Baldur's Gate II The MTS Trilogy of Crap; Part One - Pre-mod installs V2. by MajorTomSawyer - majortomsawyer@hotmail.com (As you may have guessed) Table of Contents ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I. About II. Installation III. Components IV. Tools V. Version History VI. Special Thanks I. About: Yep, I finally made my own mod. Well it is sort of a mod. Mostly a collection of portraits I like and a few various tweaks. I truly cannot take credit for most of this as it is things I "borrowed" from other sources. Where possible, permission was granted, and either way, credit given to the author. I decided to break the original MTS Crappack into three seperate mods. It seemed silly to me how many of the components had to be installed before certain mods, then others after mods. I decided to attempt to make it easier for users so they could have one pack to install before mods, then another to install post-mods. II. Installation: BGII is required. ToB is optional. The MTS Trilogy of Crap; Part One should work fine with any WeiDU mod. Unzip the main ZIP file into your BGII main directory. This is normally: C:\Program Files\Black Isle\BGII - SoA\ Run (click on) "Setup-MTS Crappack.exe". Then choose which components you would like to install. You may always uninstall them later by re-running "Setup-MTS Crappack.exe". As far as I know, you do *not* need to start a new game to take advantage of anything you installed. But some of them only help at the beginning. III. Components: 1. Keep All BG1 Items On Imported Characters Created by the king of bugfixes himself, Kevin Dorner. This mod keeps you from loosing all items you had in BG1 (or BG2 if you start a new game with an imported character). This was originally hosted as a solo componet at Baldurdash (http://www.baldurdash.org), but I chose to include it in this mod so it would have a nice WEIDU install, and be easier to remove. The original readme for this component has been included as well. I simply removed the installation instructions. 2. Shorter Dream Sequences Created by Gebhard Blucher - http://www.fortunecity.com/boozers/winelodge/79/. In the words of the author " This file reduces the dream sequences to very, very short cutscenes... just enough to remind you what you're missing. :-)" For those of you who have played Ease of Use (http://www.weidu.org/ease.html) you will have seen how the Dream Sequences happen. This allows you to have those without switching Irenicus' dialogue to that of Noober. The original readme for this component has been included as well. I simply removed the installation instructions. It might be a good idea to install this before installing any other mods, just to be safe. 3. Revised High Level Abilities by Sabre *WARNING* - This component must be installed before Refinements. From Sabre: This patch edit the High Level Abilities for the Fighter/Mage/Cleric and Fighter/Mage/Thief multi-class characters - obviously this is for people with Throne of Bhaal only. Currently in the game, the Fighter/Mage/Cleric and Fighter/Mage/Thief multi-class only get abilities from the Fighter/Cleric and Fighter/Thief class, respectively. This is mostly because the Mage's abilities are no use until your character can cast level 9 spells - which is impossible without removing the experience cap - although the extra memorise slot for level 6 to 8 would have been nice. There is only one problem with the edit, there is a limit to the number of abilities the game can handle - which is 24. If you add the abilities from the F/M/C and the F/M/T you'll get 28 and 29, respectively. Therefore 4 abilities are removed for the F/M/C and 5 for the F/M/T. The decision was done through a poll at GameBanshee forum, so it will not suit everyone, but at least it's not just my opinion. - MTS note: You can read more indepth information about this in the Original Readme Folder. 4. Ariena without Kido Basically I made this quick patch for people who want to use Ariena without the Kido mod. Neither of these NPCs are my work. All credit should go to Deathsangel for his hard work on creating both of these wonderful NPCs. I Simply created this patch because converting the 'keep-me.txt' to 'BKido.d' as he suggested did not work. So I took a dialogue file and erased all the content, then re-named it, and poped it in my override folder and I was able to install Ariena. I know there is a VERY small people that play the BG series who know even less then I do about modding, so I made this patch to help them enjoy this fine mod. Installing this patch with Kido allready installed will probably be a VERY bad idea. This creates a blank file to simulate his missing dialogue. Installing this with him in the game is pretty much assured to hose his dialogue. This was also created to see if I could make a weidu mod, it was my first creation. 5. Valygar This component turns Valygar into a Kensai, and his katana improves as he does. The katana starts off as it was in the default game, and improves at levels 15, 21, and 30. This component contains the 2.5 update: - Valygar can use all of his katanas now. Thanks, Cam and Anonymous Guest. 6. Universal Carsomyr From Kevin Dorner: This component allows any character that can use a two-handed sword to take advantage of the usually paladin-specific Carsomyr. Also includes the Throne Of Bhaal upgraded version; works with or without ToB. 7. Paladin Patch From Falkentyne: Earlier, I was fighting poison, vampire mists and wandering horrors, and to MY horror , my Paladin was running away in PANIC. Well...aren't Paladins supposed to be IMMUNE to fear at level 2+? Not knowing how to access the kits in Nearinfinity (anyone know?), I decided to tweak the Innate Protection from Evil spell (Spcl213). What I did was: 1) Added: Immune to Effect: Panic 2) Added: Immune to Effect: Morale Break I neither know, nor care, really, if one of the Paladin kits allows this natively--Paladins should never be able to suffer fear/panic. But hopefully, this spell won't break any innate ability of another kit. In addition, a Paladin is always supposed to be protected from Evil, So the spell expiring after ONE TURN is just absurd: but since it can be cast on anyone, this had to be changed around a bit. 8. Universal Ioun Stones From Kevin Dorner: Universal Ioun Stones are items I'd love to include in the Bugfixes, but the developers have stated that they really did want to restrict mages, bards and other characters who can't wear helmets from using them, though they were invented in AD&D by a mage for mages. This is in reality probably due to a hard-coding in the Infinity engine whereby anything in the "head" slot protects against critical hits as a helmet and this ability can't be removed. Here they are for all characters to use if you can't get them from Wormy's page... 9. Extended Mage/Cleric Spell Tables From Kevin Dorner: I made for those who have removed the experience point cap with the file above or its equivalent direct from TeamBG. With it, mages can earn spells to level 25 (five spells from levels 1 to 9) and clerics to level 30 (nine spells from levels 1 to 7 + bonus spells for high Wisdom) as per AD&D high-level character tables. (Note: If your character(s) are already over the cap limit, the new spell slots will appear on their next Level Up, not immediately.) 10. All-Blunt Dwarven Thrower From Kevin Dorner: When does a hammer do piercing damage? When it's the Dwarven Thrower, the only accessible throwing hammer in Baldur's Gate 2. You might find it a bit overpowered like this as everything is vulnerable to blunt damage, but it is kinda fun to cause the "chunky death" of Goblins and other minor enemies from a distance. Enjoy. 11. - 14. Better-Looking Robes Of Vecna This component does not change the gameplay of these robes, so purists can use them, but do make them look a little less like marching band apparel. Several different colour schemes are included . Note that the red/black and green/black robes will override the major colour set in your inventory and set it to pitch black while wearing the Robe of Vecna, while the non-black versions will leave your selected colours alone. To simply installation, the files have allready been re-named, and broken into four seperate components. IV. Tools: DTLCEP IEEP Microsoft Picture It! Near Infinity Notepad Photochop Weidu V. Version History 2 - .tp2 file fixed by The Bigg, to make the mod more compatable with other mods (such as BGT). Fixed the problem where the readme file would not launch. Added the Revised HLA component by Sabre. 1 - Initial release in all it's cappiness. VI. Special Thanks: (in alphabetical order) *Ascension64 For pointing out errors file folder names could cause with Non-English computers. *Bex - For pointing out typos. *Hlidskiaff - For telling me that I could create my own mod, and answering an assload of questions. *SConrad - For helping me with many questions and the .tp2 *Sir BillyBob, Seifer, Idobek, Seanas, Sticz, CamDawg, and Rabain - For helping me with so many stupid modding questions. *Sister Sinister - For putting up with my BG2 obession, and help with the Jaheria portrait. *Black Wyrm, Blacksheep Mods, Chosen of Mystra, Gibberlings Three, Pocket Plane, RPG Dungeon, Spellhold Studios, and Wediu.org - For hosting great mods and having boards to support them. *Ted's Pipe Shoppe - For supplying the best tobacco anywhere, which keeps me sane. *The Bigg - For help with the .tp2 file and answering many questions. *Wes Weimer - For creating WEIDU. That tool kicks ass. *Kevin Dormer - More then a few components are based on his hard work. He had released them pre-weidu and the originals can be found on his kick-ass site: http://www.baldurdash.org