[MOD] Dark Tidings - a quest mod for BG2

[Acifer]

DON'T DEPEND TOO MUCH ON ANYONE IN THIS WORLD, BECAUSE EVEN YOUR OWN SHADOW LEAVES YOU WHEN YOU ARE IN DARKNESS.

For thousands of years, the magical light of the Sea Tower of Irphong has been a steady guide for sailors making their passage through Asavir's Channel - until now, because the light of the Sea Tower has extinguished. There have long been rumors of pirates using the island as a hideout, as well as Dragon Turtles and Kraken that have made the shallows around the island their home. There is only one way to uncover the secret behind the darkness of the Sea Tower: You must sail to the island and search for the cause of the extinguished beacon.

Dark Tidings is a quest mod for Baldur's Gate II. It starts in the docks district of Athkatla (in the tavern Sea's Bounty) and is playable right from the beginning of the SoA part of the trilogy.

Key features:

• New areas to discover, completely designed in 3D from scratch
• New monsters to defeat
• New treasure to recover
• Playing time: 1-2 hours
• Languages: English, German

You do not need to start a new game to start the quest of this mod. The Mod  is intended for a well-balanced party of levels 9-12. To complete some of the optional components you will need either a mage, bard, cleric, shaman, sorcerer or druid in your party. 

The adventure is based on descriptions from the "Lands of Intrigue" sourcebook by Steven E. Schend and inspired by the adventure "The Darkhouse of Saerloon" (from "Faiths and Pantheons") by Eric L. Boyd and Eric Mona. 

Dark Tidings is compatible with the following versions of Baldur's Gate II:

• BG2 - ToB (the original-non-EE-Version)
• BG2EE - the Enhanced-Edition version of Baldur's Gate 2
• Baldur's Gate Trilogy (BGT)
• Enhanced Edition Trilogy (EET)

Please note that there are different installation requirements for the different versions of the game. See the readme for details.

Download at Kerzenburgforum:

https://baldurs-gate.de/index.php?resources/dark-tidings.65/

Readme:

https://www.baldurs-gate.de/acifer/Dark_Tidings_Readme.pdf

Walkthrough at the BG Wiki by @Ineth:

https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_Tidings_walkthrough

Screenshots:

Spoiler

 

Credits:

Acifer: Mod design, Graphics

Sirick: English version

Laura Hirsbrunner: Readme Microsoft Word template 

Special Thanks:

@Lava: Additional help & ideas, Beta testing

Morywen: Beta testing

Edited October 7, 2024 by Acifer

[Zutroy]

{blank space}

Edited October 18, 2023 by Zutroy

[jastey]

Congratulations on the release! I'm really thrilled to play this, but I want to finish my BG1 run first.

[Thacobell]

*Looks at readme*
Oh, nice presentation!

[Lava]

Believe me, it's not *just* the presentation

[RoyalProtector]

This looks really amazing.

I'm installing this for sure.

[Acifer]

Thank you all for your favorable feedback! 

[Graion Dilach]

Great job.

I did notice a bug during my review against mod compat - you didn't include the IWD2 worg audio, which means the mastiffs are silent on EE, because the INI refers them, but they are also missing from the games.

I didn't noticed anything else, so I also believe this is EET compatible.

EDIT: I'm not sure if this is worthy of mention but I like how this mod interacts with Imoen4Ever as well. Cool.

Edited May 18, 2023 by Graion Dilach

[Isewein]

Now we've got two trips to island towers - wonder how this measures up against Tower of Deception. The Readme looks very promising!

[Lava]

6 hours ago, Isewein said:

Now we've got two trips to island towers - wonder how this measures up against Tower of Deception. The Readme looks very promising!

While I like ToD, this one is much richer and kinda bigger

[Endarire]

Does the Seatower of Balduran also count?

[Acifer]

16 hours ago, Isewein said:

Now we've got two trips to island towers - wonder how this measures up against Tower of Deception.

I must admit that I did not play Tower of deception. I think the similarity of both mods could be that they come from a time when editing the world map was still a distant dream, so modders had to look for other ways to add new areas. Maybe a lonely island tower is an obvious choice? At least that was my inspiration for this. I started creating the first area for this mod around 2004, but at that time I lacked good texturing skills and knowledge on how to add decent water and large background animations (like the lighthouse's beam), that's why I put the mod on hold for so long.

19 hours ago, Graion Dilach said:

I did notice a bug during my review against mod compat - you didn't include the IWD2 worg audio, which means the mastiffs are silent on EE, because the INI refers them, but they are also missing from the games.

Oh, thank you for that! I totally forgot to add the soundset. I will include it with the next update.

19 hours ago, Graion Dilach said:

Great job.

Thank you very much!

[InKal]

Awesome mod but keeps crashing in that cave where you meet the cultist and where some (luminous?) crystal is.

[jastey]

Crashing animations could be a problem with the graphic card - OS interaction. I transferred a fully functional BGT game to my new Win10 computer and it crashed on larger animations.

[Acifer]

1 hour ago, InKal said:

Awesome mod but keeps crashing in that cave where you meet the cultist and where some (luminous?) crystal is.

That’s weird. I have a few questions:

• In what area specifically does the crash occur? Could you hit X and tell me the area resref?
• Does the crash occur always at the same position?
• I assume the area loads fine and the crash happens while walking through this area, am I right?
• what game version (classic BG2, BG2EE, BGT or EET) do you play with?