Delior

I believe this was deliberate on David's part based on this snippet from the SCS readme:

"As of v35, this tweak does not affect Sorcerers."

Hi Lefruet, I'm getting an error message when trying to install the autoroller component on top of your enhanced UIs (I tried it with the BG1EE and SOD skins).  That did not used to be an issue, and so I'm guessing it was something you changed in your ToF/SCS compatibility updates. The debug file is attached.  

SETUP-EEUITWEAKS.DEBUG

I second what Moggadeet said.  Beamdog gave themselves a very difficult task with SoD.  They were creating a game using an ancient engine even by 2016 standards.  They also had to create a midquel to a beloved series that had to try to stay faithful enough to fit in the saga and please fans of the OG games, as well create something "epic" enough to stand out on its own to create buzz and sales.  

I love the music, the environmental artwork, and most of the new NPCs.  Some of the encounters are a lot of fun tactically as well.  I do, however, believe that Beamdog made several unforced errors with the overall plot, especially the ending.  Jastey has done a lot of work to ameliorate some of those errors, thankfully.  

6 hours ago, squiros said:

why would anyone care what a voice actor wants or doesn't want?

Read Cam's post.  Your entire argument is legalistic in nature, whereas Cam focused on community norms.  They are NOT the same thing, although far too many people these days conflate them. 

I've been a practicing lawyer for nearly 20 years, and one thing I constantly tell my clients is 'never let your lawyer be your conscience." In other words, just because the law allows for something does not mean you should do it.  Your argument rests entirely on whether or not using AI to mimic voice actors is legally permissible.   That will be decided by the courts.  Cam's argument ignores the legal aspects entirely, and focuses instead on community norms that have kept the IE community going for 20+ years.  

I could get into philosophical discussions about how equating "legal" with "good" is a plague destroying communities all over the world, but that's a topic far beyond this community.  

Hi David, just a couple of minor notes for the SCS readme:

- There is no description for the component "Make Elemental Arrows like BG2."

- In the additional details (spoilers) section, your description for the BG1 Improved Final Battle component is missing a subheader, which makes it look like it is part of the description of the chapter 5 component.  

39 minutes ago, Lava said:

It was mentioned that Skills and Abilities have such component, but I think it required some other mod? But I may be wrong.

It requires Lefruet's enhanced UI for IWDEE.  

If 3.1 and 3.2 are the same issues I encountered and reported on the SCS forum (and they sound like they are), the issue was limited to arcane casters (I encountered the issues with both Xzar and Dynaheir).  You may want to try reproducing with an arcane caster.  

As a follow up, I made it to the Gnoll Fortress and encountered the same issue when recruiting Dynaheir.  So, whatever the issue is, it appears to be something relating to arcane casters.  Once again, the only way I could get the extra hit points and the customize ability to disappear was to select a class and kit for Dynaheir using the ability.  

I noticed a couple of other oddities.  When I recruited Minsc, the game gave him enough XP to level up to level 3, even though no one in my party was above level 2.  Also, Dynaheir had sleep assigned to her spellbook and she was able to memorize and cast it, which as an Invoker she should not be able to do.  

Just FYI, I got around to trying another installation with version 35.4 and this happened again.  Xzar was at level one with 14hp and the level up button was greyed out.  I wasn't going to use Xzar for long and so I decided to just use NI to reduce his hp to 4.  However, when reloading my save Xzar was 4/14 hp.  

I took a look at Xzar's CRE in Near Infinity to see if I could figure out what was going wrong and discovered that the 'customize" innate ability was still active. I reloaded the save, activated the ability and just selected Necromancer for Xzar.  The customize ability went away and so did Xzar's 10 extra hp, which caused him to promptly die since I had reduced his hp to 4 as mentioned above. That gave me a chuckle as Xzar certainly deserved such a fate.  

I then reloaded a save prior to recruiting Xzar and then leveled him up.  The 14hp was still there as was the customization ability (I confirmed no more level ups were available).  I used the ability but if I selected no change, then the ability stayed available as did the extra 10hp.  So, I activated the ability again, selected Necromancer as a kit and the ability and extra 10hp disappeared.  

The process for Imoen and Montaron seemed to work fine as described in the readme.  I leveled them up from zero to 1 and the customize ability disappeared as it should and nothing seemed amiss with their stats.  I don't know why it isn't working properly for Xzar on my install, but for now at least just using the customize ability to select Necromancer seemed to fix it.  

Yeah, I think a lot of people misread this post as a retirement announcement, such that Jastey was about to disappear as so many of the OG modders sadly have over the years.  I'm instead choosing to read this optimistically as "Jastey will spend less time maintaining other people's mods, and more time working on her own."  

That is an interesting comment, Morgoth. I appreciate that Lurker is actually playing the game.  I have noticed that a lot of people in this community share modlists without ever having completed a playthrough using said modlist.  I suspect, in fact, that there is an inverse correlation between the size of one's modlist and the likelihood of that person actually completing a full playthrough with that list. As just one example, look up Cahir's "EET Epic Run" on this site, where Cahir spent an inordinate amount of time researching and compiling his epic megamod list, only to admit years later that he never got around to actually playing it.  I don't mean that as a critique of Cahir - it's a trap many of us have fallen into, including me.  

After spending several weeks trying out various installations and developing a severe case of restartitis, I discovered that I was spending far more time playing Project Infinity rather than Baldur's Gate.  I realized that if I wanted to actually play the game, I had to drastically trim down my list of mods in order to minimize the amount of bugs and other immersion-breaking oddities that were making me constantly quit and restart.  

If you enjoy creating "epic" megamod installation lists and making them work, that's fine, as long as you are up front about the fact that you haven't actually played the game all the way from keep to throne using that list before you choose to share that list with other players.  

Did you already try Angel's fix from this thread?

The blank spells in BG2EE character creation for the Warlock are intentional.  It is so that the Warlock has enough spell slots for the "Invocations" the kit uses.  

That is possible.  Unfortunately, I did not keep that installation and so I can't reload to test it under those exact conditions.  I would suggest you put in a pin in this one for now instead of trying to reproduce it, unless others report similar issues.  

I believe so.  I recall hitting the level up button and choosing a sling proficiency for Xzar.  I noticed the 14hp after that.  I am not aware of a way not to finish leveling properly after hitting the level up button, but it is possible that I did something to mess up the applicable script.  

I played through to the beginning of Chapter 1 and used the NPC customization for Imoen, Montaron and Xzar.  Everything seemed to work as intended, except that for some reason Xzar ended up with 14 hit points at level one, when he should only have 4.  I've attached my WeiDU log. 

WeiDU.log

I might be missing it somewhere, but I don't see a description of the "Make elemental arrows Like BG2" component in the readme. 

46 minutes ago, jmerry said:

As of the current patch of the EE, the kit lists have been padded with dummy kits so that if you install the same kits in the same order on both BGEE and BG2EE, they'll have the same ID number and a character with a mod kit will import properly.

The problem arises when you install a BG2-only mod that comes with new kit (as many of Lava's mods do just as one example), which makes it difficult to get the kits added in the same order.  

My favorite improved encounter component is the bandit camp as it feels a lot more like what would actually happen in that situation (as opposed to vanilla where the various groups just sit around waiting patiently for you to come and kill them), but I like the kobolds as well.  One of the things I love most about SCS is how modular and customizable it is such that we can all tweak it to fit our own unique playstyles.  

So, let's say for example that I have installed a new kit added by one of the many kitpacks out there.  I play through BG1 with the new kit, and then upon importing my character to BG2, I discover that my character has the wrong kit.  As I understand it, this usually happens because BG2 will not always assign new kits the same id number as BG1.  Would the proper procedure in that case be to look at your BG2 override folder to find the proper kit.ids for the mod-added kit you want and use AddKit to assign the proper kit to your imported character?

13 hours ago, boof said:

I understand some people like to play "naturally" and go to Nashkel Mines at level 1, but you installed a difficulty mod of your own volition, and should adjust your play accordingly. Not ask for things to be nerfed.

I mostly agree with this.  If you want to rush Nashkel at level 1 (which admittedly the game pushes you to do), then don't install Improved Kobolds.  If you want the gold and Ashideena early, don't install Improved Bassilus encounter. If you install them, plan and play accordingly.    

My specific complaint has to do with the interaction of Potions for NPCs and the relocated parties of assassins.  I like both of these components, but I dislike how it forces me to deal with backstabbing thieves with invisibility potions so early in the game. I don't like rushing the basilisks or using other experience exploits, and so I'm typically around level 3-4 after clearing Nashkel, which is when the roaming assassins can randomly appear. 

At this stage in the game, unless you make side trips to tombs or Sil's cave, you should have only one invisibility potion.  I don't know how many invisibility potions SCS grants the assassins, but I'm fairly sure it is more than one.  So, what are my options for countering invisibility? Again, I am level 3-4 so my spell slots are limited.  I can use Glitterdust, which I find unreliable at best. I might have Detect Invisibility, but that only works once, and there goes my level 2 spell slots.  I don't have Invisibility Purge yet.  So, my only real options are (i) roll an Inquisitor, (ii) prioritize Detect Illusions on a thief (over detect traps and lockpicking), or (iii) don't install the components.  I typically choose not to install the roaming assassins component, but I wish I could because I like that component.  What I would love is an .ini option to limit the number of invisibility potions to one (the same amount a player typically has at that level) so that Detect Invisibility would be a reliable counter.  

1 hour ago, DavidW said:

Listing the level increase given to Bassilus in the readme seems a good idea. I'm not especially inclined to reduce it, though; I haven't had substantial feedback to that effect and he's been level 12 pretty much the whole duration of SCS.

I like the improved encounter as is - as I noted in my initial response to Hazzy, I've always felt like Bassilus should be a very difficult encounter given the substantial gold bounty offered for him.  

1 hour ago, DavidW said:

I normally assume in SCS that anybody attacking an adventuring party knows they're in for the fight of their lives and will pull out the stops to win, and worry about resource replacement later. (And adventurers usually have lots of good loot to compensate.)

I don't quibble at all with that design choice, David, but rather with the resources you make available to those assassins as compared to a player character around the time the ambush can occur.  A level 3 CHARNAME that has just cleared Nashkel has likely encountered a single instance of an invisibility potion (in Jaheira's starting inventory). I would thus say it is fair to start them off invisible (or cheat a bit to have them prebuff with HiS), and give them one invisibility potion to use as well if that component is installed.  If you give them access to more portions than that, then IMO you are giving them access to more resources than a typicaly player has, even if pulling out all the stops.  

Hazzy: 

I think we all have an experience like that the first time we dial up the difficulty with SCS.  For me, it was Silke.  I had never had a problem with that fight before, and was used to doing it on my first trip to Beregost.  Then, with SCS installed Silke threw up all sorts of protections, sequencers, and wiped most of my party before killing my main character with a Chromatic Orb petrification.  Before that, I had no idea Silke was a level 10 Bard.  On vanilla, she usually never even got a spell off before being killed.  And that's the point: Vanilla and lower SCS difficulties don't let spellcasters use all the tools available to them - higher SCS difficulties does give them that, along with all that entails.  Thus, for Bassilus, a "slight" increase in level means he has higher-level spells to throw at you.  Keep in mind that the rewards for killing Bassilus are huge (lots of gold and an awesome warhammer), and so the fight should be challenging.  

A smoother difficulty curve would be nice, but it's hard to account for everyone's playstyle and order of completing quests/maps.  So, you have a few options available to you to deal with difficulty spikes.  You can lower the difficulty slider for a fight that is proving too difficult, or you can fine-tine the difficulty for particular enemies.  You can also delay the encounter until you are at a higher level.  People who play with SCS on high difficulties often use experience exploits like rushing the basilisks to get to higher levels quickly because low-level combat against spellcasters with SCS is really painful at low levels because you just don't have the tools to fight back yet.  

One other point to warn you about (spoiler warning if you care): The redeployed parties of assassins are extremely deadly at higher difficulties if you have "Potions for NPCs" installed.  Far too deadly IMO - I don't know how many invisibility potions SCS gives them, but the thieves in the party pop them like candy and proceed to chunk your squishiest party members with abandon.  It is my biggest pet peeve with SCS because level 3 is far too low level to expect most parties to have adequate means of detecting/countering invisibility.  You have to roll an Inquisitor or rush Detect Invisibility on a thief to do that, and who wants to prioritize detect invisibility over traps, locks or backstabbing in early BG1? Yes, you might have Detect Invisibility or Invisibility Purge, but that only helps so much when the thieves just pop another invisibility potion and you have limited spell slots.  I also don't like that behavior because SCS is supposed to play fair, but as a player I would never waste multiple invisibility potions in one encounter like those assassins do - they are far too rare in the game for that.  [rant over]

I guess someone at Beamdog decided that Durlag's just had one too many traps.