my playthrough

[Gort]

ok, here will be my impressions stored.

 

Irenicus dungeon:

1. Aataqah's ogre magi caused slowdown when being created

2. strange sounds like of "web" spell repeated several times at 1st level and caused minor slowndowns. Were they shouts?

3. ilyich and his band: 2 (or 3) archers and the mage were attracted by the battle in library (goblins and mephit). Ilyich himself and 1 more archer weren't. When I met ilyich, he said his dialog and ran a bit back, but didn't attack me. I killed the remaining archer (he attacked me, so he's ok) and went into melee with ilyich. He noticed me at last, but it was too late as he was all alone=).

4. clone at the second level: looks unrealistic when she kills the assassin without buffs, and casts several instantly when turns on party.

5. duergars and traps: both duergars actually stepped in their own traps. 1 got frozen to the death, another got magic missile.

6. shadow thief battlemage: she cast buffs instantly when started fighting with vampire (which is better then clone), but cast 2 ineffective spells (I don't know if it's counting as bugs, as she might not know they will be ineffective, and she didn't cast them second time)

- she tried "charm person" on character protected with Horn of Kazgaroth (my PC is imported form BG1)

- she tried "horror" on cavalier, which is immune to such effects.

[Demivrgvs]

1) In my game too

2) It happened to me too, when goblins used potions of invisibility even whe you are far away

3) Don't remember the fight precisely

4) I think it's ok as it is now

5) That's how they're intended to die i suppose...to show you that there're traps ahead

6) Well i hope not all mages can understand to which class does the character belong and to which effects he's immune!

[Gort]

1) In my game too

2) It happened to me too, when goblins used potions of invisibility even whe you are far away

3) Don't remember the fight precisely

4) I think it's ok as it is now

5) That's how they're intended to die i suppose...to show you that there're traps ahead

6) Well i hope not all mages can understand to which class does the character belong and to which effects he's immune!

4) why? The ST battelmage behavior lokks much better

5) no-no. There is shadow thief who attacks duergar, steps into a trap and dies. Then duergar says "Ha-ha! Foolish thief!" and attacks the party. After that looks pretty dumb of him to step into the same trap.

[Lemernis]

5) no-no. There is shadow thief who attacks duergar, steps into a trap and dies. Then duergar says "Ha-ha! Foolish thief!" and attacks the party. After that looks pretty dumb of him to step into the same trap.

 

That's how it is in the vanilla game, I'm pretty sure. If so, at least it's not a SCS bug.

 

It's silly AI though, you're right. David will have the answer when he returns from holiday, but my guess is it's hard to script hostile characters to remain stationary in combat. I suppose if he's scripted to cast spells continuously he might stay put.

 

Actually, he also might use Dimension Door right off the bat. One would think he'd want to use the safety of the traps as a barrier. So it'd make most sense to have him DD back to the rear of the room where the idol is. Especially if he uses True Seeing a lot, and Improved Invisibility for his own part, and Dimnesion Doors around, this trap room could be a bitch to get through.

 

Then again, many players hate Irenicus' dungeon with a passion and just want to it complete it ASAP, so perhaps it's best to leave well enougb alone.

[Gort]

copper coronet, its sellars and slavers ship:

1. The beastmaster opened the cages, so all the animals attacked me (including Tabitha), but I stepped a bit back to not fight in the narrow space, and he himself didn't follow the party. So, I dealt with the animals and killed him alone, later.

2. There was some guy, named Callendous, in the sewers. I don't know which mod he came from. And there was 3 thieves with him. They were supposed to attack me all at once, but Callendous did not (he was blue from the beginning). I killed the thieves, then talked to him, he said "hang over all your money" and attacked me when I refused. Tough fight, though. When I finished him, no one in party had more then 20 hp.

3. There was a stack of fire arrows inside the slavers' ship - specifically to help me kill the trolls.

4. If I remember right, there should have been Yuan-Ti mage, as well as fighters. But there were only 2 figthers.

 

Overall, fair difficulty. I didn't save from the beginning to the end, but 2 times I was about to wipe or lose at least one of party members.

 

Oh, and one thing I forgot about the Ogre magi in dungeon: he had stoneskin and minor spell sequencer, what proves him as high level enough mage, but when he used spell sequencer with 2 Magic Missile on me, only 2 misslies hit me, as if he was 1st or 2nd level mage.

WeiDU.log.txt

[Gort]

yesterday I met the guys who poisoned Renfeld. This time I'm sure: I cast Remove Fear right at the beginning of the battle, but later the mage still tried to Horror me. And he used Confusion pretty late, when all his comrades were dead (while the were alive, he cast Melf's Acid Arrow, Magic Missiles and attacked with Melf's Minute Meteors). If he used it at the beginnng, it might help him much more.

 

Got my butt kicked by spirit trolls in De'Arnise keep (they drained strength from fighters so that they couldn't even move, at the same time keep spamming Unholy Blight and Flame Strike) and went to sleep. Hope next try will be succesful=).

[Gort]

got my butt kicked by the trolls 3 times more. I'm considering to restart the game with somebody more powerful=).

[DavidW]

Sorry about the trolls and thanks for the comments and bug reports.

 

- Lemernis is right, the archers setting off their own traps is in the vanilla game too, so I'm inclined to leave it.

 

- Callendous is from CoM Encounters. (tsk, I'm sure that wasn't on the approved testing list ) There's a mild incompatibility between them (as you've discovered), which I've fixed locally.

 

- I think either you're misremembering that yuan-ti mage, or some mod added him. I don't think he's in the vanilla game.

 

- I think the mage probably wasn't taking a deliberate decision not to cast confusion, he just never get around to it. There's a certain amount of randomness in SCSII just for variety. In RP terms, assume he panicked if you like!

 

 

- I've reproduced (and fixed locally) all the other bugs. Thanks again!

[DavidW]

BTW I admire your bravery, playing a tactical mod and ascension with the 50% XP reducer. Good luck!

[Gort]

- Lemernis is right, the archers setting off their own traps is in the vanilla game too, so I'm inclined to leave it.

well, "mod" is about changing vanilla game, isn't it?)

 

- Callendous is from CoM Encounters. (tsk, I'm sure that wasn't on the approved testing list ) There's a mild incompatibility between them (as you've discovered), which I've fixed locally.

but in PM you said it should be fine, also. BTW, there is also some incompatibility with Longer Road, which I tried to install. SCS2 fails on patching lrirenicus.cre.

[DavidW]

- Lemernis is right, the archers setting off their own traps is in the vanilla game too, so I'm inclined to leave it.

well, "mod" is about changing vanilla game, isn't it?)

Fair point.

 

- Callendous is from CoM Encounters. (tsk, I'm sure that wasn't on the approved testing list ) There's a mild incompatibility between them (as you've discovered), which I've fixed locally.

but in PM you said it should be fine, also.

It is fine - I wasn't being serious.

 

BTW, there is also some incompatibility with Longer Road, which I tried to install. SCS2 fails on patching lrirenicus.cre.

 

So I see. Fixed locally.

[Gort]

- the duergar at the second level of Irenicus dungeon repeats his line twice (By the Exile ...)

 

- illusionary werewolves in circus actually do damage.

 

You know, I have one thought. I believe enemy prebuffing is considired as a cheat, because a player engages in battle, sees a mage casting a bunch of spells instantly, and thinks "no way, it is cheaty". But what if you hide the prebuffing routine? Animation (I mean casting animation, not animation of spells themselves) and strings displayed. This would:

1) make more sense - player has no way to know whether an enemy has Spirit Armor cast on him or hasn't.

2) I think it would reduce slowdowns a bit - playing that much bams simultaneously does slow the game

3) it would make mages/priests more challenging, of course, since threir pre-buffs are not known apriori.

[Salk]

Gort,

 

I believe this wouldn't be fair just because enemy AI makes use of detectable spells. To make things balanced there are only two solutions:

 

1) Give players and enemies no (or extremely limited) feedback (practically cutting a big part of Detectable Spells/Stats)

 

or

 

2) Let both the player and the enemy more or less "know" what protective spells are being used.

 

DavidW chose the second path and is very reasonable because it keeps things balanced.

 

Your solution would be a hardcore one.

 

It's already very difficult sometimes to survive encounters when prebuffering comes to help your opponents. Without visual and text feedback, the difficulty would grow exponentially.

 

Since for me, the goal in the game is to survive (no reload), I can't say I'd be pleased.

[DavidW]

- the duergar at the second level of Irenicus dungeon repeats his line twice (By the Exile ...)

I don't think this is caused by SCSII, actually - I can reproduce it in an unmodded game.

 

- illusionary werewolves in circus actually do damage.

Fixed; thanks.

 

Regarding pre-buffing: yes, Salk has explained the rationale pretty well. (As regards speedup, I don't think the mages produce a casting animation anyway. (They're using ReallyForceSpell.) )

[Gort]

sorry for pestering you, I must be pain in ass=). Although I stil don't agree. Player has plenty of ways to know which buffs an enemy has. It includes animation, sounds, metagame knowledge, just intuition, results of other party members attacks. The enemy mage has only one - detectable stats, so I think it would be fair enough to hide pre-buffing strings and animation. It would look much better. About animation - I was unclear, probably - not "casting", but "gaining" animation.