Since I put the mod on hold for a while after encountering that troll early on, I don't know what other surprises might be in store; @morpheus562 revealed one of them. :-)
I'm going to change a setting in SCS—no idea if that will help. Is it possible to make such .cre files "mortal" after the fact using NI or EE-Keeper? If so, which .cre file corresponds to that troll and the mini-Boss? Thanks.
I'll take another look at this in one of my next updates. @morpheus562 has already made very good suggestions; thank you for that!
The Snow Troll's colleague in the same room (a Poison Troll or something?) doesn't have a problem with dying, so you could replace the Snow Troll with that colleague—but as for what should happen to the mini-boss, I have no idea :-).
I'm going to change a setting in SCS—no idea if that will help. Is it possible to make such .cre files "mortal" after the fact using NI or EE-Keeper? If so, which .cre file corresponds to that troll and the mini-Boss? Thanks.
I'd suggest not fiddling around too much with the installation. Instead, I'd press Pause, move the mouse cursor over the creature that refuses to die, open the cheat console, and enter the following code:
C:Eval('Kill(Myself())')
That should make sure that the creature dies immediately and allow you to continue playing the mod.
A request, since this isn’t a bug in my mod, but a bug caused by SCS:
DavidW hasn’t been active since February 2025. If you encounter bugs like this related to my mod, could you please file a report in the SCS thread as well? I hope DavidW will adjust SCS when he comes back. That would be the best solution.
I expect that my future mods might also run into issues with existing mods that modify a large amount of game content, like SCS. In such cases, those mods may occasionally need corresponding updates to remain compatible with newly added content. This worked great with an issue involving Throne of the Mad God and Tweaks Anthology, and it also works great with morpheus' Tactics Remix, so I hope things can be resolved just as smoothly in this case as well.
I just finished the mod, and apart from one snow troll quite early on, I didn't encounter any other surprises; everyone else bravely threw themselves onto my sword and died—even the "unkillable" mini-boss turned out to be mortal. No idea why only that single snow troll was immortal.
Now, about the mod itself: it is of very high quality, featuring beautiful and fitting graphics, excellent storytelling, nice quest items, and engaging tasks; the puzzles were outstanding... Definitely a mod worth recommending and a "must-have." Many thanks for the excellent work. (It’s Durlag's Tower 2 for BG2:EE :-).)
Did you have a look in all containers? I think one piece was inside one of the containers, perhaps a locked container. I think one of them was in that narrow passage in the north; I think I missed it the time I played the mod before the last time I played it a few weeks ago.
Also I think one or two of the items are dropped by some monster. I remember the last time I played the mod, I managed to go down to the "big evil guy" and managed to defeat him, though I then did not know what to do with the altar or portal or door that was behind him. I wanted to write down what I did last time, but I forgot to write it down. One of the biggest revelations to me was that the molds are used not in the big oven room but in another room that changes. For some reason I always thought I need to interact in that oven room. (I forgot if the transition was well-explained, perhaps more hints there may be useful, but I kind of know intuitively what to do when I next play the mod.)
The Vampire drops the wheel for the furnace. The key to the coffin is in a container in the narrow passage to the north. If you came here earlier the key was probably locked in a container and now the container will be open with the key to the coffin sitting inside.
I just finished this mod on my latest run of the game. I have decided to review it. (SPOILERS BELOW)
This is another large content mod from Acifer with an isolated side quest approach. It's basically a large dungeon crawl with multiple stories running through it. The mod includes new custom backdrops to explore, new enemies to fight, new items to acquire, some fancy spell effects that I've never seen before and a bunch of custom battles.
Story 4.5/5 -Very Good- In the base game you could have a drink and choose the option to talk or listen to people at the pub in the hopes of getting a new quest. This would feed you some rumors but it never actually resulted in the party getting a new quest. TOTMG actually allows you to get a job by chatting up a bard after hearing his tale at a pub. It's a nice touch that fans of D&D and the original games will appreciate.
Once you've heard the tale of Amnish soldier Lancameth and his party of adventurers, you will need to follow it up and get some more information from Lancameth's wife. Once that's done you will have a new place to visit on the map and the real fun begins. Throughout the adventure you will learn about Lancameth's story as well as the Dwarven clan of Korolnor and the story surrounding the keep's rise and fall. Eventually the two stories will intertwine with one another and come to a conclusion that your adventuring party will play a role in.
ART 5/5 -Great-Extremely detailed high resolution backdrops that push fine detail beyond what has been done previously. Custom Enemies with custom animations that really add to the atmosphere. Some new spell fireworks that left me impressed. High quality icons for new items that fit the game nicely.
Quest Design 4/5 -Good- This is basically a match for similar dungeon crawls in the base game. It's got a little setup before you enter and once you do it's a bunch of battles with traps to disarm and some puzzles that need solved. The puzzles were well done and made me feel like I accomplished something when I figured them all out without help from the internet.
Gameplay 4/5 - Good- The new enemies bring new gameplay that is a rare treat. Boss Battles were fun and the game remained pretty solid despite me being higher level than needed. Trolls are a little repetative at this point but the new varieties help keep it interesting.
New Items 3/5 -Above Average- There are a bunch of new items to use and most of them are balanced. I can think of a few that add some pretty serious advantages to certain classes though. The Mithril Armor for example is 2 points better armor protection than full plate mail and it's not magical so you can combine it with anything. It's nice and it's expensive to build as well but it does reduce damage for the rest of SOA on a level that nothing else could do before.
XP Rewards 4/5 -Good- I started this quest at level 12-13 and I was still level 12-13 when I finished it. I did use a 40% XP reduction on my game because I'm using a bunch of mods but this one didn't feel too bad despite the large number of enemies you face.
Gold Rewards 3/5 -Above Average- I started at 220,000 gold and ended a 260,000 gold. Not bad but as you can see I'm drowning in gold because of multiple mods which is becoming hard to balance. Even with the 120,000 Gold option from SCS, I still have 140,000 gold pieces and I've purchased almost everything that I'm interested in at this point in the game.
Music-/- (No custom music but some nice usage of existing tracks including a Jeromy Soul track from Icewind Dale on the main exterior.)
Voice Acting -/-
Overall, I'd give this mod an "A-" rating. I don't rate mods based on how large they are and a much less ambitious mod like "Dark Tidings" can achieve the same score from me as long as it delivers the same level of quality throughout it's presentation and achieves the goal it set out to achieve with the least amount of drawbacks on the player and the overall experience. "Endless Baldur's Gate" for example, is a small mod that is "A" quality in my opinion.
To me, any "A" tier mod is the highest quality possible and only a handful of content mods actually reach that level for me. This mod manages to reach that level but falls a little bit short of "Call Of The Lost Goddess" mainly for personal reasons which I will try to explain below. However, it's still an amazing achievement and one of the best mods in the history of this modding community. This would normally be the end of my review but I will push forward to bring some criticism and general feedback.
Minor things that chip away at TOTMG's final score: MINOR THINGS, don't take this stuff too serious. I'm nitpicking since nobody else will.
-Every time Renal Bloodscalp wants me to go back to Athkatla and pay my quarterly due at the thieves guild, I have to fight through the same endlessly spawning trash mobs in order to leave the keep and return to Athkatla. Slightly annoying, especially when I get level drained and have to pay 1000 gold to fix the problem repeatably. (Not that money is a problem)
- Talking Disney rats don't fit the tone of the game. Did they pull all of their scrolls and trinkets into the hallway and collect 6,000 gold pieces from me? How long did it take?....Rats?.... Seriously? Why do they need gold for? lol. The base game has a hamster that doesn't actually talk but helps Minsc overcome his brain damage because he is a ranger with a mental block. Mods like BG1NPC project point to Elminister for altering the hamster to aid with Minsc's problem. The talking chicken in BG1 is a polymorphed man and even in this joke scenario the guy you talk to mentions that he refuses to talk to a chicken or he would be the laughing stalk of Bergast because it's loony toon behavior that is not accepted in the game world.
I get that Beamdog added a dumb talking bear and a hippy trash / stoner elf but they also got into trouble with the community for repeatedly breaking the tone of the game with modern language, retarded pandering, and modern audience propaganda that clearly doesn't fit the game. It's not shocking that there are mods that remove Beamdog content and half of the BG community refused to buy SOD because of this type of thing. That being said, I respect that this is your mod and you can put whatever you want into it. I just don't think it fits the game or vibes with many people. There is a subset of millennial Disney adults with an unhealthy obsession with furries that will love this sort of thing though. This is a minor tick on my radar but it's the equivalent of adding "cats to pet" in an "Assassin's Creed" game. Pointless and immersion breaking in my opinion and doesn't do the mod any favors in the eye of the public as a whole. I will say that the glowing eyes showing up in the wall was a cool effect, I'll give you that.
-No roleplaying options. This isn't a problem with TOTMG but it's something I noticed that COTLG had that made it more interesting to me. In COTLG you could double cross demons, make back door deals with demons and skip entire parts of the mod. Being a traditional dungeon crawl, TOTMG is pretty straight forward. You bash everything to death that you cross paths with until it's done. There are some cool puzzles to help break up the gameplay but I think COTLG's setting and roleplaying were more interesting for me personally.
-Repetition. Nalia's Keep had trolls and spirit trolls. Then again with the Trademeet quest we are sent to the druid grove where we have to fight an entire troll army. This is yet again more trolls. They are fun opponents and you have added a solid variety to them but it's a little repetitive.
A large dungeon crawl through a Dwarven keep was already done In Durlog's Tower for BG1.
-Immortal Enemies. The Immortal Ice troll is apparently SCS's fault but I also ran into a wolf on the exterior map that I had to knock out 20+ times before it died.
One last note, an English Translation fix below:
I think reply option #1 on the screenshot above is supposed to say "Do you think you can find your way out on your own?"
Again, this is a great mod but I'm trying to nitpick as to why it scored slightly less than COTLG and similar to Dark Tidings despite Dark Tidings being a smaller mod that required less work.
I consider all Acifer mods that are currently available to be "must have" mods that I use every time I play the game. And I am not trying to be disrespectful, just honest in my feedback. Thanks for sharing TOTMG with the community, I had fun playing it
- Talking Disney rats don't fit the tone of the game. Did they pull all of their scrolls and trinkets into the hallway and collect 6,000 gold pieces from me? How long did it take?....Rats?.... Seriously? Why do they need gold for? lol. The base game has a hamster that doesn't actually talk but helps Minsc overcome his brain damage because he is a ranger with a mental block. Mods like BG1NPC project point to Elminister for altering the hamster to aid with Minsc's problem. The talking chicken in BG1 is a polymorphed man and even in this joke scenario the guy you talk to mentions that he refuses to talk to a chicken or he would be the laughing stalk of Bergast because it's loony toon behavior that is not accepted in the game world.
I get that Beamdog added a dumb talking bear and a hippy trash / stoner elf but they also got into trouble with the community for repeatedly breaking the tone of the game with modern language, retarded pandering, and modern audience propaganda that clearly doesn't fit the game. It's not shocking that there are mods that remove Beamdog content and half of the BG community refused to buy SOD because of this type of thing. That being said, I respect that this is your mod and you can put whatever you want into it. I just don't think it fits the game or vibes with many people. There is a subset of millennial Disney adults with an unhealthy obsession with furries that will love this sort of thing though. This is a minor tick on my radar but it's the equivalent of adding "cats to pet" in an "Assassin's Creed" game. Pointless and immersion breaking in my opinion and doesn't do the mod any favors in the eye of the public as a whole. I will say that the glowing eyes showing up in the wall was a cool effect, I'll give you that.
I will just say that I have your same identical idea, and I find this flaw especially evident in Lava's mods, where there is always a special creature or something odd that tries to defy the expectations,
BUT
in this case you are mistaking.
The creature added by Acifer is made of cranium rats: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Cranium_rat
and it is a particular form of specimen that can be found in dungeons, and I would say that its appearance is actually the way it is intended to be (they are very very rare, usually they are in dungeons, most of the times trying to learn because they have an appetite for learning in general).
I don't know if my explanation will satisfy you, but another "brain vermin" can be found in planescape torment: it is not common at all, but when it appears, it's really a menace.
To add to that, Cranium Rats are linked to Ilsensine, god of the Mind Flayers who has very specific links to the area. As for trolls, I also think BG2 has too many trolls but Acifer sticks to the lore of the Forgotten Realms and Korolnor is supposed to be controlled by trolls and derro
Yeah and that's fine if he wants to stick to the lore but if I see talking Disney animals or too many trolls in the game then I notice it. That's all I'm saying. It's a negative for me. With the way WOTSC currently operates I'm sure you could justify anything no matter how dumb or imbalanced it is. These are MY opinions though so I'm not saying he has to play by my rules. Acifer should do whatever he wants but that is my feedback. The talking rats are corny and the trolls are repetitive in my opinion. I don't collect action figures or fantasize about talking to squirls as an adult. Call me old school lol.
Minsc is retarded and that is why he thinks boo is a miniature giant space hamster. Anything that allows rats to speak human language and barter deals where they collect thousands of gold pieces is also retarded but unlike with Minsc, it doesn't have an excuse for being so. If these rats were actually intelligent then they wouldn't speak to humans in the first place, not that their bodies could produce language anyway but I really don't want an argument. Just leaving my opinion and I'm gone.......For good this time because I don't want to derail the thread.
EDIT: I can picture 6000 rats, each with a single gold coin strapped to their back with Velcro, running through the keep for....reasons. lollollol
The Miniature Giant Space Hamster predates Baldur's Gate by 8 years, being part of the first Spelljammer Monstrous Compendium
Wish there was a mod where autognomes kidnap Boo and take him to a giant space hamster of ill omen (who ends up being his father ofc) in a derelict Gnomish Sidewheeler and we embark on a spelljammer adventure to save him.
Now, about the mod itself: it is of very high quality, featuring beautiful and fitting graphics, excellent storytelling, nice quest items, and engaging tasks; the puzzles were outstanding... Definitely a mod worth recommending and a "must-have." Many thanks for the excellent work. (It’s Durlag's Tower 2 for BG2:EE :-).)
Immortal Enemies. The Immortal Ice troll is apparently SCS's fault but I also ran into a wolf on the exterior map that I had to knock out 20+ times before it died.
This is actually a Trollhound. Its regeneration might have been altered by SCS as well, which is why it can become unkillable, too.
I understand your reservations about the modern furry stuff, but imho neutral evil Cranium Rats with pulsating brains on top of their heads aren’t the best example, since they date back to the 1990s TSR/AD&D era.
One last note, an English Translation fix below:
I think reply option #1 on the screenshot above is supposed to say "Do you think you can find your way out on your own?"
Ah yes, the Trollhound. I couldn't remember what it was but it reminded me of a wolf. It would repeatedly fall unconscious and then get back up with full health. I don't know why but it did eventually die.
About the Cranium rats, it's a minor thing really. I thought they were corny but it's a small price to pay for all of the other stuff I liked about the mod. Nice job on the final boss fight by the way. That was a chaotic battle with lots of running around and a lot of graphics effects going off. It really put up a good challenge, Good stuff.
Acifer, would you kindly tell me the code of the next area ( https://imgur.com/a/KxdIPBC )? I'm stuck as well and I don't know where to find all pieces of the thing. would be cool to be able to finish the mod.
@Sour I generally agree with your take on most mods, but I'd like to throw in that in my rating system, COTLG and TOTMG are both 6/5 mods. The reason is that I think they're overall superior to much of the content in the base game and I am much more excited about playing through them again than most of the vanilla quests.
While you can critique the mods for various minor flaws, IMO, Acifer has surpassed the average base game quest by quite a margin. Compare TOTMG objectively to the Druid Grove, for example. Druid Grove has few challenging encounters, even with SCS or Tactics, it's still mostly a hack and slash. There's very little history or backstory to the grove itself, the area is a swamp that's not really interesting visually, it's just a simplistic stop bad druids plotline and so on.
TOTMG has rich lore, unbelievably intricate AND epic backgrounds, puzzles to solve, multiple stories woven through the dungeon, an interplay of different factions with their own agendas, storytelling through items. When I compare it to the base game I feel only Ust Natha and the Underdark has that level of detail and development.
Regarding tonally off encounters, I also hate talking animals, loving undead, cutesy mind flayers and other such things in my D&D adventure, but I didn't mind the rats so much because I've played PST before and so I was able to figure that they're cranium rats.
I played through Planescape Torment when it released but it's been more than 20 years. The story was great but the gameplay was below average so I have not replayed it. I probably would have been more accepting of talking rodents back when I was a young teen. I don't really care what year Cranium rats were established in the official lore or what games used them previously, I just think talking animals are corny as an adult and that is the impression you get when they show up in this mod. That you are talking to a pack of rats in a wall.
It's a logical fallacy to have a 6/5 score because the score is "out of 5" so naturally you can't have a 6. If Acifer goes beyond what anyone had achieved before then his work would be a 5/5 and Bioware's best would now drop to be 4.5/5. I think COTLG had quest design that was better than most Bioware content but it still had obvious areas where the roleplaying could be more effective which is why I gave it a 4.5/5. TOTMG is pretty much equal to Durlog's Tower in terms of quest design so I consider it a 4/5 which is on par with Bioware's Durlog Tower quest design. I do think Watcher's Keep is a better dungeon crawl then TOTMG and Durlog's Tower. It has puzzles where you unlock enemies with magical balls or the elemental rooms that need to be manipulated to release the elemental demon battle. You could play cards with the deck of many things. There were wild magic zones and with SCS you can even randomize the maze. There was an experimental dream sequence and powerful high level enemies like dragons and demi liches. The entire thing was balanced around a higher level party with more abilities and expanded gameplay options. This led to more powerful and interesting items without causing an imbalance in the game design. The final battle with Demogoron was even more epic than the boss of the game in my opinion.
Acifer's Art design is a solid 5/5 because it appears to match the original in it's presentation while being a little bit higher resolution and utilizing larger sprite models that we used to see in Icewind Dale but not so much in the Baldur's Gate games. His areas are just as fun to explore as the very best maps from Bioware/Beamdog while exceeding them on a technical level. Everything has it's flaws and regardless of how we approach rating things or what we consider tolerable in a game, I think we can both agree that COTLG and TOTMG are some of the best "all encompassing adventures" for Baldur's Gate. Official or otherwise.
I consider XP, Gold ,and Item balance to be less important in a mod's final score when compared to Story, Quest Design, Gameplay, and Roleplaying. Still, it's easier to make a single item interesting and balanced than it is to make 40 of them. For that reason, even through larger mods with more work in them offer more to the gamer, they are more likely to get lower scores because it's much harder to maintain a consistent level of quality in a large mod. That is why COTLG and TOTMG are oceans apart from smaller mods that score similar letter grades from me. They achieved the same "A" level grade despite being 3x the size of most mods which is why they are so impressive. Dark Tidings is an "A-" quality mod but TOTMG is still a more impressive achievement because it achieved the same "A-" while being a much larger adventure with more items, enemies, combat encounters, backdrops, ect.
I do think it's important that mods no matter how small, can achieve an "A" grade if they successfully execute their design as intended with the highest levels of quality and the least amount of drawback for the game balance. But, it's important to note that the grade is not all that matters in the end. "Personal preference" and "size" are areas of the experience that matter outside of my approach to rating content.
So the idea behind cranium rats is that you're not talking to a single rat, but to a highly intelligent, telepathic hivemind projecting a voice through a single rat. It might be corny but there's other corny things too in the games such as the mimic or the spectator beholder, and I don't think it's the same as a badger being able to speak just because it's special.
Rating system just depends on the scale you are using. To me, 5/5 or 100% quality means on par with Bioware's quality level, a perfect fit for the game. If you hit close to Bioware quality you get 4/5 or 4.5/5. If you surpass the benchmark quality level then you get a higher score, 5.5/5 or 6/5.
BTW are you playing Poisoned Pathways in this run? I'm interested in your take on it.
Everyone has their own opinion of what is corny or not. I try avoid things that I consider corny but I will put up with a certain level of it if the mod in question provides more good than bad.
The rating thing is a minor critique but it makes no sense. You can't get higher than 5 if you already defined the ultimate ceiling as 5. How can you eat 6 pieces of pizza from a pizza that was cut into 5 slices? You can't eat more than what is actually there. If you buy a second pizza and eat a slice from that then it wouldn't be 6/5 it would be 6/10. Trying to use it in a way to say that the boundaries have been pushed doesn't work. Even when people say they dialed it up to 11. They intentionally don't specify that the ceiling is 10 because they know it wouldn't make sense. Instead they act like the expectation was that the scale stopped at 10 and this somehow broke all expectations. When you define the ceiling by saying 5/5 then it simply doesn't get higher. Saying 6/5 literally makes no sense.
As for Poisoned Pathways, no I have not played it and I will have to decide if I want to try it on my next run of the game. At the moment I'm still in chapter 2 of SOA and I have lots of stuff that I still need to play through and test. Getting IWD2EET fixed up with Johnbob is a priority for me on this run. I may have to make a hard save before I embark on the adventure to the spine of the world so I can go back when my game eventually gets broken. I want to play all the way through TOB with Crucible and Ascension on this run and I am determined to do it even if IWD2EET breaks the game. It's been years since I have finished the entire series of games because of mod testing. I'm starting to forget what the end of the game was actually like lol.
Comments
I'm going to change a setting in SCS—no idea if that will help. Is it possible to make such .cre files "mortal" after the fact using NI or EE-Keeper? If so, which .cre file corresponds to that troll and the mini-Boss? Thanks.
The Snow Troll's colleague in the same room (a Poison Troll or something?) doesn't have a problem with dying, so you could replace the Snow Troll with that colleague—but as for what should happen to the mini-boss, I have no idea :-).
C:Eval('Kill(Myself())')
That should make sure that the creature dies immediately and allow you to continue playing the mod.
A request, since this isn’t a bug in my mod, but a bug caused by SCS:
DavidW hasn’t been active since February 2025. If you encounter bugs like this related to my mod, could you please file a report in the SCS thread as well? I hope DavidW will adjust SCS when he comes back. That would be the best solution.
I expect that my future mods might also run into issues with existing mods that modify a large amount of game content, like SCS. In such cases, those mods may occasionally need corresponding updates to remain compatible with newly added content. This worked great with an issue involving Throne of the Mad God and Tweaks Anthology, and it also works great with morpheus' Tactics Remix, so I hope things can be resolved just as smoothly in this case as well.
Now, about the mod itself: it is of very high quality, featuring beautiful and fitting graphics, excellent storytelling, nice quest items, and engaging tasks; the puzzles were outstanding... Definitely a mod worth recommending and a "must-have." Many thanks for the excellent work. (It’s Durlag's Tower 2 for BG2:EE :-).)
I'm also missing a handwheel for the furnace.
Also I think one or two of the items are dropped by some monster. I remember the last time I played the mod, I managed to go down to the "big evil guy" and managed to defeat him, though I then did not know what to do with the altar or portal or door that was behind him. I wanted to write down what I did last time, but I forgot to write it down. One of the biggest revelations to me was that the molds are used not in the big oven room but in another room that changes. For some reason I always thought I need to interact in that oven room. (I forgot if the transition was well-explained, perhaps more hints there may be useful, but I kind of know intuitively what to do when I next play the mod.)
This is another large content mod from Acifer with an isolated side quest approach. It's basically a large dungeon crawl with multiple stories running through it. The mod includes new custom backdrops to explore, new enemies to fight, new items to acquire, some fancy spell effects that I've never seen before and a bunch of custom battles.
Story 4.5/5 -Very Good- In the base game you could have a drink and choose the option to talk or listen to people at the pub in the hopes of getting a new quest. This would feed you some rumors but it never actually resulted in the party getting a new quest. TOTMG actually allows you to get a job by chatting up a bard after hearing his tale at a pub. It's a nice touch that fans of D&D and the original games will appreciate.
Once you've heard the tale of Amnish soldier Lancameth and his party of adventurers, you will need to follow it up and get some more information from Lancameth's wife. Once that's done you will have a new place to visit on the map and the real fun begins. Throughout the adventure you will learn about Lancameth's story as well as the Dwarven clan of Korolnor and the story surrounding the keep's rise and fall. Eventually the two stories will intertwine with one another and come to a conclusion that your adventuring party will play a role in.
ART 5/5 -Great-Extremely detailed high resolution backdrops that push fine detail beyond what has been done previously. Custom Enemies with custom animations that really add to the atmosphere. Some new spell fireworks that left me impressed. High quality icons for new items that fit the game nicely.
Quest Design 4/5 -Good- This is basically a match for similar dungeon crawls in the base game. It's got a little setup before you enter and once you do it's a bunch of battles with traps to disarm and some puzzles that need solved. The puzzles were well done and made me feel like I accomplished something when I figured them all out without help from the internet.
Gameplay 4/5 - Good- The new enemies bring new gameplay that is a rare treat. Boss Battles were fun and the game remained pretty solid despite me being higher level than needed. Trolls are a little repetative at this point but the new varieties help keep it interesting.
New Items 3/5 -Above Average- There are a bunch of new items to use and most of them are balanced. I can think of a few that add some pretty serious advantages to certain classes though. The Mithril Armor for example is 2 points better armor protection than full plate mail and it's not magical so you can combine it with anything. It's nice and it's expensive to build as well but it does reduce damage for the rest of SOA on a level that nothing else could do before.
XP Rewards 4/5 -Good- I started this quest at level 12-13 and I was still level 12-13 when I finished it. I did use a 40% XP reduction on my game because I'm using a bunch of mods but this one didn't feel too bad despite the large number of enemies you face.
Gold Rewards 3/5 -Above Average- I started at 220,000 gold and ended a 260,000 gold. Not bad but as you can see I'm drowning in gold because of multiple mods which is becoming hard to balance. Even with the 120,000 Gold option from SCS, I still have 140,000 gold pieces and I've purchased almost everything that I'm interested in at this point in the game.
Music-/- (No custom music but some nice usage of existing tracks including a Jeromy Soul track from Icewind Dale on the main exterior.)
Voice Acting -/-
Overall, I'd give this mod an "A-" rating. I don't rate mods based on how large they are and a much less ambitious mod like "Dark Tidings" can achieve the same score from me as long as it delivers the same level of quality throughout it's presentation and achieves the goal it set out to achieve with the least amount of drawbacks on the player and the overall experience. "Endless Baldur's Gate" for example, is a small mod that is "A" quality in my opinion.
To me, any "A" tier mod is the highest quality possible and only a handful of content mods actually reach that level for me. This mod manages to reach that level but falls a little bit short of "Call Of The Lost Goddess" mainly for personal reasons which I will try to explain below. However, it's still an amazing achievement and one of the best mods in the history of this modding community. This would normally be the end of my review but I will push forward to bring some criticism and general feedback.
Minor things that chip away at TOTMG's final score: MINOR THINGS, don't take this stuff too serious. I'm nitpicking since nobody else will.
-Every time Renal Bloodscalp wants me to go back to Athkatla and pay my quarterly due at the thieves guild, I have to fight through the same endlessly spawning trash mobs in order to leave the keep and return to Athkatla. Slightly annoying, especially when I get level drained and have to pay 1000 gold to fix the problem repeatably. (Not that money is a problem)
- Talking Disney rats don't fit the tone of the game. Did they pull all of their scrolls and trinkets into the hallway and collect 6,000 gold pieces from me? How long did it take?....Rats?.... Seriously? Why do they need gold for? lol. The base game has a hamster that doesn't actually talk but helps Minsc overcome his brain damage because he is a ranger with a mental block. Mods like BG1NPC project point to Elminister for altering the hamster to aid with Minsc's problem. The talking chicken in BG1 is a polymorphed man and even in this joke scenario the guy you talk to mentions that he refuses to talk to a chicken or he would be the laughing stalk of Bergast because it's loony toon behavior that is not accepted in the game world.
I get that Beamdog added a dumb talking bear and a hippy trash / stoner elf but they also got into trouble with the community for repeatedly breaking the tone of the game with modern language, retarded pandering, and modern audience propaganda that clearly doesn't fit the game. It's not shocking that there are mods that remove Beamdog content and half of the BG community refused to buy SOD because of this type of thing. That being said, I respect that this is your mod and you can put whatever you want into it. I just don't think it fits the game or vibes with many people. There is a subset of millennial Disney adults with an unhealthy obsession with furries that will love this sort of thing though. This is a minor tick on my radar but it's the equivalent of adding "cats to pet" in an "Assassin's Creed" game. Pointless and immersion breaking in my opinion and doesn't do the mod any favors in the eye of the public as a whole. I will say that the glowing eyes showing up in the wall was a cool effect, I'll give you that.
-No roleplaying options. This isn't a problem with TOTMG but it's something I noticed that COTLG had that made it more interesting to me. In COTLG you could double cross demons, make back door deals with demons and skip entire parts of the mod. Being a traditional dungeon crawl, TOTMG is pretty straight forward. You bash everything to death that you cross paths with until it's done. There are some cool puzzles to help break up the gameplay but I think COTLG's setting and roleplaying were more interesting for me personally.
-Repetition. Nalia's Keep had trolls and spirit trolls. Then again with the Trademeet quest we are sent to the druid grove where we have to fight an entire troll army. This is yet again more trolls. They are fun opponents and you have added a solid variety to them but it's a little repetitive.
A large dungeon crawl through a Dwarven keep was already done In Durlog's Tower for BG1.
-Immortal Enemies. The Immortal Ice troll is apparently SCS's fault but I also ran into a wolf on the exterior map that I had to knock out 20+ times before it died.
One last note, an English Translation fix below:
I think reply option #1 on the screenshot above is supposed to say "Do you think you can find your way out on your own?"
Again, this is a great mod but I'm trying to nitpick as to why it scored slightly less than COTLG and similar to Dark Tidings despite Dark Tidings being a smaller mod that required less work.
I consider all Acifer mods that are currently available to be "must have" mods that I use every time I play the game. And I am not trying to be disrespectful, just honest in my feedback. Thanks for sharing TOTMG with the community, I had fun playing it
in this case you are mistaking.
The creature added by Acifer is made of cranium rats: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Cranium_rat
and it is a particular form of specimen that can be found in dungeons, and I would say that its appearance is actually the way it is intended to be (they are very very rare, usually they are in dungeons, most of the times trying to learn because they have an appetite for learning in general).
I don't know if my explanation will satisfy you, but another "brain vermin" can be found in planescape torment: it is not common at all, but when it appears, it's really a menace.
I would say the cranium brain is actually an interesting creature all in all. But your opinion.
EDIT: I can picture 6000 rats, each with a single gold coin strapped to their back with Velcro, running through the keep for....reasons. lollollol
Wish there was a mod where autognomes kidnap Boo and take him to a giant space hamster of ill omen (who ends up being his father ofc) in a derelict Gnomish Sidewheeler and we embark on a spelljammer adventure to save him.
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/255246/is-boo-really-a-miniature-giant-space-hamster
@Sour : Thank you for the review!
This is actually a Trollhound. Its regeneration might have been altered by SCS as well, which is why it can become unkillable, too.
I understand your reservations about the modern furry stuff, but imho neutral evil Cranium Rats with pulsating brains on top of their heads aren’t the best example, since they date back to the 1990s TSR/AD&D era.
Thank you, I'll fix that!
About the Cranium rats, it's a minor thing really. I thought they were corny but it's a small price to pay for all of the other stuff I liked about the mod. Nice job on the final boss fight by the way. That was a chaotic battle with lots of running around and a lot of graphics effects going off. It really put up a good challenge, Good stuff.
While you can critique the mods for various minor flaws, IMO, Acifer has surpassed the average base game quest by quite a margin. Compare TOTMG objectively to the Druid Grove, for example. Druid Grove has few challenging encounters, even with SCS or Tactics, it's still mostly a hack and slash. There's very little history or backstory to the grove itself, the area is a swamp that's not really interesting visually, it's just a simplistic stop bad druids plotline and so on.
TOTMG has rich lore, unbelievably intricate AND epic backgrounds, puzzles to solve, multiple stories woven through the dungeon, an interplay of different factions with their own agendas, storytelling through items. When I compare it to the base game I feel only Ust Natha and the Underdark has that level of detail and development.
Regarding tonally off encounters, I also hate talking animals, loving undead, cutesy mind flayers and other such things in my D&D adventure, but I didn't mind the rats so much because I've played PST before and so I was able to figure that they're cranium rats.
It's a logical fallacy to have a 6/5 score because the score is "out of 5" so naturally you can't have a 6. If Acifer goes beyond what anyone had achieved before then his work would be a 5/5 and Bioware's best would now drop to be 4.5/5. I think COTLG had quest design that was better than most Bioware content but it still had obvious areas where the roleplaying could be more effective which is why I gave it a 4.5/5. TOTMG is pretty much equal to Durlog's Tower in terms of quest design so I consider it a 4/5 which is on par with Bioware's Durlog Tower quest design. I do think Watcher's Keep is a better dungeon crawl then TOTMG and Durlog's Tower. It has puzzles where you unlock enemies with magical balls or the elemental rooms that need to be manipulated to release the elemental demon battle. You could play cards with the deck of many things. There were wild magic zones and with SCS you can even randomize the maze. There was an experimental dream sequence and powerful high level enemies like dragons and demi liches. The entire thing was balanced around a higher level party with more abilities and expanded gameplay options. This led to more powerful and interesting items without causing an imbalance in the game design. The final battle with Demogoron was even more epic than the boss of the game in my opinion.
Acifer's Art design is a solid 5/5 because it appears to match the original in it's presentation while being a little bit higher resolution and utilizing larger sprite models that we used to see in Icewind Dale but not so much in the Baldur's Gate games. His areas are just as fun to explore as the very best maps from Bioware/Beamdog while exceeding them on a technical level. Everything has it's flaws and regardless of how we approach rating things or what we consider tolerable in a game, I think we can both agree that COTLG and TOTMG are some of the best "all encompassing adventures" for Baldur's Gate. Official or otherwise.
I consider XP, Gold ,and Item balance to be less important in a mod's final score when compared to Story, Quest Design, Gameplay, and Roleplaying. Still, it's easier to make a single item interesting and balanced than it is to make 40 of them. For that reason, even through larger mods with more work in them offer more to the gamer, they are more likely to get lower scores because it's much harder to maintain a consistent level of quality in a large mod. That is why COTLG and TOTMG are oceans apart from smaller mods that score similar letter grades from me. They achieved the same "A" level grade despite being 3x the size of most mods which is why they are so impressive. Dark Tidings is an "A-" quality mod but TOTMG is still a more impressive achievement because it achieved the same "A-" while being a much larger adventure with more items, enemies, combat encounters, backdrops, ect.
I do think it's important that mods no matter how small, can achieve an "A" grade if they successfully execute their design as intended with the highest levels of quality and the least amount of drawback for the game balance. But, it's important to note that the grade is not all that matters in the end. "Personal preference" and "size" are areas of the experience that matter outside of my approach to rating content.
Rating system just depends on the scale you are using. To me, 5/5 or 100% quality means on par with Bioware's quality level, a perfect fit for the game. If you hit close to Bioware quality you get 4/5 or 4.5/5. If you surpass the benchmark quality level then you get a higher score, 5.5/5 or 6/5.
BTW are you playing Poisoned Pathways in this run? I'm interested in your take on it.
The rating thing is a minor critique but it makes no sense. You can't get higher than 5 if you already defined the ultimate ceiling as 5. How can you eat 6 pieces of pizza from a pizza that was cut into 5 slices? You can't eat more than what is actually there. If you buy a second pizza and eat a slice from that then it wouldn't be 6/5 it would be 6/10. Trying to use it in a way to say that the boundaries have been pushed doesn't work. Even when people say they dialed it up to 11. They intentionally don't specify that the ceiling is 10 because they know it wouldn't make sense. Instead they act like the expectation was that the scale stopped at 10 and this somehow broke all expectations. When you define the ceiling by saying 5/5 then it simply doesn't get higher. Saying 6/5 literally makes no sense.
As for Poisoned Pathways, no I have not played it and I will have to decide if I want to try it on my next run of the game. At the moment I'm still in chapter 2 of SOA and I have lots of stuff that I still need to play through and test. Getting IWD2EET fixed up with Johnbob is a priority for me on this run. I may have to make a hard save before I embark on the adventure to the spine of the world so I can go back when my game eventually gets broken. I want to play all the way through TOB with Crucible and Ascension on this run and I am determined to do it even if IWD2EET breaks the game. It's been years since I have finished the entire series of games because of mod testing. I'm starting to forget what the end of the game was actually like lol.
Also, we explained the cranium rats, he doesn't like it and that's OK.