[REQUEST] Gaelan Bayle Needs More Gold
Jarvey
Member Posts: 31
in BGII:EE Mods
So this was an idea brought up over here when discussing SoA's pacing. Rounding up 20,000 gold for Gaelan Bayle is too easy. 20,000 is a number that seems intimidating if you've never played SoA before, but you'll probably get 20,000 within one or two major side quests. This has the side effect of creating pacing issues in relation to the main quest, particularly for completionists who want to experience as much of SoA's content as possible.
This request is for a mod that raises the amount of gold Gaelan Bayle needs to 60,000. It would help the game's pacing, as the player would need to complete more quests to get the needed gold before progressing. I've seen that Sword Coast Stratagems has a component that does what I'm asking for, but it's a small part of a large gameplay mod that I don't wish to use, and sadly I don't have the Infinity Engine modding know-how to pull this off myself.
This request is for a mod that raises the amount of gold Gaelan Bayle needs to 60,000. It would help the game's pacing, as the player would need to complete more quests to get the needed gold before progressing. I've seen that Sword Coast Stratagems has a component that does what I'm asking for, but it's a small part of a large gameplay mod that I don't wish to use, and sadly I don't have the Infinity Engine modding know-how to pull this off myself.
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I know, but I'd rather not have to install a mod that introduces a large number of gameplay changes just to get this one component.
Huh. I seem to recall that it had a mandatory core component that had to be installed, but it either isn't the case or doesn't perform gameplay changes on its own. I just installed the mod for that component and it doesn't seem to have introduced any unwanted gameplay changes.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I feel like a fool for not simply trying it out myself before making a topic.
No need to feel like a fool, I learn new things in this forum every day even though I’ve been playing the game for so long. All good.
They're simply way too lucrative - that's part of the reason why 20000gp (which SHOULD feel like an astronomical amount) seems like a joke pretty early on.
The other part is that BG's version of Amn has expensive magical items growing on trees practically; there's probably no easy way to tweak this part other than making merchants much more stingy with buyback across the board, but at least reducing gold rewards (like Nalia giving you over 10k right off the bat without batting an eyelash - 2000gp sounds much more reasonable) would help bring the crazy economy down to earth a bit, AND it would incentivize characters who actually care about Imoen to keep adventuring longer in chapter 2 in order to acquire enough coin!
Honestly, this is one of the biggest plot weaknesses in a game full of them, bad enough that conscientious modders like Jastey have been trying to come up with solutions for years (Imoen is petrified, Imoen never left your side, etc). Make it so you HAVE to pretty much take on most ch2 quests in order to raise sufficient funds vs the vanilla game where it's stupidly, hilariously easy to hit 20k after 2 quests.
What is odd is how lawful-good characters loot Nalia's place of all valuables while she is watching them.
The magical items you collect in the keep are collectively worth a lot more than the monetary reward, and many of them will go straight into the hands of Ribald Barterman.
You're around level 7-9 range typically when D'Arnese Keep is finished. 10000gp is an outlandish amount of coin for a quest at that point/level/difficulty range both from a game system standpoint and economy/worldbuilding perspective. Ironically even within the game itself, the dialog acknowledges that Fierkragg offering 10k for 'simple monster slaying' is an 'astounding' amount of coin offered.
BG2 isn't tabletop obviously (where you can get a very nice drink and meal at an inn for a silver piece), but just to give some framework/reference, check out the DMG sometime, any edition. 10k+ at that level, especially from an estate that's just lost it's patriarch and is going to need to recover for some time, is pretty outlandish.
Add to that the fact you're already halfway to the 20k goal with one quest, and then the truckloads of magical items you can sell; the rewards especially early game are not well balanced; frankly the entire economy is fantastically messed up but thats rather typical as most DnD campaigns are fairly poorly managed in terms of overall economy.
There's a reason why people ask for tweaks to the target amount and why SCS has had this mod component for years. A lot of casual CRPGplayers tend to get used to monty haul style bloated numbers as the norm, sadly. But that's how you sell games.
A level 10 character should not have trouble quickly raising such amounts of money. That is why this thread points out that the Shadow Thieves (and the vampires) should demand more money.
Level 5 makes you a veteran adventurer.
Level 10 means you are probably the strongest guy of whatever town you are in (except very large hubs like Athkatla). Nalia's quest is not the only one open to you. You are also asked to save the Umar Hills (where not only the very experienced ranger has been lost, but a team of veterans has failed as well) and Trademeet (an important economic center with lots of money to pay for the best of adventurers, and you are the best they can get). Nalia's quest is not trivial either. Umber Hulks for example appear as individual boss enemies in lower level campaigns. Level 10 sets you very much apart from the common soldier. You are worth a lot of money.
that's not the problem i think. the main fault of the BG economy is that player isn't incentivised to spend gold in the first place. which expensive item do you want? there aren't that many... even if the sell price was unrealistically lowered, you'd still have enough to buy that rare scroll etc.
the only way to make the economy work is to make the player really want to spend gold on a regular basis, and i don't know how that can be done without getting into the core mechanics.
None of this changes the fact the reward is extremely high, iirc the largest cash reward for a single quest in the game, enough to put you halfway towards the goal by itself. It's particularly jarring when an entire settlement of merchants who call on Waukeen as their patron (Trademeet) can 'only' scrape together a reward 3000gp LESS than Nalia. Add to it the items you find by that point and you've gone from 'holy cow, 20k is an extraordinary amount of coin!' protest to Gaelen Bayle to '*shrug* Well that was a piece of cake - we're already there after our first quest.'
Just for a bit of context the 3.5e DMG iirc has around 9000gp as the expected gold gain for the ENTIRE LEVEL for a lvl 8 character while reaching level 9 (that's an edition btw that's overall much, much more generous than 2nd edition which BG2 is based on). You're potentially (i.e. solo player) getting a single cash reward that's greater than the amount you're expected to make for the ENTIRE LEVEL in one shot, for one of the easiest stronghold quest plots in the game. The fact that it's likely one of the first quests most people take resulting in pushing you close to 20k makes it even sillier, especially if one happens to play a character that actually gives a damn about Imoen.
Again, there's a very sensible reason why people like the OP and many others see the need for gold target/reward to be adjusted (or even global adjustments to the economy of the game), and why mods have existed for years (decades, really) to address this. People can, of course, argue all they want that boatloads of cash, magic items growing on trees, bloated numbers and ignoring in-character motivation is 'how it should be' in a CRPG; sales/human nature being what it is, industry trends often seem to agree. I personally prefer my CRPGs to be a little less MMO/Diabolo-esque.
You make a very good point, but I think your point doesn't invalidate my point. I think we need both. It would be awesome to have a mod that somehow gives more incentive to the player to spend gold regularly. Right now you spend 1 gold to spend a night in a tavern, and that's all you need to spend most of the time. It would be great to have to spend more gold as you spend time, which would also give you more incentive to not waste too much time travelling too.
But having said this, it's really hard to realistically justify having to spend thousands of gold per week for your expenses. And that's how it should be to have an effect on your economical situation. I'm now in the middle of BG2 playthrough, on Chapter 3 before travelling to Spellhold. I already have 250k gold, mostly due to selling magical items. So, if you don't solve this magical item prices issue in the first place, your idea won't have too much effect regardless unless you unrealistically force tens of thousands of gold to be spent per week.
Reading a few other older threads related to this issue only served to drive home the point this has always been a problem with SoA since it's release; it's both a huge gaping plot hole and poorly implemented from a game mechanics/balance standpoint, especially in that if you stay in character it might mean you skip the biggest chunk of the game's content.
My current install attempts to implement the following:
1. raise the amount Gaelen asks for, but not to a sum that's simply adding to the sense of ridiculum, perhaps double it to 40k. Easily doable via installing the SCS component
2. lower the lottery jackpot amounts rewarded by Nalia and Trademeet, 2-3k for Nalia, 3k -4k for Trademeet (it's a rich settlement of merchants, rather incredible that Nalia with the state of her estate can outpay them by 3k). Easy enough to do by editing 2 or 3 dlg files in IE
3. adjust the buyback rates of merchants across the board, so they pay you 50 - 75% of what they pay in vanilla. A little more work, but should be doable via IE. A gold cap per merchant would also be nice; so would a formula that adjusts buyback prices a bit more elegantly (i.e. still pay about the same for mundane/cheap items, but the more expensive items garner a smaller payoff) but such is beyond my skills.
Put the above three together, perhaps with a couple of further economy refinement components, come up with a snappy title, and voila, someone knowledgeable with Weidu can take credit for a shiny new mod. Would make the game more challenging, less reliant on 'just go buy item x to take care of threat y' strategies, make it logical to continue adventuring in ch2 beyond the first or second quest.
Truth is that even with all this I still end up with a boatload of wealth; it may make enough of a difference however to be a bit more sensible at several points especially in Ch.2.
@DavidW do you think something like this could be added to SCS Gameplay Tweaks in the future? I'm only asking because you already have magic licence cost and Gaelan Baele cost adjustment tweaks, so I thought it could potentially be a good complementary addition to those to keep the player's economy more manageable.
What is more broken is, in SOD, the genie merchant that comes as part of vision quest actually buys items from you for a higher price than he sells to you if you have enough reputation and charisma, so you could easily earn infinite amount of gold.