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

[Jarpie]

The fight in the bandit camp was pretty fucking brutal as I took Kivan with me and he goes all Dirty Harry on the bandits, so much for "We'll infiltrate the bandits", so I have to fight all the named enemies at once, with a few strategic "CC" spells I managed to beat it.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Meh, so far i'm finding the NPC mod and the mini quest mod to be pretty cringe. Yes the writing in BG1 was extremely childish but there was this kind of impersonal atmosphere to it that added some degree of mystique to all the silliness. I'm now listening to Khalid and Jaheira talking about their marriage and i even got a "friendly" interaction with Montaron, something about how good he is at cooking. How much fucking soy do you have in you to inject a cutetsey friendly interaction with a character that's explicitly written to be an evil asshole (not that an "evil" interaction would have been written any better)?

As for the mini quests, they are all quite soyish as well and since i'm playing a Paladin i'm getting way too much reputation even though i picked the option in SCS to set the reputation gain in half.

Almost all content mods for BG/BG2 are garbage. Not the Imoen romance mod though. That one is golden.

And you need to enable options in SCS during installation. The game difficulty will not enable or disable anything.

I'd ditch Khalid, Jaheira has ton of content once you reach Cloakwood, but he's not required.

I can't remember the last time Khalid survived his solo scouting run outside the walls of the Friendly Arms Inn. So sad.

 

[Lyric Suite]

for Khalid and Jaheira, I'd ditch Khalid, Jaheira has ton of content once you reach Cloakwood, but he's not required.

I hate Jaheira though. Amusingly, i made Khalid a fighter/mage and all the dialog treat him as if he was just that. Guess the mod anticipated that. I was planning to ditch both by the time i got to Nashkel anyway.

I also couldn't take Kivan this time around as apparently there's a timer now to his quest. 20 days to get to chapter 4 if i pick him up in chapter 1, 14 days at chapter 2 etc. Not sure i like that, i usually take my sweet time between chapters i'd rather not rush through the game like that.

 

[Nano]

I'm doing my own playthrough with the NPC Project right now. Safana is actively trying to get Khalid to cheat on Jaheira, and she came onto Imoen once. She's such a slut.

 

[agris]

^^^ BG1 content mod in a nutshell, burn it to the ground.

 

[Nano]

^^^ BG1 content mod in a nutshell, burn it to the ground.

Oh, didn't mean to sound negative, I actually love it.

 

[agris]

Hah I could tell. It’s like how some people love to watch the bachelor. I personally can’t stand it, because rather than funny cringe-y it’s the vast majority of story content added by mods, i.e sad.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Those mods are most definitely written by thirsty simps.

As stupid as the Bioware writing is at least it wasn't as embarrassing as this.

 

[oldmanpaco]

I hate Jaheira though.

She's one of the best NPCs though. Fills 2 roles (backup tank, backup healer) and insect swarm is pretty good. Also she bends over for you about two minutes into BG2 so its best experience the bitchy BG1 Jaheria to truly appreciate just how thirsty she must be.

 

[Shadenuat]

Jaheira has largest spaghetti bowl of quests and events and the longest (back in the day also buggiest) romance in the game. To say that she "bends in 2 mins" is some really dumb meme shit.
Hell her quests afaik might be the rare instance where game actually checks the worthless Reputation metric.

The second in complexity is Anomen funny enough, since he also has personal quest that affects a lot, including alignment shift.

Vi and Aerie don't even have any quests for them.

 

[Shadenuat]

Finished BG1 with SCS (again). I used David recommended dif (3d highest) but problem is, I installed sawyer spells. Those give you like extra +5 thaco and +8 something damage meaning anything explodes (similar to IWD good party) - that's 2 hope spells and 1 cleric spell. And that's low level spells, no wraith of righteous. So I am torn - either crank up dif to 2d highest in BG2, or remove sawyer spells. But I like druid iwd spells so much: it is so nice to chunk things with no-save thorn spray or spam enemies with acid spewing beetles.

Even Sarevok doesn't like princess mononoke

oh no
crookedbees

my party was:
halfling cleric/thief because I never played this combo (i used remove race restrictions to be halfling to romance Edwin later of course.
of course. uh.)
alora I changed to thief/mage, although I used Imoen for other half of the game
qualey I changed to just illusionist.

the idea is to play a lot of smol people.

so for bg 2 I will be taking korgan jan and jennifer hale. also edwin to romance my smart halfling lady. the last spot is debatable after I finish companion quests, but I think trying Jaheira for Moonblade. cause it's like +4 and +12(?) magic damage against undead sooo should 3 shot kangax rite?

the hardest fights in game I would say 3:

durlag level 1 with dwarf spirits - man they are chunky
cult ambush after durlag - u r not prebuffed, 2 assasins, AYEYEYEYEEE (qualey dies)
Sarevok - cause SCS makes him immune to damage before you kill his goons. and after you kill them he turns them into skeleton warriors. also it adds +1 goon who is archer/fighter who uses Scroll of port magic on himself. I actually got a bit butthurt trying to win this fight without spamming cloudkills or smth. what a fucking fight.

also I liked how basilisc crazy gnome is armed with dispels. very trolly.

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

Are there any must-use mods for Baldur's Gate 1-2? The BG3 announcement reminded me that I've had both games sitting in my GOG account for nearly a decade and only played them for thirty minutes or so.

 

[Nano]

Shadenuat What did the bat do to deserve that?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

@Shadenaut What did that bat do to deserve that?

coronavirus carrier

 

[oldmanpaco]

To say that she "bends in 2 mins" is some really dumb meme shit.

Sorry to disrespect m'lady good sir. I merely meant she begins her romance dialogs fairly quickly after finding her husband's castrated remains.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Are there any must-use mods for Baldur's Gate 1-2?

If you are familiar with AD&D then SCS. Games get fairly easy once you figure out how shit works.

 

[Grunker]

So Lyric Suite 's revival of this thread + being isolated in my home due to COVID-19 made me reinstall this and start a full playthrough (with SCS etc.).

I'm currently at Durlag's Tower and holy fucking christ that dungeon is so sweet. Baldur's Gate 1 often takes a beating for having very basic writing and rightfully so because a lot of the game is basically fourth-wall breaking jokes and not really ingame writing. But in some spots the writing and atmosphere is just intensely gratifying, and Durlag's Tower is just top fucking quality. Ya got a heartbreaking tale of woe, and an evil threat that you learn is less the point than the theme the dungeon represents; fear of loss. I still think Watcher's Keep beats Durlag's mechanically, but in terms of atmosphere it's gotta be a contender for my favourite dungeon in gaming.

The main achievement of the dungeon is making sure that each level ties into the overarching story with minor thematic points made in each puzzle, room design, dialogue window and even a lot of the enemy encounters.

 

[Grunker]

I don't really like Extra Credits but they did do a sporadically interesting design overview of Durlag's (episode 1 below, there are more):

 

[Shadenuat]

my favorite part about durlag is traps layered under secret doors. so after you open purple door (thus stop detecting usually) you die walking through it right away.

I don't really like Extra Credits but they did do a sporadically interesting design overview of Durlag's (episode 1 below, there are more):

awesome intro movie to durlag is not mentioned because EE enhanced it out i take it

"see games that used traps better as puzzles (shows poe1)"
(turns off video)

 

[Lyric Suite]

Started over without the NPC or quest mods. WAY better. The silence of the NPCs just works better in general in BG1 because of the impersonal atmosphere. Even the jokes are more tolerable because of how detached everything is.

That said, i really wish Durlag's Tower was the whole game.

 

[Chippy]

I'm playing the original version of PST - no mods, nothing. I am using a savegame editor, and noticed the fighter profs go up to 7. I think I tried to sod around with this in the past (using near Infinity). Trainers don't give you a star over 5, but I reasoned it through that 6 stars would have given TNO and extra 1/2 an attack, and 7 a further attack to bring him up to 5/round.

You can use the savegame editor: 'Character control Planescape Editor' to give him 7 profs, as can be seen but all it does is reduce his damage by 5.




You can get profs at 7 recognized by the engine for damage, but I can't do to hit or APR. It's probably hardcoded, or I'm just crap at this.

 

[hell bovine]

Like Jason says, though, you can have Big Picture manage your install for you if it's updated.

This has now replaced BWS https://baldursextendedworld.com/Install-Tool/ - BWP doesn't work anymore, for the non-EE games you need to do it yourself.

someone already pointed this out, though I didn’t get around to checking BEW yet myself. Is it good?

It works well, maybe even better than BWS. No real reason to not to use it.

Nice. Does it always do modmerge tool for you or do you still need to sort out that?

A late warning, but don't use this tool to install BG mods. The current maintener is continuing the fine tradition of BG batshit insane modding drama. They got banned from modding forums, because of sockpuppet accounts, but the wackiness didn't end there. Apparently this tool doesn't always download the original mods, but in some cases their own 'modified' versions of said mods.

 

[Parabalus]

Like Jason says, though, you can have Big Picture manage your install for you if it's updated.

This has now replaced BWS https://baldursextendedworld.com/Install-Tool/ - BWP doesn't work anymore, for the non-EE games you need to do it yourself.

someone already pointed this out, though I didn’t get around to checking BEW yet myself. Is it good?

It works well, maybe even better than BWS. No real reason to not to use it.

Nice. Does it always do modmerge tool for you or do you still need to sort out that?

A late warning, but don't use this tool to install BG mods. The current maintener is continuing the fine tradition of BG batshit insane modding drama. They got banned from modding forums, because of sockpuppet accounts, but the wackiness didn't end there. Apparently this tool doesn't always download the original mods, but in some cases their own 'modified' versions of said mods.

I'm aware of the drama, but didn't have any trouble, or noticed anything modified in the gameplay.

What did you run into?

 

[InD_ImaginE]

That modified version IIRC is just so it is compatible. Lot of older mods aren't updated to work with EE games, especially when made into EET. And lot of those old modders went on a tirade against EE as the Codex does so they refuse to update it.

I've done installation using the tools and it worked fine whether it is EET or not. If you are using BG:EE his tools are still the easiest to use compared to manual install, especially if it is mod heavy setup.

Idc about G3 or SHS muh Classic Purity or mod drama, so long a tool works it works.

 

[hell bovine]

That modified version IIRC is just so it is compatible. Lot of older mods aren't updated to work with EE games, especially when made into EET.

Nope, it's so they are compatible with their mary sue mod. I only noticed because the mod list on that tool is outdated and the tool kept crashing. Went looking for answers, found the batshit drama, as usual.