frostysh

17 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

All summons are overpowered in Heart if Fury mode.

Yep, the spell such as Animate Dead are game breaking spell, totally devs missed the point that undead/summons with x3 HP + 80 and -6 AC bonus and + 1 APR are total imba. Currently stopped my playtrough, bothering with "Improved HoF" mod.

Dunno about 'resource management', as I remembered BG with SCS + other mod on hardcore, even with continuous rest everywhere where it's possible megatons of potions (especially explosive one which cost gold as hell) consumed on almost every more tough battle than against few skeletons... Which is means continuous lack of supplies, which was extremely annoying and no fun. And of course, if you are playing Sorcerer or most of party meele/ranger demage dealers you no need rest so often, but if you playing for an example, a Diviner or the Wild Mage, and the party main reason of victory in battles is usually your magical arsenal, it's actually no good... For myself I have my own 'glitches' that making the game harder — I cannot steal in and kill the innocent NPC, no pickpocket and so on, which is mean perma-lack of gold.

My own opinion: I like HoF, I like raid-party of Goblens that each one has near 100 HP... I like Ogres with a lot of HP and insane damage and THAC0, I like bonuses to AC of enemies which is means I need make a strict roles of characters (such as tank and healer) and using proper weapons (piercing damage against Goblens), I can even forgive a stupid vanila-AI, that actually sometimes making game harder, but such things as Animate Dead is ruining game...

@Jarno Mikkola

Yes, but I am curious about Steam way to make screenshots.

33 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Rest-spam s no different from turning the difficulty down to easy.

Of course not. You see, in Icewind Dale many of enemy groups attacking only together. It's the same like with improved AI with SCS in BG. This is means, for an example, that right after some events leading by story and leaving Easthaven, the party of heroes will encounter Goblin's ambush on the crossroads... There is no way back, and no way forward (there is a lot of raiders). No matter how many times make party rest before, single raider see our party and the full scale assault begins! After battle is started the party cannot rest until the last Goble standing. This moment took me few hours to win because only Dweomer was from attacking spells (no count useless Sleep in mage Ilauna's spellbook).

Only the one significant minus (as for hardcore gamer like me) in HoF that I have found — the "Animate Dead" spell is overpowered, unfortunately it's spawning undeads with already enlarged by HoF settings stats, such as an basin of HP...  After I have realised this fact I have only one question: to install or not to install "Improved Heart Of Fury" mode?

P. S. How to reduce size of screenshots in Steam?

3 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

You do know that forcing rules on yourself is a voluntary occupation. If you feel it's impossible, then it might be... but you will want to not "cheat yourself from the experience" by resting at every turn and after every fight.

I am not understand, the rules exist or the rules does not exist. I can say about things that I have tried in IWD with the party mentioned above, and an every fight even with a couple Goblins evaporating almost full arsenal of few casters, the party will not survive the next fight without rest, it's impossible. And I think spell Animate Dead a little bit overpowered in HoF... It's rolled on level up for Baern (Cleric/Ranger), and with this you can use army of undead like tanks, Goblins and Orcs has no any blunt weapon so they are useless against skeletons, only zombies falling.

If Ogre dealing damage to the magicians in party, this is mean a strategy fail and usually game over. That because I don't like a 'core' difficulties, too small HP enemies, no interesting battles. For an example SCS for BG making enemies much more tougher, combined with Insane difficulties and so on, they has a lot of HP and lot of protections, they good in selecting targets. Actually vanila IWD: EE the monsters no so bad at targeting too, for an example beetles that attacked the Goblin's cave, never target summoned units, and if monster firstly targeted party member, it's will be very hard to make him attack skeleton, but still far more worst than SCS. I am thinking about "Improved Heart Of Fury" mod...

7 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

And play with the rule, "I can only rest 1 time per worldmap area". It's self imposed, so no, there's a mod for that.

It's poor idea. I for myself completed some games such as "The Witcher 2: Assassins Of The Kings" on the maximum possible difficulty settings with option where single death of MC — the game start from the beginning and I must to say such things totally improper for IWD, BG series. In the game where half your win/lose battle relaying on Dice Roll rather than a microcontrol or strategy/build, and 150+ hours of gameplay (every side quest etc), you probably don't want to apply rules when your party trapped into situation where without second rest on location impossible to move farther. This rules, on my opinion, just not fit Icewind Dale.

6 hours ago, InKal said:

oh, but goblins are totally completely affected by Sleep. as I said I played HoF from scratch and them little buggers slept like babys. Two handed weapons are the best for one simple reason - highiest damage. you dont need shields and ac coz your fighters gonna get hit anyway, with THW you killing them enemies quicker than they are killing you and thats the way to go. if you cast proper combat buffs on your fighters they dont need any friggin shields, if they are hasted they are killing machines. of course there are exceptions. some one handed weapons have extra elemental damage and/or very good bonuses and extra attack or extra damage against certain type of enemy. only in this cases you could consider swtching to one hand and shield but this is situational, in most cases two handed is always better.

 I would never use premade characters.

Nonsense. Or we played into different versions of the game. I have tried 10+ times the Sleep spell on Goblins — zero success. It's simply useless and no workin in HoF, probably will work on some Squirrel but no on one hundred HP Goblen... Fighters gonna hit, but it is a very different how many times per turn, it's difference is so big that means defeat or victory. On HoF anything that has no AC bonus for frontline fighters is an insanity. For example Undead Hunter with Large Shield and Sword And Shield Weapon Style, with a lot of luck in Dice Rolls can whistand a rain of arrows from Goblin Marshals for ah, lets say 3 — 5 rounds, before he need to retreat, healing to require and kite like crazy. And this time is enough for a spellcaster to discharge all containing deadly spell arsenal properly because the archers are standing in the thick group hitting a single char and they are voulnerable to any AoE magic. If I made equip Undead Hunter with Two-handed weapon, he will not stand even a single round... It's a very big difference. Why not play with pre-made characters, they are cool and with some backstory.

The guys from Beamdog forum suggested "Improved Heart Of Fury" mod, but I think it's too strong changing the core game, or it is okay?

@InKal

Goblins has a far more than 2D4 Hit Dice so they is completely unaffected by Sleep. Do you think the creature with near hundred of HP (common goblin) has 2D4 Hit Dice? Goblins seems to has a quite of bonus against crushing damages, so it's particularly useless against them. Only weakness — piercing damage, such as arrows and daggers. Swords somehow slashing only... The Two-handed Weapon Style is an insanity, no any bonus to AC. I have already party, I will not change it.

By the way, I have managed to get trough my party that cursed goblin's ambush, relaying only on Dweomer and the hell of luck. It's took a long time, the battle on small space against Goblin Marshals ho-ho-ho...

@Isewein, @subtledoctor

Hmm... Mhm... I don't know, thinking about that. Tomorrow.

3 hours ago, marcnivar said:

Yes, the premade characters are just to save your time in case you do not want to create 6 characters one by one.

Omg...  I need to know it before I have start the story, maybe I want to download some char-mods instead. Well, I cannot so easily kill my party time for now anyway and start a new playthrough like nothing happens. At least somebody named those characters and created some Biography branch for them, and this means they are not without 'a soul' at least.  So well the hell with them in the party they will be.

2 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

Ahh, proffs. The IWDEE's latest patch added more exotic weapons, but still it's not that good. So you will definitely want Long Swords, two handed sword, a crossbow and a long bow and a short bow proff to single char(one weapon per char, as many points as you can). Also you will want blunt weapons to fight the undead, which there will be many after the first few maps.

This game is about numbers, and given that the HoF mode is not super hard mode, it's the +10 to everything the enemy does, as in +10 levels mode, you are just beating the head against a wall, it's not going to budge. No, the blunt weapons don't have super low attack rate, they are slower, but that doesn't reduce the attacks per round, just the time it takes for the first hit to land. As given that the round is 6 seconds long, a slower first hit is not going to take that long... And the animations the game does is not 1 to 1.

Okay. I actually think to add such stuff to Undead Hunter, but somehow added Bastard Sword... For now the party has next proffs: MC — quaerterstuf +, Baern — War Hammer ++, Flail / Morning Star ++, Two Weapons ++, Sling +; Cadriel — Long Sword ++, Bastard Sword +, Sword and Shield ++; Kirika — Short Sword ++, Short Bow ++, Single Weapon +; Iluana — Dart +; Felicia — Dagger +, Mace +, Single Weapon +; I am using Bard sometime like a frontline fighter because of she rolled a lot of HP on level ups. The Bard can whistand two blows from the Ogre, very useful indeed. I have read manual, and there this Hrothgar-dude scripting about some legendary dagger and spear, and flail — is this suppose to be in the game or it's just a legends? But no much spoilers plz...

The guys from Beamdog forum said that a bug in game on HoF with Petrification. Blunt weapon I have found a total trash, exception Two weapon style on poor AC enemies. Probably because orcs and goblins wearing somekind of a leather armour with -2 AC bonus against crushing damage or something like that. Nah — hit-and-run tactics in IWD with meele fighters for me is impossible, I cannot so good control chars in battles against multiple enemies. So the dagger with poor THAC0 is far more useful than mace with good THAC0 and lower APR.

3 hours ago, marcnivar said:

Pre-made characters won't really talk and interact. If you prefer to create 6 party members on your own and customize them according to your preference and don't mind that they won't talk to each other and won't interact with the quests / NPC, then playing with own created party is a good idea, you will have vanilla IWD experience.

Do you mean that it is no difference that I have by my own created six characters or using five of those who already came with game and created a single by my own? There will be no dialogues between chars and so on?

It seems quite lot of work you done!

2 hours ago, InKal said:

Well, good luck in Heart of Fury with pre-made characters. You'll gonna need it.

Thank you, this Wild Magic is so weird compared to my Diviner in BG. At last I have won against cursed orcs bandits group: tank and cleric in the front (Ranger/Cleric is indeed helpful Kit build), tank attracting enemy archers and shaman, cleric praying that he will be not targeted and healing tank, if magician's spell was successful cleric can help with hitting enemies as well. The MC behind them with Dweomers ready and Chaotic Shield upon she (or him), all other — cover and helping in the back lines, then pray for Wild Surge — "Petrification"/"Monster Summoning"/"Stinky Cloud" or something like that, if somebody of orcs defeated — run, run away, pray, and pray that orc's arrows will miss...  Then in Tavern and rest, again gather for battle... Party falls, reload and cycle repeat, and those for three hours!  Too poor that my second magician Iluana has ony armor spell and sleeping spell, the last one is almost useless due to enemies saving throws. If she had Lightning Bolt or something...

1 hour ago, InKal said:

I would recommend...

Nah thank you, vanila IWD: EE on Steam has enough of pre-made characters. I mean I thinking about installing some hardcore modes like SCS but it seems the game is hard as hell already with my playskill, the setting and my party...  It's to hard to remember with my last hardcore BG1: EE gaming about undeads, I don't remember those fellas were powerful, exception probably Liches (SCS full hardcore settings and plus some other mode on hardcore), party kind of horribly consuming supplies on those guys. Most powerful in BG1 was a demon in the very end of a game, insanely strong, almost undefeatable it was. And Durlag Tower was bloody hardcore on the level of my party when I have explored it, but not because undeads but kind of apparitions.

If there will be lot of undead in IWD... Probably the best idea is to learn blunt weapon for Undead Hunter instead of daggers, but blunt weapon so sux... And damn it, I have took Bastard Swords already...  Low attack rate of blunt stuff combining with HoF bonuses to enemy defence-throws making it almost unusable. But undeads mostly has mega-resist to non-blunt stuff such as swords. 

3 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

Yes, the wild magic has the gender bender effect, and I have no idea, the original version didn't have wildmages.

I have only valina on Steam "Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition" with no any mods, in term "perks" I mean what weapon proficiencies and fighting styles to pick for default party. In the EE there is six premade characters party ready to go, I have disbanded one and created my own (fired was Barbarian), the characters that left: Baern (Cleric/Ranger), Cadriel (Undead Hunter), Kirika (Fighter/Thief), Ilauna (Mage Generalist), Felicia (Bard). With help of my Wild Mage (she or he, because so often switch gender), this party managed to defeat lot of goblins bandits and orcs even without much use of "Hold"... Yep, my Cleric was lucky to achieve such powerful spell, but I don't like to use because my MC is Lawful Good and Hold is pretty evil spell, so for Cleric I replaced it with Magical Hammer. But for the party is now totally overwhelmed by well-equipped orc attacking group which includes Orc Shaman and Orc Elite archers. All my tactics was failure against them, need to create new approaches.

I am asking about weapon proficiencies because on such hardcore level, with such party I always hard to chose between for an example Dagger and Long Sword, for my "tank" Cadriel, the first thing has more attacks per round, the second thing better THAC0, and I have who hell know which is more useful for an example against wolves. I was luck and Dweomer destroyed wolves with Petrification, but still. Is there any "hardcore guide" for Icewind Dale which can help me with my walktrough (without spoilers)?

19 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

I played the original version of the game, and it wasn't as modable as the todays version, so take this with that in mind.

Well I mean is there any huge unbalance that can ruin vanilla playthrough? Of course I will not deliberately use such stuff If I even will find it. Yep, the char is not powerful at least, the Wild Magic is awful... Bot after many-many dozens of reloads after party dying, on the cursed bridge where battle with goblins was, my char somehow managed summon five goblin Elite with Dweomer and those I have win the battle. So at least it's not useless at all, I mean the Wild Magic.

And question: it is ok that my char' gender changing very often due stupid Wild Surge? It will not break the game?

What about party? What perk is better for them?

Greetings!

Well this was my question on Steam, after a while of thinking with what char to start this fairy-tale, and on what difficulty. Long time thinking about decisions I have already choose Wild Mage on HoF... And for now, only few hours game I have regret it multiple times... The most stupid and useless on hardcore magic in IWD is a Wild Magic. But it's no way back!

Another thing, on HoF seems to megatons of EXP, is this cool? Or should I change it? Is IWD: EE vanila on HoF cool on my settings? Or I need to install some mods?

Already figured it myself, and downloaded Nearinfinity. Is there any particular manual, or how-to? Difference on Steam version? I have already done some modification to BG: EE, BG2: EE, SoD, but it's was long time ago... My target in IWD: EE is change background images and text colors. This is example how I have done in in the BG.

Top original SoD Inventory UI, the bottom my mod. Also I want to rewalktrought BG1/2/SoD after IWD. My aim with a mod to make comfort paly — make black font of the white background.

Greetings!

After some time I decided to learn how to draw to achieve some money by making a video-game or anime, and laso I like to play in video-games so I decided to play in IWD: EE, then in IWD2: EE, then probably in SoD and BG2: EE. I have created a custom portrait for IWD: EE, I will create some biography for my MC, and so on... But the point, I am as usually discovered that IWD has white font on black, which is annoying for me and harmful for eyes if read a lot you, and in this games you need read a lot ofc... So I decided to make a little bit different new UI for IWD. I have some experience in the long past with BG UI mods, but I have forgot almost anything, that because I need short help...

— What software to download?

— How to use this software to modify UI of the Steam version of IWD: EE?

After I will start, I will probably bother this forum in section Mods Q&A. Thank you in advance for the answers!

Where I can get the complete list of changes that the mod do? Coz' the Readme on the gibberlings3.net is seems little bit outdated, I have tried to look in this topic, bu there is too much of pages..

 

Thanx.

Downloaded Readme there - SR Readme Gibberlings3, well what can I say on the first look - would be better if readme made in the format like that:

 

---- Before ---- ---- After ----

 

And will be MUCH more better if you will try to explain the reason of some changes. Of course I am not a real modder, but I know how to hard sometimes to make a large Readme - I have ma own cosmetic GUI snow for a BG1+SoD, and BG2 on github, and even in case of a small mod - my readme is large... So I just can imagine, how large may be detailed readme in your case guys .

Anyway I will read this stuff, just curious what it changes. The wods like a "Global Rebalane" is scaring me Anyway I know that BG series is pretty unbalanced...

Is this "Revised SCS" sux SCS, or it is cool SCS?

Imho - if somebody trying to make game like paper-pen rules, it is not a very good for a dynamical PC-video game world. Ok. I will read what a main difference, I hope this SCS have a good 'README".

 

On another note, I'm wondering about the issue raised in this thread. I don't have Improved Shapeshifting installed and the same thing happens: Cernd doesn't change into a werewolf and therefore is very likely to lose to Faldorn. Perhaps this is intentional but it's a significant change to the quest and it isn't mentioned in the readme.

This is a problem for my solo games too, with Improved Shapeshifting installed.

 

I do not know if this is a problem... I think this is a feature of SCS. I have a simple recipe how to defeat Faldorn (pretty sad that is the same Faldorn from bg1 which was there in conflict with SD...) at Insane difficulty (I have no LOB difficulty for now with my version of bg2 ) without any pre-casting or shapeshifting by Cernd.

 

1st round.

 

- "Miscast Magic" (or something similar that have a LESS casting time then Faldorn's "Insect Plague"/"Creeping Doom", and can interrupt this devastating spells).

 

2nd - 3rd round.

 

- "Summon Insects" and/or "Animal Summoning I, II, III".

 

the end.

 

Now the bugs that I have found.

The boots from NPC Greyhand has no description such as powers or something - just a 'blank' item.

 

 

 

The 'Double Bodhi' spawn. . .

 

 

Cannot take Minsc to the party again ,after releasing him from .

 

When Minsc disbanded the dialogue "Sent to the Copper Coronet" does not appearing .

 

BG2:EE 1.3, SCS, UB, Tactics for EE. ARProject.

The quest of the 1st chapter ending.

 

 

+1 For Shamans, because it is a really stupid to concentrate over only one type of a mythologies - Western type, in the game. Shamans must have - IMHO.

 

All other things, I do not know... Especially for difficulty, insane + SCS + Tactics for EE is a very good enough for myself. And SCS has no of that super dissemblance features... But "With Legacy of Bhaal, the creatures that are faced in combat will be given additional hit points, deal more damage, and generally be scarier" + SCS + Tactics for EE, I hope it will be something cool

 

Especially "weapons no crushing under Iron Crisis" this is sux!, SCS: "Replacing +1 Weapons with Excellent ones" and "An Excellent weapons is affected by Iron Crisis" ruled for me in BG1:EE, it was a very fun, especially when this weapons has been broken in the your party and in enemies hands simultaneously in the battle . Hand-to-hand combat . . . And this is stupid because, if the crisis has been resolved, this is not mean that all of the poisoned ore has been disappeared...

 

Cloak of Fear

 

The Cloak of Fear spell no longer causes targets to drop inventory items on the ground, in order to avoid situations where a player might lose an item without realizing it until its too late.

 

LOL! I though that was a special foolish Yuan-Ti magic, that cause my characters to drop their armor in the battle against TorGal, but that was TorGal's "Cloak of Fear" . But that was a fun feature! Why they have deleted it???

 

Yeah... Saving Throws versus Schools of Magic - this is will a really hard... More cool, but more hard, indeed, because the creatures in the game on the hardcore difficulty setting will have an insane saving throws against "Greater Malison", "Chaos", that will be something like the all creatures in the game will have an Rakshasa's immunity to the magic that is means an immunity to the almost all kinds of magic (that includes "Spell Thrust", "Secret Word", "Breach", and so on). . . Hell yeah!

 

Spellcasting Failure

 

I know only the "Luck" spell in the game, that is very often usable . Though the Concentration is forming by Wisdom? My experience said me that sometime my avatar (Diviner) have a spell failure when taking a damage, and sometimes he have not. And when he is under "Luck", I have spotted that spellcasting failure has appearing more rarely. But who knows, maybe I am wrong.

So I started my walktrhough of Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition on INSANE difficulty setting, (I will post the manuals of a difficult fights and interesting moment of the game in the my topic when I will finish Anthakla Districts exploration, because of frikin' stupid recruit characters scattering in the game itself!).

 

Installed mods are: UB, ARP, SCS (hardest setting), Tactics for EE, ContagionGUI. And now I have some suggestions and questions about SCS.

 

Overwies of a thing that I saw for now

• Vampires are weak, just a target for beating, I do not know, maybe it is because the Tactic's "Improved Undeads" component did not properly applied with a same thing from SCS??
• Skeleton Warriors is more weak then in BG:EE. Maybe because of higher level of a party, I do not know, but good that they have a ranged attack.
• Spirit Trolls are good enemies, they have a lot of immunities, they are fast, very good damage they have (with 200% damage from difficulty...), a permanent invisibility/sanctuary, the battle against TorGal with 11th lvl party was very good!
• Liches are weak, when Location provides places for a hiding from their spells , only one thing that you need to do is hit the Lich with "Azureedge +3", it is usually will be dead by 1-2 successful hits. In additional to it, Liches can be stunned by Jan's special rounds, that is not good I think, because Liches are an undead dudes, udeads can no be stunned.
• Thaxll'ssillyia the Sahadow Dragon was a very good. It is fast, have a powerful distance AoE, lot of immunities, a good magic resistance, and it is a hell tough! (I have many problems with that monster on 12th lvl party). Shadow Lord is also good enough, a mass energy drain = permanent spell losing, this a very annoying for real.
• Reputation of a party is a super low (12) still, but I trying to do all with good. Maybe installing component "1/4 reputation increasing" from SCS was a very bad idea ...

For now it is all, and really BG1:EE was more interesting, but good that I have my GUI installed, that is more better for me then in BG1:EE ^_^

 

And I almost forgot - when the Lich org a Dragon starting to do something , the screen is freeze by a ~10 seconds and the horrible lags appears too :(

Weird AI NPC habit under invisibility:

NPC Ogre Magi -

NPC Prat -

I think this is a problem of VIEW RANGE of NPC if they in invisibility and cannot see their enemy they just staying still and do nothing this is the highly reduce the difficulty of a battles (especially in the interior battlefields because of the many objects that reducing NPC view range) because they stay like that until the all of their allies has been defeated.

I think they must to 'search' or to 'find path' after the few seconds idle state in invisibility.

Installed mods: SCS, Classic Cut-scenes.

P.S. 'Path finding' cause incredible lags on my PC especially with 'Carion Crawlers'

-------NEW-------

NPC Andris - Humanoid race (Frozen Caverns - teleport from Ulgoth's Beard)
is affected by 'Hold Monster' spell that can penetrate his 'Improved Invisibility' and other anti magic pre-casts stuff.
Screenshot attached.