Sword Coast Stratagems: Item Tweaks

These are a collection of small changes to the items available in the game.

Make elemental arrows more like BG2

The arrows of Fire, Ice and Acid in BG are seriously powerful in terms of damage done - much more so than their equivalents in BG2, presumably because the designers chose to tone it down a bit. This component applies a similar tonedown to BG (not quite identical; they're still a bit more powerful than the BG2 versions).

On a BGT install, the only effect of this component is to tone down the effects of the Bolt of Lightning (which is actually quite powerful even in BG2).

Replace many magic weapons with fine ones

This replaces most of the standard (i.e. non-named) +1 weapons in the game with non-magical equivalents: they still give you +1 to hit and damage but they don't give you +1 to initiative and they can't harm creatures that are immune to normal weapons.

This is mostly a cosmetic change: I wrote it because otherwise there are implausibly many magic weapons lying around the Sword Coast. It has two significant effects on the game, though. Firstly, +1 weapons cost a lot less (about a third as much). This mostly works against you (you generally find +1 weapons on enemies and sell them). More seriously, the iron plague affects "fine" weapons. I actually quite like this (feels more realistic, and makes the iron plague more a part of the game) but if it's just going to annoy you, don't use it.

As of version 4 of SCS, you can choose to have Fine weapons without the effects of the iron crisis. It's clear from what you're told in-game that the crisis affects all iron (even iron not forged from Nashkel ore), but some people feel this is outweighed by the annoyance of having your high-quality weapons break so much. It's up to you.

BGT users should note that this component also affects weapons which you find in the BG2 part of the game. This component is incompatible with the similar component of SCSII (it doesn't matter which one you install, except that the SCSII versions will not be shatter-proof).

Reintroduce potions of extra-healing

This places smallish numbers of potions of extra-healing at some of the temples. It's mostly here because some of the enhanced encounters give potions of extra-healing to the bad guys, and it's rather unfair if the player can't buy them too.

Remove Arrows of Dispelling from stores

This component removes all the Arrows of Dispelling from the stores in BG1; you might want to install this if you find Arrows of Dispelling a bit too effective.