Jump to content

Thanks for EET!


Recommended Posts

I have taken yours and some other player's comments (+ my own experience) into account and tried to tune down the SCS selection for EET in BWS - if you do not go for the tactical overkill. That excludes e.g. the vampires and beholders if you play with *recommended* selection.

Generally, BWS should minimize the SCS pre-selection in order to avoid bad surprises for users that fast-click through the selection. It is probably better to add willingly more to the basic stuff if you want to.

Link to comment

For me, it's not necessarily that the Tough Vampires setting is turned ON, it's more about that specific encounter. Do all vampire encounters spawn that amount of Elder + Ancient Vampires? Because if so, that is going to be really hard for my party to deal with. If it's just that one encounter, I think it should be toned down a bit, that's all. Reduce the overall number of vamps in that one by a few to make it tactical, yet not overly hard.

 

What I did when installing all these mods with BWS was turn ON all tactical/tough SCS options. So far, so good, but that does mean that there is room for error in other settings. Since I also turned XP to 50% gain + an SoD XP cap of 250k (it was a bad choice in hindsight) when I was facing these Rakshasas and Vampires in BG2 I wasn't able to cast the higher level spells (level 6 at the time) to even deal with them. So it was sort of like a beginner's trap I fell into. I ended up boosting XP gain to 200% until I'm back to "normal levels" I should be at. All the other aspects of the game have been fine, sans the occasional "super tough/have to cheese" mage encounters (again because I couldn't cast higher level spells.)

 

So I'm not sure how BWS would be improved there. Maybe a pop-up that warns against messing with EET Tweaks XP settings or something? I love all the mods and BWS does a great job of letting beginner's like myself get into the game more, but it was still a bit tricky. And frankly, I'm still not 100% sure how the game is supposed to operate, and if I'm just doing something wrong. A few of the mages I fought were just really brutal (again, only could cast up to level 5 spells at the time, so maybe that changes things.) Took a bit of overly cheesy tactics and a bunch of re-loading to deal with.

 

On a good note, I ended up killing Lavok in a kind of slick way. Invisible'd a few strong characters and then hit him at once with the kitchen sink, lmao. Took 20 minutes of re-loads but it worked. Got to play more now that I'm out of that damned sphere!

Link to comment

This encounter with vampires (in Firefrag dungeon) is the hardest one of those involving vampires (IMHO).

 

One way : do this quest the last one of chapter 3 (not very role play) and try to send you cleric with Sanctuary + Turn undead to push all them in a corner. Then cast "Negative Plane protection" on warrior (or cast wish with mage/sorcerer and choose the trick against undead) and hit hard ! and even harder !

Link to comment

For me, it's not necessarily that the Tough Vampires setting is turned ON, it's more about that specific encounter. Do all vampire encounters spawn that amount of Elder + Ancient Vampires? Because if so, that is going to be really hard for my party to deal with. If it's just that one encounter, I think it should be toned down a bit, that's all. Reduce the overall number of vamps in that one by a few to make it tactical, yet not overly hard.

 

What I did when installing all these mods with BWS was turn ON all tactical/tough SCS options. So far, so good, but that does mean that there is room for error in other settings. Since I also turned XP to 50% gain + an SoD XP cap of 250k (it was a bad choice in hindsight) when I was facing these Rakshasas and Vampires in BG2 I wasn't able to cast the higher level spells (level 6 at the time) to even deal with them. So it was sort of like a beginner's trap I fell into. I ended up boosting XP gain to 200% until I'm back to "normal levels" I should be at. All the other aspects of the game have been fine, sans the occasional "super tough/have to cheese" mage encounters (again because I couldn't cast higher level spells.)

 

So I'm not sure how BWS would be improved there. Maybe a pop-up that warns against messing with EET Tweaks XP settings or something? I love all the mods and BWS does a great job of letting beginner's like myself get into the game more, but it was still a bit tricky. And frankly, I'm still not 100% sure how the game is supposed to operate, and if I'm just doing something wrong. A few of the mages I fought were just really brutal (again, only could cast up to level 5 spells at the time, so maybe that changes things.) Took a bit of overly cheesy tactics and a bunch of re-loading to deal with.

 

On a good note, I ended up killing Lavok in a kind of slick way. Invisible'd a few strong characters and then hit him at once with the kitchen sink, lmao. Took 20 minutes of re-loads but it worked. Got to play more now that I'm out of that damned sphere!

 

 

This encounter with vampires (in Firefrag dungeon) is the hardest one of those involving vampires (IMHO).

 

One way : do this quest the last one of chapter 3 (not very role play) and try to send you cleric with Sanctuary + Turn undead to push all them in a corner. Then cast "Negative Plane protection" on warrior (or cast wish with mage/sorcerer and choose the trick against undead) and hit hard ! and even harder !

Just to remind you

The issue discussed here is just as true for BG2EE as it is for EET. There is nothing EET specific to this as the source is SCS and difficulty settings. There is nothing here that is changed by using EET.

Link to comment

Just to remind you

The issue discussed here is just as true for BG2EE as it is for EET. There is nothing EET specific to this as the source is SCS and difficulty settings. There is nothing here that is changed by using EET.

True.

I just thought it also was about SCS tuning in BWS...

Link to comment

Ah, so it's the base encounter itself. Weird. Then that's really the main thing I have an issue with - that particular encounter. It gets weirder from a roleplaying standpoint because the child was kidnapped and we ended up having to just give up on the rescue and maybe come back much later. So yeah, strange one there.

 

Still have to get back into it and play more, but the random wildnerness encounter with 6 mages was flipping impossible, too. And the one encounter with shapeshifters in the wildnerness as well. The 3 Rakshasas at multiple times (on the streets of BG after the Flail of Ages and in the Druid Grove) - all super impossible for my current party. Again, my problem isn't necessarily that Rakshasas are difficult, they should be. It's just strange when the game is designed to trigger these encounters early on, especially the random ones where you can't control when you do them. I don't mind avoiding Druid Grove Rakshasas for now but the random encounters can be more frustrating because you *want* to complete them and can't. And tough mages are still super tough for us, but I repeated myself enough on that, lol.

 

Maybe certain encounters can be tuned down or modded to be easier? Not "easier" per say, but actually doable and not impossible for your current level party. I know it gets into level scaling territory and all that, but it would just be cool to delay some of those random encounters until later so you don't feel like you have to run and are missing out on possibly cool content or items. Just my 2.

Edited by fluent
Link to comment

 

Just to remind you

The issue discussed here is just as true for BG2EE as it is for EET. There is nothing EET specific to this as the source is SCS and difficulty settings. There is nothing here that is changed by using EET.

True.

I just thought it also was about SCS tuning in BWS...

 

 

 

Ah, so it's the base encounter itself. Weird. Then that's really the main thing I have an issue with - that particular encounter. It gets weirder from a roleplaying standpoint because the child was kidnapped and we ended up having to just give up on the rescue and maybe come back much later. So yeah, strange one there.

 

Still have to get back into it and play more, but the random wildnerness encounter with 6 mages was flipping impossible, too. And the one encounter with shapeshifters in the wildnerness as well. The 3 Rakshasas at multiple times (on the streets of BG after the Flail of Ages and in the Druid Grove) - all super impossible for my current party. Again, my problem isn't necessarily that Rakshasas are difficult, they should be. It's just strange when the game is designed to trigger these encounters early on, especially the random ones where you can't control when you do them. I don't mind avoiding Druid Grove Rakshasas for now but the random encounters can be more frustrating because you *want* to complete them and can't. And tough mages are still super tough for us, but I repeated myself enough on that, lol.

 

Maybe certain encounters can be tuned down or modded to be easier? Not "easier" per say, but actually doable and not impossible for your current level party. I know it gets into level scaling territory and all that, but it would just be cool to delay some of those random encounters until later so you don't feel like you have to run and are missing out on possibly cool content or items. Just my 2.

Can you check your weidu.log for this and see which of the SCS components in the 80xx range you have installed. In weidu.log you find SCS components as "strategem* e.g.

~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6570 // Smarter githyanki: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility

I think @8050=Improved Random Encounters is the one giving you a headache.
Edited by Roxanne
Link to comment

Damn. Roxanne, you're a genius! Look what I found:

 

 

~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8042 // Increase difficulty of level-dependent monster groupings -> Almost-maximum difficulty (maximum for everything except liches): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility

~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8050 // Improved Random Encounters: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility

 

"Increase difficulty of level-dependent groupings - almost maximum difficulty" - lol. Damn. Looks like those 2 tweaks right there are what's frustrating me. I'm still claiming innocence, as I didn't think that turning those on would make the groupings IMPOSSIBLE, only very difficult. :thumbsup: But seriously, those settings along with having too little XP for the early parts of the game (too little for those settings, anyway) + Hard difficulty meant those encounters were impossible, not just difficult, which is no bueno. At least we figured it out, but setting those settings in the way I did could hurt other first-time EET players experience who wanted a challenging playthrough. Thing is, even after researching all that stuff for literally several days before installing, it was still tricky and almost impossible to know how the game will play the first time through. Thank Garl Glittergold for this forum and peeps like you, though!

 

What should I do for now? Would uninstalling or tweaking those for my current playthrough mess anything up? And I haven't played in a week or so. I ended up finishing the Planar Sphere quest (legit, too! Managed to kill Lavok before he could activate every protection he had) and the D'Arnise Keep (the troll boss encounter was rough), along with a few other smaller things like Hexxat's quest, etc.. Completed the Druid Grove as well, even though I had to postpone the Rakshasas for now. Overall it's been a great run for my first time playing BG mods, with a few snags along the way. What's your expert advice for what I should do now? :love:

Link to comment

Damn. Roxanne, you're a genius! Look what I found:

 

 

~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8042 // Increase difficulty of level-dependent monster groupings -> Almost-maximum difficulty (maximum for everything except liches): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility

~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8050 // Improved Random Encounters: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility

 

"Increase difficulty of level-dependent groupings - almost maximum difficulty" - lol. Damn. Looks like those 2 tweaks right there are what's frustrating me. I'm still claiming innocence, as I didn't think that turning those on would make the groupings IMPOSSIBLE, only very difficult. :thumbsup: But seriously, those settings along with having too little XP for the early parts of the game (too little for those settings, anyway) + Hard difficulty meant those encounters were impossible, not just difficult, which is no bueno. At least we figured it out, but setting those settings in the way I did could hurt other first-time EET players experience who wanted a challenging playthrough. Thing is, even after researching all that stuff for literally several days before installing, it was still tricky and almost impossible to know how the game will play the first time through. Thank Garl Glittergold for this forum and peeps like you, though!

 

What should I do for now? Would uninstalling or tweaking those for my current playthrough mess anything up? And I haven't played in a week or so. I ended up finishing the Planar Sphere quest (legit, too! Managed to kill Lavok before he could activate every protection he had) and the D'Arnise Keep (the troll boss encounter was rough), along with a few other smaller things like Hexxat's quest, etc.. Completed the Druid Grove as well, even though I had to postpone the Rakshasas for now. Overall it's been a great run for my first time playing BG mods, with a few snags along the way. What's your expert advice for what I should do now? :love:

You can

Extract attached files to somwhere Spawns.zip

 

Either

- put the files directly into BG2EE/override

- go first to BG2EE/override and save the corresponding files to somewhere before you move mine there

- go to BG2EE/strategems_external/backup/strategems/ and then to the folders 8042 and 8050 - copy the files you find there into BG2EE/override

Link to comment

OK, so I installed SCS through my latest BWS install and by far it's the SCS content that takes the longest amount of time to go through the motions of installing. The BWS install I did was to just go through and choose MODS to install, I didn't do anything overboard, stayed away from Expert Stuff and kept it simple adding content, npc's, and tweaks mostly.

 

When the SCS install is done I don't get any options to turn things on or off, is that because I have just chosen SCS to be installed as the basic thing or is there some way I can re-run it thru Weidu and then choose which options I want?

 

Or is it more of a function of when I'm using the BWS I can use the +/- buttons on the MOD select Tree to turn things on and off? I wasn't sure how this process played out so thought I would check. Sorry If this sounds stupid. Thanks.

Link to comment

Or is it more of a function of when I'm using the BWS I can use the +/- buttons on the MOD select Tree to turn things on and off? I wasn't sure how this process played out so thought I would check. Sorry If this sounds stupid. Thanks.

Heh, open your games weidu.log file and search the "Stratagems" name. Yeah, the BWS allows a full custom install, and you should use that ... and you didn't. Missing 90% of the whole intent of the program. But what ever...

Link to comment

OK, so I installed SCS through my latest BWS install and by far it's the SCS content that takes the longest amount of time to go through the motions of installing. The BWS install I did was to just go through and choose MODS to install, I didn't do anything overboard, stayed away from Expert Stuff and kept it simple adding content, npc's, and tweaks mostly.

 

When the SCS install is done I don't get any options to turn things on or off, is that because I have just chosen SCS to be installed as the basic thing or is there some way I can re-run it thru Weidu and then choose which options I want?

 

Or is it more of a function of when I'm using the BWS I can use the +/- buttons on the MOD select Tree to turn things on and off? I wasn't sure how this process played out so thought I would check. Sorry If this sounds stupid. Thanks.

You do the mod section in the beginning with the selection tree. At that time you decide which mods you want or not. Once the install started, you cannot change it anymore. You can pause BWS and manually add a mod or you can add mods manually after BWS finished. In the later case better ask about the mod you want to add here, because sometimes adding one later may not be easy - sometimes it is.

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...