28 replies to this topic

[wellunhappy]

Recently this forum seems to be full of game problems like this crashes or this does not trigger which is fine but i want to get something of my chest, no jokes please. So as I'm sounding off what better place to start than the vale of shadows. I've played BP loads of times but always cheat in the V of S cos I find it impossible and as such boring, Even with the nerf's I realised how f king stupid this part of the game is (Sorry Vlad).

So you haven't even escaped the dungeon and with sod all protection against the constant stream of horror, confusion and hold and the excessive damage a yeti does if he gets his mits on you, but that doesn't matter cos you are wandering around like a headless chicken while your party gets mashed. Anyway, does anybody do this without cheating???

erm......how......

How do you do it, I'm currently playing an assassin, with Imy, chloe, Jah, dar and his mate.

[Chevalier]

This has nothing to do with Vlad, but Horred. I have played NeJ un-modded and the Vale of Shadows is not that hard. Horred upped the monsters to make other battles more chanllenaging, but made the Vale too hard.


Yes, I did a Vale of shadows once without cheating! It was very hard and use protect. from undead scrolls and invis. for non-protected.

Edited by Chevalier, 10 March 2005 - 02:53 PM.

[horred the plague]

This has nothing to do with Vlad, but Horred.  I have played NeJ un-modded and the Vale of Shadows is not that hard.  Horred upped the monsters to make other battles more chanllenaging, but made the Vale too hard.


Yes, I did a Vale of shadows once without cheating!  It was very hard and use protect. from undead scrolls and invis. for non-protected.

Hmmm...didn't hlidskialf make a specific part of the bp s& h patch to deal with this already?

[Chevalier]

He did, and I think it was still tuff form him or so he says.

[horred the plague]

He did, and I think it was still tuff form him or so he says.

I had these toned down a LOT, to a fair mediocre battle--but the files were overwritten when I installed all the new mods after returning to the community.
Irrevocably lost now. Guess I'll have to redo this some day--upon return to the BG2 community. Still trying to get the NWN mod levelled off, so it may be a bit yet.

[russ]

This has nothing to do with Vlad, but Horred.  I have played NeJ un-modded and the Vale of Shadows is not that hard.  Horred upped the monsters to make other battles more chanllenaging, but made the Vale too hard.


Yes, I did a Vale of shadows once without cheating!  It was very hard and use protect. from undead scrolls and invis. for non-protected.

The problem arises because the coding for these monsters is such that they will all run to you when you first enter an area. It is good practice to cast remove fear before entering an area where you know there are undead this eliminates most of the panic type attacks of these monsters. You should also (if you don't have many magical weapons) make sure you have enough money to buy the Mace+2 in Kuldahar. In addition to protection from undead spells and using a paladin's or cleric's turn undead skill, escaping the area (which means staying close to the exit) before the monsters kill you is also a good idea (this way you reduce the number of monsters you have to face in a single battle). Even though all the monsters move to you as soon as you enter they don't reach you in time if you just kill one or two and then leave.

[Azazello]

Been playing 'the monster' (or 'the beast' as some affectionately call it) and I finally got out of the Sword Coast. Despite all the extra content added to the BG1 world, it still felt (to quote a certain Rasheman witch) lack-king.

So my group, what was left of it, woke up in the lovely Hotel Irenicus, where the beds were not made, no chocalate was put on the pillows, and the morning wake-up call was Imoen shouting, "Hey, wake up you!"

Thanks to the auspices of Jasper St. Baird, I now had the choice to avoid the other niceties of Hotel I. I did pick up Yoshimo and got to the exit, to be greeted by someone named Kachiko. Apparently she too did not rate Hotel I. very highly, so after using Power Word: Reload once (didn't say the right thing to keep her happy), she agreed to join us on the wonderful tour known as BGII.

But wait gentle readers. I almost forgot about NEJ. Hmmm, well, no way my party was going to WALK back to the portal, so we decided to use the lingering magic of Jasper (better known as Ctrl-J) and the CLUA MoveToArea command to do a 2-jump hop to Icewind Dale, er, NEJ.

After the formalities of Easthaven and Kuldahar, my party was prepared - as any average 9th-level party in BG2 would be - to tackle the dreaded Vale of Shadows.

Now, you've notice I've been able to keep my sense of humor so far. You do have to have much patience and much belly-laughter to go thru all the bugs, errors, cheese and overpowered goodness thru-out the BG1 portion.

So why am I posting?

The experience of the Vale of Shadows is... shameful. There is no way I can be generous enough to say it's fun, laughable, jokeable, cheesable. The setup, having waves of some of the toughest undead that YOU WILL EVER MEET IN THE ENTIRE GAME, right at the doorstep of the Vale makes no sense. Fear-inducing (protectable), magic-casting (dealable), life/level draining (unavoidably unprotectable) undead, all out for one main purpose - GET CHARNAME. Don't matter if CHARNAME is invisibile, don't matter if there are 5 other NPCS in the way, they are going to get you no matter what stands in their way.

As the purpose of this thread points out, there is no way you're gonna get thru that valley without cheating (Jasper, where are you when we need you), cheesing (I've read somewhere that people were using Exnem items. Where's the website?), or dying. I read a post where half of someone's party died in order to make it thru. Chevalier said he made it thru - ONCE - with no cheating but we don't know the state of the party afterwards.

BTW retreating back to Kuldahar does not an enjoyable time make. Why? Some of our lovely undead friends come along with you. If you run away to a supposed defensible area, my-O-my someone starts teleporting in Invisible Stalkers to get at your flanks - and their teleporting happens even when you are at the opposite side of the map. Oh my!

Let's talk about Kuldahar and how it can help you on your quest.
- There's one Mace +2. One. It's the only decent magical weapon you can afford at this stage of your Bhaalhood.
- There are TWO Prot.f.Undead scrolls. That's it.
- There are plenty of Restoration scrolls. Presuming you have enough gold to buy enough to get your party back to full strength.
- Hmm, anything to stop the lovely Holds put on you when smacked by a Shadow Fiend? Yes there is. Either Dar, Accalia or one of your own party that has Remove Paralysis. This is presuming that said players don't get held themselves.

So I too want to know: who has made it thru the old-fashion way, by actually gaming? I want details, diagrams, play-by-play. My guess is we'll be waiting a long time for this.

You know, even Vlad laughed about this in another thread, how people are still playing an outdated version of his mod. I now understand why he wants nothing to do with this version. Makes me wonder how his updated version is designed.

I'm not trashing NEJ - hell I haven't really played it yet. But no way I'm going to continue with it because I refuse to cheat and cheese thru it. Unless someone can convince me on how to progress thru the game with a least a modicum of rolepaying, I'm going back to an earlier save, say goodbye to that Jasper jackass, and off to Athkatla my party goes.

Wild Jester, 11th level
Imoen, Charming Rogue, 12th level
Jaheira, Fighter/Justifier, 8/9
Yoshimo, Bounty Hunter, 10th level
Kachiko, Kensai/Mage, 7/10
Dar, Fighter/Cleric, 8/8

[seanas]

i agree with yr sentiments entirely azazello: it's well known that the vale of shadows in BP-BGT-NEJ) is ridiculously hard. it's a well known and unfortunate combination of NEJ's make-things-harder-by-making-more-monsters and BP's make-things-harder-by-making-monsters-smarter. the nerfs in thes_and_h patch make the first battle survivable, more or less, but only to an extent.

the next version of the patch, assuming i learn how to code stores, will add some undead-killing weapons to stores in kuldahar, which will make some difference.

but really, the only reliable way to go thru the vale of shadows (not to mention the final dungeon in NEJ...) without much CLUAing is to go *after* you get out of CI and have tooled up in the adventurers' mart. not really an ideal solution, i know. on the other hand, when you *do* finally make finish the vale, the sense of achievement is greater than any other encounter in the whole game, including ascension...

my ideal solution, and my excuse for CLUAing there after CI (altho it won't happen - for perfectly good reasons, and i won't be releasing any patch making it happen) would be for the NEJ-portal to be inside one of the buildings in waukeen's promenade: sufficiently early that undead are still a challenge; but after you've had a chance to tool up in order to survive.

Edited by seanas, 10 July 2005 - 03:28 AM.

[Chevalier]

Did you use the spell 'Create Magic Weapon' ? If you use it right it will give you 2 +3 weapons for one slot used. You should find 2 more Prot.f.Undead scrolls in the Vale.

[hlidskialf]

Not having played NEJ, I can't comment on the VoShadows, but your experience sounds familiar. What Seanas suggests is easy to code, and moving the portal is something I coded up for my own games. (I just never used it.) Vlad was against moving it, but *shrug* what someone does on their own time is their business. I've repackaged it as a stand-alone for those insterested. Do the standard "Change .txt to .rar extention".

Attached Files

•  NEJ_PS_Portal.txt   258.5K   309 downloads

[Azazello]

hlidskialf, beautiful!

To me, it makes more sense, story-wise, to put that portal in there (you didn't say where in your post, so neither will I) - all kinds of weird stuff happens in that place. I would even suggest somewhere deeper within the place, if you're taking suggestions.

Gonna install it tomorrow and when eventually get there will give my report.

[hlidskialf]

hlidskialf, beautiful!

To me, it makes more sense, story-wise, to put that portal in there (you didn't say where in your post, so neither will I) - all kinds of weird stuff happens in that place. I would even suggest somewhere deeper within the place, if you're taking suggestions.

Gonna install it tomorrow and when eventually get there will give my report.

Glad it made someone happy.
Suggestions are welcome and easy as pie to implement. I only put it there in case you wanted to do NEJ without having to do the majority of that quest first. Cheers.


PS - For those curious the location is in the readme and kinda obvious from the name of the patch.

[Sir BillyBob]

Bitch, bitch, bitch. Yes, the vale is the hardest part of the mod. That has been said for the past two years and you all still don't bother to read old posts before complaining.

As Seanas said, this is an area that we all know has to be cleaned up. It is on Horred's todo list (if not, we can always add it). For now, live with it people.

There are several posts here about how some of us have gotten past this pain-in-the-ass area. One of the best ways would be to actually go through Jon's dungeon and earn some experience before going through the portal. You did pick up the 2-handed sword from the genie, right? You do have Dar or Accalia, or some other cleric right? Lastly, jumping back and forth between the two areas does help.

Exnem will help, so does CTRL-Y on those damn mists and shadows. Folks, learn to work around the bugs please!

[Vlad]

I don't want to be harsh here but I really don't like how my mod is misused. If someone wants to summon some additional tough foes and exercise his/her group skills on them then it's really unnecessary to play NeJ. Just CLUAConsole those monsters from NeJ-BP version at any time and any level of your game and enjoy smashing them. I am strongly against changing/modifying my mod by doing following things:
1. Extracting NPCs from their story lines messing their scripts and dialogues.
2. Changing the core content of the mod by moving areas, changing portal locations, switching between areas and hence again messing variables and timers.
3. Increasing/decresing level of difficulty of the mod by introducing additional non-planned content (variables, scripts, items) without prior consent of mine.
I really don't like that after several years of working on NeJ2, I have to come back to NeJ and explain people that it was my first big mod, and playing it is a very bad idea when NeJ2 is coming out. I fully understand the reluctance of gamers to stop playing NeJ after enetring VoS in a BP version, but as Chev said it has nothing to do with my mod. Moreover I'd like to stress out that NeJ2 is not about cleaning areas out off monsters. It is a very well-ballanced game with many different elements, and if sometimes a battle becomes unbearable for your party then probably you shouldn't fight your way through.

[EDIT] Hlid, I made the portal in Irenicus dungeon just for one very simple reason - it is story line, and it would be wise to leave it there. Really, there are several dialogues and the whole story (already in NeJ fisrt edition), as well as modified Jaheira's and Imoen's dialogues. It's impossible to move to the second part of NeJ2 if you move the portal to somewhere else. It's needless to say that if you move the portal out of the Irenicus dungeon you won't get Imoen with you back in time. Yoshimo and Kachiko shouldn't be there and they will be silent. Etc. etc. etc....

Edited by Vlad, 11 July 2005 - 01:28 AM.

[horred the plague]

I don't want to be harsh here but I really don't like how my mod is misused. If someone wants to summon some additional tough foes and exercise his/her group skills on them then it's really unnecessary to play NeJ. Just CLUAConsole those monsters from NeJ-BP version at any time and any level of your game and enjoy smashing them. I am strongly against changing/modifying my mod by doing following things:
1. Extracting NPCs from their story lines messing their scripts and dialogues.
2. Changing the core content of the mod by moving areas, changing portal locations, switching between areas and hence again messing variables and timers.
3. Increasing/decresing level of difficulty of the mod by introducing additional non-planned content (variables, scripts, items) without prior consent of mine.
I really don't like that after several years of working on NeJ2, I have to come back to NeJ and explain people that it was my first big mod, and playing it is a very bad idea when NeJ2 is coming out. I fully understand the reluctance of gamers to stop playing NeJ after enetring VoS in a BP version, but as Chev said it has nothing to do with my mod. Moreover I'd like to stress out that NeJ2 is not about cleaning areas out off monsters. It is a very well-ballanced game with many different elements, and if sometimes a battle becomes unbearable for your party then probably you shouldn't fight your way through.

[EDIT] Hlid, I made the portal in Irenicus dungeon just for one very simple reason - it is story line, and it would be wise to leave it there. Really, there are several dialogues and the whole story (already in NeJ fisrt edition), as well as modified Jaheira's and Imoen's dialogues. It's impossible to move to the second part of NeJ2 if you move the portal to somewhere else. It's needless to say that if you move the portal out of the Irenicus dungeon you won't get Imoen with you back in time. Yoshimo and Kachiko shouldn't be there and they will be silent. Etc. etc. etc....

This is all just a compatability fluke, really. I made stock shadows harder in BP. (After all, you don't really run into them until the temple ruins, which you can do at your own pace.) NeJ adds an area that uses lots of stock shadows in a certain area. It has to be accessed from the starting dungeon. This is just a coincidence, a compatability issue that is causing people a lot of strife--nothing more, and nothing less.

EDIT: I just solved this whole issue. I editted my BPSHADOW.BCS. I added the following block (second from the top):

IF
  OR(4)
    AreaCheck("TT3000")
    AreaCheck("TT3101")
    AreaCheck("TT3301")
    Difficulty(EASIEST)
THEN
  RESPONSE #100
    ChangeAIScript("WTASIGHT",DEFAULT)
END

This will leave the shadows with a few more HP's, maybe a slightly better AC and so on--but absolutely no spells or special abilities. WTASIGHT is one of the more basic scripts in my AI system--augmented, but not making supermen out of anybody. It will only do this in the three regions above, which are the only I saw shadows in throughout NeJ1. If there are others, please correct me. If NeJ2 has any shadows, the areas could also be added to this block. This whole modification took me less than five minutes. Probably took longer to complain about abuse of your mod, or whatever that post was about. It certainly it took me longer to respond to the post, than fix the problem.



Vlad, nobody here is intentionally abusing your work, to my knowledge. They just want to play it. If you have to place blame for this on anyone, place it on me. It was my oversight...and I have corrected it.

That includes NeJ2--ppl here want to play it, and I'm going through a lot of work to make the new BP and NeJ(1 & 2) as seamless as possible without an extra package. This includes, but is not limited to, rewriting two other major mods (TDD and SoS -weidu), and BP itself, to work around your animation system. Hundreds of BAM files to rename, and 100's of CRE files to check and/or edit. I will also add checks for TS/NeJ content to my Setup-BP.tp2 file, and add/not add content accordingly for the sake of compatability. In my own way, I'm bending over backwards to work with you; or if all else fails, around you. I wish you could see that, or at least take it into consideration.





Well, there it is, folks--add this block to BPSHADOW.BCS, second from the top, and kiss the Vale woes goodbye. Return the mod to its maker's (albeit outdated, with the release of NeJ2) intent. And put an end to the dozens of posts, discussions, and arguments on this subject, since the first (and last) release of BP-NeJ.


Note that this will not affect an installation of BP, without NeJ, in any adverse way. On the contrary--it allows the option of making the shadows in BP easier, by simply sliding your difficulty slider to WIMP, errm... I mean EASY. It is a mod-specific block that will otherwise be ignored. The temple ruins and other areas will still be as challenging as you've learned to expect them in the BP adventure (unless you choose to WIMP out) .

Edited by horred the plague, 11 July 2005 - 03:57 AM.

[seanas]

cool, i'll add this to the next patch, and will do the same thing with the wandering horrors (and possibly the skeleton archers and skeleton warriors).

cheers horred!

[Vlad]

Bill, I sent you PM. Good work!

Edited by Vlad, 11 July 2005 - 06:02 AM.

[hlidskialf]

[EDIT] Hlid, I made the portal in Irenicus dungeon just for one very simple reason - it is story line, and it would be wise to leave it there. Really, there are several dialogues and the whole story (already in NeJ fisrt edition), as well as modified Jaheira's and Imoen's dialogues. It's impossible to move to the second part of NeJ2 if you move the portal to somewhere else. It's needless to say that if you move the portal out of the Irenicus dungeon you won't get Imoen with you back in time. Yoshimo and Kachiko shouldn't be there and they will be silent. Etc. etc. etc....

Seeing as people were advocating just CLUAing their way to NEJ later in the game, I thought giving them a quick patch a better option. All the problems you mentioned would still exist, it just keeps things out of console mode. Also, this was obviously for the BP-NEJ setup, (Not your NEJ2, which isn't in consideration for that combination yet.) and deals with a specific issue now resolved by Horred for the next versions.

[delnaja]

Well, there it is, folks--add this block to BPSHADOW.BCS, second from the top, and kiss the Vale woes goodbye. Return the mod to its maker's (albeit outdated, with the release of NeJ2) intent. And put an end to the dozens of posts, discussions, and arguments on this subject, since the first (and last) release of BP-NeJ.

Errmm... how do I edit a .BCS file...?