How I upped the difficulty even more

[Silverstar]

First of all, I can not praise SCS more. It is a very well made, customisable, and excellent mod for BG1. I am a fairly experienced player, and love difficult and challenging encounters, and SCS gave them to me. However, after beating it a few times, I needed to up the difficulty even more.

 

I have a mega mod BGT installation. Along with SCS and SCSII, I have Greyclan, Stone of Askavar, DSoTC, and many many more mods. All those mods bring much XP and magical items to party that normal game encounters, especially since this was my tenth time playing, was lacking in difficulty. So I decided to take matters into my hands.

 

By editing spesific CRE files and assigning them more high level SCS and SCSII scripts. I used Shadow Keeper and DLTCEP. And I used extensive use of scripts provided by SCSII mod. (since they have higher lvl spells etc.)

 

Shadowkeeper is easy to use to edit a creature. Let me give you an example. I wanted to make Tranzig a difficult encounter. A proper 'boss' like. He is supposed to have turned Branwen to stone, so he must be at least lvl 12 to cast Flesh to Stone, but he is kinda pushover, even though he has excellent scripts thanks to SCS. I edited him to be a lvl 12 necromancer. Gave some magical equipment, a robe of evil to buff his AC. So I used DLTCEP and gave him the SCSII script to enable him to cast lvl 6 spells, DW#2NEC6. (2 is for SCSII scripting, which I think is better and 6 is the maximum lvl of spell the script uses. NEC is for necromancers) I need to clarify a few things. SCS and SCSII makes most (if not all) mages specialists and give them spell choices according to their schools. I found them in a folder named 'spellchoices' in SCSII. Necromancers can use Death and Flesh to Stone for lvl 6 slots. Perfect. Added Greater Malison too.

 

In the game, Tranzig was much more a serious threat now, casting a greater malison and attempting a flesh to stone on Imoen (I tried disrupting his spell, failed, but luckily Imoen saved vs spell) it made the battle much more fun to me.

 

So, using this method I was able to raise the level up of all enemy mage/cleric bosses in the game. Just editing their CRE files, giving them higher levels and spells they could use, some spiffy items, and raising their XP rewards, and finally asigning a proper SCSII script. I made Ramazith a lvl20 necromancer, for instance. Whoa. That was unbalanced for BG1, maybe, but he is not a neccesary kill but I went for him regardless. He used Time stop, and dropped a Wail of the Banshee, and a few ABDHWs, and even a Finger of Death on us. It felt like a very nice change and challenge, all using SCSII's excellent scripts. I have given him some nifty mage stuff from other mods too, so when I was able to slay him, it was well worth it. (also raised his XP reward to 15000)

 

The mage guys in Ice Island was buffed as well, I raised all of them so they could cast 6th lvl spells. It was fun. I wanted one of them to use Disintegrate spell. There is nothing more scary then having this spell casted on a mid-lvl party member. But core SCSII scripts do not use the spell. SCSII scripts which are installed if Spell revisions is detected do use Disintegrate, since it is a powerful spell with Spell Revisions. But I did not have spell revisions installed this time.

 

I checked game's vanilla mage scripts vis DLTCEP. They are so simple, like 'cast spell x to nearest enemy, cast spell x to nearest enemy etc.' and short compared to SCS. So, I used the game's vanilla mage20 script for one of the bad guys on Ice Island, since that script used Disintegrate. He did use Disintegrate and other spells, but only against nearest enemy. And he never casted another spell in another order, jut using step-by-step script, he was so awfully dumb compared to SCS scripted others. This shows just how much SCS and SCSII scripts are better compared to game's vanilla scripts. SCS mages often change their patterns, wandering around the battle field when their aura is clouded to avoid melee, and react according to party's strategies, they behave as if living, breathing opponents it is scary and impressive. It was OK, one mage used Disintegrate spell against my party in BG1, which I Iiked because it is such an iconic PnP spell, and not every mage in my BG1 world needed to be as smart as SCS mages. (maybe he was a dumb sorcerer lol)

 

 

I edited every major enemy in BG1. Mulahey was a Fighter/cleric lvl 9/9 with a Slay Living spell. I have given him DW#2ECL5 script, which is script for evil clerics able to cast lvl 5 spells. He casted Slay Living, glowed an eerie red and attempted to 'touch' my party and I was like 'Run you fools!!!' it was a pretty scary and fun moment. So much more fun than Mulahey's usual boring routine hold person, maybe a command or two, or an Unholy Blight as last resort.

 

Now my enemies used Slay Living, Harm, Flesh to Stone, pro from magic weapons, finger of deaths, incendiary clouds, ABDHWs and even a time stop or two in BG1 environment. Bassilus was a lvl 14 cleric with an Unholy Word Spell, spectecularly deadly against a low lvl good aligned party. Cythandria, Sarevok's consort was now a lvl18 invoker, and gave my party major trouble (3xchain lightning on trigger crisped poor Khalid good and Jaheira avenged him.) The evil party at top of Iron Throne building was so much scarier now, cos they tossed stuff like Harm and Finger of Death and like. (also Zhalimar was bumped up to lvl 18 and given very deadly equipment.) I was able to beat the game, but I went overboard with Final Fight. Giving Semaj lvl 22, an Evil Planetar, and Cacofiends was a fun idea (hey it is the final battle!) but in practice, it was not. Semaj, his Simulacrum and Mislead or project image, SCSII scripts were so powerful and battling a Fallen Planetar at that fight was NOT fun. Oh, also I have upped Dİarmid and Angelo quite too, and Sarevok was stuff of nightmares:edited his movement rate to 10, buffed his STR to 25, set attacks to 5. So you can not kite him, he catches up to you and kills you quick, just like that. In the end I re-edited Semaj and omited Planetar and Galebrezus and the battle was exceedingly difficult still, but quite doable. Also I have given Diarmid anti-bacsktab equipment and I have forgotten it too! I have fooled myself and was suprised when my backstab failed on him

 

I couldn't touch Daveorn's script, since he has an unique mage script, like teleporting around and spamming spells. So, to make him more deadly I upped the number of his spells, gave him immunity to abjuration via undroppable item, and gave him Jon Irenicus's tactics-mod final battle robe, similar to Robe of Vecna but undroppable. He was scary, teleporting around constantly, blasting Sunfires and Cone of colds in a blink (fast casting speed) and impervious to dispels and like. Some mod also added even more enemies there, it was a very memorable and scary fight, like the old times when I was playing SCS.

 

It was pure challenge and fun. Just the thing I wanted. I wanted this and found it enjoyable as my party had very nice items from mods and much higher XP level than vanilla. I have enjoyed this run so much. I have learned much about how scripts and game enemies work, all thanks to wonderful scripts of this mod and its sister SCSII.

 

Okay, forgive my rambling but I just wanted to share this wth you guys, and praise for such excellent mods named SCS and SCSII. Really quality and long scripts, I have had so much fun custom-tailoring my game with them. Thank you so very much for making me still playing BG games with enthusiasm, challenge, and ultimately, FUN, cos this is why we play games in the first place.

[DavidW]

Glad you're enjoying it!

 

If you want to play with the levels of foes, there are a couple of semi-automated ways to do it in SCS.

 

Firstly, if you edit a wizard's or priest's level before installing SCS (or SCSII) it'll use the new level when it gives out spells and scripts.

 

Secondly, if you edit the file scs.ini (or scsii.ini) in the scs (or scsii) folder, you'll find a line "Mage_Level_Add 0". If you change this to (say) "Mage_Level_Add 5" then all wizards will gain 5 levels. If you change "Mage_Level_Scale" from 100 to (say) 125, all wizards will have their level increased by 25%. Similarly for priests.

 

Finally, if you want to have an SCS mage or priest use the SCSII scripts and spell choices rather than the SCS ones, edit them to replace their script with some BG2 spellcasting script (say, mage12a or priest12 - it doesn't matter). SCSII will assume that they're a BG2 spellcaster and edit them accordingly.

[Silverstar]

Wow, a reply from the legend himself! I am happy!

 

I knew this about editing spellcaster lvls with SCSII, and have used it to adjust my BG2 enemy mages to higher lvl when installing SCSII. (just checked with Shadow Keeper and found many major mage enemies in BG2 lvl 30+ or so...scary!!) I did not know that about SCS though, don't remember reading it in its documents. But since they are sister mods that should have crossed my mind. Thank you for this information! Still, it was fun to custom my BG1 enemies with my hand, like 'tranzig's hobby is 'stonning' people', or 'this guys is obsessed with powerwords' or 'this guy is bad, tosses Finger of Death like confetti' or 'this dude summons Aerial Servants cos he feels so lonely' and the like. Also, my Bassilus is so hardcore. A low lvl party going 'hey, he is a cleric, we can disrupt his spells!' and then he casts Unholy Word in a blink like 'where is your god now!?!' for a total party kill. All this thanks to your good quality, easy to customise scripting!