Lightbringer

Heh. I didn't even think to consider the EE NPCs. There is also Dorn, Neera, and Rasaad, that's true. That mod looks pretty neat, Endarire. Thanks for the share!

We've been waiting for IWD-in-EET for several years. Development is ongoing -- though it's been nearly a year since there have been signs of it. The developer, K4thos, has disappeared before for stretches, and then returned with new achievements. It's quite possible that he, like others, are waiting for Beamdog's 2.6 patch for the I.E. games to release, as that will break many, possibly all, mods. I'd wager we're several months away, at absolute best, from IWD-in-EET -- and that's a fair amount of wish-casting. There's probably only about a 50% chance IWD-in-EET releases before BG3.

Totally understand. Another advantage to sticking with the Bioware NPCs is that if/when the IWD-in-EET mod finishes, your party will be full of banters for it. If you want to keep the same crew from Keep to Throne, you're quite limited. The only BG1 NPCs that make it to BG2 -- at least initially -- are the ones that wake up with you in the cell. That's Minsc, Imoen, and Jahiera. Viconia is available for recruitment after you escape, and Edwin shortly thereafter. Now, it's no coincidence that those are also some of the favorites of many BG players. If you're looking for other BG1 NPCs to carry through to the Throne, there are some mods that add them into BG2. I think Kivan & Deheriana does that. Jastey's Adjantis mod for BG2 does -- though if you don't romance him (as a female bhaalspawn) you'll miss out on some content. There's a Branwen in BG2 romance mod. You've got some options.

Cannot agree more about BG1 NPC Project. The Dynaheir romance is quite good. I assume the others are as well, but I haven't tried them. Other excellent NPC mods I enjoy include: Finch (BG1), Isra (BG1-ToB), Fade (BG2-ToB), and Amber (BG2). I change their classes in EEKeeper to fit what I want. For example, my Fade is a fighter/mage multi, and my Amber is a fighter/cleric multi. I also appreciate the Nalia romance, as well as Auren Aseph. I'm currently checking out Tyris Flare -- good so far, but limited time spent.

Well, at the end of this month, it will have been a full year since K4thos even visited G3. Make of that what you will ... On the other hand, he's been on the Beamdog forum in the last month, so maybe there's still hope.

Sure thing! As I've said before, I'm adept at head-canon. Besides, it sound like just one set of scenes, upon her rejoining the party. Could be easily explained by confusion from whatever Irenicus did. You kind of have to do this sort of thing anyway, especially in an EET playthrough. Take Jaheira. I say hello to her and Khalid in the FAI in BG1, then drop them straight away. Much later, in BG2, she's in a cage near me, talking as if we've been adventuring together forever. We haven't. Still, I take her along because I need a healer. After I do her lucrative Harper quests in Athkatla, I drop her again. I read her massively angry break-up dialogue, after all we've been through together since Candlekeep (not really), and head-canon it as an amicable departure between acquaintances who only just met. If I can do that, I can certainly handle a confused Imoen for a scene Hopefully, other folks who may have similar tolerances will now be able to enjoy both great mods together.

All right. I tested it, on vanilla BG2:EE, with only the latest I4E and Imoen Romance installed and unmodified. Incidentally, playing in story mode with godbows is a helluva rush All the dreams -- the 3 vanilla dreams and the 3 Romance dreams -- occurred normally. Both the I4E and Romance banters fired appropriately. A couple journal entries for the Romance referenced her captivity in Spellhold, but that isn't a big deal for me. Upon arrival in Brynnlaw, after Saemon's ambush, Imoen was spirited away as intended by I4E. No untimely Romance conversations. It looks like the Romance will wait until you rescue Imoen from inside Spellhold. By this test, I feel confident that I4E is out-of-the-box compatible with Imoen Romance. There may be a couple references here or there to events that occurred differently, but it has seemed minimal. Any references to Irenicus torturing her could easily refer to what occurred in the Chateau. There was a hidden bonus. The optional component in I4E to have Imoen react to the Irenicus dreams actually lines up exceptionally well with the Romance dream content. You and Imoen agree to find each other in your dreams, and then they get more ... personal. In fact, the way that the reactions are set up completely fits with the fact that you are dreaming about Imoen while she's standing next to you. Not only are the two mods technically compatible, but I find their pre-Spellhold content to be thematically compatible to the point of being complimentary. They fit very well together, story-wise. I love how you wrote the dialogues for Imoen's return and existence at charname's side. The story beats, and the tension, are well preserved. Very nicely done, Jastey!

Took a deeper look at the scripting for Imoen Romance, and I'm not at all sure why it would be technically incompatible with I4E, both mods out of the box. There are dialogues in Chateaux Irenicus. Then there are 3 dream sequences. The dream sequences trigger from a timer based on the Irenicus dream sequences. Imoen's presence due to I4E shouldn't affect that. After the 3 dream sequences, there is no further Imoen Romance content until you rescue her. From what I can tell, all that content originates from triggers that involve chapter checks. It does look like there's at least one block of code that simply has a chapter 4 check and an Imoen present check -- likely intended to trigger after rescue in Spellhold. As is, it could trigger upon arrival in Brynnlaw, but before Imoen is re-abducted. Potentially -- depends on the order of events executed by the game engine. If I4E abducts Imoen in cutscene mode immediately upon arrival, and before the Romance dialogue can be triggered, than it is compatible out of the box. Either way, a simple check of the ImoenStays variable above can ensure proper timing. I'll keep digging, but most of this already looks really good. Edit: Finished digging. Other than the block mentioned above, everything else is clear. There are banters or talks about certain quests you may undertake while she's there, but they're standalone conversations. She comments on your stronghold when you enter it. Everything else is chapter-bound. The closest thing is a comment in AR1500, the Spellhold exterior map. If Imoen is abducted upon setting foot in Brynnlaw, then she'll only be present in AR1500 if you've already rescued her. Compatible. One line of code, checking for !Global("C#IM_ImoenStays","GLOBAL",1), at one spot, makes Imoen Romance technically compatible with I4E -- and even that might not be necessary. I think I'll go test it and see what happens.

Ah, found your Compatabiltiy for Modders in BGII post on page one. That's the info I need. I bet I can use your C#IM_ImoenStays global variable to adjust the timing of things in Imoen Romance and make them technically compatible. Content-wise compatibility will still require a ton of head-canon work, but that's no biggie for me.

Thanks Jastey. Sounds like everything is already good to go from I4E's end. I'll just need to check in with the Imoen Romance folks and figure out what I need to do over there.

I've been thinking about Imoen Romance compatibility. I know it's not something that can reasonably be asked for from either mod. My own tolerance for shenanigans is large, though, and I think I have an edit that I can make work for my own purposes. I'd like to run it by you, just to make sure that there isn't something I'm missing on I4E's end. This would largely be a change I make in the Imoen Romance mod. From what I've seen, there are just a few dream sequences (2 or 3?), and then a lot of silence until later (Spellhold and beyond). There may be a few more, like when you get to Brynnlaw, or upon making the deal with one of the Thieve's Guilds. I'm still early in BG2, so I'd have to find out. My idea is to simply adjust the trigger checks in the scripting for Imoen Romance to make sure that the dreams can occur in the appropriate chapter, whether Imoen is present or not, and to add a chapter check to every other Imoen Romance event. It all sounds fairly simple to me, so I suspect there may be other contingencies I'm not aware of. I'm adept at head-canoning my way through squirrelly things, so I'm not afraid of narrative inconsistencies. Assuming that this works for Imoen Romance purposes (and that may be a big IF), is there anything I need to be wary of from the I4E end?

Thanks for the continued updates! I'm feeling that BG-EET itch returning, so I'll get to check your mod out soon.

How's the update coming? Getting that BG-EET run itch again...

Same here! Feeling the itch to start a new BG-EET run, and your mods are right up my alley.

Here's a good thread to check out. https://www.gibberlings3.net/forums/topic/31281-cahirs-eet-epic-run-mod-order-help-request/ The mod list is on page 1. He lists his requirements on page 4, and I go through a discussion with him about BG1 mods on pages 4, and 5. The whole thread is a great example of the entire community coming together to build a mod list, and is worth perusing. Depending on your playstyle, this is also a good thread to look at. It gets a bit into the weeds, but might be informative for long term balancing plans. https://www.gibberlings3.net/forums/topic/32042-curbstomping-firkraag/ I've been experimenting with the balance between challenging, yet not frustrating, difficulty and a satisfyingly high power curve. The thread examines some of the pitfalls and solutions for such a gameplay idea. Both those threads are good, as you can see different philosophies of play (mine and Subtledoctor's) hashing it out. Somewhere between the two of us, you should find the kind of game you're looking for!

Hi Telcontar. Welcome to the wild world of BG modding! I'm not sure how you wound up with the duplicates -- something definitely went wrong. Definitely avoid the Sandrah Saga and Dark Horizons. While having cool concepts, they actually do throw +3 weapons at you in the first few maps of BG1. The original versions of DSotSC and NTotSC did have very unbalanced content, but newer versions have been re-balanced for EET and are quite good. I do recommend at least the NTotSC that Jastey remade. DSotSC is a bit of a straight crawl, and can cause some immersion loss. I enjoyed it, but I'm fairly easy. Stone of Askavar is fun, balanced, and seamlessly integrated. I cannot recommend SCS highly enough -- and this comes from someone who doesn't usually go for difficulty increases. The in-game slider for SCS is revolutionary and makes it pain free. Even if you avoid a ton of NPCs, consider Finch NPC, if she fits your party idea. Fun, cute, bookish gnome cleric who is wonderfully voiced. I had a similar discussion with another person on the forum a year or so ago. Let me see if I can dig it up. We went into greater detail, and the other poster seemed to have similar goals as you.

Congratulations on the release of Balduran's Seatower!

The big difference, as I understand it, is that the new tools don't require a maintainer. The ease of the old BWS tool required a constant maintainer to update all the links, repositories, and compatibility info. It was a beauty to use, but required an insane amount of continuous work on the back end. The maintainer getting burned out and retiring from the modding scene is what led to EET Setup Tool and PI in the first place. PI, in particular, eschews the ease created by a maintainer -- transferring that burden onto the user -- in order to ensure that the community would be absent a reliable tool any time a load-bearing pillar of the community retires. It's a trade off. As you said , it's not that PI is complicated. In fact, it's building a heavily modded EET that's complicated.

Thank you @K4thos from me too! (and hope to see you again around the home front here soon o.o )

For what it's worth, I'm not a coder, and I had a great experience with PI. Much thanks to Alien for his work. There are many varieties of mod users. When I first started modding IE games, it was EasyTuTu. I didn't know a WeiDU from from an SCS. I think, maybe, I also used an NPC (Finch) and the NPC Project. Pretty basic stuff. EET really isn't meant for mod users of that level. EET is an advanced mod. The BWS was even more so (from what I gather -- before my time). It had a really honkin' big PDF guide to make it work. Frankly, I'm very glad that tools like PI or EET Setup Tool (faults aside) exist to help smooth things over a little. A beginning modder will absolutely face challenges trying to blend together a megamod EET setup. A more experienced modder can craft a wonderfully customized experience. Finally, I will note that continued accusations of lying in lieu of dialogue reveal much about a poster and their intentions.

I haven't gotten far enough into BG2/ToB to speak on Wheels of Prophecy or Ascension -- though they are both quite popular and well regarded. I have them both installed and I look forward to seeing them. I can speak for SCS. The current version has an in-game difficulty adjuster -- you can tweak how tough it makes things during a playthrough. In fact, per that Firkraag thread, I plan to tweak dragon difficulty for my current game. I highly recommend giving it a try. I was a skeptic of and reluctant to try SCS. I usually don't like difficulty mods, as I don't generally like frustration in games. I love SCS. It has made my playthrough more robust and fun, and with enemies that --while more clever -- are still quite able to be defeated. Most of the horror stories you might hear have been ironed out, or can be eliminated on the fly through the in-game difficulty adjuster. FinchNPC is just an NPC mod. Finch is a very cute and fun -- and very well voiced -- bookish, gnome cleric. If you like the sound of that, go for it. If she's not your cup of tea, avoid it. She is certainly neither Viconia nor Branwen. One thing to keep in mind is that she has zero content outside of BG1. I had used EEKeeper to change Minsc to multiclass Ranger/Cleric, so I was able to deal with her absence in SoD. For BG2 and beyond, I had other plans.

Quoting from the ultra-authoritative "some guy on reddit" source: "My last SoD run, with XP caps off (the cap is 500 K in SoD), I came from BG1 with 190 K and left with 540 K."

Your mileage may vary, and if you read my post on the main EET page called "Curbstomping Firkraag", you'll know how true that is. In my opinion, a basic, mostly unmodded EET run doesn't need caps or xp reductions. See below why, and again, YMMV. I can report from experience the results of a basic BG1 run with no cap. This was, I think, in TuTu. I played a monk, I recruited a full 6-man party as fast as possible, and I kept them throughout. I did everything in vanilla BG1 I could possibly do. The only quest related mods I had were Unfinished Business, FinchNPC, and Sirine's Call -- negligible added XP. My CHARNAME reached level 9 monk in the Thieves' Maze right before the end of BG1. That's 225k XP -- a mere 64k beyond the vanilla BG1 cap of 161k. In the scope of BG2, where each level takes around 250k (class dependent), that's small potatoes. If I had the standard caps, I would have started BG2 at level 8, and made level 9 after the chateau and the standard circus/Coronet/Slavers circuit. The SoD level cap is 500k -- that's around level 10 or 11, depending on class. You'll push past that by at least the 64k, possibly a little more, depending on how much surplus XP is in SoD. Even if there's a surplus of an extra 150k XP in SoD, that's still not enough for an entire extra level. Remember, capped, vanilla SoD intends you to enter BG2 with a 10th-11th level character. As Jarno pointed out, manually setting XP levels in EEKeeper is also a very valid strategy.

Hmmm ... I guess it is still very background in BG2, like BG1. You have a powerful enemy who is interested in you and means you harm. You are reminded of this fact via either assassins or dreams. You are given the opportunity to seek them out and challenge them and their plots. Otherwise, the game just waits for you to decide to do so. <shrugs> Works for me

Well said, but I think choosing a point for an abduction at install time would be too much meta-gaming. I have no idea how I would choose it. Mine would be "when I'm ready." I would define that as "I've done everything I can do in Amn." I don't know a way to concretely measure that in a way that doesn't constrict freedom. What if I choose 180 days, but I only need 90? What if I choose 90 days, but it turns out I need 95? What if I complete all stronghold quests, but I still have all of TDD to run through? It sounds like we're just shifting the time pressure, not eliminating it. The one point when any given player is guaranteed to be ready to go to Brynnlaw is ... when they decide to go to Brynnlaw. That is the only time when Imoen can be abducted that is guaranteed to not create that pressure. I don't think the abduction can occur before that and preserve the intent of this mod. -------------- Since the problem we're tackling is a story problem, I'll approach it as such. In any story, you have to have motivation and a goal. While we as players may be happy adventuring to gain levels and treasure, CHARNAME needs a reason other than boredom. A goal is what keeps them acting instead of boozing it up in a tavern for weeks on end. Chapter 2 isn't actually about just random adventuring. It's about paying a bill -- gaining enough wealth to buy a favor to further your goal of finding Irenicus. Chapter 3 still about buying that favor -- just this time the price isn't gold, it's deeds. In the vanilla game, there are 2 motivations to seek Irenicus: to rescue Imoen, and to seek revenge or power. If Imoen isn't abducted until Brynnlaw, the first motivation doesn't exist. The remaining motivation was traditionally couched in terms of a non-good CHARNAME. What several of us are looking for is a motivation to seek Irenicus that works for a heroic character. Such a motivation can take many forms, but for a heroic character, would usually involve some form of protecting innocents or preventing harm. If Irenicus is a clear threat to something that needs protecting, that can be enough. I had suggested a targeted threat to Imoen that doesn't require abducting (it was accomplished in the Chateau) and the only solution is to find the Mage himself again. Perhaps a solution is to look in the other direction. CHARNAME could go at any time -- and the sooner the better -- but to go while too weak would be worse than not going at all. Make it clear how much CHARNAME got their butt kicked by Irenicus in the Promenade, and that he/she needs to become more powerful before attempting to stop Irenicus's evil plots. That way, the trigger is up to the player -- when they feel they're ready -- and Irenicus's threat can be whatever it needs to be. Jastey indicated that my idea still puts pressure on CHARNAME to go to Brynnlaw as quick as possible, and she has a good point. Irenicus needs to be a threat to something else, and it needs to be enough that we cannot just let him rot for an arbitrary (years?) amount of time. Something looming, but not imminent. The trick is to keep the threat credible, but not so critical that you feel like a jerk for doing "just one more quest." It's also a question of what you're risking -- Imoen, the safety of Amn, or your own soul? I think the only way to avoid pressure is for the risk to be entirely CHARNAME's. Maybe something about CHARNAME's soul or Bhaal essence. Could be handled by a few choice dialogues or journal entries. For the motivation to adventure to involve personal power gain, the threat from Irenicus must also be personal. By delaying to gain power, you're not risking others, you're risking your own soul.