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Baldur's Gate & Baldur's Gate II Mod Thread
- Thread starter Father Walker
- Start date
Red Hexapus
Savant
Here you go, have a good day
PS. not permanent though sorry, just some HTML manipulation fun.
Darth Canoli
Arcane
Thanks for the effort, both files are available again, it was probably just a hosting issue.
Well, the quest for classic adventures is now over, it's available again HERE.
octavius , sorry for your trouble.
Time to install it now.
Red Hexapus
At first, i didn't notice the Company Retarded Modders Beamdog / Retarded Modders Beamdog, well done!
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- Joined
- Mar 6, 2016
- Messages
- 4,817
Shaman class fucking sucks. It gives a pathetic amount of spells per day - max of 6 every level, same as a Sorcerer. The problem with this is that divine casters are supposed to have more spells per day than arcane casters, and because Shamans only have 7 levels of spells instead of 9, they actually end up with even less spells than Sorcerers. They don't get bonus spells from WIS either.
Shamanic Dance is underwhelming too. Really just don't bother with it.
Shamanic Dance is underwhelming too. Really just don't bother with it.
A horse of course
Guest
Men, I'm running through some BG1/TOTSC mods for my video. I've finished Dork Side and Dork Horizons, and I'm currently doing The Grey Clan. I'l probably do the Tales of Drizzt mod as well and then just get some footage from Unfinished Business/Fixpacks/BG1 NPC mod and stop.
Anyway, I was interested in the Northern Tales of the Sword Coast mod due to parts of it being based on the abandoned BG1 demo with Ajantis/Pique etc. But from what I understand, it's not actually available for the original game, only Baldur's Gate Trilogy and the Enhanced Edition. Is that correct? If so I'll skip it. I'd die before finishing all the BGT/Tutu/EE mods.
Anyway, I was interested in the Northern Tales of the Sword Coast mod due to parts of it being based on the abandoned BG1 demo with Ajantis/Pique etc. But from what I understand, it's not actually available for the original game, only Baldur's Gate Trilogy and the Enhanced Edition. Is that correct? If so I'll skip it. I'd die before finishing all the BGT/Tutu/EE mods.
The Grey Clan is actually not too bad, but the story is unfinished, and it doesn't integrate too well into the main quest of the game. The rest of the bigger quest mods is just
- Joined
- May 5, 2018
- Messages
- 6,241
There was a total conversion mod for BG2 with Drizzt and his party that I really tried to get into (name escapes me) and I think it caused actual brain damage before I realised what had happened and stopped.
-You're welcome to try it though.
Edit: Region of Terror. It even had a sountrack that sounded like something Diana Ross would sing.
A horse of course
Guest
Finished The Grey Clan mod (lite version, no way am I touching what even IE modders would define as "quite difficult"). Really distracting ESL writing but otherwise ok until that ridiculous Gracchus fight in Friendly Arm. Is he supposed to "Soul Split" himself and regain all hp+ Mirror Image etc. so many times? I thought there was a script bug or something. The final battle was much easier and I didn't have to cheese the shit out of it.
Will try Stone of Askavar next.
Will try Stone of Askavar next.
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Baron Dupek
Arcane
Have you tried World of Baldur's Gate megamod?
You need to be a real-life lich to beat it and do most content...
You need to be a real-life lich to beat it and do most content...
A horse of course
Guest
OK, I finished: Dark Side of the Sword Coast, Dark Horizons, The Grey Clan, The Drizzt Saga, and Stone of Askavar.
Drizzt Saga is just a super high level hack-and-slash with a tiny bit of dungeon crawling. I couldn't even finish the Barbarian tribe quest due to one area constantly crashing, despite a clean install and starting a new game for it.
Stone of Askavar was alright - not too difficult (by mod standards) and felt similar to the gameplay and exploration of the vanilla game. Also some good use of art assets from other games (possibly from ToEE? It didn't look like Infinity Engine assets), though I believe it was made a lot later than the other mods and could take advantage of tools made well after BG2 was released. Again required starting a new game, but had no crashes or glitches whatsoever (unlike DSOTSC, DH, and Drizzt).
Overall I wouldn't say any of the mods are really all that worthwhile. Grey Clan and Stone of Askavar probably best fit the "style" of the original game and were completely bug-free when I played them (though I've read Grey Clan fucks up the Friendly Arm Inn, which shouldn't matter much since you're at endgame level by then anyway). But I won't bother replaying any of these mods in the future. If you want more Baldur's Gate, just replay another Infinity Engine game.
Drizzt Saga is just a super high level hack-and-slash with a tiny bit of dungeon crawling. I couldn't even finish the Barbarian tribe quest due to one area constantly crashing, despite a clean install and starting a new game for it.
Stone of Askavar was alright - not too difficult (by mod standards) and felt similar to the gameplay and exploration of the vanilla game. Also some good use of art assets from other games (possibly from ToEE? It didn't look like Infinity Engine assets), though I believe it was made a lot later than the other mods and could take advantage of tools made well after BG2 was released. Again required starting a new game, but had no crashes or glitches whatsoever (unlike DSOTSC, DH, and Drizzt).
Overall I wouldn't say any of the mods are really all that worthwhile. Grey Clan and Stone of Askavar probably best fit the "style" of the original game and were completely bug-free when I played them (though I've read Grey Clan fucks up the Friendly Arm Inn, which shouldn't matter much since you're at endgame level by then anyway). But I won't bother replaying any of these mods in the future. If you want more Baldur's Gate, just replay another Infinity Engine game.
Darth Canoli
Arcane
I'm playing BG 2 EET for a while with a shitload of mods, picked a modlist, there were two focused on quests/content, the first one had some romance mods checked and not the second so i picked the second and added a couple of unchecked and compatible quest mods.
The one thing i hate about the EE is the zoom, you can't lock it to your chosen settings, it's either you lock it to playing with ants zoom or you don't and each cut-scene resets your customized zoom...
About the mods:
Assassination is great for an Evil or Neutral party, it's probably well known though. Not great but interesting missions and a way to lower your reputation.
Afaaq the Djinn is quite good, it comes with a quest bringing you to the Rakasha territory, a puzzle to solve and a good fight.
Dungeon Crawl is really good, i'd recommend this one to anyone, it really feels like a new adventure almost on par with Umar and De'Arnise Castle (it's a bit shorter though), really nice dungeon and encounters.
Tower of Deception is good too, I didn't complete it yet because i got there with a low level party and couldn't get through the third fight (the other ones were already a challenge, particularly the second one), if you're searching for challenging fights, you found it.
The White Queen is also a good dungeon crawl with challenging encounters (before leaving Athlaka), very good mod, combat oriented with some interesting loot (and a lot of magical garbage you'll just sell)
Not as good:
Innershade, this one is a mixed bag, there's a SJW blacksmith with some interesting items, a useless granny with a lot of useless dialog a couple of fetch quests and a somewhat decent main quest with some decent combat, the village visual are great and there's a bard offering to teach another bard a special song for 15K gold or something.
Test your Mettle! This one is bad, this is the modron maze from PST, you get there from the planar sphere.
Ranting...
Long story short, i had to map the maze at first and found a boss but then, you have to get back to the modron director and hunt for another one and i had no idea where he was, i walked the whole maze three times and then used the console, the director was supposed to give me a radar with 1.4, i picked the line but didn't get it (probably because of my upgrade mess) so i used the console to teleport to the cube's boss, i forgot to buff and it was messy...
TL DR
So, you walk a maze with an encounter on each room and of course, they respawn, if you want unlimited xp and grind for some rewards (they drop some items you can exchange for rewards), you might like it.
Boss fights are interesting so maybe it's worth using the mod with the console and only teleport your party to both boss fights.
This game is way better with the CTRL+J and teleport to a specific area console commands.
The one thing i hate about the EE is the zoom, you can't lock it to your chosen settings, it's either you lock it to playing with ants zoom or you don't and each cut-scene resets your customized zoom...
About the mods:
Assassination is great for an Evil or Neutral party, it's probably well known though. Not great but interesting missions and a way to lower your reputation.
Afaaq the Djinn is quite good, it comes with a quest bringing you to the Rakasha territory, a puzzle to solve and a good fight.
Dungeon Crawl is really good, i'd recommend this one to anyone, it really feels like a new adventure almost on par with Umar and De'Arnise Castle (it's a bit shorter though), really nice dungeon and encounters.
Tower of Deception is good too, I didn't complete it yet because i got there with a low level party and couldn't get through the third fight (the other ones were already a challenge, particularly the second one), if you're searching for challenging fights, you found it.
The White Queen is also a good dungeon crawl with challenging encounters (before leaving Athlaka), very good mod, combat oriented with some interesting loot (and a lot of magical garbage you'll just sell)
Not as good:
Innershade, this one is a mixed bag, there's a SJW blacksmith with some interesting items, a useless granny with a lot of useless dialog a couple of fetch quests and a somewhat decent main quest with some decent combat, the village visual are great and there's a bard offering to teach another bard a special song for 15K gold or something.
Test your Mettle! This one is bad, this is the modron maze from PST, you get there from the planar sphere.
Ranting...
I started with 1.2 version and then upgraded to 1.4 (i think) to get some directions but it didn't work quite well and i fucked up the extra armor mods in the process (i'm happy enough it didn't fuck up the saves, just destroyed some armors and boots).
TL DR
So, you walk a maze with an encounter on each room and of course, they respawn, if you want unlimited xp and grind for some rewards (they drop some items you can exchange for rewards), you might like it.
Boss fights are interesting so maybe it's worth using the mod with the console and only teleport your party to both boss fights.
This game is way better with the CTRL+J and teleport to a specific area console commands.
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2004
- Messages
- 6,927
Not being able to pick a resolution to play in is such popamole garbage, it infuriates me. It's solely because of the game is on mobile as well, and they don't want to add resolution handling, the UI assets and the development branch differences to their plate. It's fucking stupid.
But what you *can* do is install a free program called "Display Changer" by the development group 12Noon, which adds command-line support for display resolution switching. Then, create a .bat file in the same folder as the EE game's executable (actual executable, not launcher) with the command below. Leave that .bat file in the folder, create a shortcut to it on your desktop, change the icon to be for baldur's gate or whichever EE game you're playing / add the shortcut to steam etc, and then you launch the game through the shortcut. You'll get resolution control of the beamturd product.
_icewind.bat said:
Obviously that's setup for my directory structure and 16:10 aspect ratio screen, tweak as needed. If you're on anything approaching a modern monitor, especially 24+ inches, you probably want 1280 x 720 (assuming you're a 16:9 pleb).
With a batch file setup like that, run these settings in the configuration file to disable zooming, set font at a good size, etc. Also note that the nice thing about this command line program is that as soon as the game is closed, it automatically reverts your monitor's resolution to whatever you had it set to before. This is the length to which beamdog makes us go to set a fucking resolution!!
Note the font's zoom setting will reset if you change any options in-game, so make any tweaks needed and then set it. In-game we don't get so fine a control of the font size, but I've found that the 91 - 94 zoom range is best for playing at 1280 horizontal on larger monitors. Otherwise it's too big/small.
Also note that Scale UI is disabled, zoom is locked, and the stupid map zoom feature is also disabled. Character sprite outlining is disabled (of course, we're not monsters here), as is colored selection circles. This is really the most non-enhanced way to play the damn game. Note that I did include my tweak of max frame rate of 40, meaning the game plays 33% faster. You may want to tweak that down a bit, to 35. Sensuki knows what i'm talking about here.
Also note that Scale UI is disabled, zoom is locked, and the stupid map zoom feature is also disabled. Character sprite outlining is disabled (of course, we're not monsters here), as is colored selection circles. This is really the most non-enhanced way to play the damn game. Note that I did include my tweak of max frame rate of 40, meaning the game plays 33% faster. You may want to tweak that down a bit, to 35. Sensuki knows what i'm talking about here.
Baldur.lua said:
If you have a beamturd account, please go voice your disapproval here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/955891
FWIW, I've stopped playing the EEs. I can't stomach the changes. But I wanted to help those of you are still inflicting them on yourselves to get a best-possible experience.
Darth Canoli
Arcane
Obviously, i don't have an account there, i only visit this forum when one info seems to be only available on their forums.
And of course, it was just bait, they don't have any info not available everywhere else.
Thanks for the info but i'll stick to using the mouse wheel every time this garbage resets the zoom, i don't want to ruin my current instal. further.
biffthestiff
Educated
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2021
- Messages
- 107
I made this thread before I found this subforum. Can anyone chime in? 1 view in 1 hour at peak North America hours, I'm not likely to get an answer this month at this rate.
My personal recommendation is to play with EET, a tweak mod and perhaps BG1 NPC, though the latter option will get you ridiculed around these parts. I enjoy the party banter even if the writing is mediocre and sometimes a little cringe.
If you’re a discerning gamer of quality you should play with SCS - essentially the “Path of the Damned” difficulty setting. But only do that if you like a challenge and don't mind having to actually be good at the game. It is one of the best mods ever made, but it is also genuinely challenging.
Beyond that though, most mods are either trash or for additional playthroughs.
edit: another good mod is the one that enables the old movies rather than the EE-ones.
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biffthestiff
Educated
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2021
- Messages
- 107
Cheers, I'll make sure to use SCS, you're the 2nd person to call it essential. It has 5 difficulties (Basic, Improved, Tactical, Hardcore, and Insane), and they say Basic is the equivalent of Core/Normal in the original unmodded one. What do you play on?
I'm tempted to use Improved. I don't mind a challenge as long as it adds to the fun, instead of being just endless quickloading so that everything is perfect. Do higher difficulties still tolerate some player inefficiency?
Actually, the best way to put it is this: which higher difficulty still allows a non-retarded but not perfectly min-maxed OP party to beat the game without exploits? Also I would be using the story party members (Edwin, Minsc, etc), not perfect custom characters.
I modify every mod setting to my liking (which is very close to Insane), but you can't go wrong with basic or improved. But again, be warned: the meat of the difficulty in SCS comes from making the AI pre-buff and actually use BG's excellent spell defense/strip spell defense push-and-pull systems. If you're not prepared to understand these and engage in dispelling shennanigans it can be frustrating.
It's an extremely gratifying game with those settings, but it can be very annoying if you don't understand what's going on.
SCS has a thorough readme here: https://gibberlings3.github.io/Documentation/readmes/readme-stratagems.html
The difficulties are as follows:
- Basic and improved = the base game but with much smarter enemies.
- Tactical: enemies will call for help so kiting is much, much harder (and you can get swamped on some maps), enemies pre-buff just like you do evening the battlefield and some abilities can't be interrupted to cheese encounters.
- Hardcore: enemies no longer die so quickly their kit doesn't matter, they pre-buff more.
- Insane: SCS breaks its own rules of not touching enemy kits and grants abilities to enemies that were previously a cake-walk or even hard enemies that are not terrifying enough for what they are. HLAs (epic level insane player abilities) are given to enemy high level NPCs.
The difficulties are as follows:
- BASIC: Enemies choose their targets and use their spells fairly unintelligently. They refrain from using some of their more dangerous special abilities and spells. (This is roughly the level of the unmodified game's 'Core' difficulty.)
- IMPROVED: Intelligent enemies attack and use their powers fairly sensibly, though most will not use class abilities, and some of their most dangerous special abilities are still avoided.
- TACTICAL: Enemies continue to use intelligence in their targetting, and now use most of their powers and often call for help from nearby allies. Spellcasters begin casting some spells in advance of combat, especially if they arrive in the area in sight of the party. Some supernatural creatures gain the ability to use their abilities instantly and uninterruptably.
- HARDCORE: Enemies now use all of their powers as effectively as they can; a small number receive a boost to hit points. Some enemy numbers are increased. Spellcasters more aggressively cast spells in advance. In the later game, some of the most powerful spellcasters begin to use High-Level Abilities.
- INSANE: Several enemies receive further boosts to their abilities and their numbers; spellcasters aggressively cast spells before combat; use of High-Level Abilities now occurs (for the most powerful spellcasters) throughout the game.
- Basic and improved = the base game but with much smarter enemies.
- Tactical: enemies will call for help so kiting is much, much harder (and you can get swamped on some maps), enemies pre-buff just like you do evening the battlefield and some abilities can't be interrupted to cheese encounters.
- Hardcore: enemies no longer die so quickly their kit doesn't matter, they pre-buff more.
- Insane: SCS breaks its own rules of not touching enemy kits and grants abilities to enemies that were previously a cake-walk or even hard enemies that are not terrifying enough for what they are. HLAs (epic level insane player abilities) are given to enemy high level NPCs.
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biffthestiff
Educated
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2021
- Messages
- 107
Just finished installation of EET + SCS, appreciate the help. I intend to play on Tactical starting tomorrow. I also checked most of the "Improved <encounter>" tweaks which will make the game tougher.
So the game will be harder now. I usually always use story companions for the banter/flavor. I seem to remember in vanilla it was just me and Edwin carrying the rest. Is using story companions still reasonable with SCS on Tactical, or would I be entering a world of pain? Would I need to make my main character an OP class like the fabled Kensai/Mage, or can I get away with something new Bard or Monk?
Also, I've only ever played good parties, figured I'd try evil this time. IIRC the only evil companions are that dwarf berserker, Viconia and Edwin. Plus new NPCs by Beamdog probably, but I doubt I'll enjoy their writing.
So the game will be harder now. I usually always use story companions for the banter/flavor. I seem to remember in vanilla it was just me and Edwin carrying the rest. Is using story companions still reasonable with SCS on Tactical, or would I be entering a world of pain? Would I need to make my main character an OP class like the fabled Kensai/Mage, or can I get away with something new Bard or Monk?
Also, I've only ever played good parties, figured I'd try evil this time. IIRC the only evil companions are that dwarf berserker, Viconia and Edwin. Plus new NPCs by Beamdog probably, but I doubt I'll enjoy their writing.
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I always play with story companions. Sometimes I change them with ShadowKeeper but that's mostly just if I want to try out a class I haven't played with. You can do that if you want both NPCs but also control over them. However AD&D is - putting it mildly - not a character system with very much customization, so you'll do fine with most of the companions.
Be advised, however, that without BG1 NPC, BG1 "story companions" have no banter and one a few of them have (extremely short) quests.
The best (that is to say, the mostly non-insultingly written) companions in BG1 NPC are:
- Branwen
- Dynaheir (except the romance, it's obviously trash)
- Edwin
- Kagain
- Montaron
- Xzar
- Skie (mostly for the lulz)
Avoid Xan, Shar-Teel and for all that is holy in this world: Kivan at all costs.
Again, this is only with the BG1 NPC project. The companions will hardly have anything to say otherwise.
- Branwen
- Dynaheir (except the romance, it's obviously trash)
- Edwin
- Kagain
- Montaron
- Xzar
- Skie (mostly for the lulz)
Avoid Xan, Shar-Teel and for all that is holy in this world: Kivan at all costs.
Again, this is only with the BG1 NPC project. The companions will hardly have anything to say otherwise.
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2016
- Messages
- 4,817
BG1 companions actually do have a small number of Bioware-written voiced banters (the kind that open the dialog box and everything), it's just that they have a low chance of triggering.
Yeah they have a few unique reactions (what's called Interjections in IE-jargon), but they don't have actual Banters where a clock will prompt them to start dialogue with choices and such
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