Could you explain me how AttackReevaluate() behaves with respect to, say, AttackOneRound()? How would you convert Reevaluation Period into round?
My best guess is that the AttackReevaluate() equivalent of AttackOneRound() would be AttackReevaluate(LastSeenBy(Myself),90). I suspect that the Reevaluation Period is measured in ticks (which are 15 per second) rather than seconds.
My best guess is that the AttackReevaluate() equivalent of AttackOneRound() would be AttackReevaluate(LastSeenBy(Myself),90). I suspect that the Reevaluation Period is measured in ticks (which are 15 per second) rather than seconds.
While it uses a different way of keeping track of time, AttackOneRound() would be equivalent to AttackReevaluate() with a 100 tick reevaluation period.
While it uses a different way of keeping track of time, AttackOneRound() would be equivalent to AttackReevaluate() with a 100 tick reevaluation period.
As far as I can tell, a "Round" is defined as 100 ticks internally. Sources that say it is an even 6 seconds probably truncated the exact count, (which is 6.6 repeating).
Ok. First of all, I must admit I kinda hate IWD. Coming out after BG1 in late 90s, it was a huge let down for me with it's linearity, custom party creation, and mediocre story.
Having read about this mod I decided to give it a try.
In a word, it's awesome. Super-hard, punishing (I had to rest and buff before *every* single encounter) and incredibly fun.
I wouldn't compare it to SCS in any case - this is Improved Anvil for IWD1, in the best sense of the word. 100 times better than HoF itself - and much more challenging as well.
Gratz!
@Aasim Great to hear some feedback! I haven't heard too much in recent months.
How far have you gotten?
Dragon's Eye, (I guess that's the name of the place - I don't know this game very well), 3rd level - AR4003. Insane difficulty, 2x XP, max HP rolls.
Still hard... Having read this topic I'm kinda worried about what's gonna happen next. I couldn't get past the Orcs in the beginning. Dozens of attempts until I succeeded. Cheese won't work anymore since it's almost impossible to seperate enemy groups, and having my party blinded constantly didn't help. Are there any potions of health to be bought in first town? I spent my money on some fancy equipment; guess that was a mistake...
Ditto magical arrows. I CLUAed in a number of +1 arrows just so I could get through undead army in the second map. Painful area.
I installed this mod on top of Imp.HoF so I might actually be in over my head.
A lot of mods don't get the attention they deserve - I myself can't imagine playing IWD w/o this. Ever considered modifiying BG in such a manner?
Are there any potions of health to be bought in first town? I spent my money on some fancy equipment; guess that was a mistake...
Ditto magical arrows. I CLUAed in a number of +1 arrows just so I could get through undead army in the second map. Painful area.
If you want, I'll add a large supply of extra healing potions to the temple store in Easthaven in the next patch. But your decision to spend your money on fancy equipment was fine.
I also plan on adding Quiver/Case/Bag of Plenty items to Conlan's store. I'm not sure why I haven't already. I should probably add some sort of item that grants immunity to level drain as well, because those wights are quite nasty.
A lot of mods don't get the attention they deserve - I myself can't imagine playing IWD w/o this. Ever considered modifiying BG in such a manner?
Yes I have! I made a mod called High-Power Baldur's Gate, which gives many new abilities to both the party and the enemies in the game, and improves many of the items in the game. It's not as hard as Improved Heart of Fury Mode, and it's less a tactical mod and more of a mod to make the game feel new and interesting. However, it can be quite challenging due to the enormous variety of abilities that enemies get.
Are there any potions of health to be bought in first town? I spent my money on some fancy equipment; guess that was a mistake...
Ditto magical arrows. I CLUAed in a number of +1 arrows just so I could get through undead army in the second map. Painful area.
If you want, I'll add a large supply of extra healing potions to the temple store in Easthaven in the next patch. But your decision to spend your money on fancy equipment was fine.
I also plan on adding Quiver/Case/Bag of Plenty items to Conlan's store. I'm not sure why I haven't already. I should probably add some sort of item that grants immunity to level drain as well, because those wights are quite nasty.
A lot of mods don't get the attention they deserve - I myself can't imagine playing IWD w/o this. Ever considered modifiying BG in such a manner?
Yes I have! I made a mod called High-Power Baldur's Gate, which gives many new abilities to both the party and the enemies in the game, and improves many of the items in the game. It's not as hard as Improved Heart of Fury Mode, and it's less a tactical mod and more of a mod to make the game feel new and interesting. However, it can be quite challenging due to the enormous variety of abilities that enemies get.
Ahahahahahahaha.....I read about that one... I didn't know that was you! That is probably a bit too much for me but I'll probably try it out then! If it's anything like this it should be nice. This in BG1 + Anvil in BG2 should make a decent challenge I guess.
Level drain wasn't such an issue for me tbh (albeit this probably varies from party to party) but lack of actual damage was a pain to deal with. When I finally finsihed Kreselak (when I closed my eyes I started to have Imbued Wight images in my mind... ) things got a bit easier for a while, then it got painful again. Mind you, not that it's a bad thing. It will probably get better when I get Improved Haste, that should be somewhat of a turning point since regular Haste is very annoying with it's fatigue.
And yes, healing potions would be nice to have - even now I don't think I have any more left. They seem like a rare treasure. I did find a batch of 15 (I think) somewhere, after that I don't think I was lucky with them.
Version 3.1 is out! I've powered up some more spells.
(Dealing +10 magic damage rather than slashing damage also helps against skeletons.)
I overhauled Cloudburst. Now it actually does something:
I added a new component that lets you change or remove the summoning limit. Since this mod doesn't power up summoned creatures, having hordes of them wouldn't be overpowered.
You won't have to start a new game.
You can look at all the changes in the change log in the first post.
* I added a Quiver/Case/Bag of Plenty to Conlan's store.
* I added a ring to Mother Egenia's store that protects against level drain.
* Larloch's Minor Drain now deals 12 damage and grants 12 temporary hit points, which last for 1 hour. It should be quite good to make up for the fact that it doesn't work on undead.
* If EEex is installed, the game will show invisible enemies when a character under the effect of Detect Invisibility is selected.
* If EEex is installed, Know Alignment becomes Identify Creature, which displays the stats of the target creature.
* Haste no longer causes fatigue. This way you'll be less likely to need to rest after every battle.
* Enchanted Weapon gives the creature's weapons +5 enchantment rather than +6. The only creatures that require +6 weapons to hit are creatures under the effect of Absolute Immunity. I'd rather not make Absolute Immunity this easy to penetrate.
* The Phantom Blade is significantly stronger.
* Shroud of Flame now offers no save (it needs to be quite good to compete with Sunfire).
* The spells that can be cast with Seven Eyes are actually good now.
* Power Word, Kill now kills a creature with 120 HP or less.
* Circle of Bones lasts longer and doesn't prevent movement.
* Cloudburst has been overhauled and is much better.
* Negative Plane Protection now lasts 15 rounds.
* Fire Seeds now creates 20 seeds.
* Sol's Searing Orb can be cast more quickly, and undead make the saving throw with a -6 penalty. It deals magical fire damage now.
* Full Plate +1 is less expensive.
Bugs:
Ring of Protection from level drain displays wrong icon.
Monk gauntles with +2 attacks say that a barbarian can equip them, if if they can't.
Massive WoT & Rant incoming.
Party is (was) berseker, babarian, cleric/ranger, fighter - druid dual, sorcerer and archer. Difficulty Insane, max HP, no double damage. No other mods other than some Cdtweaks components such as arrow/potion stacks, no unlimited summons. I also changed Boots of Speed, since I'm intolerant to movement speed + Haste stacking. They provide Haste to the wearer rahter than increasing movement speed.
Spoilers ahead.
First, Orc cave. Did this with Charm. Undoable otherwise. Maybe with that sword you can buy which protects vs blindness, but it's a bit too specialized to spend money on.
Overall, difficult, some reloading, but not impossible. Ogres are much less difficult than orcs, Blindness is a PITA to deal with this early in game.
Next area with goblins is rather easy. Big beetle is cute, even if pretty harmless provided you bought speed boots.
Shadow Vale - challenging but very doable. Had a few hiccups here and there, but nothing drastic. Far easier than orcs. Probably my favourite battles so far - when my party survived, it was by an inch. Loved it.
Lysan - nice. Didn't reload, even if her cold resist lowering ability didn't notice before. Would be even smoother if her damn confusion/chaos/whatever didn't affect everyone bar barbarian who was enraged.
The area with Verbeegs/Acolytes was quite easy, but I already had the pleasure of meeting them before so Remove Magic/focus fire on caster tactic worked fine. Those small summons got summoned only once.
Next, Dragons's Eye. Bleh...my two tanky frontliners pretty much died in cca 60% encounters. Berseker had an ac of about -10, barb has armor with physical resistance, but they melted like flies. Still, I punched through. Smashing Wave ftw!
Undead area (Presio) - this had it's share of reloads. I couldn't get my spells of due to constant ice barrage. (btw, maybe making this spells not affect cold-immune creatures (like this here) would be nice. Spell failure when you're immune to certain kind of damage isn't cool imo. Be that as it may, flooding the area with spikey rocks, summons, insects and whatever I had worked fine eventually.
And when you think it's over, bam. From the other side, once again we go. Holy sh*t...
I was fairly proud when this was done. Presio himself wasn't all that hard, but adding Zombies is sheer evil.
Phew.
Yuan-ti temple - my dear God. Summon, summon, summon. I couldn't find the summoner. XP piled up, but eventually my party lost buffs and had to reload. Total carnage of a battle, loved it. When I finally made it, I did it by clearing out the nearby enemies, save&rest, rebuff, run toward summoner, and prey. Took a while, since I l spend all my spells beforehand. Had a few low-level ones, and they did the job after his Entropy shield expired. (had no more Remove magic available)
Painful, to say the least. Should have picked more than one arcane caster, if only for invisibility 10' radius.
Final area with Snake is where I kinda gave up hope for this party. I didn't even fought the boss snake, but ran into a massive improved-invisible Yuan-ti bunch that simply decimated my party.
I could probably do it, but I'm simply tired of constanlty reviving my front-liners.
Will roll something a bit more magic-oriented. I ended up tanking more with my sorcerer than my sword & board halfling berserker.
Version 3.2 is out! I've fixed some of the problems with the call for help AI. Enemies can no longer open doors, because in some areas (e.g. final area of Dragon's Eye) encounters are separated by doors, and letting enemies open doors lets them call enemies from behind the doors.
Also, orcs no longer have a Blindness ability. That was never an essential feature of them.
So, I had been planning to try this awesome mod for a long time, but had been engaged in other games since last year. Maybe, I'll finally get myself to play IWD with a party now (original IWD makes me play solo all the time). I have a few questions though:
1. After installing this mod, say I want to go back to vanilla difficulties temporarily. Is there an option (maybe in the .ini file?) to toggle this mod on and off, without actually uninstalling it?
2. Does this mod add additional mage spell scrolls to the game? In vanilla, spell scrolls are rare and make playing with multiple mages inconvenient. The answer to this would help me choose my party for trying this mod.
3. A mild spoiler question:
Have you changed anything about Belhifet so that he can actually be affected by spells? The vanilla Belhifet can only be affected by +3 or greater spell created weapons (like Black Blade of Disaster), making offensive magic (and thus offensive mages) quite useless against him.
1. You will have to uninstall it, unfortunately. This mod changes a LOT of things in the game, including not just creatures but also item locations, area scripts, and other things.
2. Yes it does! The mod adds plenty of extra scrolls to the game. However, the scrolls are not placed in any systematic way - there's no store that sells every scroll in the game. Rather, you'll find the extra scrolls over the course of the adventure. You can obtain pretty high-level scrolls even early on; in Chapter 1 you'll come across a 7th-level scroll or two.
Here's something else that's cool. I added scrolls for several of the HLA wizard spells from Throne of Bhaal (Improved Alacrity, Dragon's Breath, Comet, and Energy Blades). This means that mages can learn these spells but sorcerers can't. At last, mages get a small edge over sorcerers!
3. Yes! Although Belhifet is really tough in this mod, he is no longer immune to all magic. Rather, he is as resistant as you'd expect a powerful fiend to be. He has 50% Magic Resistance, which you can lower with Lower Resistance, and he has good Saving Throws, which you can lower with Greater Malison. He is immune to fire and resistant to cold, but you can still hit him with electricity, acid, and magic damage (such as from Bolt of Glory!). Meanwhile, he is resistant to physical damage. So he's not immune to anything a spellcaster can do to him.
In this mod, bosses are usually immune to effects that would completely trivialize them (e.g. stun). However, spells that merely give them penalties (e.g. Doom, Ray of Enfeeblement, Symbol of Pain) will still work on them.
1. You will have to uninstall it, unfortunately. This mod changes a LOT of things in the game, including not just creatures but also item locations, area scripts, and other things.
Well, good to know. The fact is that I have never played the expansions on my previous playthroughs, so I wanted to check them out sometime as they are without the mod. Guess it won't hurt starting with something more challenging...
2. Yes it does! The mod adds plenty of extra scrolls to the game. However, the scrolls are not placed in any systematic way - there's no store that sells every scroll in the game. Rather, you'll find the extra scrolls over the course of the adventure. You can obtain pretty high-level scrolls even early on; even as early as Chapter 1 you'll come across a 7th-level scroll or two.
Here's something else that's cool. I added scrolls for several of the HLA wizard spells from Throne of Bhaal (Improved Alacrity, Dragon's Breath, Comet, and Energy Blades). This means that mages can learn these spells but sorcerers can't. At last, mages get a small edge over sorcerers!
Oh, please, please add them HLA spells to sorcerers too! I... I simply... cannot... stand this injustice. This would haunt me forever otherwise.
3. Yes! Although Belhifet is really tough in this mod, he is no longer immune to all magic. Rather, he is about as resistant as you'd expect a powerful fiend to be. He has 50% Magic Resistance, which you can lower with Lower Resistance, and he has good Saving Throws, which you can lower with Greater Malison. He is immune to fire and resistant to cold, but you can still hit him with electricity, acid, and magic damage (such as from Bolt of Glory!). Meanwhile, he is resistant to physical damage. So he's not immune to anything a spellcaster can do to him.
In this mod, bosses are usually immune to effects that would completely trivialize them (e.g. stun). However, spells that merely give them penalties (e.g. Doom, Ray of Enfeeblement, Symbol of Pain) will still work on them.
This is simply amazing! Finally those spells would come to use. Great job! Bravo!
2. Yes it does! The mod adds plenty of extra scrolls to the game. However, the scrolls are not placed in any systematic way - there's no store that sells every scroll in the game. Rather, you'll find the extra scrolls over the course of the adventure. You can obtain pretty high-level scrolls even early on; even as early as Chapter 1 you'll come across a 7th-level scroll or two.
Here's something else that's cool. I added scrolls for several of the HLA wizard spells from Throne of Bhaal (Improved Alacrity, Dragon's Breath, Comet, and Energy Blades). This means that mages can learn these spells but sorcerers can't. At last, mages get a small edge over sorcerers!
Oh, please, please add them HLA spells to sorcerers too! I... I simply... cannot... stand this injustice. This would haunt me forever otherwise.
By the way, this makes me think, is there some way to implement the HLA system for all classes in IWD, as it is in BG2? It's absence is something I feel is lacking about the original and would have been nice on harder difficulties. Have you considered adding something like that? (unless it is too unbalanced)
By the way, this makes me think, is there some way to implement the HLA system for all classes in IWD, as it is in BG2? It's absence is something I feel is lacking about the original and would have been nice on harder difficulties. Have you considered adding something like that? (unless it is too unbalanced)
There is, and I have done it! I actually had considered including a component to allow Throne of Bhaal-style HLAs, but I dummied it out (the code for it is still in the TP2 file, and it works). Parties in this mod eventually become ridiculously powerful, with characters with 25 in all stats and amazing equipment, so there's no need to make them even more powerful. Yes, I'm worried it would be too unbalanced. I intended the late game in this mod to be challenging even for an extremely powerful, high-level party.
By the way, this makes me think, is there some way to implement the HLA system for all classes in IWD, as it is in BG2? It's absence is something I feel is lacking about the original and would have been nice on harder difficulties. Have you considered adding something like that? (unless it is too unbalanced)
There is, and I have done it! I actually had considered including a component to allow Throne of Bhaal-style HLAs, but I dummied it out (the code for it is still in the TP2 file, and it works). Parties in this mod eventually become ridiculously powerful, with characters with 25 in all stats and amazing equipment, so there's no need to make them even more powerful. Yes, I'm worried it would be too unbalanced. I intended the late game in this mod to be challenging even for an extremely powerful, high-level party.
That's great to hear!
However, just as an, *ahem*, "option", could you please make that HLA component available for installation (since you have it coded already), so that folks like me can try it out? I'd love to have something like that in my game! More options is always great!
Oops, didn't know it was intended and added hla by myself xD.
Actually that explains why Malavon was so weak . He just got beaten under time stop and spell strike.
Robe of Vecna + Alacrity greatly simplifies the game.
About HLA
UAI - useless, most of items has stat restriction (why vorpal katana needs wisdom?)
Flaming Death - good for mage\fighters (never liked this on clerics)
Deva - very weak, dies instantly
Hardiness - never use because if you are not protected from magical weapons - you die.
Magic Res - never use cause my mage\fighters already have near 80-105 res.
Traps - don't work as intended ("you can't set a trap there is an enemy nearby") or maybe I added them in wrong way.
Whirlwind - most imbalanced skill as always. Works great with vorpal katana and that spear that has 1 atk per round and shoots icelance (;D) Can be easy fixed with replacing fixed 10atk per round with improved haste effect
Dragon Breath - just a fireball.
Comet\Implosion - almost never use.
Another thing that I'm trying to test now is how wishes will work with my 18+ int\wis sorc
@kensai Yeah, that's a problem. I'll have that fixed in the next patch. For the time being, enter this command in the console:
C:Eval('Kill(\"Pomabr\")',0)
nevermind already solve this problem.
he dies if you cast true strike and kills all skeletons.
Now to the finale
Seems like old Belhi is still vulnerable to Time Stop. My other girl has sword of days.
And he dies.
Maybe the problem was that I played on insane half of game or maybe its because of hlas and time stop abusing but final fighr was easy. Now to the heart od winter!
nevermind already solve this problem.
he dies if you cast true strike and kills all skeletons.
Now to the finale
Seems like old Belhi is still vulnerable to Time Stop. My other girl has sword of days.
And he dies.
Maybe the problem was that I played on insane half of game or maybe its because of hlas and time stop abusing but final fighr was easy. Now to the heart od winter!
Congratulations for beating the game!
By the way, if you found Belhifet easy, you probably won't find most of the rest of the game too hard. The next time you play this mod, I recommend you play without HLAs.
There are several big problems with including HLAs in this mod.
1. It makes the party significantly more powerful without making the enemies any tougher. This mod was balanced for parties without HLAs.
2. Yet at the same time, it cannot serve as an "easy mode" because it doesn't make the game any easier before you get HLAs.
3. It makes multi-classed characters even more unbalanced. Whereas a single-classed fighter gets 11 HLAs by max level, a fighter/mage/cleric gets 55.
My plan for HLAs is to give some of them to characters in other ways than choosing one on level up. I was considering turning some of the cleric and druid HLA spells into regular 7th-level spells. I could probably simply give bards Use Any Item at some level.
Comments
My best guess is that the AttackReevaluate() equivalent of AttackOneRound() would be AttackReevaluate(LastSeenBy(Myself),90). I suspect that the Reevaluation Period is measured in ticks (which are 15 per second) rather than seconds.
@kjeron
Can you confirm? Thanks...
Correct, as always, @kjeron.
So why not 90 = 15 * 6?
Having read about this mod I decided to give it a try.
In a word, it's awesome. Super-hard, punishing (I had to rest and buff before *every* single encounter) and incredibly fun.
I wouldn't compare it to SCS in any case - this is Improved Anvil for IWD1, in the best sense of the word. 100 times better than HoF itself - and much more challenging as well.
Gratz!
How far have you gotten?
Dragon's Eye, (I guess that's the name of the place - I don't know this game very well), 3rd level - AR4003. Insane difficulty, 2x XP, max HP rolls.
Still hard...
Ditto magical arrows. I CLUAed in a number of +1 arrows just so I could get through undead army in the second map. Painful area.
I installed this mod on top of Imp.HoF so I might actually be in over my head.
A lot of mods don't get the attention they deserve - I myself can't imagine playing IWD w/o this. Ever considered modifiying BG in such a manner?
If you want, I'll add a large supply of extra healing potions to the temple store in Easthaven in the next patch. But your decision to spend your money on fancy equipment was fine.
I also plan on adding Quiver/Case/Bag of Plenty items to Conlan's store. I'm not sure why I haven't already. I should probably add some sort of item that grants immunity to level drain as well, because those wights are quite nasty.
Yes I have! I made a mod called High-Power Baldur's Gate, which gives many new abilities to both the party and the enemies in the game, and improves many of the items in the game. It's not as hard as Improved Heart of Fury Mode, and it's less a tactical mod and more of a mod to make the game feel new and interesting. However, it can be quite challenging due to the enormous variety of abilities that enemies get.
Ahahahahahahaha.....I read about that one... I didn't know that was you!
Level drain wasn't such an issue for me tbh (albeit this probably varies from party to party) but lack of actual damage was a pain to deal with. When I finally finsihed Kreselak (when I closed my eyes I started to have Imbued Wight images in my mind...
And yes, healing potions would be nice to have - even now I don't think I have any more left. They seem like a rare treasure. I did find a batch of 15 (I think) somewhere, after that I don't think I was lucky with them.
(Dealing +10 magic damage rather than slashing damage also helps against skeletons.)
I overhauled Cloudburst. Now it actually does something:
I added a new component that lets you change or remove the summoning limit. Since this mod doesn't power up summoned creatures, having hordes of them wouldn't be overpowered.
You won't have to start a new game.
You can look at all the changes in the change log in the first post.
You can download Version 3.1 here.
Fantastic!
Ring of Protection from level drain displays wrong icon.
Monk gauntles with +2 attacks say that a barbarian can equip them, if if they can't.
Massive WoT & Rant incoming.
Party is (was) berseker, babarian, cleric/ranger, fighter - druid dual, sorcerer and archer. Difficulty Insane, max HP, no double damage. No other mods other than some Cdtweaks components such as arrow/potion stacks, no unlimited summons. I also changed Boots of Speed, since I'm intolerant to movement speed + Haste stacking. They provide Haste to the wearer rahter than increasing movement speed.
Spoilers ahead.
Overall, difficult, some reloading, but not impossible. Ogres are much less difficult than orcs, Blindness is a PITA to deal with this early in game.
Next area with goblins is rather easy. Big beetle is cute, even if pretty harmless provided you bought speed boots.
Shadow Vale - challenging but very doable. Had a few hiccups here and there, but nothing drastic. Far easier than orcs. Probably my favourite battles so far - when my party survived, it was by an inch. Loved it.
Lysan - nice. Didn't reload, even if her cold resist lowering ability didn't notice before. Would be even smoother if her damn confusion/chaos/whatever didn't affect everyone bar barbarian who was enraged.
The area with Verbeegs/Acolytes was quite easy, but I already had the pleasure of meeting them before so Remove Magic/focus fire on caster tactic worked fine. Those small summons got summoned only once.
Next, Dragons's Eye. Bleh...my two tanky frontliners pretty much died in cca 60% encounters. Berseker had an ac of about -10, barb has armor with physical resistance, but they melted like flies. Still, I punched through. Smashing Wave ftw!
Undead area (Presio) - this had it's share of reloads. I couldn't get my spells of due to constant ice barrage. (btw, maybe making this spells not affect cold-immune creatures (like this here) would be nice. Spell failure when you're immune to certain kind of damage isn't cool imo. Be that as it may, flooding the area with spikey rocks, summons, insects and whatever I had worked fine eventually.
And when you think it's over, bam. From the other side, once again we go. Holy sh*t...
I was fairly proud when this was done. Presio himself wasn't all that hard, but adding Zombies is sheer evil.
Phew.
Yuan-ti temple - my dear God. Summon, summon, summon. I couldn't find the summoner. XP piled up, but eventually my party lost buffs and had to reload. Total carnage of a battle, loved it. When I finally made it, I did it by clearing out the nearby enemies, save&rest, rebuff, run toward summoner, and prey. Took a while, since I l spend all my spells beforehand. Had a few low-level ones, and they did the job after his Entropy shield expired. (had no more Remove magic available)
Painful, to say the least. Should have picked more than one arcane caster, if only for invisibility 10' radius.
Final area with Snake is where I kinda gave up hope for this party.
I could probably do it, but I'm simply tired of constanlty reviving my front-liners.
Will roll something a bit more magic-oriented. I ended up tanking more with my sorcerer than my sword & board halfling berserker.
Also, orcs no longer have a Blindness ability. That was never an essential feature of them.
1. After installing this mod, say I want to go back to vanilla difficulties temporarily. Is there an option (maybe in the .ini file?) to toggle this mod on and off, without actually uninstalling it?
2. Does this mod add additional mage spell scrolls to the game? In vanilla, spell scrolls are rare and make playing with multiple mages inconvenient. The answer to this would help me choose my party for trying this mod.
3. A mild spoiler question:
1. You will have to uninstall it, unfortunately. This mod changes a LOT of things in the game, including not just creatures but also item locations, area scripts, and other things.
2. Yes it does! The mod adds plenty of extra scrolls to the game. However, the scrolls are not placed in any systematic way - there's no store that sells every scroll in the game. Rather, you'll find the extra scrolls over the course of the adventure. You can obtain pretty high-level scrolls even early on; in Chapter 1 you'll come across a 7th-level scroll or two.
Here's something else that's cool. I added scrolls for several of the HLA wizard spells from Throne of Bhaal (Improved Alacrity, Dragon's Breath, Comet, and Energy Blades). This means that mages can learn these spells but sorcerers can't. At last, mages get a small edge over sorcerers!
3. Yes! Although Belhifet is really tough in this mod, he is no longer immune to all magic. Rather, he is as resistant as you'd expect a powerful fiend to be. He has 50% Magic Resistance, which you can lower with Lower Resistance, and he has good Saving Throws, which you can lower with Greater Malison. He is immune to fire and resistant to cold, but you can still hit him with electricity, acid, and magic damage (such as from Bolt of Glory!). Meanwhile, he is resistant to physical damage. So he's not immune to anything a spellcaster can do to him.
In this mod, bosses are usually immune to effects that would completely trivialize them (e.g. stun). However, spells that merely give them penalties (e.g. Doom, Ray of Enfeeblement, Symbol of Pain) will still work on them.
Well, good to know. The fact is that I have never played the expansions on my previous playthroughs, so I wanted to check them out sometime as they are without the mod. Guess it won't hurt starting with something more challenging...
Oh, please, please add them HLA spells to sorcerers too! I... I simply... cannot... stand this injustice. This would haunt me forever otherwise.
This is simply amazing! Finally those spells would come to use. Great job! Bravo!
There is, and I have done it! I actually had considered including a component to allow Throne of Bhaal-style HLAs, but I dummied it out (the code for it is still in the TP2 file, and it works). Parties in this mod eventually become ridiculously powerful, with characters with 25 in all stats and amazing equipment, so there's no need to make them even more powerful. Yes, I'm worried it would be too unbalanced. I intended the late game in this mod to be challenging even for an extremely powerful, high-level party.
That's great to hear!
However, just as an, *ahem*, "option", could you please make that HLA component available for installation (since you have it coded already), so that folks like me can try it out? I'd love to have something like that in my game! More options is always great!
Actually that explains why Malavon was so weak
Robe of Vecna + Alacrity greatly simplifies the game.
About HLA
UAI - useless, most of items has stat restriction (why vorpal katana needs wisdom?)
Flaming Death - good for mage\fighters (never liked this on clerics)
Deva - very weak, dies instantly
Hardiness - never use because if you are not protected from magical weapons - you die.
Magic Res - never use cause my mage\fighters already have near 80-105 res.
Traps - don't work as intended ("you can't set a trap there is an enemy nearby") or maybe I added them in wrong way.
Whirlwind - most imbalanced skill as always. Works great with vorpal katana and that spear that has 1 atk per round and shoots icelance (;D) Can be easy fixed with replacing fixed 10atk per round with improved haste effect
Dragon Breath - just a fireball.
Comet\Implosion - almost never use.
Another thing that I'm trying to test now is how wishes will work with my 18+ int\wis sorc
Wow, I had no idea you had gotten so far. Yeah, that's why I was worried about including HLAs.
I've changed the Wisdom requirements on Wish so that the highest tier of choices requires 25 Wisdom.
C:Eval('Kill(\"Pomabr\")',0)
nevermind already solve this problem.
he dies if you cast true strike and kills all skeletons.
Now to the finale
Seems like old Belhi is still vulnerable to Time Stop. My other girl has sword of days.
And he dies.
Maybe the problem was that I played on insane half of game or maybe its because of hlas and time stop abusing but final fighr was easy. Now to the heart od winter!
Congratulations for beating the game!
By the way, if you found Belhifet easy, you probably won't find most of the rest of the game too hard. The next time you play this mod, I recommend you play without HLAs.
There are several big problems with including HLAs in this mod.
1. It makes the party significantly more powerful without making the enemies any tougher. This mod was balanced for parties without HLAs.
2. Yet at the same time, it cannot serve as an "easy mode" because it doesn't make the game any easier before you get HLAs.
3. It makes multi-classed characters even more unbalanced. Whereas a single-classed fighter gets 11 HLAs by max level, a fighter/mage/cleric gets 55.
My plan for HLAs is to give some of them to characters in other ways than choosing one on level up. I was considering turning some of the cleric and druid HLA spells into regular 7th-level spells. I could probably simply give bards Use Any Item at some level.