Yet Another Thread About A Big BG2EE Install

[Endarire]

@subtledoctor
Where's that myconid bridge?  I don't recall that from BGII.

[Jarno Mikkola]

19 minutes ago, Endarire said:

@subtledoctor
Where's that myconid bridge?  I don't recall that from BGII.

It seems to be the Trademeets Druid Growe. Aka, ar1900. No, there is mushrooms in the bridge, originally.

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, Endarire said:

Where's that myconid bridge?  I don't recall that from BGII.

It’s the bridge in front of Ihtafeer’s House of Friendly Face-Eating Rakshasa. The vanilla game has two Myconid Spores (or whatever you call the stationary thing that creates myconids) to the northwest of the house, over the next bridge. Some mod adds six to the first bridge, situated in such a way that if you try to close the distance and kill the first one fast, the second and third will see you and activate; if you bomb the first three with fireballs, the fourth and fifth will activate; etc.

It’s pretty diabolical, and a good challenge, but it also feels completely artificial - the vanilla ones’ placement feels like encountering unnatural mold growth on the underside of a bridge; this feels like “lets space these monsters out so as to make it more challenging for the player!”

Edited August 2, 2020 by subtledoctor

[DavidW]

I suspect it's mine ('improved minor encounters') though I have a feeling I might have borrowed it from Tactics. 

I don't think artificiality bothers me: if there are hostile plant creatures on the route to Faldorn, my working assumption would be that the Shadow Druids placed them deliberately.

 

[DavidW]

On 8/1/2020 at 3:21 AM, Bartimaeus said:

As a test, I once summoned probably like 40 hobgoblin archers and had them fight against spellcasting-triggered SCS Cowled Wizards, and the Hobgoblin Archers pretty easily won. Overwhelming numbers can sometimes be just that: overwhelming.

Although it's also true that SCS's AI assumes it's fighting level-appropriate adventurers - I suspect I could write anti-Hobgoblin AI for the SCS wizards that would do a lot better against large numbers of low-level mooks.

[subtledoctor]

45 minutes ago, DavidW said:

I have a feeling I might have borrowed it from Tactics

Ah yes, it has that feel. 

45 minutes ago, DavidW said:

I don't think artificiality bothers me: if there are hostile plant creatures on the route to Faldorn, my working assumption would be that the Shadow Druids placed them deliberately

Sure. It’s a bit on the artificial-feeling side of things, but there us definitely a balance to be struck. This jumped out at me, mostly because it surprised me. But, as an indication of my overall judgment of it, I would certainly install that component again. (And now I’m really wondering where and when I’ll see more of its changes...)

[subtledoctor]

Meantime, I’m at about a million XP. I’ve picked up Valygar as my ranger and Saerileth as my armored fighter (she’s taking her sweet time to be abducted). I just rescued Haer’Dalis from the Planar Prison and he joined up. Then, due to some unspecified past offense by H’D, Keto decided she needs some time off. Aerie is still my party mage.

I’m starting to feel the effects of my mods that 1) slow down XP advancement starting around level  9, and 2) halve XP rewards for kills. That, and having multiclass casters. Having gone through a majority of chapter 2, Lionidas is a 12th-level mystic. (He’s dual-class, so advancing fairly fast.) Aerie and Haer’Dalis are both only 10th-level mages. Meaning only 5th-level spells available - no Pierce Magic, among other things.

How crazy would it be to go into the Planar Sphere right now, to face Lavok and Tolgerias? I’ll meet Kelsey inside, who is probably a ~12th-level sorcerer. Think that’s enough arcane firepower?

Alternatively, maybe I should make Valygar wait. I could go to the Windspear Hills, or Portpentyrch, or Innershade. Aerie needs ~90K XP to reach 11th level as a mage, then she’ll have 6th-level spells.

BTW the “Magic Battles Revised” component in my Random Tweaks mod seems to be working quite well. The Planar Warden outleveled me by quite a bit; after being damaged he contingency’d or sequencer’d a Spell Deflection, Globe of Invulnerability, and PfMW. I was out of Secret Word at that point, but Aerie, Keto and Lionidas took down his spell protections with three Spell Thrusts, and then Lionidas Breached him in the next round.

Speaking to the “levels vs  numbers” point above, my MBR system allows numerous lower-level casters to be effective against a single high-level caster. (This also validates the Cowled Wizards’s strategy and dialogue against Irenicus in the initial Promenade cut scene, and Irenicus’ choice to “surrender” to them.) I’m very happy so far with how this mod is working.

 

[DavidW]

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

Ah yes, it has that feel. 

Sure. It’s a bit on the artificial-feeling side of things, but there us definitely a balance to be struck. This jumped out at me, mostly because it surprised me. But, as an indication of my overall judgment of it, I would certainly install that component again. (And now I’m really wondering where and when I’ll see more of its changes...)

& yes, checking the code (and SCS's readme) that section is a verbatim copy from Tactics' "Improved Druid Grove", untouched in SCS since 2011 (and even that was just to fix a namespace problem).

[subtledoctor]

Rrggh, I've been playing with the sound off on my iPad... turned it on today, and it turns out there is a sound effect firing every ~6 seconds.  Presumably some aura or other repeating effect has a vestigial sound effect that I didn't manage to strip out.  I'll have to look for that... it will be annoying because my mods do that sort of thing a LOT.

[subtledoctor]

Sigh.  I'm probably going to start over.  I just updated a bunch of mods, with a couple more still to come.  But in the meantime, Haer'Dalis was just abducted arrested, and taken from the party.  This is really getting to be an over-used plot device.  But anyway, I had to get him out of the prison, which meant I had to go by the Viconia "burn her at the stake" cut-scene. I was avoiding that, because I don't particularly care for an Evil single-class cleric with practically no hit points. But here I was, so fine.  And then there was this nice moment where Isra was like "do the right thing, be good to the drow" and Mazzy was like "she was almost burned at the stake, let's make sure she's okay" and Valygar was like "show us you have honor and do right by the drow."  And then Aerie was like "make her go away, abandon her, she's of an evil race, you should have just let her die!"  Whoa, Aerie! Pump the brakes on the racism!  I've got the Wings mod installed (nice that Aerie gets a familiar) and the Viconia Friendship mod installed, and maybe there will be a sweet reconciliation between the two weird elves if you take them along for the full ride.  But I have no patience for that.  Aerie, sorry, you gotta go.

And so Viconia joins, and suddenly I figure out what to do about my mage problem: Viconia, currently a cleric of Shar, has 16 INT, and I randomly have an INT tome in my bag (I don't recall where that came from... maybe Southern Edge?), and I have liberalized the multi-/dual-classing rules. So Viconia can become a mage!  And it makes plenty of sense for her: after being exiled from the Underdark and first turning to Shar, she eventually ends up more self-sufficient, learning her own magic to protect herself. She'll end up a far better mage than Aerie, and then I can let H'D or Keto or Imoen be a backup mage.  I certainly have a clearer mental image of Viconia as an archmage slinging Comets and Dragon's Breath at hapless opponents, than Imoen or Aerie.

Anyway, back to updating those mods.