First, I mean Second, try at a big(ish) EET install

[subtledoctor]

Er, uh, okay...

Anyway where was I? The party went into the Cloakwood. Took out some shadow druids, took out some wyverns, took out some spiders. This part of the game is largely unchanged by mods - except, the big wyvern cave has more wyverns and a fire drake... it was very challenging. Good stuff.

Oh yeah I met Coran but he is not very interesting to me in this game. Also did I mention I got rid of Safana? She went off to find more treasure and Eldoth came along. normally I think he should have the Blade kit, but this time for a bit of increased interest, I specced him out as a "Jinxer" which is inspired by the Gypsy kit from the 2E Complete Book of Bards. But, he is super annoying and worse in every way than Rose, including personality. I'm sad to have left her behind. So the group is:

• Charname: ranger/psion
• Sirene: Paladin
• Emily: archer/cleric
• Eldoth: mage/thief bard
• Finch: cleric/mage
• Indira: fighter->mage

I went through the Cloakwood Mine and ran into Yeslick. Man, is he in an awkward place. I'm supposed to let someone go at the bottom of a mine that is in enemy hands and I'm, about to destroy with floodwaters?? Sigh. I clear the mine and then go outside to rest up;  Sirene leaves at the surface and Yeslick joins, and then we go down to face Davaeorn. Davaeorn was... lackluster. I didn't install the SCS "Improved Chapter-End Battles" components, because they are based on code from the old Tactics mod, and I never liked Tactics. But, Davaeorn alone, even with SCS mage AI, is really just annoying. As long as I don't get caught in too many fireballs and I have someone disarming the traps, I just... chase him down and take him out. Underwhelming. And I'm not really sure how it could be improved, because it's just a mage in some corridors. What make this fight annoying for the player also makes it difficult for the AI to work against the player.

Eh, anyway I leave the mines, head back to the FAI. We go up to Baldur's Gate to get a few things done there. Walking through the city, two encounters force themselves on us: we get poisoned by Marek and Lathander, and we are approached by a priest of Tymora looking for his son's body. This is okay, because both of them lead you to the Temple of Umberlee. So... put a pin in that. I head to Skie's family mansion, sneak in, and she joins my party. Yeslick goes his own way. Then I head to the temple of Umberlee.

I don't/can't have Tenya in the party, so I have no interest in cutting deals with the Umberlites. Umberleesians? Whatever - I take what I need by force. Conveniently, Eldoth ran forward to impress Skie, and got himself killed. Too bad, so sad, and good riddance! Unfortunately, even though the priestesses turned red from dialogue, the battle still substantially reduced my reputation! Or maybe Eldoth was just so charming and well-liked that people are upset at me letting him die. Anyway, I left the  city and picked up Ajantis, who immediately complained about our reputation (9). I donated some money to temples to improve that. (Note - in EET temples need BG2-size donations to improved your rep, not BG1-size donations.) Ajantis has specialization with hammers and axes and he is a boss. We cleared the FAI basement, then went south to pick up some Winter Wolf leather armor from Nashkel, then back through Beregost where, thanks to my .LUA tinkering, Neera appeared. This was a difficult choice, since I really like my party right now, but I want more content and Neera will appear in SoD/BG2 while Indira won't so... Indira had to go.

Then we went to the Spider Wood in search of the fourth special Orb, but it isn't there. I'm not sure where it is. Maybe I missed it in Peldvale or Larswood? The hint is something like "in a forest far from the coast." Huh.

Anyway now the party is:

• Charname: ranger/psion
• Ajantis: paladin
• Emily: archer/cleric
• Skie: swashbuckler
• Finch: cleric/mage
• Neera: wild mage

This is probably good for the end of the game. At some point I'll let Skie go in favor of... Imoen? Maybe it's time for Imoen to come back into the fold. Charname chose "Carapace" (1x/round Stoneskin) and "Camouflage" (weak invisibility and improved hide in shadows). Super useful stuff.

Only glitches I've seen lately: 1) Eldoth had a bunch of dialogue that seems to be from the "Vanishing of Skie Silvershield" mod which is to be expected since the mod isn't designed for EET. And, 2) Ignatius Bombastus told me to meet him near the stone circles in the Lion's Way, but he disappears and never showed up there.

Edited August 8, 2022 by subtledoctor

[jastey]

29 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

And, 2) Ignatius Bombastus told me to meet him near the stone circles in the Lion's Way, but he disappears and never showed up there.

Known bug for EE (caused by game script loop) which the new mod version didn't fix despite the changelog stating it.

[subtledoctor]

On 8/4/2022 at 4:03 PM, Quester said:

I'm sort of confused about all the versions of SR. Back in April I had everything set up with your SR fork.

Do I now grab the latest master from your github and just merge the spell_rev folder with my existing one, overwriting existing files? Is that the right way?

Sorry, I ran by this question. For the record:

You don't want to  use my fork of Spell Revisions. My fork only exists so that I can supply fixes to the main branch. For Spell Revisions, you should use the latest master commit of the main branch (click the green button labeled "code" and choose "Download ZIP").

By contrast, Item Revisions has not been active in applying updates. For that mod, you are best off using my personal bug-fix fork.

[Oloriniel]

23 hours ago, jastey said:

Known bug for EE (caused by game script loop) which the new mod version didn't fix despite the changelog stating it.

Maybe the new version did work?  It worked for me, and I was never able to get it to work before this run.

 

23 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Then we went to the Spider Wood in search of the fourth special Orb, but it isn't there. I'm not sure where it is. Maybe I missed it in Peldvale or Larswood? The hint is something like "in a forest far from the coast." Huh.

I think it's near the bandit camp; close to the "stone of askavar" dungeon, IIRC.  Make sure Charname is wearing the ring; I found that it didn't work if it was on a different character.

[jastey]

32 minutes ago, Oloriniel said:

Maybe the new version did work?  It worked for me, and I was never able to get it to work before this run.

Oh. Then this worked, but some other mod didn't. It will all be fixed eventually.

[subtledoctor]

i went north to Ulgoth's Beard and the northern coast to begin the NTotSC content, but then I realized it is kind of out of the way, and everyone in Ulgoth's Beard really wanted me to to that stuff like immediately, and I realized "Hey! I've got Endless BG1 installed!" And so I'm going to get into the main plot and leave a lot of side stuff (NTotSC, Durlag's Tower, Werewolf Isle if I even bother with that one) as interlude adventures before transitioning to Siege of Dragonspear.

So in Baldur's Gate, I investigated the Seven Suns coster for Scar, and also looked into the Merchants' League for Aldeth Sashenstar. Funny enough, they were both being infiltrated by dopplegangers. Super weird coincidence! (Also, super weird that the Merchants' League, which is optional content that is super easy to miss, is really well-done while the Seven Suns quest seems like it was put together by a Bioware intern on the morning it was due...) I also investigated the sewers to figure out why people were going missing, and dispatched a bunch of mutated gibberlings. Now I'm going to swing south to Beregost for Emily's quest, to Adoy's Enclave for Neera's quest, and to scour the map for the bones of the sons of an undead pirate.

I can't tell how to get to the Balduran's Seatower map. Is there some trick to it that I haven't found yet?

Also, for the sake of comparison to Oloriniel's thread, my stats:

• It is day 76
• Charname has 105,000 XP - 52,500 in each of two classes, so level 7/7 ranger/psion
• Charname has 701 kills

Oloriniel has several mod-added quest mods that I didn't install, and in my experience mods tend to just chuck fight after fight at you (with some notable exceptions, e.g. Lava's). Probably (?) explains why at a similar stage of the main quest, Oloriniel was at day ~200 with ~400,000 XP and ~3,000 kills.

Also I just realized that I forgot to do the Serpents of Abbathor quest in a timely fashion, and now the dwarf is no longer in Beregost. Oh well.

[J Beau]

If I remember right, to get to Balduran's Seatower you go to the docks area in the south and just go to the southern edge of the map by Umberlees temple. Just exit the map to the south and it will take you there. That's how I remember it. Its been a while. I searched for a long time trying to find it.

[subtledoctor]

Ah! I just must not have noticed it. Thanks!

[Oloriniel]

I don't *think* it's primarily quest mods.  I've done a deeper dive into my journal entries, and it looks like I got the Achievement for 1000 kills on Day 22, by which time I was still early in Chapter 3 and had just started Bone Hill.  Rather, I think it's a combination of:
Playing on the Hardcore setting, which can increase critters per encounter;
A component that makes resting more likely to be interrupted; 
A component that makes spawn points reset more rapidly, and scales opposition based on the party level.  That might mean I get 50 kobolds or skeletons instead of 6, or a beholder or fire giant mage,or yaga-shura or gromnir officer, rather than hobgoblins or ghouls.

I flooded the Cloakwood Mines on day 89, so not hugely far behind you; then pissed away a hundred fifty days or so just going back and forth, collecting npcs and doing their quests.  Lots of travel time, relatively little combat/xp.

[Oloriniel]

Oh, for Serpents of Abbathor, check after dark, the dwarf's spawning may be time dependent and I think the note you get tells you to meet him at midnight.

Or, you could spawn him, but I don't remember his name.

[StummvonBordwehr]

Hi Subtledoctor

Good to see you playing the game - not just modding.

Some questions came up reading about your progress:

1) You are playing secret of Bonehill (SoBH) Is it Roxannes version? And how bug free/ridden is it (on a scale from 1-10,  where 10 is the worst)?. It was broken beyond repair in the pre EE era….,

2) You have “the manual of war” from Klatu tweaks installed. Have you found the manual and does it work?

ps. I know SoBH and the manual of war are unbalanced to the point of broken….

[subtledoctor]

20 minutes ago, StummvonBordwehr said:

You are playing secret of Bonehill (SoBH)

No, I am not. That always looked interesting, but it sounds like it has a number of bugs, and not quest markers/journal entries, and people seem to get through it often by using the console to advance. I play on an iPad so mods like that, which may be inconvenient for players on a computer, could be game-ending on an iPad. So I steer clear.

21 minutes ago, StummvonBordwehr said:

You have “the manual of war” from Klatu tweaks installed. Have you found the manual and does it work?

Yup, it's a good way to burn off a bunch of the magic items and money you find. And given this is a single character in EET, the accrued bonuses will last forever!

I will say, it can very easily make Charname quite OP. Repeatable AC/thac0/damage bonuses, an APR bonus, stat bonuses... I like it for a non-martial class to eek out an extra .5 APR and be a bit better in combat while still being less than a warrior. But applying all of these to a warrior could just make you stoopidly powerful. I advise restraint, else it turn into a boring win-button mod.

[StummvonBordwehr]

Thanks

SoBH was (and perhaps still is) extremely buggy.. I still vaguely remember the area codes needed for clua’ing around - and it must have almost  15 years since I played it.

So your reasoning as an iOS player seems quite sound…

Good to know about The manual of War - seems like an item for the Extreme power players (it had me at extra 0.5 apr)

[Oloriniel]

2 hours ago, StummvonBordwehr said:

1) You are playing secret of Bonehill (SoBH) Is it Roxannes version? And how bug free/ridden is it (on a scale from 1-10,  where 10 is the worst)?. It was broken beyond repair in the pre EE era….,

Nah, that's me, not Doc.  I double-checked, and I am using Roxanne's version:
RoxanneSHS/BoneHill (github.com)

On the scale of 1-10, I suppose I would give it a 5.  In my playthrough, nothing was *broken*, you could play through without crashes or resorting to the console--IF you have the Worldmap installed.  If not, you'll need to console from one map location to another.

However as others have noted, journal entries show up not as quests, but as journal entries.  This does make it harder to keep track; if you don't already know the mod, you're likely to get lost, by the time you are first prevented from going home because of a theft, if not sooner.  There is at least one good walkthrough out there that can help, if you don't mind resorting to it.

Balance is in the eye of the beholder; there are certainly a few items that can fairly be considered overpowered (there's a +3 staff, you can get a belt of hill giant strength if your mod setup doesn't convert BELT06 to a Belt of Beatification like mine, and you can buy the bottomless +1 arrow/bolt/bullet quivers).  There's only AFAIK, one tome, for INT.

Note this commentary only applies to Part 1; Part 2 is not compatible with Framed (even if you go to where he should spawn in Chapter 7, Fabio does not appear to take you to Lendore Isle).  I may see if I can spawn him and head over before I move on to SoD, I haven't decided for sure yet.

 

 

3 hours ago, StummvonBordwehr said:

2) You have “the manual of war” from Klatu tweaks installed. Have you found the manual and does it work?

I have this installed.  Wasn't it supposed to be in the Ulcaster dungeon?  If so, I didn't find it.  I do remember hearing there were challenges with it for EET, but don't recall specifics.

[Graion Dilach]

38 minutes ago, Oloriniel said:

Wasn't it supposed to be in the Ulcaster dungeon?  If so, I didn't find it.  I do remember hearing there were challenges with it for EET, but don't recall specifics.

http://www.shsforums.net/topic/57873-mod-klatu-tweaks-and-fixes/?p=611688