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

[mastroego]

I already regret installing the slightly harder dungeon component.
It prevents resting after the first time. Missed this particular detail.
2 character party, no healers, no resting.... Bad.

I'll be forced to free those two earlier than I planned....

 

[Average Manatee]

Its very important to note that SCS has both an AI and a Tactics component. The description for the mod talking about how it "plays fair" and makes "low-key" changes only applies to the AI part. The Tactics components will happily take a vanilla level 6 "boss" in BG1 and upgrade them to an optimized level 12 character. If you want a more vanilla-like game with just AI then skip all tactics components

 

[mastroego]

I did install them on purpose but I underestimated that particular component.

In my defense, the description is poorly worded.
"Slightly harder" dungeon it is not.
I mean it might be, with a canon party, but no rest, with the wrong setup, means it's impossible.

In my case I respec'ed Imoen, using SCS's own tool no less, so that means no spells memorized.
This possibility should have been accounted for.
I have a mage with no spells and no resting, thanks.
No healers, no rest, only so many potions, and hordes upon hordes of Duergars.
Slightly harder, ok.

I don't mind reloading, but there's no different tactics to engineer here, there's little to play with at the beginning, you'll only have to reload each and every fight in order to minimize wounds.
Don't install this component.
I can't stomach to redo it from scratch though, I'll need to deal with it somehow, even if by cheating.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Don't install this component.

I told you not to install SCS + Ascension, and you're already giving up at duergars? You're in for a world of pain.

 

[Average Manatee]

That's the case with many of the components that make things "slightly harder". The guy upgraded from level 6 to level 12 in BG1 (who you are likely to fight with a level 2 or 3 party normally) is described as a "slight" level increase.

WeiDU should be able to uninstall the tactics part and maintain the rest of your install order just fine. You'll probably need to restart but that's all.

 

[mastroego]

Don't install this component.

I told you not to install SCS + Ascension, and you're already giving up at duergars? You're in for a world of pain.

Again, I beat old Ascension back in the day.
Duergars are trivial but it's about lack of tools.

I was doing a duo-party, as I did in the past, but it's not doable with this component.
I have the script to respec NPCs, that means that Imoen starts spell-less.

I've now recruited Jaheira out of desperation, and she's spell-less too (!), because the respec script fires up for every new recruit.
Yet, I cannot rest.
I wasted the only available rest when I didn't know there could be only one, so now I have a party of spell-less, power-less hobos.
I already used all the potions, and there's tens and tens of duergars here.
I can probably still finish the dungeon now that I have these two fresh faces, but there was little strategy involved in getting here.
Just tons upon tons of reloads.

 

[Average Manatee]

The component does warn you about only getting one rest and specifically states "to choose your spells".

If you're playing with difficulty increasing mods I don't think you can complain that they aren't balanced for playing with only half as many characters as you're expected to have + not understanding what the mod changes and playing/building around it.

 

[mastroego]

Ok, my bad, again, but I was mislead by the "slightly" claim.
Even with one rest it's hardly just "slightly" harder.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah the word slightly is just straight up misleading, should assume that most tactics components are a significant increase to enemy level/stats/abilities.

 

[d1r]

Don't install this component.

I told you not to install SCS + Ascension, and you're already giving up at duergars? You're in for a world of pain.

Again, I beat old Ascension back in the day.
Duergars are trivial but it's about lack of tools.

I was doing a duo-party, as I did in the past, but it's not doable with this component.
I have the script to respec NPCs, that means that Imoen starts spell-less.

I've now recruited Jaheira out of desperation, and she's spell-less too (!), because the respec script fires up for every new recruit.
Yet, I cannot rest.
I wasted the only available rest when I didn't know there could be only one, so now I have a party of spell-less, power-less hobos.
I already used all the potions, and there's tens and tens of duergars here.
I can probably still finish the dungeon now that I have these two fresh faces, but there was little strategy involved in getting here.
Just tons upon tons of reloads.

I just love this kind of resource management. In my install, Jaheira, or Minsc won't be even available to you if you beat Sarevok without them in your party. Besides that, you don't have to kill, and have to loot everything in this dungeon. Just scout ahead with Imoen hiding in the shadows, and get the essential items.

 

[mastroego]

Exited the damn thing.
It was a chore.

Anyway, something seems to have gone wrong with the setup.
+1 ammos (darts, stones and arrows) all have wrong string references.
A whole text about Anomen appears when I hover the pointer on +1 bullets...
Scrolling through store inventories nothing else seems to be out of place, but I fear bigger issues down the line...

I don't think I've touched this items.
I've even skipped the component to revise them and/or stack them...
At least I thought so....
Ideas?

(sorry for hijacking the thread anyway... not that it was seeing much use lately, I think)

 

[d1r]

Exited the damn thing.
It was a chore.

Anyway, something seems to have gone wrong with the setup.
+1 ammos (darts, stones and arrows) all have wrong string references.
A whole text about Anomen appears when I hover the pointer on +1 bullets...
Scrolling through store inventories nothing else seems to be out of place, but I fear bigger issues down the line...

I don't think I've touched this items.
I've even skipped the component to revise them and/or stack them...
At least I thought so....
Ideas?

(sorry for hijacking the thread anyway... not that it was seeing much use lately, I think)

Well, your install is fucked. Probably by uninstalling something most likely.

 

[mastroego]

hmmm, not going to give up yet.
I've tracked down one item to check, it's been modified by SCS.
The component to replace some +1 ammos with "fine" ones.

I'll investigate further.
It might be that nothing else changed the dialogs after that....

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Uninstall them in reverse order one by one and check that item if it's still corrupt. Eventually you'll find the culprit.
Then you reinstall everything else as before without the bad component. Copy Weidu.log so you can mostly redo the install just by looking at it, it's got a log of installed components.

Don't play with corrupt dialog.tlk, do you really want to get an unskippable crash in the middle of the game after playing for 40 hours?

 

[mastroego]

Damn.

 

[mastroego]

There's one file in the SCS install folder that handles those bullets.

There lines are:
arow02,name=>20305
arow02,desc=>20306
arow02,pro=>ARROW
bolt02,name=>20307
bolt02,desc=>20308
bolt02,pro=>BOLT
dart02,name=>20309
dart02,desc=>20310
dart02,pro=>DART
bull02,name=>20311
bull02,desc=>20312
bull02,pro=>DART

Those strings references are wrong of course.
But how can they already be wrong in SCS folder files?

I could remove this component only, but how do I know if the rest works?

 

[mastroego]

so I remembered that modders used to APPEND new or even altered lines to the file dialog.tlk.
Basically nobody ever touches the original lines, especially their positioning.

SCS with that component in theory lists NEW strings of text that need to be appended to the dialog.tlk.
Since several languages can be supported, the installer calls a separated .tra(nslation) file that contains the actual strings that need to be added to the main game dialog file.
Modified items can then be referenced, ON THE FLY, to the newly appended lines.
The final string numbers cannot be known by the installer before the procedure operates.
So, the numbers I listed in the above post need to be a reference to the translation file.
Indeed, the translation file does contain lines with those numbers, and they are indeed the intended descriptions for the ammunition files!

What happened, for reasons I can't deduce, is that the installer used those very same reference numbers to pick strings of text from the IN GAME dialog file, instead of reading them from its own translation file and appending them.
In other words, it bypassed the translation file and used the addresses with an indexing criterion that by that point had lost its meaning.

So, it would definitely seem a local error in the SCS installer.
Still, this is a widely used mod.
I can't believe no one noticed such a bug before.
So perhaps there's been a reason why this error only happened with my installation....

EDIT:
damn I was right.
There was already a bug report in the SCS forum a few days ago.
Apparently it'll be fixed in the next version....
Didn't even occur to me to check there, I assumed I did something wrong on my part.

 

[Cryomancer]

Any good guide on how to install mods on Linux? For original BG2 and "enhanced" edition?

 

[mastroego]

Any good guide on how to install mods on Linux? For original BG2 and "enhanced" edition?

Installing itself is easy, the Weidu installers handle everything.
It all comes down to possible individual conflicts and there's no "quick and winning" strategy for that.

Only research and trial.
So it might be useful to rely on research that's already been done
I posted my modlist in the previous page, if you're interested in a similar setup I can help, since it's all fresh for me ATM.

Do keep in mind that BG2 original requires generally more mods (Fixpacks, TobEX, others).

 

[roshan]

Started with the installation of the GUI mod, now I have to pick quests.
So far I've selected the usual Unfinished Business, Quest Pack, and added Almaterias restoration project, Tower of Deception to the list.

Many people swear by Lava Del Vortel's mods.
Are you guys so adamant against any addition of this kind?

I don't recall many of Lava's mods, but if it's your first playthrough avoid it anyway.

Assassinations is great for an evil party.
Lava's mods in general are high quality (especially on the art department), but they tend to add trippy stuff here and there into the game. Definitely not for everyone.
Wheels of Prophecy makes ToB less linear, and is good.
And don't forget Ascension.

Lava is a potato from the potato scene, and I hope I'm not misremembering him when I say he's a bit of a loony.

Perhaps during my next playthrough I should give all those older mods people were talking about on the forums in the 00's a chance. Just to celebrate the old times. Or perhaps I should let the past die.

I've only tried one of Lava's mods, and just a bit of it. Shades of the Sword Coast added a small dungeon below the Friendly Arm Inn that had good art, it was fun, challenging and came with appropriate minor loot at the end. If the rest of her content is of similar quality then I'd recommend it.

 

[mastroego]

So.
I'm in the city. I'm running now a duo party with Imoen.

It's hard to find doable quests.
Even the tanner quest now pitches me against a Bone Golem. Did it always?

I can't do a Bone Golem.
You need magic weapons and I don't even have +1 ones... because Sword Coast Strategems removed them.
Also those things appear to be immune to magic.

I also cannot complete the Sewers, since Jellies are similarly immune to everything.
Nice.

EDIT: spent more than 3000 gold for a Quarterstaff +2.
Half of my possessions but maybe now I can START something...

 

[NecroLord]

So.
I'm in the city. I'm running now a duo party with Imoen.

It's hard to find doable quests.
Even the tanner quest now pitches me against a Bone Golem. Did it always?

I can't do a Bone Golem.
You need magic weapons and I don't even have +1 ones... because Sword Coast Strategems removed them.
Also those things appear to be immune to magic.

I also cannot complete the Sewers, since Jellies are similarly immune to everything.
Nice.

EDIT: spent more than 3000 gold for a Quarterstaff +2.
Half of my possessions but maybe now I can START something...

Welcome to the world of SCS "balancing" and "strategy"!!

 

[ghostdog]

SCS core doesn't change encounters, only the AI of creatures. So if you face different enemies, you either installed some special SCS component, or some other encounter mod.

 

[Jvegi]

Git gud.

 

[mastroego]

SCS core doesn't change encounters, only the AI of creatures. So if you face different enemies, you either installed some special SCS component, or some other encounter mod.

There are several additional components, the ones that removes +1 weapons is recommended in order to "balance" mages and their immunity spells.

Anyway, shortly after I almost exhausted my finances to buy the Quarterstaff +2 I found the first named Short Sword +2.
Since only Imoen can use these 2 ATM, I could have spared the money.
Not going to reload on this though.