bob_veng

why is the "Replace original Golem Manual" component option not available for Golem Construction for Spellcasters? i'm 99% sure it's available in BWS (i had accidentally made a wrong game selection)

double

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Good analysis. I see it a bit differently: The doubtful tob line is not so doubtful when looked in context of how the narrative follows from one instalment to another - its clearly another one of those canon elements. When calling the line doubtful (false? narratively unreliable?), and thus supposedly probing it for truth-value you must look at it from a cannon-setting perspective: that which comes after is always canon, and that which came before and is non-comforming to the current canon becomes superseded. That means its not doubtful that Tamoko died. She *certainly* died when you killed her in the Undercity... just like its certain that you didnt kill Dynaheir on sight, in her pit (i sometimes do ). This is an hard problem for EET. It cant be mentally put out of the picture because to fix the discontinuity while respecting the canon in its proper interpretation (Tamoko died means that Tamoko died at that time in the undercity, not on some other, random, arbitrary occasion) there simply must be an intervention. If you didnt kill Tamoko discontinuity arises. The canon doesnt account for the alternate scenario of you keeping her alive, and since EET wants to promote continuity, this line must be removed from ToB. However there is certain dramatic value to it, and simply deleting it is slightly too unconservative for EET. What if you did kill Tamoko? Then you shouldnt be deprived of this sort of conclusion. Now you might say that even if you were deprived of it it wouldnt be a loss because the line is almost gibberish and doesnt gel with your past experience, its a narrative glitch that can go away. However id disagree there. The line is not necessarily discoherent. I find it acceptably continuous with the canon scenario. Namely: maybe Tamoko was envisioned as a warrior (F/C, F>C...) by her writer, and the "implementer" forgot to give her warrior levels, or it was deemed that a relatively high-level F>C would feel like too much of a boss fight prior to the actual boss fight, so they decided that she should, in line with Winsky, just serve the purpose of building up to the climax and not pose a tactical challenge. In fact i've always imagined tamoko as some kind of a warrior-woman, so that part of the line is just a little bit bothersome. To me it's mostly "legitimate". Tamoko can be Sarevok's true love even if he left her, because that's how the concept of true love works. Ostensibly Sarevok left the reliable and ever-loving Tamoko for the reckless "evil woman" witch Cythandria, and that might have had a major part in his downfall. This part is totally "legitimate" to me. It may be interpreted in various ways but has narrative weight, and can't be dismissed. Sarevok knows that she died because you killed her and he learned it from you. Or he learned it in a supernatural way while he was dead. This part is more implicit because it would be too much to have had an in-game dialogue in the 2001 ToB since many players wouldn't have known or remembered Tamoko's significance. ToB was also rushed. So just a single line in the epilogue was considered sufficient in order to make a "formal" nod to continuity with the original game, i guess. This issue is not critical anyways. So...the solution: In the Tamoko mod: the "dubious" epilogue line should be removed if you killed Tamoko there should be a conversation with Sarevok, near the end, where you will learn that: he somehow knows you've killed her (or you will tell him); she was his true love, not Cythandria (doesn't need to be mentioned explicitly, but should maybe be implied); that he mourns her and eventually he will journey to Kara-Tur to bury her. ORif you didn't kill her, she should have a romance with Sarevok, and should not die due to "canon" (not canon any more in EET) reasonsalso...tamoko is F/C, or a C(10)>F(11) dual, that seems more interesting, also it's legal

good tweak. i've always felt the same way about it

i'm not really qualified to proclaim this, but that's some unfathomable efficiency

i'd recommend no caps & 50% xp for the whole of EET. you'll see that it will be very close to a vanilla original BG2 playthrough near the end in terms of party levels, which is i think ideal. i'm completely against the 89,000 xp cap. it's highly artificial and limiting, quite unreasonable and unnecessary

i could imagine some kind of shaman enemy but i'd rather not have ranged enemies there because the game is inundated with ranged encounters

he's coming... i can feel it...

k4thos!

the patch is entering open beta next week. we can haz IWD-in-EET now, right?

here's my idea for mechanical BP integration (no real ideas for narrative integration yet) - black pits is a quest in SoD, because, as i envision it, it's too hard for BG:EE - you get no xp rewards for arena victories, only the final quest xp reward - you are stripped of everything when you come in, including gold - your gold and possibly some quest items are placed in a certain unreachable chest; you are able to retrieve the contents of this chest at the end of the questline - the rest of your inventory is placed in one merchant's stock, and that merchant sells nothing else; there is another merchant that sells some cosmetic (functionally inadequate for beating BP) enchanted equipment, and another who sells a few potions and scrolls - you get a a starting amount of gold and gold rewards for arena victories; you only get gold as a reward, not the items - to win battles you *must* spend the gold you've got to buy back your equipment because the battles have been revised with this in mind (you will be told that you will face enemies immune to normal weapons so you have to buy back some of your enchanted weapons, and if you didn't have them when you got in, or if you squandered your reward money on something stupid like your fanciest armor, you might even get brickwalled but that's acceptable design because it resembles how unfair ToTL can be to someone who doesn't know what he's getting himself into) - the total amount of gold that you get during BP is sufficient for you to buy back around 80% of your equipped items (not consumables) in an average scenario (typical SoD mid-game level of party equipment which should be valued at a certain point, i'm blindly guessing somewhere around 40k) but there isn't enough money to buy back the other stuff that you had (your hoard), so you have to make some sacrifices this removes a lot of hoarded weapons and armors, and consumables from the game and reduces item bloat which is great. if you carry your stuff over to SoA, especially so. an additional idea: BP could be used as an alternative for the gold-removal mechanic in SoD. so instead of the demented pro forma way you lose your gold there, BP becomes the actual way you lose gold. (the trivial SoD stuff regarding this matter gets removed). however this would mean that it's unskippable. i think that it's okay that it should be unskippable. so structurally it would fit right in at the start of SoD

cool!

relatively near...coupl'a months.

works! e: the forum...

i also think that eet is more stable, and that's arguably the most important thing for a good, enjoyable experience

still, if it can be done - to make attacking possible but ineffective, that would be a better-looking tweak.

on apr=1: sf=10 means you attack at the boundary of round 1 and round 2, sf=5 means you attack in the middle of round 1 and sf=0 means you attack at the very start of round 1, right? i mean that's the common wisdom so how is it true that "SF 7 does not mean it's supposed to take 7/10 of a combat round"? the idea is that it's true in a apr=1 situation. so the logic of the proposed tweak is based on the question: why wouldn't it also be true with more than 1 apr? why should the attack be compressed to squeeze in more attacks? i mean it's not necessary to see things like this but there's something persuasive about the proposition that more attacks per round doesn't mean that attack duration is compressed, it just means...more attacks - if there's a time window to fit them in, considering the physical boundaries of the weapon etc.

it can't be max 1 apr. the slowest weapon, sf=10 (2h sword) would have this calculation for max apr: 10/(10/2)=2 apr sf=9 (halberd): 10/(9/2)=2 apr, rounded down sf=8 (bastard sword)... same result sf=7 (flail)... same result --- a notable magical weapon which is this slow is the silver blade, and i don't think there are many cases like this, and those that would exist i'd consider pretty justified sf=6 (spear): 3 apr sf=5 (long sword): 4 apr --- this is exatcly your desired scenario 5 apr > 4 apr, and i think that many magical weapons have speed factors of 5 and 4 (carsomyr, unholy reaver...), and generally less than that (one-handed weapons) sf=4 (katana): 5 apr, which is the hard cap, so sf=3,2,1,0 is the same greater haste would double these values, and whirlwind would set it to 10. so not such a big change, it's pretty subtle. maybe too subtle.

that would be the coolest tweak ever done, by far.

And, take Ajantis on a quest to save Ajantis. Heh. Well, there will be always different mods featuring the same BG1 NPCs, and that's alright because it broadens the content the player can chose from. (Having them all in one game is the problem then.) But in general, there is no reason not to have another NPC mod for a game character if the modder wants to tell his/her own story (I am biased in this regard, though.) But - it's not scope of EET. And, as Roxanne already pointed out, having the BG1NPCs in BGII without content and taking them from Irenicus Dungeon and meeting all the (fleshed-out) BG1 mod NPCs along the way would kill the playing fun for me. (Just a note: Requests like these are one reason I will not script my BGII Ajantis to use the BG1 script variable. I am not judging, just saying that I'm not doing it to prevent two mod NPCs to be triggered at the same time.) I think the situation can be described like this, if we start from a provisional agreement that just the "technical" continuity (no content changes) would be a significant improvement over the status quo: - if the work required to do this was fairly small: it would be in the scope of EET to make versions of certain mods with purely "technological" updates (in order to make them "compliant with EET standards" ); that's a conceivable construction and all relevant people would either cooperate or not complain - if it's not fairly small​, this work falls out of the scope of EET because it becomes an unpractical idea so it's not about the results. the results would be good and worthy and would certainly elevate EET for a lot of players (some non-technical people still wonder what's the "added value" of EET compared to importing...). it's about the scope of a project more in practical terms, than conceptual terms...

what do you think about skipping the dialogue/story continuity, e.g. simply not doing (1), and only going with the creature continuity? why can't it be done automatically? by automatically i mean "find and replace" same with ajantis and other well known BG1-NPC-in-BG2 mods just creature continuity would be a great thing for EET. the tome bonuses would stick, pips, skills, spells, experience, fallen status, death state (if possible)... afterwards, gradually, maybe, dialogue/story continuity can be improved...dialogue continuity isn't exactly amazing with vanilla (EE included) characters either. there's no need to impose higher standards on mods

change the adverse effect of durlag's goblet to something characters are less ordinarily immune to, while preserving the thematic combo of durlag's goblet and kiel's helmet by making the helmet provide an immunity to that effect instead of the ordinary immunity to fear *and/or* make it impossible to recharge the durlag's goblet (perhaps make it 1xday or make merchants refuse to buy it, perhaps along with other cursed items) *or, failing all else* make the durlag's goblet much more expensive, so recharging becomes relatively uneconomical (more relevant for SoD, because of the money situation there) reasons: content changes since the original TotSC create a new context for the use of this item which makes it drastically more powerful and convenient than it was designed to be edit: also, i think that kiel's helmet shouldn't provide a working immunity to the durlag's goblet fear curse (it's supposed to trick you to believe you're immune) and that it didn't in the original edition, but this nuance was lost in the subsequent generations of the game; i'd have to check on this though

“There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

yesss!