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Talk to me about essential Baldur's Gate mods.
The_Scarab
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Recently picked up the Baldur's Gate 4 pack for an obscene $10. It is quite tender. It contains Baldur's Gate 1 + Tales of the Sword Coast, and Baldur's Gate 2 + Throne of Baal. All on nice shiny, high capacity DVDs, with no disc swapping during installs or during play (though if I'm honest, I kinda miss the 'insert disc 4 of 5 messages during installation', pure nostalgia)
The last time I played these games to completion was, quite literally, at their launch nearly twelve years ago. I intend to remedy that.
I don't consider myself to be a particularly fervent graphics whore. I don't mind playing vintage games 'as is', but in this case - as I understand it - there are a whole suite of modifications and tweaks that improve the games significantly with no real downside. A cursory Google search has yielded pages of mods, everything from widescreen tweaks to entire homebrew patches. I don't know where to begin.
The only mod I already knew about was the one for BG2 that removed the starting dungeon. I do not want this mod, but I do want others that improve the resolution, fix bugs and bring back the partially cut content. That sort of material. Can anyone assist me in this or direct me to somewhere credible to get the lot? As I said, usually I would just Google this shit, but when you're going back to the internet of the late 90s it's hard to tell what is legit and more importantly, what is up to date. I've had a lot of 'Warning, this web page will fuck you over' messages from Chrome during my search.
Plus, with no actual knowledge of the mod community, I don't know which of the ten widescreen mods works, or which bug fix pack is the right one etc etc. It's a lot to digest.
I have no doubts the fine Penny Arcade Forums community will be able to assist me in this endeavor. In return I offer a cute puppy.
Note: I may or may not be lying about the puppy.
The last time I played these games to completion was, quite literally, at their launch nearly twelve years ago. I intend to remedy that.
I don't consider myself to be a particularly fervent graphics whore. I don't mind playing vintage games 'as is', but in this case - as I understand it - there are a whole suite of modifications and tweaks that improve the games significantly with no real downside. A cursory Google search has yielded pages of mods, everything from widescreen tweaks to entire homebrew patches. I don't know where to begin.
The only mod I already knew about was the one for BG2 that removed the starting dungeon. I do not want this mod, but I do want others that improve the resolution, fix bugs and bring back the partially cut content. That sort of material. Can anyone assist me in this or direct me to somewhere credible to get the lot? As I said, usually I would just Google this shit, but when you're going back to the internet of the late 90s it's hard to tell what is legit and more importantly, what is up to date. I've had a lot of 'Warning, this web page will fuck you over' messages from Chrome during my search.
Plus, with no actual knowledge of the mod community, I don't know which of the ten widescreen mods works, or which bug fix pack is the right one etc etc. It's a lot to digest.
I have no doubts the fine Penny Arcade Forums community will be able to assist me in this endeavor. In return I offer a cute puppy.
Note: I may or may not be lying about the puppy.
The_Scarab on
Kuribo's Jew wrote: »scarab you have mental problems
Posts
They're usually incredibly poorly made, simply giving a lot of boss/minor boss type characters a bunch of magical buffs that you need to break down with a mage.
So basically, they're anything but tactical and more, oh, tedious and repetitive?
/rant over
'Get your fucking finger on the wookie'
It's been awhile since I played but when I did the mods I used were:
Dungeon Be Gone
Because Irenicus dungeon at the start of BG2 gets really old really fast., the mod lets you skip it whilst retaining all of the items, gold and xp you would get from doing it normally.
Ascension
Makes all the boss fights in TOB much more difficult and restores a fair bit of cut content, mostly at the end of the game. It was actually made by one of the developers (David Gaider I think but I can't recall) and it shows. Be warned though, the final boss fight is teeth grindingly hard with this mod.
Tutu
Essentially allows you to use all the new features from BG2 in BG1 (new classes, races and spells, dual wielding and improved resolution). Makes doing a complete playthrough of the whole series (if you are so inclined) feel like less of a chore.
Is it better to only have the bare minimum of mods? Am I going to have mod conflicts where some prevent others from working etc? Like I said in the OP, I presumed there would be a catch all 'mod pack' that puts in all the tinier fixes and tweaks.
Somehow I still managed to screw up and I got a difficulty Mod with 3 times all the monsters in every encounter. I've been meaning to try again, but I've been stuck on some of my Steam sales lately.
So where did you get this 4 pack? I've been looking for one myself too (since I've only got the original games and none of the expansion packs.)
For cut content, you need Unfinished Business. I've only played the BG2 version, but there's an early BG1 build as well. This mod includes primarily cut content or content created by the designers (as far as I remember anyway). It's very good.
The Item Upgrade mod is fun, but without some difficult-enhancing mods, the items you can make are just too powerful. Personally, I'm a big fan of Tactics and Ascension (both can be found on Weidu). Though only download these mods if you enjoy extremely difficult battles. They aren't generally well-received on these forums -- and probably for good reason. They definitely are not for everyone. But the vanilla game is an absolute cakewalk, so I really enjoy these mods. If you find the vanilla game too easy, give them a shot (and prepare for lots of reloading).
Also, make sure you install the official patch and the Baldurdash FixPack before installing any mods.
Note that if you install Tutu, you want to install Gibberlings3's BG*2* Fixpack on top of it, because it populates the world with some BG2 stuff you'd otherwise have to use the console to spawn (ie: bags of holding, adding scrolls of new spells to merchants, etc etc)
Just had to open that can of worms, didn't you?
For all the poopoo-ing surrounding Imoen romance, the mod itself is actually quite well written and executed.
The site, however, seems very much alive. I haven't been keeping up, but it even has a new layout compared to when I last saw it a few years ago.
Not a mod, but I would highly recommend the "collector's pack" bonus merchants who sell some pretty sweet equipment.
Goddamn it Pancake.
Although to be fair your bait worked so
Well played.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
That's seriously not why it's creepy.
On another note, Scarab! Use this widescreen mod. It works really well.
In all fairness, the mod has an absurdly large amount of content compared to other romance mods, and the writing is a good bit better as well. Whether or not you want to actually dive in to that content is a totally different matter.
o_O
I'm... curious... I'll get to that just as soon as I finish Act II of The King in Yellow.
My heart belongs to another, you see.
Furthermore, I'd be surprised if Lewie hasn't brought it up in the UK bargains thread, but I got the BG 4 pack from GAME. They had it, and a whole wall of classic PC games, all for under 10 pounds. I wrote dollars in the OP because I'm dumb and the 3 is right next to the 4 on my keyboard.
Picked up the Warcraft 3 battlechest, all the quake games that matter (1, 2 and 3 arena) and Unreal tournament 2004 too. I guess it's that time of the year where they clear out stock.
The incest thing is a red herring. There's no biological relation.
The real creepiness comes from the whole "preying on a girl's emotional trauma to get sex" vibe the mod has going for it.
That's definitely there, though you can play it without there being any sort of romantic or sexual relationship whatsoever. There are quite a few options available as far as what sort of relationship you develop. It gives you the option to be pretty twisted, but it's not forced upon you. I think the mod gets more flak than it deserves, in other words.
That's not a well-written mod.
True enough. I suppose I shouldn't say it's well-written, but parts of it, when compared to a lot of other mods out there, are not the absolute worst words ever written.
The bar is pretty low.
But to keep this thread a bit closer to on topic: steer away from the romance mods and you'll be better off!
Guess I never got around to that particular gem. I'll have to save it for a rainy day.
I remember it being sheer comedy gold in how awful it was.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Oh I remember that one. Man, that one was horrible. And for anyone who thinks he's exaggerating: he's not. She really was a lesbian demigod Kensai with 25 strength. If you didn't pursue a romance with her, she'd seduce Imoen. Glorious.
Chloe!
She was especially great because "I am awesome and also a lesbian" was pretty much her whole character.
Anyway, the only mods that I really would say are critical are the fan bugfix and high resolution patches, and tutu if you are going to be playing BG1. Ascension is okay but wasn't terribly interesting for me, and kind of sucks if you want to use a less-than-optimal party.
There's another mod called UnfinishedBusiness that's worth a look, too. It's nothing terribly important but it restores some sidequests that were cut from BG2 and makes some existing sidequests end a little more coherently.
my unofficial autobio will be accompanied with tips on how to smile
cause I've found that when they don't see you frown, they never know that you're a threat
and they don't sweat you when you came around
Pancake's summary of her character has more depth than her actual entire persona. I just want to be sure we're clear here.
I'm trying to think of some fan-made character mods that I actually enjoyed, but nothing's coming to me. I know I tried a ton of them. The originals are just so great that the modders can't really compete.