NPC Banter & certain enemy frequencies lacking/missing
Divina
Member Posts: 26
Hi. First of all thank you Beamdog for bringing back all of our old favorites and (hopefully) more to come in the future. Really, it's a pleasure to be able to play them again.
I made an account specifically to bring something to your attention: The latest EE edition of BG1 on Steam has zero NPC banter. I am very much aware that only specific combinations of party members produce banter but I am playing with my original party and I distinctly remember Jaheira and Khalid having at least a few instances of banter among themselves, which at the time I had played BGII originally made my waking up to find (SPOILER ALERT) only Jaheira alive particularly painful as their banter had cemented their relationship as emotionally impactful. I also do seem to remember Imoen having some banter with my CHARNAME but I could be wrong about that, memories are a bit hazy on that front. I do not expect any more banter from my other NPCs cause they are Kivan and Branwen and I never remember them saying anything to anyone.
The fact that I have had no banter this time around has really taken away from the experience of the game from me, though this game is still better than no game at all... Would be really nice to know *why* this has happened? I checked around on the forums a bit and it seems someone else had the same complaint but somehow for him banter somehow started eventually. For me it is evident that it will not, because I am about to finish the game. I just really hope that BGII will be different...
Being in the final chapter brings me to the second problem. This EE edition has had something else missing: I have not come across as many "powerful" encounters as in my original playthrough, which means that I have not hit my level-cap despite having gone through the ToSC expansion as well as taken every single quest. What is missing? Basically the random fights with winterwolves, powerful spiders, worgs, vampiric wolves etc. Random spawns have overwhelmingly been gibberlings, hobgoblins and skeletons...
It would be nice to get an explanation at least on the banter part of the message. As for the encounters, I thought perhaps it was done intentionally to space out enough xp to be gained at Dragonspear without it quickly becoming meaningless if levelcapped too early before moving on to BGII.
Thanks for reading the (long) message.
I made an account specifically to bring something to your attention: The latest EE edition of BG1 on Steam has zero NPC banter. I am very much aware that only specific combinations of party members produce banter but I am playing with my original party and I distinctly remember Jaheira and Khalid having at least a few instances of banter among themselves, which at the time I had played BGII originally made my waking up to find (SPOILER ALERT) only Jaheira alive particularly painful as their banter had cemented their relationship as emotionally impactful. I also do seem to remember Imoen having some banter with my CHARNAME but I could be wrong about that, memories are a bit hazy on that front. I do not expect any more banter from my other NPCs cause they are Kivan and Branwen and I never remember them saying anything to anyone.
The fact that I have had no banter this time around has really taken away from the experience of the game from me, though this game is still better than no game at all... Would be really nice to know *why* this has happened? I checked around on the forums a bit and it seems someone else had the same complaint but somehow for him banter somehow started eventually. For me it is evident that it will not, because I am about to finish the game. I just really hope that BGII will be different...
Being in the final chapter brings me to the second problem. This EE edition has had something else missing: I have not come across as many "powerful" encounters as in my original playthrough, which means that I have not hit my level-cap despite having gone through the ToSC expansion as well as taken every single quest. What is missing? Basically the random fights with winterwolves, powerful spiders, worgs, vampiric wolves etc. Random spawns have overwhelmingly been gibberlings, hobgoblins and skeletons...
It would be nice to get an explanation at least on the banter part of the message. As for the encounters, I thought perhaps it was done intentionally to space out enough xp to be gained at Dragonspear without it quickly becoming meaningless if levelcapped too early before moving on to BGII.
Thanks for reading the (long) message.
0
Comments
Also, did you play with any mods installed?
(For example, because of the mod BG1NPC Imoen is quite chatty with you, so if you had that installed on previous games, it is quite a difference with the unmodded version).
Also, could you attach a save game so people could have a look at it? It might be that somehow something went wrong and you're not seeing any banter because of that. The people on this forum are quite adept at figuring that out from your save game (zip the whole folder of the save).
As for a save file, I have moved on to SoD after completing BG1 now, so it is a bit pointless unless anyone from Beamdog really needs one for future bugfixing.
As for SoD, I am currently happy because banter is ALIVE
Jaheira and Khalid have banter among themselves, and Imoen talks to the main character in BG1 if you use the mod http://www.gibberlings3.net/bg1npc/. What you remember from the past is most likely you playing BG1 with that mod. BG:EE doesn't include the BG1NPC mod by default.
Also, the Unfinished Business is a mod as well, and Prism didn't complete his statue even in the vanilla, - it's this mod that addresses the Prism issue. BG:EE doesn't include the Unfinished Business by default.
The type of a random group of monsters spawning depends on the location. You can get the vampiric wolf spawning on the area just north to Nashkel, even on the 1st level. Winterwolves usually spawn in south and south-west regions of BG1. Worgs spawn in a lot of places. Spiders spawn in "forest" areas. Remember, these are random spawns, so you may play the game and don't get them (unless you come to the same place again and again).
For the banter, yes, you may be right. Though I do not remember ever modding the original (I do remember clearly modding BGII) this mod sounds too close to what I remember for it to not be so.
As for the enemies, yes, I know about the fact that they are location dependent. This is not my first playthrough. I have played BG1 3 times before, and this was my 4th playthrough - but first time with EE. What I am talking about is their spawn rates within those areas. I guess I just didn't get enough hard enemies this time around. I was a bit shocked through my playthrough tbh because I kept expecting all these enemies and kept getting weaklings -_-;
In respect of spawns, if you have previously used EasyTutu for example the number of creatures per spawn will be different with for example groups of six gibberlings. EE reflects the original game and has smaller groups to start.
As for easytutu, no I can say with some confidence that I have not used it. I see it was released in 2006 and 2006-2012 were 6 dead years for gaming for me as I was studying at the uni. So no time for PC games just getting my gaming itch scratched with Nintendo more casually.