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

[Russia is over. The end.]

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.

Enchant Weapon spell?

 

[Average Manatee]

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.

Aside from the tactics components that can greatly buff enemy levels or give them new abilities, there's this:

Tie difficulty of level-dependent monster groupings to the difficulty slider

At various points in the unmodded game, BG2 chooses the strength of the monsters you face based on your level. Typically there are four encounters, and which one you get depends on your experience level.


This component causes the game to give you somewhat tougher choices. It is sensitive to the difficulty setting:

• IMPROVED and below:Random monster spawns are as in the unmodified game (so, tied to level and game progression).
• TACTICAL: Random monster spawns are slightly enhanced from the unmodified game.
• HARDCORE: Random monster spawns are significantly enhanced from the unmodified game.
• INSANE: Random monster spawns are very significantly enhanced from the unmodified game.
• LEGACY OF BHAAL:Random monster spawns are maximum difficulty, whatever your level or chapter.

I don't think its doing anything to him since he's on improved but the harder difficulties can have you facing mages with HLA spells very soon after leaving Irenicus's dungeon.

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...

Bone Golem is apparently normal https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Tanner_Shop. It says you need a specific level though so maybe SCS is making you encounter harder enemies slightly earlier. If you're having unusual problems killing it then it is probably some kind of additional abilities/stats to make it "PnP accurate" that SCS is adding.

Regarding the Jellies, can you not simply nuke them with fireball and clean up with magic missile? Otherwise it might be the case that you need specifically a crushing weapon rather than an enchanted one, I can't remember all the various jelly types but one of them just requires crushing.

 

[mastroego]

Those Jellys have extremly high MR, perhaps 100% even.
But now I can try doing them again with the staff +2....

 

[d1r]

Those Jellys have extremly high MR, perhaps 100% even.
But now I can try doing them again with the staff +2....

What's your party composition right now?

 

[mastroego]

What's your party composition right now?

- Protagonist: Berserker dualled to mage. Currently a puny mage with a dagger.
- Imoen: Swashbuckler/Mage.

That's it.
This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why I'm having issues
Anyway, I'm almost finished with the Slavers. Imoen got access to Cloudkill and I managed to clear the large room after a couple of attempts.
The tables are, perhaps, turning. I sure am leveling fast.

I plan to add at least Yeslick (Figher/Cleric NPC) but I think he's in Trademeet.
I'd also add a 4th member but I'm unsure who.
Viconia?
Cernd?
Hubelpot?

 

[NecroLord]

What's your party composition right now?

- Protagonist: Berserker dualled to mage. Currently a puny mage with a dagger.
- Imoen: Swashbuckler/Mage.

That's it.
This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why I'm having issues
Anyway, I'm almost finished with the Slavers. Imoen got access to Cloudkill and I managed to clear the large room after a couple of attempts.
The tables are, perhaps, turning. I sure am leveling fast.

I plan to add at least Yeslick (Figher/Cleric NPC) but I think he's in Trademeet.
I'd also add a 4th member but I'm unsure who.
Viconia?
Cernd?
Hubelpot?

Damaging area of effect spells like Cloudkill, Death Fog and Firestorm are really good, mainly because they interrupt enemy spellcasters.

 

[Average Manatee]

"why can't I beat things in melee?" - player playing with effectively 2 mages

Damaging area of effect spells like Cloudkill, Death Fog and Firestorm are really good, mainly because they interrupt enemy spellcasters.

I think SCS changes things so that they need to inflict damage to interrupt and higher level spellcasters will commonly have some kind of immunity that needs to be removed.

 

[mastroego]

Ineffective weapons remain ineffective even if you are a melee grand master.
Besides, I did beat those slavers.
I think I can take that bone golem too now.

 

[NecroLord]

I think SCS changes things so that they need to inflict damage to interrupt and higher level spellcasters will commonly have some kind of immunity that needs to be removed.

Spell Immunity maybe, but spells can still damage and interrupt casters even with all the bazillion buffs they have active...

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

ToBEx and maybe SCS have a feature that causes casting not to fail when zero damage is taken. In vanilla interrupts could occur. This might be what you're thinking of. PS, the best spell for i terrupting is Melf's Acid arrow.

 

[NecroLord]

ToBEx and maybe SCS have a feature that causes casting not to fail when zero damage is taken. In vanilla interrupts could occur. This might be what you're thinking of. PS, the best spell for i terrupting is Melf's Acid arrow.

Oh, yeah.
Melf is a really good spell. Very good at interrupting casters.
Put it in a Minor Sequencer for extra damage.

 

[cretin]

So, DavidW's Next Big Ting is out in beta, Talents of Faerun

Talents of Faerûn (ToF) is a collection of about 85 mini-mods for the Enhanced Edition versions of Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, and Icewind Dale, partially inspired by existing mods and tabletop Dungeons and Dragons resources. It contains many optional tweaks to various parts of gameplay, focussing on expanding and rebalancing player character abilities. Features include 150-odd new high-level abilities, a new 'feat' system where lower-level characters gain abilities every few levels, revisions to existing kits, new classes, new kits for multi-class characters, new types of magical specialization, a dozen or so new spells, many spell tweaks, 20-odd new gods for clerics to worship, a subrace system, a revised system of cleric/druid spells, and tweaks to the rules for ability scores and proficiencies.

Anyone tried it?

 

[Yosharian]

Wow that sounds really cool.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

All links in the documentation to the list of new spells, abilities, etc lead to 404

Found an alternative link:
https://gibberlings3.github.io/Documentation/readmes/subdocuments_dw/scs_iwd_desc_arcane.html
https://gibberlings3.github.io/Documentation/readmes/subdocuments_dw/scs_iwd_desc_divine.html
https://gibberlings3.github.io/Documentation/readmes/subdocuments_dw/hlas_10thlevel.html

 

[Yosharian]

Is it me or did he completely change shorty saves

 

[Yosharian]

Alright I finished looking through the fucking gigantic list of changes

Overall this looks like pretty big incline to me, I can see people being a bit upset at some changes he's made to the meta though

The new feat system looks really fun although I'm sceptical that it's balanced

Also I'm not entirely sold on some of the 3rd edition style changes he has made in some places such as the stat system, but I'm willing to give it a try

Had a Bard-themed playthrough planned for my next game so I'll probably try it out with that

(In six months or so, gotta let the plebians beta test it first)

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Overall this looks like pretty big incline to me,

Care to tldr?

 

[Yosharian]

Overall this looks like pretty big incline to me,

Care to tldr?

Basically he incorporates the vast majority of tweaks that improve/balance the game, for example capping skull trap damage, making breach more usable versus liches, making Imp Invisibility+Spell Immunity:Div combo less overwhelming, stuff like that

He also makes it so that enemies are a bit more resistant to cheese strats eg they can pierce magic immunity scroll effect with certain abilities, that kind of thing

The enormously long list of changes to classes, kits, races, ability scores etc are not so immediately obvious to analyse, will require some testing to see if they are incline or if they don't fit the game

But overall it looks very promising, if possibly a bit feature-creepy

 

[mastroego]

I'm pretty sure most of that stuff is in SCS already.

 

[cretin]

So because I'm pedantic about minor issues, Ive been running both a BG2 complete and a BG2EE install side by side. I've always suspected BG2EE just looks worse, no matter what options you choose, and now I'm fairly certain of it. I wont pretend to understand whats going on at a technical level, but to my eyes something is just "off" - dimmer, a little blurrier, a little less detail in the art - about BG2EE's rendering of the artwork, and it doesnt matter if you use the alt renderer or change the scaling method or lock zoom (and by the way, the locked zoom level in BG2EE is *not* the same level as intended despite the text they have).

A few forum posts seem to suggest I'm not alone, others also notice the difference and apparently it wasnt always this way, that BG2EE used to use catmull-rom for scaling but they dropped it because it wasnt working on mobile platforms, so now everyone is stuck with linear (looks like shit) or nearest-neighbor (looks like shit).

After much experimentation with widescreen mods and improved GUI's 2x scaling feature and so on, I ended up coming back around to thinking this game looks its best on a modern system at 800x600, GPU scaling to aspect ratio and no shitty widescreen hacks. Yes, its a little bit more of a hassle to set up, but I think its worth it in the end. Keeping in mind almost every "improvement" the EE can boast was and is actually available in mods for BG2 classic, especially UI and QoL stuff.

 

[Yosharian]

How much of a difference are we talking about here?

Can you make a screenshot comparison?

 

[NecroLord]

So because I'm pedantic about minor issues, Ive been running both a BG2 complete and a BG2EE install side by side. I've always suspected BG2EE just looks worse, no matter what options you choose, and now I'm fairly certain of it. I wont pretend to understand whats going on at a technical level, but to my eyes something is just "off" - dimmer, a little blurrier, a little less detail in the art - about BG2EE's rendering of the artwork, and it doesnt matter if you use the alt renderer or change the scaling method or lock zoom (and by the way, the locked zoom level in BG2EE is *not* the same level as intended despite the text they have).

A few forum posts seem to suggest I'm not alone, others also notice the difference and apparently it wasnt always this way, that BG2EE used to use catmull-rom for scaling but they dropped it because it wasnt working on mobile platforms, so now everyone is stuck with linear (looks like shit) or nearest-neighbor (looks like shit).

After much experimentation with widescreen mods and improved GUI's 2x scaling feature and so on, I ended up coming back around to thinking this game looks its best on a modern system at 800x600, GPU scaling to aspect ratio and no shitty widescreen hacks. Yes, its a little bit more of a hassle to set up, but I think its worth it in the end. Keeping in mind almost every "improvement" the EE can boast was and is actually available in mods for BG2 classic, especially UI and QoL stuff.

I always runned it with the widescreen mod at monitor resolution and it looks really good.
The true BG2, not that EE shit.

 

[cretin]

How much of a difference are we talking about here?

Can you make a screenshot comparison?

I will try to but classic isnt being cooperative with print screen. Its not a huge difference - I freely admit to being pedantic here - but it is noticeable to me.

 

[Yosharian]

Hmm ok

 

[cretin]

Oh and while I'm at it, 1PP is the most fucking overrated mod ever, and its built into the EE, not optional.

Imoen in base BG2 is a redhead in a skirt and has gigantic tits and then they go and turn her into a sexless generic hooded thief. Bunch of other changes annoy the fuck out of me too. Cool roman legionnaire style helmet ? Now its a goofy looking horned helmet, for some dumb reason.