My latest super-modded EET game - with more IWD

[Delior]

On 3/16/2024 at 12:11 PM, subtledoctor said:

Finished Durlag’s - was fine. As I mentioned elsewhere, some mods really add a crap-ton of OP equipment. Between that, and my added caster flexibility of 5E spellcasting and unlimited 1st-level spells, I could do the entire dungeon without resting. Sigh. I wish it was easier to get the experience of modders’ wonderful creativity, while somehow preserving the scarcity of magical artifacts that originally helped make BG1 fun. 

I share your sentiments. I had to drop SotSC from my game partly due to the abundance of loot it adds to the game. It's unfortunate because the artwork is well done, and I can tell that Lava put a lot of time and effort into crafting all of the items. They are not simply "OP Longsword +6 with 50% stun chance" or something along those lines. If anything, my issues with the mod stemmed more from the sheer amount of changes it makes to the game. Lava has said that he prefers BG2 over BG1, which is presumably why so much of the mod ports over creatures from BG2, and as we all know BG2 (and SoD) has a lot more loot than vanilla BG1. I personally like to keep the games a bit more separate, and SoTSC is an all-or-nothing mod that changes the game a lot. I also couldn't help shake the feeling that the mod was unbalancing the game. 

I can see the counterargument, however, which is that even vanilla BG1EE has OP items. It's not hard for a player with meta knowledge to quickly gather up a wand of fire, exploding potions, and a necklace of missiles, and those items can trivialize quite a few fights that otherwise are fairly difficult for low-level parties. 

[subtledoctor]

I spoke too soon! Had a scripting bug in the last interaction with Illasera. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I’ll just say that a green circle turned blue, and I did not get a final dialogue for the mod. So that’s a third bug. But to be honest I can’t say for sure it wasn’t due to some mod interaction in my fairly aggressive install. And honestly I was perfectly satisfied with the mod having been finished at that point. So, still A+, best mod in the list. Those three bugs are totally fixable, I could probably even do it myself with a spare hour or two. 

3 hours ago, Delior said:

I share your sentiments. I had to drop SotSC from my game partly due to the abundance of loot it adds to the game

Yeah, well, I didn’t want to use this space to point fingers, but yeah, Lava’s mods are among the worst offenders in this area. They are very creative, but their sense of how to balance loot is quite bad. There is one BG2 mod where after leaving the tutorial dungeon, without a single combat, you can go through a couple dialogues and get a dagger +4. Like, the excitement of finding a good magical dagger is basically removed from 80% of the game. I know it’s not intended this way, but it actually sucks fun out of the game. Like I say, I am at the point of making my own personal mod to tone down Lava’s items. 

But I don’t want to focus too much on Lava. I’m pretty sure some of my other OP loot comes from other mods. I have, like, half a dozen +APR items. I hate it. I firmly believe all +APR items should be purged from the game. Including Belm. 

[Trouveur80]

2 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

I spoke too soon! Had a scripting bug in the last interaction with Illasera. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I’ll just say that a green circle turned blue, and I did not get a final dialogue for the mod. So that’s a third bug. But to be honest I can’t say for sure it wasn’t due to some mod interaction in my fairly aggressive install. And honestly I was perfectly satisfied with the mod having been finished at that point. So, still A+, best mod in the list. Those three bugs are totally fixable, I could probably even do it myself with a spare

Quote

 

There is no dialogue after the final fight, the mod is expecting an immediate end game and transition to SoD or importing to BG2EE. 

[subtledoctor]

Playing the end of Black Hearts, then The Undercity/Sarevok, then Korlasz’ crypt, feels a bit off. Black Hearts does such a great job adding some meat to the end-game right before Sarevok, it makes me want to move Korlasz’ crypt to the same place in the sequence. It’s a bit weird that I give Sarevok’s sword to Belt, and then I am searching for that sword not five minutes later. And the plot point of “clear out the remaining former followers of Sarevok” is weak. And, finally, the way you save the Dukes even though you are a wanted murderer, and Belt immediately forgives you and teleports you to the thieves’ guild, has always felt unsatisfying. And suddenly I see a way to improve the sequence: have Belt say he doesn’t know where Sarevok went, and you’ll need to ask around a bit to find out. And after a rest a messenger can tell you they have located one of his followers, and send you after Korlasz. And only after defeating Korlasz do you get Sarevok’s location, and maybe a magical ward to open the way into the (otherwise inaccessible) maze and Undercity. Would just need a few altered dialogues and global variables. Then back to the palace, and then the “Champion of Baldur’s Gate” sequence, and then the transition to SoD.

I also had thoughts about whether and to what extent the dukes should really trust you, keeping in mind that eventually you will need to leave the city in disgrace. And maybe we should keep it a bit ambiguous, even at this early stage. And then I had a devilish idea to take some threads from The Calling mod, and the Brandock mod, and Durlag’s Tower, and spin them together into a little thing. 

And then I started thinking about what the transition to SoD would look like in this scenario, and in my head I ended up rewriting, like, all of SoD. Because the whole “Caelar starts a war and causes untold death and misery and famine, and risks an invasion from hell, to save her favorite uncle” is in fact pretty damn weak. Maybe better to make the Crusade a bit more directly tied to Sarevok, and make it less Hephernaan’s plot and more Irenicus’ plot. And then that got me thinking about this idea - you could basically slash SoD in half, make it a shorter transition to SoA, and use whatever was cut out of it in a mod to improve ToB - to bring the dumb ToB storyline a bit more in line with the Sarevok story from BG1. Maybe in fact make it one big story instead of two disjointed ones, and bring SoD into it as well.

And now my brain is spinning. 

In short I have two small ideas for mods, and two or three rather huge ideas. The big ones still need fleshing out, and maybe never will be. But maybe the small ones will materialize.

Edited March 19 by subtledoctor

[subtledoctor]

Uh-oh, bit of a problem. I finished Korlasz’ crypt, then went back to the palace and talked to Belt, told him I needed to rest for a bit. Sirene, Brandock, Neera & Imoen all told me they were going to go off on their own. Okay, here we go, time to start SoD! Right? Right?

Well, not exactly? The screen faded to black but instead of waking up to the attack on Imoen, the game just kicked me out to the main menu. I want to be like, “excuse me? This is EET! I don’t do main menus.” 

Sigh. This transition is so fraught every time I play. What’s going to happen to my companions? What’s going to happen to my equipment? Will anything be lost? Do I need to do anything to prepare?

Last year I installed both Transitions and EndlessBG1. That time it was complicated and nerve-wracking and buggy. I only installed EndlessBG1 by itself this time, hoping it would be simpler and more reliable. But perhaps not…

Oh well. All the more incentive to make my own transition mod. 

EDIT - okay there is an auto-save and a ‘final save’ in my savegames. The sequence seems to be, I tell Belt I want to rest, the screen fades, there is an invisible area transition, then my party members say a line and leave the party, then a script is running which I presume is supposed to trigger waking up to the assassination attempt. But it doesn’t happen and I am kicked out to the menu. 

If I load up the autosave, I am in one of the top-floor palace bedrooms and everyone is still in my party. Whatever script has them leave seems to be interrupted when loaded this way, because everyone just stands there doing nothing. I know there are more than one version of these areas; I don’t know which one this is. Need to dig into the scripts and dialogues to figure out what is breaking. 

Edited March 19 by subtledoctor

[subtledoctor]

Okay it seems like the problem may be here:

Spoiler

IF
	HasDLC("SOD")
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		CutSceneId(Player1)
		ApplySpellRES("clearcld",Myself)  // No such index
		SetGlobal("EndOfBG1","GLOBAL",1)
		SetGlobal("SOD_fromimport","GLOBAL",1)
		SetGlobal("PartyCured","GLOBAL",1)
		Wait(1)
		ApplySpellRES("clearcld",Myself)  // No such index
		Wait(4)
		FadeToColor([30.0],0)
		Wait(1)
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player2)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player3)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player4)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player5)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player6)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player1)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player2)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player3)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player4)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player5)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player6)  // No such index
		AdvanceTime(TEN_DAYS)
		ApplySpellRES("bdrejuve",Player1)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdrejuve",Player2)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdrejuve",Player3)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdrejuve",Player4)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdrejuve",Player5)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdrejuve",Player6)  // No such index
		SetGlobal("EndOfBG1","GLOBAL",1)
		Wait(3)
		StartMovie("SODCIN01")
		FadeToColor([1.0],0)
		Wait(1)
		MoveToCampaign("C#STSD")
		MultiPlayerSync()
		SetCursorState(TRUE)
		EndCutSceneMode()
END

IF
	!HasDLC("SOD")
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		CutSceneId(Player1)
		ApplySpellRES("clearcld",Myself)  // No such index
		SetGlobal("EndOfBG1","GLOBAL",1)
		SetGlobal("SOD_fromimport","GLOBAL",1)
		SetGlobal("PartyCured","GLOBAL",1)
		Wait(1)
		ApplySpellRES("clearcld",Myself)  // No such index
		Wait(4)
		FadeToColor([30.0],0)
		Wait(1)
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player2)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player3)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player4)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player5)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bdresurr",Player6)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player1)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player2)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player3)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player4)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player5)  // No such index
		ApplySpellRES("bddispel",Player6)  // No such index
		SaveGame(0)
		SetGlobal("EndOfBG1","GLOBAL",1)
		Wait(3)
		MultiPlayerSync()
		SetCursorState(FALSE)
		EndCutSceneMode()
		GoToStartScreen()
END

...seems like maybe HasDLC("SOD") is returning false in my game? Quite weird. Could it be a bug in my hacked-up version of EET? My only hacking was to merge parts EET v12 that work with BG2EE v2.5 with parts of EET v13. Was this a bug in EET v12? Why did this work in my last install? Maybe something to do with Transitions taking over the process?

Hm. Well, I'm going to simply delete the 2nd half of that script, and change the first trigger from HasDLC("SOD") to True(), and see if it starts SoD for me. I don't need that trigger, I know I have SoD in my game.

EDIT - that did the trick. I wonder why that happens. And, where is that script even from? I think it is BDSODTRN.BCS… which sounds like a vanilla BGEE script. Maybe EET or EBG1 needs to handle it differently… or maybe this is just something idiosyncratic about my install. 

Edited March 19 by subtledoctor

[subtledoctor]

OK, so Imoen/Sirene/Brandock/Neera/Breagar left the party. I removed all their gear beforehand - I have no idea what the EET/EBG1 scripts do with it and didn’t want to take chances. Imoen got poisoned and Breagar ran in the room - apparently he has been hanging out in the palace with me! We went to recruit more. I want to pick up Minsc and Dynaheir - again, for story and again, temporarily. And there at the Three Old Kegs I ran into Drake. Would be nice to take Drake along… but that would make six, and no thief in sight. Would I bring him to the crossing, and then immediately remove him in favor of Glint or someone? Should I forget him altogether and take Safana? 

But story-wise, Drake was kind of the black sheep of the family, and he likes hanging in skeezy bars… so maybe he has a history of being a thief, before his family circumstances led him to join the Order of the Radiant Heart? I specced him as a thief, with the Rake kit (Drake the Rake!) dualled at 5th level to a priest of Tyr. And, holy moly this is a S-tier build! He is specialized with longswords, daggers, clubs and crossbows, as well as both the shield-fighting and dual-wielding styles, and has the ‘dirty fighting’ feat and a bonus to melee thac0. Plus having enough Find Traps and Open Locks to get me through, and being a full-level single-class cleric! Just, wildly good. 

[subtledoctor]

I know I haven't posted much here, but I just finished SoD. Spent some time with Drake the Rake(/cleric) and he is indeed wildly awesome, sniping with crossbows and all the good crossbow ammo in SoD, and dual-wielding longsword+dagger, and also a functional single-class cleric. Also, Drake has great SoD content! There is an extra random encounter, and you meet some members of the Amnish Order of the Noble Heart, and they can join the coalition and act as an extra optional squad for use in the various Coalition Camp battles! Artemius_I did an excellent job with this one.

Anyway, I dropped for Glint after a bit. Glint is much more reasonably powered, and his spells with the Faiths & Powers sphere system are less battle-oriented. I had Jaheira and Khalid along for a bit, then took Voghiln toward the end. My party at the end of SoD was:

• Charname (fighter/druid)
• Sirene (paladin)
• Voghiln (fighter/mage)
• Glint (cleric/thief)
• Walahnan (mage)
• Neera (mage)

A bit crazy, in this run I was like "Hm, I've never taken Brandock the whole way through before, I'll include him!" and "I've never taken Neera the whole way through before, I'll include her!" and "I've never played with Walahnan before, I'll include him!" Lol, way too many mages.

SoD itself is... eh, the story is crazy. Like, the whole thing could be taken care of if Charname just doesn't go into the castle! That's bonkers. And by the time you get there, you already know what Hephernaan is up to. The story needs you to get into that room, but your whole motivation the whole time is to not go there! Also, the mechanism for opening the portal is weak. I have mentioned something like this elsewhere in relation to Sarevok and Amelysan: the mere spilling of blood should not do anything special. Look at Irenicus for an excellent example of how to use artifact-level magic: it takes weeks of experiments, a giant soul-stealing machine, lots of innocent victims as, effectively, reagents, several long rituals, and a separate artifact (the Tree of Life) that itself already has the power of a god. The idea that Sarevok/Hephernaan/Amelysan could just snap their fingers and suddenly your blood is a useful magical item? That's weak writing.

Also, Charname's status as a Bhaalspawn is poorly handled. It is not really known, but Caelar knows it perfectly well, and she shouts about it so everyone she talks to knows it. But the crossing at Boareskyr Bridge is supposed to be some kind of revelation. And then later, back in Baldur's Gate, it becomes public knowledge - as if it was not already? And, finally, the idea that the Hooded Man can cast a simple divination spell and determine that Caelar is or isn't a Bhaalspawn is weak. If you could find it out via a simple divination, then why don't some powerful people find all the Bhaalspawn before they become powerful, just round them up and Imprison them or something?

I think the whole main plot would be rewritten with a surprisingly small number of changes. Caelar's goal and motivation could be made much stronger with just a few modified dialogues. And the mechanism for opening the portal could be made more sensible. I need to think about the details, but it is definitely something I plan to address in a mod.

Meanwhile, the EET transition from SoD to BG2 is fantastic. You meet up with I/J/K/M/D, and the ambush scene happens, and then the BG2 intro movie, and then boom, you are in the dungeon and Imoen/Jaheira/Minsc are right there. It feels like a very fast continuation of your adventure - the transition from the ambush to Chateau Irenicus feels a bit like going from the Cloakwood Forest to the first level of the Cloakwood Mine. Which is perfect, because that is how it should feel. You just fight through some baddies, find some gear, keep adventuring... not yet aware that this transition is actually quite different.

The only fly in that ointment is that, just like last time I played EET, I started out in Irenicus' Dungeon with a huge amount of fatigue. The game scripts a time-jump of like 10 or 20 days, and somehow it keeps Charname awake the whole time. Does this happen to anyone else? I can code up a hotfix for it easily enough, but maybe it is something peculiar about my install? Is it because I am using an older version of EET?

[argent77]

17 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

The only fly in that ointment is that, just like last time I played EET, I started out in Irenicus' Dungeon with a huge amount of fatigue.

That has been fixed last year in one of the commits among many other issues. In general, EET has been greatly improved since the latest official release. By now I would always suggest to download and play the latest master branch version instead of the (outdated) release version.

[subtledoctor]

54 minutes ago, argent77 said:

That has been fixed last year in one of the commits among many other issues. In general, EET has been greatly improved since the latest official release. By now I would always suggest to download and play the latest master branch version instead of the (outdated) release version.

Well, I’m playing BG2EE v2.5 so I cannot use recent versions. Good to know that’s been fixed though, it means I can just implement a simple local fix for myself.