BG1 Club +1, +3 vs Unnatural Creatures

[chuft]

I got this club, apparently because BG1 Unfinished Business is installed.

 

Does anyone know what "Unnatural Creatures" means? I just tried using it against some doppelgangers and couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with it.

 

Also in general is there any way to tell if an item like this - such as the Warhammer +1, +4 vs Giant Humanoids, or the Sword +1, +3 vs Shapeshifters, is applying its higher bonus to a current foe? It doesn't seem to be reflected in the shown to-hit rolls or (obviously) character THACO stat.

[devSin]

IIRC, the effects these use don't actually do anything in BG/TotSC, so it's just a +1 item against all targets.

[chuft]

IIRC, the effects these use don't actually do anything in BG/TotSC, so it's just a +1 item against all targets.

 

[Dakk]

I do believe it works with IR though (in a BGT/tutu game?)...

 

Could be worth checking what Demi's take is on this.

[chuft]

IIRC, the effects these use don't actually do anything in BG/TotSC, so it's just a +1 item against all targets.

 

I was just using Near Infinity to look at some items in Icewind Dale with Auril's Bane. It appears the "vs" items all have no effects attached to them. "Trollkiller, sword +1, +5 vs trolls" has no effects added. Neither does the "+1, +3 vs shapeshifters" sword.

 

I played around with some item from Auril's Bane that was already bugged (Bone Club, whose description says "Haagg's Book", only costs 24 gold and has a Stun effect and uses a Mace bam) and it seemed I could add effects for THACO vs creature type and Damage Bonus vs creature type. Do these effects simply not work? Why would people not actually put them into things like the Shapeshifters sword or the Trollkiller sword?

[plainab]

not sure if it appears/takes affect in the game. the blun10.itm (club +1, +3 vs unnatural creatures) has aside from the color changing upon equip 6 additonal equip effects which use external effect files to add 2 points of THAC0 and 2 points of damage when fighting those types of creatures. i don't know if external effect files actually work in ToTSC/Saga tho... and any weapon from vanilla that stated a + amount against specific types never had any external eff files added with the introduction of ToTSC.

 

my guess is that external eff files do not work or only work halfass in the ToTSC engine version. Doesn't mean that the weapons couldn't be tweaked to work 'properly' under the BG2 engine for TuTu & BGT games.

[chuft]

My experiment pertains to Icewind Dale HoW. Not sure what engine version that is.

 

Well I tried making the Bone Club +2, with an additional THACO against undead of +3 and an additional damage against undead of +3. The damage rolls made it obvious that what I did wasn't working (only the +2 general bonus worked). Of course I might have done it wrongly.

 

I did notice an item that does bad things to giants had an external effects file (whatever that is) so maybe that is necessary to get THACO and extra damage against certain classes of creatures. Seems odd the effects are there for the using though (178 and 179 I think) for bonus THACO and bonus damage versus certain types of creatures, if these effects don't actually do anything.

[chuft]

And I just noticed throwing axes get the strength bonus to damage, which they didn't in BG1.

 

I have no idea if a mod did this, or IWD-HOW-ToTL does this normally.

[chuft]

I also noticed that day and night lighting cycles do not seem to occur in either Kuldahar or the Vale of Shadows. They do in Easthaven and in the Kuldahar Pass - in those places it gets dark, and my dwarf's infravision kicks on at 10 PM (Hour 22). But that never happens in the other two locations. Strange.

[chuft]

This is really quite eye-opening. I have been using Near Infinity to look at Trollslayer, Pig's Eye etc and these weapons, despite saying "+1, +4 vs Trolls" and "50% chance to blind orcs" actually have no specific enemies listed in their effects anywhere.

 

How many of the item descriptions are totally bogus? Now I am wondering how many of the magic items actually do what they say.

[devSin]

my guess is that external eff files do not work or only work halfass in the ToTSC engine version.

It doesn't work at all that I know of.

 

Doesn't mean that the weapons couldn't be tweaked to work 'properly' under the BG2 engine for TuTu & BGT games.

They should work under BG2 (so, Tutu or BGT) as-is (these items actually already exist, working, in BG2 resources). (The caveat being that none of the "vs. type" effects stack, so the last one to be applied to the character is the only one which will work.)

 

This is really quite eye-opening. I have been using Near Infinity to look at Trollslayer, Pig's Eye etc and these weapons, despite saying "+1, +4 vs Trolls" and "50% chance to blind orcs" actually have no specific enemies listed in their effects anywhere.

Not all of the "vs." weapons show up in the game, but I believe in IWD (and ID2) these are determined by the resource name (yuck!). It seems to be 'ZZ' (which means "this is a +n to THAC0 and damage vs. type") 'XY' (this is where it says what spec the bonus applies to; I don't know how the codes are mapped) and then 'ABCD' (the designer label for the item). I think in IWD it supports only a single bonus (either +1 or +2 or +4 or whatever it is), and I think in ID2 it may have been by game mode (in Heart of Fury, the bonus doubled, or something like that).

 

How many of the item descriptions are totally bogus? Now I am wondering how many of the magic items actually do what they say.

Most do. It's only cases where functionality wasn't implemented (like those sorts of bonuses in BG/TotSC) or where they forgot (or changed the item but didn't change the description).

 

I also noticed that day and night lighting cycles do not seem to occur in either Kuldahar or the Vale of Shadows. They do in Easthaven and in the Kuldahar Pass - in those places it gets dark, and my dwarf's infravision kicks on at 10 PM (Hour 22). But that never happens in the other two locations. Strange.

This is simply a flag in the ARE resource.

[chuft]

Interesting about the way the "vs." items are handled.

 

I keep running into strange things. For example "Dhaliri's scimitar" says it has a +3 THACO, but it doesn't. When I equip it, it doesn't have any better effect than a +1 longsword. Looking at it in Near Infinity, it says the to-hit bonus is +1. I am wondering what is going on with these discrepancies between the item description and what it actually does.

 

Poking around I also find things like

 

General name: Traveller's Ring

Identified name: Poisonous Two Handed Sword +3

 

Similarly when I tried to change the description of the "Bone Club" from "Haagg's Book" to something accurate, I searched around and found there was a real Haagg's Book and that its description now matched the one I had put in for the Bone Club. It seems there are multiple items which are pointing to the same resources in some way, and often the item descriptions don't match the item abilities - they will list multiple powers for an item, yet it only will have one Effect.

 

Either the Auril's Bane people did a really sloppy job, or else some other mod is interfering with it. I did find an old forum post where someone else mentioned the Bone Club having "Haagg's Book" as the entirety of its description, but I don't know what other mods they were using, if any.

 

Would Unfinished Business, G3 Tweaks, or G3 Item Upgrade interfere with Auril's Bane items?

 

Is it possible to have two installs of Icewind Dale on the same machine? I am tempted to do another install and just put in Auril's Bane with no other mods and see if these weird item problems go away. There are definitely oddities that defy explanation - like Conlan selling two Ammo Belts, one for 3 GP and one for 150 gp. I have to think there is some kind of conflict going on between the mods.

[devSin]

Yeah, those freaky things are mod issues. But I don't have any familiarity with any of those mods with IWD, sorry.

[Dakk]

Is it possible to have two installs of Icewind Dale on the same machine? I am tempted to do another install and just put in Auril's Bane with no other mods and see if these weird item problems go away. There are definitely oddities that defy explanation - like Conlan selling two Ammo Belts, one for 3 GP and one for 150 gp. I have to think there is some kind of conflict going on between the mods.

Indeed it is. More to the point, you don't even need it installed per se. The game I'm playing right now I started on another computer, then just copied it to an USB-stick and copied to another computer (same path, mind you) and kept going

 

If you have a fresh totally vanilla (patched) install, you can just copy the entire directory infinite times and install mods to you liking. Like so:

c:\games\IWDclean (never mod this one)

c:\games\IWD-AurilsBane

c:\games\IWDmodded

c:\games\IWDrandomspelunking

 

..and so forth.

[chuft]

That's good to know. Unfortunately I don't have a vanilla install, just this modded one, and I guess there is no way to do a vanilla install without removing the modded one first? Maybe I could copy the modded one to an external drive and then do an uninstall, reinstall a vanilla one and then copy the modded one back to another folder.