Switching to Legacy of Bhaal
Alonso
Member Posts: 806
I'm playing BG2EE in insane difficulty and finding it way too easy. I'd like to switch to Legacy of Bhaal difficulty without having to restart the game. Is there any way of doing it (EEKeeper, console, mods, bribing Amber Scott...)?
0
Comments
I can't guarantee you won't encounter unwanted side-effects, but technically Story Mode works the same way and the option to switch it on the fly exists in game so...
EDIT: Forgot to mention: you might also need to set the GAME_DIFFICULTY global variable to 7.
@mf2112: I have "No Difficulty-Based Damage Increase" unchecked. I was getting double damage all the time. All the time I got damage, that is, which almost never happened. I have four casters (my blade, Nalia, Aerie and Jan) and a lot of gear, and I like to use all the abilities, spells, etc. Playing this way makes me so powerful that not even dragons stand a chance. Actually, I'm not sure even LoB it's challenging enough. I've fought a few low and medium level battles so far and they were pretty straightforward. Let's see what happens when I meet a big boss.
Imposing restrictions on yourself can also increase the difficulty, whether by limiting resting, playing minimal or no-reload, doing poverty runs, going solo, refraining from using your top X number of spells and items for each class, or some other change to gameplay.
If you do decide to start playing minimal or no-reload runs, which a lot of us find very exciting to read and write about, please post your progress in @BelgarathMTH's minimal reload thread here:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/51150/raising-charname-minimal-reload-thread-bg1-sod-bg2-spoilers#latest
...or in @Ygramul's no-reload thread here:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/40393/maybe-this-time-no-reload-thread-io-the-avenger-and-the-perils-of-a-thiefless-party#latest
The latter changes its name from time to time, but it always says "Maybe this time" in it.
Regarding Tactics, sounds interesting, but it looks like the development stopped years ago and there are posts all over the place of people troubleshooting compatibility issues. I'd rather use mods that are currently active and supported. There's enough misery in the world already and that "wrong reasons" remark strongly suggests that this mod would add to the total. I've toyed with that idea, but eventually discarded it for now. This is essentially my first playthrough (played the game about 12 years ago, but forgot most of it), so I want to experience the whole thing again. If I decide to play it a second (third) time I will probably give it a go.
I got my install working by transplanting @Blackraven's install onto mine. If you like, I can post my override folder and dialog.tlk file here, and you can simply copy them into your BG:EE directory. I was completely unable to install SCS successfully before I tried that; now it's fine. The only problem is I can't use any other WeiDu mods without screwing everything up.
And no, I wouldn't really recommend Improved Anvil. A handful of devoted followers like the mod, but pretty much nobody else does. There are too many reasons to list, but the most common is the toxic atmosphere on the IA forums.
A guy named Saros Shadowfollower once did a no-reload run of IA (posted on Youtube), as well as a solo run. The creator of IA had previously declared that a solo run of IA was impossible, and when he found out Saros had succeeded, he banned Saros from the forum forever. He also complained repeatedly about Saros on the forum, when Saros no longer had a voice to defend himself there.
You might play the first dungeon or something, though. Improved Anvil is worth a laugh or two.
I'm afraid in my previous post I talked about BGEE by mistake. I meant BG2EE, which is the game I'm currently playing. I think SCS has less problems with BGEE. If you have the SCS installation for BG2EE, it would be very nice of you to post your files and folders here. That might do the trick.
As for the "dialog" .rar file, it contains only the dialog.tlk file itself, which you should place here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Baldur's Gate II Enhanced Edition\lang\en_US
Or whatever your directory is, but it should still end with:
\lang\en_US.
Unless you're using a non-English version, in which case all kinds of strings are probably going to be screwed up.
This will install most of the components of SCS. You won't have maximum-strength everything, but it's basically all the hardest difficulty settings. Dragons will have hundreds upon hundreds of HP, Planetars will have instant-casting spells, Beholders will steal the Cloak of Mirroring and Shield of Balduran, Mind Flayers will use extra psionic powers, and all enemy spellcasters will use pre-buffs and also HLAs if they're high enough level.
It will also add Ascension to your install, with all component. Plus, you'll get notifications about when buff durations run out.
All the strings should be accurate, except for +1 ammunition, which will work fine, and look the same, but have weird names and descriptions.
The current maintainer, @critto is also much more open to suggestions and criticism than Sikret used to be. I'd say the IA is worth trying to make your own opinion about it. Personally I don't like it at all but for people who want the feeling of being completely outgunned by everything it does the job quite competently.
A lot of creatures have nasty abilities that the player initially does not but once you get the higher level spells and great gear the initially difficult foes become just annoying trashmobs and the extremely impossible foes become merely difficult foes.
I like it though and it is just a different experience after a game with SCS.
@Alonso: Attached is the hotfix. Unzip it into your "stratagems" folder inside your BG2:EE directory and then try to reinstall SCS. If it works, you should be able to keep your other mods as well. If it doesn't work, the previous option--transplanting the override, stratagems, and stratagems_external folder as well as the dialog.tlk file--should work instead.
- Creating a stratagems folder manually, unzipping the hotfix there and trying the SCS installation.
- Same as above, but creating the stratagems folder by trying to install SCS and letting it fail. I've already tried three or four variations of this and it has failed each time.
- Transplanting semiticgod's installation as suggested originally.
I have tried the third option and it doesn't seem to work, but I guess it depends on what components were installed in this particular installation. For example:- Melf's Minute Meteors give a -5 bonus to THAC0. SCS reduces it to -2.
- True Sight doesn't prevent blindness.
Anyway, I'll keep playing a bit with this setup and see what happens.
I guess after a few more battles I will grow tired of so much tactical planning, but right now I'm enjoying it a lot. When I decide to tone it down a bit, I think I'll go back to Insane and keep SCS, which seems more interesting than keeping LoB and removing SCS.
I have installed Tweaks on top of SCS, and I've observed a few changes in the text feedback that I don't remember reading about in the documentation of either SCS or Tweaks:
• [Name]: [Spell effect] expires in X seconds. E. g.: Aerie: Haste expires in 60 seconds.
• When a caster triggers a contingency the word “Contingency” appears on top of his head.
• [Caster name] is casting a [spell school] spell. E. g.: Jan is casting an Illusion spell.
Do you know where these come from?
I like all of them, but the last one would be more useful if I had a list of spells sorted by school. I can create the list myself, of course, but it would take me quite a while. Do you know if such a list is already available somewhere?
Normally, you can find the list of installed components in the "WeiDu" text file in your main directory. That file is nothing but the list of what you've got installed. But that doesn't apply for transplanted installs; your WeiDu text file won't tell you anything about that.
Which is why I myself don't know exactly what components I have installed. I just know it has almost everything on it, including universal pre-buffs and HLAs on any caster with enough levels. The only components I know aren't included are boring things like removing the Cloak of Mirroring from the game or moving the Robe of Vecna from the Adventurer Mart to the bottom of Watcher's Keep (Azamantes will use it against you).
Oh, @Blackraven! I invoke you to leave whichever plane of existence you reside in and share with us the arcane mysteries of your WeiDu file!
No, I'm not English. Well, I'm English by ancestry, and people have said my accent sounds English or more often Irish, but I'm from Texas.
The reason I say "idear" is because so many Chinese people I know have replaced the "uh" sound with an "er" sound. It might just be a north Chinese thing (the "erhua" dialect, a northern accent, adds r's to various places), but I don't know. These three are the most common examples:
idea->idear
umbrella->umbreller
famous->faymerce
I know that the developers have the right to do everything they want, with the only obligation of not change the original content. This is obvious to me and to everybody.
But everybody also know that Bioware had a big benefit from the great work that the modding community did, without asking any money for that. And Beamdog inherited that benefit, they owe something to the modding community, no sorry, they owe a lot.
The community has done a GREAT and very time consuming work to enhance the gamer's enjoyment, and is doing a great work in making the mods compatible to EE and in maintaining them.
We also know that some mods, SCS is one of them, are used by a wide part of the players.
So, even if Beamdog does not owe nothing from the legal (or financial) point of view, I think that they could have been more respectful to the modding community and to the part of the gaming community who use the mods, at least the more used of them.
That respect could have been make themselves an effort to assure the better compatibly with the existing mods when they upgrade the version of the game. Or maybe send in advance to the maintainers of the mods information on the changes they are going to introduce and give them some time to upgrade the mods.
Obviously this is a morale issue, not a legal one, as legally they own the copyright.
Telling this I don't want to attack or criticize the developers of the game, I am just hoping that in the future Beamdog will be more willing to collaborate with people who do a great work just for free. A great work from which Beamdog earn money. Without the modding community I bet that the game would have been dead a long time ago, Beamdog and EE would never come in existence, and even if not so they would have much less customers.