Neera nearly solos that encounter when I run into her, my biggest problem is that its a rush to stop her from kill stealing. Granted, I don't play any higher dificulty than core rules. *EDIT* What patch do you play on? I do remember Neera being a lot dumber and the encounter being more difficult as a consequence on older patches.
@BelgarathMTH I know what you mean about the EE NPCs forcing themselves down your throat. I'm thinking of avoiding the Neera area/encounter entirely and just EE Keepering a gem bag into my inventory. It would save the trouble of installing a mod. Of course, there's still Rasaad sticking his nose into your business in Nashkel when you fight Nimbul. Darn right I don't have time for his proverbs!!! I wonder if you can run him through with a sword without turning the whole area hostile....
Core difficulty, no mods. Neera has two color sprays, then rushes the guards with her staff. Enemy wizard has color spray, mirror image, grease, *flame arrow*, and magic missiles.
If the wizard targets Neera with the flame arrow she's a goner. If she rushes into melee before you get the guards dead she's a goner. If that flame arrow gets targeted at Charname it's a game over if he or she is level one. It's often a game over if Neera knocks the whole party unconscious.
I've had her die multiple times during her recruitment encounter. I find it very hard to keep her alive long enough to recruit her when I want to.
The encounter was changed in one of the more recent patches. I know it was much easier and less likely to kill Neera in the older versions.
Btw, this is with SoD installed. That makes a difference in many encounters, in ways that were not intended.
I've never had any problem with recruiting Neera, maybe sometimes I'll have a party member get caught in a poorly aimed color spray, but on the whole it's a fairly simple matter to use ranged weapons to take out the mage and by then Neera has smoked all of her color sprays and it's safe to move in on the guards. I've also seen her drop the wizard with her color spray (or my own casting of sleep) several times which basically makes the encounter a walk over lol. The guards also regularly fail to the sleep spell and other debuffs (blindness). Blinding the mage is another pretty funny tactic since it makes it impossible for him to cast anything other than mirror image
I make a point of never trying to get her until I have a cleric with the command spell. Then I just drop the mage with it and pelt him with arrows, keeping my archers well back so as to avoid Neera's colour spray. If I happen to already have a mage, I complement the command spell with sleep, usually taking out the two guards. Then I welcome Neera to the party, take the gem back and dismiss her (since I can't stand wild mages), which, if I'm playing good, makes me feel lousy from a role playing perspective - hence my plan to use EE Keeper for the bag from now on.
Core difficulty, no mods. Neera has two color sprays, then rushes the guards with her staff. Enemy wizard has color spray, mirror image, grease, *flame arrow*, and magic missiles.
If the wizard targets Neera with the flame arrow she's a goner. If she rushes into melee before you get the guards dead she's a goner. If that flame arrow gets targeted at Charname it's a game over if he or she is level one. It's often a game over if Neera knocks the whole party unconscious.
I've had her die multiple times during her recruitment encounter. I find it very hard to keep her alive long enough to recruit her when I want to.
The encounter was changed in one of the more recent patches. I know it was much easier and less likely to kill Neera in the older versions.
Btw, this is with SoD installed. That makes a difference in many encounters, in ways that were not intended.
Hmmm. I'm now playing on 'hard' difficulty and have SoD installed. All party members (and Neera) have survived the last few times at least. Do you have any good missile users? I always pelt the red wizard right out of the gate so he NEVER gets a spell off. Neera sometimes gets a color spray off but even when she takes out one of my companions it's no big deal. Have you tried reorganizing your party formation so that your tank gets transported right next to the henchmen and red wizard?
The problem I've had is likely that I usually don't want to recruit Neera. The few times I have wanted her, things have just gone really wrong, especially with that Flame Arrow. There's probably an issue in that I like to scatter my party instead of getting caught in Neera's Color Sprays, rather than immediately attacking the red wizard.
I think my trouble with the encounter is partly due to my play style and my reactions to the encounter being something that the devs didn't anticipate. If there's a way to mess up dev intentions, certain subgroups of players will find it.
I just decided on today's play session that "If you can't beat them, join them", and I recruited Neera. But I was playing a half-orc berserker with 19-18-19 and rage activated, which pretty much amounts to an "I win" button in BG1.
Since I decided that I didn't need Minsc with me as a berserker, and therefore didn't need Dynaheir, I recruited both Neera and Rasaad. I actually like Rasaad, just not his class. He manages to convert me to Selune worship every time I start talking to him.
I had tried a shapeshifter/werewolf character earlier today and yesterday, and I've found that the min-maxed half-orc berserker makes a better werewolf than the actual werewolf. I just pretend my berserk button is a "wolf-out" button. Which also gives me a great roleplaying feel with Rasaad in my party as my spiritual advisor, especially since Selune is the goddess of good lycanthropes, in addition to being the goddess of the moon, Shar's chief rival, and a one-third inheritor of Amaunator's power.
SoD by itself doesnt change BGEE (well apart from the UI and you immediately jumping to the start of SoD). Also I think the Neera fight was changed way back 1.3 (or maybe even 1.2). I'm not aware of it getting touched in 2.0.
I still have my old, big, and I mean BIG, bgt installation in an external drive. It is about 10+ gb in size and has so many mods, quest, npc and difficulty etc. installed, and further editted to suit my tastes by me at those years, all before ee.
I recently tried playing it on my new laptop, and well there was this graphical imcompatibility that running it in 3d has its screen very small and bordered with blackness. My graphic card was not easy to set up as 'stretch to full screen' and after trying some solutions online and failing, I went back to 2d mode and it looked horrible. I tried playing again starting in bg2, but I was waaay overboard with mods, and that bgt installation really required a pc that played out a modded to brim bg1 (dark side, northern side, greyclan, many other mods) to begin in bg2, so a newly created bg2 character had no luck in Irenicus Dungeon. So started in bg1 and immediately I saw glaring unbalance issues thanks to zillion mods, which is a thing for me in the past, but I never let it happen in my current ee games and I edit any sort of overpoweredness by dltcep and NI.
Sooo it did not work out, I returned to my ee installations, modded a bit and editted a bit to perfect it, and back to playing ee. I look at my bgt installation as my 'Old project' it was fun and great for me back then, not so much today.
Today I play ees on my Ipad, so 1.3 is still the way I roll. It is my project, that is ever developing, I edit everything with NI and dltcep even take assets, sound files and bams from my other IE games like iwd1, iwd2, etc. to make a perfect gaming experience for me. Modding and editting is half the fun. I took some item bam files from my iwd2 game and they look slick on my bg:ee on Ipad.
To me 2.0 loses a lot of charm thanks to UI changes, and I don't think to upgrade to it for a long time. I will need to install all my mods again and tweak and edit all over again, I just don't think it is worth it, for now. Maybe a few years later I will look back at my 1.3 installation and say 'what was I thinking?' who knows.
The problem I've had is likely that I usually don't want to recruit Neera. The few times I have wanted her, things have just gone really wrong, especially with that Flame Arrow. There's probably an issue in that I like to scatter my party instead of getting caught in Neera's Color Sprays, rather than immediately attacking the red wizard.
I think my trouble with the encounter is partly due to my play style and my reactions to the encounter being something that the devs didn't anticipate. If there's a way to mess up dev intentions, certain subgroups of players will find it.
I just decided on today's play session that "If you can't beat them, join them", and I recruited Neera. But I was playing a half-orc berserker with 19-18-19 and rage activated, which pretty much amounts to an "I win" button in BG1.
Since I decided that I didn't need Minsc with me as a berserker, and therefore didn't need Dynaheir, I recruited both Neera and Rasaad. I actually like Rasaad, just not his class. He manages to convert me to Selune worship every time I start talking to him.
I had tried a shapeshifter/werewolf character earlier today and yesterday, and I've found that the min-maxed half-orc berserker makes a better werewolf than the actual werewolf. I just pretend my berserk button is a "wolf-out" button. Which also gives me a great roleplaying feel with Rasaad in my party as my spiritual advisor, especially since Selune is the goddess of good lycanthropes, in addition to being the goddess of the moon, Shar's chief rival, and a one-third inheritor of Amaunator's power.
I feel berserker as the strongest warrior class is a funmode one time to try. Its so close as barbarian pc i enjoyed the game with my avanger party as branwen, kivan, xan, yeslick and imoen. My next stop will be wizard slayer if i get enough energy to play
I got into the series when the original BG2 was releasedand I much prefer the polish of the EE versions over the original. It's really to each his own.
Hi BelgarathMTH, I've reverted to BG1 after 3-4 years of EE editions of 1 & 2, and actually do not miss EE on the whole because recently I've wanted to play BG closer to what was intended by the original developers. EE is beautiful and the new areas enjoyable, but in general it seems "over the top".
The original can be set-up quite nicely: I use the widescreen mod at 800x600 (on a glorious 25" monitor that can switch to 4:3 from 16:9) as I like the detail and immersion. I use the GUI mod from http://athkatla.cob-bg.pl/viewtopic.php?t=3257 which makes the widescreen mod work better. I use BG1FixPack11.exe from Baldurdash. Lastly I increase the ammo stacks (only) to 40 with bg1tweaks-v5 (the other original stack sizes are fine) and make a few other cosmetic changes and vioila! The game looks great (not as good as EE for inventory items, though), is pretty-much debugged for my PC and basic party, is challenging, and runs smoothly too (Windows 8.1)!
I can't wait to get to BG2 (with 1PP - One Pixel Productions - of course).
Corrected: if you are multi-class then Imoen doesn't start with a Wand of Magic Missiles in BG original (single class PC = Imoen does start with a Wand of Magic Missiles, which is too easy if you know what it's useful for).
Downsides without EE or Tutu are several. You have to know where the "easter egg" containers are located (ctrl-L). Looting can be tedious but it is more immersive. Pathfinding takes some effort in narrow hallways, just take a couple of steps at a time and it's fine, or have some NPC's use ranged for the time being. For faster walking speed: set Maximum Frame Rate=33 or something higher. The game is un-paused in the inventory screen but that makes it more challenging during combat.
I agree that HOMM2 was great, it's faster-paced than HOMM3, but I still find myself booting-up HOMM3 (RoE and AB) on occasion. I still end up playing some Might and Magic VI and VII, as well, on occasion - absolute classic RPG's.
@James_M , Hi, nice to meet another person who appreciates the quirkiness and quaintness of the original game.
@Milo explained the wand thing earlier in the thread. If you play a multi-class, Imoen doesn't get a wand, but Khalid gets enough xp to be level two when you meet him. If you play a true class, Imoen gets her wand, but Khalid only has 42 xp. I confirmed this information by starting a true class after I had played with my original multi-class awhile. I'm not sure what the original devs' thinking was in programming it that way.
Some other differences between original and BG2/EE:
-Minsc doesn't have any dual wielding. In fact, dual wielding and other weapon styles don't exist. Minsc also doesn't have bow proficiency. He starts with two pips each in blunt weapons and large swords.
-There are no damage flags on enemies such as "injured, badly wounded, near death". There's no way at all to tell how badly hurt they are. I think this has the effect of increasing suspense and tension during combat, because if it's going badly, you don't know if you almost have dangerous enemies down, or if they can keep going all day and you need to retreat.
-Wands have no number of charges indicator on the icons. You have no idea how many wand charges you have left. This has the effect of discouraging wand cheese.
I was hit by a case of Nostaglia a month or so ago. I booted up mc gog cd copy and created a party. But....I stopped at Unclaster school. (I butchered the spelling I know) Because I've been spoilled by the ee's for so long that I can now only play those.
I though that I had experienced some of the same issues that you are talking about a few months ago, so I loaded up some old favorites of mine that I loved to play. Anyone remember the magic candle series? My favorite one was Bloodstone: An Epic Dwarven Tale. I loaded it up and found that I just couldn't get into it anymore. So I tried some of my other favorites, and just couldn't handle them. I tried playing ultima 7, which I had never played before, thinking that perhaps it was because I had played those other games to death. Nope, I just couldn't reignite that old feeling. I attribute it to my age, not the quality of the new games. From a functional and graphical point, here is no denying that the EE's are superior to their predecessors. Seeing as none of the original CONTENT has been changed (just minor things that us veterans nitpick about), how can it logically be said that the EE's aren't as good? It really is our nostalgia...and ultimately our age...showing. I think that the reason I couldn't get those old games to reignite the old feeling of wonder in me is because I am older now. I guess what I am trying to say is I understand how you feel and I feel the same way, @BelgarathMTH , but I don't think that it is the fault of the EE's, but rather with our perception in our current lives.
I am going through the same thing. I even tried to go back and play the vanilla versions. It didn't last. I enjoyed it at first and really had a good time about half way through the game but eventually the archaic design was too much. The EE editions or TUTU have rendered the originals almost unplayable in the long run.
I love M&M but I wouldn't consider them D&D style. Yes, it uses hit points and ability scores and stuff, but there really isn't as much role-playing to be had. M&M is also pretty casual. Wizardry 6-7-8 is the trilogy to shoot for if you want hardcore computer role-playing.
Lately I am going back to Icewind Dale, and I'm also enjoying Might and Magic X Legacy again. I also love the old Heroes of Might and Magic strategy games. The HoMM Chronicles on GoG is really good. It's like HoMM3 but just only linear sagas. I've got all the HoMM and M&M games. Really good stuff.
Nothing beats the Baldur's Gate saga, though. I mean nothing. It's the Michael Jordan of CRPGs. We talk about these other awesome games but I will always go back to the BG saga because it's like, "if I'm going to play this (some random CRPG), why not play that"? That being BG, something so much better than whatever CRPG I'm playing at the time.
I would say that the EEs are not meant to substitute the original games. To me, the main idea of the EEs is to revive the broader interest to IE games, to make it easier to run them on modern devices, to let play them on tablets. The original games are still there, for people who already have them and for those who manage to buy them nowadays (they are a part of the GoG.com offer for the EEs, though).
If they aren't meant to be substitutes for the original games, how come people can't buy the original games anymore? If people want to buy the classics now they can only get them IF they buy the EE versions.
As I said in the quoted part, the original games are still there, for people who already have them and for those who manage to buy them nowadays.
Whether to sell the original games or not, and in what ways, only the rightholder can define. Hasbro is the rightholder here. The decision has been made in terms of making the original games a part of the EEs for selling through GoG.com.
From a functional and graphical point, here is no denying that the EE's are superior to their predecessors.
I respectfully disagree about the EEs being graphically superior to the originals (but there's no denying they are from a functional standpoint.) They were graphically superior when they launched and employed the spiffy Catmull-Rom Bicubic filter for scaling; that is one of the best scaling algorithms available to preserve graphical fidelity and it introduces minimal blur upon zooming in/out from native resolution.
When SoD was released, that filter was ditched in favor of what looks like Bilinear--a significantly blurrier filter which I reckon was necessary to enable sprite outlines and highlighting. Then an option was implemented to "revert" to Nearest Neighbor (I'm using quotes because Nearest Neighbor had never been there before this option), which is odd for two reason: It looks much worse (more pixellated) than Catmull-Rom Bicubic, and it only applies to sprites while everything else remains scaled with Bilinear and stays therefore blurry (the effect is especially bad on selection circles imo, but backgrounds also suffer.)
I tried to run the original BG on my computer at 640x480 using my monitor's built-in scaler to make it bigger (and my monitor's built-in scaler is nothing to write home about) and to me it looks so much better.
With that said, I did write up a feature request on Redmine to implement Catmull-Rom Bicubic as an option that applies to everything (not just sprites.) If 2.04 brought that about, then I would agree again that the EEs are graphically superior (although I can't stand the blue UI in BG:EE, heh.)
The original sprites are really blocky and jagged though, They look much worse to my eyes. I also love and miss the blue stone UI. Graphics are probably the single most subjective aspect of games.
Comments
*EDIT* What patch do you play on? I do remember Neera being a lot dumber and the encounter being more difficult as a consequence on older patches.
If the wizard targets Neera with the flame arrow she's a goner. If she rushes into melee before you get the guards dead she's a goner. If that flame arrow gets targeted at Charname it's a game over if he or she is level one. It's often a game over if Neera knocks the whole party unconscious.
I've had her die multiple times during her recruitment encounter. I find it very hard to keep her alive long enough to recruit her when I want to.
The encounter was changed in one of the more recent patches. I know it was much easier and less likely to kill Neera in the older versions.
Btw, this is with SoD installed. That makes a difference in many encounters, in ways that were not intended.
I'm now playing on 'hard' difficulty and have SoD installed. All party members (and Neera) have survived the last few times at least. Do you have any good missile users? I always pelt the red wizard right out of the gate so he NEVER gets a spell off. Neera sometimes gets a color spray off but even when she takes out one of my companions it's no big deal.
Have you tried reorganizing your party formation so that your tank gets transported right next to the henchmen and red wizard?
I think my trouble with the encounter is partly due to my play style and my reactions to the encounter being something that the devs didn't anticipate. If there's a way to mess up dev intentions, certain subgroups of players will find it.
I just decided on today's play session that "If you can't beat them, join them", and I recruited Neera. But I was playing a half-orc berserker with 19-18-19 and rage activated, which pretty much amounts to an "I win" button in BG1.
Since I decided that I didn't need Minsc with me as a berserker, and therefore didn't need Dynaheir, I recruited both Neera and Rasaad. I actually like Rasaad, just not his class. He manages to convert me to Selune worship every time I start talking to him.
I had tried a shapeshifter/werewolf character earlier today and yesterday, and I've found that the min-maxed half-orc berserker makes a better werewolf than the actual werewolf. I just pretend my berserk button is a "wolf-out" button. Which also gives me a great roleplaying feel with Rasaad in my party as my spiritual advisor, especially since Selune is the goddess of good lycanthropes, in addition to being the goddess of the moon, Shar's chief rival, and a one-third inheritor of Amaunator's power.
Rest in peace, vanilla. And a long and prosperous future to EE.
I recently tried playing it on my new laptop, and well there was this graphical imcompatibility that running it in 3d has its screen very small and bordered with blackness. My graphic card was not easy to set up as 'stretch to full screen' and after trying some solutions online and failing, I went back to 2d mode and it looked horrible. I tried playing again starting in bg2, but I was waaay overboard with mods, and that bgt installation really required a pc that played out a modded to brim bg1 (dark side, northern side, greyclan, many other mods) to begin in bg2, so a newly created bg2 character had no luck in Irenicus Dungeon. So started in bg1 and immediately I saw glaring unbalance issues thanks to zillion mods, which is a thing for me in the past, but I never let it happen in my current ee games and I edit any sort of overpoweredness by dltcep and NI.
Sooo it did not work out, I returned to my ee installations, modded a bit and editted a bit to perfect it, and back to playing ee. I look at my bgt installation as my 'Old project' it was fun and great for me back then, not so much today.
Today I play ees on my Ipad, so 1.3 is still the way I roll. It is my project, that is ever developing, I edit everything with NI and dltcep even take assets, sound files and bams from my other IE games like iwd1, iwd2, etc. to make a perfect gaming experience for me. Modding and editting is half the fun. I took some item bam files from my iwd2 game and they look slick on my bg:ee on Ipad.
To me 2.0 loses a lot of charm thanks to UI changes, and I don't think to upgrade to it for a long time. I will need to install all my mods again and tweak and edit all over again, I just don't think it is worth it, for now. Maybe a few years later I will look back at my 1.3 installation and say 'what was I thinking?' who knows.
https://www.google.com.br/search?q=baldur's+gate+loading+screen&safe=off&espv=2&biw=1517&bih=708&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjz2NuaiJzPAhXEjpAKHa-6DgkQ_AUIBigB&dpr=0.9
Fixed it.
The original can be set-up quite nicely: I use the widescreen mod at 800x600 (on a glorious 25" monitor that can switch to 4:3 from 16:9) as I like the detail and immersion. I use the GUI mod from http://athkatla.cob-bg.pl/viewtopic.php?t=3257
which makes the widescreen mod work better. I use BG1FixPack11.exe from Baldurdash. Lastly I increase the ammo stacks (only) to 40 with bg1tweaks-v5 (the other original stack sizes are fine) and make a few other cosmetic changes and vioila! The game looks great (not as good as EE for inventory items, though), is pretty-much debugged for my PC and basic party, is challenging, and runs smoothly too (Windows 8.1)!
I can't wait to get to BG2 (with 1PP - One Pixel Productions - of course).
Corrected: if you are multi-class then Imoen doesn't start with a Wand of Magic Missiles in BG original (single class PC = Imoen does start with a Wand of Magic Missiles, which is too easy if you know what it's useful for).
Downsides without EE or Tutu are several. You have to know where the "easter egg" containers are located (ctrl-L). Looting can be tedious but it is more immersive. Pathfinding takes some effort in narrow hallways, just take a couple of steps at a time and it's fine, or have some NPC's use ranged for the time being. For faster walking speed: set Maximum Frame Rate=33 or something higher. The game is un-paused in the inventory screen but that makes it more challenging during combat.
I agree that HOMM2 was great, it's faster-paced than HOMM3, but I still find myself booting-up HOMM3 (RoE and AB) on occasion. I still end up playing some Might and Magic VI and VII, as well, on occasion - absolute classic RPG's.
@Milo explained the wand thing earlier in the thread. If you play a multi-class, Imoen doesn't get a wand, but Khalid gets enough xp to be level two when you meet him. If you play a true class, Imoen gets her wand, but Khalid only has 42 xp. I confirmed this information by starting a true class after I had played with my original multi-class awhile. I'm not sure what the original devs' thinking was in programming it that way.
Some other differences between original and BG2/EE:
-Minsc doesn't have any dual wielding. In fact, dual wielding and other weapon styles don't exist. Minsc also doesn't have bow proficiency. He starts with two pips each in blunt weapons and large swords.
-There are no damage flags on enemies such as "injured, badly wounded, near death". There's no way at all to tell how badly hurt they are. I think this has the effect of increasing suspense and tension during combat, because if it's going badly, you don't know if you almost have dangerous enemies down, or if they can keep going all day and you need to retreat.
-Wands have no number of charges indicator on the icons. You have no idea how many wand charges you have left. This has the effect of discouraging wand cheese.
Ah, you mean these:
Anyone remember the magic candle series? My favorite one was Bloodstone: An Epic Dwarven Tale. I loaded it up and found that I just couldn't get into it anymore. So I tried some of my other favorites, and just couldn't handle them. I tried playing ultima 7, which I had never played before, thinking that perhaps it was because I had played those other games to death. Nope, I just couldn't reignite that old feeling.
I attribute it to my age, not the quality of the new games. From a functional and graphical point, here is no denying that the EE's are superior to their predecessors. Seeing as none of the original CONTENT has been changed (just minor things that us veterans nitpick about), how can it logically be said that the EE's aren't as good? It really is our nostalgia...and ultimately our age...showing.
I think that the reason I couldn't get those old games to reignite the old feeling of wonder in me is because I am older now.
I guess what I am trying to say is I understand how you feel and I feel the same way, @BelgarathMTH , but I don't think that it is the fault of the EE's, but rather with our perception in our current lives.
I love M&M but I wouldn't consider them D&D style. Yes, it uses hit points and ability scores and stuff, but there really isn't as much role-playing to be had. M&M is also pretty casual. Wizardry 6-7-8 is the trilogy to shoot for if you want hardcore computer role-playing.
Lately I am going back to Icewind Dale, and I'm also enjoying Might and Magic X Legacy again. I also love the old Heroes of Might and Magic strategy games. The HoMM Chronicles on GoG is really good. It's like HoMM3 but just only linear sagas. I've got all the HoMM and M&M games. Really good stuff.
Nothing beats the Baldur's Gate saga, though. I mean nothing. It's the Michael Jordan of CRPGs. We talk about these other awesome games but I will always go back to the BG saga because it's like, "if I'm going to play this (some random CRPG), why not play that"? That being BG, something so much better than whatever CRPG I'm playing at the time.
Whether to sell the original games or not, and in what ways, only the rightholder can define. Hasbro is the rightholder here. The decision has been made in terms of making the original games a part of the EEs for selling through GoG.com.
When SoD was released, that filter was ditched in favor of what looks like Bilinear--a significantly blurrier filter which I reckon was necessary to enable sprite outlines and highlighting. Then an option was implemented to "revert" to Nearest Neighbor (I'm using quotes because Nearest Neighbor had never been there before this option), which is odd for two reason: It looks much worse (more pixellated) than Catmull-Rom Bicubic, and it only applies to sprites while everything else remains scaled with Bilinear and stays therefore blurry (the effect is especially bad on selection circles imo, but backgrounds also suffer.)
I tried to run the original BG on my computer at 640x480 using my monitor's built-in scaler to make it bigger (and my monitor's built-in scaler is nothing to write home about) and to me it looks so much better.
With that said, I did write up a feature request on Redmine to implement Catmull-Rom Bicubic as an option that applies to everything (not just sprites.) If 2.04 brought that about, then I would agree again that the EEs are graphically superior (although I can't stand the blue UI in BG:EE, heh.)