Further into ScS 5

[Guest PetrusOctavianus]

After the very hard fight against the Kobold Cheiftain and his two Shamans, the end battle in the Nashkel mines against Mulahey was a bit of an anti-climax.

In version 4 he buffed (even buffen my party), but he did not buff in version 5 (tried several times). Also there are four Kobold Elite in the same room as Xan, but they never do anything. They have blue circles and "have nothing to say". They were also inactive in version 4.

 

Making the bounty hunter parties only appear after lvl 4 was a huge improvement! Epic battles. The way I play I don't use Temples or Scrolls to resurrect and only re-load if the characters don't do as told (either by me clicking wrong or the infernal path finding making them take a short-cut around the the globe), so I lost Montaron against the amazons. He's one of my favourite characters (excellent little back-stabber) but his low HPs was his bane as he was killed in one blow, by an enemy with Potion of Giant Strenght. :-(

 

 

I also have this mod installed:

SETUP-EASYTUTUSPAWNRANDOMIZER.TP2~ #0 #0 // EasyTutu Spawn Randomizer -> Base Spawn Chance: 30%

~SETUP-EASYTUTUSPAWNRANDOMIZER.TP2~ #0 #15 // Respawn Interval Selection -> Disable Respawning (interval set to 1000 game days)

 

The result was that instead of being surrounded by a horde of Gnolls, the Gnoll Chieftain was alone, making the Gnoll fortress too easy.

Not sure if ScS actually changes anything at the Gnoll Fortress, but maybe it should?

 

 

At the shipwreck, Droth was a major pain in the ass with his Mirror Images, Protection against Missiles and low AC making it almost impossible to hit him. Had to use the Wand of Frost to get rid of him.

I think the improved Droth should give more XP, to reflect how hard he is to kill.

 

 

The Wolf of Ulcaster is terrific. It's special abilities makes for an excellent fight.

 

 

The improved Icharyd was another major pain in the ass. First time I fought him in my current game the second bounty hunter party appeared after he invoked Myrkul's help, making it utterly impossible.

So I decided to explore the ruins first and luckily enough the bounty hunters appeared after exiting the ruins.

 

The key to defeating Ichary was Potions of Absorpion. With the 10 extra AC from this potion Khalid had an effective AC of -13 and Ichy had problems hitting him.

Stupic Ichy kept pounding on Khalid while my Kensai and Kivan with his Elven Spear +2 (missile weapons are almost useless against Ichy) kept pounding him.

 

So all in all I'm very happy with this mod so far.

[DavidW]

After the very hard fight against the Kobold Cheiftain and his two Shamans, the end battle in the Nashkel mines against Mulahey was a bit of an anti-climax.

In version 4 he buffed (even buffen my party), but he did not buff in version 5 (tried several times). Also there are four Kobold Elite in the same room as Xan, but they never do anything. They have blue circles and "have nothing to say". They were also inactive in version 4.

 

That's definitely a bug. (Except... have you got Priests Buff turned off? In v4 Mulahey buffed even if you don't install Priests Buff; in v5 he doesn't.)

 

Making the bounty hunter parties only appear after lvl 4 was a huge improvement! Epic battles.

Great. (As I said somewhere else, the way I play I'm c. lvl 3-4 when they turn up anyway, so I wouldn't have noticed it, but it sounds like I take a lot longer than most people to get around to clearing the Mines.)

 

The result was that instead of being surrounded by a horde of Gnolls, the Gnoll Chieftain was alone, making the Gnoll fortress too easy.

Not sure if ScS actually changes anything at the Gnoll Fortress, but maybe it should?

It doesn't. It sounds as if disabling spawn points is causing some problems in the Gnoll Fortress but I don't really want to get into the game of changing things to allow for other people's mods. Just turn the spawns back on, if only for the Fortress.

 

At the shipwreck, Droth was a major pain in the ass with his Mirror Images, Protection against Missiles and low AC making it almost impossible to hit him.

Glad to hear it!

 

Had to use the Wand of Frost to get rid of him.

I think the improved Droth should give more XP, to reflect how hard he is to kill.

I agree that would be fair. But it's a general SCS design principle not to increase the experience or cash rewards - otherwise you get into a vicious circle where characters are higher level because they've killed tougher monsters, so the monsters need to be even tougher, so they're worth even more experience, so...

 

The Wolf of Ulcaster is terrific. It's special abilities makes for an excellent fight.

Great!

 

The improved Icharyd was another major pain in the ass. First time I fought him in my current game the second bounty hunter party appeared after he invoked Myrkul's help, making it utterly impossible.

So I decided to explore the ruins first and luckily enough the bounty hunters appeared after exiting the ruins.

 

The key to defeating Ichary was Potions of Absorpion. With the 10 extra AC from this potion Khalid had an effective AC of -13 and Ichy had problems hitting him.

Stupic Ichy kept pounding on Khalid while my Kensai and Kivan with his Elven Spear +2 (missile weapons are almost useless against Ichy) kept pounding him.

Sounds a pretty sensible strategy (I've never got around to making much use of those potions, but it sounds as if I ought to.)

 

So all in all I'm very happy with this mod so far.

 

Really glad you're enjoying it! And thanks for the feedback, positive and critical - it's really helpful.

[Guest pmoeba]

I got the "Mulahey never buffing and his Kobold Elite lackeys standing around"-bug too. I first thought this was caused by me removing the improved Kobolds component after my party of 5xlvl1 got consequently molested by the trio of sleep and M's acid arrow hurling little rodents.

 

Anyway, I'm on my first foray to TuTu & SCS(v5) and enjoying most of it immensely. The improved AI really makes things more interesting, and coupled with Ding0's XP fixer (set at 75%-50%) and the NPC project, BG1 is finally starting to materialize as the decent game it should have been.

Here's some minor things I've noticed thus far:

 

When fighting against Nimbul in Nashkel, the Amnish soldiers kept firing arrows at him even though it was futile because of his PNM. I think they should be smart enough to engage in melee, at least after firing a few shots, since they're quite a crucial aid in that battle for a party of lvl2-3.

 

I too got lots of problems fighting Zordral at the carneval, until I realized I can lure him outside the tent where it's much easier to maneuver against the his sleep spells making my whole party to doze off. Anyway, he definitely shouldn't be allowed to pre-buff, as mentioned at the other thread.

 

Tranzig pre-buffed AGAIN after the dialog where my party denied his pleads for mercy. A bug, hopefully. I think his pre-buffing at all is a bit questionable, since according to his dialogue he's not expecting anyone. I realize he might be a bit too easy without it though.

 

The first assassin party that hunts the player down caught me pants-down with almost no spells and half of my party wounded(at the Beregost temple), so I managed to flee from the map after some maneuvering and a chunked Safana. Anyway, when I returned there later I was a bit disappointed to find them still waiting at the same spot with no buffs. If the party does flee (which I'd presume to happen quite often, considering the nature of the encounter), it'd be better for the assassins to de-spawn and try to regain their element of surprise elsewhere.I've no idea if it's possible to code this though.

 

The name of one of the swords on sale at Beregost smithy is displayed as "name___sw1h05" with no describtion text when you right-click it. I think this is the excellent long sword, so this could be caused by SCS.

 

Also, when scribing the spell "Power word: Sleep" for Xzar, it appears as lvl9 (instead of 2) in his spellbook! Perhaps an oversight in the "only BG1 spells" component?

[DavidW]

Hi, thanks for the feedback, and glad you're enjoying it.

 

When fighting against Nimbul in Nashkel, the Amnish soldiers kept firing arrows at him even though it was futile because of his PNM. I think they should be smart enough to engage in melee, at least after firing a few shots, since they're quite a crucial aid in that battle for a party of lvl2-3.

 

Nice idea; okay, I'll look into scripting it for the next version. (Basically, SCS normally doesn't touch "non-enemy" AI, so they're just using the original BG1 scripts).

 

I too got lots of problems fighting Zordral at the carneval, until I realized I can lure him outside the tent where it's much easier to maneuver against the his sleep spells making my whole party to doze off.

 

Good strategy.

 

Tranzig pre-buffed AGAIN after the dialog where my party denied his pleads for mercy. A bug, hopefully.

Yep.

 

I think his pre-buffing at all is a bit questionable, since according to his dialogue he's not expecting anyone. I realize he might be a bit too easy without it though.

 

Yes, this is a difficult problem in general. I could set up pre-buffing only for people who you don't in some sense "catch by surprise", but I'm a little reluctant to because the nature of the game is such that you're (almost) always the one doing the surprising. (It's easier in BG2 because of sequencers and contingencies, of course.) I don't find it too difficult to believe that Tarnesh isn't expecting anyone but he's a paranoid bandit and when he hears heavy footsteps outside he takes precautions...

 

Perhaps we'll see how many "questionable" prebuffs you and Petrus have identified by the end of SCS. If it's only a handful, it would add flavour to remove their prebuffing. If it's dozens, that's a different matter.

 

The first assassin party that hunts the player down caught me pants-down with almost no spells and half of my party wounded(at the Beregost temple), so I managed to flee from the map after some maneuvering and a chunked Safana. Anyway, when I returned there later I was a bit disappointed to find them still waiting at the same spot with no buffs. If the party does flee (which I'd presume to happen quite often, considering the nature of the encounter), it'd be better for the assassins to de-spawn and try to regain their element of surprise elsewhere.I've no idea if it's possible to code this though.

 

Possible but a bit fiddly. I'll think about it. I'm surprised they didn't at least redo their buffs though...

 

The name of one of the swords on sale at Beregost smithy is displayed as "name___sw1h05" with no describtion text when you right-click it. I think this is the excellent long sword, so this could be caused by SCS.

It is caused by SCS, yes: a missing line in the Non-magical Weapons section. Will fix.

 

Also, when scribing the spell "Power word: Sleep" for Xzar, it appears as lvl9 (instead of 2) in his spellbook! Perhaps an oversight in the "only BG1 spells" component?

 

Well, it's not exactly an oversight. "Power word: sleep" isn't a BG1 spell. I assume you've got the spell from another mod (BG1NPC possibly). There's only so much I can do about this, unfortunately.

[Ieldra]

Now having finished chapter 4, I'm in a position to add my comments to this thread. All in all, SCS makes the game much more interesting, but I'm still undecided about keeping the pre-buffed mages in for more than this one game.

I have installed all components with the exception of:

-Make elemental arrows more like in BG2.

-Replace many magical weapons with fine ones.

-Remove spells not in BG.

-Faster bears

-Skip Candlekeep

I have also kept the BG2 walking speed. That having been said, here are my comments about some specific encounters up to the start of chapter 5:

 

1. Tarnesh

 

I usually arrive here with a "party" of two and found I could not win this fight with two Thieves. If you play a good character and decide not to trust Xzar and Montaron, but still want to play along the storyline, this can be somewhat annoying. I had no chance but to get another NPC into my party before going to the FAI. Not that Kagain is much better than X+M if you aim for a good party, but I needed a fighter...

 

2. Bassilus

 

Somewhat harder than without SCS, but as opposed to some others, I did not find him particularly difficult compared with other SCS enemies.

 

3. The Kobold Shamans and Mulahey

 

I agree with PetrusOctavianus here. The Kobold Shamans were an interesting battle, and the only reason it wasn't impossible was that my party was level 3 - Stinking Cloud won the day, as in so many other early battles . Mulahey, on the other hand, didn't seem very different from his non-SCS incarnation.

 

4. Bounty hunter ambushes

 

Very nice! These were difficult because the enemies appear right after you enter a new area, so you have no chance of setting up protections (not that you have many at L4) - but it worked out very well. Hard but not impossible.

 

5. The Wolf of Ulcaster

 

My favorite battle so far, particularly because you see a nice little story lurking behind this special encounter (as opposed to the standard one it was in original BG), and because it didn't feature a mage (see the end of this post for more about pre-buffed mages) and still was made quite challenging by adding interesting special abilities. A nice surprise, too - too bad it will never again be as interesting as this first time...

 

6. Droth, Kahrk and the Ogre Mage in the Cloakwood Mine L3

 

I have to say it's really annoying when your mages and missile-slingers cannot do *anything* to an enemy *and* your melee fighters only do damage on a critical hit while being themselves damaged by every second hit. You might as well not bother and just bring two priests with Wands of the Heavens, because everything anyone else does is nothing but a very lucky hit. Most interestingly, Karhk wasn't so much more difficult than the others, he was about as hard to hit by fighters, and my mages were as powerless against him as against the others, he only was more dangerous because he had more spells. The fight took a very long time, and a great many healing potions, because I hadn't got a Wand of the Heavens then and had to rely on critical hits to do damage.

(I'm already thinking, with some trepidation, about the house with the five Ogre Mages in Baldur's Gate - has anyone survived this with SCS? How?)

 

7. Tranzig

 

This battle was almost a comedian's dream. It took almost 20 minutes of running around on the second floor of Feldepost's Inn, full of useless attempts to affect him with magic and missiles (as usual ), fighters following him around trying to get hits in while the party mage he was single-mindedly determined to follow was fleeing from him in turn. I can almost imagine the devastation left among the furniture and furnishings of the inn after the battle, with the party charged an additional 500gp for repairs.

 

8. Red Wizards at the Temple Ruins

 

Does everyone need to have a Minor Globe of Invulnerability? This gets annoying when you're fighting against mages who give 300xp apiece. From their xp rewards they can't have been higher in level than 3 (or 5 if you're really generous), so where do their Minor Globes come from? This fight wasn't particularly hard compared to others, but it still was totally out-of-proportion to the xp rewards. I can understand the reasons for not tampering with the xp rewards, but then these newbie Red Wizards should have their buffs reduced. Really.

 

9. Bandit Camp - Chapter 3 end battle

 

Almost a letdown after what I had seen earlier. Venkt didn't pre-buff, so the battle was only slightly harder than usual, with my standard tactics of two carefully placed fireballs from wands as a starter (never mind Kagain, with a fire resistance potion he can take it), followed by a more or less standard battle involving swords, bows and magic missiles, winning the day in not more than two minutes. To imagine that this important battle was so much easier than the fight against the Red Wizards at the Temple Ruins...

 

10. Improved Spiders

 

What a nasty surprise! But I like it. I had to re-load two times for one of the spider battles on the Temple Ruins map before I found a way to deal with them (no Free Action spell yet in a L6 party), but never mind - their behavior is convincing and the new web-slinging ability feels natural. At last, Giant Spiders and their kin are more than easy xp providers.

A sidenote: on Cloakwood 2, as I had already suspected in another thread, I *did* get four of five Phase Spiders on the map teleported to the party at the same time (The first one was already gone - I had met it immediately after entering the map).

 

11. Drasus' party

 

The first time I encountered this party I was clobbered to death by Mr.D himself. The second time I managed to disable both mages with a Stinking Cloud from off-screen before they came into view and pre-buffed. Sometimes you can really use a piece of luck - even though both fighters were unaffected. At some time I'll repeat this battle just to see how it can go. Drasus himself is almost too hard, even without his artillery. To think that I used to defeat the original version of this party with a solo mage...

 

12. Davaeorn - Chapter 4 end battle

 

A typical instance of how annoying a battle against a pre-buffed mage in close quarters can be. Never mind the Battle Horrors - since my mages can't do anything to Davaeorn, they might as well kill the Battle Horrors with magic missiles while a fighter keeps them occupied. That keeps my priest free to attack Davaeorn with her Wand of the Heavens, while a second fighter keeps following him around for distraction, not that there is much hope to hit anything short of a critical hit. Have I forgotten anything? Ah yes, the Web spell. Since the usual tactics of trying to disrupt the casting doesn't work as well anymore, and the other usual tactics of spreading out over a large area is impossible here, I had to rely on foreknowledge after a re-load, and provide Free Action (thrice by spell, twice by potion, once by weapon) to my party members.

 

Comments on pre-buffed mages in general:

 

I don't mind the difficulty so far. After all, mages in original BG1 had been ridiculously easy to defeat, and the pre-buffing is part of the solution. But I do mind that at least until Chapter 5, when you get Arrows of Dispelling, the majority of my party might as well not be present if you're fighting a mage with a Minor Globe and (improved) PNM active. The only thing you can really do is rush them with melee fighters and hope to keep the party alive and in control of themselves while the enemy's Mirror Images are destroyed. While I have not been tempted to uninstall this component, I have been tempted to cheat a scroll of Secret Word or Remove Magic into my saved games, just so that my mages have something to contribute to the fight against others of their kind - which they really should IMO. So far I haven't done it, and since I'm now in chapter 5 with access to Sorcerous Sundries, I have some time left to see if the supply of Arrows of Dispelling is enough to survive the mages in chapters 5 to 7.

 

One thing that Pre-buffed Mages (more than any other component) does: it makes you appreciate more the value of certain one-use items like protection scrolls and potions. Unfortunately, that leaves another problem: While I don't mind spending 10000s of gp on one-use items, money is less of a problem than limited supply of those items you might come to appreciate, such as Potions of Freedom or Clarity (or whichever was the one that prevents confusion). And since now, more enemy mages get more spells off, there is an even greater need of those. I like to play as if my party didn't know what comes, but things like the Chapter 4 end battle plainly show that this is impossible: Davaeorn used a very effective sequence: Start with a Web, follow-up by a Fireball or two, both spells that won't affect himself because he has the Minor Globe. Unfortunately, there is no real protection against this sequence in close quarters except Free Action, but Potions of Freedom are rare enough that you *never* use them unless you have some idea of what's coming, and you don't usually have a priest with 3 Free Actions memorized. So, if you *really* play as if you don't know what's coming, using only standard buffs like PFE, Resist Fear, Defensive Harmony, Mirror Image etc. (you don't have a Minor Globe at this time).. .you die.

 

So, I'll keep the pre-buffed mages in for now because I want to see if I can win against them, but I'm still undecided about keeping them in after this one game. The amount of frustration occasionally kills the fun.

 

Note on problem areas:

Laurel's Gibberling Horde makes things go *very slowly* on my computer. Things improve with every Gibberling killed.

There's the same slowdown problem with Cloakwood 4 (the Wyvern area), but I couldn't detect the cause. Things started out slow and kept slow regardless of killed enemies, until I left the area.

[Ieldra]

Sorry, double post. See above for the original.

[DavidW]

Thanks for such a thorough set of comments!

 

A few quick thoughts:

 

Tarnesh

 

I think this actually reflects the fact that the writers of the vanilla game throw you up against something that in PnP would be nigh-impossible - a L5 mage vs a (small) L1 party. I don't actually give Tarnesh any new abilities (unless you count prebuffs, I guess) - the main shift I do is changing from the single-target MM to the lethal Sleep. (One of the design parameters of SCS is that I try to make every creature as intelligent as possible (well, for intelligent creatures anyway!) within its vanilla

stats, then tweak those stats up if it's still not challenging enough. I'm so far resisting the temptation to tweak anything down.

 

In a way, it's quite realistic - your L1 protagonist is basically seriously outgunned by any realistic bounty hunter. Discretion might be the better part of valour here - if you can sneak round him and get into the FAI, Khalid and Jaheira will be happy to help...

 

The Wolf of Ulcaster

 

This was certainly fun to write - once in a while it's nice to do something totally different, and as you say, in vanilla BG it's totally unclear what the backstory is behind Ulcaster. (Not that I do more than hint at it.)

 

Droth, Kahrk and the Ogre Mage in the Cloakwood Mine L3

 

I'm a bit puzzled about why you're finding it so hard to hit the ogre mages - they ought to have AC around 2-4, which L4-5 characters with +1 weapons ought to be hitting about a third of the time. (You've got to get rid of their mirror image, of course). I agree that in this sort of battle there's only so much you can do if you're not a front-liner, but mages at least might want to consider Magic Missile - it takes down mirror images very effectively, even through a MGI.

 

Tranzig

 

Well, that's not exactly what he's supposed to do, but it's so hilarious that I think I'll leave it...

 

Red Wizards at the Temple Ruins

 

In the vanilla game they're levels 3,4,5 and 6. The "Improved misc. encounters" component of SCS increases them by 3 levels each. The experience point issue is tricky - there are only really three alternatives:

i) don't make creatures tougher (in which case some encounters, like this one, are annoyingly easy)

ii) make creatures tougher and compensate the party with more experience (in which case things get unbalanced)

iii) make creatures tougher and keep the experience reward fixed.

 

SCS normally goes for (iii). I take it you're suggesting (i) in this case, but I'm not all that keen - as you say, that fight isn't particularly hard as it is. In this particular case, I might go for (ii) if the experience awards feel ridiculously small - on a one-off basis it doesn't matter too much.

 

Bandit Camp - Chapter 3 end battle

 

Venkt certainly should have prebuffed - this is a bug (and one I can't reproduce locally). Can I confirm: were there various extra Black Talon Elite and Hobgoblins in the tent?

 

Improved Spiders

 

Glad someone likes the webspinning! As for phase spiders, I think you just got unlucky (either that or it's a bug, but I'm fairly sure that bit is working okay). It's quite random.

 

Drasus's party

 

This is pure AI, actually - I haven't given Drasus any extra abilities.

 

Davaeorn - Chapter 4 end battle

 

I agree, it's pretty hard without metagaming. Again, to some extent I'm a victim of vanilla BG - Davaeorn is a pretty high-level wizard who encounters the party in a tactically very favourable area. Having said which, it's perfectly reasonable to do quite a lot of antimagic prebuffing in this encounter, even without metagaming - you know you're about to confront a very dangerous high-level mage, so a few potions of magic resistance/blocking are probably in order. The spider sword is also helpful. Again, I'm quite surprised how hard you're finding it to hit him - his AC isn't that special.

 

Pre-buffed mages in general

 

Things I found that work well against a mage with MGI:

 

- melee (obviously). Often you meet them when there's plenty of fighters or summons around, so it's not as if your other party members can't keep busy. Don't all rush in at once, though, or you'll be dangerously bunched for a Chaos or Confusion spell.

 

- magic missile. It can't hurt the wizard but it can strip away his mirror images, which makes it a lot quicker for the fighter-types to hurt him.

 

- arrows of dispelling. A must in the later game.

 

- the Dispel Magic spell. You get it at L5 and it's got a fair chance of working against most mages. It's much harder to use than the BG2 version, of course, but often it's still worth it.

 

- Confusion. You only get it in the later game, of course, but it goes right through MGI.

 

- Wands of Frost and of the Heavens. Ditto.

 

I see your point about it being easy to use up vital items - in some ways this is a good feature, but it does encourage metagaming. But it is possible to take these items at very short notice - you can take a Freedom potion while Davaeorn's web projectile is in flight and still be protected, for instance.

[Ieldra]

One of the design parameters of SCS is that I try to make every creature as intelligent as possible (well, for intelligent creatures anyway!) within its vanilla

stats, then tweak those stats up if it's still not challenging enough. I'm so far resisting the temptation to tweak anything down.

As a rule, this does work very well. "Better Calls for Help" and the various smarter AI components makes many battles much more convincing. Another example are the Vampire Wolves on the Temple map - it used to be a cakewalk taking them on one on one. I still managed to kill them with a L2-3 party of 4 without a mage, but it was a lot of work and even more running than usual.

 

In a way, it's quite realistic - your L1 protagonist is basically seriously outgunned by any realistic bounty hunter. Discretion might be the better part of valour here - if you can sneak round him and get into the FAI, Khalid and Jaheira will be happy to help...

Indeed, but realism shouldn't get in the way of the story. I never tried getting past Tarnesh without killing him, but I suspect it would be impossible for a L1 Thief anyway, and running past would probably let him get a Sleep or Magic Missile with 3 missiles off, both deadly for a L1 party of two. I'm not suggesting that he be changed, but I am undecided in my opinion about whether the more challenging fight is worth the hit to the story. Usually I'm a storyteller first and a tactician second in my roleplaying games.

 

I'm a bit puzzled about why you're finding it so hard to hit the ogre mages - they ought to have AC around 2-4, which L4-5 characters with +1 weapons ought to be hitting about a third of the time. (You've got to get rid of their mirror image, of course). I agree that in this sort of battle there's only so much you can do if you're not a front-liner, but mages at least might want to consider Magic Missile - it takes down mirror images very effectively, even through a MGI.

It does? Well, that just shows you never stop learning about games as complex as the BG games even after playing countless games over 8 years. Up till now, I didn't even bother to try since the MGI description plainly says the mages are immune to L1-3 spells. And since arrows don't seem to kill off Mirror Images vs. a mage with PNM, I simply assumed the same would be the case with MM against MGI. I'll have to try that...

 

Red Wizards at the Temple Ruins

In the vanilla game they're levels 3,4,5 and 6. The "Improved misc. encounters" component of SCS increases them by 3 levels each. The experience point issue is tricky - there are only really three alternatives:

i) don't make creatures tougher (in which case some encounters, like this one, are annoyingly easy)

ii) make creatures tougher and compensate the party with more experience (in which case things get unbalanced)

iii) make creatures tougher and keep the experience reward fixed.

 

SCS normally goes for (iii). I take it you're suggesting (i) in this case, but I'm not all that keen - as you say, that fight isn't particularly hard as it is. In this particular case, I might go for (ii) if the experience awards feel ridiculously small - on a one-off basis it doesn't matter too much.

I do think that in this special case, there is justification to increase the xp reward if these mages stay as they are. They were about as difficult as the mages on the second floor of Sorcerous Sundries, which is, interesting but not particularly deadly for a L7 party if you know what you're doing.

 

Bandit Camp - Chapter 3 end battle

Venkt certainly should have prebuffed - this is a bug (and one I can't reproduce locally). Can I confirm: were there various extra Black Talon Elite and Hobgoblins in the tent?

Were there? I don't recall how many enemies there are in the original game, but if Dan Simpson's FAQ is correct, then there are originally only four named enemies in this room, plus Ender Sai. This time there were, apart from the four, at least one unnamed Black Talon Elite and one Hobgoblin Elite in here. Maybe more than one, I don't recall.

 

Drasus's party

This is pure AI, actually - I haven't given Drasus any extra abilities.

But you did increase the levels, from what I read in the readme. This is very much noticeable in the improved THAC0s, of Drasus himself in particular. He never was really easy with his Boots of Speed, now it's important to finish him off quickly at all costs before he slashes my mages to ribbons.... Everyone else is manageable. As I said, I got lucky and can't really rate the difficulty of this battle.

 

Davaeorn - Chapter 4 end battle

Again, I'm quite surprised how hard you're finding it to hit him - his AC isn't that special.

Actually, one of my fighters did kill him at the end. But I found it surprising how long it takes, even without Mirror Images - they got destroyed somehow during the battle. But without the Wand of the Heavens, I doubt I could have won this fight without a party death.

 

Things I found that work well against a mage with MGI:

 

- melee (obviously). Often you meet them when there's plenty of fighters or summons around, so it's not as if your other party members can't keep busy. Don't all rush in at once, though, or you'll be dangerously bunched for a Chaos or Confusion spell.

Indeed. That's what makes mage fights in close quarter so dangerous. But at least from chapter 5 onward two can play that game

 

Dispel Magic. You get it at L5 and it's got a fair chance of working against most mages. It's much harder to use than the BG2 version, of course, but often it's still worth it.

No, that's not a tradeoff I'd like to make. Most probably it will just strip my own fighters of Resist Fear, and the AI will notice that and follow up with Horror. At the same time, with the increased levels of most mages my chances of getting something useful out of a L3 spell slot with Dispel Magic are almost nonexistent. Having tried this a few times, I don't even bother to memorize Dispel Magic any more, except one instance in a priest setup. It might be worth it in multiple-mage battles - even one mage stripped of protection helps - but against parties with one mage it's next to useless.

 

Confusion. You only get it in the later game, of course, but it goes right through MGI.

Again, this works best against enemy parties, since the chances are better that one or two enemies will fail their saves.

 

Wands of Frost and of the Heavens. Ditto.

My best anti-(SCS-)mage weapons indeed. I find it somewhat less than satisfactory to depend on items so much more than on spells, but that's just my preferred playing style. I wonder if it's possible to make a mage kit that sacrifices item usage for more spells that are harder to defend against...

[DavidW]

Drasus: duh, sorry. I was getting him mixed up with someone else. You're right, I do increase his level.

 

Red Wizards: I'm convinced, I'll kick their XP up for the next release.

 

Party deaths: I think the odd party death in end-of-chapter fights is just life (so to speak...) Resurrection is fairly affordable in BG1.

 

Dispel magic: Yes, agreed, it's often not worth it, but against groups of wizards (the Red Wizard bunch, for instance) it's worth a shot.

[Guest PetrusOctavianus]

I'm currently playing IWD. Was unhappy with my Kensai, since with no armour he's much too fragile in BG1 and was not very fun to play.

 

Anyway, I saw this thread started by my has had lots of messahes lately, so I though I'd add some comments.

 

Tarnesh: I really prefer the SCS version, as the Sleep spell is not as lethal as the MM spell. MM against the protagonist is Game Over. Sleep can be partially avoided by using the Pause button, and start speading the party as soon as the spell is cast. Then at least *some* of your party will be in condition to fight and the Horror spell and Tarnesh's melee ability is not fatal for the protagonist.

 

 

Bassilus is not that difficult if you *know* he has the Physical Mirror spell. It didn't even occur to me that he could have it, since PM is a BG2 spell.

But unless you have a really good melee figher, he *is* very difficult to hit.

 

 

Agree about Droth being very hard to hit, needing Critical Hits. I has to use the last charges of my Frost Wand to kill him.

And I agree that foes that are hard to kill and take a *long* time to kill (like Droth and the four Red Wizards), should get more XP. I don't think it's unbalancing, after all you get 2000 XP from much easier opponents like Vampiric Wolves, Flesh Golems and Sirines.

 

 

Tranzig makes me really ache for the combat engine of the old Gold Box games, where characters engaged in melee would get free attacks against enemies moving out of melee. Being a control freak I hate the way characters can just move thorugh your characters without penalty. And since the IE games have no grid, it's almost impossible to block enemy characters.

I still can't believe that games with such a heavy emphasis, has such a shitty combat engine. It would have been vastly better if you could bring up a grid, get a target area for you AOE spells and *individual* line of sight. It makes me want to crush something, crush something to goo, when instead of just stepping one step to the left or right, my idiot archer instead moves to point blank to get a good shot.

 

 

A good tactic against the Red Wizards is to use a Cloud Kill scroll. You may kill one outright if lucky.

 

 

Bandit Camp:

The presence of all the grunts make a Fireball almost mandatory, as you need to kill them ASAP, to prevent them shooting you mage to death. This usually also kills Ender Sedai (or what's his name).

Also, something is wrong with the mage. Not only does he not pre-buff (which I think he's supposed to), but he doesn't cast any spell, just throws darts.

All in all this battle is too easy, even with the added Talon soldiers.

 

 

Drasus' party.

One of the best battles in the game. With both parties pre-buffing, this is a good fight.

 

 

Davaeorn:

By this time you should have Yesclick in your party. Dispel Magic ability is a life saver against pre-buffed mages and for me it made the fight against Davaeorn easy.

Later you'll have access to the ultimate cheese - Arrows of Dispelling.

[Salk]

One question: when I played BGT with SCS on (and other Mods as well), I was surprised that I got no chance to ever buy the scroll of Mirror Image and I played up to Chapter Four. Have you perhaps removed them from the game? If that's the case, I can't say I really liked that idea since the enemies, fairly so, make costant use of this spell.

[DavidW]

@Salk: no, I haven't touched the Mirror Image scroll. High Hedge sells them, I think.

 

re: Tarnesh: okay, so some people find him more lethal this way, some less. I think I'll just leave him alone

 

@Petrus: the point about high XP being unbalancing isn't that there aren't creatures worth more XP that are less tough. It's just that it increases the amount of XP in the game, total. (I know the in-principle amount of XP in the game is infinite, if you deliberately farm flesh golems or something, but in practice there's a finite amount you get.) In principle, obviously you could just rescale every monster in the game, so the total amount of XP stays fixed but the difficulties are respected, but I can't be bothered. That said, I agree in the two or three cases people have brought up that it should be changed.

 

re: Venkt: found it, it's a bug that only comes up if you install on EasyTutu (SCS was written in vanilla Tutu). I'll put it on the to-fix list.

[Ieldra]

A good tactic against the Red Wizards is to use a Cloud Kill scroll. You may kill one outright if lucky.

Not so good long-term. There are only two Cloudkill scrolls in the game (unless there are more added by mods), and I usually need these for my mages to learn the spell for the endgame battles.

 

Bandit Camp:

The presence of all the grunts make a Fireball almost mandatory, as you need to kill them ASAP, to prevent them shooting you mage to death. This usually also kills Ender Sedai (or what's his name).

Heh, that's why I said "carefully placed Fireballs". With two Wand of Fire, you can hit Venkt and the center with one and the left and the center with the other one, both without harming Ender Sai. Your leader will catch some friendly fire that way, but that's OK.

 

Davaeorn:

By this time you should have Yesclick in your party. Dispel Magic ability is a life saver against pre-buffed mages and for me it made the fight against Davaeorn easy.

Later you'll have access to the ultimate cheese - Arrows of Dispelling.

I already have Viconia, who's better at Dispelling than Yeslick by two levels. The problem remains that you most likely dispel more of your own protections than Davaeorn's. OK, you can reload until you succeed, but that's not the way I like to play, at least if I see other methods of winning. I'll wait until Durlag's chessboard to see if this will be necessary .

[Guest PetrusOctavianus]

A good tactic against the Red Wizards is to use a Cloud Kill scroll. You may kill one outright if lucky.

 

Not so good long-term. There are only two Cloudkill scrolls in the game (unless there are more added by mods), and I usually need these for my mages to learn the spell for the endgame battles.

 

Hmm...I think I had two or three scrolls, but only on mage. With all four Wizards having Minor Globes it was an easy choice for me.

 

 

Bandit Camp:

The presence of all the grunts make a Fireball almost mandatory, as you need to kill them ASAP, to prevent them shooting you mage to death. This usually also kills Ender Sedai (or what's his name).

 

Heh, that's why I said "carefully placed Fireballs". With two Wand of Fire, you can hit Venkt and the center with one and the left and the center with the other one, both without harming Ender Sai. Your leader will catch some friendly fire that way, but that's OK.

 

I always role play my party, and since it's not possible to sneak in a thief, my characters don't know about the prisoner, but concentrate on killing the enemy archers ASAP. If you are playing a neutral party, too high Reputation can be a problem, so the -5 for killing Ender Sai is not so bad.

 

 

Davaeorn:

By this time you should have Yesclick in your party. Dispel Magic ability is a life saver against pre-buffed mages and for me it made the fight against Davaeorn easy.

Later you'll have access to the ultimate cheese - Arrows of Dispelling.

 

I already have Viconia, who's better at Dispelling than Yeslick by two levels. The problem remains that you most likely dispel more of your own protections than Davaeorn's. OK, you can reload until you succeed, but that's not the way I like to play, at least if I see other methods of winning. I'll wait until Durlag's chessboard to see if this will be necessary .

 

Yeslick's Dispel Magic is an ability, and like the Arrows of Dispelling it never fails, while the spell is dependent on having as high level as possible.

In all my years of playing BG I've never payed with Viconia. Since I role play, I can never see a reason to rescue her. If lawful you'll side with The Law ("I *am* the law!"), if neutral you'll not be involved and as evil you couldn't care less, unless you hate the Flaming Fist. I think I'll play a Chaotic Good character next time; that is about the only alignment I can see helping Viconia.

[Guest PetrusOctavianus]

Sorry about the messed up quoting in my previous reply.

Isn't it "funny" how modern web boards still are much slower and more cumbersome than Usenet and email has ever been?