[mod] Athkatlan Grounds: The Ink Gallery
LavaDelVortel
Member Posts: 3,233
in BGII:EE Mods
A new Athkatlan Grounds mod is now available!
Welcome to The Ink Gallery: a new Athkatlan establishment, and a place of many wonderful books. Read them, and let the tomes present you with epic battles and deadly struggles. Become the main hero/heroine of these books, even if only for a short moment, and face powerful enemies. Test your mettle and learn how to become even stronger than you already are. Remember, however, that there is a fee to be paid.
You may find The Ink Gallery behind the Council of Six building -- it may be reached either through its halls, or from outside, through the covered pathway right below the newly opened section of the area.
The mod is one of the Athkatlan Grounds mods, which is a series of smaller fan expansions created to make the main city of Baldur's Gate II even more interesting.
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Welcome to The Ink Gallery: a new Athkatlan establishment, and a place of many wonderful books. Read them, and let the tomes present you with epic battles and deadly struggles. Become the main hero/heroine of these books, even if only for a short moment, and face powerful enemies. Test your mettle and learn how to become even stronger than you already are. Remember, however, that there is a fee to be paid.
You may find The Ink Gallery behind the Council of Six building -- it may be reached either through its halls, or from outside, through the covered pathway right below the newly opened section of the area.
The mod is one of the Athkatlan Grounds mods, which is a series of smaller fan expansions created to make the main city of Baldur's Gate II even more interesting.
DOWNLOAD
FORUM
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Comments
When playing with mods, people have a lot of gold, perhaps too much, and here you may spend (at least) some of it.
Thanks
I just played through the ink gallery mod again, in my recent test
run (only twenty mods installed; I want to narrow down which mods
are problematic and not-problematic, after running into issues such
as Edwin mass-spawning cloaks and then dropping them to the ground,
or the very strange Duality's Odd Quest Mod).
This time I also mapped all rewards from the Ink Gallery and I
contemplated a few of the fights, in particular difficulty-wise.
Now, first difficulty-wise. Some fights are harder than others, but
all are doable even at a fairly low level, for the most part, considering
preparation and other items and abilities available. Diffulty-wise,
though, some fights may be a tiny bit too easy, but this is entirely
up to you of course how you consider the challenges there. I completely
understand that you do not want to make the challenges too difficult.
The two fights I think may need a slight increase are:
- The Three Thirsty Rascals. I understand that they have the benefits
from the "class" (don't want to be too specific, to not spoil what they
are) and there are those "extras" that, I think, emerge after one is
killed, but it was quite easy to swarm and overwhelm them. So here I
think a slight increase in this challenge may be useful. I am not
necessarily suggesting to boost the three, per se, though this could
also be considered; but instead I think it may be useful to put in
some "fodder" units before them, for protection, such as you kind of
do in the "necromancer" challenge or the dancing spoons (could not
resist, of course these are not spoons but I don't want to use the
real word either). These can help block party movement for a little
bit and help with delays. So for the rascals, there could perhaps be
some additional helper-units. Not sure what they could be: disease
rats or so, or perhaps victims that are zombies or something, perhaps
one or two ranged fodder units (like goblins but perhaps victims of
the rascals, so, modified goblins). Or perhaps something more fitting
to the rascals e. g. how they became "rascals". The idea would be to
just have these weaker fodder units help delay reaching the rascals
or making it a bit harder to kill them. Dark druids/dryads or so
might also fit. Or perhaps a spike trap or two - not so much damage
wise, but just causing slow or delay in movement for a short duration.
Anyway, just throwing out some ideas.
- The other fight that I think is a bit too easy, is the "necromancer"
part. Now he has some fodder units, so this is fine, but perhaps a
few more placed right before him. And perhaps one "bodyguard" with
slightly increased statistics - does not need to be too much, just
a bit stronger, hitpoint-wise, and slightly better than the other
fodders. The idea being just to delay the demise here. (And AI-wise,
the necromancer can be a bit confused; I noticed this when I moved
in with summonables or so, or NPC companions, I think it was Jazon
but it could be Aura's automaton. The necromancer was throwing a
spell that had no effect on Jazon. But it seems to have only triggered
because Jazon was the closest target suddenly. I don't have a good
suggestion for a change here, as this may be a bit difficult to
adjust accurately, but perhaps his behaviour could be extended a
bit; for instance, in that particular case, rather than throw a
useless spell, it may have been better to summon some units or
cast slow or teleport field or something; slow may be more useful
or perhaps just a mass dispel. Either way, just mentioning it -
naturally the suggestions here are not meant to make the fights
impossible, just a bit harder than they are right now.)
- Other fights seem mostly fine. The hardest one I had initially
was the one with the fire-damage, I think, but probably the
deva-scenario has the best individual fights (strongest fight)
or so - not entirely certain. (If anyone else wants to go through
this systematically, perhaps you can note down your party composition
and level, and do this on the same XP level, sort of. I did not
do this at the same level, so my comparison is a bit biased either,
but I now did ink gallery twice in total, so I think I have a slightly
better overview than I had when I did it for the first time only.)
Reward-wise, I think there are a few better rewards than others.
I don't want to suggest any nerfs here; but from a selection,
the magic resistance one seems sort of best, followed by individual
resistances. Though, there is one consideration to be made, which
is the gain of one ability. This is fine for, say, Korgan, since it
does not make a whole lot of difference here, but I can also use
it for Drizzt, which actually upgrades him to be a better fighter.
That's actually pretty cool, and when I have Drizzt in the party,
this is by far the best ability gain, since that ability makes
many fights much easier. But it also gives Drizzt something he
normally never has access to. Again, this is great reward-wise,
I like it, but ultimately this costs only 3500 gold and it almost
feels as if it is too cheap or too easy (whereas it is totally
fine for e. g. Korgan, IMO). So while I don't really want to suggest
a change here, 3500 gold is almost a bit too cheap for Drizzt here.
Perhaps for character classes where that reward is unique (e. g.
other than Korgan or similar classes), the ability gain could be
made a bit more costly. I don't necessarily suggest a flat price
increase per se, but let's think about something that might make
in-game sense. It could be a tome that would be given to the target
character, replacing the usual reward; and only usable by that
character. But before using it, it may need some preparation.
This could be a few ingredients used for special ink to apply
to the tome, revealing mystical runes, or something like that;
or it could involve finding a teacher (though, who could be
a teacher ...) or anything that would cause a bit of a higher
investment. Could involve a short sub-quest too, or some
spiritual teacher like a ghostly kobold rager. That one could
demand some payment, either gold or gems or anything of that
sort. I don't have a great suggestion here either, but as it
is right now, the reward that I would then pick for Drizzt here,
is by far the best IMO. (Second best are the resistances of
course, but you also have this in a few other mods to some
extent, like the brezel in southern district.)
As for the items: these are quite expensive, some do not seem
to be worth the cost, others are nice. I usually take the
shield when I have Viconia (this time I am testing Anomen
though). Cost-wise I think it is fine, though some items seem
more useful than others. I have not made a systematic test of
all though. (The animation for the musical instrument confused
me a bit, it seemed more like an explosion.)
Overall it's a great mod.
By the way, the idea for the cellar (or rather, its content) is
pretty great, probably the best individual idea in the mod as
such, story-wise. I can not remember anyone else having this
or a similar idea (e. g. the big object in the cellar).
In regard to rewards -- I won't be making any big changes here, or making the rewards vary more; nor will I become class/character sensitive. I know it may not be exactly visible from the perspective of a player, but the script of that area (which handles teleports, activation/deactivation of the books, rewards, etc.) already has 1600 lines (for comparison, Waukeen's Promenade has ~300, Slums have ~210, Bard's Stronghold which has a lot going on because a quest series and other things are handled through it, has ~600 lines) and it's already complex, because I had to track a lot of many things out there.
Show items / mementos -- they are more like a bonus that was added later on, just a couple of things that may be useful for specific characters and yet another way to spend gold. They never intended to be really powerful, because I don't want the most useful items to come from one shop. And yeah, some of them are better than others, that's intentional.
Still, I am glad you enjoyed the mod, I'll give a tiny boost in stats to the Three, and maybe the zombies (those two boosts could be beneficial, I suppose), but I doubt there will be some major changes. While working on this mod was fun at first, the more the mod grew, the more tiresome it was to work on it. Don't get me wrong, I am really glad I made it, but working on some more usual quest mods, like The War of Bloom and Rot (for IWDEE) way way more fun.