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

[agris]

Anyone know if level1npcs was ever updated to work with the EEs?

 

[ghostdog]

Anyone know if level1npcs was ever updated to work with the EEs?

I'm pretty sure it is. At least in some form. (maybe a tweaks component).

 

[deuxhero]

Is GemRB far enough along to be the prefered method of playing BG? Does it work with the BG1 to BG2 engine mods? Has it been used to make a turn based mod?

 

[Grunker]

Anyone know if level1npcs was ever updated to work with the EEs?

I'm pretty sure it is. At least in some form. (maybe a tweaks component).

It is not. There is a kind-of-working-but-extremely-wonky work-around by a new modder, but it does not provide full Level1NPC functionality. I know because Level1NPC is basically my favourite mod beyond the obvious ones, so I kind of nagged the maintainers until it became clear they wouldn't be updating.

However EE Keeper enables full characters resets now (i.e. full Level1NPC functionality), so you can do it that way. Yeah it's annoying that you have to do it manually, but it is what it is.

 

[ghostdog]

Anyone know if level1npcs was ever updated to work with the EEs?

I'm pretty sure it is. At least in some form. (maybe a tweaks component).

It is not. There is a kind-of-working-but-extremely-wonky work-around by a new modder, but it does not provide full Level1NPC functionality. I know because Level1NPC is basically my favourite mod beyond the obvious ones, so I kind of nagged the maintainers until it became clear they wouldn't be updating.

However EE Keeper enables full characters resets now (i.e. full Level1NPC functionality), so you can do it that way. Yeah it's annoying that you have to do it manually, but it is what it is.

Maybe it's an EET component, then? I think I had it when I last played using EET.

 

[Nano]

Don't you guys use SCS? It has something similar to L1NPCs (but somewhat less flexible).

Improved NPC customisation and management (BGEE,BG2EE,EET)

This component makes it much easier to customise NPCs and to make sure they keep up with your main character even if you swap them in and out of the group. When it is installed, NPCs (including mod-added NPCs) join your party at level zero. If you want, you can activate a special 'customise' power on their innate abilities to change their class and kit to whatever you like. After that, you can level the character to first level and choose their proficiencies, skills and the like. The character will continue levelling until they reach about the same level as your character. (The 'customise' power is unavailable once you increase above level zero.)

If you kick the NPC out of the party and subsequently re-recruit them, they will again start levelling until they reach about your character's level. (To be more precise: they are given that level which they would have if they had as much XP as you do; they get given exactly the right amount of XP to reach that level.)
Engine limitations lead to a few slight awkwardnesses with this component. Firstly, thieves don't gain quite the right number of skill points at level one. To fix this, thieves are given one-off innate abilities that allow you to increase your thief skills by the missing amount. Secondly, mages and bards have their spellbooks selected from a fixed list (you don't get to choose yourself). Thirdly, if you have the Party AI disabled, you may occasionally notice minor glitches in the amount of experience your characters receive (this will be most noticeable if you use the customise program to change a character's class). Turning AI back on (even if only briefly) will resolve this (though it is possible to get a slightly-too-high level character if you change from single-class to multiclass and then level without AI on.

As of version 33.2, the component should be able to allow for other mods that let humans multi-class, nonhumans dual-class, and multi-class characters select kits. However, it is incompatible with any mod (notably the component of Tweaks Anthology) that removes the ability to dual-class from humans - basically because the component doesn't know what to do with the existing dual-classed humans in the game, like Imoen.

Some NPCs are only partially affected by this component: notably, Wilson the bear and the joinable vampire in BG2EE cannot be customised.

This component makes very extensive use of features of the Enhanced-Edition game engine, and so is not (and never will be) available for original BG/BG2.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

If you're going to cheat just use keeper.

 

[agris]

As Grunker said, the functionality of L1NPCs was amazing and was one of the things that kept the games so replayable. To those of us who really enjoyed the combat of the IE games, it's that interplay between class, weapon proficiency and itemization interacting with SCS that made L1NPC so nice. I used a custom batch file to install my mods, and L1NPC was such an elegant solution to letting you explore new party compositions while still keeping access to NPC quest content.

The SCS component you're talking about Nano has not always been around, although I used it shortly after it was introduced and I found it extremely buggy. It's also news to me that keeper now lets you change classes and correctly recalculates all base stats and attribute bonuses. My last serious playthrough of BG2 was probably ~7 years ago, so my knowledge is from then. But rusty at least should be able to appreciate the CLI elegance of L1NPCs vs faffing around with in game menus or keeper.

 

[Grunker]

Nano That component, like many other tweaks that seek to do this, does not enable full Level1NPC functionality; that is: effectively complete control over the entire character sheet/making an effectively "new character" from scratch. Level1NPC did that, adhering to RAW. AFAIK, only EE Keeper can mirror this functionality currently - unless there's been a new release within the past year or so that I don't know about.

Anyone know if level1npcs was ever updated to work with the EEs?

I'm pretty sure it is. At least in some form. (maybe a tweaks component).

It is not. There is a kind-of-working-but-extremely-wonky work-around by a new modder, but it does not provide full Level1NPC functionality. I know because Level1NPC is basically my favourite mod beyond the obvious ones, so I kind of nagged the maintainers until it became clear they wouldn't be updating.

However EE Keeper enables full characters resets now (i.e. full Level1NPC functionality), so you can do it that way. Yeah it's annoying that you have to do it manually, but it is what it is.

Maybe it's an EET component, then? I think I had it when I last played using EET.

It's not unless it is very recent. There are EET components that will allow you to reduce people to level 0 and such things - but NOT change classes, proficiencies, etc.

As Grunker said, the functionality of L1NPCs was amazing and was one of the things that kept the games so replayable. To those of us who really enjoyed the combat of the IE games, it's that interplay between class, weapon proficiency and itemization interacting with SCS that made L1NPC so nice. I used a custom batch file to install my mods, and L1NPC was such an elegant solution to letting you explore new party compositions while still keeping access to NPC quest content.

The SCS component you're talking about Nano has not always been around, although I used it shortly after it was introduced and I found it extremely buggy. It's also news to me that keeper now lets you change classes and correctly recalculates all base stats and attribute bonuses. My last serious playthrough of BG2 was probably ~7 years ago, so my knowledge is from then. But rusty at least should be able to appreciate the CLI elegance of L1NPCs vs faffing around with in game menus or keeper.

It was news to me too, but I've done it myself in two playthroughs now. There is nothing that Level1NPC allowed you to do that Keeper cannot mirror - change class, set to level 0 etc. This includes and is not limited to new multi- and dual-class combinations that you modded in (such as Archer/Cleric), and you could probably make it work for other weird combos as well though I wouldn't recommend toying with non-modded combinations. It's a bit more work to do it than with L1NPC since you need to set everything up manually for each character, but not too much. For instance, one thing you have to do is set a character's hit points to 1 when you reduce them to level 0, because otherwise they will have 0 hit points when you open the save, and they'll die. Then, once you've leveled them up, you need to reduce their maximum HP by 1 (the additional HP you gave them at level 0).

 

[Average Manatee]

Playing BG1EE now with SCS/BG1UB/BG1NPC/some tweakpack stuff. SCS seems quite fair and balanced so far, just finished Nashkel Mines. Playing on Insane w/o damage increase. Running with Kagain/Shar-Teel/Viconia/Imoen/Edwin and myself as a Berserker. The NPC customization thing seemed to work 100% with allowing respecs into different kits or classes from what I can tell in testing but I've avoided anything other than just leveling the normal class from level 1 since I want a fairly pure game for now. Gonna give SoD a try, finish the rest of the series, might experiment more on a replay if I'm still into it.

 

[soulburner]

I have a weird issue: no music.
I installed BGT a few months ago and finally wanted to play this on my retro WinXP machine. Noticed there is no music. So I thought I'd install BG1 from scratch and use the tweak tool for some stuff. Fired up the game and... there is no music. Tested the game on my 'modern' desktop and an Windows 2000 PC.

Any tips?

I don't want to play the enhanced editions...

 

[The Limper]

On old school speakers, you must turn the knobs clock-wise….

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Mazzy just got exploaded at the very last second of the 4 dragons fight. She had her protections dispelled and 226 fire damage killed her just as the fucker was about to die from magic damage.

It's a tough fight for me, I think I'll swallow the loss and replace her with Sarevok or something. I'll give him some xp so he's not to far behind. Would it be safe to install the tweaks (?) component that scales joinable npcs xp to my level?

You could just add the XP manually, either via CLUA or ShadowKeeper.

That's what I did in the end. Modding felt less like cheating though, but I know it's the same.

Poor Mazzy. This playthrough is fun.

No-reload games can hit pretty hard. In one playthrough, I had Nalia was petrified and chunked by a Hive Mother in the Underdark. Mazzy got vorpaled by a Balor in Hell against Irenicus. Anomen got frozen and chunked by Slayer Irenicus. I was victorious, but the wound never quite healed. I filled the party back up in ToB, but ouch. Losing those companions so late after nearly 200 hours really stung.

 

[d1r]

I have a weird issue: no music.
I installed BGT a few months ago and finally wanted to play this on my retro WinXP machine. Noticed there is no music. So I thought I'd install BG1 from scratch and use the tweak tool for some stuff. Fired up the game and... there is no music. Tested the game on my 'modern' desktop and an Windows 2000 PC.

Any tips?

I don't want to play the enhanced editions...

I think one music component from BGT was bugged. I installed this one, and it's running fine.

~SETUP-BGTMUSIC.TP2~ #0 #1 // Baldur's Gate Trilogy - Music -> Hybrid Baldur's Gate/Shadows of Amn/Throne of Bhaal Music

 

[Herumor]

I feel like replaying Baldur's Gate 2 and other than the Ascension mod, is there anything in particular else that could improve the experience?

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I feel like replaying Baldur's Gate 2 and other than the Ascension mod, is there anything in particular else that could improve the experience?

Sword Coast Strategems is a must. Item Revisions is very good. It tones down some cheese and brings some mediocre items up to par. Rogue Rebalancing is excellent (covers bards too). I really like spell revisions, but I wouldn't go past V3. Version 4 started becoming its own creature and is a bit too far removed from the original. I am also a huge fan of PnP Celestials and aTweaks. There are more, but these are some major ones that will really tune the game.

 

[ghostdog]

I feel like replaying Baldur's Gate 2 and other than the Ascension mod, is there anything in particular else that could improve the experience?

I don't think Ascension mod is really that great. Ascension adds more enemies to make some TOB battles harder (and the ending battle a long drawn out thing). It also adds some minus story bits, but nothing that great.

If you're looking for a more intricate and challenging combat system for the whole game (BGII), I prefer Sword coast stratagems. It gives all the enemies a much better AI instead, which is better as a whole IMO. If you use SCS, check out all the options and maybe make some enemies easier, like litches, if you don't want them to be very annoying.

Wheels of Prophecy, by the author of SCS, adds some minor story changes and non-linearity to ToB, if you want that.

Ascension is compatible with SCS, but if you use both, the final Tob Battle will be extremely hard, due to the increased enemies of Ascension combined with the better AI of SCS. Some people may like that, but most will find it super annoying and probably unbeatable.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

ghostdog Herumor The best thing about Wheel of Proohecy are the Monk high-level ability revisions. Rather than using the ordinary and thematically weak fighter HLA, there are a slew of awesome and fitting HLA that truly distinguish the Monk. It does this without making them cheese either.

 

[Average Manatee]

I feel like replaying Baldur's Gate 2 and other than the Ascension mod, is there anything in particular else that could improve the experience?

SCS, if you're OK with figuring out the autistic BG2 spell countering system, some uneven difficulty spikes, and needing at least 2 arcane casters. I recommend reading the options and not installing the whole thing, some options are kind of just punitive. In particular the "take all of the party's items in spellhold", "remove/move overpowered items", "move unrealistically convenient items", and "harder starting dungeon" felt a bit silly to install for me.

If you're playing EE, EEEX and Bubb spell menu are really nice UI changes. The former can give you a timer to know when a character's round is up (so you can cast a new spell/ability), along with being able to right click to see what spells affect a creature (almost essential for SCS unless you like scrolling up and down the log constantly to see what they cast). The latter makes spell casting infinitely better since you can see all your spells at once organized by level rather than needing to scroll. It's really a night and day change in how usable spell casters are for me in IE games.

One neat mod that I used most recently is NPC strongholds. It basically lets a character in your party take a stronghold in place of you and they'll make all the decisions for it. There's some unique content too, like

Spoiler

Imoen in charge of the thief stronghold ended up backstabbing Renal Bloodscalp to, uhh, establish a "good" thieves guild (I guess no torture/assassinations and a more robin hood stealing approach). And by backstab I mean you get to do the whole taking down the thieves guild assault that you'd normally get to do with Bodhi, meaning you get both the items for siding with the shadow thieves and the ones for fighting them, nice.

For the most part it's well-written and your party members act as you'd expect (e.g. Edwin being totally OK with sending his apprentices to the most dangerous tasks). I find it added a lot to the game experience.


SCS + Ascension is fine IMO, lower the difficulty level if the final ToB fight is too hard. For the most part SCS is very lenient if you set it to the minimum difficulty. It took me about half a dozen tries both for the first fight and the last on insane (no damage doubling).

 

[Grunker]

I feel like replaying Baldur's Gate 2 and other than the Ascension mod, is there anything in particular else that could improve the experience?

Ascension is kind of outdated as far as mod design goes. SCS is the only mandatory mod for BG these days, along with perhaps the Tweak Anthology (only use the tweaks you enjoy). I use Item Randomiser but that’s only great if you’re the kind of guy who can recall every item location and want to mix it up.

Wheels of Prophecy will improve ToB. Quest Pack is still good.

Then there are the minor tweak packs you might enjoy, like aTweaks and Song & Silence. Again, only install bits of those mods you want, not the whole mod.

You can take a look at the EET compatible mod list, if you want, it’s pretty much an exhaustive list of updated mods.

I like Item Revisions and Spell Revisions in principle, but both mods make too many drastic changes I don’t like so I rarely install them. Item Revisions less so than Spell Revisions.

 

[Nano]

I feel like replaying Baldur's Gate 2 and other than the Ascension mod, is there anything in particular else that could improve the experience?

You've gotten a few recommendations already, but none for the most essential mod. The Imoen Romance. Mandatory for the best BG2 experience.

 

[Average Manatee]

Ascension is kind of outdated as far as mod design goes. SCS is the only mandatory mod for BG these days, along with perhaps the Tweak Anthology (only use the tweaks you enjoy). I use Item Randomiser but that’s only great if you’re the kind of guy who can recall every item location and want to mix it up.

Not sure what you mean by outdated here. It's an old mod but it's still well-regarded I think, and its compatible with basically everything because it's an old mod.

I feel like replaying Baldur's Gate 2 and other than the Ascension mod, is there anything in particular else that could improve the experience?

You've gotten a few recommendations already, but none for the most essential mod. The Imoen Romance. Mandatory for the best BG2 experience.

Careful now, Imoen Romance is actually a quality mod compared to NPC mods like Saerilith and Sandrah

 

[Nano]

Careful now, Imoen Romance is actually a quality mod compared to NPC mods like Saerilith and Sandrah

I wasn't being sarcastic.

 

[Grunker]

Ascension is kind of outdated as far as mod design goes. SCS is the only mandatory mod for BG these days, along with perhaps the Tweak Anthology (only use the tweaks you enjoy). I use Item Randomiser but that’s only great if you’re the kind of guy who can recall every item location and want to mix it up.

Not sure what you mean by outdated here. It's an old mod but it's still well-regarded I think, and its compatible with basically everything because it's an old mod.

Only that its fight design is lesser than SCS', and I prefer the latter. Its story beats are also largely taken care of by Wheels. Of course nothing's stopping you from rolling with all three - I personally don't though, ToB's fights are plenty hard with SCS on Insane.

 

[Average Manatee]

Only that its fight design is lesser than SCS', and I prefer the latter. Its story beats are also largely taken care of by Wheels. Of course nothing's stopping you from rolling with all three - I personally don't though, ToB's fights are plenty hard with SCS on Insane.

They do entirely different things to the fights though.

By vanilla Melissan just spawns a bunch of random demons and undeads and fights you. SCS doesn't actually do that much here except some random buffs to high level undead and demons. Which is IMO one of the dumber parts of SCS since SCS's method of buffing high level demons/undead/dragons/etc on high difficulties is to give them +50/100% HP and uninterruptable instant cast abilities that can be spammed constantly. But for the most part you don't need to do much in SCS to fight demons other than pre-buff with immunity to fire/death spells/mind spells then rip them apart with the usual 10 attacks per round critical strike warriors. And if you are only playing on basic/improved difficulty most of these SCS bonuses don't even exist and you'll barely notice changes to demons and undead.

Spoiler

Note that implosion is 10d10 fire damage 10d10 crushing damage save for half and a stun with no save and all effects ignore magic resistance. Complete fucking bullshit if you aren't immune to stun and fire, especially when you can't interrupt it. And SCS enemies on higher difficulties will read your resistances/immunities so that they target the one character who is weak to their abilities.

Ascension changes the final fight so that you fight the five bhaalspawn before Melissan, who are all fully featured characters with mostly non-bullshit abilities. Balthazar is still kind of bullshit though, especially since he ignores timestop along with Mellisan and therefore whenever you, Sendai or Melissan cast timestop you're probably about to get fucked. Aside from him its just a good high level fight with fighters/mages/clerics who have some of their unique abilities. I think all the bhaalspawn are toned down a bit from their original boss fight though.

I'd say the design of Ascension is far ahead of the vanilla fight while SCS doesn't really do that much to change the final battle. But SCS also works with ascension just fine and the allows you to tune difficulty levels

Spoiler

The real difficulty on insane, as mentioned, is Melissan appearing early and then someone casts timestop and you just get raped by two high level fighters who can't miss on their attacks. I'm not sure why they added the rest restrictions considering anyone playing SCS is going to have multiple mages casting Wish to rest between battles. On lower difficulty SCS Sendai and Abazigal won't start with as many or any buffs up so you can just dumpster them immediately and the fight becomes pretty trivial. Of course you can still configure SCS so that it has the lowest Ascension difficulty but casters still get pre-buffing, which is probably pretty fair.

Also note that Ascension lets you either bring Balthazar or Bodhi into the final battle as an allied NPC. Not sure what Balthazar looks like (though I'd be happy just not to fight him), but Bodhi is a level 25 Fighter/Thief who has boss level HP/regeneration/immunities and tears shit up. She can facetank at least Balthazar indefinitely and not even lose HP.