Baldur's Gate

[Dark_Raven]

Looks good, heavy on the spell casters. Yeslick you could pick up that would give you another cleric. Alora is a great thief also.

[Humodour]

Well that sucks.

 

I was exploring one of the wilderness areas and BAM, next thing I'm turned to stone and it is game over.

 

I reloaded, grabbed the ghast (the one that wants to eat you) and he took out all the basilisks by himself, netting me about 20,000 experience in one go! He is seemingly immune to their damage.

[Dark_Raven]

Multiple scrolls of Cloudkill FTW.

[Arkan]

Well that sucks.

 

I was exploring one of the wilderness areas and BAM, next thing I'm turned to stone and it is game over.

 

I reloaded, grabbed the ghast (the one that wants to eat you) and he took out all the basilisks by himself, netting me about 20,000 experience in one go! He is seemingly immune to their damage.

 

 

Summoned skellies work quite well, too.

[Tigranes]

It does suck when the mod doesn't fit well with the game. Spell/item icons that are clearly out of place; abilities that are clearly overpowered; so on and so forth. However, over the years, I feel that the BG2 modders have become so good at what they do there are quite a few mods out there which really fit in quite seamlessly; for example, the one which lets you have Irenicus in your party in TOB, and even have him contemplate redemption, as Sarevok does. He is a little too powerful, but they did a good job by not going overboard with the redemption thing (he has doubts, he doesn't just go OMG ILL BE GOOD NOW), the dialogue fits quite wonderfully, etc.

 

Tactics is very good if you leave out some fights you personally fiind silly. You don't need to cheese through most of tactics battles to win it, and I'm not a particularly good D&D player or a careful character builder (i mean, Jan+Edwin+Mage PC+Jaheira? Not effecitve, at all), but I don't need to cheese on most of the battles. Even soloing Very Hard vanilla isn't very hard after a while, because the challenges are very 'stock' - it just gets annoying because of the ridiculous difference in pure damage and HP. It's not fun to fight, say, 50,000 soldiers with 2,000; it's fun to fight 3,000 vs. 2,000 where those 3,000 have special bonuses like immunities or unnerfed abilities, and that's what tactics does.

 

MC - Yeah, I assume with a more sensible party like yours Torgal is eminently defeatable. A trilogy replay is due sometime in the next month or two, I think.

[random n00b]

It does suck when the mod doesn't fit well with the game. Spell/item icons that are clearly out of place; abilities that are clearly overpowered; so on and so forth. However, over the years, I feel that the BG2 modders have become so good at what they do there are quite a few mods out there which really fit in quite seamlessly; for example, the one which lets you have Irenicus in your party in TOB, and even have him contemplate redemption, as Sarevok does. He is a little too powerful, but they did a good job by not going overboard with the redemption thing (he has doubts, he doesn't just go OMG ILL BE GOOD NOW), the dialogue fits quite wonderfully, etc.

The Longer Road is one of those mods I have perma-installed. Not only the writing is pretty good, with Irenicus having effectively more interaction with the rest of the party and the PC than say, romantic Jaheira, but he also makes a great addition to the party (regardless of party alignment, a la Sarevok!), without being overpowering. After all, they did take his cheat scripts away. He is just a level 30 wizard, and he has no HLAs. The only fault I can find with the mod are the VOs (which are pretty scarce, and none for Irenicus himself, fortunately), and the item icons. The rest meshes with the game pretty seamlessly.

 

 

Tactics is very good if you leave out some fights you personally fiind silly. You don't need to cheese through most of tactics battles to win it, and I'm not a particularly good D&D player or a careful character builder (i mean, Jan+Edwin+Mage PC+Jaheira? Not effecitve, at all), but I don't need to cheese on most of the battles. Even soloing Very Hard vanilla isn't very hard after a while, because the challenges are very 'stock' - it just gets annoying because of the ridiculous difference in pure damage and HP. It's not fun to fight, say, 50,000 soldiers with 2,000; it's fun to fight 3,000 vs. 2,000 where those 3,000 have special bonuses like immunities or unnerfed abilities, and that's what tactics does.

The problem I found with Tactics is that some bosses were unreasonably beefed up, and given stupid immunities/cheats. I hate when that is done. And some of the other fights (Random City Encounters) become a chore after fighting the same group for the Nth time.

 

Take Improved Faldorn, for instance. She is given an undispellable Ironskin, begins the fight already polymorphed, summons 3/4 allies instantly at the beginning, and despite using her wild shape's claws to attack, keeps applying the stun effect from the Staff of Thunder and Lightning. You, on the other hand, begin naked. That's not fun, that's sadism. She IS a chapter 3 boss that can only be challenged by DRUIDS. A mage can mop the floor with her, but that option simply doesn't exist.

 

The same with Improved Bodhi. What's the rationale for making her harder than the endgame boss (Improved version)? That is, assuming you don't cheese, and give everyone scrolls of protection from undead/magic.

 

It's entirely possible that I plain old suck, btw. But beating those fights using metagame/cheese is just not rewarding for me.

[Tigranes]

Take Improved Faldorn, for instance. She is given an undispellable Ironskin, begins the fight already polymorphed, summons 3/4 allies instantly at the beginning, and despite using her wild shape's claws to attack, keeps applying the stun effect from the Staff of Thunder and Lightning. You, on the other hand, begin naked. That's not fun, that's sadism

 

Yeah, I forgot about that one - I don't install it either. There is indeed a line between challenge and sadism. I recall a couple of other battles where I liked the level of challenge being presented, but some of it was obscene, and I would use Ctrl+Y to kill off a particularly cheesy enemy before I began - no problem, still a fun challenging battle, but without, say, a superhasted Vampire that hits every hit and level drains 3 levels (not an exact example).

[Monte Carlo]

^ Improved Faldorn is in fact just dull, in the end I edit my druid to level 40 or something and just hit her with Devas / Elemental Lords.

 

Which is just plain wrong.

 

OTOH, Kuriosan the Acid Kensai is loads of fun once you get it. He looks indestructible but there is an inherent weakness - figure it out and you can take him down and earn one of the most munchkin magic swords ever to grace a mod.

[Moatilliatta]

I often find that the easiest mods to play with are graphical mods as it is hard to be a puritan about graphics, quality is still the deciding factor here. Gameplay mods come afterwards but these are usually only used when you don't mind overwriting the gameplay i.e. Oblivion - puritanism looses its idea when applied to Oblivion. Then comes NPC and story mods as Krezack desribed above, and I don't touch them as a general rule.

 

Since it seems we share similar views on what constitutes a good mod, what mods would you suggest for BG2?

Ascension? As I said I can't remember any other that I've played with though the entire game. I would personally try a new party combination and new possibilities in quests, if there aren't anything vanilla that you haven't tried then I just wouldn't play the game, quite simple really. The Baldurs Gate series is in general too good for mods.

 

I've wanted there to be gameplay mods worth playing because BG gameplay isn't too good, but most mods fall into the cheezyness traps that I hate.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

I was exploring one of the wilderness areas and BAM, next thing I'm turned to stone and it is game over.

 

Gah, I hated that spell - if only one of your team could cure you...

[random n00b]

Yep. I don't understand why it was decided that petrification/imprisonment meant final death for the PC. And ONLY for the PC, since Imoen can die in any number of ways, and so long as she isn't chunked/disintegrated, she can be raised and it's all fine and dandy.

[Arkan]

Yep. I don't understand why it was decided that petrification/imprisonment meant final death for the PC. And ONLY for the PC, since Imoen can die in any number of ways, and so long as she isn't chunked/disintegrated, she can be raised and it's all fine and dandy.

Design flaw. Same thing with being charmed if you're soloing. Game over.

[Arkan]

Anyway, what good NPC mods are there for BG2? I was thinking about breaking the old girl out for a spin, but I'm a bit tired of all the stock NPCs. Uh...was that Nalia romance ever finished?

[Arkan]

So I was looking at the Icewind Gate Mod. Has anyone tried the beta for this? I know it only works for SoA, but I was wondering what the deal was with a ToB version, even though it said it may just remain in beta indefinitely.

[Humodour]

I'd avoid beta mods Arkan.

 

As for NPC mods, most of them either only last for BG2 (which makes them silent in ToB... pfft) or aren't very good.

 

I hear Keto and Kelsey are decent...

[Pop]

Kelsey's the only really decent NPC mod I've played with. Fade would have been the best, but she's got no content for ToB. Whatev. There are a lot of NPC mods that add lots of content but are either badly written (Soulafein) or badly designed (Soulafein, that drow chick, the aasimar paladin, etc.)

 

As far as unfair mod adds go, I think that drow chick takes the cake. The party is teleported to a small room with a number of assassins who have permanent improved haste, 15 hp/round regen or thereabouts, 9th level spells and munchkin weapons. Even in late-game ToB, ctrl+Y was just about your only recourse.

Edited April 27, 2008 by Pop

[Dark_Raven]

So I was looking at the Icewind Gate Mod. Has anyone tried the beta for this? I know it only works for SoA, but I was wondering what the deal was with a ToB version, even though it said it may just remain in beta indefinitely.

Its buggy like any good beta usually is.

 

Anyway, what good NPC mods are there for BG2? I was thinking about breaking the old girl out for a spin, but I'm a bit tired of all the stock NPCs. Uh...was that Nalia romance ever finished?

Nalia was done at PPG.

 

NPCs mods there is of course Miriam who will take you all the way to ToB and than some.

[Arkan]

So I was looking at the Icewind Gate Mod. Has anyone tried the beta for this? I know it only works for SoA, but I was wondering what the deal was with a ToB version, even though it said it may just remain in beta indefinitely.

Its buggy like any good beta usually is.

 

Anyway, what good NPC mods are there for BG2? I was thinking about breaking the old girl out for a spin, but I'm a bit tired of all the stock NPCs. Uh...was that Nalia romance ever finished?

Nalia was done at PPG.

 

NPCs mods there is of course Miriam who will take you all the way to ToB and than some.

 

I found the Nalia one, but no mention of ToB for one of them.

 

Miriam, huh? Maybe I'll check that out. Any good?

[Tigranes]

Yeah, I wouldn't usually recommend beta mods for everyone. Icewind Gate would have been a very nice mod had it been finished by Weimer himself, but he's at PSG now and won't ever come back to it.

 

As for NPC mods, I never play them. I find most of them poor or not fit in very well (making a new character is a lot harder than it looks) - also I am very happy with the standard NPCs. I do hear good things about Kelsey, though.

[Arkan]

Yeah, I wouldn't usually recommend beta mods for everyone. Icewind Gate would have been a very nice mod had it been finished by Weimer himself, but he's at PSG now and won't ever come back to it.

 

As for NPC mods, I never play them. I find most of them poor or not fit in very well (making a new character is a lot harder than it looks) - also I am very happy with the standard NPCs. I do hear good things about Kelsey, though.

What is PSG and why did he leave never to return? Seems to happen to the great modding heroes. Kevin Dorner, Weimer...

 

On the good side I did find a good mod that gives you better looking (BG1) shields and my favorite, TRUE FLAMING SWORDS!!!

[Humodour]

Yeah, what's with the sucky item and avatar art in BG2?

 

If it was just one thing - sucky tileset art, sucky portrait design, sucky item art, sucky avatar design... but it's ALL of them. They hired monkeys with a vein fetish to draw the portraits (especially apparent in NWN1).

 

Flaming swords... hmm I wish Greywolf's sword had the flaming ice animation in BG1. I think I've modded it before to do that but meh.

Edited April 28, 2008 by Krezack

[Tigranes]

*shrug* IE portraits were never really that good, with the exception of Torment. I didn't think many of the IWD series portraits were that special, but then I'm never a fan of the fantasy style.

 

Item icons were fine, weren't they? They weren't great, but they didn't really stand out or jar or anything.

 

What is PSG and why did he leave never to return? Seems to happen to the great modding heroes. Kevin Dorner, Weimer...

 

A year or two ago, Weimer with a couple of others founded http://www.planewalkergames.com/ - I have no idea why I called it PSG, sorry. Anyway, they are developing a whole new RPG with a very IE feel to it, with the explicit aim of bringing back that kind of older RPG that is no longer produced very much. It looks quite promising, though it's a long time away. Given this, I find it very hard to believe he would come back to dabbling in BG2 mods.

[Gorth]

I loved the character portraits in the IWD games. I always wondered why the full sized pictures weren't offered for sale in poster size, as some kind of merchandise by BIS/Interplay (and now Obsidian as I seem to remember they bought the assets from Interplay)

 

Baldurs Gate I and II had a different style, slightly more cartoonish, but I kind of liked them too. The only thing that struck me as slightly ridiculous was their haircuts. Everybody except Minsc (iirc) had dreadlocks of some kind.

 

I wonder if a wish for better/more varied avatars weren't on most peoples wishlists though

 

It felt like a step down in quality when playing IWD first, then installing HoW and all the nicely detailed avatars became the bland, uninteresting ones from the new IE version.

 

Was there ever a mod that let you use the BG1/IWD avatars in later versions of the IE games?

[Pop]

I seem to remember some IWD2 portraits being made into BG2 custom portraits, but it wasn't all of them.

[random n00b]

I liked BG(2) portraits. Must be nostalgia...

 

Anyway, for NPC mods, get the Edwin Romance, and unleash the erotic fury. You know you want to.

 

It's such a shame the BG1NPC mod doesn't continue into BG2. I haven't quite recovered from Shar-Teel's romance ending in BG1.