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Mod spotlight: Planar Sphere Mod

inethineth Member Posts: 707
edited November 2022 in BGII:EE Mods
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  • Mod authors: Inferno, Duality, others
  • First published: 2002? (not sure)
  • Adds content to: BG2 chapter 2 (Athkatla)

The Planar Sphere Mod is a very old mod, which has been improved by multiple authors over the years.

Despite its undeniable game balance issues and at times overbearing silliness, it remains one of my favorite BG2 mods of all time, because it is, quite simply, fun to play through.

It adds the following content:



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Tired of having a big empty Planar Sphere as your stronghold?
This mod allows you to turn it into a full-blown training facility for Cowled Wizard apprentices. This adds content to almost every room of the sphere - characters to talk to, new spells to learn (example), a shop, a forge for enchanting weapons yourself, a few mini-quests, and a series of 'visitors' (combat encounters at the sphere entrance)...

Many of the interactions are on the sillier end, so if you prefer to think of the Cowled Wizards as sinister overlords rather than a gang of buffoons who like to blow themselves up with their own experiments, then this may not be for you... :)

To start:
  • A few days after you've completed the normal Mage stronghold quest-line (training apprentices and Lord Argrim quest), Teos will appear again in the Planar Sphere (standing on the entrance bridge). Talk to him.

    (If your CHARNAME is not a mage, you can install the "Multiple Strongholds" component of the Tweaks Anthology mod to get access to it.)

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It's not merely the fate of the Sword Coast, that hangs in the balance – it's the fate of the entire multiverse! An uber-powerful sorcerer is trying to implode the planes of existence, and the gods & overgods are powerless to stop him. Only you, CHARNAME & party, can foil his evil plan...

This is a pretty large quest with a grandiose story that starts in the Planar Sphere, but takes you around Athkatla (and... other places). Legendary Forgotten Realms characters, and even gods, make an appearance – and die. Magic itself incarnates and goes to battle. Extraplanar creatures swarm Athkatla.
Despite its craziness, the story draws you in. Planescape: Torment fans will recognize the many references to that game's setting. Some humorous fourth-wall-breaking dialog is thrown into the mix.

The battles are interesting (basically a series of unique "boss fights", and not many trash mobs), and very challenging. If your party isn't ready for the toughest encounters of Watcher's Keep, you won't get very far in this quest, either.
The XP rewards total in the millions, the loot includes very overpowered items (example 1, example 2), and CHARNAME receives high permanent bonuses.

Ridiculous? Over-the-top? Yes. But also great fun... :naughty:
Not recommended for Forgotten Realms lore purists or those who seek a balanced game; but for powergamers, this is a must-try.

To start the quest:
  • After having turned the Planar Sphere into a Cowled Wizard academy (see section A above), talk to Teos again (he now stands next to the table in the room where the Solamnnic Knights were), and accept his task to retrieve an artifact. It will lead to this quest.
Hints:
  • When Athkatla is temporarily "changed", explore various districts for bonus content that won't be available before or after (such as a hard-to-find shop, and a very long and silly cut-scene, lol).
  • In the last two boss fights of this quest (both back inside the Planar Sphere), the rewards – but also the enemy numbers & AI – scale with the difficulty slider. Turn it up to Insane to get the best loot. In the earlier fights it makes no difference.
Walkthrough:



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Download version 2.6c of the mod from here.
Then, before installing the mod, patch it using the Big World Fixpack to make it EE-compatible.

Alternatively, if you are only interested in the "Mage stronghold brought to life" part, you could have a look at Roxanne's Expanded Mage Stronghold mod – which is apparently an EE/EET port of the Planar Sphere Mod, but with the "Evil archsorcerer" quest removed and the remaining content rebalanced. (I haven't tried this myself yet.)



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Post edited by ineth on
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Comments

  • StummvonBordwehrStummvonBordwehr Member, Mobile Tester Posts: 1,343
    Great stuff @ineth
    I will be looking forward for more. Both threads bookmarked
  • AngulimalaAngulimala Member Posts: 82
    Apparently I installed the toned-down EET version, some day I'll go back and do a pure BG2EE install for more nostalgia of this ridiculous and also very fun mod.
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,367
    I remember this from back in my modding days. My favorite part was transforming my mage Charname into an honest-to-God lich! It was awesome until I realized that he now moved as slowly as a lich... :s
    StummvonBordwehrRaduziel
  • RaduzielRaduziel Member Posts: 4,714
    Balrog99 wrote: »
    I remember this from back in my modding days. My favorite part was transforming my mage Charname into an honest-to-God lich! It was awesome until I realized that he now moved as slowly as a lich... :s

    That's relatively easy to work around, I think.
    Angulimala
  • AngulimalaAngulimala Member Posts: 82
    Any ideas on that workaround? I was thinking putting an extra point or two of movement rate using EEKeeper. Or changing the char avatar back to mage and changing skin color to some grey or black to reflect his necrotic state.
  • inethineth Member Posts: 707
    Angulimala wrote: »
    Any ideas on that workaround?

    To be clear, the mod doesn't force you to turn into a lich.

    In fact, it's not even part of the mod's story - it's merely an optional item sold in a hidden shop added by the mod, which allows you to do this.
  • MaurvirMaurvir Member Posts: 1,090
    To be honest, the lich thing would be great if you had a phylactery in the planar sphere. That way, instead of "game over" it's "game jerks you back to the planar sphere".

    It would be reminiscent of the silver acorn in Ultima Underworld.
    AngulimalaIsewein
  • Austin87Austin87 Member Posts: 280
    I’ll clarify - in 2011, a later version 2.6e with a Russian translation and corrections for BWP was posted on the SHS.
    http://www.shsforums.net/topic/24405-planar-sphere-mod-v26a/page-5#entry514257

    If one of the administrators can add it to the main page (http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/131-planarsphere/), we will be grateful!
    The author of the Russian translation is Fess
    ineth
  • EndarireEndarire Member Posts: 1,512
    How do we install this on EET?
  • inethineth Member Posts: 707
    Endarire wrote: »
    How do we install this on EET?
    It's not on the Mod Compatibility List for EET, so I don't think you can.
    Only Roxanne's stripped & tuned-down version, Expanded Mage Stronghold, seems to be EET-compatible.
  • chibisenseichibisensei Member Posts: 36
    I actually tried to install this mod recently into BG2EE and it was not possible - it said it required EET to be installed - so I was wondering is there just a BG2EE version?
  • EndarireEndarire Member Posts: 1,512
    edited June 2023
    JohnBob updated the original version for EE & EET compatibility. The cheesy scenes are seemingly preserved in this version.

    @ineth @chibisensei
  • chibisenseichibisensei Member Posts: 36
    Thanks - definitely will try it on the next play through
  • shevy123456shevy123456 Member Posts: 174
    Does the John Bob version work for BG2II? Any issues?

    Note the original link to http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/131-planarsphere/
    no longer works. Can someone edit the first thread and put the github link in
    there?
  • JohnBobJohnBob Member Posts: 128
    The release is exactly the same mod as the one on SHS...

    All changes made for works on the EE are available only while downloading the master. But the master should also be compatible with vanilla game.
  • shevy123456shevy123456 Member Posts: 174
    edited November 2023
    Thanks, that cleared it up. At first I had some installation issue (I think I accidentally downloaded the wrong file, I got an awkward message), but when I used https://github.com/The-Gate-Project/PlanarSphere/archive/refs/heads/main.zip then the installation worked. I am on another play-through right now, trying to see what works and what does not in general (and trying Lava's Ravenloft mod too).
    Post edited by shevy123456 on
  • shevy123456shevy123456 Member Posts: 174
    I think I found a small but odd bug. I believe you get a mage knife
    which helps you memorize more spells. My character has, however
    had suddenly 20 spell slots for first spell level, second spell level
    too. And then I think +1 or +2 for the other ones.

    So, being able to fire 20 magic missiles is awesome, but I think this
    must be a bug. There is probably something wrong with the code;
    it should increment perhaps by +1 or so, but +15 or set to the max
    here.

    Perhaps another mod also causes issues here, so maybe it is an
    indirect bug. I'll also report it on github.
  • JohnBobJohnBob Member Posts: 128
    edited November 2023
    @shevy123456

    It's probably an "indirect bug" Triumph of the Caster allows Aura Cleansing but do not grant more spells.

    Is it the item you talking about ? You need to be more precise when you report something.

    If you want to post your weidu.log.

    Are you sure you don't have any other item equipped that would grant you more spells ?

    For verifying what other mod touch this item you can download the archive below, extract the content in you game directory and double click on change-log.bat... It will create a new folder named change-log, you can post the results here !



    Thanks for reporting, but please do not duplicate the issue here and on github, choose only one plateform !

    Also the official thread for The Gate Project mods is here, but you can post on this thread if you prefer.
    Post edited by JohnBob on
  • shevy123456shevy123456 Member Posts: 174
    edited November 2023
    Hey there JohnBob,

    > It's probably an "indirect bug" Triumph of the Caster allows Aura
    > Cleansing but do not grant more spells.

    > Is it the item you talking about ? You need to be more precise
    > when you report something.

    > If you want to post your weidu.log.

    > Are you sure you don't have any other item equipped that would
    > grant you more spells ?

    This only happens with that mage knife. I have like 20 level 1
    spells and 20 level 2 spells available. It is tied to that mage
    knife that was crafted in the planar sphere (actually, are there
    two planar sphere mods? Because this may explain the confusion).
    I have had other items equipped, such as ring of wizardry
    but these behave normally - that is they only add one or two
    spells of the appropriate level, depending on the ring at hand.

    Posting a weidu.log is cumbersome since I actually only use
    the forum here when I use linux, whereas BG2 is on my
    windows machine on the left. The primary reason I actually
    registered here is to give some feedback to Lava, other than
    that I much prefer github in general. More on that in a
    moment.

    > For verifying what other mod touch this item you can
    > download the archive below, extract the content in you
    > game directory and double click on change-log.bat... It
    > will create a new folder named change-log, you can
    > post the results here !

    It can indeed be that some other mod tampers with things,
    but the strange thing is that I only have this with the mage
    knife that was crafted in the planar sphere mod. That mod
    is mega-buggy and absolutely broken. It's on the one hand
    a fairly epic mod, and tons of things are fun - for instance,
    Jan on his quest of becoming a lich, first with the eye of
    vecna, and then going full-scale towards EVIL. But there are
    so many small and large things ... I actually no longer feel
    as if it is worth reporting what is all broken with it. For
    instance, just an hour ago, I managed to enter an infinite
    loop in the temple district: tanari and lich kept on infinite
    casting time stop. There was a VERY small delay to do something
    between, so perhaps one can do something here but when
    I left the area and went to another area, the same loop
    kicked in, without any tanari or lich in the area. So that
    infinite loop thing kept on carrying over to other maps.

    I reloaded and did things a bit differently this time (e. g.
    running to them and fighting them), so perhaps it can
    be beat, but, boy, bug after bug after bug ...


    > Thanks for reporting, but please do not duplicate the issue
    > here and on github, choose only one plateform !

    I tried a google search right now and I can not find the
    github page anymore.

    I did check your link above; at first beamdog was not
    loading that external link (and, by the way, I hate how
    beamdog modifies the URLs rather than just allows
    us to click on it; this indirection beamdog uses is such
    a huge antifeature).

    Anyway, I think I found the github page here:

    https://github.com/The-Gate-Project/PlanarSphere

    Right?

    There is no way I would register at another external
    forum. I am fine using github though. I will make sure
    that I may report more issues there, but to be honest,
    I am fine playing it, and giving feedback here, and then
    moving on.

    Anyway. I'll next give some feedback of the mod for others
    to ponder through.

    I think the mod is on the one hand awesome (I always wanted
    to make Jan a lich! This also was easier to do, e. g. there is
    that other mod from Lava which also promises great strength,
    but the lich part in the planar sphere mod was actually easier
    go through since it was clear what happened). Many fights
    are very challenging; unfortunately some are simply unfair
    and overpowered. I complained about Tactics remix in the
    past, in particular the improved Irenicus part, but boy,
    planar sphere mod really puts Tactics remix being broken
    to shame - planar sphere mod is by far the most broken mods
    out there "balance"-wise. Many other mods are very well-behaving.
    For instance, Lava's mods, like them or not, are in general not
    really game-breaking. The rewards are usually fine, sometimes
    very good (I love the final item in the bridge block). Planar sphere
    however had feels as if someone wrote the mod who really did
    not care about storyline or world setting or anything, and just
    wanted to have the strongest opponents ever. The whole dialogues
    are immersion breaking e. g. "we are here because in a game we
    are usually the villains or bad guys", and the name is "test dummy".
    What the heck ...

    I could go on and on here, so it's a bit strange because the fights
    and rewards are addictive, but the bugs and unbalanced nature
    is annoying. So I can only recommend this mod for people who
    already played the vanilla game and then probably some other
    of the better mods out there (e. g. Lava's mods or the Dusk NPC
    mod and some more).

    PS: I think it would be much easier if people would aggregate
    onto github rather than be so spread out and diluted all over
    the place. https://github.com/The-Gate-Project/PlanarSphere has
    a grand total of zero issues reported; at the least
    https://github.com/SpellholdStudios appears to be somewhat
    more active, but searching for "planar" led to no results, so I
    am a bit confused when you write I should not write here and
    on github. To which github issue do you refer to actually?
    Unless it is another mod. To clarify: my complaints go
    specifically against the huge planar sphere mod, not the
    stronghold mod part. The stronghold mod part is somewhat
    ok; I guess the mage knife is part of that mod, not the extended
    planar sphere mod. So, the planar stronghold mod is fine to
    play through; the mage knife bug is a small issue, I am sure
    someone may find out why that clones first level spells so
    many times (Jan also has 15 magic missiles available now,
    without any knife - not sure if this is a bug, but some things
    are broken on the setup I use right now).
  • JohnBobJohnBob Member Posts: 128
    @shevy123456

    I'm sorry, but I don't understand your message at all...

    I can't verify anything without your weidu.log.

    You have installed two PlanarSphere mods...?

    Can you read the description of the Knife and give me it's exact name ?
  • shevy123456shevy123456 Member Posts: 174
    edited December 2023
    An example that can be given for the rather flawed design of this mod is
    the final fight, in particular when the opposing mage summons 6 Planetars.

    So why is this problematic?

    I don't refer here primarily - or solely - to 6 Planetars being powerful,
    which is already hugely questionable in and by itself, but more the fact
    that in vanilla BG2 you are limited to one Planetar. So this mod simply
    decides "hey, we don't care about the rest of the game, we simply decide
    to do whatever we want to".

    What I have seen with some mods (including Tactics remix) is that there
    isn't much thought given about overall balance and design of mods (and
    how they relate to the main game). For some mods this is on purpose,
    e. g. the swords coast stratagem, whereas for some other mods this simply
    seems to be "what can I do to annoy the player". A good example for the
    latter is when exits are disabled, compared to vanilla BG2. The latter
    refers more to Tactics remix than the mod here, but as an example, if
    you are about to obtain the celestial fury katana, you go upstairs and
    see enemies. Ok now you say "oh damn, these are tough folks, let's
    chicken out and run away". But nopes - the stair exit is disabled. So,
    you walk up the stairs, but suddenly an invisible magical shield pops
    up and ... you can't go back down again. This is simply bad design of
    a mod when compared to vanilla. Vanilla also has some exits that can
    not be used after entering, but some mods really seem to think they
    need to leverage this to the maximum. In my opinion, mods should in
    most cases try to refer to vanilla as much as possible, from a starting
    point in regards to their design. It's ok to have mods that then go on
    and change things specifically, but in such a case it really should be
    expected that there is an intrinsic design goal that is of solid quality,
    as well as notifications to players prior to installation, so that things
    such as "hey, 6 planetars in this round, meteorites and 10 new overpowered
    spells in that round" or "hey, let's slap down an additional dragon to
    the boss fight to make it harder" does not really happen in and by
    itself. That's not really design - that's just annoying the player of the
    game.

    It's somewhat unfortunate because I actually agree with the threadstarter
    that the mod can be fun; Jan becoming the new hobo lich in town is
    hilarious (imagine when he returns home to Lissa or what was her name
    and demands that she joins him), the items are also quite great even
    thoug overpowered - but the overall design of the mod is simply really
    just bad. The older mods have this problem a LOT more than the more
    recent mods; for instance, Lava's mods are all designed fairly well,
    as is the case with many other mods. Whereas a few other mods are simply
    so bad with their issues leaking all over the place.

  • StummvonBordwehrStummvonBordwehr Member, Mobile Tester Posts: 1,343
    edited December 2023
    The old mods are great. They are often inbalanced - either to lenient in their XP / items rewards, or greatly altering the difficulty.

    But thats the fun if it. In the mega installs you can get really powerfull early on, and a lot of players add these tough fights to balance their game. Its not the modders job to balance the players game, its the players. If mods bother you, then uninstall them or change the setup.
    Post edited by StummvonBordwehr on
  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    Tactics and Planar Sphere are not about balance, are about unbalance and harsh difficulty. Not only enemy mages can gate 6 Planetars or have 2 familiars that cast spells as well as mages or the hidden compound stairs are not available to run away, but once you open doors you can not close them, minor foe spawns a split second before your enemies to suck the damage of your pre set traps, spells are cast with the reallyforcespell script so you can not disrupt the caster and so on.
    All this is intentional and prevents you from using legitimate but cheap tricks to win the battles like using the doors, that the ai driven enemies can not open, to divide them facing smaller groups or setting traps on known spawn points, trick that in vanilla can even kill the WK boss without a real fight.
    Those old school mods are not for everybody, but the way they are implemented is intentional, in the final battle of the Soulafein mod, still not available foe EE, the enemy party has a free Time Stop round every other round in which all 6 of them can attack and cast while all your party and summons but Soulafein is freezed, is it fair or balanced? No. Is it fun to play? For some of us surely yes, for others maybe not, and this is fine as there are more modern, less cheating mods out there, different foods for different tastes so everybody can be happy.
  • morpheus562morpheus562 Member Posts: 249
    edited December 2023
    What I have seen with some mods (including Tactics remix) is that there
    isn't much thought given about overall balance and design of mods (and
    how they relate to the main game). For some mods this is on purpose,
    e. g. the swords coast stratagem, whereas for some other mods this simply
    seems to be "what can I do to annoy the player". A good example for the
    latter is when exits are disabled, compared to vanilla BG2. The latter
    refers more to Tactics remix than the mod here, but as an example, if
    you are about to obtain the celestial fury katana, you go upstairs and
    see enemies. Ok now you say "oh damn, these are tough folks, let's
    chicken out and run away". But nopes - the stair exit is disabled. So,
    you walk up the stairs, but suddenly an invisible magical shield pops
    up and ... you can't go back down again. This is simply bad design of
    a mod when compared to vanilla. Vanilla also has some exits that can
    not be used after entering, but some mods really seem to think they
    need to leverage this to the maximum. In my opinion, mods should in
    most cases try to refer to vanilla as much as possible, from a starting
    point in regards to their design. It's ok to have mods that then go on
    and change things specifically, but in such a case it really should be
    expected that there is an intrinsic design goal that is of solid quality,
    as well as notifications to players prior to installation, so that things
    such as "hey, 6 planetars in this round, meteorites and 10 new overpowered
    spells in that round" or "hey, let's slap down an additional dragon to
    the boss fight to make it harder" does not really happen in and by
    itself. That's not really design - that's just annoying the player of the
    game.

    It's somewhat unfortunate because I actually agree with the threadstarter
    that the mod can be fun; Jan becoming the new hobo lich in town is
    hilarious (imagine when he returns home to Lissa or what was her name
    and demands that she joins him), the items are also quite great even
    thoug overpowered - but the overall design of the mod is simply really
    just bad. The older mods have this problem a LOT more than the more
    recent mods; for instance, Lava's mods are all designed fairly well,
    as is the case with many other mods. Whereas a few other mods are simply
    so bad with their issues leaking all over the place.

    Again, these mods are not for you. Tactics Remix is mostly net new scripting and is NOT designed for you as an audience. An incredible amount of thought is given into Tactics Remix to balance it to the intended audience, including vastly modernizing it to be highly responsive to the difficulty slider so putting it on "Easy" actually does just that in the game. Regarding blocking exits, it seems like that is a cheese tactic you don't like being removed from you. Lore wise, it is incredibly simple as you are invading the establishment of a highly powerful wizard, so of course he can lock the doors to his own home (I'm also fairly certain SCS also blocks the same stairs you are complaining about being blocked).

    You complain about the readmes not being descriptive, yet it tells you pretty plainly it is going to be difficult:
    All of the enemy scripts have been rewritten from scratch and many of the fight mechanics are improved from the old Tactics days. These fights are aimed at being more challenging than the original encounters while removing much of the cheese that players of old remember. These are meant to be BRUTAL.

    Improved Irenicus:
    I take the original Tactics fight, with some slight alterations, to give Joneleth "The Shattered One" Irenicus the fight he and the player truly deserve. This is a multi-phase fight that should provide a suitable challenge. To start, instead of summoning generic demons, Jon will shatter himself into multiple fragments and brings forth enemies for each Tear of Bhaal Test in Hell. These enemies will provide their own unique challenges, and will bring forth more minions to aid themselves, depending on the difficulty.

    In regards to this specific thread and Planar Sphere mod: it's designed to be difficult and players wanting a challenge. It delivers exactly that: a challenge.
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