IA v6 Final

[Nominar]

I think many IA players would have welcomed new choices for a protagonist, added quests not limited to just one protagonist kit and making single classes more viable. Not the tweaking old challenges yet again, destroying classes like the rogue (leaving less and less classes useful in IA) and incorporating needless anti-cheese measures (that only Saros really used because he wants to play no-reload solo). At least it would attract more players to the mod rather than push them away from it.

You are forgetting something, Sikret (and Baronius particularly) don't care if no new players come along, it's only for their elite select few non-western players. Or that's what I take from their posts anyway. I do sincerely hope they realize no new players will be coming along, who in their right mind would pay 30$ to play a mod they've never tried before and even if they do it's like a wet towel slap in your face because of the difficulty most likely making the person quit playing. I don't understand why Sikret doesn't want new players to try his mod. Or maybe he does, bu he's sure doing a good job discouraging people from trying it.

[Jeff W]

I wonder why this Sikret fellow didn't just change all experience including creature experience to =quest experience/6 if he wanted to discourage soloing this badly. This would effectively remove all reward for soloing and make it purely a fiendish challenge.

 

There is a simple answer - I suggested that almost immediately after completing IA 5.0 for the first time solo insane no-reload. Obviously Sikret didn't implement it, because it was my suggestion. Otherwise, it's pretty logical. However, even this way it is possible to accumulate unlimited xp by killing endlessly spawning monsters.

 

I think even in the vanilla game, all experience from quests should have been quest xp instead and all the quest rewards should have been reduced. You can hit half of the xp cap from BG1 in the skinner murder quest alone--this is Weimar Republic level inflation!

 

A possible solution to endless monster spawn killing is to reduce the xp value of any given monster each time one is killed. The way I look at it, having to kill endless respawning monsters is its own punishment, but I guess there is no reasoning with a madman.

[lroumen]

I know you want to mod something for yourself once in a while, but I really do not understand why you would make a huge mod that in the end nobody is going to play. That absolutely makes no sense to me. Elitist, sure, if you listen to the players that you have. Paywall, sure, if you provide excellent service to the players that you have. But doing none of that and doing it on a game that is 13+ years old (forgot the count) with a huge amount of other free mods of which almost nothing is compatible with yours... Is there a better word for this phenomenon than facepalm?

 

Yeah sorry it seems that my party could fight Chaos...my bad on this. Thanx for the info, though, I dunno what went wrong and why didn't the Spirit of the Grove appeared previously after resting inside the Grove. Maybe I forgot to do something first.

I think that you may have to wait one day before he spawns after resting. Most stronghold quests have a timer like that. There is certainly nothing else that you need to do after beating Faldorn to get the Spirit to show up (like talking to an NPC or going a certain place).

[InKal]

In my opinion the thing is: they don't want to do this anymore ...for free. The simple message they sent was: PAY US MONEY or GTFO. Fortunately, it has quickly reversed/altered to be: GIVE US MOD FOR FREE or GTFO - response from the "fans". All right now.

[Saros]

Azamantes was indeed not much.

 

Jon on the Tree: has the support of four Heartwood golems or something. He's immune to all attacks while the golems are alive, so here's where he cheats. His 'starting buff sequence' simply doesn't kick in until the last of the golems is alive, which is logical. What is not logical is the fact that Sikret stated that the 'buff sequences' on IA mages or clerics simply imitates the pre-buff a player does before battle. So far so good. However, in this case the battle with Jon prolonged for quite some time (about 2 full turns) when the last Heartwood golem fell and Jon's starting buffs 'triggered'. Otherwise, each of the golems is much more frightening than Jon himself.

 

Battle in Hell: neither the trials nor the final fight are modified since IA 5.0. One of the easiest fights ever (compared to the same fight with a solo character IA 5.0, when the fight ends with me using all Criticals and GWW attacks to win, and much thinking what to do - here it was simply fighter rush with a little mage debuff help).

 

Illasera: her mage starts refreshing spell protections in the second they are dispelled, using Alacrity...hmph, where have I seen that before...looks so familiar...

 

Gromnir: Karun the Black, Gromnir's mage, has multiple Alacrities and fights under SI:D. However, he is immune to Remove Magic, and also CC with RRR's and/or Breaches doesn't work. Neither does the Breach from Wish. He uses ProMW, and seems to refresh it even if there are no party members (or ally summons) near him. He's also immune to normal weapons. Energy Blades don't help much either. Obviously, Sikret made him this way in order for him to survive and mess up the fight until the very end. I have one last idea in order to strip him of his protections, will write afterwards if successful. Winning the fight by spawning summons is not so hard, though.

[kreso]

Heh..

Irenicus in hell is where I quit the game completely. Check this - in game progress, a Necromancer party kills hundreds of golems. One would expect something different for the grand final. And then again, golems....

Weimer made this batlle so much better (not to mention Bodhi) that it's a real shame that IA6 does nothing in terms of making the battles interesting, it's just a hack n slash fest on golems with Critical strike all the way from first HLA to the end of EDE.... No fun.

+ the fact that 60% of enemies wield Carsomyr with instant death ability for summons (and 4D10 dmg)....equals crap mode. Honestly, who would pay for this?I had more fun soloing vanilla game than IA6.

[isleepwithfucking goats]

I think the problem with IA v6 is that the difficulty was increased, so now it's a completely "no go" for newbies, and for us "veterans" it simply didn't add anything new, in fact it added all the wrong ingredients which makes this mod a bit silly now.

 

 

Too many restrictions, too repetitive, many important vanilla encounters are still untouched, too many golems, new quests are silly, too much hack'n slash focused (If I wanted to play Diablo, i'd be playing that), too many golems, too many rangers, and last but not least, TOO MANY FUCKING GOLEMS!

 

 

I didn't find v6 particularly more difficult than v5 with my party, nor did I find it more enjoyable. Well first run was interesting, but after that I kinda lost interest.

 

 

 

This just in... from the v7 changelog:

Horrid Golems: "With each successful attack on the Horrid Golem, the attacker gets struck by ADHW, twice."

[kreso]

I cannot but agree with all the posted above..

IA6 is that much more difficult, it's just plain dumb.

One thing I would point out is the final dialogue in new "Vagrant only" quest....(if X gets defeated by Vagrants twice(!!!!!) he is screwed ROLF... ). That is, arguably, the worst mod dialogue and idea ever. (You so noble, you soo good, you so heroic blah blah give me my goddamn reward!!!!). Compared to RR dialogue of Chosen of Cyric (or AI) encounter IA6 looks very amateurish, to say the least.

[Saros]

Battle with Gromnir:

 

Karun the Black cannot be cheesed even with Timestops because Gromnir is immune to their effect and kills frozen in time party members. Talking about double standard...enemies are immune to melee damage under TS, while party members arent. Still, the fight is very easy if Karun is distracted with summons, preferably ones hard to kill, like a Skeleton Lord and a Greater Djinni. Karun simply has no answer to these, and they can keep him occupied, while the party takes care of the rest of the enemies. Karun refreshes SI:D almost immediately after the previous one runs out, so it's important to either have several TS running, or have an instant True Sight ready for the exact moment. The Truth longsword helps in this case.

 

Yaga Shura: the game crashes for some reason if the party enters the siege camp, teleports to the pocket plane, rests, buffs, and tries to re-enter the siege camp. So no pocket plane. However, if the party doesn't move from the starting point (when entering the camp), only a few enemies appear and no one messes with the pre-buff. Chaotic Commands on all fighters is essential, because of the Fire Giants' knockback & stun melee strikes. Knockback cannot be prevented, but stun can, and should.

 

Once again, summons are the key here, especially ones like the Greater Djinni (or even better, two of those), and Greater Yuantis. Three waves of lieutenants appear, which should be slain in such a fasion: first Battlemage, next Assassin (not that strong, simply easy to kill), next Elite Fire Giant. The battlemage poses biggest threat, because if left unsupervised, he starts to shoot breaches at the party fighters, making them easy prey to the enemy fighters/giants. The cleric and fighter are optional - they pose a very little threat. It's best to have the fire giants occupied by summons, and mages to keep summoning and debuff the enemy battlemage. When the three battlemages and three elite fire giants are slain, the rest is easy. Weapons with cold/electrical damage are good vs the fire giants and Yaga-shura. Yaga has one Hardiness, which should be breached ASAP. Once again, the Assassin-thief proved his value in this fight, because in some cases he helped not only as a superior melee-absorbing tank, but also as a de-buffer with Breach or RRR scrolls.

[Earthquake Damage]

After reading the entire thread, it occurs to me that nobody mentioned one of the game's most powerful debuffs: Detect Illusions. A Thief (dual-classed I assume, since multi- and single-classed ones have apparently been nerfed to the point of extreme lulz) can dispel all illusions in sight once per round, so long as you keep Find Traps active or time it properly. I never tested the timing, so I don't know how useful the Thief would be for anything else, but SI:D is utterly useless when the hard-coded (thus damned hard for Sikret to disable) DI effect hits. I've used it to great effect with a few parties with other mod setups, so it'll probably work just as well in IAv6.

 

I suppose he could script some sort of "apply permanent DI = 0 effect every X seconds" crap to neutralize the ability, but that's pretty much the only way to prevent it.

[the bigg]

Doesn't Non Detection block thieves' Detect Illusions?

[Earthquake Damage]

Doesn't Non Detection block thieves' Detect Illusions?

 

I can't say from personal experience, but a post here claims DI ignores Non-Detection.

 

In a different thread over there, someone else claims SI:D blocks DI, but I don't think so. It shouldn't, since it's technically a hard-coded effect (i.e. not a SPL or EFF) and conceptually non-magical. Also, though my memory is decidedly untrustworthy on this point, I think I've used it to pierce SI:D before. That should be easy for an adept modder (read: not me, esp. since I don't currently have the game installed nor are my CDs handy at the moment) to test, though.

[InKal]

I'm pretty sure that detect illusion is not blocked by immunity divination but it is blocked by non detection. I'm also pretty sure that Sikret has gave non detection as ability for all mages in IA which makes detect illusion skill completely useless.

[Saros]

'Detect Illusion' skill is blocked by Spell Immunity Divination in IA 5.0 and 6.0 (maybe in older versions too).

 

From IA's readme:

 

37 B - Immunity to divination will grant much better protection against various methods of

dispel illusion. (It really wouldn't make sense to me that a pathetic low level thief

could dispel the illusion of a high level arch mage who was also under the effect of

immunity to divination. The thief skill can still dispel illusions provided that the mage

is not protected by immunity to divination.) A successful 'Remove/Dispel magic' will still

work and will dispel the illusion even if the invisible mage is protected by immunity to

divination (Remove Magic is not a divination spell or a specific means to dispel

illusions).

 

So Remove/Dispel magic is the only way to get rid of enemy's pesky illusions. Meaning that a higher-leveled than party mages enemy spellcaster can cheesily hide him/herself via SI:D and illusions, and since the party mages/priests are almost always of lower level than any tough enemy caster (that is, if played by Sikret's guidance), the fights with such enemies conclude with absorbing/evading (somehow) all their spells/melee attacks (because most of these are powerful fighter/mages), usually by spamming summons, and waiting for their SI:D to wane, in which moment the enemy illusions have to be dispelled ASAP, because enemies in IA 6.0 refresh spell immunities immediately after the current one expiers. Maybe in v7.0 they will refresh SI prior to expiration. I simply use xp exploit to raise levels enough so that my mages' Remove Magic always works (if the enemy's not immune to it of course).

 

Also, it's notable how Sikret on one hand despises SI refreshment, party members hiding under powerful illusions (even writing 'dispel illusion' combat scripts to counter that - and those fully ignore SI:D), Illusionist-specialist mages, Fighter-Illusionists or Fighter-Mages, while on the other hand, most powerful 'bosses' are either F/M, or hide under high-level SI:D and illusions, or refresh spell protections - or all three of those. Double standard.

 

So to summarize: 'Detect Illusion' skill of thieves is still useful, especially in some of the starting fights, for example - improved Suna Seni, where the mage is usually equal to or higher-leveled than the party mages so Remove Magic has little chance of success, but SI:Enchantment doesn't protect him from detect illusions, and at that point even True Seeing is unavailable to the party. It's usually the first skill I raise to 100 when having a thief in the party (even disarm traps is better left at lower value in the beginning). But generally, since SI:D protects high-level enemy mages from 'Detect Illusions' skill, and since the skill isn't 'instant', while various other divination spells and/or TrueSight abilities can be cast at instant speed via proper items or significantly reduced casting time - the skill isn't very useful compared to those. Besides, while detecting illusions, the F/T can do nothing else, and this isn't the best thing to do in a hard fight.

 

Edit: IA enemy mages don't use Non-Detection. It's useless as party buff as well.

[Earthquake Damage]

'Detect Illusion' skill is blocked by Spell Immunity Divination in IA 5.0 and 6.0 (maybe in older versions too).

 

How? I could've sworn the skill's effects were hard-coded. I don't see how he could create such an effect unless (a) it used a SPL (news to me, and which one is it?) or (b) his AI scripts check for thieves in Detect Traps mode and reapply illusions appropriately (or something to that effect).

 

Actually, he may also use some system of scripting states to determine which effects should be active, then reapply them if they've been dispelled "improperly". "Properly", of course, being with a spell that adjusts those scripting states to say "I've dispelled your illusion, neener neener!"

 

Side note: I'd love to watch a full LP video of Sikret playing through his own damned mod. No tweaking his version of IA to make it easier. No other mods installed. No SK. Legal party, so IIRC not imported from BG1 and no creating a full party of "Bhaalspawn" (i.e. start a new game with each character then export them so they have the initial 6 Bhaalspawn abilities). No cheese. Final Destination. He is supposed to be a "tactical" genius, right?