(Excellent dungeon crawl by the way. Lots of lore and backstory gives it depth, the "twist" how the island is not just what it seems at first is cool, and the area art is nothing short of amazing. Highly recommended.)
Hi, I just played this mod and I loved it! Some of what I enjoyed:
- The area art is gorgeous
- Interesting puzzles for the player. I enjoyed the puzzle of the lighthouse - basically figuring out the way to the other side - and also completing the ritual at the end.
- Most of the enemies are new and interesting in some way or another.
- Great storytelling, from the dialogues and the overall plot to the various notes and books. Just all around very well crafted.
- Well balanced in terms of items and experience.
- The notes on this mod said the play time would be 1-2 hours but I actually spent a whole morning on this. I am not a speedy player but I do think the playtime is longer than estimated, which is a good thing.
- Lots of creativity! Won't go into specifics as not to spoil anything.
Some points for improvement:
1. The lacedons fell too easily and are basically "trash mobs" - they could be made more difficult.
2. Wrong capitalization in the dialogue with Jhanex, he says amn instead of Amn. There are other issues with this dialogue:
The response is also gramatically incorrect, it should be "We should find a way off THIS island AND back to the mainland."
Jhanex's response to this should be: "THAT shouldn't be too difficult, we found a ready-moored ship ON THE SHORE a little to the west of here." (The way the original sentence is constructed is very awkward in English)
Another one: "But from what people say about THIS island, I'm not surprised." (Since the characters are on the island, referring to it as "the island" is quite weird).
"Allow me and my men to go to THE ship and get everything prepared." (Since the ship is in a different location, he ideally shouldn't say THIS ship, although it isn't necessarily wrong)
3. I'm playing the game with SCS (double damage enabled). I missed the prebuffed enemies in this mod. The various cultists, sirines, the hag and even the main enemy fell a little too easily to my party of 5 (average level 9). I suggest that some of the enemies could start combat with at least basic protection spells to enhance their staying power.
I think Acifer mentioned somewhere, that DT has it's own scripts and isn't affected by SCS.
Yup, I'm aware, SCS doesn't touch mod characters that have their own scripts. I'm just saying, hoping for a more challenging version of this, it would be even more fun to play.
Hi @Acifer it seems there is also a bug with the Veil of Choking Darkness item. Equipping it in Athkatla causes a Cowled Wizard to appear and accuse me of casting magic. Also, even if it's already equipped on a character and I load a saved game, a Cowled Wizard instantly appears upon loading with the spellcasting accusation.
it seems there is also a bug with the Veil of Choking Darkness item. Equipping it in Athkatla causes a Cowled Wizard to appear and accuse me of casting magic. Also, even if it's already equipped on a character and I load a saved game, a Cowled Wizard instantly appears upon loading with the spellcasting accusation.
Oh my goodness, this should not happen. I know what's causing this, I’ll upload a new version soon. Thanks for reporting!
I will also fix the typos you mentioned and include harder lacedons with the next version.
Thank you for your feedback!
Regarding SCS - my main focus at the moment is releasing all my mods at a difficulty level adapted for the unmodified game. Once that's accomplished, I might look into customizations. However, this may take a long time.
Changelog:
- fixed typos, thanks @roshan !
- Lacedons have more HP, lower AC and better THAC0
- the Veil of Chocking Darkness no longer triggers the Cowled Wizards to appear in Athkatla
- removed the word "malus" from English language tra as this word doesn't exist in English AD&D terminology
I think Acifer mentioned somewhere, that DT has it's own scripts and isn't affected by SCS.
Yup, I'm aware, SCS doesn't touch mod characters that have their own scripts. I'm just saying, hoping for a more challenging version of this, it would be even more fun to play.
I reached out to @Acifer and I'll be updating Tactics Remix to include more challenging scripts for his various mods. This way, players who want a boost in difficulty can get it and those who want less difficulty can also have their needs met.
Would it be possible to re-arrange the file structure for the mod a bit?
Right now at the base directory there are ~845 files and directories such as AC#DTSBD.bam and so forth.
I tend to copy all content of a mod into the base directory of my BG2 installation; on windows typically C:\\BG2\ as
this is more convenient for me to find and navigate to. I then copy all mods into that directory. These are named by
a script automatically e. g. 01_ 02_ 03_ so I always know which install order I use. (I keep track of that in a .yml file).
So when I am about to install the Dark Tidings mod, I copy the files to the base directory at /BG2 and
end up with lots of files that are specific to Dark Tidings. Note that other mods usually have an
extra directory, and then the weidu setup- exe. For instance, call of the lost goddess has that
structure too, e. g. a directory Godcall/ and then a file called setup-godcall.exe.
Could this perhaps also be changed for Dark Tidings?
(I suppose I could create that directory and move all but the .exe inside, but I remember that sometimes
when I do things manually, the installation breaks down; I had that problem with weidu in the past,
e. g. where it refuses to install things because a text file is missing. weidu is a super-strange program.)
Sorry, but I don't understand what you mean. All my mods are packed the same way - if you unpack them, you'll get a mod folder (in that case "Tidings") and a weidu setup.exe file. I just checked the actual version of Dark Tidings, and it unpacks fine.
For reference, I cleared the mod with the difficulty updates with a level 13+ party. I did not prebuff for any of the fights except for the final fight.
I just finished playing Dark Tidings on a new recent run. This was also the first time I
played this mod altogether.
I usually give "better" feedback when something is new to my brain, so I'll make some
comments and suggestions. These are a bit semi-random, just as the thoughts come in.
1) The lighthouse kind of reminded me a bit of the other mod Tower of Deception, but
bigger.
2) The trolls were quite difficult; I assume this is due to Tactics Remix (I think?),
in particular when first arriving on the place. So i assume this is not due to the
Dark Tidings mod. It was a bit easier lateron when the party could reposition more
easily, but the initial landing ship was making this a little bit harder; some NPCs
got semi-stuck. Took me a while to adjust.
3) In total I think there are about 3 ships or so? It would be nice to have some
background, can be short, e. g. a captain's log in a cabinet or container on that
second ship south. One can assume how it ended up here, due to the background story,
but it could be explained a little. Or even have a ghost of a pirate's captain or
so who ended up there. The background story is quite decent.
4) The fights were not too hard overall. One fight that was exceptionally easy was
the one with the six cultists and leader. I actually sniped the cultists off first
and they barely did anything too dangerous. I assume the mod is not aimed at
high difficulty, but perhaps the cultists can be a bit smarter in what they do
if morpheus has time to adjust their sharpness. This could be either summons, or
relocation (they kind of just stand still and don't do much when my party rushes
them) or area effects or damage. Perhaps one could cast slow or something like
that, another one some cloud effect. Could also be random what they do. Overall
even with a fairly low level party, the fights were not too difficult.
5) I was confused what to do, in particular in the basement; the walkthrough
helped a lot here, I actually only saw 3 of the 4 spots to investigate, the
one on the bottom right or top right I did not notice at first.
6) A ring can be obtained but I actually skipped that part, largely due to
laziness. Perhaps necessary scrolls could also be dropped somewhere? Like
in a container or something and some new guardian is also nearby. Could be
a huge troll; or perhaps a larger charming lady. (I guess one can remember
the spells, but I am lazy so I prefer scrolls.) Speaking of charming lady ...
7) The charming ladies were not that problematic. They seem to don't quite
know what to do against skeleton summons. Perhaps one melee bodyguard
could also be placed where the leader of the charming ladies is or so,
her champion. Should not be too strong either but could give the charming
ladies more time. I sent in summons first to draw some aggro and distract
them, then my stronger fighters went in and sniped them off individually,
avoding that water thingy at first.
8) The part behind the ... secret passage was a bit more difficult, took
me a while to figure out how to approach this best. The invisible ones
were not that strong but quite annoying when party members were injured.
Trolls were the biggest problem again. But it is doable, even with a
fairly weak party.
9) The "finished" lighthouse is quite nifty, a beacon of elegance. Oddly
enough, two NPCs showed up on the lighthouse top. I was surprised aboutt
his and tried to talk to them. They spoke about southern edge or so, so
I assume these NPCs "leak" over areas as these should belong to Lava's
mod. I sometimes have those awkward leakage of NPCs, I think this may
be the fault of an unrelated mod altogether though. Just mentioning this,
as it was quite peculiar that two NPCs showed up suddenly (I had this in
other runs; most confusing were NPCs that suddenly showed up in that
elven city one can go to after defeating Bodhi - no idea how this happens
but I suspect some mod may change things here).
10) I assume the mod is older than, say, Call of the Lost Goddess or the
mad dog I mean dog mad, I mean mad god. It also seems smaller in scope.
I don't quite have a lot of things to suggest for change, but one thing
that could perhaps be added is a post-story to it, e. g. a pirate story
or so. Some smugglers could emerge and cause issues, perhaps the head
of Athkatla could hire the party to kill the pirates. Or a story about
an undead pirate who also wants to get his final rest and requires
something for this. Hmmm. But that's just a semi-random thought, I guess
the mod is finished as it is, since it is fairly small-ish. So the only
change I'd probably consider seriously, aside from a few enemy tweaks
or so (or perhaps even a new monster), would be for some background
filling. For instance in the mad god mod I like that there was a prior
adventuring party that kind of failed; that makes trying to find out
what happened to that party also interesting, almost like a detective
start of a mod. (Also installation was very easy, I guess the layout was
simplified; I remember I had issues with the files in the past, for some
reason having many files in the base directory of the installation is
causing some issues on my computer.)
Comments
Dark Tidings walkthrough
(Excellent dungeon crawl by the way. Lots of lore and backstory gives it depth, the "twist" how the island is not just what it seems at first is cool, and the area art is nothing short of amazing. Highly recommended.)
That's amazing! Thank you very much for your contribution!
And I’m glad that you enjoyed the mod.
- The area art is gorgeous
- Interesting puzzles for the player. I enjoyed the puzzle of the lighthouse - basically figuring out the way to the other side - and also completing the ritual at the end.
- Most of the enemies are new and interesting in some way or another.
- Great storytelling, from the dialogues and the overall plot to the various notes and books. Just all around very well crafted.
- Well balanced in terms of items and experience.
- The notes on this mod said the play time would be 1-2 hours but I actually spent a whole morning on this. I am not a speedy player but I do think the playtime is longer than estimated, which is a good thing.
- Lots of creativity! Won't go into specifics as not to spoil anything.
Some points for improvement:
1. The lacedons fell too easily and are basically "trash mobs" - they could be made more difficult.
2. Wrong capitalization in the dialogue with Jhanex, he says amn instead of Amn. There are other issues with this dialogue:
The response is also gramatically incorrect, it should be "We should find a way off THIS island AND back to the mainland."
Jhanex's response to this should be: "THAT shouldn't be too difficult, we found a ready-moored ship ON THE SHORE a little to the west of here." (The way the original sentence is constructed is very awkward in English)
Another one: "But from what people say about THIS island, I'm not surprised." (Since the characters are on the island, referring to it as "the island" is quite weird).
"Allow me and my men to go to THE ship and get everything prepared." (Since the ship is in a different location, he ideally shouldn't say THIS ship, although it isn't necessarily wrong)
3. I'm playing the game with SCS (double damage enabled). I missed the prebuffed enemies in this mod. The various cultists, sirines, the hag and even the main enemy fell a little too easily to my party of 5 (average level 9). I suggest that some of the enemies could start combat with at least basic protection spells to enhance their staying power.
Yup, I'm aware, SCS doesn't touch mod characters that have their own scripts. I'm just saying, hoping for a more challenging version of this, it would be even more fun to play.
I will also fix the typos you mentioned and include harder lacedons with the next version.
Thank you for your feedback!
Regarding SCS - my main focus at the moment is releasing all my mods at a difficulty level adapted for the unmodified game. Once that's accomplished, I might look into customizations. However, this may take a long time.
I understand about the difficulty - it did feel like some of the more challenging parts of the unmodded game! Hope to see all your content out soon!
Changelog:
- fixed typos, thanks @roshan !
- Lacedons have more HP, lower AC and better THAC0
- the Veil of Chocking Darkness no longer triggers the Cowled Wizards to appear in Athkatla
- removed the word "malus" from English language tra as this word doesn't exist in English AD&D terminology
I reached out to @Acifer and I'll be updating Tactics Remix to include more challenging scripts for his various mods. This way, players who want a boost in difficulty can get it and those who want less difficulty can also have their needs met.
Right now at the base directory there are ~845 files and directories such as AC#DTSBD.bam and so forth.
I tend to copy all content of a mod into the base directory of my BG2 installation; on windows typically C:\\BG2\ as
this is more convenient for me to find and navigate to. I then copy all mods into that directory. These are named by
a script automatically e. g. 01_ 02_ 03_ so I always know which install order I use. (I keep track of that in a .yml file).
So when I am about to install the Dark Tidings mod, I copy the files to the base directory at /BG2 and
end up with lots of files that are specific to Dark Tidings. Note that other mods usually have an
extra directory, and then the weidu setup- exe. For instance, call of the lost goddess has that
structure too, e. g. a directory Godcall/ and then a file called setup-godcall.exe.
Could this perhaps also be changed for Dark Tidings?
(I suppose I could create that directory and move all but the .exe inside, but I remember that sometimes
when I do things manually, the installation breaks down; I had that problem with weidu in the past,
e. g. where it refuses to install things because a text file is missing. weidu is a super-strange program.)
For reference, I cleared the mod with the difficulty updates with a level 13+ party. I did not prebuff for any of the fights except for the final fight.
I have now uploaded Dark Tidings to GitHub, so all my mods are now available on GitHub. The link in the first post has been adjusted accordingly.
played this mod altogether.
I usually give "better" feedback when something is new to my brain, so I'll make some
comments and suggestions. These are a bit semi-random, just as the thoughts come in.
1) The lighthouse kind of reminded me a bit of the other mod Tower of Deception, but
bigger.
2) The trolls were quite difficult; I assume this is due to Tactics Remix (I think?),
in particular when first arriving on the place. So i assume this is not due to the
Dark Tidings mod. It was a bit easier lateron when the party could reposition more
easily, but the initial landing ship was making this a little bit harder; some NPCs
got semi-stuck. Took me a while to adjust.
3) In total I think there are about 3 ships or so? It would be nice to have some
background, can be short, e. g. a captain's log in a cabinet or container on that
second ship south. One can assume how it ended up here, due to the background story,
but it could be explained a little. Or even have a ghost of a pirate's captain or
so who ended up there. The background story is quite decent.
4) The fights were not too hard overall. One fight that was exceptionally easy was
the one with the six cultists and leader. I actually sniped the cultists off first
and they barely did anything too dangerous. I assume the mod is not aimed at
high difficulty, but perhaps the cultists can be a bit smarter in what they do
if morpheus has time to adjust their sharpness. This could be either summons, or
relocation (they kind of just stand still and don't do much when my party rushes
them) or area effects or damage. Perhaps one could cast slow or something like
that, another one some cloud effect. Could also be random what they do. Overall
even with a fairly low level party, the fights were not too difficult.
5) I was confused what to do, in particular in the basement; the walkthrough
helped a lot here, I actually only saw 3 of the 4 spots to investigate, the
one on the bottom right or top right I did not notice at first.
6) A ring can be obtained but I actually skipped that part, largely due to
laziness. Perhaps necessary scrolls could also be dropped somewhere? Like
in a container or something and some new guardian is also nearby. Could be
a huge troll; or perhaps a larger charming lady. (I guess one can remember
the spells, but I am lazy so I prefer scrolls.) Speaking of charming lady ...
7) The charming ladies were not that problematic. They seem to don't quite
know what to do against skeleton summons. Perhaps one melee bodyguard
could also be placed where the leader of the charming ladies is or so,
her champion. Should not be too strong either but could give the charming
ladies more time. I sent in summons first to draw some aggro and distract
them, then my stronger fighters went in and sniped them off individually,
avoding that water thingy at first.
8) The part behind the ... secret passage was a bit more difficult, took
me a while to figure out how to approach this best. The invisible ones
were not that strong but quite annoying when party members were injured.
Trolls were the biggest problem again. But it is doable, even with a
fairly weak party.
9) The "finished" lighthouse is quite nifty, a beacon of elegance. Oddly
enough, two NPCs showed up on the lighthouse top. I was surprised aboutt
his and tried to talk to them. They spoke about southern edge or so, so
I assume these NPCs "leak" over areas as these should belong to Lava's
mod. I sometimes have those awkward leakage of NPCs, I think this may
be the fault of an unrelated mod altogether though. Just mentioning this,
as it was quite peculiar that two NPCs showed up suddenly (I had this in
other runs; most confusing were NPCs that suddenly showed up in that
elven city one can go to after defeating Bodhi - no idea how this happens
but I suspect some mod may change things here).
10) I assume the mod is older than, say, Call of the Lost Goddess or the
mad dog I mean dog mad, I mean mad god. It also seems smaller in scope.
I don't quite have a lot of things to suggest for change, but one thing
that could perhaps be added is a post-story to it, e. g. a pirate story
or so. Some smugglers could emerge and cause issues, perhaps the head
of Athkatla could hire the party to kill the pirates. Or a story about
an undead pirate who also wants to get his final rest and requires
something for this. Hmmm. But that's just a semi-random thought, I guess
the mod is finished as it is, since it is fairly small-ish. So the only
change I'd probably consider seriously, aside from a few enemy tweaks
or so (or perhaps even a new monster), would be for some background
filling. For instance in the mad god mod I like that there was a prior
adventuring party that kind of failed; that makes trying to find out
what happened to that party also interesting, almost like a detective
start of a mod. (Also installation was very easy, I guess the layout was
simplified; I remember I had issues with the files in the past, for some
reason having many files in the base directory of the installation is
causing some issues on my computer.)