ahungry

Ahungry Tweaks (couple small ones - +APR balancing, remove backstab/timestop immunity from creatures) https://github.com/ahungry/ahungry_tweaks I'll be adding more as I think of them while playing through the mega-mod testing of my ahungry-deletefier.

Oh, and yes, scrolls are included in the culling (everything except ^(book|misc))

I'm working on a lot of play-testing (there is a lot to do...) and trying to choose either "purge it all, whitelist some items", or "purge explicitly" approach - I may just make it a user option during install (I've already broken up the store purge, creature purge, and item purge into 3 separate components). Currently "cleaning up" the mod vendor merchants is working how I would like (most the guys that appear with a huge inventory of +3 weapons outside FAI now have 1 to 3 weapons, vs 10+) - obviously this is "self inflicted" by installing all this with a megamod setup, but I like the variety! My plan right now during play testing is to note (via the mod's whitelist regex) any special quest items as I play through my megamod install with the deletefier disabled (it seems easier to record significant items as I go along, vs trying to find the gaps while I play with the mod). In early play-testing, I found a lot of early game quest items are weapons based (hull's sword, 2 daggers/rings) and I don't want to break all those quests (or any mod added ones). it also sucked to be unable to de-petrify Branwen, as Zeke lost his scroll as well However, a vast amount of mod additions do not follow any type of convention matching the original (sw1h, sw2h etc.) - but totally customized names, so I think after I map out all the quest items I come across, I will probably focus most my play testing on the "purge it all, skip quest significant items".

Thanks for the words of encouragement all! Right now I'm iterating on each .cre, .sto, .are file and doing (roughly): - If item name begins with "misc" or "book", do nothing (a lot of quest items are MISCxx, but definitely not all - Hull's sword is noticeably absent atm) - On creatures: Try to match common prefixes (sw1h) and replace with a basic item like sw1h04 (long sword) so that the impacted mob still has it's proficiency matched up - for scrolls, just delete - for potions, 'downgrade' to basic healing potion (so other potions like antidote etc. become rare - Might and Guile alchemy feat really becomes valuable here) - On stores/areas: Remove item entirely I wanted to try to make it more granular and just target special items, but that'd make the install insanely slow if I had to do nested lookups based on item name (for each item name, check it's attributes for lore value or proficiency level etc.). Maybe something I'll try in the future. I'm also curating a list of unconventional item names (mod added things, like "BARDIC.itm" or DSSW1HD.itm) and trying to match up/remove them. Likewise, I'll be adding the inverse - a list of quest items that should never be deleted.

I love mega-mods - thousands more items/npcs etc., however even in my not-so-megamod installs, I notice my pack ratting gets to ridiculous proportions (hundreds of items in my bag of holding I'll never use). In fact, the magical items become so plentiful, it feels more like I'm playing diablo 2 than AD&D. I'm also a fan of item randomiser and recently came across "low magic world" which was _almost_ what I would like (however that seems to reduce power of existing items - I still want those powerful items, I just don't want Thalantyr to have a list of 100 of them). With that said, this mod "ahungry deletefier" aims to go through stores, creatures, and areas, and delete (with a user specified percent) each item it comes across (in some cases, replacing with a basic item). As it's random and relies on all other mods already being installed, it should be installed last in the install order (or if you have mods you don't want affected, prior to those mods - caveat: no clue if it'd cause problems with subsequent mod installs trying to assume an item of some type is present on some target). I'm having a lot of fun playing with a >90% threshold - it makes it really special when an unidentified item drops off a monster (or is available in a shop - even the item shop mods with many rare items become exciting, as you never know what small handful of their large lists will be available). My intent is that at endgame, some characters in the party may still be using basic weapons/armor! (although a 1% drop rate may not be enough for that, I may have to go a magnitude higher in the precision). WARNING: This is alpha quality at best - it shouldn't break anything in a segfault manner (/knock on wood) but it's definitely possible some quest items could be missing (although I recently redid the code to work off a delete-list vs deleting it all and keeping a save-list). https://github.com/ahungry/ahungry_deletefier If anyone tries it and you notice some mod weapons/armor are being missed by these checks, please report here with their item names and I'll add in to the checks.

Mmm tacos Baldur's Gate is conceptually prone to cheese (whether its pre-laying a ton of traps/summons/buffing). Initially I disliked how Pillars of Eternity kept battles a clean slate (no pre-buff etc.), but from an anti-cheese POV, it makes a lot of sense. Baldur's Gate allows player thieves to disarm traps without consuming an action - it'd be a nice boost for enemies to be able to do the same (if an enemy thief is present with disarm traps, they just auto-cancel all your traps instantly). Likewise, every mage (of appropriate level) possible should have the AoE death spell memorized to instantly destroy any pre-summoned summons in their various contingencies. Ultimately, not-cheesing is always going to be up to the player and honor system - where do you draw the line? Ctrl+y enemy? CLUA Console some gold? Stay "in the rules" and exploit steal/resell glitch? Spam chat an npc so they stand still and die?

Update - post black pits I was able to have my characters successfully die as expected. I noticed during the campaign, I didn't seem to get any xp from monsters (and then each member got a flat 12k or so post campaign).

I'm about halfway through the fights in BP in BG, and I noticed that upon death, my "knocked out" characters are still fighting (and being hit by monsters). I'm not sure if that's a result of the mod, or something else in my mega-mod setup (in the past, I've hit snags where a character gets a permanent effect where they can't drop below 1 hp, which I've had to manually remove in EEKeeper). If you try to lose on a more vanilla BP in BG setup, are you able to? I believe plain Black Pits behavior would be to add the knocked out effect and make the enemies ignore the knocked out character. Post BP completion, I'll see if I can once again have characters die and maybe finish it up via the honor system for this go (just reload if any character gets to 1 hp).

What a topical link!

Thanks!

https://github.com/ahungry/ciopfs I recently worked on some performance boosts for my override/ directory, as a simple `ls` would take up to 2 seconds (130k files in said directory) when mounted on ciopfs. A native `ls` on the backing directory (not going through ciopfs) would take 0.4 seconds under ext4 (so, roughly 5x faster). With the caching/memoization I added to my ciopfs fork, I am at the 0.4 seconds *with* ciopfs - this shaves almost 2 seconds off my Quicksave time. Unfortunately, some ops like `ls -l` still take ~6 seconds under this ciopfs, while that takes about 1.5 seconds under ext4. I'm not sure if I can cache further, I think it's just the translation time to get the attr/xattr on 130k files. Let me know if you find a use for this!

I wanted to try this, but when I attempted to install a week or 2 ago, I got an error about "Could not install missing AR3300" - this was attempting to install after EET setup and before EET_end (actually pretty soon in my total mod list order). Was this fixed with the explicit EET support update? Or is it another mod causing issue?

I LOVE the idea of dropping weapon based proficiency in favor of static attributes one can spec into (it'd be a nice complement to go with M&G feat system). Since it's a "this is a game, not true D&D" - it already fits the mantra of other Scales of Balance features and could be a #2 option when picking to use the SoB proficiency system or not (use this new one instead of the SoB prof rebalancing). If there was a global HP increase to all PCs/mobs (x3?), something with larger scaling could even work without making all combat end too soon: Swift Striker - 1 pip = +0.5 APR (max 2.5 APR at 5 pips) Deadly Precision - 1 pip = 5% crit increase (max 25% crit at 5 pips) Nimble - 1 pip = 1 bonus to ac and thaco (max 5 ac/5 thaco) Super Tank - 1 pip = 5% physical resist (max 25% phys res) Shrug off Magic - 1 pip = 5% magic resist (max 25% magic res or save bonuses, +1 to each save category - if the magic resist component is installed) Keep the 4 weapon styles from SoB with shield bash/dual wield etc. You could still orient a character to go "all in" on something (maybe you have mod added gear and plan to have 5 base APR, or use Greater Whirlwind often, or the 100% crit HLA)

I've always had a tricky time getting sphere system mods to play nice with other mods (leaving may kits/classes in a state of no spells at all showing up), granted I haven't thoroughly tested/tried out any of the new combos (I think there are 5 or 6 sphere systems to choose from now). My last install used the first option iirc (and I had to uninstall it). I wonder if there could be an alternative to limiting spells that still integrated a sphere system in some way - something like "Cast spells belonging to your sphere at level * 1.5, cast spells not of your sphere at level * 0.5" - that way there wouldn't be any issues with invalid spell tables, but just "at cast" time checks on how effective the spell would be.

~EEUITWEAKS/EEUITWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #4040 // Spell Books -> Kilivitz's Classic Spellbooks: 4.0.1 When attempting to use the might and guile feat system appears to segfault when install order is LeUI -> EEUITweaks -> M&G, and then I load up a character and click on the Learn Feat ability. When attempting to install LeUI -> M&G -> EEUITweaks, this component will not install at all, with an error: ERROR Installing [Spell Books -> Kilivitz's Classic Spellbooks], rolling back to previous state Will uninstall 0 files for [eeuitweaks/eeuitweaks.tp2] component 4040. Uninstalled 0 files for [eeuitweaks/eeuitweaks.tp2] component 4040. ERROR: Failure("Unable to find Mage Book Lua code block") PLEASE zip/rar the file setup-eeuitweaks.debug along with UI.MENU and send via message to lefreut at https://www.gibberlings3.net/forums/topic/30832-ui-eeuitweaks-mod-collection-all-ees Using Language [English]

As always, thanks @subtledoctor!

Where in an install does Transitions typically fall? Towards the beginning or end?

lol

First off - this sounds great. Second - It'd be a really cool implementation to do similar to the old Final Fantasy 3 coliseum - wager an item to enter into a battle in a pit - if you win, you get a new item (based on what you wagered) - if you lose, you lose your item. Could add a lot of replayability if this concept was somehow incorporated into it (find/discover new gear by wagering old gear). Also - I really really dislike any parts of mods (SCS on Improved Spellhold for one, among others) that tries to remove gear and allow restoration later - as soon as you mix in other mods and aren't on a pure vanilla install, it no longer becomes a lossless transition, and certain gear (from various mods) gets permanently lost - whether it was in a custom bag the mod didn't know how to handle, or just coded in a way it didn't appear visible to the snapshotting scripts.

This depends on your circle of friends/community I think - I spent a lot more time in d2 than d1, and making characters just to try out specific builds was a huge time sink my friends and I would do for replayability (hammerdin, lightning sorc etc.). if you played in a community that didn't, and you yourself didn't - it could seem like that was the case. One might state that things changed from d1 to d2, however BG1 only came out 1 year after d1 and again, making special builds was a big reason to play bg1 (including gaming with the intent to be powerful vs RP, for myself at least). Even before d1, in 1995 was Star Wars CCG, and 4 or so years before that, MTG - both heavily lending themselves to "power gaming" or building optimal builds (decks) in my own adolescence - but again, it comes down to community - in a single player game, builds and min/max rarely matters - but as soon as you go multiplayer, things change big time due to the competitive nature of things.

https://github.com/BGforgeNet/bg2-tweaks-and-tricks/ has this for Perdue + Nester - it's just a slight recolor (I think Nester's dagger is light green, Perdue's short sword a purple hue) - it'd be nice to have a component that does it for many more items. Another approach could be to do similar to what the cdtweaks colorblind component does, but instead of adding an "o", "x" etc. in the corner of the item, maybe a "q" on the icon thumbnail to identify it as a quest item?

Some mod (SR or SRR) changed petrification to be an unbreakable hold on my current playthrough, so char isn't removed from party when it happens. You could make imprisonment like a permanent polymorph - but instead of a squirrel sprite, maybe the floating skull one? Using your latest idea, they could then roam with party and everything - apply the "min HP can't go below 1" status effect, and ensure their damage is set to 0?

Hah, amazing

I found out the hard way (accidentally letting steam verify file integrity) NOT to launch game from Steam, or keep it in the steam game dir location - it'll happily ruin your mod install to restore the original files. If you want achievements, I like the A7-Achievements mod + running game separate from Steam (basically, by copying out the entire game dir). Granted, if you enjoy steam achievements, what you say makes sense - just make sure not to do anything that triggers file integrity check/re-download of game from steam.

Going by the ol' PNP rules - arguably no enemies that aren't story driven (aka, random lich) should be able to even use it, based on a quick skim of the 2nd edition rules: " The imprisonment spell functions only if the subject creature's name and background are known. " So, while a story based people, like the Harpers, may know CHARNAME's actual name (beyond "Gorion's Ward") and background ("spawn of Bhaal from candlekeep, yadda yadda") the random lich you just stumble upon should never be able to cast it - given such a heavy RP connotation, to me, it doesn't even make sense in scope of the game, except for a scripted event, or requiring a pre-req, like an enemy successfully cast some diviniation spells on the character they are targeting to first "discover" this info (name/background) - where the player would be able to have said NPC protected from divination. https://adnd2e.fandom.com/wiki/Imprisonment From another source, I think combining some 1st ed and 2nd ed rules: "This incredibly powerful spell took a whole minute to cast, and could only be cast at opponents up to 30 ft (9.1 m) away. " https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Imprisonment So yea - I don't see how a random goober is ever supposed to be casting it in one combat round (6 seconds?) at charname (who may be known) or secondary chars (who most certainly aren't) as a standard combat staple - it'd have to be a ritualistic ceremony thing, or used by an enemy who can survive being beaten on for a minute of game time/combat rounds - even liches aren't going to live through 10 rounds of being hit and not doing anything but channeling one spell.