Have Weimer's oldest mods been ported to the BG2:EE scene?
Shalamayne
Member Posts: 12
Im talking Solaufein, Valen, Item upgrades, tactics - the good stuff.
EDIT: I had posted the same query in the BG2EE general discussion yesterday, but my post got removed, likely due to having been in the wrong section.
However just now i saw that it has been restored, so this is sort of double-posting.
Id delete this one, but i cant find a function for that.
EDIT: I had posted the same query in the BG2EE general discussion yesterday, but my post got removed, likely due to having been in the wrong section.
However just now i saw that it has been restored, so this is sort of double-posting.
Id delete this one, but i cant find a function for that.
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SCS+Tactics lich in the docks fired 3 times stops, then wished for 2 more, all the while firing 3 ab-dhazim chain contingenies, yet somehow always managed to keep pfms on.
He also dispels protection from undead scrolls and you cant escape the room once the fight starts.
Cant live without that one.
Its ok. I eventually returned the middle finger, by killing SCS kangaxx at level 9 with a vhailor'd antimagic scroll, while a berserking minsc tanked the imprisons (apparently demi-liches dont consider that a spell).
How did i kill Kuroisan at level 8? Oil of speed on kiting character and have him aim one of his abi dhazims at the city guard, which promptly call for help and start wailing at him.
Then spend 2 min running away from his GWW'd kai's, while the guards pelt away at his 9 PfmW casts and dying in droves by the acid backlash. When he is out of stuff to insta-gib you with, start taking swings with your CF and hope for a stun. If it fails run away and heal and try again. Its important not to prolong because he heals at 1hp/3sec and teleports away after he is fully out of cheap stuff.
How to get CF from SCS'd compound? Equip everyone with slings and buy 10 +2 bullets for each, mages use melf meteors. Cast haste, go up, pause as soon as screen loads and enemies are still neutral (blue circles), target mage before his *previously cast* scripts activate and down him in 1 volley.
Get the hell outta dodge and run back down. Repeat the same till cleric is dead too. Get back up and spam spooks, untill 2 of them work. There you go.
Above all else, SCS taught me, that being cheap is easier than being good.
- I know that Weimar's Solaufein causes a reliable crash during the conversation with Bodhi when you confront her in her lair. So far, I've tested it while romancing Solaufein (so he was abducted).
The mod seems to work as-intended up to that point (not that it's so strange since you can just import multiplayer characters to fill the party slot, the engine doesn't really care about the character as a .cre), but it's really depressing to get 200 hours into a playthrough and then it all stops there so close to the end.I suspect it has something to do with a non-standard text character in his dialogue somewhere, but I don't know for sure because I haven't cracked it open to have a look.
I also know that Weimar's Solaufein conflicts with the Romantic Encounters mod since RE has content involving Solaufein and the lust pits, I think? My main problem with Weimar's Solaufein is the irritating combat encounters it introduces. They're moderate challenges... *if you're prepared specifically to deal with them and you're extremely well-geared and high level* when they "ambush" you. But if you were playing without foreknowledge like you should be, then they are ridiculously overwhelming. Especially with SCS. Indeed, my main concern with both mods is how unrealistic it makes the game: you're expected to be ultra-optimized with all buffs running at all times because your opponents sure work that way. And for random bored mooks lurking in a dungeon, that's just silly. Does every lich in the setting just waste a few centuries waiting in a closet packed chock full of perfectly-optimized combat spells all ready to go in case someone knocks on the door?
And then there's the meta-game concern about whether it's healthy to break immersion so often by forcing the player to abuse zoning/resting and other completely meta-game exploits just to get by. Did you really bravely dive into that portal to rescue the bards if you actually spent a day resting, preparing spells, buying potions and selling loot from Mekrath's lair? Isn't it a bit silly to get in a fight with a mighty undead archmage ... and then just walk 50 feet away so when he halts the flow of time itself he just wastes it twiddling his thumbs?
Solaufein is an interesting character as Weimar wrote him (a bit on the pretentious whiny emo side, though, to be honest) and fills a useful niche in a neutral party (as a superior Haer'Dalis), continuing the neutrals' theme of multiclassed sub-optimum characters. Solaufein brings the sort of raw power that vanilla team neutral lacks. But the mod introduces combat encounters that absolutely ruin it for me and there's no way to make them optional or tone them down. If your GM pulled that sort of shennanigan on you at the table, they would be outrageously disrespectful.
- As for Weimar's item upgrades expanded recipes, it seems to work just fine with vanilla BG2EE thanks to its maintainer's updates, it's just a bit awkward with Item Revisions since neither mod really collaborates. Basically it just removes the listed items from your inventory (along with way too much gold if you're using IR because IR radically reduces your gold income by adjusting merchants and item values) and gives you the mod-introduced item. This is pretty robust because the mod is keyed to the .itm files, so it doesn't matter whether that item has been modded so long as you have that item in your inventory.
The problem is more conceptual: the vanilla items are wildly imbalanced with absolute trash that no one ever uses for anything other than merchant fodder (an amulet with +5% MR...? As an "end game" final "reward" before heading into epic levels?! I begin to understand Irenicus' seething hatred of his elven kin...) along with maybe one or two full sets of ridiculously overpowered items (like Carsomyr and the Robe Of Vecna) that only really fit together on a handful of specific character builds. Thus... the Item Revisions mod is virtually necessary to introduce a degree of choice, balance and variation.But Weimar's item upgrades recipe expansion mostly just merges a bunch of items together to make one uber output item (Ilbratha sucks. But if it were mixed together with Kundane, Entropy and Chaos, maybe I might use the resulting swords). Which means the output items have stats and effects which "expect" the vanilla items. This is compounded if you use Scales Of Balance and its YARAS component to redesign armors, though I think if you run SoB's YARAS component **after** you have installed the item upgrades mod, its script should be able to rip through all those items and adjust them (YARAS looks at the paper doll to decide what category of armor the .itm is). The .tlk description entries for the items will be wildly inaccurate, though you can correct those with a few hours' tedium in NI/DLTCEP if you feel like.
Yeah, you missed a lot.
IR alters more than just weapon categories / proficiencies. It alters specific effects and stats of the items themselves.
For example, IR nerfs Carsomyr from +5 to +4 and causes its Dispel on-hit proc to allow a save vs. spell to avoid being dispelled.
Other mods also have components that alter weapon proficiency categories. I have drastically reduced the categories down to BG1-styled more simplified and general weapon categories while including combat styles, so Carsomyr is a "large sword" that benefits from "two-handed style" (it's still a greatsword, basically). But the same "large sword" proficiency applies to one-handed longswords like the Daystar. If that makes sense.
Another example, IR alters the Staff Of Curing so that it projects a regenerative aura around the wielder. It also alters the maximum number of charges on wands and their total value to merchants.
IR alters just about every equippable piece of gear, really. The goal of the mod is to "compress" the power variation between items and give them more variation so that each piece occupies a more distinctive niche and can be more competitive for an equipment slot depending on the exact situation you're in. Whereas before there were very very clear "best in slot" items, and the other five members of your party were just sort of running around practically naked using named vendor trash for want of anything better. With IR, different characters will find different items more appealing, and the overpowered god items have been nerfed a bit (because... seriously the original Carsomyr is insanely overpowered and all you have to do is stomp Firkraag at level 9! ... maybe level 12 if you use SCS...).
Ahh. I rechecked it, and I see it now. In the readme, it's only got a tiny paragraph, but includes a link to all the changes. That's how I missed it. Thanks for pointing it out.
Valen was a fun character, and she expressed herself through her actions as much as her dialogue. I've always meant to have a playthrough with her, living the 1 rep life and being simply unable to use many services & stores. A different kind of difficulty. Many npc mods could benefit from forcing players to make difficult choices!
On SCS & difficulty you can edit the .ini file or choose the options in a very modular fashion. If you don't like mages doing something then don't install those options or drop the mage levels.
I do tinker with other major "overhaul" mods like Scales Of Balance (especially the yaras and no-more-MR components) and SCS from time to time. I like SoB. But SCS, even though it accomplishes its goal, mostly just makes the game feel like a chore, so I don't use it much on recent playthroughs.
That said, IR and SR are not perfect. The most recent versions are definitely beta, and I've found a lot of minor bugs and inconsistencies in them (usually just easily corrected oversights like scrolls of Web not being usable by enchanters even though SR makes it a conjuration spell like 3.Xe D&D). They're also not very "complete" in a few ways (like clearly-superior spells sharing a spell level with trash for example SR's lightning bolt being nerfed to a single-target nuke... and being given nothing else to compensate... while sitting next to fireball...). Some things like Druid spell choices at spell level 7 are just ridiculously bad (shambling mound is ok, but the rest are objectively worse than some level 2 druid spells...) in comparison to cleric level 7s. So I basically spend a few days tinkering with them to suit my own personal taste and correct issues that crop up that EEKeeper can't address.
Once I figure out how to modify class spell lists directly, it'll be even easier. But casual or first-time players will probably never really care about these things if they aren't playing a druid (or with Cernd) or a neutral party themselves.
Sorry for the thread necro, but was this new mod (or update?) ever completed?
Sorry for the necro, a bit late to the party.
Just wanted to state how much I disagree. Hexxat...boring and annoying.
IMO, Valen is far more enjoyable as the mod currently exists because her personality and voice are better, but the mod would be superb if 1) Valen's abilities were toned down a bit and 2) she had a quest. Would be awesome if someone made Valen EE compatible.