Improved random encounters: too difficult?

[Guest ld]

Hello,

 

I have completed the game a few times. I guess this was a long time ago: the only mods available were Westley Weimer's, Ascension, Kelsey, and Tashia. Now i'm replaying it a few times, enjoying the new possibilities offered by the more recent mods. I did not read about yours first, but when I discovered it I was quite thrilled.

 

So far, I'm still at low levels, and I'm quite happy with your mod: many fights that used to be annoying diversions are now reasonnable challenges. I was maybe a little bold one time or twice (Mae Var? bah!) and ran into a hard encounter without resting. Reloading once (or twice, or more...) did the trick.

 

Now comes my question. Everyone in my party is roughly 400,000 XP. I've just had the random encounter that brings Harperhold quest, and finished this quest. I've got about 30,000 GP from previous quests, and I'm moving from the Docks to the Promenade (so as to buy expensive equipment) and then to Trademeet.

 

From the Docks to the Promenade, I ran in a random encounter, I guess this is the third that I meet. I think it is extremely difficult. After six reloads, I went through it with applying CTRL+R once to my party members if they were confused or highly wounded, and even so it was no easy fight. Next, after shopping in the Adventurer's Market, I went to Trademeet. New random encounters, with three Rogues or Warrior/Rogues who had no problems into backstabbing anyone in my party into oblivion . I was pissed of, so I reloaded and CTRL+Yed at will. And went on to Trademeet. Then: guess what? Random encounters with Orogs and such. This was too much, I CTRL+Yed them all, eventhough if the encounter is scripted in the vanilla game, I did not want to see what the mod did to the mage and the priest.

 

I have SCS:II installed with almost all components (no the troll one, irrelevant here) and RR. The attacking parties seem to be roughly the same level as mine (Charname Sorceror, Jaheira Ra/Cle, Valygar, Minsc, Aerie Thie/Ma, all 400,000XPish).

 

And I really find them too difficult: the warriors hit too hard, the rogues do too much damage, the mages/clerics disable too much, and so on. However, I think the mod is quite good so far, so I'm thinking about uninstalling the random encounter part.

[DavidW]

Hello,

 

I have completed the game a few times. I guess this was a long time ago: the only mods available were Westley Weimer's, Ascension, Kelsey, and Tashia. Now i'm replaying it a few times, enjoying the new possibilities offered by the more recent mods. I did not read about yours first, but when I discovered it I was quite thrilled.

 

So far, I'm still at low levels, and I'm quite happy with your mod: many fights that used to be annoying diversions are now reasonnable challenges. I was maybe a little bold one time or twice (Mae Var? bah!) and ran into a hard encounter without resting. Reloading once (or twice, or more...) did the trick.

 

Now comes my question. Everyone in my party is roughly 400,000 XP. I've just had the random encounter that brings Harperhold quest, and finished this quest. I've got about 30,000 GP from previous quests, and I'm moving from the Docks to the Promenade (so as to buy expensive equipment) and then to Trademeet.

 

From the Docks to the Promenade, I ran in a random encounter, I guess this is the third that I meet. I think it is extremely difficult. After six reloads, I went through it with applying CTRL+R once to my party members if they were confused or highly wounded, and even so it was no easy fight. Next, after shopping in the Adventurer's Market, I went to Trademeet. New random encounters, with three Rogues or Warrior/Rogues who had no problems into backstabbing anyone in my party into oblivion . I was pissed of, so I reloaded and CTRL+Yed at will. And went on to Trademeet. Then: guess what? Random encounters with Orogs and such. This was too much, I CTRL+Yed them all, eventhough if the encounter is scripted in the vanilla game, I did not want to see what the mod did to the mage and the priest.

 

I have SCS:II installed with almost all components (no the troll one, irrelevant here) and RR. The attacking parties seem to be roughly the same level as mine (Charname Sorceror, Jaheira Ra/Cle, Valygar, Minsc, Aerie Thie/Ma, all 400,000XPish).

 

And I really find them too difficult: the warriors hit too hard, the rogues do too much damage, the mages/clerics disable too much, and so on. However, I think the mod is quite good so far, so I'm thinking about uninstalling the random encounter part.

[DavidW]

OK, this is interesting - I haven't had much feedback about the difficulty of this component. I'd be interested to know what others think.

 

Glad you're enjoying the mod in general. You should be able to uninstall the "improved random encounters" component mid-game without problems.

[Demivrgvs]

OK, this is interesting - I haven't had much feedback about the difficulty of this component. I'd be interested to know what others think.

It has been quite some time ago...but I'd never had too much troubles. Fights usually were a lot more fun than in vanilla, and even quite deadly if the party was low on hit points and spells due to previous fights, but I never encountered a fight which I cannot win even after a few reloads. I'm not complaining about it not being too difficult, not at all, and I think this should be the level of difficulty of most encounters, while extremely tough fights should be reserved to more "special" encounters imo.

 

The only dream I have about SCS's scripts is about making them slightly shorter and more "unique" (e.g. mages with a more customized spell selection, specialists like necromancers and illusionists) but I know it would involve an incredible amount of time and efforts. Other than that I dream about the AI being able to use a lot more spells than the usual few thanks to SR, but that may happen sooner or later, right?

[Raj]

I don't have a problem with random encounter difficulty, maybe some more with the chances of them happening: there're a lot of them early game, expecially the first time you travel from one area to another, and they take place at any time of the day; looks like living in Athkatla is more dangerous than Naples

 

Overall no serious issues here, and if you get ambushed you can always run for your life and leave the area.

[Shaitan]

I use the part where the opponents are just a wee bit better than you (xp wise) and I haven't had that kind of troubles. I like the possibility to chose how improved the random encounters should be ie making the game more appealing to me. (like almost everything SCS & SCS2 has done so far so keep up the good work David and please do grant us more updates to your wonderful mod )

[Guest ld]

To be more specific:

 

1. I find it really "unfair" to fight against a fully buffed party at my level with my unbuffed party. But I guess it makes sense that the ennemy is better prepared than I: after all, it's an ambush.

 

2. As I said, I found the first two random encounters quite manageable: the Suna Seni (?) one, and the Harpers one. However, I felt like there was a sudden gap in difficulty between the Harpers encounter and the next one.

 

3. I don't know neither what triggers random encounters in the vanilla game, nor if SCSII makes any change. In my past non-SCSII games, I think I always met the Harpers encounter very early. In this SCSII game, there was a quite long delay between the first random encounter and the Harpers one: I made many Athkatla-to-Athkatla trips with no encounters (I am romancing Jaheira, if this may have an influence). And after the Harpers encounter finally triggered and I completed the Harpers quest, I met 3 random encounters in a row.

 

4. Speaking of which, I had a random encounter right after another random encounter, which means there was no way for my party to rest after the first encounter.

 

5. The XP reward for killing the ennemies is quite disapointing with regards to the difficulty of the task...

 

I my opinion, the beginning of the game is the hardest part in the vanilla game: you have few equipment and lack access to good spells (eg: no one in my party can cast True Seeing). So, I'm not disinstalling this component right now, I just hope I'll be able to manage the next encounters with a higher-level party!

 

Thanks again for this mod which, as I said, brings otherwise great fun and clever challenge to the game!

[Raj]

Suna Seni and the injured harper encounters are present in vanilla game.

The first one always takes place the third time you move to a new place in Athkatla: e.g., you are forced to go to slums from promenade, no ambush; then you move to docks, no ambush, then you try to reach temples, Suna Seni and her companions will appear.

The second one takes place after some time if you keep moving inside Athkatla, or automatically if you try to exit the city from the gates early.

SCS2 encounters happen after the two vanilla ones.

 

These encounters give almost no xp nor gold/items reward ( compared to the Suna Seni & Co. that provides a more than nice income, and the harper quest is xp heavy ), that's why I woudn't feel bad at skipping them entirely going invisible or just running

 

There's a wilderness encounter with two ogre magi that drop something like 3k gold worth of gems/laereal necklaces each, and 4-5 high ( 7-8 ) spell scrolls each, that one is indeed worth fight

[aVENGER_(RR)]

There's a wilderness encounter with two ogre magi that drop something like 3k gold worth of gems/laereal necklaces each, and 4-5 high ( 7-8 ) spell scrolls each, that one is indeed worth fight

 

That one's from Quest Pack and the über loot is actually caused by a typo in the G3 BG2 Fixpack.

 

With Wisp's fix applied, the loot is much more reasonable.

[Ardanis]

Orogs made me seriously consider to Ctrl-Y them too. I've just rested, had all of my spells ready and those bastards were quick to chop me if I didn't use magic. After Nth time I got enraged, set Jaheira on the loose and saw them scattering around Insect Plagued and Lightning'ed. But I had to rest after that, which wasn't on my wish list.

 

Having learnt that, I now just run away from city ambushes, especially when they pop up at the wrong time.

[Shaitan]

It could be that my lessons from the time I tried Improved Anvil's encounters gave me some experience handling difficault ambushes 'cause well the orogs did damage me, but not serious

[DavidW]

For reference, SCSII doesn't change the incidence of random encounters, it just changes what encounter you actually get when one triggers.

[Shaitan]

For reference, SCSII doesn't change the incidence of random encounters, it just changes what encounter you actually get when one triggers.

But it does alter mages and clerics

[DavidW]

For reference, SCSII doesn't change the incidence of random encounters, it just changes what encounter you actually get when one triggers.

But it does alter mages and clerics

 

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I mean, it doesn't change when and where random encounters happen, it just changes what turns up when an encounter does happen.

[AzureDrag0n1]

I would seriously consider not installing the mage prebuff component or at least use the weakest option as that makes some fights incredibly difficult imo. In particular the Lich battles.

 

I like the random encounters mod though. Makes them pretty interesting. Although sometimes they do stuff like launch spell trigger: 3x flame arrow on my lowest hp character which almost always means instant death if not pre buffed.

 

Actually I am not sure that comes from SCSII. Might be from another mod.

 

I do wish they had more varied combos like contagion + ray of enfeeblment on a fighter or spider spawn + web or tenser transform + improved haste + mislead on thief/mage or bard. Why doesn't the enemy use mislead with thief mages to backstab you? How about 2x regeneration + Improved haste on Cleric mages? Firestorm x3 + protection from fire?

 

The most awesome displays of AI I have ever seen where from Improved Anvil though where some of the enemies do multi party combos with their spells although that woud probably be really complicated to do normally. Although I do not like Improved Anvil that much though.