I never noticed rangers could dual class. an archer/cleric would be an offensive spell caster that does a lot of damage with a sling, sounds interesting
David.
You basically made the Biblical David.
This is awesome.
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
Bah - I forgot item revisions. Half an hour of uninstalled and reinstalling and I'm set. Removing a lot of the proficiency and weapon limits in the tweak pack got me thinking, though. I feel I've suffienctly borked my original two PC's to need a restart.
Assuming that Keldorn will be using Carsomyr, Anomen will be using a shield + flail of Ages, Imoen will be using Short Sword / Short Bow, and Edwin will be using...whatever. Suggest some other viable combinations that make sense with this party comp? One thing I really liked was the Item Revisions mod had a component that actually makes shields not suck, now - large shields, for instance, give +4 AC instead of the same +1 as a small shield. I'd like to even run my PC ranger/cleric with a shield because of this.
The first time I made my ranger/cleric, I had the Ranger's mandatory 2 points in dual-weapon (what a pain in the ass - if you're going to use a bow or crossbow, you can't use a second weapon anyways! Are you supposed to pause and dig it out of your inventory every time?). Moreover, I had points in flail and mace (thinking he'd use the flail of ages + crom faeyr), but there's no good flails or maces to be found for some time. I have my BG2 modded so Clerics can use swords (maybe only through Fighter-Cleric dualing? Not sure.)
Ranger seems cool, but you're automatically down 2 proficiently points in dual weapon style. Is it assume that rangers/clerics are going to be purely melee? Moreover, can clerics even use ranged weapons outside of slings at all? I'm not sure if I have that limitation modded out, if it exists at all.
Another concern: I really don't like the bug that Ranger/Clerics get access to druid spells. When the tweak pack asked me about all the spellcasting tables, I used the P&P option for all of them, and I' running the game at Core Rules difficulty. Does this bug mean you get an additional number of spells, or just an additional selection of spells? If it's the second, I think I'm okay with it.
As far as the second PC, the Kensai/Thief...so long as Imoen can unlock/disarm everything, I'm wondering if it's even necessary at all. I know the idea is to ultimately get the Use Any Item HLA for the Kensai, but at that point, how much of the Fighter-table THACO/HP/Kensai bonuses are you giving up in order to do that? I mean, it must be worth it or people wouldn't do it, but is it really that awesome - sure, you're wearing armor now and you can backstab (only with thief-only weapons) but you have limited HP and you can't hit anything.
Looking at my party comp, I have a mage in Imoen (plus all the thief I need). Keldorn is (effectively) a fighter. Anomen is a cleric. Edwin is another mage. I've got 2 mages, a fighter, and a cleric. I need another fighter and another cleric for a rounded party, right? I'm not missing out on backstab, am I? Recommendations? I'd like to have at least one party member (including the NPC's) good with a bow, and one good with a cross-bow...
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
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chiasaur11Never doubt a raccoon.Do you think it's trademarked?Registered Userregular
I never noticed rangers could dual class. an archer/cleric would be an offensive spell caster that does a lot of damage with a sling, sounds interesting
David.
You basically made the Biblical David.
This is awesome.
Let's be fair here.
David kicked people's asses with everything. His credentials to fight Goliath were "So, my day job is kicking the shit out of lions and bears. Didn't need armor there. "
I never noticed rangers could dual class. an archer/cleric would be an offensive spell caster that does a lot of damage with a sling, sounds interesting
David.
You basically made the Biblical David.
This is awesome.
Let's be fair here.
David kicked people's asses with everything. His credentials to fight Goliath were "So, my day job is kicking the shit out of lions and bears. Didn't need armor there. "
Truth, but cleric/rangers can wear armor and fuck people up with hammers and shit.
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KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
I never noticed rangers could dual class. an archer/cleric would be an offensive spell caster that does a lot of damage with a sling, sounds interesting
David.
You basically made the Biblical David.
This is awesome.
Then, if two of your party members start getting interested in each other, send the male to his death and bang the lady.
The first time I made my ranger/cleric, I had the Ranger's mandatory 2 points in dual-weapon (what a pain in the ass - if you're going to use a bow or crossbow, you can't use a second weapon anyways! Are you supposed to pause and dig it out of your inventory every time?). Moreover, I had points in flail and mace (thinking he'd use the flail of ages + crom faeyr), but there's no good flails or maces to be found for some time. I have my BG2 modded so Clerics can use swords (maybe only through Fighter-Cleric dualing? Not sure.)
Ranger seems cool, but you're automatically down 2 proficiently points in dual weapon style. Is it assume that rangers/clerics are going to be purely melee? Moreover, can clerics even use ranged weapons outside of slings at all? I'm not sure if I have that limitation modded out, if it exists at all.
First off, the Ranger's automatic 2 points in two-weapon fighting are a bonus they get, not a deduction from your total pool of points. Rangers in D&D have always been about bows and two-weapon fighting - later editions essentially turn the Ranger into two different classes based on which route you decide to go down. Second, yes, a Ranger who primarily uses TWF is going to have a bit of an inventory hassle if you need to switch to a bow. It sucks, but it's manageable. A Ranger/Cleric is usually melee-focused, but as mentioned it's possible to do Archer/Cleric and still be good. Third, Crom Fayer is a War Hammer, not a mace, so if you reroll the character, you may want to put points there instead.
Another concern: I really don't like the bug that Ranger/Clerics get access to druid spells. When the tweak pack asked me about all the spellcasting tables, I used the P&P option for all of them, and I' running the game at Core Rules difficulty. Does this bug mean you get an additional number of spells, or just an additional selection of spells? If it's the second, I think I'm okay with it.
You don't get more spell slots, only a broader selection of things to put in them.
As far as the second PC, the Kensai/Thief...so long as Imoen can unlock/disarm everything, I'm wondering if it's even necessary at all. I know the idea is to ultimately get the Use Any Item HLA for the Kensai, but at that point, how much of the Fighter-table THACO/HP/Kensai bonuses are you giving up in order to do that? I mean, it must be worth it or people wouldn't do it, but is it really that awesome - sure, you're wearing armor now and you can backstab (only with thief-only weapons) but you have limited HP and you can't hit anything.
The vast majority of your character's HP is gained from levels 1-9, where HP gains are determined by dice roll (varying by archetype) with a bonus from your CON modifier. At level 10, even the Fighter/Ranger CON bonus stops working and every class gains a flat 1-3 HP per level, so if you dual at levels 9 or 12, you've already gotten the bulk of your HP growth out of the way. As far as THAC0 is concerned, a normal level 9 Kensai as 9 THAC0, and a level 12 Kensai (should you choose to dual at 12 instead) has 5. A level 9 Thief has a THAC0 of 16, and a level 12 Thief has a THAC0 only 1 lower. Even limited levels in Fighter provide a massive boost in to-hit.
Looking at my party comp, I have a mage in Imoen (plus all the thief I need). Keldorn is (effectively) a fighter. Anomen is a cleric. Edwin is another mage. I've got 2 mages, a fighter, and a cleric. I need another fighter and another cleric for a rounded party, right? I'm not missing out on backstab, am I? Recommendations? I'd like to have at least one party member (including the NPC's) good with a bow, and one good with a cross-bow...
If your main character is going to be a Ranger/Cleric, then there's your second Cleric right there. Your main character can focus on buffs and the Druid offensive spells, while Anomen takes care of heals. If you're going to go the dual-wielding Ranger/Cleric route for Crom Fayer and the Flail of Ages, it might be better to have Anomen work on mainly Mace instead, for the Mace of Disruption. Backstabbing isn't necessary and that party setup is verging on having more front-line meatshields (counting your Ranger/Cleric main character) than it can really support. As far as weapons go, are you using Item Revisions? Your first paragraph didn't make that too clear. Imoen mainly uses shortbows, but she can only ever have * in them, relying mostly on her high DEX to boost her THAC0. Keldorn also has ** in Crossbows but really terrible DEX. If you really want someone who's a good bow/crossbow specialist, you're going to either want to grab Mazzy or possibly change your Kensai/Thief to something else.
If you do change your Kensai/Thief to something else, I'd recommend either an Archer ranger or go with an Elf Fighter/Thief with lots of points in Long Bows and Long Swords. While Imoen is pretty good at popping locks and disarming traps, there are a lot of other Thief skills out there that are very handy. Setting traps is very nice, especially once you hit Throne of Bhaal and Detecting Illusions is also very handy and underrated, since it will reveal invisible enemies no matter what, while True Sight and other magical invisibility purges can be foiled by Spell Immunity: Divination. Even if you don't backstab, having stealth skills can still be extremely handy for scouting. Imoen will never improve her thieving skills, and thus can only rely on Invisibility to scout around.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
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ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
I never noticed rangers could dual class. an archer/cleric would be an offensive spell caster that does a lot of damage with a sling, sounds interesting
David.
You basically made the Biblical David.
This is awesome.
Then, if two of your party members start getting interested in each other, send the male to his death and bang the lady.
Isn't this basically how Bioware intended it for Haer'Dalis and Aerie?
It's probably just a display error. Callic shows as having 1 attack in Shadowkeeper when he's loaded up, but in-game and with no weapon equipped he's got his proper 3/2 attacks from having 9 levels of Fighter.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I tried GemRB on the Mac in order to run BG1 and the results weren't that pleasing.
1. Program installs its config in the Library Application Support folder but still searches for config file in the user folder /.gemrb - The application support path is documented nowhere and the error message is misleading - even my Google-fu failed me on this one. I had to use Pacifist in order to see where it unloads the example config for OSX (the mac version has some different pathes because all of the data is contained in the application bundle. )
2. No widescreensupport by default. I thought the reason for this program is to eliminate the restrictions of the infinity engine. And the widescreen patch only has a PowerPC executable. I had to install the game to a virtual machine, use the Windows Widescreen patch and move the installation back to OSX.
3. No Fullscreen videos either
4. GemRB doesn't write settings in the Baldur.ini apparently and the default settings are annoying - autopause after every hit and voiced selection confirmation after every click. Back to Virtual machine, run the game, set the configuarion. Move the Baldur.ini back to OSX.
5. The finally configured game didn't run that impressingly. 2x Lockup during my short playthrough of the Prolog. It appeared that some animations and spell effects were missing (for example the vine thingies from the ensnarl spell - maybe I am remembering it wrong).
Well, maybe the Windows Version of GemRB fares better. Otherwise I might try BG Tutu or how it is spelled and run it in Wine.
If you're just wanting to run normal unmodded BG1 and can't get GemRB to work to run it in OSX, you can just install the Widescreen mod and play it normally in Windows. Otherwise Tutu is probably superior to GemRB overall, as far as playing on Windows is concerned.
Finally, Legend of Grimrock beaten. Now I can get back to this.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
Could somebody familiar with quest scripting tell me if it's possible to resolve a botched quest? I was working on Keldorn's family quest, and in attempting to resolve it in a lawful non-violent way, I got a crapsack ending instead of a good ending (i.e. Anomen's quest.) Unfortunately, I'm at the point in the quest where you need to meet him back at the Radiant Heart building in three hours, and going inside and talking to him finishes the quest. Is there a CLUA console command I can use to force a quest state where, instead, we go talk to the other NPC mentioned?
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
I never noticed rangers could dual class. an archer/cleric would be an offensive spell caster that does a lot of damage with a sling, sounds interesting
David.
You basically made the Biblical David.
This is awesome.
Let's be fair here.
David kicked people's asses with everything. His credentials to fight Goliath were "So, my day job is kicking the shit out of lions and bears. Didn't need armor there. "
Truth, but cleric/rangers can wear armor and fuck people up with hammers and shit.
the dual class would give you a lot more spell casting power since you are effectively a single class cleric with some ranged bonuses.
I still thing berserkers are the easiest beginner play through. the whole be immune to everything thing makes a lot of fights much easier. mind flayers? immune. mages? immune. vampires? immune. beholders? immune. kangaxx? yup immune. the only npc option is evil, there are tons of good npc clerics to chose from
Despite how powerful Enrage is, Mind Flayers can and will still kill you if they get enough melee attacks through, since the INT-draining component can't be stopped by any protections and Beholders will kill you easily.
Also, SCS II does some really stupid bullshit for the last leg of the Cleric stronghold sidequests, where you have to go and kill the leader of the oppositely-aligned temple - in my case, the Weathermistress from the Talos temple. As soon as you enter the temple the game grinds to an absolute halt as a few thousand scripts fire off, and then you're ambushed by enemies spawning in from nowhere on both sides of you: three Storm Knights on one side and two Storm Knights and a named Mage on the other. They spawn in pre-buffed and all four Storm Knights will launch an instant-cast Lightning Bolt at you; in the tiny cramped quarters of the Talos temple (where there are only three rooms in which you can maneuver, and the entrance hall walkway is only just barely big enough for two characters to stand in at once) these lightning bolts will hit your entire party, and four of them will kill 2-3 people dead. You're soon joined by Ada herself and two more Storm Knights; one or more of the Knights will cast Greater Command, almost guaranteeing any non-dead members of your party are now asleep and will soon be dead.
I am unashamed to say that I console cheated my way through this fight, first by Ctrl-R-ing all the NPCs to remove their buffs, then doing the same to all mine to keep them healed. I will tolerate a certain amount of bullshit from SCS, but teleporting a large group of enemies in literally on top of you who will proceed to instantly incapacitate your party while the game is chugging trying to process scripts is a bit beyond my limit.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Hi everyone, let me introduce myself, I'm the devious mind behind both Item Revisions and Spell Revisions.
I don't even remember how I ended up here, but I found korodullin's posts interesting and I wanted to thank him for the indirect feedback on Revisions mods, while also trying to answer a few of his doubts mentioned in old posts.
I don't have too much time right now but for example:
1) Shield of Balduran (aka anti-beholder cheat code): explaining everything would take a while, let's just say the SoB you have found (the one granting magic resistance - like all Balduran equipment within IR) it's not vanilla's SoB. Mirror Shield took its role, and can be found in the Underdark. I do nerfed it because instead of reflecting beholder's rays back to them it only deflect them! On a side note, that shield now deflects all gaze and ray attacks, not just beholder's rays.
2) Mace of Disruption: I didn't buffed it, except for its enchantment lvl. Perhaps you forgot that non-modded this mace's disrupting effect forced undead creatures to save at -4 penalty or die, and I removed that penalty completely. If you think it's still too powerful (even against Death Knights and Liches) just let me know!
3) Flail of Ages: again, it's supposed to be nerfed, as secondary effects allow a save (unlike non-modded 33% chance to slow), and elemental damage is less than before (1d3 instead of always 3), and doesn't even trigger on each hit (only 60% of times). Is it still too powerful?
4) I noticed you seem surprised everytime you find an unchanged item, but that should happen whenever the non-modded item was already fine, both conceptually and in terms of balance. Anyway, point out the cases I should look into and I will do.
1.) Yeah, I've read over the item listing on the IR forum so I know about the swapped-around Mirror Shield. The Mirror Shield itself was originally a plain +4 medium shield with a unique bam before, wasn't it? When I manage to get to the Underdark and nab it I'll toss it up as a listing. I didn't think to mention it when I talked about the Shield of Balduran when I was doing the Unseeing Eye stuff.
2.) I knew the vanilla Mace had the same "save or die" proc, though I didn't realize it was at such a steep penalty. I was mostly surprised that Store Revisions places it where it's at, and for a not unreasonable price. I understand why it was removed from the blood pool in the vampire lair, but it felt odd having such a powerful weapon available so quickly and easily upgradeable to +4 if you do the Sarles quest. Though I honestly can't think of any other good place to put it otherwise, unless you remove it from Athkatla entirely and slap it in Spellhold or somewhere. If you did that, I wouldn't put it much later than Spellhold though.
3.) Yeah I understand that the Flail is supposed to be overall nerfed, but I think that the nerfing of the consistent, reliable damage in favor of a percentage chance is roughly balanced out by the possible max roll on a d3 combined with the extra on-hit effects from each head like the -2 THAC0 from the Fire head makes it kind of a wash, possibly slightly more powerful overall. Certainly not overpowering though, in my opinion.
4.) I'm not really all that surprised, if it came across that way. I can't really think of many things that really need all that much tinkering though.
For general feedback I will say I do really like the whole theme of the Balduran set with its +hp and magic resistance that makes it a pretty fun generalist set now. I do agree with your Item List note on the Improved Cloak of Protection +2 probably needing a little extra something, though. Once-per-day Mantle is pretty nice, but that 20,000 gold price tag isn't trivial, especially with Store Revisions essentially making stealing pointless. I also generally like the robe changes, if it didn't come across strongly enough in the BG1 portion of my updates: the Battlemage robe makes Xan into a real threat without making him too nuts. Store Revisions I'm a little torn on, though. It seems to make scrolls a huge pain to find and buy in BG1, but I'm not sure on how I'd suggest altering it.
I do have one question though, but not about Item Revisions. My Berserker/Cleric recently hit 14 and got his first level 7 spell slot, so I decided to give the Death Knight that Spell Revisions adds a quick spin to see how it does. I read the spell description and gathered that a mental duel must take place similar to the Mage elemental summons, but I'm a bit confused as to what exactly that entails and what affects it, since the description is rather non-specific. From searching around the SR forums, I've managed to piece together that some classes get a bonus to their chances to turn the thing friendly for the duration and that some stats provide a bonus and that Good-aligned characters may not be able to control it at all, but it seemed to have been just developmental idea chatter and I couldn't really find anything concrete. So basically, what exactly did you end up going with as far as requirements to turn it to your side?
Oh, and update the Gibberlings3 main site's Item Revisions download to v3 already! :rotate:
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
Hey Demi Awesome work. A question, though - I've stated a game with Item Revisions, but I didn't realize there was a Store Revisions mod as well. Am I missing out on whole items by running the one without the other, or will it just mean that some items are in unintended locations?
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
From what I understand, Store Revisions is a little bit of a misnomer since it affects a lot more than just stores and temples. If you don't install it, everything that I, for example, might say has been moved should still be around and in their normal locations.
Anyway, Trademeet and the Druid Grove finished. I'll probably spoiler the main body of these update posts from here on out since I'm sure people are tired of seeing massive blocks of text from me on every damn page.
Headed over to Trademeet and grabbed both the quest to investigate the Druid Grove (and had Cernd tag along for the hell of it) and the quest to take out the Rakshasa for the Djinn. The grove itself isn't much changed in SCS, mostly with a larger amount of trolls and with a wider variety. There were a few surprises though, like a couple of earth elementals as normal enemies (which I had never actually seen before because who summons earth elementals?) and even a shambling mound, causing all of those repressed nightmares NOSTALGIC MEMORIES of Curse of the Azure Bonds to come to the fore. I have the Shapeshifter Rebalance component (from either SCS or BG2Tweaks, can't remember which) installed, which makes Cernd pretty rockin' and nearly overpowered, especially since he can still cast while shifted. He doesn't get his multiple normal Werewolf shifts that Shapeshifters should get as they level, though, which is kind of odd. I loaded him up with offensive spells and pretty much just launched him at everything.
First stop was the troll mound, basically laying waste to every troll in my path with Shapiro scouting things out first. I eventually came across a massive group of trolls and decided to have a little fun. Pulling back, I had Shapiro lay all his traps (4/5 succeeded, not bad) and then lure the group over. Somehow about eight trolls managed to trigger all the traps at the exact same time, leaving them ripe for a single fireball from the Staff of Fire (which I forgot to list in last time's item roundup, whoops) and a ton of XP at once. The mound itself was fairly easy, though spectral trolls are incredibly annoying with their stat drains and constant popping in and out of invisibility, causing your attacker to stop swinging. Wiped the place out, looted it, and left to get accosted by Harpers wanting to know what had happened at the compound in Athkatla. I think I might've forgotten to mention the battle there, but not much of note happened. Between Xan's Horrors, Callic's Callic-ness, Jaheira's Call Lightning, and Shapiro's backstabs, we pretty much stomped them. I hope I didn't muck up the Jaheira romance, though, since the lovetalk after avoiding a fight with the Harper squad in the grove read a little bit like it considered me having fought them. Oh well.
Next up was the group of adventurers fighting off trolls. Normally they handle themselves pretty well, but SCS's boosted trolls basically ripped them apart before I could even get my party in to help. Oh well. Mopped up the trolls, looted the unfortunates, and immediately encountered some Shadow Druids. Not wanting to deal too much with them, I decided to crank out some summons for the hell of it, since I hadn't used them much. Xan summoned a couple Shadows and Callic channeled his inner Tiax to call up a few Ghasts. Hasted everyone up and then Shapiro kicked things off with a 57-damage backstab, sending one Shadow Druid into morale failure. Xan charged in, True Striking even as his shadows level drained the Druid to hell and gone. Callic's Ghasts hit the third Druid (who'd managed to shapeshift into a bear) with Holds and Disease, Jaheira finishing him off before I could even get a word in edgewise. Jan Magic Missiled down the fleeing Druid and it was all over. Time to bag a rakshasa.
I could've sworn Ihtafeer engaged in conversation the moment you entered her hut, but she didn't for some reason. Sucked to be them I guess. Shapiro and Were-Cernd each picked a target with Xan summoning more Shadows and readying a Disintegrate, Jan moved off to the side, and Callic and Jaheira prepared to burn down Ihtafeer as fast I could. Talked to her and she immediately knew we were from the Djinn, so she attacked. Shapiro's backstab brought his target to Near Death and one of Jan's magic missiles happily finished the job. Cernd's target was half dead before Shapiro could even spend the round to restealth and move to backstab him, only managing to get off a Cloudkill + Stinking Cloud sequencer (which Jaheira immediately Zone of Sweet Air'd away) before croaking. Ihtafeer herself put up much more of a fight, having multiple sequencers and contingencies, eating a bunch of Breaches, Remove Magics, and even a Pierce Shield or two before finally running out of Stoneskins and Protections From Magic Weapons and eating it. Grabbed her head, went next door, grabbed good ol' Belm (which went straight to Jaheira) and then left.
Some more trolls and a boatload of myconids later I reached the end of the path and the final Shadow Druid encounter. Parked Shapiro with poison active behind one of the Adherents and pretty much did a frontal assault. Adherent took a backstab and almost died, but failed his poison save so he was on borrowed time anyway. Second Adherent ate a bunch of Flame Arrows from Jan and Xan, and the named guy kept faffing about trying to switch between shapeshifting to a bear and casting buffs to try and buy some time. It didn't work and he croaked. Weirdly though, his only loot was a normal scimitar. He should have had the +3 Flame Tongue longsword, which I was going to toss to Mazzy (whose proficiencies I've changed to longsword). No idea where IR moves it to now. Went inside and had Cernd challenge Faldorn for the grove. She accepted, he shifted to a Greater Werewolf and then proceeded to chew her face off. I don't think she managed to get a single hit in. After that it was a simple matter of quest turn-ins and other little bits of mopping up.
All that's left now, sidequest-wise, are Windspear Hills and the Planar Prison. I'll probably get the Prison out of the way first since I'm not too terribly fond of the place and I'll be too tempted to just say "fuck it" and head on to Chapter 3 if I leave it for last.
As always, the lewts:
Staff of Fire +2
One of the bits of loot from the Planar Sphere I forgot to mention last time, it (along with all the other elemental staves) has been given a pretty significant overhaul with Item Revisions. Worth keeping for the ability to use it as an infinite - though once per day - Wand of Fire alone, it's got enough on-hit goodies that make it more than worthy of being used in melee. A quarterstaff-centric character would be quite interesting to play with an arsenal of staves that can be switched between like this. As for my current party, Xan's got it in his second weapon slot, ready to switch at a moment's notice to hurl a fireball (which he can't normally do as an Enchanter) or use it to finish off a troll.
Staff of Thunder and Lightning +2
Wrested from the corpse of Weathermistress Ada from the Temple of Talos, most of the same commentary above applies to this. Its on-use abilities are both really nice (the Thunder & Lightning ability acts like a Wand of Lightning, I believe) and the on-hit effects are possibly better for general use than the Staff of Fire's. For some odd reason, this staff is Druid-only, though every other elemental staff (Fire, Air, Earth) is usable by anyone. Jaheira's hanging on to this one for now.
Cleric's Staff +3
It's staff day, apparently! Only a simple +3 staff in vanilla, IR turns it into a very capable undead-busting weapon, having the same Undead Bane effect as the Mace of Disruption, which unfortunately overshadows it. Still not a bad staff all told.
Staff of the High Forest +2
Staves, staves, and more staves! Cernd's staff, previously a normal +2 staff with a slow HP regen effect, has been given a nice little overhaul. The immunity to Entangle is nice, though the other spell immunities are unlikely going to come into play beyond maybe the duel with Faldorn. Still, it's not bad and gives Cernd a bit more flavor, but I'd undoubtedly give him a different staff if I elected to keep him around.
Cloak of the High Forest
Cernd's cloak. Mostly the same as it was originally, but the Staff of the High Forest's regen effect has been shifted onto it and made a bit less effective overall, presumably to not make it insane when combined with werewolf regen. I'm fairly certain that, like a lot of other pieces of NPC-specific equipment, protagonists with stats at least as high as Cernd's could equip it (and his staff) if so desired.
Gloves of the Rogue
Formerly the Gloves of Pick Pocketing, these babies have been moved from a drawer in the Copper Coronet and onto the fence at the Thieves Guild. Given rebalanced thieving stats and a reason to equip them outside of whenever a lock needs popped or a trap needs setting, they'll be on Shapiro full-time once I find him a good belt to make up for losing the Gauntlets of Ogre Power.
Belm +2
The infamous Belm. Extra attacks reduced by half, but is still one of the best offhand weapons in the game. Nestled safely in Jaheira's off-hand, where it will stay for most of the rest of the game, if not all of it. Joining it is...
Rashad's Talon +2
Originally just a +2 scimitar with a fancy name, IR gives it a fairly unique ability intended to complement Belm. Sitting comfy on Jaheira, I'm actually really excited to see how this performs, especially seeing as it's the best scimitar for her until at least the Underdark.
Ras +2
Still a +2 dancing sword, IR increases the duration of the effect to 60 seconds instead of a paltry 24. Currently Mazzy's melee weapon, which she can let fight on its own and then switch back to her bow. Would be nice if it was usable once every five turns or something, giving it a more "once per encounter" kind of feel, but it'll still be handy in a pinch.
Necaradan's Crossbow +3
Formerly a plain +3 light crossbow, it's been moved from the end of the Underdark to the fence at the Thieves Guild. The unique on-hit ability is really nice and gives Shapiro an opportunity to get a backstab in when it procs if I can notice it in time. Very fun little crossbow.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Hi again, sorry for the apparent random answers, but I'm tons of posts behind and I noticed a few things in old posts that merit some attention. Anyway...
Store Revisions: it's not a different mod, it's part of IR since V3 (@SummaryJudgment, are you perhaps using V2?). Yes, the name is a little misleading but we couldn't find a much better one. It doesn't add new items as korodullin says, it re-arranges items locations (even the ones not in an actual store), and hugely re-shape pratically every "store" within BG2 (we still have to do that for BG1). Now promenade's fletcher finally is the place to visit for archers, temples sell healing or curative potions, fences sell thief-related items, librarians sell scrolls, smithes don't sell scrolls anymore, and so. In general every store now has its own "theme" and sells items accordingly to that.
@korodullin, Joluv bonus merchant shouldn't have that broken Scarlet Ninja-to (we removed it from the game), you probably installed Tweak Pack's bonus merchants after IR, altering what we did to him. Am I right?
Death Knight: we are planning to do what you read in our forums for V4, but within V3 Death Knight works pretty much as vanilla's elementals did (but the mental duel takes an instant and the DK shouts something like "I'll follow you for now" or "I'll destroy you fool" as soon as he is summoned). You have 15% chance of DK going hostile, and 85% of times it will fight as a semi-trusty ally. The AI kinda cheats instead, and always summon Death Knights (and fiends) as allies.
Improved Cloak of Protection: I'm thinking to make it a CoP +3, after all it costs a fortune, and players can already get a Ring of Protection +3.
Ring of Earth Control: it got +2 AC instead of +1, but vanilla's version had a hidden +1 to all saves which I have removed.
Staff of Thunder and Lightning: it's druid only because I follow PnP rules as much as I can. Btw, it is intended to be slightly better than the other elemental staves.
Plate of Balduran: it seems buffed to you because you are playing without dexterity penalties in heavy armors. That component is taken into account when balancing armors, and without it all the full plates you're going to find will be clearly overpowered compared to lighter armors.
Mace of Disruption: I was concerned too about allowing it to be improved so early in the game, but it worked like that even in vanilla and I cannot do nothing about it unless we move the weapon somewhere else, later in the game. The problem as you say is that I don't see a place it would fit it neither in Spellhold nor in the Underdark.
Armor of Faith: judging by your fight against Torgal I guess you changed your mind regarding it not being powerful. Anyway, I do thought about making it a +2 armor, but its 20% physical res already is outstandingly effective, and we decided that +-1 AC would have not changed the armor's effectiveness anyway. Long story short, if you want to rely on AC you have to opt for other armors anyway (a +1 or +2 plate within BG2 has orrendous AC, a non-magical full plate beats it!), and against boss-like opponents you need maximized AC (e.g. full plate + large shields, or swashbuckler) to make it matter, else they are going to hit you almost always.
Amulet of Magic Shielding: energy resistance means resistance to all energy types (fire, cold, electrical, acid, magic), much like SR's Protection from Energy spell grants immunity to all of them.
Ice Storm: nice to see someone using this previously underused spell. I was afraid it was still unappealing, but I guess I was really wrong judging by your battle reports. Edit: Go to the menu and remove the gore option!!! That will make frozen targets not explode together with your loot, allowing you to use all cold based spells/items without worries! The gore option is also responsible for other similar issues.
Note that we're currently working on SR V4, thus if you have any suggestion, you notice a spell still is underwhelming or it is utterly insane let me know. Feedback from an actual playthrough like yours (especially if SCS is installed as it uses SR) is crucial for me, because sometimes something which seems balanced on paper it is not in-game.
Yep, both tweak packs (BG2 and BGT) are currently installed pretty close to the end of my load order for varying reasons, most of them having to do with BGT itself. Oddly enough it doesn't undo all the IR changes to the bonus merchants, only Joluv. I doubt I'll grab the Scarlet Ninja-to, though. For one thing, I need UAI to equip it, and I don't really care to spend a ton of gold and lug the thing around all SoA just to get a free attack per round in ToB. Besides, the Short Sword of Mask + RR's Short Sword of Backstabbing is a better combo anyway.
I forgot about not running with the DEX/speed penalties for heavy armor. I actually used to run with it a couple years back but grew really frustrated with the movement speed penalties and eventually just axed that part altogether. After I finish this playthrough I'll probably nuke my current install and do a Tutu+BG2 install instead and I might reinstate the DEX penalties, though I'd probably do something about Keldorn's DEX since his AC is terrible to the point of actually making him a liability with those penalties enabled.
The Armor of Faith is a really weird piece of armor and I've been kind of struggling to find a really solid use for it. It was pretty effective against Tor'Gal and company. Against Thaxll'ssillyia... not so much. It's still in my bag of holding and I might pull it out for the Planar Prison, but I just can't really find a good niche for it to fill. 20% physical resist by itself is pretty good, but when combined with lackluster AC it feels like kind of a wash overall.
Ice Storm is also very nice and I love it to pieces, but I've actually had to stop using it on humanoid enemies because I was simply losing too much loot due to frozen enemies exploding and having all of their equipment poof along with them. It still gets pulled out from time to time, but not as often as I'd prefer.
And as to the Death Knight, either I'm hideously unlucky or have something messed up on my end somewhere along the line, because the DKs I summon are always hostile for me, even after 20+ test casts with a variety of variables (Protection vs. Evil or no, high stats vs. low stats, Evil-aligned caster instead of Good-aligned, etc.) changed around. It's never had any text of any kind either.
Now promenade's fletcher finally is the place to visit for archers, temples sell healing or curative potions, fences sell thief-related items, librarians sell scrolls, smithes don't sell scrolls anymore, and so.
Funny you mention that, since I just bought several high-end mage scrolls (Spell Shield, Pierce Shield, one of the Bigby's spells...) from the Smithy in Trademeet a couple hours ago.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
The Armor of Faith is a really weird piece of armor and I've been kind of struggling to find a really solid use for it. It was pretty effective against Tor'Gal and company. Against Thaxll'ssillyia... not so much. It's still in my bag of holding and I might pull it out for the Planar Prison, but I just can't really find a good niche for it to fill. 20% physical resist by itself is pretty good, but when combined with lackluster AC it feels like kind of a wash overall.
Doing the math, it seems like that item would only be worthwhile against enemies with absolutely ridiculously high THACO. It reduces your physical damage taken by 20% but makes you 20% more likely to be hit. Against very low THACO enemy that could more than double their chance to hit you, it only reduces your damage taken against enemies that already hit you at least 85% of the time.
EDIT: Assuming the scenario above where you had an armor with 4 better AC. Of course there are other armors in the game with better AC, making it even more useless.
I forgot about not running with the DEX/speed penalties for heavy armor. I actually used to run with it a couple years back but grew really frustrated with the movement speed penalties and eventually just axed that part altogether.
That's why we made that component grant multiple choices, one of which keeps all encumberance effects except movement speed reduction. That one is probably the one you should use if you cannot bear slow movements in heavy armors part (many players don't).
Regarding Keldorn, he should get DEX 7 instead of 9 while in full plate, but that has no effect of his AC. I may think about having his armor inflict him only 1 DEX penalty, justifying it within the description by saying it was crafted specifically for him bla bla bla.
On a side note, for the upcoming official release of IR V3 we are adding even more options, as armors may now grant a small amount of physical resistance (5% light ones, 10% medium ones, 15% heavy ones), while lowering attack speed factor (which IR makes a crucial feature of weapon types because enchantments doesn't lower it anymore).
Ice Storm is also very nice and I love it to pieces, but I've actually had to stop using it on humanoid enemies because I was simply losing too much loot due to frozen enemies exploding and having all of their equipment poof along with them. It still gets pulled out from time to time, but not as often as I'd prefer.
Have you missed my "edit"? The issue of cold damage destroying the loot can be avoided by simply turning the gore option off!!
And as to the Death Knight, either I'm hideously unlucky or have something messed up on my end somewhere along the line, because the DKs I summon are always hostile for me, even after 20+ test casts with a variety of variables (Protection vs. Evil or no, high stats vs. low stats, Evil-aligned caster instead of Good-aligned, etc.) changed around. It's never had any text of any kind either.
I'll look into it as soon as I get back from work. It could be something isn't working on your install (e.g. a compatibility issue), but if it's an error on my side I'll fix it in a second.
Now promenade's fletcher finally is the place to visit for archers, temples sell healing or curative potions, fences sell thief-related items, librarians sell scrolls, smithes don't sell scrolls anymore, and so.
Funny you mention that, since I just bought several high-end mage scrolls (Spell Shield, Pierce Shield, one of the Bigby's spells...) from the Smithy in Trademeet a couple hours ago.
That shouldn't really happen! It sounds even more strange if those are high lvl scrolls. I'll look into it, but I'd bet it's not because of IR.
Actually I didn't notice that Ice Storm edit about the gore setting. Where was it at, since it's not in the readme?
As far as the Death Knight and scrolls at the Trademeet Smithy go, they could very well be problems with compatibility on my part due to having things like the tweak packs installed so late. It's not a really big deal or anything and I can easily work around it, but there you go. If you're curious, my weidu.log is here. Stuff like this is also why I generally prefer Tutu and BG2 as separate installs, but I really wanted to give BGT a spin.
For what it's worth, I've also had error pop-ups and crashes with a few temples when I browse the spellcasting services they have. Again, not sure if it's something to do with the fact that I'm running BGT with Store Revisions not being designed for BG1 and some weird wankery with temple services drawing from the same pool of resources. I forget which specific temples had crashes, but I'll experiment with a few and let you know which just in case.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Finished off Mekrath's laboratory and the Planar Prison. Only one more sidequest to go and it's off to Chapter 3 and Spellhold at long last.
Headed off to the Five Flagons playhouse in the Bridge district, saw the terrible play, and got tasked with finding the absolutely insufferable Haer'Dalis in the Temple sewers. Immediately got ambushed by a group of mephits and quasits in the lab entryway, which fell easily. Shapiro scouted out the place, finding only Haer'Dalis in his little storeroom corner, Mekrath himself off in his little hallway and a group of Yuan-ti crammed into the tiniest room in the place, the master bedroom. Four Yuan-ti Mages, one regular Yuan-ti, and one Greater Yuan-ti. That is an insanely stupid group to fight in such cramped quarters, so I did the cheapest thing I could think of: had Xan cast Mass Invisibility on the party for group Improved Invisibility, waltzed in, and laid down Greater Malison, Chaos, and Sphere of Chaos, then Horror, in that order. The confusion that followed was pretty glorious; three of the mages just lost their shit and went straight into panic mode immediately, the Greater Yuan-ti immediately began beating the snot out of the normal Yuan-ti, and the last remaining mage got beat down pretty quickly. The Greater went down after that, and then it was just a matter of gritting my teeth, blocking the two doorways out of the room, and killing the three panicked mages through their initial stoneskins and their subsequent contingencies. Mekrath himself was a bit less dramatic. Cast Bless, Aid, and Chant on Shapiro to boost his THAC0, parked him behind Mekrath, triggered Death Attack, and insta-killed him. No muss, no fuss, thanks for the 14,000 XP. I then returned to the Five Flagons after shooing off Haer'Dalis and grabbing the gem.
After the subsequent cutscene I ended up in the prison and the initial crazy ambush. Not too awful much to say about it, really. Lots of Greater Command, some Flame Arrows, a True Sight or two, some magic dispelling, Mazzy slinging eighty billion arrows (that did nothing, apparently, since she wouldn't shut up with her "weapon ineffective" lines no matter what arrows I tried on her) and Xan even doing some melee fun. Next up was a big room full of more goddamn Yuan-ti. Close to half a dozen mages were in there along with more Greater Yuan-ti, so I parked Callic in a choke point and had Jan and Jaheira fill the room up with Webs, Ice Storms, and a Sphere of Chaos from Callic. Most of the mages went down from that onslaught, but one or two managed to make it out and had to be dealt with, though not before they all managed to dispel all the buffs I went through so much trouble to bother casting. Dispelled (multiple times, thanks Contingencies and Sequencers!) the remaining Mages and had Shapiro backstab them a time or two while Jaheira and Xan melee'd, Jan tossed Magic Missiles, and Callic tanked the Greater Yuan-tis that somehow managed to avoid the big deathtrap entirely.
Shapiro decided to do some quick scouting after that, but ran into the Master of Thralls who saw him through stealth despite his Cloak of Non-Detection. The Master then decided pull a Davaeorn and Teleport Without Error right on top of Mazzy... who happened to still be surrounded by the rest of my team. Needless to say, he went down pretty damn fast. The wyvern that is normally on the perch inside the room next to the Master was gone for some reason, but the two remaining thralls that were there went down fairly easily, followed by the two Air Elementals (who wrecked a buffed-up Callic in melee, despite the physical resist from the Armor of Faith; I decided to finally put it out to pasture after that and use Armor of Faith spell on a discretionary basis for harder fights instead) that would have normally helped the Master had he not been a complete dunce. Mazzy, wearing the Boots of Speed, took the Master's orb down to the incenerator to break it, freeing the other thralls who then promptly committed Suicide by Cambion, thankfully getting the Warden's two Yuan-ti Mage helpers to expend some spells taking them out. Shapiro scouted ahead once more, being spotted by the Warden who, for some reason, decided to buff up rather than engage and follow. The Yuan-ti Mages both went invisible and made a beeline for the rest of my party though, where they were promptly cut down one after the other. Shapiro scouted ahead once again, this time noticing the out-of-place wyvern who decided to follow him back to the party (the Cambion, yet again, opted to cast another set of instant buffs via sequencer instead of following). It went down without much hassle and then it was down to just the Warden.
We buffed and I decided to send a hasted Callic ahead to engage the Warden, the rest of the party carefully following behind to avoid falling into the fleshy trap pits filled with enemies. The Warden had an enormous panoply of buffs engaged from his contingency and sequencers, so Callic decided to open up with a Dispel Magic. The Warden decided to open with Power Word: Blind instead, and then something strange happened. Callic got blinded, and when you're blinded in BG, your vision range drops down to so little that you can barely move forward in uncovered fog of war areas. If you attack an enemy that you can see (such as via a spotter) with a ranged weapon or spell, that character will actually walk forward until the enemy is in their tiny little vision range and then attempt the attack. For this reason it's kind of annoying when you get hit with Blind because it can be hard to notice with all your other characters' large fields of vision making up for the blinded one's, leading to a lot of confusion when your ranged attacker suddenly starts trying to close to melee range to shoot. But Callic was in the middle of winding up a Dispel when he got smacked with Blind, so he walked forward toward the Warden to try and cast it. Normally, if you move a character while they're casting like that, the cast is interrupted. But Callic managed to walk forward and actually finish casting the Dispel, dispelling not just the Cambion's entire set of buffs, but his own blindness as well (plus all of his own buffs, naturally). A Call Lightning, Disintegrate, and some Magic Missiles later, the Master croaked, Haer'Dalis and company were freed, and a bunch of people leveled up.
Now it's off to Windspear Hills and then Chapter 3!
However, before I go over loot, I have a confession to make: I have no fucking idea what I'm doing with my spellcasters and their spellbooks. I thought I did, but the Planar Prison (and Lavok a couple updates prior) have shown me that I clearly don't. I don't like constantly resting to fine-tune the spellbooks of four casters (two arcane, two divine) for each non-trivial encounter, so I went with what I felt were sort of generalist setups: a variety of buffs, some attack spells, a few heals, and some debuffs. Obviously this isn't really doing me very well, seeing as I keep getting into fights where I can't really do much with my arcane casters due to running out of dispelling magics and my divine casters have buffs that sit un-cast most of the time because they generally only last long enough to be of use in larger, more difficult fights.
I'll list how many spell slots my casters have for each level and what I currently have them filled with. It'd take way more space and effort than I'm willing to expend to type out what spells each person has, but consult the Spell Revisions Spell List for what spells are available at what level and what they do under the mod. Bear in mind that Jaheira gets some spells that Callic does not and vice versa. For Xan and Jan, assume that they have or can easily gain access to every spell in the Arcane list, barring their opposition schools (Evocation for Xan, Necromancy for Jan). If anyone could point me in the direction of a much nicer overall spell selection for my casters, I would be extremely grateful. I've been able to muddle through the game by the seat of my pants with spell selections all this time, even in SCS and Ascension, but I've been playing this game for twelve years now and it's past time I got a better idea of what I was doing and how to do better.
Callic - 9 Berserker/14 Cleric
Level 1: 10 slots
Armor of Faith x2
Bless x2
Doom x2
Resist Fear x2
Cure Minor Wounds x2
Level 2: 10 slots
Aid x3
Chant x2
Draw Upon Holy Might x2
Silence x2
Hold Person x1
Level 7: 3 slots
Khelben's Warding Whip x1
Ruby Ray of Reversal x1
Power Word: Stun x1
Jan - 12 Illusionist/13 Thief
Level 1: 11 slots (he has both the Ring of Wizardry imported from BG1 that doubles 1st level spell slots as well as the one found earlier in BG2 granting extra spells for 1-4)
Magic Missile x8
Mage Armor x1
Grease x1
Identify x1
With that craziness out of the way, it's loot time:
Pixie Prick +2
Though it's been nerfed a bit (it's lost 1 enchantment level to become a +2 dagger and its sleep effect only has a 20% chance to trigger but still allows a save), it's still a really nice weapon and a pretty good complement to something like the Stiletto of Demarchess. Invisibility procs are very, very nice. Not going to be using it this run, but it's got a new item graphic and it's overall an interesting weapon in an underused category.
Gloves of Parrying
Completely changed from vanilla, where they were instead Gauntlets of Weapon Skill, granting +1 THAC0. Not much else to say about 'em, really. They're on Jaheira for lack of a better person.
Melodic Chain +2
Still Bard-only, this Elven chain mail has had its enchantment level reduced by 1, but given an immunity to silence effects. Would be nice if I had a Bard or kept Haer'Dalis around, provided he's capable of actually equipping it since Elven chain mails are normally only usable by Humans, Elves, and Half-Elves.
Kundane +2
Belm: Short Sword edition, and its attack speed bonus was nerfed in the same way for the same reasons. Still a great off-hand weapon. On Shapiro, naturally.
Staff of Air +2
Another of the elemental staves, this one has a less-useful daily enchant (though it frees up a Gust of Wind slot on a divine caster), but its combat abilities are very interesting. +1 attack per round is something I'm not sure any other staff has, and the bonus damage is fun too.
Adjatha the Drinker +2
Significantly changed from vanilla. It loses its immunity to Charm and Domination while gaining +2 saves vs. spells to still provide resistance to those effects. Its normal sorta-but-not-really vampiric effect was changed to instead feed off of the memorized spells of its victims, which is a very interesting ability and would make this an absolutely brutal weapon in the hands of a Wizard Slayer. The +5 HP is just icing on the cake. Mazzy's go-to melee weapon.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
#korodullin, Death Knight works fine in my install, but I have one guess. Can you try to open SR's spwi7## folder and copy-paste dvdeathk.cre and dvdeathk.bcs from there to your installed game override folder? Then try to cast the spell a couple of times and tell me if it works as it should. Btw, anytime you have a problem that might be related to one of my mods just mention it within Revisions forums and rest assured we generally solve everything pretty fast when it comes to bug fixing.
Regarding your spell selection I don't see anything truly wrong with it, except perhaps a couple of weak choices (e.g. Cure Light Wounds is still underwhelming even with my buffs outside of BG1), a few sub-optimal choices depending on characater's role (e.g. Fire Shield spells are only effective on true fighter/mages, they don't shine on characters who try to be hit as little as possible like Jan) and a bunch of very situational spells (e.g. Negative Plane Protection within the Planar Sphere is pretty much useless). Just remember to adjust your spellbooks a little depending on where you're going (e.g. true enchanters are pretty much worthless against undead and very limited against demons, but they are devastating against humanoids and monsters).
If you want a more in-depth analysis let me know, I'll try to help.
Nope, no go. Copy/pasted the two files (and overwrote when it asked) and no change. Death Knights always hostile. Did ten casts, five from Callic and five from Xan, all with Protection from Evil going, if that matters any.
And as for my spells my biggest problem is never really having enough dispels to do what I want to do. Enemy mages always have so many buff spells and contingencies and sequencers, but it never feels like I ever make much headway against them while slinging all my dispel-type stuff at them. I'm also at a general loss as to what's usually pretty good to put into contingency slots. I figure something like Stoneskin is probably the best overall, or maybe Improved Invisibility. Sorely wish I had Chain Contingency.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
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AriviaI Like A ChallengeEarth-1Registered Userregular
You're missing Insect Plague on Jaheira! Get it!
Also I just started my BG2 run yesterday by cleaning out much of Athkatla. I'm torn as to dropping Jaheira; I'm wondering if three full mages might almost be too much with my f/t protagonist and Aerie if I go and get Imoen.
On the other hand, I didn't realize I needed to fix my tweak pack installation a little until Keldorn tried to behead Viconia but got killed instead. This has me thinking of maybe dropping Viconia for Anomen, but bleh, Anomen.
So when this game comes out again this summer I can come here to learn how to build a character right?
I don't want to optimize but it sounds like my first character has the possibility of not being able to finish the game.
I also have played a druid in every rpg they've offered the class and I hear that they may not be very good in BG1.
Any class can beat the game. Some just take a bit more effort. But with the wide variety of NPCs, you could just have your protagonist sit on his ass and do nothing all game long, and it wouldn't really matter. If you're into powergaming, playing a druid probably isn't your best bet. But if that's the class you want to play, then go for it. I personally think druids are fantastic and a very fun class, thematically speaking.
Druids are fine, just generally overshadowed by other classes. If the EE allows kits in BG1 (which I'm assuming it will), then you're pretty much golden.
The hardest part, and arguably the "game killer" for first-time classes, are your initial stats. Those can be handled with a bit of patience though.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
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DunxcoShould get a suitNever skips breakfastRegistered Userregular
Druids are fine, just generally overshadowed by other classes. If the EE allows kits in BG1 (which I'm assuming it will), then you're pretty much golden.
The hardest part, and arguably the "game killer" for first-time classes, are your initial stats. Those can be handled with a bit of patience though.
I hope this is a case because I want to take whichever Druid kit it is that let's me turn into a werewolf and rip faces off.
... For good! Ambiguous good.
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AriviaI Like A ChallengeEarth-1Registered Userregular
So I decided to keep Viconia, but I'm still torn on Jaheira. It certainly didn't help that I misclicked and deep-sixed the romance by accident.
I currently have: Keldorn, Mazzy, Aerie, Viconia, and a M/T protagonist. Problem is, if I replace Jaheira, who do I replace her with? Cernd is Cernd, Imoen is a third mage, and Anomen is bleh.
Between Viconia and Aerie I doubt you're hurting for the extra spells Druids get. If you lose Jaheira then you get rid of a capable meleer, and your only remaining options on that front are Anomen (blah, as you say), Korgan, or Minsc. Also, what are you going to do about Keldorn vs. Viconia, provided you don't have that conflict modded out.
Making a custom multiplayer character isn't out of the question either, maybe.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
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AriviaI Like A ChallengeEarth-1Registered Userregular
Yeah I modded it out
by reloading a save where she didn't bash his skull in after redoing my tweak pack install
You're right, though, I need a third melee person. Maybe picking Minsc back up is in order!
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David.
You basically made the Biblical David.
This is awesome.
PC- ranger/cleric ??
PC - Kensai/thief ??
Imoen - Thief/Mage
Keldorn - Inquisitor
Anomen - Fighter/Cleric
Edwin - Mage
Assuming that Keldorn will be using Carsomyr, Anomen will be using a shield + flail of Ages, Imoen will be using Short Sword / Short Bow, and Edwin will be using...whatever. Suggest some other viable combinations that make sense with this party comp? One thing I really liked was the Item Revisions mod had a component that actually makes shields not suck, now - large shields, for instance, give +4 AC instead of the same +1 as a small shield. I'd like to even run my PC ranger/cleric with a shield because of this.
The first time I made my ranger/cleric, I had the Ranger's mandatory 2 points in dual-weapon (what a pain in the ass - if you're going to use a bow or crossbow, you can't use a second weapon anyways! Are you supposed to pause and dig it out of your inventory every time?). Moreover, I had points in flail and mace (thinking he'd use the flail of ages + crom faeyr), but there's no good flails or maces to be found for some time. I have my BG2 modded so Clerics can use swords (maybe only through Fighter-Cleric dualing? Not sure.)
Ranger seems cool, but you're automatically down 2 proficiently points in dual weapon style. Is it assume that rangers/clerics are going to be purely melee? Moreover, can clerics even use ranged weapons outside of slings at all? I'm not sure if I have that limitation modded out, if it exists at all.
Another concern: I really don't like the bug that Ranger/Clerics get access to druid spells. When the tweak pack asked me about all the spellcasting tables, I used the P&P option for all of them, and I' running the game at Core Rules difficulty. Does this bug mean you get an additional number of spells, or just an additional selection of spells? If it's the second, I think I'm okay with it.
As far as the second PC, the Kensai/Thief...so long as Imoen can unlock/disarm everything, I'm wondering if it's even necessary at all. I know the idea is to ultimately get the Use Any Item HLA for the Kensai, but at that point, how much of the Fighter-table THACO/HP/Kensai bonuses are you giving up in order to do that? I mean, it must be worth it or people wouldn't do it, but is it really that awesome - sure, you're wearing armor now and you can backstab (only with thief-only weapons) but you have limited HP and you can't hit anything.
Looking at my party comp, I have a mage in Imoen (plus all the thief I need). Keldorn is (effectively) a fighter. Anomen is a cleric. Edwin is another mage. I've got 2 mages, a fighter, and a cleric. I need another fighter and another cleric for a rounded party, right? I'm not missing out on backstab, am I? Recommendations? I'd like to have at least one party member (including the NPC's) good with a bow, and one good with a cross-bow...
Let's be fair here.
David kicked people's asses with everything. His credentials to fight Goliath were "So, my day job is kicking the shit out of lions and bears. Didn't need armor there. "
Why I fear the ocean.
is there any info yet on what all's being improved/changed in this new edition?
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Truth, but cleric/rangers can wear armor and fuck people up with hammers and shit.
Then, if two of your party members start getting interested in each other, send the male to his death and bang the lady.
First off, the Ranger's automatic 2 points in two-weapon fighting are a bonus they get, not a deduction from your total pool of points. Rangers in D&D have always been about bows and two-weapon fighting - later editions essentially turn the Ranger into two different classes based on which route you decide to go down. Second, yes, a Ranger who primarily uses TWF is going to have a bit of an inventory hassle if you need to switch to a bow. It sucks, but it's manageable. A Ranger/Cleric is usually melee-focused, but as mentioned it's possible to do Archer/Cleric and still be good. Third, Crom Fayer is a War Hammer, not a mace, so if you reroll the character, you may want to put points there instead.
You don't get more spell slots, only a broader selection of things to put in them.
The vast majority of your character's HP is gained from levels 1-9, where HP gains are determined by dice roll (varying by archetype) with a bonus from your CON modifier. At level 10, even the Fighter/Ranger CON bonus stops working and every class gains a flat 1-3 HP per level, so if you dual at levels 9 or 12, you've already gotten the bulk of your HP growth out of the way. As far as THAC0 is concerned, a normal level 9 Kensai as 9 THAC0, and a level 12 Kensai (should you choose to dual at 12 instead) has 5. A level 9 Thief has a THAC0 of 16, and a level 12 Thief has a THAC0 only 1 lower. Even limited levels in Fighter provide a massive boost in to-hit.
If your main character is going to be a Ranger/Cleric, then there's your second Cleric right there. Your main character can focus on buffs and the Druid offensive spells, while Anomen takes care of heals. If you're going to go the dual-wielding Ranger/Cleric route for Crom Fayer and the Flail of Ages, it might be better to have Anomen work on mainly Mace instead, for the Mace of Disruption. Backstabbing isn't necessary and that party setup is verging on having more front-line meatshields (counting your Ranger/Cleric main character) than it can really support. As far as weapons go, are you using Item Revisions? Your first paragraph didn't make that too clear. Imoen mainly uses shortbows, but she can only ever have * in them, relying mostly on her high DEX to boost her THAC0. Keldorn also has ** in Crossbows but really terrible DEX. If you really want someone who's a good bow/crossbow specialist, you're going to either want to grab Mazzy or possibly change your Kensai/Thief to something else.
If you do change your Kensai/Thief to something else, I'd recommend either an Archer ranger or go with an Elf Fighter/Thief with lots of points in Long Bows and Long Swords. While Imoen is pretty good at popping locks and disarming traps, there are a lot of other Thief skills out there that are very handy. Setting traps is very nice, especially once you hit Throne of Bhaal and Detecting Illusions is also very handy and underrated, since it will reveal invisible enemies no matter what, while True Sight and other magical invisibility purges can be foiled by Spell Immunity: Divination. Even if you don't backstab, having stealth skills can still be extremely handy for scouting. Imoen will never improve her thieving skills, and thus can only rely on Invisibility to scout around.
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Isn't this basically how Bioware intended it for Haer'Dalis and Aerie?
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One last question:
I downloaded Shadowkeeper to fix botched proficiencies, and I noticed that a fresh-made level 7 ranger is only showing 1 attack, instead of the 1.5 attacks that this progression chart (http://playithardcore.com/pihwiki/index.php?title=Baldur's_Gate:_Progression_Charts#Paladins_and_Rangers) is showing me. Is the 1.5 in the chart in reference to a weapon proficiency bonus or something?
EDIT: Loaded one of the TOB pre-made characters, and the level 18 fighter is only showing 1 attack, too. Weirdness with Shadowkeeper?
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AC for example, is always 10 in shadowkeeper because it's the base AC of every character.
1. Program installs its config in the Library Application Support folder but still searches for config file in the user folder /.gemrb - The application support path is documented nowhere and the error message is misleading - even my Google-fu failed me on this one. I had to use Pacifist in order to see where it unloads the example config for OSX (the mac version has some different pathes because all of the data is contained in the application bundle. )
2. No widescreensupport by default. I thought the reason for this program is to eliminate the restrictions of the infinity engine. And the widescreen patch only has a PowerPC executable. I had to install the game to a virtual machine, use the Windows Widescreen patch and move the installation back to OSX.
3. No Fullscreen videos either
4. GemRB doesn't write settings in the Baldur.ini apparently and the default settings are annoying - autopause after every hit and voiced selection confirmation after every click. Back to Virtual machine, run the game, set the configuarion. Move the Baldur.ini back to OSX.
5. The finally configured game didn't run that impressingly. 2x Lockup during my short playthrough of the Prolog. It appeared that some animations and spell effects were missing (for example the vine thingies from the ensnarl spell - maybe I am remembering it wrong).
Well, maybe the Windows Version of GemRB fares better. Otherwise I might try BG Tutu or how it is spelled and run it in Wine.
Finally, Legend of Grimrock beaten. Now I can get back to this.
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the dual class would give you a lot more spell casting power since you are effectively a single class cleric with some ranged bonuses.
I still thing berserkers are the easiest beginner play through. the whole be immune to everything thing makes a lot of fights much easier. mind flayers? immune. mages? immune. vampires? immune. beholders? immune. kangaxx? yup immune. the only npc option is evil, there are tons of good npc clerics to chose from
Also, SCS II does some really stupid bullshit for the last leg of the Cleric stronghold sidequests, where you have to go and kill the leader of the oppositely-aligned temple - in my case, the Weathermistress from the Talos temple. As soon as you enter the temple the game grinds to an absolute halt as a few thousand scripts fire off, and then you're ambushed by enemies spawning in from nowhere on both sides of you: three Storm Knights on one side and two Storm Knights and a named Mage on the other. They spawn in pre-buffed and all four Storm Knights will launch an instant-cast Lightning Bolt at you; in the tiny cramped quarters of the Talos temple (where there are only three rooms in which you can maneuver, and the entrance hall walkway is only just barely big enough for two characters to stand in at once) these lightning bolts will hit your entire party, and four of them will kill 2-3 people dead. You're soon joined by Ada herself and two more Storm Knights; one or more of the Knights will cast Greater Command, almost guaranteeing any non-dead members of your party are now asleep and will soon be dead.
I am unashamed to say that I console cheated my way through this fight, first by Ctrl-R-ing all the NPCs to remove their buffs, then doing the same to all mine to keep them healed. I will tolerate a certain amount of bullshit from SCS, but teleporting a large group of enemies in literally on top of you who will proceed to instantly incapacitate your party while the game is chugging trying to process scripts is a bit beyond my limit.
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I don't even remember how I ended up here, but I found korodullin's posts interesting and I wanted to thank him for the indirect feedback on Revisions mods, while also trying to answer a few of his doubts mentioned in old posts.
I don't have too much time right now but for example:
1) Shield of Balduran (aka anti-beholder cheat code): explaining everything would take a while, let's just say the SoB you have found (the one granting magic resistance - like all Balduran equipment within IR) it's not vanilla's SoB. Mirror Shield took its role, and can be found in the Underdark. I do nerfed it because instead of reflecting beholder's rays back to them it only deflect them! On a side note, that shield now deflects all gaze and ray attacks, not just beholder's rays.
2) Mace of Disruption: I didn't buffed it, except for its enchantment lvl. Perhaps you forgot that non-modded this mace's disrupting effect forced undead creatures to save at -4 penalty or die, and I removed that penalty completely. If you think it's still too powerful (even against Death Knights and Liches) just let me know!
3) Flail of Ages: again, it's supposed to be nerfed, as secondary effects allow a save (unlike non-modded 33% chance to slow), and elemental damage is less than before (1d3 instead of always 3), and doesn't even trigger on each hit (only 60% of times). Is it still too powerful?
4) I noticed you seem surprised everytime you find an unchanged item, but that should happen whenever the non-modded item was already fine, both conceptually and in terms of balance. Anyway, point out the cases I should look into and I will do.
I'll be back.
Cheers
Demi
1.) Yeah, I've read over the item listing on the IR forum so I know about the swapped-around Mirror Shield. The Mirror Shield itself was originally a plain +4 medium shield with a unique bam before, wasn't it? When I manage to get to the Underdark and nab it I'll toss it up as a listing. I didn't think to mention it when I talked about the Shield of Balduran when I was doing the Unseeing Eye stuff.
2.) I knew the vanilla Mace had the same "save or die" proc, though I didn't realize it was at such a steep penalty. I was mostly surprised that Store Revisions places it where it's at, and for a not unreasonable price. I understand why it was removed from the blood pool in the vampire lair, but it felt odd having such a powerful weapon available so quickly and easily upgradeable to +4 if you do the Sarles quest. Though I honestly can't think of any other good place to put it otherwise, unless you remove it from Athkatla entirely and slap it in Spellhold or somewhere. If you did that, I wouldn't put it much later than Spellhold though.
3.) Yeah I understand that the Flail is supposed to be overall nerfed, but I think that the nerfing of the consistent, reliable damage in favor of a percentage chance is roughly balanced out by the possible max roll on a d3 combined with the extra on-hit effects from each head like the -2 THAC0 from the Fire head makes it kind of a wash, possibly slightly more powerful overall. Certainly not overpowering though, in my opinion.
4.) I'm not really all that surprised, if it came across that way. I can't really think of many things that really need all that much tinkering though.
For general feedback I will say I do really like the whole theme of the Balduran set with its +hp and magic resistance that makes it a pretty fun generalist set now. I do agree with your Item List note on the Improved Cloak of Protection +2 probably needing a little extra something, though. Once-per-day Mantle is pretty nice, but that 20,000 gold price tag isn't trivial, especially with Store Revisions essentially making stealing pointless. I also generally like the robe changes, if it didn't come across strongly enough in the BG1 portion of my updates: the Battlemage robe makes Xan into a real threat without making him too nuts. Store Revisions I'm a little torn on, though. It seems to make scrolls a huge pain to find and buy in BG1, but I'm not sure on how I'd suggest altering it.
I do have one question though, but not about Item Revisions. My Berserker/Cleric recently hit 14 and got his first level 7 spell slot, so I decided to give the Death Knight that Spell Revisions adds a quick spin to see how it does. I read the spell description and gathered that a mental duel must take place similar to the Mage elemental summons, but I'm a bit confused as to what exactly that entails and what affects it, since the description is rather non-specific. From searching around the SR forums, I've managed to piece together that some classes get a bonus to their chances to turn the thing friendly for the duration and that some stats provide a bonus and that Good-aligned characters may not be able to control it at all, but it seemed to have been just developmental idea chatter and I couldn't really find anything concrete. So basically, what exactly did you end up going with as far as requirements to turn it to your side?
Oh, and update the Gibberlings3 main site's Item Revisions download to v3 already! :rotate:
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Anyway, Trademeet and the Druid Grove finished. I'll probably spoiler the main body of these update posts from here on out since I'm sure people are tired of seeing massive blocks of text from me on every damn page.
First stop was the troll mound, basically laying waste to every troll in my path with Shapiro scouting things out first. I eventually came across a massive group of trolls and decided to have a little fun. Pulling back, I had Shapiro lay all his traps (4/5 succeeded, not bad) and then lure the group over. Somehow about eight trolls managed to trigger all the traps at the exact same time, leaving them ripe for a single fireball from the Staff of Fire (which I forgot to list in last time's item roundup, whoops) and a ton of XP at once. The mound itself was fairly easy, though spectral trolls are incredibly annoying with their stat drains and constant popping in and out of invisibility, causing your attacker to stop swinging. Wiped the place out, looted it, and left to get accosted by Harpers wanting to know what had happened at the compound in Athkatla. I think I might've forgotten to mention the battle there, but not much of note happened. Between Xan's Horrors, Callic's Callic-ness, Jaheira's Call Lightning, and Shapiro's backstabs, we pretty much stomped them. I hope I didn't muck up the Jaheira romance, though, since the lovetalk after avoiding a fight with the Harper squad in the grove read a little bit like it considered me having fought them. Oh well.
Next up was the group of adventurers fighting off trolls. Normally they handle themselves pretty well, but SCS's boosted trolls basically ripped them apart before I could even get my party in to help. Oh well. Mopped up the trolls, looted the unfortunates, and immediately encountered some Shadow Druids. Not wanting to deal too much with them, I decided to crank out some summons for the hell of it, since I hadn't used them much. Xan summoned a couple Shadows and Callic channeled his inner Tiax to call up a few Ghasts. Hasted everyone up and then Shapiro kicked things off with a 57-damage backstab, sending one Shadow Druid into morale failure. Xan charged in, True Striking even as his shadows level drained the Druid to hell and gone. Callic's Ghasts hit the third Druid (who'd managed to shapeshift into a bear) with Holds and Disease, Jaheira finishing him off before I could even get a word in edgewise. Jan Magic Missiled down the fleeing Druid and it was all over. Time to bag a rakshasa.
I could've sworn Ihtafeer engaged in conversation the moment you entered her hut, but she didn't for some reason. Sucked to be them I guess. Shapiro and Were-Cernd each picked a target with Xan summoning more Shadows and readying a Disintegrate, Jan moved off to the side, and Callic and Jaheira prepared to burn down Ihtafeer as fast I could. Talked to her and she immediately knew we were from the Djinn, so she attacked. Shapiro's backstab brought his target to Near Death and one of Jan's magic missiles happily finished the job. Cernd's target was half dead before Shapiro could even spend the round to restealth and move to backstab him, only managing to get off a Cloudkill + Stinking Cloud sequencer (which Jaheira immediately Zone of Sweet Air'd away) before croaking. Ihtafeer herself put up much more of a fight, having multiple sequencers and contingencies, eating a bunch of Breaches, Remove Magics, and even a Pierce Shield or two before finally running out of Stoneskins and Protections From Magic Weapons and eating it. Grabbed her head, went next door, grabbed good ol' Belm (which went straight to Jaheira) and then left.
Some more trolls and a boatload of myconids later I reached the end of the path and the final Shadow Druid encounter. Parked Shapiro with poison active behind one of the Adherents and pretty much did a frontal assault. Adherent took a backstab and almost died, but failed his poison save so he was on borrowed time anyway. Second Adherent ate a bunch of Flame Arrows from Jan and Xan, and the named guy kept faffing about trying to switch between shapeshifting to a bear and casting buffs to try and buy some time. It didn't work and he croaked. Weirdly though, his only loot was a normal scimitar. He should have had the +3 Flame Tongue longsword, which I was going to toss to Mazzy (whose proficiencies I've changed to longsword). No idea where IR moves it to now. Went inside and had Cernd challenge Faldorn for the grove. She accepted, he shifted to a Greater Werewolf and then proceeded to chew her face off. I don't think she managed to get a single hit in. After that it was a simple matter of quest turn-ins and other little bits of mopping up.
All that's left now, sidequest-wise, are Windspear Hills and the Planar Prison. I'll probably get the Prison out of the way first since I'm not too terribly fond of the place and I'll be too tempted to just say "fuck it" and head on to Chapter 3 if I leave it for last.
As always, the lewts:
One of the bits of loot from the Planar Sphere I forgot to mention last time, it (along with all the other elemental staves) has been given a pretty significant overhaul with Item Revisions. Worth keeping for the ability to use it as an infinite - though once per day - Wand of Fire alone, it's got enough on-hit goodies that make it more than worthy of being used in melee. A quarterstaff-centric character would be quite interesting to play with an arsenal of staves that can be switched between like this. As for my current party, Xan's got it in his second weapon slot, ready to switch at a moment's notice to hurl a fireball (which he can't normally do as an Enchanter) or use it to finish off a troll.
Staff of Thunder and Lightning +2
Wrested from the corpse of Weathermistress Ada from the Temple of Talos, most of the same commentary above applies to this. Its on-use abilities are both really nice (the Thunder & Lightning ability acts like a Wand of Lightning, I believe) and the on-hit effects are possibly better for general use than the Staff of Fire's. For some odd reason, this staff is Druid-only, though every other elemental staff (Fire, Air, Earth) is usable by anyone. Jaheira's hanging on to this one for now.
Cleric's Staff +3
It's staff day, apparently! Only a simple +3 staff in vanilla, IR turns it into a very capable undead-busting weapon, having the same Undead Bane effect as the Mace of Disruption, which unfortunately overshadows it. Still not a bad staff all told.
Staff of the High Forest +2
Staves, staves, and more staves! Cernd's staff, previously a normal +2 staff with a slow HP regen effect, has been given a nice little overhaul. The immunity to Entangle is nice, though the other spell immunities are unlikely going to come into play beyond maybe the duel with Faldorn. Still, it's not bad and gives Cernd a bit more flavor, but I'd undoubtedly give him a different staff if I elected to keep him around.
Cloak of the High Forest
Cernd's cloak. Mostly the same as it was originally, but the Staff of the High Forest's regen effect has been shifted onto it and made a bit less effective overall, presumably to not make it insane when combined with werewolf regen. I'm fairly certain that, like a lot of other pieces of NPC-specific equipment, protagonists with stats at least as high as Cernd's could equip it (and his staff) if so desired.
Gloves of the Rogue
Formerly the Gloves of Pick Pocketing, these babies have been moved from a drawer in the Copper Coronet and onto the fence at the Thieves Guild. Given rebalanced thieving stats and a reason to equip them outside of whenever a lock needs popped or a trap needs setting, they'll be on Shapiro full-time once I find him a good belt to make up for losing the Gauntlets of Ogre Power.
Belm +2
The infamous Belm. Extra attacks reduced by half, but is still one of the best offhand weapons in the game. Nestled safely in Jaheira's off-hand, where it will stay for most of the rest of the game, if not all of it. Joining it is...
Rashad's Talon +2
Originally just a +2 scimitar with a fancy name, IR gives it a fairly unique ability intended to complement Belm. Sitting comfy on Jaheira, I'm actually really excited to see how this performs, especially seeing as it's the best scimitar for her until at least the Underdark.
Ras +2
Still a +2 dancing sword, IR increases the duration of the effect to 60 seconds instead of a paltry 24. Currently Mazzy's melee weapon, which she can let fight on its own and then switch back to her bow. Would be nice if it was usable once every five turns or something, giving it a more "once per encounter" kind of feel, but it'll still be handy in a pinch.
Necaradan's Crossbow +3
Formerly a plain +3 light crossbow, it's been moved from the end of the Underdark to the fence at the Thieves Guild. The unique on-hit ability is really nice and gives Shapiro an opportunity to get a backstab in when it procs if I can notice it in time. Very fun little crossbow.
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Store Revisions: it's not a different mod, it's part of IR since V3 (@SummaryJudgment, are you perhaps using V2?). Yes, the name is a little misleading but we couldn't find a much better one. It doesn't add new items as korodullin says, it re-arranges items locations (even the ones not in an actual store), and hugely re-shape pratically every "store" within BG2 (we still have to do that for BG1). Now promenade's fletcher finally is the place to visit for archers, temples sell healing or curative potions, fences sell thief-related items, librarians sell scrolls, smithes don't sell scrolls anymore, and so. In general every store now has its own "theme" and sells items accordingly to that.
@korodullin, Joluv bonus merchant shouldn't have that broken Scarlet Ninja-to (we removed it from the game), you probably installed Tweak Pack's bonus merchants after IR, altering what we did to him. Am I right?
Death Knight: we are planning to do what you read in our forums for V4, but within V3 Death Knight works pretty much as vanilla's elementals did (but the mental duel takes an instant and the DK shouts something like "I'll follow you for now" or "I'll destroy you fool" as soon as he is summoned). You have 15% chance of DK going hostile, and 85% of times it will fight as a semi-trusty ally. The AI kinda cheats instead, and always summon Death Knights (and fiends) as allies.
Improved Cloak of Protection: I'm thinking to make it a CoP +3, after all it costs a fortune, and players can already get a Ring of Protection +3.
Ring of Earth Control: it got +2 AC instead of +1, but vanilla's version had a hidden +1 to all saves which I have removed.
Staff of Thunder and Lightning: it's druid only because I follow PnP rules as much as I can. Btw, it is intended to be slightly better than the other elemental staves.
Plate of Balduran: it seems buffed to you because you are playing without dexterity penalties in heavy armors. That component is taken into account when balancing armors, and without it all the full plates you're going to find will be clearly overpowered compared to lighter armors.
Mace of Disruption: I was concerned too about allowing it to be improved so early in the game, but it worked like that even in vanilla and I cannot do nothing about it unless we move the weapon somewhere else, later in the game. The problem as you say is that I don't see a place it would fit it neither in Spellhold nor in the Underdark.
Armor of Faith: judging by your fight against Torgal I guess you changed your mind regarding it not being powerful. Anyway, I do thought about making it a +2 armor, but its 20% physical res already is outstandingly effective, and we decided that +-1 AC would have not changed the armor's effectiveness anyway. Long story short, if you want to rely on AC you have to opt for other armors anyway (a +1 or +2 plate within BG2 has orrendous AC, a non-magical full plate beats it!), and against boss-like opponents you need maximized AC (e.g. full plate + large shields, or swashbuckler) to make it matter, else they are going to hit you almost always.
Amulet of Magic Shielding: energy resistance means resistance to all energy types (fire, cold, electrical, acid, magic), much like SR's Protection from Energy spell grants immunity to all of them.
Ice Storm: nice to see someone using this previously underused spell. I was afraid it was still unappealing, but I guess I was really wrong judging by your battle reports.
Note that we're currently working on SR V4, thus if you have any suggestion, you notice a spell still is underwhelming or it is utterly insane let me know. Feedback from an actual playthrough like yours (especially if SCS is installed as it uses SR) is crucial for me, because sometimes something which seems balanced on paper it is not in-game.
I forgot about not running with the DEX/speed penalties for heavy armor. I actually used to run with it a couple years back but grew really frustrated with the movement speed penalties and eventually just axed that part altogether. After I finish this playthrough I'll probably nuke my current install and do a Tutu+BG2 install instead and I might reinstate the DEX penalties, though I'd probably do something about Keldorn's DEX since his AC is terrible to the point of actually making him a liability with those penalties enabled.
The Armor of Faith is a really weird piece of armor and I've been kind of struggling to find a really solid use for it. It was pretty effective against Tor'Gal and company. Against Thaxll'ssillyia... not so much. It's still in my bag of holding and I might pull it out for the Planar Prison, but I just can't really find a good niche for it to fill. 20% physical resist by itself is pretty good, but when combined with lackluster AC it feels like kind of a wash overall.
Ice Storm is also very nice and I love it to pieces, but I've actually had to stop using it on humanoid enemies because I was simply losing too much loot due to frozen enemies exploding and having all of their equipment poof along with them. It still gets pulled out from time to time, but not as often as I'd prefer.
And as to the Death Knight, either I'm hideously unlucky or have something messed up on my end somewhere along the line, because the DKs I summon are always hostile for me, even after 20+ test casts with a variety of variables (Protection vs. Evil or no, high stats vs. low stats, Evil-aligned caster instead of Good-aligned, etc.) changed around. It's never had any text of any kind either.
Funny you mention that, since I just bought several high-end mage scrolls (Spell Shield, Pierce Shield, one of the Bigby's spells...) from the Smithy in Trademeet a couple hours ago.
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Doing the math, it seems like that item would only be worthwhile against enemies with absolutely ridiculously high THACO. It reduces your physical damage taken by 20% but makes you 20% more likely to be hit. Against very low THACO enemy that could more than double their chance to hit you, it only reduces your damage taken against enemies that already hit you at least 85% of the time.
EDIT: Assuming the scenario above where you had an armor with 4 better AC. Of course there are other armors in the game with better AC, making it even more useless.
Regarding Keldorn, he should get DEX 7 instead of 9 while in full plate, but that has no effect of his AC. I may think about having his armor inflict him only 1 DEX penalty, justifying it within the description by saying it was crafted specifically for him bla bla bla.
On a side note, for the upcoming official release of IR V3 we are adding even more options, as armors may now grant a small amount of physical resistance (5% light ones, 10% medium ones, 15% heavy ones), while lowering attack speed factor (which IR makes a crucial feature of weapon types because enchantments doesn't lower it anymore).
Have you missed my "edit"? The issue of cold damage destroying the loot can be avoided by simply turning the gore option off!!
I'll look into it as soon as I get back from work. It could be something isn't working on your install (e.g. a compatibility issue), but if it's an error on my side I'll fix it in a second.
That shouldn't really happen! It sounds even more strange if those are high lvl scrolls. I'll look into it, but I'd bet it's not because of IR.
As far as the Death Knight and scrolls at the Trademeet Smithy go, they could very well be problems with compatibility on my part due to having things like the tweak packs installed so late. It's not a really big deal or anything and I can easily work around it, but there you go. If you're curious, my weidu.log is here. Stuff like this is also why I generally prefer Tutu and BG2 as separate installs, but I really wanted to give BGT a spin.
For what it's worth, I've also had error pop-ups and crashes with a few temples when I browse the spellcasting services they have. Again, not sure if it's something to do with the fact that I'm running BGT with Store Revisions not being designed for BG1 and some weird wankery with temple services drawing from the same pool of resources. I forget which specific temples had crashes, but I'll experiment with a few and let you know which just in case.
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After the subsequent cutscene I ended up in the prison and the initial crazy ambush. Not too awful much to say about it, really. Lots of Greater Command, some Flame Arrows, a True Sight or two, some magic dispelling, Mazzy slinging eighty billion arrows (that did nothing, apparently, since she wouldn't shut up with her "weapon ineffective" lines no matter what arrows I tried on her) and Xan even doing some melee fun. Next up was a big room full of more goddamn Yuan-ti. Close to half a dozen mages were in there along with more Greater Yuan-ti, so I parked Callic in a choke point and had Jan and Jaheira fill the room up with Webs, Ice Storms, and a Sphere of Chaos from Callic. Most of the mages went down from that onslaught, but one or two managed to make it out and had to be dealt with, though not before they all managed to dispel all the buffs I went through so much trouble to bother casting. Dispelled (multiple times, thanks Contingencies and Sequencers!) the remaining Mages and had Shapiro backstab them a time or two while Jaheira and Xan melee'd, Jan tossed Magic Missiles, and Callic tanked the Greater Yuan-tis that somehow managed to avoid the big deathtrap entirely.
Shapiro decided to do some quick scouting after that, but ran into the Master of Thralls who saw him through stealth despite his Cloak of Non-Detection. The Master then decided pull a Davaeorn and Teleport Without Error right on top of Mazzy... who happened to still be surrounded by the rest of my team. Needless to say, he went down pretty damn fast. The wyvern that is normally on the perch inside the room next to the Master was gone for some reason, but the two remaining thralls that were there went down fairly easily, followed by the two Air Elementals (who wrecked a buffed-up Callic in melee, despite the physical resist from the Armor of Faith; I decided to finally put it out to pasture after that and use Armor of Faith spell on a discretionary basis for harder fights instead) that would have normally helped the Master had he not been a complete dunce. Mazzy, wearing the Boots of Speed, took the Master's orb down to the incenerator to break it, freeing the other thralls who then promptly committed Suicide by Cambion, thankfully getting the Warden's two Yuan-ti Mage helpers to expend some spells taking them out. Shapiro scouted ahead once more, being spotted by the Warden who, for some reason, decided to buff up rather than engage and follow. The Yuan-ti Mages both went invisible and made a beeline for the rest of my party though, where they were promptly cut down one after the other. Shapiro scouted ahead once again, this time noticing the out-of-place wyvern who decided to follow him back to the party (the Cambion, yet again, opted to cast another set of instant buffs via sequencer instead of following). It went down without much hassle and then it was down to just the Warden.
We buffed and I decided to send a hasted Callic ahead to engage the Warden, the rest of the party carefully following behind to avoid falling into the fleshy trap pits filled with enemies. The Warden had an enormous panoply of buffs engaged from his contingency and sequencers, so Callic decided to open up with a Dispel Magic. The Warden decided to open with Power Word: Blind instead, and then something strange happened. Callic got blinded, and when you're blinded in BG, your vision range drops down to so little that you can barely move forward in uncovered fog of war areas. If you attack an enemy that you can see (such as via a spotter) with a ranged weapon or spell, that character will actually walk forward until the enemy is in their tiny little vision range and then attempt the attack. For this reason it's kind of annoying when you get hit with Blind because it can be hard to notice with all your other characters' large fields of vision making up for the blinded one's, leading to a lot of confusion when your ranged attacker suddenly starts trying to close to melee range to shoot. But Callic was in the middle of winding up a Dispel when he got smacked with Blind, so he walked forward toward the Warden to try and cast it. Normally, if you move a character while they're casting like that, the cast is interrupted. But Callic managed to walk forward and actually finish casting the Dispel, dispelling not just the Cambion's entire set of buffs, but his own blindness as well (plus all of his own buffs, naturally). A Call Lightning, Disintegrate, and some Magic Missiles later, the Master croaked, Haer'Dalis and company were freed, and a bunch of people leveled up.
Now it's off to Windspear Hills and then Chapter 3!
However, before I go over loot, I have a confession to make: I have no fucking idea what I'm doing with my spellcasters and their spellbooks. I thought I did, but the Planar Prison (and Lavok a couple updates prior) have shown me that I clearly don't. I don't like constantly resting to fine-tune the spellbooks of four casters (two arcane, two divine) for each non-trivial encounter, so I went with what I felt were sort of generalist setups: a variety of buffs, some attack spells, a few heals, and some debuffs. Obviously this isn't really doing me very well, seeing as I keep getting into fights where I can't really do much with my arcane casters due to running out of dispelling magics and my divine casters have buffs that sit un-cast most of the time because they generally only last long enough to be of use in larger, more difficult fights.
I'll list how many spell slots my casters have for each level and what I currently have them filled with. It'd take way more space and effort than I'm willing to expend to type out what spells each person has, but consult the Spell Revisions Spell List for what spells are available at what level and what they do under the mod. Bear in mind that Jaheira gets some spells that Callic does not and vice versa. For Xan and Jan, assume that they have or can easily gain access to every spell in the Arcane list, barring their opposition schools (Evocation for Xan, Necromancy for Jan). If anyone could point me in the direction of a much nicer overall spell selection for my casters, I would be extremely grateful. I've been able to muddle through the game by the seat of my pants with spell selections all this time, even in SCS and Ascension, but I've been playing this game for twelve years now and it's past time I got a better idea of what I was doing and how to do better.
Armor of Faith x2
Bless x2
Doom x2
Resist Fear x2
Cure Minor Wounds x2
Level 2: 10 slots
Aid x3
Chant x2
Draw Upon Holy Might x2
Silence x2
Hold Person x1
Level 3: 9 slots
Dispel Magic x3
Invisibility Purge x2
Holy Smite x2
Gust of Wind x1
Remove Disease x2
Level 4: 9 slots
Cure Critical Wounds x2
Death Ward x1
Free Action x1
Magic Circle Against Evil x1
Defensive Harmony x1
Negative Plane Protection x1
Cloak of Fear x1
Mental Domination x1
Level 5: 4 slots
Chaotic Commands x2
Flame Strike x1
Greater Command x1
Level 6: 2 slots
Bolt of Glory x1
Create Undead x1
Level 7: 1 slot
Sphere of Chaos x1
Jaheira - 11 Fighter/13 Druid
Armor of Faith x2
Bless x2
Doom x2
Cure Minor Wounds x2
Entangle x1
Sanctuary x1
Level 2: 7 slots
Barkskin x3 (for herself, Callic, and Xan usually)
Chant x1
Slow Poison x1
Know Opponent x1
Resist Fire and Cold x1
Level 3: 7 slots
Call Lightning x2
Dispel Magic x2
Summon Insects x1
Gust of Wind x1
Cure Serious Wounds x1
Level 4: 5 slots
Ice Storm x2
Poison x1
Lesser Restoration x1
Negative Plane Protection x1
Level 5: 2 slots
True Sight x1
Mass Cure x1
Level 6: 2 slots
Heal x2
Xan - 14 Enchanter
Blindness x2
Mage Armor x1
Sleep x1
Grease x1
True Strike x1
Level 2: 6 slots
Blur x1
Mirror Image x1
Power Word: Sleep x1
Melf's Acid Arrow x1
Horror x1
Strength x1
Level 3: 6 slots
Flame Arrow x2
Remove Magic x2
Slow x2
Level 4: 5 slots
Stoneskin x1
Spirit Armor x1
Simbul's Spell Matrix x1
Greater Malison x1
Polymorph Other x1
Level 5: 6 slots
Breach x2
Lower Resistance x1
Shadow Door x1
Summon Shadow x1
Chaos x1
Level 6: 4 slots
Pierce Magic x1
Disintegrate x1
Globe of Invulnerability x1
Tenser's Transformation x1
Level 7: 3 slots
Khelben's Warding Whip x1
Ruby Ray of Reversal x1
Power Word: Stun x1
Jan - 12 Illusionist/13 Thief
Magic Missile x8
Mage Armor x1
Grease x1
Identify x1
Level 2: 6 slots
Web x2
Melf's Acid Arrow x2
Blur x1
Mirror Image x1
Level 3: 6 slots
Remove Magic x2
Haste x1
Fireball x1
Lightning Bolt x1
Invisibility sphere x1
Level 4: 6 slots
Stoneskin x1
Improved Invisibility x1
Greater Malison x1
Emotion: Despair x1
Fire Shield: Red x1
Simbul's Spell Matrix x1
Level 5: 5 slots
Breach x2
Chaos x1
Shadow Door x1
Cloudkill x1
Level 6: 2 slots
Contingency x1
True Seeing x1
With that craziness out of the way, it's loot time:
Though it's been nerfed a bit (it's lost 1 enchantment level to become a +2 dagger and its sleep effect only has a 20% chance to trigger but still allows a save), it's still a really nice weapon and a pretty good complement to something like the Stiletto of Demarchess. Invisibility procs are very, very nice. Not going to be using it this run, but it's got a new item graphic and it's overall an interesting weapon in an underused category.
Gloves of Parrying
Completely changed from vanilla, where they were instead Gauntlets of Weapon Skill, granting +1 THAC0. Not much else to say about 'em, really. They're on Jaheira for lack of a better person.
Melodic Chain +2
Still Bard-only, this Elven chain mail has had its enchantment level reduced by 1, but given an immunity to silence effects. Would be nice if I had a Bard or kept Haer'Dalis around, provided he's capable of actually equipping it since Elven chain mails are normally only usable by Humans, Elves, and Half-Elves.
Kundane +2
Belm: Short Sword edition, and its attack speed bonus was nerfed in the same way for the same reasons. Still a great off-hand weapon. On Shapiro, naturally.
Staff of Air +2
Another of the elemental staves, this one has a less-useful daily enchant (though it frees up a Gust of Wind slot on a divine caster), but its combat abilities are very interesting. +1 attack per round is something I'm not sure any other staff has, and the bonus damage is fun too.
Adjatha the Drinker +2
Significantly changed from vanilla. It loses its immunity to Charm and Domination while gaining +2 saves vs. spells to still provide resistance to those effects. Its normal sorta-but-not-really vampiric effect was changed to instead feed off of the memorized spells of its victims, which is a very interesting ability and would make this an absolutely brutal weapon in the hands of a Wizard Slayer. The +5 HP is just icing on the cake. Mazzy's go-to melee weapon.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Regarding your spell selection I don't see anything truly wrong with it, except perhaps a couple of weak choices (e.g. Cure Light Wounds is still underwhelming even with my buffs outside of BG1), a few sub-optimal choices depending on characater's role (e.g. Fire Shield spells are only effective on true fighter/mages, they don't shine on characters who try to be hit as little as possible like Jan) and a bunch of very situational spells (e.g. Negative Plane Protection within the Planar Sphere is pretty much useless). Just remember to adjust your spellbooks a little depending on where you're going (e.g. true enchanters are pretty much worthless against undead and very limited against demons, but they are devastating against humanoids and monsters).
If you want a more in-depth analysis let me know, I'll try to help.
And as for my spells my biggest problem is never really having enough dispels to do what I want to do. Enemy mages always have so many buff spells and contingencies and sequencers, but it never feels like I ever make much headway against them while slinging all my dispel-type stuff at them. I'm also at a general loss as to what's usually pretty good to put into contingency slots. I figure something like Stoneskin is probably the best overall, or maybe Improved Invisibility. Sorely wish I had Chain Contingency.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Also I just started my BG2 run yesterday by cleaning out much of Athkatla. I'm torn as to dropping Jaheira; I'm wondering if three full mages might almost be too much with my f/t protagonist and Aerie if I go and get Imoen.
On the other hand, I didn't realize I needed to fix my tweak pack installation a little until Keldorn tried to behead Viconia but got killed instead. This has me thinking of maybe dropping Viconia for Anomen, but bleh, Anomen.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I don't want to optimize but it sounds like my first character has the possibility of not being able to finish the game.
I also have played a druid in every rpg they've offered the class and I hear that they may not be very good in BG1.
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Any class can beat the game. Some just take a bit more effort. But with the wide variety of NPCs, you could just have your protagonist sit on his ass and do nothing all game long, and it wouldn't really matter. If you're into powergaming, playing a druid probably isn't your best bet. But if that's the class you want to play, then go for it. I personally think druids are fantastic and a very fun class, thematically speaking.
The hardest part, and arguably the "game killer" for first-time classes, are your initial stats. Those can be handled with a bit of patience though.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I hope this is a case because I want to take whichever Druid kit it is that let's me turn into a werewolf and rip faces off.
... For good! Ambiguous good.
I currently have: Keldorn, Mazzy, Aerie, Viconia, and a M/T protagonist. Problem is, if I replace Jaheira, who do I replace her with? Cernd is Cernd, Imoen is a third mage, and Anomen is bleh.
Making a custom multiplayer character isn't out of the question either, maybe.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
You're right, though, I need a third melee person. Maybe picking Minsc back up is in order!
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)