SCS updated to 32.6 (now 32.8)

[czacki]

Ah, so the massive spawns are actually vanilla? hmm.

It's obviously not something that's overly difficult. Quite the contrary, since it pumps the characters with tons and tons of experience. I'd even argue that throwing legions of enemies at the player actually lowers the intended difficulty because it gives you a level advantage. SoD, even if you play without EET (hence keeping the caps) is capped in way that makes it possible for your typical friendly Kensai-Berserker dualed to Mage at 9 regain his levels precisely at the cap (500,000), and obviously the faster that happens, the better for the player

I'd make the same argument for respawning, easy enemies in BG1 (Carrion Crawlers in "Flesh golem cave" - 100% chance to spawn on rest, 975 exp).

EET doesn't come with a fully functional cap (even if you add it, blocking exp gain after the threshold, you'll gain the experience acquired above the cap in the "next game" - so, finishing SoD pushed me from 500,000 to 760,000 xp instantly), making things a bit worse.

Edited October 17, 2019 by czacki

[Luke]

14 hours ago, bob_veng said:

since SoD has pretty robust AI and encounter design (irrespective of it's style which is more h&s), SCS doesn't touch it i think

I guess the main reason is that @DavidW hasn't found the time to play the game yet.... If you look at the scripts and compare them, you'll notice SCS ones are superior (generally speaking...)

Edited October 18, 2019 by Luke

[NiziNizi]

On 10/17/2019 at 10:13 PM, czacki said:

Ah, so the massive spawns are actually vanilla? hmm.

It's obviously not something that's overly difficult. Quite the contrary, since it pumps the characters with tons and tons of experience. I'd even argue that throwing legions of enemies at the player actually lowers the intended difficulty because it gives you a level advantage. SoD, even if you play without EET (hence keeping the caps) is capped in way that makes it possible for your typical friendly Kensai-Berserker dualed to Mage at 9 regain his levels precisely at the cap (500,000), and obviously the faster that happens, the better for the player

I'd make the same argument for respawning, easy enemies in BG1 (Carrion Crawlers in "Flesh golem cave" - 100% chance to spawn on rest, 975 exp).

EET doesn't come with a fully functional cap (even if you add it, blocking exp gain after the threshold, you'll gain the experience acquired above the cap in the "next game" - so, finishing SoD pushed me from 500,000 to 760,000 xp instantly), making things a bit worse.

 

Yes, SoD have massive number of enemies at some places. There is many undead in caves (forget name) where you fight some dwarf lich in the end. Also when you enter their castle from caves beneath and start fight with Hephernaan inside (if you kill all of them, and keep killing all ones which spawn, they stop spawning in some time). Bridgefort battle is big one. I think Flaming Fists come to aid when you kill their commander at camp, or if you discuss that with Fists before to attack together.

I prefered to solo that and kill all camp alone. If I recall right, you can kill some mage at came on left side without provoking everyone to go hostile. With F/M/T it is fun to play with them.

I have to admit, playing EET with many mods installed, you get way more XP, even when you activate components to reduce your XP.

Why bother with cap? I never use it. XP I get is desereved. But that is just me, of course. I like playing with multiclass, but not like to get to later stage of game without ever reaching your best spells. If you see your gameplay as unbalanced and overpowered because of more XP, with EET you can reduce XP income to 25%, and maybe even 10%, not sure.

 

Edited October 19, 2019 by NiziNizi

[czacki]

13 hours ago, NiziNizi said:

Why bother with cap? I never use it. XP I get is desereved. But that is just me, of course.

 

I actually used to think the same for years, but reaching certain spells and abilities completely changes the game. Playing ANY wizard is a race to HLAs, once you get them it's like a whole different game. To lesser extent this is true for other classes. A simple example would be Kangaxx (SCS Kangaxx) which, unless you cheese him of course with 1 million anti-Kangaxx cheese strategies, provides some challenge to a pre-HLA team.. and zero to HLA team. I don't know if EE/ modern SCS changed this, but last time I played SCS years ago, he ate a Dragon's Breath and died right away. That's because you're not exactly "expected" to have HLAs here. Demilich immunity doesn't include level 0 spells which HLAs are.

If there is no cap, nothing stops you from XP farming till you HLA. Hell, with EE allowing party members to level up after you, you may as well farm XP till you hit 3 mil solo and recruit your party which will be scaled to your level (should be up to 1,250,000 in SoA 2,500,000 exp in ToB but it seems bugged and party members start going over the intended limit in SoA already). It's not even an exploit since the game naturally features respawning enemies.

I like to "powergame", but I like a set of rules to keep me in check. it's only fun to optimize your playthrough if you don't break the game with your optimization, I'd say. Hitting HLAs by early BG2 breaks it, SCS or not.

 

In the end, since EET caps are non-functional anyway, I just play a 6-man party that does not farm encounters, ever. This way I usually stay within reasonable bounds. For instance, I did ALL quests in BG1:EE and ended up with "only" ~280 000 exp on main char, which is obviously more than the intended 187,000, but it's usually not even enough to warrant an extra level.

SoD is the only offender with those huge, diablo-like spawns of random trash.

Edited October 19, 2019 by czacki

[Blash2]

19 hours ago, czacki said:

I actually used to think the same for years, but reaching certain spells and abilities completely changes the game. Playing ANY wizard is a race to HLAs, once you get them it's like a whole different game. To lesser extent this is true for other classes. A simple example would be Kangaxx (SCS Kangaxx) which, unless you cheese him of course with 1 million anti-Kangaxx cheese strategies, provides some challenge to a pre-HLA team.. and zero to HLA team. I don't know if EE/ modern SCS changed this, but last time I played SCS years ago, he ate a Dragon's Breath and died right away. That's because you're not exactly "expected" to have HLAs here. Demilich immunity doesn't include level 0 spells which HLAs are.

If there is no cap, nothing stops you from XP farming till you HLA. Hell, with EE allowing party members to level up after you, you may as well farm XP till you hit 3 mil solo and recruit your party which will be scaled to your level (should be up to 1,250,000 in SoA 2,500,000 exp in ToB but it seems bugged and party members start going over the intended limit in SoA already). It's not even an exploit since the game naturally features respawning enemies.

I like to "powergame", but I like a set of rules to keep me in check. it's only fun to optimize your playthrough if you don't break the game with your optimization, I'd say. Hitting HLAs by early BG2 breaks it, SCS or not.

 

In the end, since EET caps are non-functional anyway, I just play a 6-man party that does not farm encounters, ever. This way I usually stay within reasonable bounds. For instance, I did ALL quests in BG1:EE and ended up with "only" ~280 000 exp on main char, which is obviously more than the intended 187,000, but it's usually not even enough to warrant an extra level.

SoD is the only offender with those huge, diablo-like spawns of random trash.

As far as I know, SCS "Hardcore" difficulty makes so that some enemies use HLAs as well.

Do you think this would balance the problem you exposed? Do you think it would be even too dangerous having enemies with HLAs?

[NiziNizi]

7 hours ago, Blash2 said:

As far as I know, SCS "Hardcore" difficulty makes so that some enemies use HLAs as well.

Do you think this would balance the problem you exposed? Do you think it would be even too dangerous having enemies with HLAs?

 

When I make EET install for myself, I always select everything to be hardest. And always play on Insane with double damage. Because of that I'm not aware how SCS do at lower difficulty. Honestly, even on Insane, I do not find it hard, except here and there some unique enimies which come as very badass (have hard time with them even with XP cap 100% removed, and many many items provided from various other mods inside EET install), but they are not in big number.

I'm not against enemies having HLA. Of course, not in moment when you can't reach proper level for yourself.

 

Now, to answer to Czacki. Your argument is right when I think about it. Without cap, everyone can be allowed to farm to millions.. (but I do not understand how someone could spend time doing something so boring). Ok, if you recruit vert low level NPC, have some area with spawning of high XP monsters, than you could do few killing for your new NPC, and it takes few minutes. More than that I would never do.

But, bigger, overall, problem is, how to find perfect balance for everything? There is always one or other way to exploit or abuse something. It is not up to me to give answers or directions. I can only say what I do and what I would recomment to players.

I do not like cap because, from moment you reach it, you lose some motivation for some areas, quests, etc. Feeling of progress is what keeps my motivation up.

And I can give opinion only as EET player now, because I'm not going back to playing separate games ever, and my memory starts to fading.

Don't farm, don't cheese. in EET there is plenty of mods which provide you better items, and more XP, if you install them. SCS makes game harder (meaning, more reason for you to become better, and if you are mage for example, to find important spells to counter other mages). My best guess would be to adjust XP reduction (for kilings, and another one for quests, and you can even do it for Thief activity) to level which fits you. Maybe you will fall little behind cap, maybe you will go beyond it a little, but you would still have motivation for areas and quests. Maybe someone, like me who play Multiclass with 3 classes, like little more XP, because I also look to get into "trouble" with improved/harder encounters.

About Kangaxx, I can't test it now in more details because I'm working on something specific, but I did take a look into Dragon Breath spell. Both WIZARD_DRAGONS_BREATH, and HLA_WIZARD_DRAGONS_BREATH, are now level 9. Description say level 10, but it is level 9.

Edited October 21, 2019 by NiziNizi

[NiziNizi]

To not to forget to ask, this is for DavidW, or anyone else who is familiar with this?

SpellState ITEM_MM. It corresponding to exactly what? Does it mean Magic Missile?

[czacki]

On 10/20/2019 at 7:03 PM, Blash2 said:

Do you think this would balance the problem you exposed? Do you think it would be even too dangerous having enemies with HLAs?

It would certainly make thegame more annoying... but harder? not really. Mages have some reaction time (tied with the time it takes for a blue circle to turn red, plus some extra seconds sometimes), and are not wearing robe of Vecna like your caster does so they have higher casting times. You should cast faster than them most of the time and in SoA, a simple Chaos spell will mostly screw up mages instantly (you can be an ass and cast malison into sequencer with triple chaos if you really want, lol).

 

20 hours ago, NiziNizi said:

But, bigger, overall, problem is, how to find perfect balance for everything?

Yes, there's always some abuse + even if we got rid of EVERY exploit, there are still powergaming options that are clearly better than others. Like Inquisitors in Baldur's Gate 1, for instance. We'd have to start nerfing things until the game is bland and boring. This is a path many modders take and in my experience it NEVER ends in a fun game. It just takes all the fun of optimization away since everything is equally bland.

There are spells that are broken, but SCS took care of most of them, even overnerfed some like Insect Plague (four different nerfs... umm)

 

20 hours ago, NiziNizi said:

And always play on Insane with double damage.

After some thought, I decided that my further playthroughs will NOT be on 100% Insane anymore.

Reasoning is simple: it shoehorns you into specific playing style too much.

For instance, Insane precasts means that wizards will basically spam every and each spell there is under the sun to fight you. Logic aside (who would cast things 1 round/lvl spells to prebuff unless it's right before combat? Tactical makes sense here), it forces you to spam Malison+AOE (either direct damage, or my favorite - chaos spell) every fight unless you want to deal with getting dispelled and chaos'ed/horror'ed/skull trap'ed each fight, which is quite maddening and absolutely not fun at all.

I think enemies removing your buffs is frustrating because I have to rest + waste time recasting them again, which after 200th attempt is annoying.

 

Games should be fun, not annoying. So settings like those have to go. The bit of extra challenge is not worth it IMHO.

This is also why I'm not a fan of Kensage in SCS. Too weak to dispel, and casting SP:A every fight is just frustrating. It can get removed anyway and next thing you see is "protections removed". OUCH.

Dwarven Defender forever.

20 hours ago, NiziNizi said:

About Kangaxx, I can't test it now in more details because I'm working on something specific, but I did take a look into Dragon Breath spell. Both WIZARD_DRAGONS_BREATH, and HLA_WIZARD_DRAGONS_BREATH, are now level 9. Description say level 10, but it is level 9.

ah, nice catch. Can you still one shot him with a level 25 Dorn? I recall drain life ignores all protections, is level 0, and will deal exactly 50 damage to Kangaxx on level 25 (CLVL*2), killing him outright. Or you can cheese up with Vhailor and make your simulacrum cast this as well, lowering instakill level to 13. Maybe even lower with Ring of Victor and Ring of Ram.

There's always "the next abuse in the list" until you're basically forced to pick a character with maximum save vs. spells possible (shorty, though Jaheira's quest pin gives her a shot too),get him/her to -10 save vs. spells, ensure the "Imprisonment on protagonist" is off, send all team members away and equip cloak of mirroring. IIRC this will make a character effectively immune to every and each spell effect, including trap the soul  (SCS nerfed it) bar Maze which will just waste some time if you're in a team (unlike solo where it instantly kills you and ends the game), which means you just need to wait till his protections are gone and chip 2 HP per hit away till he dies. killing the occasional summon in between. Fun? hardly...

 

I believe a save vs. Spell at -8 will effectively make you immune to Trap the Soul after a greater malison, and everything else like Symbol: Stun as well, without any (dispellable) protections on you. IIRC the enemies, even in SCS, will not target the GROUND to avoid cloak of mirroring absorbing all spell damage, they will still target the character.

Edited October 21, 2019 by czacki

[NiziNizi]

So far, I did not found in SCS scripts creature which will somehow target ground, not creature directly. But I may be 100% wrong because I work only limited number of creatures. This can best be answered by SCS authors, of course.

I found, and use personaly, some lines which instruct creature to target clumped enemies with AOE spells. It also can be set for creature to not do so, if ally creature is in range of AOE spell, to avoid friendly fire.

For Cloak of mirroring, so far I can see, enemies are forbidden to target creature with that cloak.

For Dorn I did take a look now, and I did not found "drain life". I have not much expirience with him because I did not play him much. But I found spell in innate abilities, Absorb Health, maybe it was renamed?

This Absorb Health is set as level 1 spell, with flags Break Sanctuary, and Castable when silenced. It scale up to level 34, where it deals 68 MAGIC damage.

It uses opcode 12 Damage, and opcode 17 Current HP bonus. Meaning, you can cast for example Protection from Magic Energy to get 100% magic damage resistance, and you are immune to damage in that case, but Dorn will still get healed. 

It can be blocked with protections, no problem. For example, Minor GOI, Minor spell deflection, will render it ineffective.

Edited October 23, 2019 by NiziNizi

[DavidW]

Replying to a few points:

- ok, clearly something is still going wrong with the “customize NPC” thing, but it seems erratic. If you’re using that component and it’s fine, can you let me know? 

- will have a look at the Baresh/Selaad encounter when I get a chance. (I’m relocating atm and have limited time.)

- yes, I’m leaving SoD alone at least until I have a chance to play it. Its AI is totally different from the rest of the game and it wouldn’t make sense to mess with it blind (and reviews suggest it’s pretty good).

- ITEM_MM is set on items that give immunity to Magic Missile.

- Although they’re listed in their descriptions as L10, HLAs are actually L9 iirc; in any case I’m pretty sure SCS doesn’t mess with their level.

- fwiw there are no “SCS authors” other than me: it’s not a collaborative project.

[czacki]

On 10/23/2019 at 6:40 AM, NiziNizi said:

For Dorn I did take a look now, and I did not found "drain life". I have not much expirience with him because I did not play him much. But I found spell in innate abilities, Absorb Health, maybe it was renamed?

This Absorb Health is set as level 1 spell, with flags Break Sanctuary, and Castable when silenced. It scale up to level 34, where it deals 68 MAGIC damage.

It uses opcode 12 Damage, and opcode 17 Current HP bonus. Meaning, you can cast for example Protection from Magic Energy to get 100% magic damage resistance, and you are immune to damage in that case, but Dorn will still get healed. 

It can be blocked with protections, no problem. For example, Minor GOI, Minor spell deflection, will render it ineffective.

Thank you for checking this. Yes, I meant Absorb health! My bad. Forgot the name. If it's a level 1 spell, not level 0, it's nowhere as good as it could be, obviously. Does it at least bypass Magic Resistance (not Magic Damage Resistance)?

45 minutes ago, DavidW said:

- yes, I’m leaving SoD alone at least until I have a chance to play it. Its AI is totally different from the rest of the game and it wouldn’t make sense to mess with it blind (and reviews suggest it’s pretty good).

- ITEM_MM is set on items that give immunity to Magic Missile.

- Although they’re listed in their descriptions as L10, HLAs are actually L9 iirc; in any case I’m pretty sure SCS doesn’t mess with their level.

I think SoD AI is ok - not as good as SCS but it's acceptable. The final fight isn't Insane Sarevok tier, I'd say it's easier than the Ulgoth's Beard final fight in SCS as well, but only slightly - it's not trivial, especially because the final boss is immune to +2 weapons and lower, teleports around and is fully magic immune with a spam of lesser demons coming from all sides constantly.

On the "L9 spells as HLA" - this is interesting because Kangaxx IIRC wears a ring that gives him full protection to level 1-9 spells; this has been changed in EE; I recall being able to kill him with Dragon's Breath in regular Baldur's Gate.

 

Edited October 24, 2019 by czacki

[DavidW]

SCS "spellcasting demiliches" nerfs demilich immunity down to L1-5 iirc.

[czacki]

Makes sense - the very idea behind the original demilich was to make it a semi-invulnerable one trick pony. Which I always found lame.

@NiziNizi what about the Blackguard's "Aura of Fear" ? does the fear effect work as intended (it's a bit hard because the descriptions in wiki and ingame are conflicted; is it really like this:

- fear with no save for 1 turn, works on HD8 creatures or less (level 15 char)

- fear with no save for 1 turn, works on HD18 creatures or less (level 20 char) ?

It takes 3,600,000 exp to reach level 20 for a Blackguard but HD18 means basically (almost) everything. Is this fear stopped by magic resistance though? what spell level is this?

It would be a great counter for Drow and Mind Flayers if it did. Sadly, with the exp requirement you can only get the level 15 variant by Underdark with a typical 6-man team.

Edited October 25, 2019 by czacki

[Guest Gwaihir]

On 10/24/2019 at 2:37 PM, DavidW said:

- ok, clearly something is still going wrong with the “customize NPC” thing, but it seems erratic. If you’re using that component and it’s fine, can you let me know?

Fwiw, i remember having this issue, then found that adding some xp to the npc through the ctrl+spacebar menu fixed it. At least that worked in my case.

As a side note, is it possible to make an npc multiclass with this component? It didn't seem to give me the option with imoen.

[DavidW]

You can’t make her multiclass: she’s human.