What is the Gibberlings3 community's stance on making or adapting mods for tipun's Icewind Dale in EET?

[StummvonBordwehr]

Sorry for the off topic posts, but the iOS version of IWD really need some help…. @Luke and Subtledoctor are the most adept on the iOS modding scene, so I am crossing my fingers for succes, since the  update for the iOS ports have no ETA and will likely take some time.

On topic: like Subtledoctor said, the plot for IWD makes sense - something the BG2 “plot” never did. BG2 is the best game in the world, but the plot is only partially makes sense and only with the help from a few newer mods (thank you for trying to fix it).
 

But if you prefer to play the games with a full package of the Old mega mods, some timetravelling will not break immersion or feel out of place… So I wouldn’t call IWD in EET a bad idea - compaired to TS or RoT…. With all the great new mods for IWD (yes, they are there), at least we could introduce a great plot and some well executed mods into the mayhem of a fully packaged EET setup. 

[subtledoctor]

Well, what do you know?? Tipun already made a HoW-in-BGEE mod, and even tested it working in tandem with the TotLM-in-BG2EE mod. While IWD works great as its own game, as I said I think HoW could work great as a bespoke adventure added to BG. I might have to give this a look-see. (Also, why can't Google Translate translate the Arcane Coast forum?)

It would also be kind of interesting to see things reversed a bit: put access to, say, Black Pits 1 in IWDEE. Maybe even Watcher's Keep. (Is there any lore that says it has to be located south of Amn? Wasn't it basically created out of whole cloth for ToB?)

[Greenhorn]

5 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Well, what do you know?? Tipun already made a HoW-in-BGEE mod, and even tested it working in tandem with the TotLM-in-BG2EE mod. While IWD works great as its own game, as I said I think HoW could work great as a bespoke adventure added to BG. I might have to give this a look-see. (Also, why can't Google Translate translate the Arcane Coast forum?)

 

Google Chrome can translate it, not perfect but close enough. 

[Graion Dilach]

Watcher's Keep in IWD could work. I'm not aware if the Black Pits were located anywhere besides "in the Underdark", although Mark Meer tends to run Baeloth as his personal 5e D&D character/NPC in events (it was just last week when he DMed a three-shot for Idle Champions taking place in the Black Pits), so it might end up canonized properly in the long run in a supplemental at one point.

[argent77]

26 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

It would also be kind of interesting to see things reversed a bit: put access to, say, Black Pits 1 in IWDEE. Maybe even Watcher's Keep. (Is there any lore that says it has to be located south of Amn? Wasn't it basically created out of whole cloth for ToB?)

For Watcher's Keep in IWD you'd have to come up with a different story, since many aspects of that side quest are more or less related to the aftereffects of the Time of Troubles (e.g. existence of wild magic zones, or the failing/weakening magic to keep Demogorgon imprisoned.)

[subtledoctor]

On 7/19/2022 at 12:11 PM, Graion Dilach said:

I'm not aware if the Black Pits were located anywhere besides "in the Underdark", although Mark Meer tends to run Baeloth as his personal 5e D&D character/NPC in events (it was just last week when he DMed a three-shot for Idle Champions taking place in the Black Pits), so it might end up canonized properly in the long run in a supplemental at one point.

But you teleport in and out right? So it could work as well as, say, TotLM. (I don't know if there are any conversations or the like that would create lore issues, haven't played it all the way through and haven't looked at the dialogues yet.)

On 7/19/2022 at 12:25 PM, argent77 said:

For Watcher's Keep in IWD you'd have to come up with a different story, since many aspects of that side quest are more or less related to the aftereffects of the Time of Troubles (e.g. existence of wild magic zones, or the failing/weakening magic to keep Demogorgon imprisoned.)

Oh fair point. It's a bit too high-power for IWD anyway.

Edited February 23, 2023 by subtledoctor

[CamDawg]

The stuff from TotSC (Balduran's Isle, mage prison) would work better in IWD, and be appropriate for the party's levels towards the middle-to-end of the IWD campaign. I'm not so confident on Durlag's, as I think it has a canon placement in the Sword Coast.

[Endarire]

@subtledoctor
I had to manually visit translate.google.com and have it translate webpages, but this is the result you sought.

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, CamDawg said:

The stuff from TotSC (Balduran's Isle, mage prison) would work better in IWD, and be appropriate for the party's levels towards the middle-to-end of the IWD campaign. I'm not so confident on Durlag's, as I think it has a canon placement in the Sword Coast.

The mage prison, for sure. I forgot about that. Balduran's Island, though... I suppose if you replaced the ship travel with teleportation? Or something? Going sailing in the midst of the IWD campaign would be weird. Apart from that, though, sure.

[Endarire]

As mentioned in this thread, subtledoctor and tipun made IWD in EET into separate campaigns on the EET platform, akin to how players can choose to use EET to start in Black Pits 1/2 or BG 1/2.

[subtledoctor]

On 7/16/2022 at 2:09 PM, Oloriniel said:

XP *is* nerfed; if you do the whole IWD-How-TotLM, you'll wind up with, I think, about 400k XP.

Oof, just re-read this thread and noticed this... this doesn't bode well for playing these as their own campaigns. Might need an add-on mod to boost the XP back to the normal IWD levels... not sure I really want to think about how much effort would be required for that...

EDIT - tagging @tipun in case they wander by and can give information about whether the XP is changed in IWD1_EET and IWD2_EET versus in the actual games. And if there is a reasonably easy way I could change it back or add a switch or option to have it one way or another based on 1) install choice, or even better, 2) setting an in-game variable

EDIT 2 - okay I found the way IWD1_EET implements XPLIST.2da and I basically just edited that list to match the values in IWDEE. It will differ in some discrete instances where IWDEE grants a sum of XP not defined in that table, but whatever, it should be close enough. The ideal situation would be to add more values, and edit every script that grants XP to condition it on the presence of a global variable that would tell the game whether you are playing the campaign by itself, or playing Charname in an EET game. Would be possible, but a crapload of work. I don;t intend to actually play this inside an EET game, I just want to play the normal IWD campaign, so I'll just edit the table to match IWDEE.

IWD2, however, is another can of worms entirely. I grabbed a copy of the actual game, but I realized that the game uses the 3E rules, which means an entirely different progression in XPLEVEL.2da. So even if the game contains a copy of XPLIST.2da that I could copy from, it would be useless because I am using the 2E rules and the EET version of XPLEVEL.2da. I've never played the game so I have no idea how fast the party is designed to level up, and it would take forever to 1) track down every scripted grant of XP and 2) figure out where it is in the game and where the party should be level-wise, and then 3) see what that corresponds to in terms of XP, in order to 4) insert a reasonable number.

This seems... really difficult. Honestly I might just install it as-is, and play it blind, and just use the console to bump myself up a level whenever the challenge feels like it requires it? Is that crazy? Might take all the fun out of the game...

Alternatively I could just play through IWD, and then take that ~15th-level party right into IWD2. I'll steamroll a substantial portion of the game, but maybe that's okay? I've never played it before, it would be like playing on easy mode in order to discover the game...

Hmm...

EDIT 3 - okay so the 3E table has linear progression and ends up at 20th level about an order of magnitude lower than in 2E. So maybe I’ll increase the values at the bottom of the XPLIST additions by 10x, and progressively smaller increases going up the table. 

Edited February 24, 2023 by subtledoctor