Kivan of Shilmista - feedback

[Suspiria]

My my, after reading all of the posts, I have just GOT to try this MOD. I really love the concept of a great friend for my first ever BG PC, Ariana (started playing the game about a year ago and have created many PCs, but my first has a special place for me). She is special to me, probably as special to me as Kivan seems to be to you (which is one of the reasons I WON'T be trying the romance option, Ariana as second best? Never! Plus, I have been second best in real life relationships and hated it, not gonna role play it). Anyway, I will download it, play it and tell ya what I think. Thanks for this mod. I have already downloaded, now I am gonna instal it!

[Domi]

Actually I am doing lots of work for this mod atm, writing a very large (some 20 talks and a few additional K-specific encounters) sequence so it could be more fun once that is done especially if the romance is not of any interest (though I will be with great dread adding 10 more talks to the gentle friendship with the female PC as well)

[Suspiria]

Hey Domi, so far, I really like this MOD. Kivan is a sweet heart, thats for sure. I don't understand why, in your quote, you down your work, it seems fantastic so far, very well written. I love the fact that you mention that you only have time for the BG games and IWD games, because the more mods for the BG games, the better, as far as I am concerned. I haven't broken down and purchased the IWD games yet because the things that make BG so fantastic are the NPCs and their banters. I love that thanks to BGTuTu, we have banters for part 1 too. Anyway, please keep up the good work, you rule.

[Domi]

Thank you for your kind words. We all have our vurnerable moments, that's all. I will be definetly switching back to my Eco-Martin quotes once I am over it.

[Eon Blue Apocalypse]

I was wondering how your writings for Kivan in this mod and for BG1NPC are related. Suppose one would first play through BG1 with BG1NPC, and then through BG2 with Kivan of Shilmista, would the stories 'fit'? You're in the unique position to ensure a neat flow here.

[Domi]

Yes there is full compatibility in the character development, in fact BG2 version works only on a premise that Kivan had been adventuring with PC in the past as he is reffering freely to BG1 context. However, in addition to the obvious and valid 'but what if I did not have him in Bg1' it also come at a price of repeating a few of the key BG1NPC talks with PC. Basically if you have played BG1NPC, I would suggest waiting on V6 for Kivan of Shilmista, as it will add a significant amount of BG2-specific PC content. There is no good transition between BG1TUTU and BG2-SoA so it is difficult to transfer variables between the two and thus prevent the talks from re-occuring. But we hope to work out the global variables transfer into BG1NPC eventually...

[Eon Blue Apocalypse]

Cool!

[Kulyok]

Two things I would very much like to see:

 

1) No BG1 NPC dialogue. It does not feel good to me to have the same content in different mods for different games. I would much rather see new dialogue only.

 

2) Full soundset and first lines' voicing. I can live without it, actually: my suggestion number one bothers me much more. But to say honestly and openly "Yes, it is one of the best NPC mods there is. Try it, and you will not be disappointed", I'd like it to be present in the mod.

[Domi]

The problem is that I have to cover Kivan's background with Deheriana, so what I will be doing is adding an option to tell him that you remeber his trials well which will shut down the sequence at the very first talk. Or, maybe, even in PID's so it can be shut down prior to the first talk.

 

As for voicing I do not have a voice actor and to be honest I think that unless there is someone who can do it amazingly well, I would not rather not do it. It is a big time investiture, and imo does not pay.

[Domi]

Actually, I think the better idea with the 'old' talks to *initiate* them on the request from PID. Yep. That's what I will do. As in "Kivan, things are still blurry in my head, could you tell me more of yourself blah-blah-blah." Yep, I like that.

[Kulyok]

Yeah, I love that too.

[Grand_Dracolich]

I have a question, if CharName's head is still ringing after a week (thats how long it takes me, when I TRY not to take so long), how is it that he/she can still fight/cast?

[Domi]

The way Minsc fights I am sure it is medicinally possible for a person to lose part of her memories after being a subject to horrible horrible tortures. Especially if those memories were the tales of tortures....

[Guest Laura]

I am so disappointed! All the way through my game I have planned on finding Kivan's wife, and now at the end of SOA I find out that I missed my chance in Spellhold. I don't mean to be overly critical, but the prisoners in Spellhold must have been the only people in the entire game I didn't speak to in my quest to find the wife, and they are not exactly obvious people to talk to. I just can't bear the thought of going through the whole game again. But I'll have to. Making the plot depend on someone so hard to find (as in one chance and that's it) seems a little unfair - especially as otherwise the Kivan mod is very good and I am (was) enjoying it enormously.

 

Is there any way to deal with this? Other than re-doing almost the whole game? I am literally at the end - just before taking on Irenicus. What an enormous disappointment.

[Domi]

If you have a save before you talked to Demin in Suldanessellar you can nerf her variable.

 

If you don't, you can set the proper variables and summon Deheriana via CluaConsole. Her first dialogue will be cut, because it requires Demin's presence, but you can add her in the party by Ctrl+Q. Give me a shout, I'll send you the Globals via PM/e-mail in the evening. You have three different ways to prevent Deheriana from dieing upon summoning; Aerie, Cernd or cleric/paladin PC. Or nerfing the variable if you ran out of time in the game.

 

I am sorry that you are dissappointed. I would like to emphasize that the mod is completely playable without ressurecting/restoring Deheriana, it just have a different outcome. That was the idea with both the romance and various story-arcs. They may or may not occur, and there are consequences. I understand that this is probably not the best approach the way people play BG2 nowadays, but well, I was interested in integrating and alternatives, rather than rail-roading.

 

The plot-important non-joinable NPCs are described both on the mod home page and in the ReadMe.

 

There are 4 plot-important NPCs: Aphril and Demin (Deheriana's suplot); Tazok and Nyalee (Tazok subplot).

 

The game in Spellhold urges you to talk to the innmates while waiting on the Irenicus to spawn, and you can't progress through the game without talking to Demin or Nyalee. Tazok is pretty obvious as Kivan's antagonist. So, all of the plot-important existing NPCs are not obscure. I will be adding an interjection from Kivan in Spellhold for the new version where he'll attract attention to Aphril. The problem with adding alternatives is that the talk can spawn too soon killing a player's chance for a romance.