DavidW

@JabberwockI can reproduce the Planetar problem; it's fixed locally. Thanks for spotting it.

@AngelIt looks as if some previous mod in your install order has done something odd to msectype.2da, and WEIDU's ADD_SECTYPE function is choking on it. You have too many mods for me to guess which; could you post msectype.2da, and also do a change-log on it?

Thoughtful and helpful, thanks. I'll consider (and see if I can reproduce that Planetar).

Be warned: given how that bug works, you’ll need to go back to a save before you entered Torgal’s level of the keep.

I am reasonably confident that v33 will fix a bunch of v32 bugs without breaking anything in your current game. But I admit I can't be sure. It's a matter of relative risk preferences.

Your save game is probably fine (no promises!). Uninstall/reinstall sounds safest.

Just to note: this only applies globally. That is: once you've installed *all* of your mods, you can remove the folders. You can't safely remove the folders of the mods you've installed and then install other mods: for compatibility reasons, some mods look at each others' folders.

In fairness, it's easy to see why people get this impression unless they're deeply familiar with SR. The version on G3's main webpage is still v3; the de facto current version is still called a beta.

FWIW, the reason you do is (i) there was an unused 'yellow dragon scales' item in the vanilla game, so it seemed natural to make use of it; (ii) I didn't like the idea that you only got a reward if you didn't spare the dragon. More generally, thanks for the kind words! (And I'd forgotten that Nizi doesn't drop scales.)

A lot of this is personal taste and judgement, of course :my reading of chromatic dragons lets pride, and an unwillingness to believe that they are more powerful than any mere primate, figure in much more strongly as motivation; I also don't have a problem with red dragons deciding to sit back and let 'lesser' dragons do their work for them. And SCS's readme is explicit that the Abazigal component makes more changes than other components. There are a couple of factual issues, though: 1) There is in-game mention of the dragons. Throne of Bhaal is pretty thin on background generally, but if you ask the bartender in Amkethran about Abazigal, you're told If you talk to one of the townswomen, you can get this comment: And if you buy drinks at the tavern you can get this rumor (this is less conclusive, to be sure): Those vanilla-game references to an "army of dragons" (which the actual enclave doesn't really provide) were the starting point for that component - I didn't invent the idea. 2) Not all dragons in the vanilla game drop scales - fewer than half of them do. Firkraag, Irenicus's dragon, the shadow dragon, and Abazigal all do. But Fll'yessitat doesn't; Saladrex doesn't; the green dragon in Watcher's Keep doesn't; Draconis doesn't; as you say, Adalon doesn't. (And the Hell dragon doesn't, but arguably that's more a figment or demonic presence, so perhaps it doesn't count.)

I appreciate the feedback (genuinely). Let me say a little about my design thoughts for that component (albeit it was ten years or so ago!) The starting point is that Abazigal's lair is supposed to host 'an army of dragons'. So I wanted to up the dragon representation. And dragons are fiddly: they need large areas to fight in, and the entrance to the lair is cool. So I wanted an excuse to use that area for one of the new fights. In terms of actual fight design (this being a tactical mod, ultimately), I was running with two concepts: one was a yellow dragon (as yet unused, but in the game files) who was also an archmage; one was a fight with a significant group of dragons. Since you like Anadramatis anyway, I'll concentrate on the latter. Tactically, I'm reasonably happy with it: a sequential fight against dragons hasn't been tried (Ascension Abazigal is a simultaneous fight) and feedback has been good. The reason for not having all the dragons fight simultaneously is practical - they would hurt each other with their breath weapons, and it's too difficult to script so they don't breathe on each other. But I don't find the in-world account implausible- a stronger dragon might well force a weaker dragon to fight in its stead, in the hope of not having to injure itself in the first place. I'd be interested in hearing more about why you think the dialogs are 'weird'. I've had occasional comments on a similar line before, but no details. I did an editing pass over those dialogs before releasing v32 and tweaked them (they were perhaps a little playful). Mostly speaking, dropping powerful items goes against SCS design principles (it contributes to the arms race where you get cooler stuff from fighting more powerful foes) but I can see a case for green dragon scales - I'll consider it. The rope acquisition is definitely the weakest part of the component - it's fairly transparently an excuse to send the party back to Amkethran, and it's a bit implausible that a party as powerful as ToB-<CHARNAME> is stymied by something so mundane. The only thing I'd say in my defense is that it's thematically in keeping with the vanilla lair. ("We can't hold our breath long enough! … oh, we've got some magic to help with that... but we're getting lost in the tunnels! If only we had a rope! … Oh, this monk gave some to us). It's pretty ridiculous, one of the weaker parts of ToB. There's a case for doing some slightly more systematic level redesign... but now we're well out of scope for SCS.

Assuming you intend a refresh rate slow enough that you don't get a spell back during a battle, it doesn't really matter. The NPCs could go on using the original spells, while the player uses the clones. You'd have to pay a lot of attention to opcode 206/318/324 issues, but I guess you're used to that issue already.

It depends on the difficulty setting and your playstyle. If you're on INSANE, that's probably right. It is a very long time since I played the chess battle myself, but I don't recall needing to metagame or use the zillions-of-fireball tricks. But perhaps something has shifted that makes it harder; I'll have a look. (And I don't play on INSANE myself - more like HARDCORE).

No promises, but probably.

Yes. See the readme for details.

I've just glanced through the code of NPC Strongholds (a mod I'm not familiar with). My tentative guess is that it isn't modifying very much that SCS modifies, and you ought to be able to install them in either order without bugs. (But it's only a guess - I haven't done an install check, much less any playtesting). In general, the reason to install SCS last is that it can react to other mods' content, usually by giving smart AI to them. That applies here too - a few creatures in NPC strongholds use vanilla-game scripts, which SCS notices and uses as a cue to upgrade the AI of those creatures. So I'd lean towards saying 'install SCS last'. But it is not a big deal at all.

I'm sad to say this, but I wouldn't recommend WoP right now. There are a lot of serious bugs being reported (there have been since EE, really). It needs some sustained love; it'll get it when I have a chance.

I could do an ini override if there's demand. But yes, seriously broken! There are other mods that make HLAs innate and don't restrict to 1/day. SCS actually pays attention to that setting, so if you install that mod then enemy liches (etc) will also get to do it. Turnabout is fair play... (Fun SCS testing/debugging story: I once had someone complain that SCS liches were just permanently casting timestop and never letting them get an action in. It turns out that player had installed a mod where spells you cast returned to your memorized spell list after a few rounds. Liches were benefitting from this too! I suggested that I should probably let the lich pause for a round after, say, the thirtieth timestop to let the damage from its fifty-odd Horrid Wiltings and Dragon Breaths come in, before going around again if there were any survivors...)

Oh, great. Let me add that to the official description.

Human-readability of the file, basically. If you compile at install time, you can tweak or debug just by editing the text file; if you precompile, editing the script requires you to open it in. Ear Infinity or similar. Also, if you want to include new text strings, compiling at install time is pretty much required.

Let me know how it goes - I don’t use hot keys at all myself so I don’t have much experience of this aspect of the EE. I actually suspect that some of the higher level mage spells may be unavailable.

It should be fixed in v33 (now out).

Fair enough! But if you want the low-tech way to implement my suggestion: - open the script in near infinity - copy-paste it into a textfile, and name it myscript.baf, and put it in mymod/myscripts - include COMPILE "mymod/myscripts/myscript.baf" in your weidu I in turn find Git completely incomprehensible, so I have no idea whether that's easier or harder than persuading git to handle baf files correctly.

I'm not sure what you mean. If you download and run the Windows executable, it includes setup-iwdification.exe, same as for any other mod.

What is an example of an HLA that you ought to be able to take multiple times but only get to take once?