Top 10 MOST PLAYED mods for the Baldur's Gate series (NOT the best mods)
Alonso
Member Posts: 806
My goal with this thread is to create a list of the ten or so most played mods for the Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition series, with a short description of each in plain English. I have read hundreds of threads about mods, but I miss one that gives a general view of the main mods available. Most threads discuss one particular mod in painful technical detail full of acronyms. Others have lists of mods, even lists of recommended mods, but they just give you the names and say nothing about what they do.
This thread aims to be helpful to anyone interested in mods, but specially for those who, like myself, want to start using mods and want to have a general picture of the main options available. The general consensus is that it's best to avoid mods when you play the game for the first time. Therefore, this thread assumes that you have already enjoyed quite a few hours of the unmodded game. Having said that, it's worth noting that some features, like Tweaks' unlimited stacks of arrows, can make the game more enjoyable even for new players without detracting in any way from the unmodded experience.
So let's create an easy to understand "Top 10 most played mods". Please bear in mind that this is NOT about what mods are the "best", since that is subjective and there would never be an agreement. It's just about the most played. I start with Stratagems:
Sword Coast Stratagems
This seems to be THE mod. It is a huge improvement to the artificial intelligence of the game. It makes the game much more challenging and interesting by making the enemies smarter. Apart from that, it offers very nice tweaks, like casting Stoneskin or Melf Minute Meteors automatically after you rest. It affects spell and proficiency choices, kits, and high-level abilities. It affects the AI of practically every creature in the game, though in most cases without significantly affecting their core abilities. Its documentation explains in detail all the options available.
The Tweaks Anthology
The Tweaks Anthology changes several aspects of the game without adding new content. Whether each change improves the game or not is largely a matter of personal preference. You can select each "tweak" individually, and with so many of them available, you're definitely going to find a few that fit your taste. While this is certainly not a "must have mod", installing it seems like a good idea for almost everybody. It has nice and detailed documentation to help you choose your preferred tweaks.
Some highlights:
Ascension
Ascension is the work of David Gaider, one of the original designers of Baldur's Gate. Gaider felt that Throne of Bhaal needed more deveolpment time to be fully realized and he created this mod in his own time to fulfill the vision he had for the game. Ascension changes the end of the Throne of Bhaal expansion to feature extended roleplaying and tactical opportunities, and a much better final battle. According to Gaider it makes the ending to Throne of Bhaal longer, more fun and more fulfilling.
I will try to edit this first post regularly until it grows into something useful. Gentlemen, I'm eager to get your feedback.
This thread aims to be helpful to anyone interested in mods, but specially for those who, like myself, want to start using mods and want to have a general picture of the main options available. The general consensus is that it's best to avoid mods when you play the game for the first time. Therefore, this thread assumes that you have already enjoyed quite a few hours of the unmodded game. Having said that, it's worth noting that some features, like Tweaks' unlimited stacks of arrows, can make the game more enjoyable even for new players without detracting in any way from the unmodded experience.
So let's create an easy to understand "Top 10 most played mods". Please bear in mind that this is NOT about what mods are the "best", since that is subjective and there would never be an agreement. It's just about the most played. I start with Stratagems:
Sword Coast Stratagems
This seems to be THE mod. It is a huge improvement to the artificial intelligence of the game. It makes the game much more challenging and interesting by making the enemies smarter. Apart from that, it offers very nice tweaks, like casting Stoneskin or Melf Minute Meteors automatically after you rest. It affects spell and proficiency choices, kits, and high-level abilities. It affects the AI of practically every creature in the game, though in most cases without significantly affecting their core abilities. Its documentation explains in detail all the options available.
The Tweaks Anthology
The Tweaks Anthology changes several aspects of the game without adding new content. Whether each change improves the game or not is largely a matter of personal preference. You can select each "tweak" individually, and with so many of them available, you're definitely going to find a few that fit your taste. While this is certainly not a "must have mod", installing it seems like a good idea for almost everybody. It has nice and detailed documentation to help you choose your preferred tweaks.
Some highlights:
- Removing "you must gather your party..." audio. What a relief!
- Adding bags of holding, which help a lot with inventory management.
- Unlimited ammo stacking. Another improvement on the inventory management.
Ascension
Ascension is the work of David Gaider, one of the original designers of Baldur's Gate. Gaider felt that Throne of Bhaal needed more deveolpment time to be fully realized and he created this mod in his own time to fulfill the vision he had for the game. Ascension changes the end of the Throne of Bhaal expansion to feature extended roleplaying and tactical opportunities, and a much better final battle. According to Gaider it makes the ending to Throne of Bhaal longer, more fun and more fulfilling.
I will try to edit this first post regularly until it grows into something useful. Gentlemen, I'm eager to get your feedback.
Post edited by Alonso on
3
Comments
Anyway, moving on.
Tweaks
Tweaks changes several aspects of the game without adding new content. Whether each change improves the game or not is largely a matter of personal preference. You can select each "tweak" individually, and with so many of them available, you're definitely going to find a few that fit your taste. While this is certainly not a "must have mod", installing it seems like a good idea for almost everybody. It has nice and detailed documentation to help you choose your preferred tweaks.
Some personal highlights would be:
- Removing "you must gather your party..." audio. What a relief!
- Adding bags of holding, which helps a lot with inventory management.
- Unlimited ammo stacking. Another improvement on the inventory management.
It's worth noting that in the past it did include some essential tweaks, like the one which prevents you from being attacked when you're in the middle of a dialog. Probably that's why it has been and, to some extent, still is so popular. However, these "must have" tweaks and fixes have already been incorporated into the Enhanced Edition, so it's not a must have anymore.While sure, brief summaries of each mod are nice and all, I feel like most mods are pretty good at describing what they offer in their own readmes or descriptions.
I'm afraid that's not the case. As I said, the other goal of this thread is to provide descriptions in plain English. This is from the first line of the description of Tweaks: "The BG2 Tweak Pack is a WeiDU compilation of..." WeiDU? What on earth is that? (Rhetorical question, just in case). After half an hour ploughing through very technical and arcane documentation, I realized that it would take me hours just to understand the meaning of that word, and I probably didn't need to understand it anyway. And still, it is in the first sentence of the documentation of one of the most popular mods. That kind of arcane documentation is what led me to create this thread. You're optimistic, my friend. I like that. I would certainly love to see the list grow beyond 10. That's exactly what this thread is not about: Installed mod lists, interoperability, combinations that others haven't tried... There are zillions of threads about that, and, as far as I know, no thread like this one. This thread is about: simple, popular, newbie friendly, plain English. Words with more than three syllables are not allowed
Weimer's Item Upgrade: Always helped giving more options. Loved the idea of recipes, after all.
Honourable mention: Ruad. If it had EE compatibility of any kind, I'd use that too, for the same purpose. (And also because I helped come up with ideas for it back in the day.)
Pocket Plane's / IEP Banter Packs: More banters are always good, and these were well-written enough for me.
Kelsey NPC: I rarely bring him in the party for long, but he fits in too well not to have him float around in game. Xan gets an honourable mention here, too.
Rogue Rebalancing: I always brought this in for the basic kit adjustments, and the thief shop.
Honourable mention here goes to the expanded Thief Stronghold. Had its issues, but it was nice all-around. Would love to see an EE upgrade sometime.
Unfinished Business / Quest Pack: The PPG versions, if another version exists somewhere. Except for the Missing Boo quest. I don't use that anymore. There used to be part of that quest that sent you to the trolls in the Druid Grove, but I never liked forced travel like that. Nitpicky me!
And obviously, SCS and Tweak packs for some things that really needed changing. Just played SCS's improved Abazigal dungeon for the first time, and loved the changes there.
After trying out some of the bigger ones like Dark Horizons and Dark Side of the Sword Coast, I have to say they are pretty lackluster and completely unbalanced. The ones I keep are Stratagems, though I can't seem to install all of the features, Mini Quests and Encounters, Unfinished Business and Darkdogg's Caina NPC.
In this list SCS, for instance, doesn't even make the top 10. Does it really mean that it is not one of the top 10 most played mods? Or does it just mean that there are a dozen other servers from which people download it, thus making this list meaningless?
I've tried to install SCS on several occasions but get an error message every time - which is no use at all to someone like me who doesn't speak Computerish.
Moreover, mods hosted on GitHub or similar platforms are difficult to count as there are several different options how to download them. The nature of version control systems (such as Git) makes it impossible to do a meaningful count anyway.
Imoen Romance XD I actually have no idea if this mod is popular or not, all I know is it's really really good.
Regarding the installation of SCS, it seems quite straightforward to me. Only problem is... it doesn't support v2.0+
On the other hand, it’s the first time I hear about these: Caina and Kelsey NPCs, Weimer's Item Upgrade, Ruad, Imoen Romance. So they might not fit the category. Of course, corrections are most appreciated if I got this wrong.
In the EEs I don't use mods, with the exeption of Distinguishable Clubs because I hate the lack different pictures for the weapons.
Ascension
The Ascension mod makes the end of the Throne of Bhaal expansion longer (more fun) and a little more fulfilling, featuring extended roleplaying and tactical opportunities. It shows off what the Infinity Engine can do when stretched to its limit and offers a bit more bite to Throne of Bhaal's climax. It was written by one of the original developers of the game.Regarding the other mods you mention, they sound interesting, but it doesn't look like they are among the most played currently.