Tigranes

Outrageous distractions would be the minimal requirement. I'm pretty sure there are no unlimited spawn areas either, and if there are, it can't be more than one or two. I'm not too bothered about it. Anyway, I think Pop is right, or something, about the sneak rules - you don't even have to be hidden in NWN2, as long as you hit somebody's back it's a sneak attack (thus your rogue could potentially make a sneak attack EVERY TURN indefinitely.) BG did use the back-to-wall workaround, and dialogue initiation upon area entrance regardless of invisibility (i.e. Gromnir Il-Khan). Of course, traps were so broken in BG it wasn't funny - my solo Assassin in SoA could kill the Tree Irenicus in ONE TURN with traps.

Hey, in pnp I'd have the thief sneak in, talk to Fihelis himself, and sneak out, while the rest of my party stays outside creating suitable Qara-like diversions. Not my fault the game can't handle creativity. " And Spot is really powerful in NWN2, so half the time you can see them on screen even though they are still invisible. They can still baxtab though, so you have to turn to face them.

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Gromnir, I never said BG was hard. Hell, I've played it so many times I instinctively know where all the encounters are, etc, etc. But it's still *fun*. That's the whole point. And it's certainly more challenging than NWN2 with the right mods, way more challenging (though still not uber-difficult). BG battles are nearly always a lot more fun. What's wrong with BG2 entangle pop? I still use it in Tutu usefully.

You fools, you don't actually *fight* through that area, you just get a thief on invisibility and haste dash into the room with Fihelis, initiate conversation (thereby teleoprting your mainchar into the room as well), then have whoever's waiting by the door exit, thus, in a PST-style exploit, letting everybody leave the place. Or just have thief & mainchar sneak back. Seriously, who barges in there like an Anomen and kills everybody? Come on, think pnp, not Diablo.

Yep, its possible and I did it on my second runthrough. It's probably one of the most difficult diplo checks in Act 1, scale-wise.

I'd say the latest Tutus are pretty similar now, especially if you have Tutufix and Tututweak or whatever it's called. The main difference in mine is that because I use faster BG2 walking speeds, ranged weapons aren't as awesome as they were in BG1 vanilla (where you can just shoot everything down before they reach you). I still don't have a fireball, it's a travesty. I have this compulsive disorder that before I go to the bandit camp I must explore all areas south of Beregost (except Durlag's Tower); so I did everywhere west, and now am doing Firewine Bridge. It was really great in one map where i used Charm Person on Zat (the guy that throws Darts really fast), killed his companions, ran up to the top of the map where that encounter with Sendai and the 2 lackeys are, and then had Zat help me take them down. They fire really powerful arrows for level 3 characters. Well they are, kinda. Just not conversation / appriase skills.

I don't know the reasoning behind Obsidian's decision on that either, but it seems to me that it doesn't serve a very positive purpose. Anyway, if there are no gameplay OC modifications or standalone modules worth playing right now (as it seems), I might just complete BG saga again. Played about the first half of BG1 and it really is still excellent, the combat is still a lot more fun for me than NWN2 (or NWN1, K1/2, JE...)

Yes, your PC pretty much does everything. It leads to silliness when you have your thief sneak around scouting the place out, but then you enter a room where dialogue is automatically initiated (what with their all-seeing eye of Scriptzor) and your PC is instantly teleported there so he/she can speak to them. I believe the Bandit house in act 1 is a classic example, as is Fihelis' house. Anyway, I had laid off on NWN2 a bit after finishing it twice; are there any interesting modules out there yet (I assume not), or tools, or OC modifications worth looking at? All I really use ATM is some UI mods.

Apparently not.

Not really. Many Christians interpret the Bible in terms of symbolism, allegories, anecdotes and parallels. Can God condone such brutal murder in one time and one place and condemn it in another? For some, yes. For some, no. Even when placed contextually, it tells you that God is capable of ordering such things and does not see wanton murder of those with different religion as inherently bad. Following this, it would not be 'unlike' God to order mass genocides of Muslims in the Middle East right now.] Uh.. that was pretty much what I was responding to, no? I was pointing out that while you can find lots of KILL quotes in the Qu'ran as has been quoted last page, so can you with the Bible. That was all. Now if you want to look at the context as well, then see what I wrote above. To say a portion of the bible doesn't apply at all because it's in a diff. time and place is not valid.

Yes you can. I've never had the opportunity to sit down and read the Qu'ran extensively, but any casual reader of the Bible need only sit down and think a bit. One of the examples - one of many - I can remember is Joshua in OT.. he's pretty much ordered by God to go and kill children, women, men, everyone in a city, just because they didn't feel like submitting to the Israeli migration into their lands and put up a fight. No baby-killers or Sodom or nuthin'. Of course, even more interesting is Joshua.. ch10? 11? Somewhere that says, roughly, that these men were doomed to fall under the Israeli because God had hardened their hearts and made them refuse the overtures of the Israeli. Could be interpreted very badly for God. But that's not the point here.. both the bible and the Qu'ran have passages that, taken literally - and for some, even when not taken literally - are very, very aggressive. Is interesting to see how others that are religious / want to be religious reconcile these passages.

They are just behind a big boulder and have a campfire. The crates are clearly visible on the map, and they also have a couple of weapon bags.

The example sorta clunks here because it was a passive one, but are you then suggesting that anything we can get used to, is within our nature? You can gradually increase the temperature of the bathwater to kill humans without realising, you know. I suppose that's in their nature too - to die from insidious, slow-heating bathwater. As for the instinct, is that instinct an instinct to kill, or something even more base that simply manifests in killing? Is it the instinct of self-defence, or of physically lashing out at those it hates / fears, even physical reflexes?

How is that relevant to the question of killing being human nature? That's like saying being crushed by heavy things is human nature, whether by a big rock or by a flying pig launched by a Cambodian intercontinental artillery unit. I'm not sure where you people draw the line between action and nature.

Easiest way: go to game folder\data\world\imperial_campaign (might have missed out a folder there) then open descr_stats.txt, then at the top move all factions to playable. Except for a few like rebels, who don't work properly without further modding. I'm using Darthmod Lite right now, mainly for its inclusion of ShabaWangy diplomacy mod.. it's the only thing that makes the game tolerable. I got exactly the same experience as BI: a few new features made it fresh for about 5 hours, then I found out that the AI is still just as stupid, and the game mechanics remain just as, uh, mechanical. It's still a damn good game, but right now and after months of RTW, I dont have the patience for the same enemy betraying me EVERY turn although it's outnumbered 20 to 1, then fighting me just so it can sit there on top of the hill getting shot by my arrows. Still, it was pretty fun being the Champion of the Pope.. I had 10 out of 13 cardinals French, French pope, with a little kingdom in Jerusalem and Acre (Antioch and Damascus held by the Hungarians) and the English as my vassals. Just really miss giving out titles. I'm actually playing Romance of the Three Kingdoms 11 by KOEI... it's a very old series, you westerners might know KOEI from Dynasty Warriors. I hadn't played it since the 4th rendition back in the last century, and they now have battles actually take place on the campaign map. The thing is, this game is pretty damnc omplex - and had just as many variables and so forth as total war games back in its more ancient incarnations. And the AI works so much better. THey honour allianaces; they gang up on you and only attack when the odds are good; they backstab you only with a big chance of success; they use battle tactics very well; etc. There are probably a bit less variables and stuff like that than TW, sure, but it doesn't matter becuase it's so immersive.

No, really. I played a little bit of EU1 and a lot of EU2, I loved trhe games but to pretend that the combat is good is .. yeah. It's simple and does a goodj ob at using the limited variables like morale to good effect, but it devolves into movement point arithmetics and has some randomness about it which gives you all the frustration of being a real armchair general and not much else. I play EU2 for its campaign, not its combat.

The 3 crates for the Orc is easy, you just follow the coastline from Cape Dun until you find some bandits with a campfire. You kill them, then take the crates. Above the cliffs still, not below on the beach.

EU's combat is slightly superior to Risk's.

NWN2 has better companions than Gothic 3. Gothic 3 is designed as a solo game and places small emphasis on companions. The two statements are not contradictory and they do not imply anything more than what they say, like 'so nwn2 is better'. Arguing that NWN2 sucks without henchmen is stupid too, because that's like saying Gothic3 would suck without quests.

Orden, yes. It is a very narrow window when you can visit WH and still get him - but it makes sense because you would naturally go to WH to close the What Happened to Lorne? Quest, which was probably cut down to size. So original vision, IMO, was that the full blown Lorne quest would have its epilogue in the words of his mother, then on the way out you'd talk to Orden. The tower has other purposes. A mage called star something will teleport in and commission a wizard's tower - I found its items more useful. Church, monk.. not too much difference IMO. just slightly different kind of shop.

Guyven is bugged. You must find him in 3 locations, then offer him your 'hearth', after which he shows up in the Keep kitchen. I did it all and no deal. He has a nice 'find' for you if he does show up, though. Other than that, Gorth covered everything, I think.

My second playthrough saw a better Keep as well... some bugs with upgrading meant I couldn't get maximum weapons and armour last time, and so forth. Didn't see too much of a difference... but using diff. characters meant I got Bishop's prompt this time ( ), I had the Construct this time, etc. However, I didn't stop to watch the ending and see how it changed - I had forgotten about the possibility of a different ending, but was rather concerned with alt-F4'ing out of the horrible narration. Really, it was an instinctive reaction!

Meh. I've come to accept the fact that X800XT over 9600Pro will do little more than give me real normal mapping. I've played games on 10-15fps for so long, it doesn't really bother me too much anymore.