Baldur's Gate & Baldur's Gate II Mod Thread

[Somberlain]

If my als hasn't kicked-in yet, the ring is not at waukeen's promenade.

Spoiler

The quest for finding the ring begins at waukeen's promenade with one of the three merchants above the inn. A halfing near the entrance of the bridge district has the actual ring.

Nope, it's dropped by the boss in circus tent. The quest with the bookkeeper merchant is from Unfinished Business or Quest Pack mod, can't remember which. Also, the mod quest involved Friends scrolls instead of the ring, IIRC.

 

[Lilura]

The ring that sets your Cha to 18 is dropped by the Circus Tent gnome, yes.

If you want to wield a katana and cast arcane spells then you either have to be a dual or multi-class fighter/mage, or be a thief with Use Any Item HLA.

For the dual minimal fighter lvl required is second level (BG1 only - though the proficiency is "Large Swords", reassigned to katana on importation to BG2); best level to dual for most people in BG2 is 7 or 9; optimum power-gaming dual level is 13.

 

[Melcar]

Can't regular Thieves use Katanas? In IWD they can.

 

[deranged]

Nope, it's dropped by the boss in circus tent. The quest with the bookkeeper merchant is from Unfinished Business or Quest Pack mod, can't remember which. Also, the mod quest involved Friends scrolls instead of the ring, IIRC.

Yes you are right. I stand corrected.

*I just checked it, it's from the quest pack mod, the 'Burglary of the bookkeeper' component and you have the option of giving the ring of human influence to the Halfling, who has been stealing the scrolls...

 

[Sykar]

Yeah, the two bonus merchants were originally from the bonus CD. The shield is basically a purge Beholders for free card and the Robe of Vecna is the most overpowered piece of magjifick in the game since it decreases your spell casting time. The helmet that allows you to cast Simulacrum is also really good, and the Mercykiller ring can be nice early on for thieves. Weird thing is that they even threw in Dak'kon's zerth blade, despite the important fact that only he could wield it. It's like they didn't even bother to play Planetscape: Tournament to find that out.

There are mods which move or remove these items. My favorite one gives the Robe of Vecna to a pretty nasty Lich...

 

[GloomFrost]

Does anyone know, have they fixed all the bugs in BG2 EE yet?? Coz most of people i know tell me not to bother with it, That vanilla BG2 plus some mods like unfinished business is still a lot better. I just want to check out new party members and quests (well and kill time before POE).

 

[Surf Solar]

I killed the illusionist gnome and the ring was definitely not there. Eh I dont care much, as already said its munchkinism

GloomFrost - as said i am playing the EE right now, for about 6 h. Finished the circus tent, copper coronet slavers, the slaver ship and the de Arnise siege with not a single bug so far. I believe they just moved that darn ring haha.
Latest patch for the game came out in december, so it was pretty recent with an extensive list of fixes.

Only new party member I found so far is a chick in the copper coronet with horrible voice acting - the dialogue is ok but my god the voice sounds like crap.

 

[Tigranes]

BGT with SCS & some other mods run, now returned to Athkatla. Was on an Insane 4-party run but at Spellhold opted to delete huge chunks from party XP and go down to Core for a while. Party was leveling up too fast and I wanted to enjoy each level of combat. Still without 8th level spells, though now XP wise I'm catching up.

Adalon can be pretty annoying with her bypass-everything super cold breath attack, it definitely bypasses Mislead and Globe, perhaps Protection from Energy would have worked but didn't even have 7th level spells until I killed her and Edwin got a level up. So it became an exercise in keeping the spellcasters out of sight range (which, with other party members and summons, is again based on intuition). Main plan was nothing special, Anomen gates in a demon as initial fodder, Edwin and PC goes in with Lower Resistance & Breach/Pierce Magic, Korgan drugged on potions goes in with extra summons. Flame strike, flame arrows, killing blow a magic missile for kicks.

Ironically the drow wizard at the exit gave me far more trouble, seemed to have multiple sequencers rammed up the arse, some power words and a time stop to boot.

 

[deranged]

I killed the illusionist gnome and the ring was definitely not there. Eh I dont care much, as already said its munchkinism

According to the wiki it should.
http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Ring_of_Human_Influence

However, as Somberlain mentioned above, some mod probably changes this.

 

[Stokowski]

That, and I am also having a hard time to come up with a class that is able to have weapon proficency in Katanas and is able to cast spells of level 4 and higher. Multiclass maybe?

If you want to wield a katana and cast arcane spells then you either have to be a dual or multi-class fighter/mage, or be a thief with Use Any Item HLA.

*cough* Bard (esp. Blade Kit)

 

[GloomFrost]

Does anyone know, have they fixed all the bugs in BG2 EE yet?? Coz most of people i know tell me not to bother with it, That vanilla BG2 plus some mods like unfinished business is still a lot better. I just want to check out new party members and quests (well and kill time before POE).

The vast majority of bugs are fixed (I didn't encounter any in my playthrough). No way in hell should you check out the new NPCs/Quests though.

Ok thanx. Are they really that bad?? Will not even bother with it then.

 

[Somberlain]

Well, they are kind of a mixed bag. Writing and stories of the characters range from bad to meh, but some of their quests are really fun gameplay wise, especially if you use SCS. Neera's quests involve fighting a lot of mages, some of which can actually be somewhat tough (there's a way to making one of her hardest fight in SoA a lot easier, though). Dorn's ToB quest involves

Spoiler

fighting two Silver Dragons at the same time,

which was awesome.

So, if you don't mind the bad writing, they are worth it. It's not like the original game had glorious writing and characters anyway, so I didn't really mind. The biggest problem for me was that the new quests are tied to the new characters, so you have to bring them with you, if you want to complete the quests. Luckily, you can do their quests almost immediately, so you don't need to keep the new characters around for too long, if you don't want. Hexxat's SoA quests require you to wait for an in-game week between the quests, which can be fixed with repeated resting, and Dorn's SoA quest requires him to be level 12, which might take some time, but he was the only new NPC I actually wanted in the party, so it didn't matter.

 

[deranged]

I recently finished IWD:EE and BG:EE and I don't see myself going back to the vanilla IE engine + mods. The new NPCs are terrible and cheesy, true, but the zoom option plus the ability to see what each character is doing at all times (small icon top right of the portrait) make these games so much better, is not even a question for me anymore. You may also want to avoid the new classes, for balance reasons.

 

[agris]

BGT with SCS & some other mods run, now returned to Athkatla. Was on an Insane 4-party run but at Spellhold opted to delete huge chunks from party XP and go down to Core for a while.

In case you or others don't know this, you can play with all difficulty-dependent spawns and AI (AI only valid for SCS and a few other mods iirc, not vanilla), while retaining the core game mechanics, using The Bigg Tweak Pack.

Improved Difficulty System


This component has no effect on an unmodded game, it only makes sense with mods that add smarter enemies according to the difficulty level (EG Ding0's Quest Pack, Oversight).
This component (based on an idea originally contained in the RtW mod) allows you to set the difficulty level to be different from the one set in the slider. This allows you to get more intelligent enemies, while not getting 200% damage.
The difficulty is set via a dialogue with Ggib Eht; if you later want to change your difficulty level, you can either activate the AI, choose your character, and press the 'k' key, or use directly the "RTWMyDifficulty","Global" variable (1=easiest, 5=hardest).

For BGT games I forget if the BG1 level spawns are affected by the Difficulty, like in vanilla BG1. When using SCS in conjunction with The Bigg's tweaks to set the difficulty to insane, it forces SCS to use it's most advanced AI.

There are also mods that address XP bloat with more/harder spawns, like Ding0's Experience Fixer (DEF JAM). Personally, I use the monster XP component because it's the most robust.

Split into 3 separate sections (creature XP, skill XP and quest XP), you can choose the new XP rate for each component irrespective of the others. Choices vary from 10% to 75% of the original XP. Who knows. Maybe 10% XP rewards would provide a challenging alternative to Tactics-type mods.

While DEF JAM has a skill XP component, I prefer aTweak's Improved XP rewards from locks, traps, and scrolls.

Improved XP rewards from locks, traps and scrolls
This component has two subcomponent. The first subcomponent alters the XP rewards from picking locks, disarming traps and scribing scrolls to be lower than the vanilla BG2 values. The rewards start out small and increase as the thief gains levels, or with higher spell levels. The new XP rewards are summarised tables 2 and 3. The second subcomponent removes the XP rewards for picking locks, disarming traps and scribing scrolls.

Table 2: XP rewards for picking locks and disarming traps.
Thief Level Picking Lock Disarming Trap
1 20 50
3 50 100
6 100 200
9 200 400
11 300 600
13 400 800
16 500 1000

Table 3: XP rewards for scribing scrolls.
Spell Level Scribing Scroll
1 50
2 100
3 200
4 500
5 1000
6 3000
7 5000
8 7000
9 9000

Dialing the XP back in a reasonable manner is a great way to increase the difficulty by fighting the hardest spawns with the best AI, while dialing back the XP and PC's power curve. Rather than turning enemies up to 11 and using consummate cheesy gear, you dial yourself down and really appreciate the vanilla items and quest XP rewards.

Note: I have no idea how these components play with the EEs.

 

[Somberlain]

aTweaks works with all the Enhanced Editions. The author currently works for Beamdog, actually.

 

[Surf Solar]

Is there a mod that disables party members fighting each other? I remember I had one like that to let me have Viconia and that Paladin in the same party without infighting.
Yeah yeah I know popamole etc. but I already have a party combination in mind and don't want to have that faggot cleric in my party.

 

[Somberlain]

BG2 Tweaks has components that disable NPCs fighting each other, leaving for too high/low reputation etc.

 

[Surf Solar]

BG2 Tweaks has components that disable NPCs fighting each other, leaving for too high/low reputation etc.

Thank you, exactly what I was looking for!

 

[Gragt]

Kinda dreading to go there because I hate Aeries whining with a passion.

Her whining isn’t as bad and she makes up for it with her capacity to cast a ridiculous amount of spells per day.

Is there a mod that disables party members fighting each other? I remember I had one like that to let me have Viconia and that Paladin in the same party without infighting.
Yeah yeah I know popamole etc. but I already have a party combination in mind and don't want to have that faggot cleric in my party.

You have no honour, like a woman.

For all their flaws Bioware did a lot of things right with BG2, and one of them is the relationships between party members: some of them just hate each other and will eventually come to blows if forced to spend too much time together. While annoying when planning your party, the fact that they can act outside of your control helps to give them a bit of personality, especially when compared to Bioware’s next games where everybody stays together and can’t be killed outside of some special events.

 

[Tigranes]

Aerie whines harder than a chorus of fourteen year olds having their first PMS. Her voice actor did a great job capturing her utter brainlessness.

 

[octavius]

I love Aerie's "oh my!" when doing a critical. Only reason I kept her in the party.

 

[Surf Solar]

Kinda dreading to go there because I hate Aeries whining with a passion.

Her whining isn’t as bad and she makes up for it with her capacity to cast a ridiculous amount of spells per day.

Is there a mod that disables party members fighting each other? I remember I had one like that to let me have Viconia and that Paladin in the same party without infighting.
Yeah yeah I know popamole etc. but I already have a party combination in mind and don't want to have that faggot cleric in my party.

You have no honour, like a woman.

For all their flaws Bioware did a lot of things right with BG2, and one of them is the relationships between party members: some of them just hate each other and will eventually come to blows if forced to spend too much time together. While annoying when planning your party, the fact that they can act outside of your control helps to give them a bit of personality, especially when compared to Bioware’s next games where everybody stays together and can’t be killed outside of some special events.

While this is true, I am mainly replaying the game because of the combat that I enjoy in the game since I already know the story, the npc history and such - and infighting hinders that aspect a bit. Also, replaying the game, I am amazed at just how much content there is in this game. It is really huge. Hats of to the creators.

 

[Gragt]

[…] and infighting hinders that aspect a bit.

You might as well create a multiplayer party then since that will allow you to control their creation and nobody will ever complain or leave you. I still find it regretable to get rid of one of the few bits of C&C the game offers, but to each his own.

Anyway, I’m wondering who will be my last party member. I’m currently going for Minsc, Valygar, Yoshimo/Imoen, and Aerie, with a Cavalier protagonist, and I wonder whether to pick up Keldorn or Viconia. My guess is that I already got the divine spellcasting covered with Aerie, and Keldorn will have more staying power plus his ridiculous Inquisitor abilities and Carsomyr, while Viconia will progress faster but that’s about it—her innate magic resistance is nice but won’t save her much. I’m leaning towards Keldorn but Viconia getting into a fight with everyone can liven things up, plus she can bring more ridiculous high-level divine spells in the later parts. I guess I’ll figure it out.

 

[Murk]

Viconia is useful but you'll have to get her a STR mod weapon, like that mace or a belt of giant's str or something cuz her carrying weight and inability to use certain gear is a bit of an issue. Keldorn is, numerically, great but if you are into storyline completion then the 'best' ending has him leave your party. First few times I went that route and immediately regretted it. Later playthroughs I'd skip his side story outright.

I actually found Cernd to be quite useful as a priest because of his 18 wis, tho you'd have to toggle phases basically. After a while, you can afford to have him be in wolf form during combat then switch him to human form to cast/buff/heal, then wolf it up again -- early on, this is not as easy to do.

 

[Gragt]

Let him retire to spend time with his family when there is evil afoot? Are ye daft, man?

Also it’s only one dialog choice with no other consequences than having him stay in the party or leave forever. If something else came out of it, it’d be worth discussing, but here….