Discussion of tipun’s IWD mods and their integration in EET games

[subtledoctor]

I have played Argent77's "TotLM-in-BG2EE" mod and I love it - I think it is a perfect little prestige dungeon to add to the Shadows of Amn portion of a campaign. I have also played through tipun's "HoW-in-EET" mod (the precursor to his full "IWD1_EET" mod) and I came to the conclusion that HoW can be treated similarly: as a prestige mini-adventure that is best done during the SoA portion of a game. I also came to the conclusion the the full IWD1 campaign really has no place in an EET game. The beginning is for a low-level party, and the end is for a mid/high-level party, and any place you try to insert all that into an EET game will completely disrupt and unbalance a large portion of the game. IWD1 is itself a great game, and it should be set apart as a distinct campaign, the way the Black Pits and Black Pits 2 are.

However. That doesn't mean we can't cannibalize some of the IWD content!

So I have made a little mod: if you install tipun's HoW-in-EET mod, or his IWD1_EET mod but not the "Icewind_EET" extra mod, my little mod will put Hjollder in Athkatla's Bridge District. So there's HoW covered. And TotLM-in-BG2EE already has TotLM covered. What else can we do?

I recently had a flashback to this idea of incentivizing players to do more questing around Athkatla pre-Spellhold, without feeling like they were being a terrible friend to Imoen. The idea was, in short, place pieces of a magical MacGuffin in the various stronghold quest areas, and when you have collected a certain number of pieces of them, they can be made into an item that reveals the location of the Spellhold pirate island and thus allows you to sail there. (Clearly the location of the island ought to be magically concealed, it's only sensible.) So, hm, a magical artifact with strong divination powers, where have I heard of this before? The Heartstone Gem, of course!

So here's my rough plan:

1. When you pay Gaelan's fee and Aran Linvail is ready to send you on the ship with Saemon Havarian, have Aran say the island is warded and the Heartstone Gem is needed to find it.
2. Put a dungeon entrance somewhere, and have the entrance go right to the first level of the Dragon's Eye map installed by tipun's IWD mod. Maybe this could be in the North Forest or Small Teeth Pass? EDIT - or maybe inside the Troll Mound?
3. Play through Dragon's Eye, kill Yxunomei, get the Heartstone gem. This may not need any changes at all.
4. Bring the Heartstone Gem back to Aran, have him say he needs a few days to activate it and find Spellhold. (Meantime, go questing.)
5. Then Aran says an elf told him that only Larrel can activate it; have him teleport the party to Severed Hand map installed by tipun's mod.
6. Play through the Severed Hand. This may not need any changes at all.
7. At the end, when you meet Larrel, his dialogue must be changed drastically. He will have to "activate" the Heartstone Gem and then teleport the party to Athkatla.
8. Finally, all conditions satisfied, hop on the ship and travel with Saemon to Spellhold.

#1, #4, #5, and #8 require additions to ARAN.DLG. Doesn't seem too difficult. (Though, I've never done this sort of thing before.)

#2 requires adding a door to a map. I don't know how to do this. It also needs the 1st-level Dragon's Eye entrance to be changed to whatever area it is inserted into.

Alternatively, the Dragon's Eye exterior area could simply be placed on the worldmap? Maybe in the mountains up near Nashkel? (That could explain the snowy, windswept exterior.)

#7 requires substantial changes to DLARREL.DLG. Probably I would simply create a new version and overwrite the original; not much chance of mod conflicts here, and any additions to the dialogue would check for a variable indicating this is happening in an EET game, so if you play IWD as a standalone campaign it would still work normally. (This would work similarly to how I set up the Black Pits campaign to be playable either on its own or within BGEE.)

Am I crazy, or does it seem like this could be added really easily? Change two dialogues and add a door to an area or add a pre-existing area to the worldmap. Right?

Edited May 8, 2023 by subtledoctor

[subtledoctor]

So, anyone have any feedback? Advice? Want to point out something I haven't considered?

Anyone want to help?

Here is one specific question: let's say a cave door is added to the North Forest or Troll Mound or somewhere, which leads to the 1st level of Dragon's Eye, which is ID4001.ARE. The exit from ID4001.ARE goes out to the IWD Dragon's Eye exterior, ID4000.ARE. We want to preserve that in case someone plays the IWD campaign by itself within the EET app, but when traveling there from Athkatla, we would want that exit to send you back to the North Forest or Troll Mound. Can this be done? Can an area exit/travel trigger change where it sends you based on, e.g., the value of a global variable?

Edited February 14, 2023 by subtledoctor

[mickabouille]

I don't remember the campaign really well, but I think there may be _some_ other dialog changes, though probably not that many.

There were some quests around the villagers that were prisoners, weren't there? That could be kept for the most part, I guess.

There is a part around the blacksmith's son that maybe couldn't, and the priestess maybe? Those characters could simply be removed...

 

On the other hand, the elven tower has no real quest from or to the outside except the main story (I think).

 

Maybe the difficulty would be a little on the easier side? I don't remember around what level you reach the dragon eye.

 

Edited February 14, 2023 by mickabouille

[Graion Dilach]

Honestly, I'd scrub the IWD1 and IWD2 map areas clean for this one (and maybe mix them up so that I'd use areas from both games) and I wouldn't try using the imported IWD areas, but outright clones under a modder prefix.

I think the solution to that would be to ensure all areas have two exits and the variables just flipping which exit is available, akin to how De'Arnise Keep is switched.

Edited February 14, 2023 by Graion Dilach

[Gorionar]

Hello. May I try to direct your desire in a more reasonable direction. Why make bones, for mods that are just made to pass. And crash into the main storyline of the game, which is absolutely impossible to do.
K4thos never completed the EET for Icewind Dale in his time, he might try to put all his strength into it to achieve his goal! And calmly lead two lines of BG EET modding and IWD EET.

 

[Endarire]

How does Icewind_EET change things compared to IWD1 in EET?

I like the idea of visiting IWD in EET.  I was eager for years to be able to play IWD 1 & 2 in EET, even if they seemed to fit poorly, just because it meant more mods and it seemed novel to be able to visit even more of Faerun!

I agree that being able to start IWD 1 & 2 in BG2 is a handy alternative.

Thankee!

Edited February 14, 2023 by Endarire

[subtledoctor]

2 hours ago, Graion Dilach said:

I think the solution to that would be to ensure all areas have two exits and the variables just flipping which exit is available, akin to how De'Arnise Keep is switched.

Ah, good. My concern was, I didn't know this was possible. Now just need to learn how. I forgot about De'Arnise Keep doing this! I'll take a look at it. (I'm literally about to do that quest in my current game, so it will refresh my recollection.)

2 hours ago, Endarire said:

How does Icewind_EET change things compared to IWD1 in EET?

My understanding (admittedly theoretical at this point - I haven't played them) of tipun's mods: IWD1_EET and IWD2_EET put the IWD1 and IWD2 areas and resources and everything into an EET game. But when playing, this doesn't actually get you to Icewind Dale. The Icewind_EET mod adds stuff to the game that actually gets your party from the Sword Coast to the Ten Towns and back.

If you want to bring your party through IWD, that's totally cool - this mod wouldn't be for you. You would install IWD1_EET and Icewind_EET. For people like me who don't want to play Icewind Dale with my BG party, it might be worth grabbing bits and pieces of it for a bit of extra gameplay. We can install the IWD1_EET mod for the resources, and I'll handle the connections myself:

• I'll place Hjollder in Athkatla, instead of Kuldahar
• Argent77 puts Hobart somewhere in Amn
• We can put bits and pieces of IWD into Amn, piecemeal.

2 hours ago, Gorionar said:

K4thos never completed the EET for Icewind Dale in his time, he might try to put all his strength into it to achieve his goal!

FWIW I had debates with k4thos back in the day, I didn't like the idea of bundling together IWD and IWD2 and the bridges between them and the BG games in a single inflexible package. I suggested one mod to bring the resources over, and then a different mod - or efforts by different modders altogether - to actually provide the story hooks and other bridges between the content in-game. This is, essentially, exactly what tipun has created. It is quite flexible and we can play around with how it might be fun to bring that content down into the BG game. So, now I am playing around with that!

I am now playing an EET game in the SoA portion, and I am remembering the size of these quests:

• Windspear and Umar Hills are one exterior map and one dungeon level
• The Druid Grove is one exterior map
• De'Arnise Keep and the Unseeing Eye are about three dungeon levels
• The Bard Playhouse is basically two dungeon levels
• I don't even remember the paladin stronghold, I never do it
• Heart of Winter is basically a town and five dungeon levels
• TotLM is basically ~five dungeon levels
• Durlag's Tower is... six? dungeon levels
• Watcher's Keep is five dungeon levels

Dragon's Eye plus Severed hand is nine dungeon levels. Put together, they make a nice big bonus quest, comparing favorably to the stuff that is already in the game.

2 hours ago, Gorionar said:

Why make bones, for mods that are just made to pass. And crash into the main storyline of the game, which is absolutely impossible to do.

Sorry I don't quite follow what you are saying here. If there is concern about tying this to the main quest as a bar to going to Spellhold, well, the idea is that the game needs something extra there. But, now that I think about it a bit more, there is perhaps a much better way to connect it. The Dragon's Eye stuff, at least...

3 hours ago, mickabouille said:

There were some quests around the villagers that were prisoners, weren't there? That could be kept for the most part, I guess.

There is a part around the blacksmith's son that maybe couldn't, and the priestess maybe? Those characters could simply be removed

Yes. Conlan's son could simply be removed. As for the rest, I figure the whole "yuan-ti are doing evil things to defenseless level-zero NPCs" is a vague enough trope that it doesn't need much particular handling. BUT, now that I think about it, we already have a castle full of trolls and yuan-ti doing evil things to level-zero NPCs! And a cryptic bit of dialogue from Torgal about his never-to-be identified boss. And there are also yuan-ti randomly in the Slums slaver headquarters (where children are being abducted, mind you), and under the Temple District sewers by the broken bridge to the forgotten temple of Amaunator.

Maybe it's worth adding a bit more narrative support, and making a little mod to tie these things together? Maybe Yxunomei is Torgal's boss. What is she after? What are the yuan-ti looking for at the Temple of Amaunator? Etc. Fun possibilities here. (Of course this doesn't involve the elves of the Severed Hand in any way. But I still like the idea of getting this powerful divination artifact from Yxunomei, and then needing Larrel to actually use it...

Edited February 14, 2023 by subtledoctor

[jmerry]

19 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

I don't even remember the paladin stronghold, I never do it

None of the strongholds are separate dungeons; they're all sequences of mini-quests that follow on after you complete another quest (that generally has a dungeon). The paladin stronghold quest follows from the Windspear Hills quest, with the caveat that you shouldn't kill the dragon the first time through because that's the final part of the stronghold quest.

22 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

BUT, now that I think about it, we already have a castle full of trolls and yuan-ti doing evil things to level-zero NPCs! And a cryptic bit of dialogue from Torgal about his never-to-be identified boss. And there are also yuan-ti randomly in the Slums slaver headquarters (where children are being abducted, mind you), and under the Temple District sewers by the broken bridge to the forgotten temple of Amaunator.

Makes sense to me, generally. My headcanon definitely has TorGal's "Stronger" as some sort of yuan-ti leader. Roenall contracts with yuan-ti leader through slaver connections, asking for some expendable muscle for his real estate scam. Yuan-ti leader sends in the trolls, Nalia gets away to look for support, and then the party comes in.

The groups in the temple district sewers ... those aren't necessarily yuan-ti. They're spawn points; one generates either gibberlings or yuan-ti, while the other generates either undead or yuan-ti. The snakes can show up in a bunch of places in the role of random monsters, and that's one of them. I put more stock into places where they're pre-placed like the slaver ship or de'Arnise Keep; those are definitely present as part of the story.

[InKal]

realistically how many players actually finishes BG2EE? 30%? I don't think so? Maybe 15 max 20% players actually play from start in Ircy dungeon to ToB finale. and how many actually finishes EET? maybe 5% but reaistically max 2% in my opinion. what is the point putting half or more content form another game into BG2 when 80% players will be bored even before going to Spellhold. thats the one thing. second thing is that TotLM is independent adventure that can be played even in PST in my opinion, just replace some enemies with different enemies and voila you have pretty awesome NOT PST adventure but separate adventure for PST in another world which doesn't interfere at all with PST main story!! thats the difference, maybe you don't even need to farrm Greater Glabrazus finally coz you will have much needed xp. Messing up both IWD (Larrel don't gives two shits about Athkatla and Aran likewise about Larrel) and BG2 main stories just for playing the same stuff we had already played countless times is really bad idea. Let IWD be IWD and BG2 stay BG2. there are mods like Sellswords and Back to Brynnlaw, (mods like this kind we really need) to bad Kulyok retired. but there is Lava and Angel, God bless them.

[Fishmalk]

8 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

1. When you pay Gaelan's fee and Aran Linvail is ready to send you on the ship with Saemon Havarian, have Aran say the island is warded and the Heartstone Gem is needed to find it.

I think this is a bit of a stretch, honestly. By this point the player has already paid what is supposed to be a large sum of gold and eliminated the rival guild. The trip to spellhold has been earned. The needed gold to pay Gaelan/Bodhi and buy whatever other items the player wants is already sufficient reason to adventure in chapter 2.

I like better the idea someone (maybe you) had about making the IWD sections part of the rhynn lanthorn hunt. I think post-spellhold athkatla benefits from having some things to do that werent available before.

[subtledoctor]

12 hours ago, Fishmalk said:

I think this is a bit of a stretch, honestly. By this point the player has already paid what is supposed to be a large sum of gold and eliminated the rival guild.

TBH I kind of think that is a bit of a stretch? I mean, Spellhold is supposed to be super secret, nobody knows anything about it, even very knowledgeable adventurers you meet and people plugged into Athkatlan politics. Even several Cowled Wizards! Yet it's sitting there on an island, with temples and stores and brothels and commerce and hundreds of civilians going in and out... there's just no way word doesn't filter out. Meanwhile, the group trying to keep it secret has salaried day-shift employees who respond to errant castings of Infravision - so, traffic cops basically - who can cast 8th- and 9th-level spells! And various mod-high-level operatives like Tolgerias who can cast 10th-level spells (depending on you install, I guess). Why wouldn't they use magic to obscure the location of the island?? And, in this context, the goal of Charname in chapter 2 is to... raise money to buy a boat? That's the thing stopping you from getting there?? There's been a run on boats in the Sword Coast? It makes no sense. Questing for an artifact with divination powers to be able to find Spellhold should, if anything, be in place of the "fee." This is supposed to be D&D - that sorts of quest is, like, the entire point of playing D&D. The idea of "well, you have to pay a fee" is honestly marvelously unimaginative. Yeah I greatly increase the required fee via SCS, but all SCS really does is fine-tune something that is marvelously unimaginative.

"Well," you might say, "we can presume that the fee you pay Gaelan Bayle not for something so mundane as to buy a boat, but so they can direct their resources to finding the means of locating the island. To which my response is, someone thought it would be a good idea to have the questing and artifact funding happen off-page, while tasking the hero of the story with organizing a bake sale to raise some money? Like, if it was 2000 and I was pitching this game to you and talking about the middle part, which sounds better:

• The heroes travel to the frozen north to wrest an artifact of vast magical power from a demon, and then must convince a lich to activate it for them
• The heroes find an empty storefront, set up a small business, and collect regular revenues until they can pay an oceanic Uber driver to carry them where they want to go

And before you say that's hyperbole, realize that the second option is a totally accurate description of the fighter, thief, and bard strongholds.

Just saying, pull at this thread too much and the sweater starts to look pretty shabby.

OTOH there are other, perhaps easier ways to add this kind of stuff. Like, maybe don't bother with those quest additions. Maybe just add an entrance to the Dragon's Eye maps to the bottom of Nalia's Keep, where the umber hulks were digging through from below. No journal entries or anything, just a travel trigger for the player to find, or not find, end of story. Then five levels of underground adventure right beneath the Keep. The final boss is there, motivated by... what? Well, we already have some other under-used narrative hooks in the game - like how the Druid Grove rakshasa react to your possession of the Flail of Ages. Clearly there is something special about this flail, beyond just being a good weapon against Stoneskins. Maybe add a line to Yxunomei about wanting it - maybe have her taunt the player for bringing it right to her, if Charname possess it when meeting her. (Maybe give her the flail head of fire? Maybe change the flail to have some powers against Lawful enemies, or fiends, or something that would be particularly useful to a Marilith.) In its simplest form we're just talking about two added lines of dialogue and two altered map travel triggers, for the benefit of added depth to the story and some bonus dungeon-delving.

I'm like water, I seek the path of least effort.

Actually this is giving me some more ideas... which maybe aren't worth spoiling? Hmmm...

[subtledoctor]

Anyone know if there is any lore about the Hand of the Seldarine/Severed Hand and Dorn's Deep outside the IWD game? The FR wiki only notes the computer game as sources for information on both...

I'm trying to figure out if it couldn't reasonable by moved somewhere. Like, if there's no canonical placement of the Hand of the Seldarine outside the IWD game, then it could be, like, a military outpost not far from Suldenesselar. Maybe connected to the North Forest or Small Teeth Pass area, or near the ruined Temple of Amaunator... maybe it would be simplest to simply have a travel trigger on an open map, like the way you get to Ormyrr's Peak from the Gnoll Stronghold in Shades of the Sword Coast...

[Gorionar]

Quote

FWIW I had debates with k4thos back in the day, I didn't like the idea of bundling together IWD and IWD2 and the bridges between them and the BG games in a single inflexible package. I suggested one mod to bring the resources over, and then a different mod - or efforts by different modders altogether - to actually provide the story hooks and other bridges between the content in-game. This is, essentially, exactly what tipun has created. It is quite flexible and we can play around with how it might be fun to bring that content down into the BG game. So, now I am playing around with that! 

Yes, you don’t need to touch the main quest line, I just put it wrong.

Why then try to connect the history of the IWD here, if you can simply create a mod that will expand the player's story about spellhold without IWD.

[subtledoctor]

46 minutes ago, Gorionar said:

Why then try to connect the history of the IWD here, if you can simply create a mod that will expand the player's story about spellhold without IWD.

I don't want to connect the history of IWD? As I said, the content is introduced by tipun's work, and then there is the question of how to integrate it into an EET game - maybe the BG party could literally go play IWD, dates be damned, or maybe they could time travel, or maybe it could be a dream sequence... lots of options, none of them perfect. This is an alternative idea that uses some of the content without actually trying to shoehorn the IWD story inside the BG story. That's why you couldn't use e.g. Dorn's Deep areas in this way - they are set up to be too involved with the IWD quest - finding the badges, journal entries discussing Belhifet, etc. Whereas, the Dragon's Eye and Severed Hand levels have very little to do with the specific events of the IWD game, so they can be repurposed about as easily as the HoW and TotLM content.

Also I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "simply create a mod that will expand the player's story about Spellhold?"

In any event, this has been productive, I think I have a good idea now, that should hopefully be fun while using a light touch as far as actually inserting itself into the BG story.

[Graion Dilach]

Why do you want to tie this to tipun's mod?

Because from what I get, you would just basically use, I dunno ~15 areas from IWD, maybe a bunch of item files and creatures only. I don't see what is the benefit of just including these assets directly with your mod over relying on another one to provide it. This helps on mod compatibility - ensure that all mods think about the same item availability (keep in mind that most IWD item importer mods rename the IWD item filenames) via using your mod prefix everywhere, allows combining it with A7-TotLM-BG2EE -, makes the code a lot simpler - you don't have to dynamically rewrite all the area scripts and maybe the areas themselves if you want to redefine scripts and whatnot -, decreases fat via not relying on someone converting over the entire oIWD imported and then dangling aside, allows you to mix IWD1 and IWD2 assets (since both Dragon's Eye and Severed Hand are explored in both of the games).

Keep in mind that tipun had converted over oIWD1 moreso and not IWDEE and those are static conversions (unlike EET which is dynamic and k4thos's IWD-in-EET's also a dynamic import-based project). It needs a lot of work, I don't know anything about it's mod compatibility (it's install instructions are pretty shaky, since it's alpha) and IMO even the IWD2 considerations would offer a more balanced take than this dependency. Then again, IWDEE still needs a lot of work, for example on the audio front (besides the usual skellytz inaccuracies, there's also the issue that IWDEE uses BG2 CRE soundslot layout with the actual creatures still having oIWD or BG1 assignments).

I don't see the gain of the dependency.

Keep in mind that Yxunomei is Belhifet's rival and she outright acknowledges that in his talk, so you still have to tweak that.