BG2 Tweak Pack Content Changes

These components make alterations to content in order to provide a better player experience.

More Interjections
Previously known as Valen/Solaufein-Style Interjections
One of the more common triggers for dialogue interjections does not quite work as well as intended--Irenicus not realizing Yoshimo is in your party at Spellhold is a common example. This component will interactively replace these faulty triggers with a simple in-party check, similar to the Valen or Solaufein mods. The net result is that some characters may be chiming in on conversations from half-a-map away, but it also means no more silliness such as Irenicus missing Yoshimo when he's standing four feet away. If party members are in another area, this component could cause some dialogues to exit early. This component will affect all dialogues and scripts in the game, including ones introduced by mods that use the IsValidForPartyDialogue trigger, provided this component is installed after them.

Alter HP Triggers for NPC Wounded Dialogues
Non-Tutu
Many NPCs have banters for when they are wounded. However, the triggers are typically for HP levels so low that many players never see them. This component will raise the HP trigger level so that the player has a better chance of seeing these dialogues.

Reveal Wilderness Areas Before Chapter Six
Non-Tutu
This component will allow you to travel to the three wilderness areas from the City Gates area at any point in the game. Previously, the Small Teeth Pass, North Forest, and Forest of Tethyr areas were not available until chapter six. Please note that while not incompatible per se, this may cause conflicts with mods that set encounters in these areas that assume you've completed the story through chapter six.

Make Cloakwood Areas Available Before Completing the Bandit Camp
Tutu, BGT Only
This component will allow you to travel to the Cloakwood forest from a nearby area prior to completing the Bandit Camp. This will allow you to explore, complete Cloakwood quests, and pick up Cloakwood NPCs earlier in the game. The component has two options: open up the first area only (with the lodge and Aldeth Sashenstar) or open up all four wilderness areas, leaving just the mines themselves inaccessible until after the Bandit Camp.

This functionality is also available from the BG1 NPC Project.

Improved Athkatlan City Guard (Andyr)
Non-Tutu
The Amnish guards aren't really tough enough to keep the peace in the cities, what with all the thieves and vampires around. This component makes the various Amnish guards and the like slightly tougher, and gives them a chance of summoning backup in the form of either another guard, a Sanctioned Wizard or a Militia Cleric.

Please note that the guards aren't amazing killing machines, and this isn't aiming to make the game a hardcore battle experience. You won't get much XP or loot for randomly going around killing soldiers, either. But it might make such activities a little more interesting.

Gradual Drow Item Disintegration
Non-Tutu
Rather than your drow items turning to dust immediately upon exiting the Underdark, they will gradually degrade over time. They also have a chance to break every time they are used in combat. Please note that this component adds a number of item checks to the main game script; as such it can cause slowdowns when you have a very large number of items in your inventory and bags of holding.

Breakable Nonmagical Armor, Helms, and Shields
Tutu Only
The iron crisis in the Sword Coast means that nonmagical iron weapons can break when used in combat. This component will extend the same vulnerability to nonmagical iron armor, helmets, and shields to close an oversight by the game.

This tweak is not available for Baldur's Gate Trilogy as it contains this functionality by default.

Improved Multi-Player Kick-out Dialogues (Weimer)
This allows you to ask multi-player created NPCs to "wait here" or, if accessible, to go to the Copper Coronet (in SoA) or Pocket Plane (in ToB). For Tutu or the Baldur's Gate portion of BGT, the option to go to the Friendly Arms Inn is available. Without this they just disappear forever if you kick them out.

Add Bags of Holding
In the Shadows of Amn portion of the game, this component adds potion cases to the stores of Roger the Fence and Mrs. Cragmoon and ammo belts to the stores of the Trademeet blacksmith and Perter.

Bags will also be added to the Baldur's Gate portion of Tutu and BGT games. This component will add a gem bag to the Friendly Arms Inn store, a scroll case at the High Hedge, an ammo belt to Thunderhammer Smithy, a potion case to the Nashkel General Store, and a bag of holding at the Sorcerous Sundries in Baldur's Gate.

Exotic Items Pack
Tutu, BGT Only
This component adds a handful of weapons and items available in Baldur's Gate II and scatters them throughout stores, creatures, and containers in the Baldur's Gate portion of the game. Items include katanas, wakizashis, scimitars, ninja-tos, bags/quivers of plenty, ioun stones, and a handful of spell scrolls. However, please note that the items have been placed with an eye towards balance and likelihood that they would be on the Sword Coast at all. The exceptions are scimitars, which are definitely less exotic than the other items and hence more plentiful.

This component also fixes a known bug in the game, in that the merchant at Gullykin and the Helm temple in Nashkel shared the same store file.

Reveal City Maps
Tutu Only
In Baldur's Gate II, city maps were revealed as soon as you entered the area. This component will reveal the maps of Baldur's Gate, Nashkel, Beregost, Candlekeep, and (if Tales of the Sword Coast is installed) Ulgoth's Beard. This tweak is not available for Baldur's Gate Trilogy as it contains this functionality by default.

Add Map Notes
Tutu Only
This component will add map notes to many Baldur's Gate areas throughout the game, including some wilderness areas. This process is done interactively, so no areas are overwritten. This tweak is not available for Baldur's Gate Trilogy as it contains this functionality by default.

Stores Sell Larger Stacks of Items
This component will alter all stores in the game to use higher stacks of arrows, bolts, bullets, darts, throwing axes and throwing daggers. This component will affect all stores in the game, including ones introduced by mods.

Reputation Resets at Beginning of BG2
BGT Only
When making the transition from the end of Baldur's Gate to the beginning of Baldur's Gate II, this component will reset the party's reputation back to its default value (from 8-12, depending on the protagonist's alignment). It doesn't make sense that the party could emerge from the opening dungeon, head over to the Adventurer's Mart, and get hero discounts (or villain markups) from Ribald. Despite the events of Baldur's Gate, the protagonist and the party are more or less unknown in Amn.

Gems and Potions Require Identification
This component assigns a lore value to gems and potions, meaning that they now require identification. Lore value is calculated by an algorithm based on the value of the item, but smaller gems and lesser potions should still be fairly easy to identify by the party.

Shapeshifter Rebalancing (Weimer)
Please note that this is a legacy component from Wes Weimer's Ease of Use mod. Wes typically designed for balance under the assumption that people would have the Tactics mod installed, so this is probably overpowered for most normal games. The rest of the description is from Wes:

Shapeshifter abilities now create "symbolic paws". When you wield one you turn into a Werewolf, when you remove it you're human again. There are no possible exploits and you may choose whether to put the paw in your on-hand or off-hand. Since your off-hand THAC0 as a pure druid is, shall we say, sub-optimal, I recommend the on-hand. This fixes the bug where the Shapeshifter's paws could be dispelled and then any weapon could be put in their place. That exploit essentially gave you two extra attacks with whatever you wanted, plus all the werewolf powers.

This also fixes a "bug" where attributes of the CRE file for "PC polymorphed into a Werewolf" were not actually given to the PC by the Polymorph opcode. For a normal werewolf:

For the greater werewolf:

To see this for yourself, check out werewodr.cre, weregrdr.cre, brbrp.itm, etc.

The "Rebalancing" gives a greater werewolf shapeshifter the +7 HP per Level due to a fighter with 25 CON (before you just got +2). Most importantly, shapeshifters may now cast spells while shapechanged. Yuan-Ti, Githyanki, Sahuagin, etc. can all cast spells--why not wolfmen?

In addition, the Druid spell choices were a bit weak in some areas, so some Priest-only spells were made Priest-Druid: Sanctuary (sylvan sanctuaries abound), Chant (they got Bless, why not Chant?), Zone of Sweet Air (sounds nature-y to me!), Glyph of Warding (no excuse, but they need a damaging spell here that isn't Call Lightning), Righteous Magic (listen to Jaheira for a while and tell me she's not Righteous ... more importantly, if they're going to tank around they need some extra help).

Finally, 99% of all sixth-level druid spell slots go to "Summon Fire Elemental". You can get a 24 hit dice monster with +4 claws that lasts for hours with that spell. It's so much better than the 7th level "Summon Earth Elemental" that it isn't funny. The other 6th-level summons just don't come close. To give you some actual choices, "Conjure Animals" has been changed to summon two 20 HD Greater Bearweres (they're like Greater Wolfweres). However, the duration remains 4 turns. Do you want Fire Elementals forever or Mighty Big Tanks for a short time? You decide.

Multiple Strongholds (Sabre, Baldurdash, Weimer)
Non-Tutu
This component comes in two variants. The first is the original from Ease of Use, which allows any character, regardless of class, to acquire as many strongholds as wanted. The second variant is similar, but retains the class restrictions--so a fighter-mage can acquire the Planar Sphere and de'Arnise Keep, but would not be offered the Thieves' Guild or membership in the Noble Order of the Radiant Heart. In the original game, you were also not able to decline the Five Flagons Playhouse, the cabin in the Umar Hills, or the Druid Grove. In either variant of this component, the player can now decline these strongholds when offered.

Bonus Merchants (Baldurdash, Weimer)
Non-Tutu
This adds Joluv and Diedre to the Copper Coronet and Ribald's Mart, respectively.

Female Edwina (Davide Carte, Wendy Yung, Weimer)
Non-Tutu
This patch gives Edwina a female portrait to go with her female soundset and female paper doll. This patch was originally written by Davide Carte. This version includes Wendy Yung's "Edwina" portrait, a modified version of the original BG2 art (thus it looks seamlessly like part of the original game).

You can override the portrait by putting your own Royo4L.bmp and Royo4S.bmp files in the override directory.

Romance Bug Fixes (Sabre, Richardson)
Non-Tutu
This module applies some bug fixes to the romance scripts. It's highly recommended that you at least install this module to fix a few glitches in the original game romance scripts. If the BG2 Fixpack is installed, this component will be skipped as this fix is already included in the Fixpack Core Fixes.

Imoen ToB Dialogue Fix (jcompton)
Non-Tutu, Requires Throne of Bhaal
This fixes about 15 places where Imoen had banter dialogue in ToB but you couldn't see it because of a spelling error in the game. If the BG2 Fixpack is installed, this component will be skipped as this fix is already included in the Fixpack Core Fixes.

Use BG Walking Speeds (BETA)
From Tutufix, this will make folks walk slower, as they did in the original Baldur's Gate. While it's most useful for Tutu and BGT players, you will be able to install it on a bogstandard BG2 game. Since this component had some issues in Tutufix (notably when interacting with polymorph or haste/slow spells) it's being labeled a beta until the issues can be worked out.

Allow Cromwell to Upgrade Watcher's Keep Items
Non-Tutu, Requires Throne of Bhaal
It's never made sense to me that Cromwell can forge armor out of red dragon scales, ankheg shells, and shadow dragon armor--but doesn't even acknowledge the white dragon scales you can acquire in Watcher's Keep. This component will allow Cromwell to forge items found in Watcher's Keep using the same formulae as Cespenar. (Note that only the formulae using items you can legally obtain in SoA are implemented; if you cheat in a component from Sendai's Enclave you'll still be out of luck.) This component will allow the party to obtain some high-level items in Shadows of Amn, so be warned that this may ruin the balance in SoA and make the remainder of the game fairly easy. The component will make one minor tweak to Cespenar as well--normally, he can only add the electric head to the Flail of Ages after the poison head has been attached. This component will allow him to add the heads in any order.