coaster's weidu log for Beta v2 & bug reports

[coaster]

OK, a few more bugs, comments:

 

-Several dialogues not triggering on sight: Garrick outside Radiant Heart, dwarf thrall after defeating Master of Thralls, Raelis Shai after defeating Warden

-spirit trolls - no red x on character portrait to show strength drain (it does appear if Torgal causes the strength drain though)

-Belmin Gergas in Waukeen's Promenade - if Viconia in party and talk to him, he turns red & attacks - if kill him, or even if guards kill him, guards turn hostile

-Tarnor Hatchetman's sewer party - the mage (Gaius?) was standing around without a stoneskin - begging to be backstabbed. So I did. Probably made the battle too easy. Suggest he "skins up", so to speak.

 

Planar prison warden battle: very tough one this for a low level party (at least with the components of SCSII I had installed). The Warden summoned a dark planetar who diced up my party in about 10 seconds. Eventually I had to resort to cheese - put on the boots of speed, ran around with the planetar in pursuit until the summons duration expired.

 

A couple of apparent bugs in this battle: the Warden seemed to cast a number of offensive spells on his own simulcrum (Melf's Acid Arrow, Chain Lightning etc). I don't know if it was because he was fighting the warden thralls a bit earlier and got carried away. He also summoned a fiend which then attacked him - either he wasn't protected from evil, or the sunfire he set off annoyed it & made it attack, I wasn't sure. In one playthrough of the battle I had, the glazrebu (sp?) killed the Warden himself - a casualty of your improved fiends component I think!

[coaster]

Bug when fighting Baron Ployer & co in the slums: Malacazar - one of the assassins - cast lower resistance on Viconia, but it affected all my party.

[DavidW]

Thanks - I can't tell you how useful this all is.

 

Garrick, Raelis: definitely bugs, fixed locally.

Dwarf thrall: I think not a bug, at least not with SCS II. He's not supposed to initiate dialogue till the combat is definitively over, which can be a bit glitchy even in the vanilla game.

Spirit trolls: I can reproduce this but I don't understand it yet. I'll get back to you.

Belmin: not a bug, I think: he's supposed to attack Viconia in the vanilla game. Or did you mean something different?

Gaius: I can't reproduce this, he's stoneskinned when I test it.

Warden's self-chain-lightning: bug, fixed locally. (Can't reproduce Melf yet, though).

Warden and demons: the problem is that the glabrezu sees a lawful evil demon and assumes it's a baatezu, and so attacks on Blood War grounds. I'll relabel the warden as something other than Demonic.

Multi-effect Lower Resistance: not really a bug. Lower Resistance became an area effect spell like Spell Thrust etc, as a way of getting around the game's hardcoded restrictions on targetting invisible opponents. If you think it should be more like Breach, though, I'm listening.

 

As for the difficulty: I actually reckon that putting HLAs into SoA is systematically fairly unbalancing, which is why I wouldn't use them myself. Without it, that spell slot would go to Power Word: Kill, which is a bit more survivable.

[coaster]

Sorry, should have been clearer on the Belmin point. The main problem is that there is no way of resolving the situation once you talk with him. Belmin turns hostile: 2 options, kill him or lead him to the guards and let them kill him. In the vanilla game, killing Belmin yourself turns the nearby guards hostile, so you would choose the second option - lead him to the guards, the guards kill Belmin, and all is well again in the world. What is weird is that the guards are turning hostile after they kill Belmin - seems a little unfair, they kill a civilian and I get blamed! Perhaps the AI is trying to frame me...

 

On lower resistance - hmm. It seems to me that you have gone to great pains in this mod to make sure the enemies are playing by the rules and (for the most part) doing what player mages are capable of doing, but for enemies to have a powerful spell like lower resistance as an area effect, whereas I get it on an individual targeting basis, doesn't seem fair. That said I'm not sure what you mean by "the game's hardcoded restrictions on targetting invisible opponents" - do I have some advantage over the enemy because of these restrictions?

 

edit: my bad, should have read the documentation on the changes made to lower resistance etc. I presume enemy spellcasters can target improved invisible characters and I can't, right? - so you are evening things up by allowing both enemies & my party to use an AoE version of lower resistance (and the other spells). Might take some getting used to, I'll have a play and see how it goes. How big is the AoE?

[DavidW]

Belmin: got it. Turns out my new Shout() script basically isn't designed for civilians. I've reverted them to the old one - hotfix uploaded.

 

 

Lower Resistance:

 

Basically, the problem is that, because individual-targetted spells can't be cast on someone who's Improved Invisible, a wizard with Spell Immunity: Divination and Improved Invisibility is very hard to deal with, esp. if he's also using Mantle type spells (and worst of all if he's a lich). There are lots of clever tactical solutions, but the natural thing to do - hit him with some of those nice anti-magic-defences spells - isn't available.

 

What I wanted to do was modify Ruby Ray etc so that they can be used to target creatures even when they are Improved-Invisible. But it turns out that this can't be done in BG2, at least for the players. So making these spells have a (very small) area of effect is my workaround - area-of-effect spells can be targetted anywhere.

(If the area seems too big in playtesting, I'll look into making it smaller but shortening the casting time of the spell).

 

All that said, I can't now remember why Lower Resistance was on the list of spells to be made area-effect. Let me know whether or not it's a net improvement to the game...

[coaster]

Will do.

 

Significant problem in the Bridge district, with the 4 hostile enemies hanging around pointlessly in one of the houses (AR0530). One of the spells cast by the mage (Dracandros) is causing a CTD (not sure which one, but it take a while to cast - just as he is about to release it, the CTD occurs). The two melee fighters are acting weirdly as well, they keep going to stand next to the mage and twitch a bit... you might want to check all these guys out.

[DavidW]

Will do.

 

Significant problem in the Bridge district, with the 4 hostile enemies hanging around pointlessly in one of the houses (AR0530). One of the spells cast by the mage (Dracandros) is causing a CTD (not sure which one, but it take a while to cast - just as he is about to release it, the CTD occurs). The two melee fighters are acting weirdly as well, they keep going to stand next to the mage and twitch a bit... you might want to check all these guys out.

 

It's cacofiend. There's a bug in improved fiends, he's trying to summon something that doesn't exist. And the fighters are trying to get a Protection from Evil, but not being given one (again because of Improved Fiends).

 

In the next 2 minutes I'll add it to the hotfix - can you try it out again?

[coaster]

Yep - seems to work now, thanks

[DavidW]

Okay, I've tracked down the bug with spirit trolls and phase spiders. It's part of a rather systematic bug that I can't fix by hotfix, so I've uploaded a new beta version.

[coaster]

OK - do you suggest I continue with the current beta (it's no big deal for me that I don't have the odd portrait icon) or un/reinstall?

[coaster]

More issues.

 

Two that I'm not sure are SCS:

 

-Tanner's shop, Bridge: 1 of Rune Assassins & Bone Golem only showed up a minute or so after the other enemies were dead. Not sure why there was a delay?

-Tolmas Bendalia (merchant who wants paying off in Fighter stronghold) is still in castle, he never left

 

And some that I think are:

 

-Beholders & gauths near riddle bridge (Unseeing Eye quest) don't move towards their attackers after being cloudkilled - nor do they move out of the AoE (so they die)

-Empathic manifestation (Unseeing Eye quest) dies instantly on entering Amaunator temple - should die on being healed

-Undead cave - undead don't seem to be calling for help?

-Lich battle in undead cave - lich not using antimagic spells against Edwin except remove magic (none memorised)? Seems a bit suboptimal that he wouldn't have a spellstrike or something up his sleeve. Or has he detected that Edwin has SI:Abjuration active so he isn't wasting his spells - he would need 2 Ruby Rays to bring down my Spell Shield & SI: Abjuration. Also a bug - the lich is definitely summoning 2 planetars (simulcrum/PI isn't doing it).

 

Anyway, the lich battle is way too hard so I'm grabbing the gauntlets of dexterity & legging it for now

[coaster]

Just finished the unseeing eye quest. Can confirm that beholders/gauths are not moving out of cloudkill zones, the same thing happened in the beholder lair.

[DavidW]

Just finished the unseeing eye quest. Can confirm that beholders/gauths are not moving out of cloudkill zones, the same thing happened in the beholder lair.

 

That's less of a bug, more poor AI. I'll see if I can persuade them to be brighter.

[coaster]

I've sided with Bodhi & completed her quests. A couple of problems:

 

-some of the thieves in Aran's lair are trying to backstab with warhammers. Might be worth giving them some daggers/swords instead.

- dialogue trigger problem with Aran Linvail - he just stayed blue as I killed all the thieves in his room. Again it should be triggering on sight.

 

An AI comment:

 

-most of the mages cast protection from magical weapons; this is OK I suppose, but I just switch to normal weapons and kill them that way. I'm not sure there is any way around this as PfMW and PfNW are mutually exclusive; I assume they are not high enough level to cast mantle (and it is shorter duration anyway).

 

Finally, on the single target vs area of effect change. This is perhaps the bit of the whole mod I'm most dubious about; I think it might be breaking more than it is fixing. eg. I was attacking the mage in Aran's room and she cast power word blind; not only did it blind my entire party (ouch!) it seemed to blind Aran (who was still blue circle at this point) and herself! Personally I would prefer to live with the fact that the Immunity:Divination/Improved Invisibility combo is overpowered (a high level dispel magic can still bring this down, so I'm not convinced it is that overpowered) than the changes in balance and slightly odd results which are being introduced by the AoE issue. I will probably leave the component in for this playthrough, but I don't think I would use it in the next BG2 run (kudos to you for the modularity of the mod!)

 

Hope I'm not being too critical with all these issues I'm raising - in all other respects the mod is working very well, and has ramped up the challenge of most battles (and mage battles in particular) greatly.

[DavidW]

First point: absolutely you're not being too critical. I'm very grateful for the comments.

 

As for bugs: I'm wearily starting to realise that bards and thief-mages must have got missed from my do-they-initiate-dialog check - nearly all of them seem broken. I'd do a systematic check, except that I think you've met basically all of them now.

& yes, backstabbing with warhammers doesn't exactly sound like the sort of icy professionality for which the Shadow Thieves are renowned. Both fixed locally.

 

Mages with pro/magic weapons: they are low(ish) level, but they could just about cast Mantle; I've added them one. Generally this is an interesting issue though. For vampires, liches, and rakshasas, who are immune to normal weapons anyway, Pro/MW is a no-brainer. For mortal wizards, though, it's a tradeoff. If your enemy actually has no +3 weapons then obviously Mantle is ideal; if they do, Mantle is useless and Pro/MW at least stops them applying those nasty damage bonuses and stoneskin-penetrating elemental damage. SCS II basically defaults to preferring Pro/MW once the protagonist is above 14th level or in chapter 5 (on the grounds that enemy wizards will basically have done their homework but can't be expected to know precisely what items their foes will have).

 

Area effect: believe it or not, I haven't touched Power Word Blind: it's area-effect in the vanilla game. It's not used that often in vanilla BG2 so possibly you just haven't seen that much of it. I didn't realise it affected your own side, though; that strikes me as suboptimal and odd, and I might introduce a component to change it.