Bartimaeus

The bad cursed items are...Ring of Clumsiness (no way to really give this item anything as far as I can see without changing its entire concept), Ring of Folly (at least this one has an interesting twist even if it's still unusable), Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity, and Gauntlets of Might (which could probably be made usable with just a small amount of tweaking: -4 THAC0 is too much, perhaps just -2 or -4 dexterity instead). As for the Claw of Kazgaroth...it is a bit powerful, but it also costs a lot of money unlike most cursed items. In vanilla, it was: +1 AC +4 AC bonus vs. missiles -4 saving throws vs. death +3 saving throws vs. everything else -2 Constitution And now it's... +2 AC (no Rings of Protection +2 in BG1 makes this special) +4 AC bonus vs. missiles -3 saving throws vs. death +3 saving throws vs everything else -10% HP Could increase the vs. death saving throws to -5 and/or change the HP bonus to somewhere between -15% and -25%, but again, it's a pretty expensive item that you *have* to buy. (e): I think I'll do -15% and -5 vs. death, don't put this on your main character unless you like to be killed with death effects 100% of the time without Death Ward, .

I actually think Bracers of Speed can be pretty good for non-dual-wielding fighters. The exhausting is only 5% and only lasts for 2 rounds (it used to be 5 rounds in IR, but I reduced it to 2 because what the heck, that's so long!). @pochesun If you're playing an EE game, then no, not really, just a couple of bug fixes and scroll-adding patches I wrote down that I need to get around to, oh and the optional Remove Magic revision for SR. I should probably do those first, but I've been working on the new 1pp compatibility problem instead. @Salk (and NdranC): Interesting fact I just discovered: IR actually disables the import mechanic - and note that I said "IR" and not IRR, though IRR does as well as a result. It simply makes Helm of Balduran and Mail of the Dead always equip to Ilyich. Apparently, it's been that way for a long while. The lists of items can be changed via IMPORT01.2da and IMPORT03.2da (also interesting - IMPORT02.2da exists in a vanilla BG2 game, and is the list BG2EE uses to import an item to have Malaaq give you, while the Sword of Chaos +2 is moved to the Cambion). So having IR always assume Mail of the Dead +2 and Helm of Balduran were the imported items was inadvertently completely correct, since it was already forcing that to be true, . Interestingly, I think NdranC said he still imported the Claw, though. Hmm.

You can extract IRR and SRR at the same time, as long as IR and SR were extracted beforehand. It sounds like you did it right. If you install IR/R and you look in the weidu.log and there's a "Revised" appended to the component description, you did it right (and the same holds true for SR/R).

That's true, I didn't take it they meant literally only those mods, but if that's really all you have, then yeah, makes no sense to automate it.

Sadly, I just can't hack touchscreens - no strong tactile feedback is so difficult to get used to (I'll never trade physical buttons for virtual interfaces!), and I just find touchscreens to be kind of clunky and slow in general, especially due to the necessity of having to move fingers/hands physically across the screen to do things (and I very much do not enjoy the lack of a precise and perfectly controlled cursor, and never mind the lack of hotkeys and macros). For doing a few things, that's not a big deal, but playing a game for many hours would drive me totally looney-toons. I have trouble doing anything of note on modern smartphones for much the same reasons. Anyone who's ever had a grandparent or parent who has started to get older and suffer from physical handicaps that make it so they can't always do the same things or do them in the way they used to probably has seen them struggle mightily at times to adapt to the new realities of their situation, and has probably seen them get extremely frustrated and belligerent as a result - that's basically me. Decades of built-up muscle memory and things working just as precisely and efficiently as I like them suddenly upended, and then being forced to make due with much slower and more imprecise implementations is extremely frustrating and soul-sucking. There are certain genres of games (such as but not limited to first person shooters and real-time strategy) that I used to play a lot but have now crossed out entirely because it is too awful to play with a controller, and that's just kind of where I am now.

This is kind of already what happens. IR places a couple of items that were used by the import mechanic, basically ignoring that they could be import options and instead just placing them regardless. 4/4 items of the first list will be present somewhere in BG2 with IR installed (well, sort of - Fallorain's Plate just becomes a generic Plate Mail +1, but it's functionally the same), at least assuming Mail of the Dead +2 is the imported item. Similarly, with IRR installed, 4/4 items of the second list will be present somewhere in BG2 assuming that the Helm of Balduran is the item found in Irenicus' dungeon - if instead you choose one of the other three options (such as the Claw of Kazgaroth), that means there will be two Claws of Kazgaroth in the game and no Helm of Balduran, since IRR already places the Claw elsewhere (similarly, if you choose something instead of Mail of the Dead, that means a duplicate of the other option and no Mail of the Dead in the game at all). That's why I was considering disabling the vanilla import mechanic altogether and simply forcing the Helm of Balduran and Mail of the Dead +2 to always be what's found, to prevent pointless duplicates as well as prevent either Mail of the Dead +2 or Helm of Balduran from never appearing in the game. @pochesunAs NdranC said, you don't ever actually install IR or SR - you extract IR and SR into your game directory, then extract IRR and SRR into the same location, then install the main component of IR (now IRR), then the main component of SR (now SRR). It is a bit of an obtuse process, but it's this way to prevent confusion for everyone on who's using IRR or SRR instead of the base mods. The "main components" are the very first components of both mods that it asks whether you want to install, they are the bulk of the modified content. @Salk Yeah, every version of BG2 will check the inventory of the character before it does the "strip the party of all items" function at the very start of the game before the intro Irenicus torture cutscene. There are two lists (now three with BG2EE) plus a check for the Golden Pantaloons. From the wiki: "[...] one item from each of the two lists below is brought, with the higher position in the list taking precedence over the lower. For example, a character who has both the Helm of Balduran and The Claw of Kazgaroth in inventory, will only have the helm recovered. Items tagged with [Default] is what is presented if the character either has none of the listed items, or if the player didn't use an imported character. #1 is worn by Ilyich at (1529, 448) and #2 is in a chest at (3748, 907) along with Air Elemental Statue in the same area. Table #1: Protector of the Second Mail of the Dead [Default] Fallorain's Plate Chainmail +3 Table #2: Helm of Balduran [Default] The Claw of Kazgaroth The Horn of Kazgaroth Koveras's Ring of Protection +1" In regards to completing BG2, I have the opposite problem - I've only ever truly finished BG1 like a couple of times, I have so much difficulty retaining interest in the run by the time I clear all the wilderness areas and I finally get inside of Baldur's Gate city proper, and I just want to move on to BG2. Different strokes from different folks and all that.

I think it was a neat idea by BioWare whose implementation left a bit to be desired. The priority problem (which puts Helm of Balduran always at the top and therefore makes it the overwhelmingly the most likely choice to be imported) isn't great. There's also the fact that even if you don't have any of these items (or are coming from a new game entirely), it still "imports" an item (which is again, the Helm of Balduran), which means the majority of people probably expect the Helm of Balduran to be there. The secondary list (with the Helm of Balduran and other items) is also not equal, unlike the first (which are all just armor items) - personally, my favorite item of the list is the Claw of Kazgaroth, which is the reason I placed it elsewhere in the game while assuming the Helm of Balduran will be in Irenicus' dungeon. Also, I guess BG2EE creates a third list of items to be imported...but they used a list of weapons that are mostly already placed in vanilla BG2, and the ones that aren't are by IR anyways, so that's not great. I'm not a hundred percent how I'll resolve this.

We were on the subject of item importation - IRR kind of assume that Mail of the Dead +2 and Helm of Balduran are always the imported items. Non-revised IR places Protector of the Second (an alternative import option to Mail of the Dead +2) elsewhere, while Almateria's Restoration Project places the Horn of Kazgaroth on the lich Deril (which I opted to duplicate for people not using it - by removing it from him and then adding it back, of course, as him carrying two would be quite silly if you were using Almateria's Restoration Project). If you decide to import either the Claw of Kazgaroth or the Horn of Kazgaroth instead of the Helm of Balduran, then the Helm of Balduran will naturally not appear in Irenicus' dungeon (not a change I made), and it would unfortunately lead to a duplicate of them as they're already placed elsewhere, so I naturally would not recommend doing that. There's probably a way to modify the item importation script to make this impossible to happen, I might have to look into it... Furthermore, I also just realized that Fallorain's Plate +1 (which doesn't even exist in BG2, though I recreated it for BGT/BG1EE/EET games) and a generic Chain Mail +3 are also alternatives to Mail of the Dead +2, which are both kind of silly, so that's even less reason to have the vanilla item importation script do anything but add the Helm of Balduran and Mail of the Dead to Irenicus' dungeon. @spanyam Sorry, I really don't know, as I don't use automated install tools, and I don't run any Enhanced Edition games (though I've certainly made plenty of fixes of IR items for them...). Someone else would be better suited to answer this. Note that if you do go with an automated installation, IRR and SRR must be extracted on top of IR and SR respectively *before* IR or SR are installed, which may or may not be something you have to manually do after all your mods are extracted to your game directory.

When downscaling to an icon, I like to: Downscale using nearest neighbor to create a clean outline. Create a duplicate downscale using bicubic sharper instead. Create a third non-sharp bicubic downscale and do a 25% paste over the sharp version because bicubic sharper is good at getting the details, but is usually just a little bit too sharp for pleasant viewing (...and this method creates a better result than trying to do like gaussian blur after the fact or something). Paste the contents of the bicubic downscale inside of the nearest neighbor outline (selecting only pixels that are occupied, ignoring transparent or green pixels in order to still have a clean outline with no pesky green anti-aliasing artifacts). Tweak the outline as necessary - there may be a few pixels where there shouldn't be anything, or maybe there's a few pixels that are transparent/green that shouldn't be, fill/remove them as necessary.

1. Yeah, still have to click and stuff. I do make use of SCS' general AI script to help automate the endless amounts of trash fights in these games (...though I have a controller button to disable or enable party AI on the fly as it's necessary). Past the first hour or so of using it, I honestly don't find this controller setup difficult to use at all, and in fact prefer it in some ways over the old M+KB controls - but you do have to be pretty precise with them. Shockingly, I've never accidentally quickloaded even once with this setup, even though the controls are setup in such a way that would make it extremely easy to do so. I'm sure it'll happen eventually, but it hasn't yet! 2. Hmm...not really - I go pretty light on things, as I get annoyed by things that I feel are out of place or don't fit in very easily. You're welcome to look through my weidu.log, but it is much less interesting than most other people's I've seen: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/oj6ecp60lqoe7ky/WeiDU.log

>Is it just IR or IR+IRR? Sorry, I should really stop using IR and IRR, SR and SRR interchangeably - whenever I've referred to either, I really just meant IRR or SRR, as I have no authority over the official versions of IR or SR. I just mean to install the "main components" of both in that order, with the main components being the first components of each.

If you use the default petrification option as defined in settings.ini, you should be safe to petrify enemies without fear of losing their items (as they aren't actually petrified, but simply held). If you use the "0" or "2" setting for that option (aka "all creatures are actually petrified" / "only enemies are petrified" respectively), then you would need to use a "petrified creatures drop items" component like the P5 Tweaks gives. Yeah, but there just aren't enough buttons on a controller to do everything - I already have most things double-bound, and some triple-bound. The difference between opening up my innate abilities, my equipment abilities, and accidentally doing a quick load instead are already a matter of a quarter second each, I don't think I can add on that much more, . I have issues with my hands that makes using a mouse for more than short bursts very painful, so I have devised alternative ways of playing games.

SR's Disintegration spell no longer actually uses the disintegration effect, but if you're playing with e.g. SCS, it's unlikely to respect or detect the changes made to the wizard spell Disintegration when those beholders are using their own version of it. I would suggest using...oh, wait, no, it's ToBEx that makes it so the Disintegrate effect no longer destroys items. But there is another quite old mod called P5Tweaks that achieves a similar effect - I use its "Drop Items on Imprisonment" component, and there is one for Disintegration as well. Can't a hundred percent guarantee it'll work correctly on the EEs, but it may be worth a shot: http://www.shsforums.net/topic/24586-p5tweaks/ Sorry, no idea about either keybinds or SCS pre-buffing scripts. I play with a controller that I created a made-for-IE-games profile with a lot of timing-based functions (e.g. holding down one button for 0-0.25s will do one function, but holding it down for 0.26-0.50 will do something else entirely, and anything beyond 0.50 will do another thing yet, etc.), but I don't get into binding specific spells as a result. I've never used the pre-buffing script and have no idea how it works or how reactive it is to changes in spells or anything like that, you may be better off asking @DavidW.

Note that IRR places the Horn of Kazgaroth as well - the lich Deril holds it (following Almateria's Restoration Project's lead). So you'll have duplicates of both, and no Helm of Balduran. Oh well! Also, I got confused - Sword of Chaos +2 isn't part of the importing process, but Mail of the Dead +2 is, of course, considered the default option for the second list of items. Forgot to test it, but I just did now, and it does work, . Again, IR first, SR second now if you're using the latest repository versions.

Greenstone Amulet: I think so. One positive from being its own type of effect ("Mind Shield") is that it doesn't have to correspond to any other spell, either - meaning, that you're more free to define exactly what it does than if it was specifically Chaotic Commands, so if you want it to grant total immunity to psionics when Chaotic Commands might not necessarily grant, you can do that. Free Action: Having a real confabulation moment here, thought for sure Free Action did not protect from stun at all (as stun is not a movement modifier but a mental state) and hadn't for a long while with SR, but it apparently does. As far as I know, psionic stunning simply uses the stun opcode, so if an item claims to grant immunity to stunning (note that "hold" is a different effect entirely and therefore not necessarily included unless it claims both), it should do the trick. Missile Damage: Above my pay-grade to answer for the most part. It continues to exist because that's simply how the BG games were made. I don't know if missile damage is actually a P&P convention or not, but for the IE games specifically, I would guess it's there in order to provide specific protection or penalties against it (missile damage reduction, missile damage AC bonuses/penalties) because ranged attacks are inherently different from melee in terms of advantages and exploitation. Item Packs: Items that make modifications to base items after IR does, or use them as part of recipes, will simply be inconsistent with IR. IR can't possibly deal with all other mods making their own changes. If you want othed mod-added items to be affected by IR's global changes (e.g. Weapon Changes, Revised Shield Bonuses, etc.), those components should be installed after those item-adding mods. As for anything that fits in: sorry, no idea, as I don't use any item-adding mods - I think the base game has quite enough already, and enough wrong with them that I don't even want to think about other people's items. Claw of Kazgaroth: I know I've looked up how the importing feature works before, but I think I eventually just came to the conclusion it was "better" (i.e. significantly easier) to always act as if the Sword of Chaos +2 and the Helm of Balduran were always the imported items. Sorry for the inconsistencies if that's not the case, . More Throwing Weapons: IIRC, there were literally zero throwing spears in the original BG2, hence the lack of javelins appearing anywhere. I'd also like to see throwing weapons as a whole become more ubiquitous, but it's an extremely annoying and time-consuming process to consider, and anyways, I wouldn't want to force it via IR (and I don't really want to do the work to properly implement it at all, if we're being honest). BG1 is especially light on throwing weapons - BG2 obviously adds a number of enchanted throwing daggers, throwing spears (via IR), throwing axes, and throwing hammers, but they're not really used that much by enemies.

Most everything everyone does besides simple creative writing is heavily derivative of something else (...and if we're being honest, good creative writing is very often learned or at least inspired from a blending of other sources anyways). For Baldur's Gate specifically, most of the things I like best from mods are P&P-inspired (whether 2.0 or 3.x), which is certainly not by any means majority original work - most everyone is heavily inspired from someone somewhere for their ideas. Anyways, I was less talking the subject of original ideas and more specific technical implementations for a concept, which are certainly limited inside the Infinity Engine.

Well, sure - I'm certainly not stopping anyone from installing it...but I'm also not going to straight up steal someone else's files, either. Basic ideas I don't have as many qualms about, since there's simply only so many ways to do things in these games and if you limit yourself to only your own original ideas you'll find yourself out of things to do awfully fast (and it would really go against the spirit of modding as a whole as well), but the least you can do is actually put in the work in implementing it yourself. Also, most people that aren't weidu experts don't code up easily modifiable lines that would make changing, say, polytope's 3% to 5%, take minutes instead of an hour or two, so that's a bit of a problem as well.

Nice. ...Didn't realize Juju Zombies were still that weak, didn't even notice the difference, the poor things, .

I was unable to complete the Zombie Farm quest - I searched and searched and did a few complete circuits (including the entire top right), but was unable to find all the zombies that were apparently supposed to be there (I also didn't see any Juju Zombies which I thought the component description mentioned adding - BGT game, of course).

I plan on providing an alternative Remove Magic via an .ini setting sometime within the next week, and eventually a not as extreme Dispel Magic (5/5 instead of 5/10), but that's a bit farther off due to its complexity. Implemented Mike's safer macros.

Thank you!

That too, thanks. @subtledoctor It actually wasn't that bad to do IR -> SR instead, once I realized it would actually help get rid of the majority of my patches - though I should note that the majority of my spell-like abilities in IRR are already SR-ized. This is what ended up being the totality of my SRR-for-IRR patches: ACTION_IF (FILE_EXISTS_IN_GAME ~ir_mc.mrk~) THEN BEGIN LOAD_TRA ~spell_rev/languages/english/item_revisions.tra~ ACTION_IF (FILE_CONTAINS_EVALUATED (~SPELL.IDS~ ~[ %TAB%]CLERIC_POLYMORPH_OTHER[ %TAB%%LNL%%MNL%%WNL%]~)) BEGIN // Periapt of Form Stability Druid Polymorph Other LAF RES_NUM_OF_SPELL_NAME STR_VAR spell_name = ~CLERIC_POLYMORPH_OTHER~ RET spell_res END OUTER_SPRINT ~polymorph_other~ ~%spell_res%~ ACTION_IF (FILE_EXISTS_IN_GAME ~amul24.itm~) THEN BEGIN COPY_EXISTING ~amul24.itm~ ~override~ REPLACE_TEXTUALLY ~sppr420~ ~%polymorph_other%~ END END COPY_EXISTING ~brac23.itm~ ~override~ SAY IDENTIFIED_DESC @1308 COPY_EXISTING ~hamm03.itm~ ~override~ SAY IDENTIFIED_DESC @1550 COPY_EXISTING ~hamm11.itm~ ~override~ SAY IDENTIFIED_DESC @1566 COPY_EXISTING ~misc3a8.itm~ ~override~ SAY IDENTIFIED_DESC @1699 COPY_EXISTING ~misc3h.itm~ ~override~ SAY IDENTIFIED_DESC @1714 COPY_EXISTING ~misc3l.itm~ ~override~ SAY IDENTIFIED_DESC @1723 COPY_EXISTING ~npshld.itm~ ~override~ SAY IDENTIFIED_DESC @1805 COPY_EXISTING ~slng06.itm~ ~override~ SAY IDENTIFIED_DESC @1932 COPY_EXISTING ~staf22.itm~ ~override~ SAY IDENTIFIED_DESC @2049 COPY_EXISTING ~sw1h65.itm~ ~override~ SAY IDENTIFIED_DESC @2162 ACTION_IF (FILE_EXISTS_IN_GAME ~brac23.spl~) THEN BEGIN COPY_EXISTING ~brac23.spl~ ~override~ // Righteous Fury SAY NAME1 @4012 END ACTION_IF (FILE_EXISTS_IN_GAME ~npshld.spl~) THEN BEGIN COPY_EXISTING ~npshld.spl~ ~override~ // Protection from Missiles SAY NAME1 @4033 END ACTION_IF (FILE_EXISTS_IN_GAME ~sw1h65.spl~) THEN BEGIN COPY_EXISTING ~sw1h65.spl~ ~override~ // Draw Upon Holy Might SAY NAME2 @4073 END ACTION_IF (FILE_EXISTS_IN_GAME ~misc3l.spl~) THEN BEGIN COPY_EXISTING ~misc3l.spl~ ~override~ // Silence SAY NAME1 @4104 END COPY ~spell_rev\item_rev\dvbram.spl~ ~override~ COPY ~spell_rev\item_rev\dvmcure.spl~ ~override~ SAY NAME1 @177 COPY ~spell_rev\item_rev\dvpexpl.spl~ ~override~ SAY NAME1 @4014 COPY ~spell_rev\item_rev\dvreson.spl~ ~override~ COPY ~spell_rev\item_rev\dvsburst.spl~ ~override~ COPY ~spell_rev\item_rev\hamm11.spl~ ~override~ SAY NAME1 @163 END Much better than the thousand line nightmare that it was in IRR. One thing I don't know how to fix yet is re-stringing item extended headers outside of the framework of IR, though - so for example, Anomen's shield will say "Protection from Normal Missiles" when you mouse over the ability instead of the actual cast spell, which is "Protection from Missiles". There's only a handful like that that need minor corrections, which I'll...try to figure out some other time. I think one of the other things that I did back when I first was doing this that complicated everything was that I was installing Store Revisions right after the main component for Item Revisions, which is a terrible idea if you're using SR because it has SR-centric stuff, and so should be installed after SR. I do hate splitting up the installation of components into different chunks, but at this point, it's rather kind of necessary. (e): Actually, I lied - I added a chunk of IRR resources to the Spell Deflection and Haste/Slow .tpas, too, but overall, not too bad. ...And also, I don't think this is BG1EE-friendly, so I guess I'll have to fix that, too. Sigh...

(Post duplicated from the SRR thread) I have completed the transition of installing IR first and then SR second in the last github repository. I will be doing a full release with a proper version number increment for both IRR and SRR once I have finalized compatibility between these two and 1pp as well, with fuller instructions to follow. For the time being, if you're installing the very latest repositories, it should be: Main component of IR. Main component of SR. (Non-EE only): Except for the avatar-switching script component, all of 1pp v4.1.0 with my 1pp fixes (NOT v4.2.0 - full v4.2.0 compatibility without any need for my fixes will be forthcoming in the near future). EE games do not need 1pp or to heed this step. The rest of SR after any other spell-adding components that aren't SCS and CDTweaks (i.e. all the other components should always be before SCS and CDTweaks). The rest of IR after any other item-adding components (but like above, before SCS and CDTweaks - SCS and CDTweaks should be installed after all "content" components, which should be pretty late into your install). Note that the order of #4 and #5 do not actually matter in relation to each other - you can do IR's secondary components first or SR's secondary components first, it shouldn't matter, so long as they are after other content-adding mods.

And on that note, I have completed the transition of installing IR first and then SR second in the last github repository. I will be doing a full release with a proper version number increment for both IRR and SRR once I have finalized compatibility between these two and 1pp as well, with fuller instructions to follow. For the time being, if you're installing the very latest repositories, it should be: Main component of IR. Main component of SR. (Non-EE only): Except for the avatar-switching script component, all of 1pp v4.1.0 with my 1pp fixes (NOT v4.2.0 - full v4.2.0 compatibility without any need for my fixes will be forthcoming in the near future). EE games do not need 1pp or to heed this step. The rest of SR after any other spell-adding components that aren't SCS and CDTweaks (i.e. all the other components should always be before SCS and CDTweaks). The rest of IR after any other item-adding components (but like above, before SCS and CDTweaks - SCS and CDTweaks should be installed after all "content" components, which should be pretty late into your install). Note that the order of #4 and #5 do not actually matter in relation to each other - you can do IR's secondary components first or SR's secondary components first, it shouldn't matter, so long as they are after other content-adding mods.

Yeah, it would - but for the time being, the current 5/10 system would continue to exist until I get around to it, and doesn't really affect the change of Remove Magic.