Yet Another Thread About A Big BG2EE Install

[subtledoctor]

I mean, it's fine.  Not a big deal.  Just something I noticed.

And yeah, sounds like a simple fix would be replacing the script reference on the illuwere.cre.  I should do that, in case I start over... but I'm lazy, and in this game I'm already past the Circus...

[Luke]

10 hours ago, Caedwyr said:

Further investigation suggests it may be caused by SCS. @DavidW

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/26021/circus-tent-illusions-deal-real-damage

Yep, correct. The culprit is EquipMostDamagingMelee() in SCS scripts. That script action makes those illusionary creatures equip their "real" weapon even if the player ignores them / doesn't attack them (they're scripted to switch to the "real" weapon only if attacked – see "ILLUSION.BCS" for further details...)

Edited June 2, 2020 by Luke

[DavidW]

Noted.

[subtledoctor]

So, the problem with Nalia being a dual-class thief-psion is, she doesn’t have her thief skills right now! She is supposed to be my thief for the D’Arnise Keep quest, but she needs >100k XP to get her thief skills back. 

Okay, that’s fine I guess, I’ll go get Alora earlier than I planned. So I go recruit her, and trigger the ‘Kit Change’ ability to make her a Halfling Whistler and... it’s not there! What??

NOOOOOOOOO!!

Fine. Fine! Keto’s thief skills are... okay. (She’s a new-style bard, so she can search for traps and open locks as well as pick pockets.) Forget Alora, I’ll go pick up Auren. I need a warrior anyway.

On further investigation, the kit IS there; but a bug in Might & Guile gave the wrong strings. A little dialog.tlk surgery should fix it. And then I have a trilemma: whether to...

- ...recruit Alora the Whistler, who is an amazing thief and can smash people from afar with sling stones... but this means Mylo and Kivan, both wearing leather armor, will have to handle all the melee in a castle full of trolls.

- ...recruit Auren, have melee covered, and have Keto handle traps and locks bu guzzling Potions of Thievery as needed. Then ditch Nalia and recruit Alora.

- ...use the console (I have that now!  ) to give Nalia enough XP to reach level 11 and get her thief skills, and recruit Auren for melee support. (This whole quest is premised on Nalia being able to sneak in and out if the castle, after all.) Then ditch Nalia and recruit Alora.

Hmmm...

Edited June 2, 2020 by subtledoctor

[subtledoctor]

Forgot, I don’t have to actually make that choice yet - Jaheira isn’t in my party, but she will return for me the next time I sleep, and then I will face the Harper Hold. 

But... I don’t want to rest. It’s the middle of the day! Hmm, how can I kill some time... well, this guy in the Copper Coronet wants me to buy him a bunch of rare alcohol from all over the city. Okay, why not. I troop around, talk to a bunch of people in a bunch of bars, and on a lark I take care of Mencar Pebblecrusher & co. (That fight was tough - the familiar can cast 4th-level spells! Hit me with 2x Vitriolic Sphere!) 

Anyway I had almost no spells left on anyone, but that’s okay, I’m just running around carrying beverages. That is until I get to the end, which takes me by surprise, and WOWZERS.

 

Twelve SCS mages!

Might have to leave that fight ‘til I have a few more levels...

Edited September 17, 2021 by subtledoctor

[subtledoctor]

Hi! I scrapped that game and reinstalled. Some people have “restartitis” when playing BG2... I apparently have “re-mod-itis.”

In addition to updating a bunch of mods to fix bugs and add minor improvements, this time I’ve added the latest version of my “Magic Battles Revised” mod. This is meant for SR installs, and is hopefully compatible with SCS mages. It aims to slightly simplify mage duels by having the Spell Deflection series of spells give you multiple ‘layers’ of defense, and differentiate the Spell Thrust/Secret Word/Pierce Magic/etc. series of magic attacks by having them remove more and more layers of defense  It also moves Spell Thrust to 1st level and integrates with TnB’s ‘Level 1 Cantrips,’ so when you cast most of your spells and the enemy suddenly pops another Contingency - Spell Deflection, you won’t be out ways to counter it. 

The fighter->mystic from the last install is a nice concept, but it wasn’t the most exciting to play. Like a fighter/druid, but without the shapeshifting and animals. 

But I came up with another concept that can work well: a fighter, dual-classed to a Mana Sorcerer! This is normally quite illegal, of course, but it’s one of those cases where I’ll make an exception for Charname, because I think being subjected to Irenicus’ experiments should be a transformative experience. It’s an arcane caster that is quite different from all if the others in the game, which fits nicely. It will let me summon a familiar and play through the game with the TnB modded familiars. 

So this should be a good test run for several different mods. Time to get going!

[subtledoctor]

Eh, the Mana Sorcerer was underwhelming, so I’m continuing with a Light Mystic Warrior.

BUT, there’s a problem. I just finished the Umar Hills dungeon, and destroyed the Shade Lord. Toward the end of the fight, I got hit by some kind of Mass Call Lightning. All six party members got hit by lightning. 

A couple minutes later, as I was moving to the edge of the map to return to Imnesvale, it happened again. All six party members struck by lightning. Upon entering Imnesvale, it happened again. After talking to the mayor: again. Upon returning to the Athkatla city gates: again. Entering Waukeen’s Promenade: again. The Temple District: again. 

Every time I enter an outdoor area, I get hit by six lightning bolts. 

What gives???

[Caedwyr]

You may have to CTRL+R the party members.  I think Call Lightning can have a long duration and I recall a bug way back in the day where transitioning between areas could cause it to continue to fire off because of how it was coded.  Possibly something to do with a script misfiring.

[subtledoctor]

I reloaded all the way back to before the Shadow Altar fight, and re-did it, and the lightning is still happening.   I don't think this is the Call Lightning spell.  That fires every round; this is happening once every couple minutes (like, once every 10 or 20 rounds). The frequency is more like the Static Charge spell from IWD... but that spell has a different graphic.

It happened to Keto only during the battle, and there was some kind of message like "Keto: damage taken (12) from Shadow Patrick." But things were chaotic, and I can't be sure whether that lined up correctly with the lightning strike I saw.

Two other things of note:

The lightning that keeps striking the whole party is accompanied with floating text over Charname that says "WHERE IS MY NECKLACE?"

1) I'm using the "Wings" mod, and we just parted ways with a rude Avariel who left behind a "mysterious gem, warm to the touch and pulsating with strange energy" which is undroppable in Aerie's inventory.  Could the nasty avariel want the gem back and be attacking me from the sky??

2) I also met a strange woman ion Imnesvale with a bee in her hair, which I gallantly offered to  take off her hands and carry to its home.  The bee (also an undroppable inventory item) is reportedly "buzzing with electrical energy." I've been all over the Imnesvale and Temple Ruins maps, and I nothing has happened  to suggest where this creature's home tree is; and the bee itself claims to have no idea where to go.  Maybe this is some kind of timed thing for this mod?  Maybe the "where's my necklace" thing is just a text error?  Has anyone seen this bee  before? I've never seen it and have no idea which mod is is with.

[Bartimaeus]

...Shadow Patrick? Is someone wearing the Cloak of Nature's Wrath? I've had weird issues with that cloak that made me enforce that it never targets friendlies - if some kind of effect is firing every so often, it might be triggering that cloak into erroneously firing.

Edited July 9, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Shadow Patrick? Is someone wearing the Cloak of Nature's Wrath?

I did pick that up!  But I didn’t wear it. Didn’t even identify it until just now. Shadow Patrick must have been wearing it, and I hit him (obviously, since he died). 

So this is an IR bug? Maybe something with the targeting? It sounds like it’s meant to be an electric version of Fire Shield, but Keto hit him with a spell from afar when she triggered the reaction. Easy fix, then. Needs to be balanced, anyway... 

[Bartimaeus]

All of the IR/SR "effect when struck" spells/effects are a bit long, IIRC - deliberately so, I guess, though I'm not a hundred percent sure why (although out of everything, I think Cloak of Nature's Wrath makes the most sense to have a long range given its nature). I don't know for certain if that's it, though, especially because what you wrote suggested that it started happening before you even fought with Shadow Patrick? Maybe? If so, that wouldn't fit.

Edited July 10, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[Shin]

8 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

2) I also met a strange woman ion Imnesvale with a bee in her hair, which I gallantly offered to  take off her hands and carry to its home.  The bee (also an undroppable inventory item) is reportedly "buzzing with electrical energy." I've been all over the Imnesvale and Temple Ruins maps, and I nothing has happened  to suggest where this creature's home tree is; and the bee itself claims to have no idea where to go.  Maybe this is some kind of timed thing for this mod?  Maybe the "where's my necklace" thing is just a text error?  Has anyone seen this bee  before? I've never seen it and have no idea which mod is is with.

I believe this is part of the 'every mod and dog' mod. The bee normally shocks you every now and then, but just the one carrying it and not the entire party. If I remember correctly you can drop the bee off toward the mid-left side of the Imnesvale map near some vaguely termite nest looking structures; getting close enough should trigger a dialogue.

[jastey]

9 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

The lightning that keeps striking the whole party is accompanied with floating text over Charname that says "WHERE IS MY NECKLACE?"

This is connected to the Mae'Var quest where you steal the necklace from the priestess of Thalos. And probably a mod. This rings a bell, if I remember more I'll let you know.

[subtledoctor]

On 7/9/2020 at 6:26 PM, Bartimaeus said:

Is someone wearing the Cloak of Nature's Wrath? I've had weird issues with that cloak

Upon closer inspection, the cloak seems to be fine.  I would do it differently - I would make it only affect attackers within 3' of the wearer, make it like a static electricity version of Fire Shield and Acid Sheath, and change it from 20% chance of 6d6 damage to 50% chance of 2d6 damage.  At some point I'll probably tweak it in my post-IR "Random Tweaks" mod.  But, on a technical level, for what it attempts to do, it is okay.

On 7/10/2020 at 3:35 AM, jastey said:

This is connected to the Mae'Var quest where you steal the necklace from the priestess of Thalos. And probably a mod. This rings a bell, if I remember more I'll let you know.

Yes, on reflection that makes a lot of sense.  I noticed that when I did the Thieves' Guild quest there was a priest of Cyric with Mae'Var, who asked for the necklace when I gave it up.  But that was the last I heard of it.  I don't think it was in the loot when I eliminated Mae'Var, and now his guildhouse is empty.  I did that quest a fairly long time ago - like an in-game week - and I don't think I have any journal entries or recollection of dialogue pointing me in a certain direction.  This is a recurrent problem with BG2 mods, I think: they are way too subtle about how they direct the player.  I get not wanting to engage in hand-holding, but this is a game that takes ~100 hours to play, over many weeks (or for someone like me, several months). If you want to be extremely subtle that's fine, but then you have to allow that the player might move on without ever finishing the mod content.  I had several mods that were uncompleted in my BG1 and SoD games, because I wanted to progress and couldn't be bothered to hunt down every last bit of content.  And that's okay! 

But if you are going to start striking me with lightning, then it better damn well be accompanied by some clue as to what you want me to do to resolve the issue!  If your mod makes me load an old save and lose a dozen hours because you didn't do a good job of pointing me in the right direction to begin with, then it's going right in the trash, and it belongs there.

Edited September 17, 2021 by subtledoctor