SConrad

You're very welcome! Congrats on the move and well done to all involved—seems like everything went off without a hitch. It's awesome to see the community still thriving.

? I thought Id stop by to give some context. SHS and G3 are both currently hosted on the same server, provided by the German hosting company Hetzner. They have a program that reuses servers at heavily discounted rates. The upside for us is that SHS/G3 runs on a beast of a machine, more than capable of running both sites when working, for a total of $40/month. The downside is that, well, you get what you pay for. Because the hardware is recycled, it is unreliable at times. If I had time to jump on issues when they occurred, it would be way less of a problem. But due to work, it sometimes takes days or even weeks before Im able to get to it. During the most recent downtime (caused by a failing hard drivethe most common reason when the server goes down), the G3 admins contacted me to say theyd like to move G3 off the server. They have an alternative. In their position, Id 100% have done the same thing. And personally, while Ive been happy to host G3 for several years now, I prefer to reduce some of the stress I feel when theres an issue and I cant do anything about it. Knowing that one of the sites will be unaffected helps. SHS will continue to be hosted on the current server until there is another viable option. Theres no alternative that I know of that wont cost $150-200+. The difference between SHS and G3 is the size of the mods in the catalogue and bandwidth usage. Its not as bad as it used to be, but SHS still uses 600-800 GB of data traffic per month. Finally, a note on donations. SHS has long accepted one-off donations and has ads on the download page for each mod. While the contributions from both of these income streams have been appreciated, they have at best paid for half of the overall costs. A Patreon is a great idea that Ill think about, and I encourage the G3 folks to think about it as well.

For those curious, khayman and I decided to whip up a site for Skyrim alchemy ingredients. Please have a look and let us know what you think!

Spellhold Studios This year, thanks to some generous donations, SHS has decided to host a small competition for 12 Days. The prize? Digital copies of all Infinity Engine games. To enter, write a review of a mod you've recently tried. The best review wins digital copies of all Infinity Engine games--that is, Icewind Dale, Icewind Dale II, Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II SoA/ToB and Planescape: Torment. All entries also go into a draw to win an Infinity Engine game of your choice. Five such games will be awarded, and you can enter with as many reviews as you can write! You can check out the rules and how to enter here!

Spellhold Studios Innershade v4 has been released, with a new Polish translation. Related Links Download Forum Website

Spellhold Studios MILES NPC MOD RECIPE 1 half-elf NPC 1 thief class with default kit 1 3/4 cups nature paranoia 1 moose encounter, fresh in memory Salt 1 tsp tough-love 1/2 cup Athkatlan origin 6 servings of crude/inappropriate jokes 1 PC (and party, if applicable), recently escaped Add NPC to mixing bowl along with class, Athkatlan origin, and tough-love. When mixed appropriately, mixture will appear shifty. Fill pan with nature paranoia and heat until nearly all discretion evaporates, leaving the paranoia concentrated. Transfer NPC mixture to pan and let sit for five minutes, stirring occasionally. Slowly add moose encounter (adding too quickly will make mixture highly volatile) while stirring. Pour over six servings of jokes. Finally, add PC and party. Mod is finished as soon as banters and interjections begin appearing on the crust. Season with player-initiated dialogue and salt to taste. Best enjoyed in the city. ** Side effects of consumption include quick bouts of giggles and difficulties with breathing. Consult your doctor before cooking, as fumes from nature paranoia may cause an irrational fear of squirrels. For free samples, click HERE to go to the mod page on the website, and click HERE to go to the mod forum!

Spellhold Studios The BP-BGT Worldmap mod replaces the in-game worldmap with a new, larger rendition. It is especially useful for mega-modifications (BGT, TDD, SOS, CtB, TS, DSotSC, NTotSC, SoBH, Drizzt Saga...). The user has the option of installing one of two worldmap sizes and the mod includes a full set of coloured map icons. The mod also includes a saved-game converter for updating your current saved games to use the new worldmap. Summary of what is new in version 8: Many bugs have been fixed, including the bug where it would take 20 hours to travel from Waukeen's Promenade to another part of Athkatla. The mod has been split into several smaller parts. Certain bulky files are now downloaded separately. Some compatibility issues with other mods have been resolved. The content has been slightly tweaked. Among other things it is no longer possible to travel to the Cloakwood mines from the Ankheg Farm area when "Revised Travel Times and Area Visibility" is used. Relevant links Download Website Readme Forum

Spellhold Studios The following mods have been updated: Classic Adventures has been updated to Version .53 aTweaks has been updated to Version 3.30 Innershade has been updated to Version 3 Stay tuned over the next few weeks for further updates!

Spellhold Studios Lava Del'Vortel has released the next mod in his "Colours of Infinity" series, entitled "Innershade". "Follow a path between the trees to find a very new village to visit: the village of Innershade. It's been having some problems lately: some people disappeared, and the attacker was never seen. You must stop the guilty party, if you can. Solving the problem may be not enough; getting rid of the attacker is only one of the ways to handle this. The second is understanding the motives and past that became a great burden. In the end, you may have to become a judge of sorts. In the village, you will also find some minor problems, and even a little affair. Meet Eva, a female blacksmith with a really explosive character. Listen to Li'l Bud's tales about heroes and villains. If you are a bard, maybe you will learn a new skill from a not-too-kind minstrel. Don't forget to visit Granny Bunny, a really nice and kind elderly lady, who will tell you some stories from her past. What else can she offer? Hot tea with some jam, homemade biscuits, and a warm smile." Related links: Download link Forum link Website link

Spellhold Studios Tales of the Deep Gardens is a quest mod that adds a brand new adventure including new areas, people, music, spells and items. It will allow you to visit a new world called the Deep Gardens - a mysterious underground land where the Colours, which are strange essence-like objects, rule the everyday life of the dreamlike village. Here are the changes in v5: * French translation by Lothringen. * Additional way to kill Silver Monument. * Fixed Yellow Mace. * Fixed music scripts. * Text correction. * Colour Links correction. Related links: Download link Forum link Website link

Spellhold Studios Version 2 of the Mazzy Friendship has been released, with restructured code and several bug- and typo-fixes! It has also been TRAified for ease of translation. The Mazzy Friendship adds a series of dialogues for an eligible PC, in which you can discover more about and befriend the valiant halfling. Mazzy is not the most talkative woman in the world, but she definitely has her opinions, and will voice them if she feels it appropriate--similarly if she has questions she will not be afraid to ask. There are 16 dialogues throughout the course of SoA & ToB. Related links: Download Forum Website Readme

Spellhold Studios The release for Day 3 of SHS' Twelve Days of Christmas is a new version of ghostdog's PS:T UI mod! The PS:T UI Mod now supports ALL resolutions and also offers bigger fonts for most language versions. The bigger fonts are 100% better than the ones in the previous versions of the mod. The mod has been tested for most standard resolutions up to 1920x1080 but really there's no reason why it shouldn't work for any given resolution, even custom ones. Nevertheless, let me know if it works for you, especially with some notebook/laptop resolutions. A video demonstration of the mod in action can be found ! Related links: Download Forum Screenshots Website

Spellhold Studios As part of SHS' Twelve Days of Christmas, Lava DelVortel has released v4 of his quest mod, Tales of the Deep Gardens! Tales of the Deep Gardens allows players to travel through a new land, deep under Faerun; a realm of mystery, dream, Colourful Essences and riddles. Talk to people who may not even see you, try to find the answers to obscure riddles, fight with Living Colours and gather 10 Colours to leave the Gardens. But remember, Dreamer, that this place is something more than just a chain of caves... It may be a Dream you'll not want to wake up from... V4 includes a number of fixes, some newly voiced lines and improved compatibility with Sword Coast Stratagems II! Related links: Download link Forum link Website link

Spellhold Studios On this, the first day of SHS' Twelve Days of Christmas, we are releasing the next version of Classic Adventures! Beside bug fixes, Version .51 includes 2 other mods; Exnem Items and Infinity Animations. Exnem Items is a unbalanced, overpowered items mini-mod. Items included give you over -20 AC, high stats, incredible weapons and spells. It is a useful mod for those that like cheesy god-level powers or those needed to pump up their character. Don't use if you don't like +6 weapons for level 1 characters. Inifinity Items is a new mod that allows modders to add more creature animations to a BG2 game. This mod has been changed for the CA mod and is not compatible with other mods (not that a total conversion would be anyways). Animation slots used here are not approved by the authors of IA and probably never will be. It is only for our needs to add in IWD/IWD2/PST and some new NWN creature animations to the CA storyline. Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! Related links: Download link Forum link Website link

Spellhold Studios After some hard work on Miloch's part, Aurora's Shoes and Boots has been released. Packed with much more content than originally envisioned, Aurora's Shoes and Boots is definitely a mod worth checking out! Related links: Download link Forum link Readme link Website link

Thanks. The domain expired and I guess somebody with not-so-noble intentions re-registered it. Such a shame.

A sad, sad day. David Eddings' were the first real fantasy books I ever read, and I've read them many times since. I'm actually re-reading them right now. While his work never will be the best books I've ever seen, they've always been a great source of entertainment. The Belgariad and Mallorean series will always have a special place in my heart.

Not sure if that's a good idea. The IE modding community has had its fair share of hissy fits, with users deleting their accounts only to come back a week later to create it anew. In most of those cases, they've been assigned new ids when re-registering, so all of their old PMs would be "orphaned." I know I probably have a good hundred or so of PMs from members who subsequently deleted their accounts on SHS, as we historically deleted any member on their request. I seem to recall Cam doing the same over here. I would also really, really strongly discourage G3 admins from using subqueries in a DELETE query on a production database--unless they know exactly what they're doing. Bad Things Will Happen™. In any case, none of this seems to have changed anything as the PMs still are in everybody's inboxes.

No, but don't blame that on IPB. You need a foreign key for ON DELETE * to work, and in MySQL, foreign keys are only allowed on InnoDB tables. Because of several reasons--including compatibility concerns--IPB (and numerous other software) ships with MyISAM as the default engine, where foreign keys aren't allowed.

You guys might also want to delete the PMs that already have been sent--they're still doing damage as they are still in everybody's PM inboxes. Use these SQL queries: DELETE FROM `ibf_message_topics` WHERE `mt_from_id` = 12345; DELETE FROM `ibf_message_text` WHERE `msg_author_id` = 12345; ...where "12345" is the id of the member in question. Since you've already deleted the members, you'll have to go into the database and fetch the member id unless you've saved it somewhere. The queries above also assumes the table prefix is "ibf_," which is the default. Be careful with the queries, though. Typos or wrong implementation can cause every single PM in the database to be erased.

Spellhold Studios PC Soundsets adds 30 completely new and original soundsets to the game, which you can use for your PC. The soundsets are all written and recorded by members of the modding community. PC Soundsets is not a WeiDU mod, and can be installed before or after any other mod, without any compatibility issues (and you can of course uninstall at any time). For Windows users, the mod comes with a useful installer, which automatically downloads and installs the soundsets you choose. Version 2 adds 8 new soundsets (3 female and 5 male) to complement the original 22. The OSX/Linux version also includes a Windows batch script in case you have problems with or don't want to use the installer. Related links: Download link Soundset samples Readme Mod website Mod forum

Spellhold Studios Iylos is a ToB-only NPC from Amkethran who will join you in Saradush, if you will let him. A serious and angry man at first glance, Iylos has an ironic, slightly twisted sense of humour which doesn't exactly fit with one's general idea of a monk. He has 2-3 banters with each NPC, interjections, a developed friendship track as well as several scenery dialogues and an extensive PID menu which includes a chatpack and flirtpack, all of which are optional in the install. He is voiced by Bob 'TheWizard' Dupois, and has crossmod banters with many mod NPCs, which are included in the Crossmod Banter Pack. V2 has been almost completely recoded, with a number of bugs fixed and extensive testing, as well as several new options in the PID. Related Links: Download link Readme Mod website Mod forum Frequently Asked Questions Information Thread

Spellhold Studios SHS is proud to welcome Ninde NPC, a romanceable female necromancer! Lady Ninde Amblecrown; once Waterdeep's most alluring young ingenue, now a hunted woman with a tongue like a guillotine, formidable magical skill and a matching ego. Will you befriend her? Grow to love her? Will you even be able to bring yourself to tolerate her? Her lavish upbringing has perhaps left Ninde with a slightly bloated sense of entitlement that doesn't exactly suit her to adventure, and certain events of her past darkened her temperament. That's not to say Ninde doesn't appreciate life's more earthy pleasures - men, mead and magic are her self-confessed vices, and 'being poor, seal-clubbing, and chastity' the only things she isn't good at. Although perhaps she exaggerates slightly, there. She will certainly prove herself a wily, capable and (hopefully) entertaining companion, whether trying to bed Valygar or encouraging <CHARNAME> to take a little walk on the wild side. If you're lucky, you may even see a more serious side of the vivacious elf. Whether Ninde is truly a woman altered beyond repair by the blackening tinct of her past, or the proverbial tart with a heart – well, that's for you to decide. Related links: Mod website Mod forum Int roduction FAQ

Spellhold Studios SHS is proud to welcome the Hidden Kits mod by Zyraen! This mod introduces a variety of Hidden Kits that are made available under certain conditions. They are obtainable by dual-classing from either a Fighter, Mage or Cleric. Apart from a few standard advantages and disadvantages within the new kit itself, largest gain with Hidden Kits is the ability to increase your inactive class by one level every time you level up. This advantage grants players the enjoyment of being able to level up what is effectively a multi-class character at about the rate of a single-class character. Some kits will also work for certain NPCs, after completing specific in-game quests. This mod has already been released as a public beta, and is available for download from the SHS Download Center. Related links: Download link Mod website Mod forum

Spellhold Studios Nathaniel Aplin-Fletcher is a former officer of the Flaming Fist in Baldur's Gate, and was a witness to the devastation that the PC's half-brother Sarevok wrought in the city. As a result of those events, he left the guards' employment with several friends and has been travelling since. Though he is a skilled fighter, Nathaniel suffers from bouts of self-doubt, perhaps partially due to his lack of robustness. For some players he can become a loyal companion, relying on him or her in times of crisis and in turn offering his support. For the right male character, a friendship can develop into something more. Version 4.2 contains several major bugfixes from previous versions. Related links: Download link Readme Mod website Mod forum