybe its fixed already)
spear of kerish + whirlwind = enemy is stunned until dies.
spam webs + free action for 1\3 of game
sorc spams time stop and fighter with sword of days help him. and fighter can use vailor helm too.
you can survive that cold bomb skeletons if you ran on previous level.
knife that gives alacrity on hit is a cheat for kensage
fire salamandra respawns and drops fire res pots. You can max easy (I dont do it)
spellstike makes mage combat easy, but enemy don't use it.
not even infernal bones can survive triple bolt of glory
I don'n test it but backstabbing with kai katana should kill a lot of things
As always game becomes much easier then you can cast protection from magical weapons and improved haste
And optimal party combination for this is
2 f/m
1 c/f (range weapon)
sorc
also if you use spell revisions
don't use prismatic mantle - still breaks balance
with dispel screen you can have a 100 magic res and dispell immunity (but absolute dispel still works)
true strike is a must for f/m
OlvynChuru, I have to say, thank you for your awesome mod! You did a great thing
Thanks for your feedback!
I could do that.
No, it's not. I was actually worried it would be too powerful. For example, it lets a non-monk equip the Force of Lightning bracers and get two additional attacks per round.
I intended Yxunomei to teleport to your party.
The Spear of Kerish offers a save on the stun, and it only deals cold damage (which a lot of enemies are immune to). It's still a good weapon, but I think it's reasonable. Normally you shouldn't even have Whirlwind in the first place. I could probably disable the stun if the target is immune to cold.
Yeah, webs are really good. I'm not sure what to do about them, and I prefer not to nerf things.
I intended the Sword of Days to be used that way. That's the point! However, I'm not sure what you mean by "vailor helm." Vhailor's Helm is not in the game, unless you added it with another mod. Neither is the Robe of Vecna, which you mentioned earlier.
That's okay. It's another way to deal with them.
The Mage Dagger +4 is quite good, yes.
I should probably just not let them respawn.
For the record, I'm fine with there being ways of getting unlimited stat-increasing items, as long as it's tricky to do so (e.g. staying alive in the Belhifet battle and killing his undead summons for stat-increasing books) or if it's so late in the game that it doesn't matter much.
Were you using another mod that buffs Spellstrike? With this mod alone, Spellstrike just removes spell protections.
Bolt of Glory is fine the way it is. I actually made Apocalyptic Boneguards weak to magic damage so that you could hit them hard with spells like Wall of Moonlight and Bolt of Glory. On the other hand, I didn't intend them to be that easy. So I'll probably change them.
I guess, but it's nothing special. The Kai Katana deals 12 base damage, while other weapons deal more base damage than that on average. It can be quite good if you dual-wield it with a weapon that uses many dice for base damage.
The mod NPCs affected by this are:
Holvir, Korin, Nella, Severn, and Teri from IWD NPC by @kulyok
Dusky by @LavaDelVortel
Turald by @Sinaherib
Afaaq by @argent77
I would assume the increased XP gain does make significant difference, but that's okay. When I playtested the game, I did it on Insane with the increased XP on (though with double damage on). But play on whatever difficulty you want. I won't mock you for playing on an easier difficulty.
Also, it looks like I STILL haven't balanced the orc cave right if you're having that much trouble! For the record, I did not intend the orc cave to be especially hard (there are parts of the mod I intended to be really hard, but not this one). In the next patch, I will be weakening the orcs further.
Ha ha, the thing that makes that part hard is the large number of archers in the middle of the cave. I sent in my shadowdancer to backstab one, then used my mage, bard and ranger/cleric to cast sleep, stinking cloud and entangle respectively, while the others focused on killing the orc elites. I think I'll have to try a few more times, but the swift volley of arrows kept decimating my party.
However, I'm really enjoying this mod. This provides me an entire new way to play the game.
First, is it possible to rewrite weapon restrictions to make it more smarter.
For example that katana with vorpal effect - is it possible to make it normal +6 katana and vorpal effect only if char had 25 wis? Or something like that.
Second is it possible to make a weapon with power (+thaco + dmg) that depends on char level?
Sorry if this counts as offtopic
I guess I could do those. As for your second idea, could you be more specific? How would it interact with multiclass levels?
How about +1 dmg +1 thaco every 5th level?
About mulyiclass - maybe count higher level of one of their classes. (So 10/9 f/m only get +2 dmg and thaco)
That's all possible, but it means the weapon will be +0 until level 5, +1 until level 10... that's quite weak for this mod. Maybe it would be better for a different mod (a special weapon for a specific NPC or something).
* I made it so that after you beat Belhifet, you can go straight to the expansion without starting a new game.
* And after you beat Icasaracht, you are sent to the tavern in Lonelywood where you can talk to Hobart and start Trials of the Luremaster.
Note: This mod is balanced such that you should finish the base game before going to Heart of Winter, and you should complete Heart of Winter before you go on to Trials of the Luremaster.
* A new component is added: Modify Fighting Styles. This component improves the fighting style bonuses and lets a character take up to five points in a fighting style (only if the character could normally take the maximum number of points in the style).
Details on fighting style bonuses:
Proficient (1 slot): The wielder gets a +1 bonus to THAC0, a -1 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 19 or 20 when using a one-handed weapon.
Specialized (2 slots): The wielder gets a +2 bonus to THAC0, a -2 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 18 to 20 when using a one-handed weapon.
Master (3 slots): The wielder gets a +3 bonus to THAC0, a -3 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 17 to 20 when using a one-handed weapon.
High Master (4 slots): The wielder gets a +4 bonus to THAC0, a -4 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 16 to 20 when using a one-handed weapon.
Grand Master (5 slots): The wielder gets a +5 bonus to THAC0, a -5 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 15 to 20 when using a one-handed weapon.
TWO-HANDED: This fighting style allows the character to use a two-handed melee weapon and receive special bonuses.
Proficient (1 slot): The wielder gets a +2 bonus to damage rolls and a -1 bonus to Speed Factor.
Specialized (2 slots): The wielder gets a +3 bonus to damage rolls, a -2 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 19 or 20 when using a two-handed weapon.
Master (3 slots): The wielder gets a +5 bonus to damage rolls, a -3 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 19 or 20 when using a two-handed weapon.
High Master (4 slots): The wielder gets a +6 bonus to damage rolls, a -4 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 18 to 20 when using a two-handed weapon.
High Master (5 slots): The wielder gets a +8 bonus to damage rolls, a -5 bonus to Speed Factor, and the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 18 to 20 when using a two-handed weapon.
SWORD AND SHIELD: Anyone can pick up a shield and get its basic protection bonuses, but by spending slots on this fighting style, an adventurer can maximize the benefits received.
Proficient (1 slot): The wielder gets a +1 bonus to AC against all weapons, and an additional +2 bonus to AC against missile weapons.
Specialized (2 slots): The wielder gets a +2 bonus to AC against all weapons, and an additional +4 bonus to AC against missile weapons.
Master (3 slots): The wielder gets a +3 bonus to AC against all weapons, and an additional +6 bonus to AC against missile weapons.
High Master (4 slots): The wielder gets a +4 bonus to AC against all weapons, and an additional +8 bonus to AC against missile weapons.
Grand Master (5 slots): The wielder gets a +5 bonus to AC against all weapons, and an additional +10 bonus to AC against missile weapons.
TWO-WEAPON: This fighting style allows the character to use two melee weapons at the same time with fewer penalties. A character wielding two weapons without a slot in this fighting style would incur a -4 penalty to attack rolls with the main weapon and a -8 penalty with the off-hand weapon.
Proficient (1 slot): The wielder's penalties are reduced to -2 with the main weapon and -6 with the off-hand weapon.
Specialized (2 slots): The wielder's penalties are reduced to 0 with the main weapon and -4 with the off-hand weapon.
Master (3 slots): The wielder's penalties are reduced to 0 with the main weapon and -2 with the off-hand weapon.
High Master (4 slots): The wielder gets no penalties from wielding two weapons.
Grand Master (5 slots): The wielder gets no penalties from wielding two weapons and gets a +1 bonus to AC while doing so.
There are various other changes as well. Check the change log in the first post!
However, you shouldn't need to start a new game. The changes in how you go to the expansion only affect the scripts near the end of the game. If you're in the middle of the game, you'll be fine just continuing.
Another thing I appreciate a lot in the latest version is the fact that you've made it possible for a party to move directly to the HOW expansion after defeating Belhifet, and so on for TOTLM, without losing money and containers. In my opinion, you should make a separate mod just for this one life-saving fix. That would be really helpful.
A few things I've been thinking:
* Making Bless and Curse (and so on) stack? Not sure how that would affect the end game balance, but this would actually make those spells useful in the scenario of this mod.
* Rebalancing some of the kits? Giving them some additional powers and maybe some other disadvantages along with it. (Druids and Shapeshifters could use some love, since I think none of their shapeshifting forms have anything better than +2 weapons.)
* I like the changes you made with the fighting styles. However, it seems that for classes like Paladins, I could take a 3rd pip in Two Handed style during character creation but not during leveling up. Seems like a glitch. I'm not sure what should be the expected behaviour.
* Also, how about a new fighting style for ranged weapons? Since all other fighting styles are only melee exclusive.
Thanks for your feedback!
This is a great idea, but as far as I know there is no way to implement this without EEex (or some really awkward BCS scripting). I could make a component to do something like this which would only be installable if the player has EEex installed.
That actually sounds pretty reasonable, given how short those spells last.
I'm generally worried about giving players really powerful offensive buffs (the prime examples are Emotion Hope and Emotion Courage, which together give the entire party +5 damage, +3 THAC0 and +2 saving throws for an entire hour in the base game). The problem is that since there's no reason not to put on these buffs in basically every fight (once you get them), I have to balance the enemies given that the party is almost certainly going to have these buffs. So more powerful buffs means more powerful enemies.
I think it's preferable to have fewer good buffs while balancing the game to be beatable by a less-buffed party - this way you won't have to spend as much time putting on buffs before each fight.
Nevertheless, having Bless and Curse stack would be fine.
Druids are already quite good. Spells like Spike Growth and Wall of Moonlight are great. As for their shapeshift forms, if their weapon enchantment isn't high enough to hit a particular enemy, you could use one of the many weapons in this mod with a high enchantment. Also, the +2 weapon of the Shapeshifter Werewolf form is sufficient to hit any enemy before Chapter 3 unless they have Mantle or a similar spell up (even Yxunomei can still be hit by +2 weapons). And later on a Shapeshifter will get their Greater Werewolf form, which has a +4 weapon.
For the record, here's my stance on shapeshifting balance. I do not think a shapeshifted druid should be as good at fighting as a fighter, because druids already have other advantages over a fighter, particularly their whole arsenal of spells. It's fine for a particular shapeshift form to be better than a fighter in some ways: more attacks per round, more damage per hit, higher resistances, regeneration, or other abilities. But no one shapeshift form should be better than a fighter in all of these ways.
I think I've found the problem. I'll try to fix this in the next patch.
Ranged weapons already have the advantage of being able to hit people from far away.
Is this +4 weapon for the Greater Werewolf form added by this mod? Because, as far as I know, they only had a +2 weapon, at least in BG2. (Not sure about vanilla IWD.)
Yes it is! I've powered up all the druid shapeshift forms. I want the abilities of each class to be useful, and if I didn't power them up, their pitiful stats would be overshadowed by the stats the druid would have normally. The Greater Werewolf form is easily the best of the forms (since a Shapeshifter don't have as versatile shapeshifting as a regular druid, the forms they do have should be really good). Here are its stats:
By the way, I have thought of doing something absolutely crazy and absolutely stupid.
Now, well, the fire beetles under the inn were simply a death pit for a solo character. I had to wait. And rise in power. So I went about doing the other town quests and gain XP.
First kill:
And with that, I got level 3 cleric spells, among which was Protection from Fire.
127 Fire Resistance! Now it was a simple matter of plummeting the poor beetles to death. They were intelligent enough to not use their fire attacks on my now-fire-immune character.
Next was the goblin fish party. Two casts each of Animate Dead and Sleep did the trick.
And now I return the fish and decide to take some rest.
I intend to carry on this solo playthrough along with my main playthrough, so that I can first gauge the difficulty with my party and then use the meta-knowledge to make it a bit easier. Let's see how far I am able to go.
Go for it! And don't feel ashamed about playing a fighter/mage/cleric starting with 20 in all stats. If you're soloing THIS mod, you'll need all the help you can get.
I've actually tried a similar solo playthrough of the mod, where I soloed as a kensai/swashbuckler who could use any item and started with maximum proficiency in all weapons and fighting styles. It ended up being about the same difficulty as a regular playthrough of the mod with a party of six.
It might be possible to solo the first few chapters with a single-classed Avenger. That's among the best single classes in the game. They can deal with encounters by putting down a bunch of Webs and then casting multiple Spike Growths.
Quick question, however:
What's the best party?
Call me cheap or a power-gamer or whatever, but I want the most out of my playthrough.
In the vanilla game, if you just run through the game with 5 F/M/C's and a F/M/T you can pretty much dominate the game.
Is it the same here? Any proficiency points I absolutely should get?
Just trying to get the "bang for my buck," as the kids say.
Thanks in advance.
Avengers are probably the best characters early on in the game, but they're less good later on. Later on, fighter/mage/clerics and fighter/mage/thieves are still really good. Just keep in mind that if you play with a team of fighter/mage/clerics and fighter/mage/thieves, you won't have anyone with really high-level spells for a while. You probably won't have anyone who can cast 6th-level mage spells until late Chapter 4 or early Chapter 5 (that's if you play on Insane with double experience, which I recommend).
As for proficiencies, pick whatever you want. I tried to have there be good weapons of all weapon types. If a weapon type is particularly bad, I'd like to improve those weapons.
At any particular point in the game, not every weapon you'll find will be equally powerful. But weapon types that get less powerful options at one point in the game might get better options later.
A quick message to say thanks for the mod, i just finished TotL with my party on insane difficulty, and had a great time !!
I am a long fan of improved anvil for BG2 but was always disappointed that it was pretty impossible to use magic to blow thing up. You managed to make a relatively well balanced mod that is very hard (double damage is pretty punishing) and where both magic and melee are necessary. Every one of my character was very useful throughout the entire game, except for maybe a portion of the late game where my barbarian was getting destroyed in melee until i found additional equipment.
Last fight was very good and required thorough planning, although I'm pretty sure it would have been nearly impossible without 2 arcane casters, at least on insane.
All in all, I had a great time, so thanks a lot for making me enjoy this game once more
cheers
my party :
Barbarian
Dwarven defender
Archer
F/M/T (ended level 30/24/30)
Cleric/ranger (with druidic spells)
Cleric/mage
Although I made the minor battles easier, I kept the big battles just as hard or harder. I also added some new enemies to some fights:
You can download the latest version of the mod here.
Gonna give it a try.
Hope i won't be smoked by the first orc ))
Hey any idea if your mod is doable without any mages?
Say Bers, Cleric/Thief, Avenger and Shifter or Monk?
BTW. Fantastic mod, I have so much fun playing it.
PS. Sorry for my english
Giving the greater werewolf form protection from normal weapons isn't necessarily bad; I should just give some more enemies magical attacks.
The greater werewolf form is very good initially, but it doesn't improve over the course of the game, whereas your other party members will grow MUCH stronger.
Keep sharing your thoughts!
Dragon's Eye 3rd level, it's very hard again.