The Dragon of Umar Hills (mod for BG2EE)

[temnix]

I once worked a mod called "The Demon and the Dragon" about the shadow dragon under Umar Hills and the demon lord in Ust Natha. This is the part of that aborted mod that works completely, and it deals only with the dragon. It is now possible to negotiate with him, and there are different approaches depending on the strength of the party (which means how soon the player comes on this quest): weaker than the dragon, more or less the same and stronger. Being or appearing weaker is not unintelligent here and may let the party skip the fight, which, by the way, is more difficult than before and includes a few surprises and improved effects. There is a new merchant in the Bridge district of Athkatla, a gnome, who will sell the party something that helps take off the edge. If the party is stronger than the dragon, he will try to bribe them with a new and useful magic item, one that can also be picked up from his body. Plus the dragon no longer detects the characters everywhere in the area, and it is now possible to bypass him even without the wardstone by staying near the wall and heading downstairs for the Shade Lord. Something to remember about shadow dragons, however, is that they are Chaotic Evil with Genius Intelligence and don't stick up for failed masters.

The Enhanced Edition is required.

Download

Edited April 12, 2022 by temnix

[Guest Morgoth]

Another good roleplaying mod from you

[Endarire]

Alleluia!  Thankee for sharing!

[temnix]

If only I uploaded this to GitHub!

[Endarire]

Download Mirror

[zelazko]

 

I can confirm the mod is fully functional on EET. Level 1 pc charname character can easily surrender to the shadow dragon who will order player to fetch some gems. Surrender option fails when your units are about 18 lvl. I picked up party from ToB pocket plane summoning utility thing. But those early ToB units can force shadow dragon into surrender and get cloak from the dragon.

Quote

Endarire:

Does this mod mess with Anomen's quest's globals? Someone on Discord said that he was having trouble with Anomen's quest and this mod may have interfered.

 

Thankee!

I checked for SetGlobal and phrase 'ano' in mod files tp2, tra, baf and bcs. Nothing related to Anomen comes up unless the mod makes some wild edits that are beyond my non modder knowledge.

 

 

 

Edited March 14, 2023 by zelazko

[Endarire]

The mod Shadow Magic also modifies the Shadow Dragon.  How do these interact?  I wasn't sure if they would simply overwrite each other.

Thankee!

[zelazko]

On my testing backup the order install was Shadwo Magic -> SCS -> Teminax's Dragon of Umar Hills. The fight proceeds normally as it would and the dragon gets its smarts from SCS. At the beginning of the fight you're surrounded by numerous shadow creatures. Without any prebuffing and meager +1/+2 equipment the dragon ate my party for launch.

Probably the best place to install this Teminax's mod would be in the very beginning or after Mazzy Mega Mod.

Edited March 14, 2023 by zelazko

[Graion Dilach]

This mod fucks up all the monsters which use black dragon animations and turn all of them into their shadow dragons. SCS has two such dragons, CtB adds one and one mod adds two more in my game.

Needs a recoding to split off the shadow dragon archetype from black dragons via duplicating the animation - there are free XDR slots, so that would be doable.

I don't know what was "fully functional" testing - when it comes to trashnix, one needs to look at not just that the one particular scenario the mod tweaks working, but to check what else is affected by the destructively ignorant modding style of his. (Like for example, 1000 Gold, a simple concept... breaking the scripts which would grant BG1 Bhaalspawn abiilities.)

Edited March 15, 2023 by Graion Dilach

[jmerry]

And there are two black dragons even before any mods (Nizidramanii'yt in Suldanesselar, hell dragon from evil Pride test). Plus a second shadow dragon (Yxtrazzal in Rasaad's ToB quest)

What is this even doing? It's supposed to be a quest mod that affects exactly one dragon. Building that is obvious; you edit one CRE and its associated scripts and dialogue. Globally editing creatures that match a characteristic shouldn't even have been considered.

[zelazko]

Thanks guys for the answer about the draon of umar hills do you know by chance if teminax mod mercy and jaccob ladder mock something up/make wild edits?

 

[polytope]

17 hours ago, Graion Dilach said:

This mod fucks up all the monsters which use black dragon animations and turn all of them into their shadow dragons. SCS has two such dragons, CtB adds one and one mod adds two more in my game.

 

16 hours ago, jmerry said:

And there are two black dragons even before any mods (Nizidramanii'yt in Suldanesselar, hell dragon from evil Pride test). Plus a second shadow dragon (Yxtrazzal in Rasaad's ToB quest)

What is this even doing? It's supposed to be a quest mod that affects exactly one dragon. Building that is obvious; you edit one CRE and its associated scripts and dialogue. Globally editing creatures that match a characteristic shouldn't even have been considered.

I don't think it's quite that bad because the patches made on the basis of animation are cosmetic changes to their soundest, the modifications to statistics and inventory etc. check for actual .cre filenames and should only effect the shadow dragon.

PATCH_IF animation = 4609 THEN BEGIN

SAY INITIAL_MEETING @15
SAY BATTLE_CRY1 @16
SAY BATTLE_CRY2 @17
SAY ATTACK1 @18
SAY ATTACK2 @19
SAY DAMAGE @20
SAY DYING @21
SAY SELECT_COMMON1 @22
SAY SELECT_COMMON2 @23

END
END

I wouldn't have done this regexp global patching of creatures either, though, but it's not something new or rare.

ETA: It also gives all shadow dragon breath attacks (SPIN893.spl) a more reasonable projectile, black dragons are supposed to spit a thin stream of acid, shadows more of a cloud. At any rate, I think it's probably good that the .pro not be shared?

On 3/15/2023 at 2:55 AM, Endarire said:

The mod Shadow Magic also modifies the Shadow Dragon.  How do these interact?  I wasn't sure if they would simply overwrite each other.

Thankee!

Temnix hasn't been active here for a long time and he and Artemius (the author of Shadow Magic) did not like each other at all. So I wouldn't expect good result in trying to combine those mods.

Edited March 16, 2023 by polytope

[Graion Dilach]

Just because you don't value consistency in your game, others might.

Such soundset changes where someone targets animations are rare. Even Infinity Animations relies on explicit creature lists (including cases which could be simplified to regexp) instead of regexping. Also, because black dragons use INI soundsets, that lookup literally triggers the CRE/INI soundset overlap bug where CRE_ATTACK and INI_ATTACK.are played at the same time (think DAMAGE, DYING and SELECT overlaps were fixed by now).

temnix never understood INI audio, his post history shows that especially in Animate Dead Now (another siituation where he should've cloned the animation slots).