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Baldur's Gate It's 2018. This is my first thread. I'm going to play BG2 for the first time.

sser

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
1,866,661
Go with others are saying and just play it without mods or read ups. There's no need to min-max or do any of that on a first playthrough. The game has an insane amount of content to chop through and it's best to do just find it all on your own.
 

RapineDel

Augur
Joined
Jan 11, 2017
Messages
423
There's zero reason to reading up or modding. Plenty of people picked it up and were more then fine without having to essentially walkthrough the game when it released, why can't the same be done now? Any adjustments or advice are just going to ruin the experience of going in blind, you'll see room for improvement as you learn the game and you can save all that for another play through.
 
Joined
May 4, 2017
Messages
629
Depending on the version you've used, all I recommend is just Wheels of Prophecy for ToB

and fixpack if you use the original version

The end.
 

Servo

Arcane
Joined
Aug 7, 2013
Messages
1,479
Location
1988
You need quite a few, most are lore friendly/enhance vanilla.
- TOB patch
- BG2 fixpack
- TOB fixpack
- Refinements ( for better high level classes/abilities)
- Ascension ( for better ending/villain battles+ one alteration)
- Virtue ( for better morality/reputation system)
- Sword Coast stratagems ( mostly AI)
- Spell revisions ( rebalances and improves most spells)
- Item revisions ( the same for gear)
- Banter packs ( adds a lot of lore friendly, good companion dialogue)
- Unfinished business ( restores some quests)
- Quest pack+G3 anniversary ( adds some fun content)
- Atweaks+BG2 tweaks
- Phaere ports ( really good alt portraits for followers)
- 1PPV410 ( this changes/improves paperdolls or something)

General order: Install first patches, then fixpacks, Refinements, Ascension, everything else, and then as Last any major/comprehensive tweaks ( Atweaks, BG2 tweaks, or something similar)

You can try a few companion mods, but they are not essential. ( usually Keto and Kelsey are considered best)

Seriously? You'd recommend all those for a first timer?

Just play the game unmodded. Mods are completely unnecessary and make reinstalling the game a pain if you ever need to.
 
Last edited:

Mustawd

Guest
I'd suck 3 dicks for a TB mod for this game.

There’s a ToEE total conversion mod for IWD in development by one of the Co8 modders if you’re interested. IIRC there is a thread here with a demo of the first IWD village.
 

MilesBeyond

Cipher
Joined
May 15, 2015
Messages
716
Okay booted up BG2EE for the first time last night. Holy crap. There is one huge reason to get the EEs and that is moddability. The latest SCS release for EE is fantastic. First, it allows the option for integrating spells from Icewind Dale. This isn't anything new, as other mods have done this for eons. What is new is that SCS teaches the AI to use them and use them effectively - mods like IWDification, while awesome, effectively just gave you a larger arsenal that you could use against the enemy. I don't know that this is only possible with the EE, but given that it only came about recently, it seems like it's at least much easier to do with the EE.

Bigger than that, though, is the interface changes. SCS is now directly integrated into the game itself: The in-game difficulty slider now impacts which SCS options are in use (for example, how high the slider is determines how many short-duration spells enemy mages get up for free, and when enemy mages start getting access to HLAs), and there's an in-game interface that allows you to fine-tune all the options yourself (for example, if you want high-level mages in SoA to have access to HLAs, but you don't want mages to be able to go into battle with protective spells already up).

Beyond that, the SCS Ease-of-use Party AI now replaces Beamdog's Advanced AI setting, and again, not only allows for more customization than before, but allows you to change options on the fly, instead of having to reinstall or dig into Weidu.

For the first time I'm actually excited about the BG EEs. What modders are able to do now is a lot more interesting than the already incredible stuff they were doing with the base games, and they seem to have a lot more access to things that used to be either hardcoded or just too much of a pain to work with.

Oh, also I discovered another QoL feature that I appreciate a lot - smart switching between hands. So for example you can let Minsc have a two-handed sword and a longbow and a weapon equipped in the off-hand. If you switch to a 1-handed weapon in the main hand, he'll suddenly be dual-wielding. Then switch back to a 2-handed weapon and he's not. It makes your characters feel a lot more flexible - technically it doesn't actually change anything, but digging into the inventory to swap around weapon slots every time you want your dualwielder or sword-and-boarder to use a bow can be pretty inconvenient.

It also has smart spell slots: If a caster loses spell slots for any reason (level drain, unequipping an item that grants spell slots), the game will remember what was in those slots when you gain them back. They won't be actually memorized, of course, you'll have to rest again for that. But it's actually a huge convenience. My least favourite part of fighting level-draining enemies was that if they got a couple of hits on my spellcasters, after I'd restored the level drain I'd have to spend a good five minutes retooling everyone's spell slots. This was especially an issue with SCS when you'd go up against things like the improved Shadow Dragon who could drain levels with her breath attack and dispel Negative Plane Protection.

So I'm going to say something I never thought I'd say: I recommend getting the EEs. Beamdog's new content still mostly ranges from "mediocre" to "hot garbage," but the bugs are almost entirely sorted out, the QoL improvements are real nice, and most importantly, the modding is even better than before.

DISCLAIMER: You have to use EETool to install mods for EE. EE doesn't always play well with direct WEIDU installation and BWS is no longer being supported. This is actually the reason why I only just found out about the SCS changes - I was using BWS up until last night which only had older versions of SCS, that was essentially the same mod as the one for classic versions, just ported over.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,885
Does all that work for BG1EE as well? Spells from IWD make Druids playable in Bg1 and I love druids. Also having enemy druids be more dangerous sounds good.

Also I hope SCS modders do something like that for SoD, I would love to play through it again without needing to use Insane difficulty that added too many enemies into battles in addition to making them smarter
 

MilesBeyond

Cipher
Joined
May 15, 2015
Messages
716
Does all that work for BG1EE as well? Spells from IWD make Druids playable in Bg1 and I love druids. Also having enemy druids be more dangerous sounds good.

Also I hope SCS modders do something like that for SoD, I would love to play through it again without needing to use Insane difficulty that added too many enemies into battles in addition to making them smarter

AFAIK it does, not totally sure though. I only discovered EETool after I finished the BG1 portion of my run.
 

Deleted Member 16721

Guest
Just play Pathfinder: Kingmaker instead. Seriously, it's way better and more worth your time.
 

Reapa

Doom Preacher
Joined
Jul 10, 2009
Messages
2,340
Location
Germany
Just play Pathfinder: Kingmaker instead. Seriously, it's way better and more worth your time.
pretty sure it's still in development.
yes, it's awesome, but kingdom management is a big part and it's pretty broken.
 

Deleted Member 16721

Guest
Pathfinder isn't broken, but hell, play BG1 then, which is a superior game to BG2. BG2 may be more high level and have more explosions and bells and whistles, but BG1 provides a more authentic, organic exploration adventure. I'm not saying BG2 is shit but I'm not a big fan of it, I much prefer the first game and now Siege of Dragonspear.
 

Ramnozack

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Jan 29, 2017
Messages
876
Played 1 a very long time ago. Enjoyed it aside from RTwP combat.

Any mods and unofficial patches I should be running? .ini configs?
https://baldursextendedworld.com/Install-Tool/

Download that, pick what IE game you are going to play, pick the mods from the list you want, it will then take care of everything for you.

There are some presets from the old version of this tool called big world setup, they are okay and a good starting point for someone who knows nothing about BG mods. The recommended preset from it doesn't do anything to crazy gameplay wise (other than SCS) but it installs to many custom NPCs for my liking but you can simply uncheck those.
 

purpleblob

Savant
Joined
May 16, 2014
Messages
564
Location
Sydney
BG2 is upgrade to BG1 is almost every single way. I'd say play BG2 - I still play it to this day and love it.
 

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