Zamael

Ay-up, that would be Old Jed. The problem is in our knowledge.

I forget how that one works into the plot, but doesn't it give you some useful information?

Yeah, it lets you know the demon's true name to control the armor he's inhabiting. The only way to get the armor, at least without dying and unleashing a powerful killing machine to the rest of the party.

I'll look into it, it's probably a good idea to keep it as a spell or make some special scrolls.

The ideal solution would be to do some arrangements in the plot itself to change it, or switch the spell to something more appropriate or something, but that's probably asking too much as long as you're a one-man team.

So there are a few spells in IWD1 that aren't in IWD2, which are probably going to be removed by this project. I'm not going to miss them, really, but I'm concerned about one of those spells, mainly Contact Other Plane, because at one point in HoW, it's essential in acquiring a powerful armor. How are you going to resolve this matter?

Shadows curse me, occasionally. Far less than they used to in the original, but still. Also blunt weapons work relatively well, in case you get stuck. Not well enough, though: I can still remember how well maces and axes used to crush undead in Diablo.

I'm working on the XP balancing. It's very easy to overdo it. It's also kind of odd to get a lot of XP from killing skeletons. The IWD2 approach was to send horde after horde of low levels things for you to kill and do most of the XP pumping through quest rewards. At least that's what it seems like.

 

I have to choices: pump up the XP reward for quests or pump up the per creature XP (but keep the rest spawns low XP to avoid easy exploiting). I have to do one or the other, or maybe a little of both.

There should be a massive increase to the quest rewards: I agree that the original 13k I got from Kresselack is a bit too much now that my bunch gets levels faster, but 700 is nothing short of an insult for all the hard work and slaughter my team went through. Somewhere in between would be good, maybe 9k or something, and a similar approach to the other quests.

As for the creatures, the experience I get from them is a bit too small as well. The 600 of imbued wights is just about right, but mummies and Myrkul's Sending give way too little. As for their toughness, it should be reduced, and a lot.

The other odd thing I'm noticing is that the monsters in IWD2 seem to have a longer range of awareness. I'm not sure if this is because "random walk" is letting them walk further or because they can see the PC's from further away. I just noticed that I get swarmed from time to time in places I don't expect to.

I noticed this too. It seemed for me like they would hear the sounds of fighting from afar: They'd be like "Hey, it sounds like my buddies over there, that I can't exactly see, are facing with some badass adventures! Better go and help!". As long as I don't engage in combat, however, I'm left relatively alone.

One other thing, though: There would still seem to be a lore value on some items. I don't recall how this was in IWD2, but shouldn't lore be made obsolete with all those new skills and stuff?

I'd love to help, but I can't do programming: Beta testing and hopefully helpful advice and feedback is just about as far as my abilities can stretch. Sorry.

For the record, if this thing was playable to the finish, Arundel working and all, I'd've beaten it at least twice by now.

No pressure, take your time, etcetera. It's not like I'm bored out of my skull or anything.

Excellent! Thanks for playing through so far! I haven't yet gotten through the vale. I think the early creatures are a bit easy.

Oh, well that explains your opinion about difficulty: I thought it was kinda easy as well. A lot less goblins at the Kuldahar pass, for instance. Could be because I hadn't reached for level 2 just yet back then.

Making IWD2 still playable is going to need some work, and I think I'll put this off until everything else is done. For now, you can do two installs (if you have the spare disk space). I'll have to see how BG1tutu did this.

It'll be a lot of work, sure: Your work is still far from what BG1Tutu was, but I'm confident this will have changed in the end.

I agree with you completely about the opening splash and music. I'd love to get rid of that (never liked it). Which parts do you think are too IWD2-ish in general? Do you mean the style of the buttons in the user interface? Any suggestions you have for this I think would be great. It wouldn't be too hard to get some of this over. Most of the major things can't change (like you'll still have feat buttons and the weapon swapping will work the same way, these are the things I actually like).

Well, I reckon that if you could change the colour scheme to fit somewhat the original, then I'd be fairly satisfied. I always hated the silvery-greenish outlook of IWD2, while IWD1's brown fit in just about perfectly.

Thanks again for the excellent feedback! I'll try to get my party further along into the vale's dungeon.

You're welcome. I'll be able to post some more as soon as you can fix Arundel, but until that, I'm pretty much stuck here. Edit: Although I guess I could Dalekeep myself about million more xp and go exploring HoW. Might do that later.

Well, to my experience, the game works just fine - apart from Old Jed, of course - at least up until the second level of the Vale of Shadows's main dungeon, where I am right now. The only actual gameplay problem I have is that I level up a bit too slow right now: I'm about two levels behind of what I would be in a normal game. You could boost up the experience a little bit, especially on some tougher monsters: Everything gives about half the usual experience! And it's not funny when every undead, only excluding the lowest of the lowest of skeletons, has ridiculous damage resistances: When a Myrkul's sending won't go down until I throw literally everything I have at him, I'd love if he gave a lot more exp than he did. Not to mention mummies, which have always been pretty tough, and whose experience gain has dropped from several thousand to measly 75. Challenge rating my ass.

Edit: *After trying the zillionth time the entrance battle of the Vale's third level* How in the bloody hell could you say the game's "pretty easy for a part of 6"? What kind of a badass gang do you have?

Ehh, good thing there's Dalekeeper, which still works... *Gives everyone a 5,000 experience bonus*

Moredit: Kresselack's quest gives 700 xp? Seven bloody hundred from a quest that used to give thirteen thousand?! Yeah, this totally needs some rework here. It's a wonder how my bunch can gain levels at all without Dalekeeper.

Also Arundel doesn't seem to understand that I'm done with the Vale of Shadows, still telling me to go over there without furthering the plot.

Every other problem I have is purely cosmetic: The game still looks way too much like IWD2, although fixing this would probably be way too much trouble - though I suppose you could go and change the colors a bit to more IWD1'ish at least, or something. Also, it'd be nice if it kept IWD2 perfectly playable without messing it up: If BG1Tutu made BG2 unplayable, I'd rage. And, perhaps most importantly, the menu music desperately needs fixing: IWD1's rules, IWD2's sucks.

Also would be cool if I could still go to HoW and TotL after finishing the game, without taking a long hike to Kuldahar to talk to Hrotgar.

All in all, though, everything works just fine, apart from the absolutely sluggish exp gain, so I reckon you could start concentrate more on cosmetics from now on.

Edit: Never mind, figured it out exactly five seconds after posting this.

Here's another question, though: The operation ran succesfully, but you didn't leave any instructions of what to do next? Both IWD1 and 2 would still seem to run perfectly normally, saved games and all, and I'm not sure whether this should be a good or bad thing: Right now it'd seem like nothing's changed.

Moredit: I sure hope the instructions about allowing to write in the override folder meant about removing the "read only" label, which I did. Interestingly, each time I open the Properties window of the folder, the label's back, but none of the files under it are read only anymore.

Thanks. Downloading now (and uninstalling mods).

Also one another thing: I used to love the IWD1 interface, but hate the IWD2 one. So I was wondering whether it'd be possible for you, or someone else, to add a similar option than in BG1TuTu, where you could make the game look like it's supposed to instead of the sequel?

(Obviously a lot tougher task than with BG1Tutu, but still.)

I can't download because it asks not only a password, but a name, which you never mentioned.

Also how will this thing conflict with all those mods I've put on IWD1? Should I uninstall them first, or will this just dump everything over them and forget about them?