6 replies to this topic

[valky]

sobered, back and re-edit the whole thing a bit, with some things I noticed in my current walkthrough.

 

First off, the whole mod & story is ridiculous amazing, now that am finished Part 7. It often felt like a different game with a whole new story line. Also the interaction with roughly  any NPC (party/non-party) was fun.

Further, the character itself feel finished and balanced, compared to what you usually get from nearly any other OP-NPC mod, your have moderate attributes, which are in unison with the char itself. (= no 18/18/18/xxx thingies)

The only minor exception is maybe the lack of a bit constitution for Kova, cause the multi.class limits his hitpoints quite a bit and the boost girdle (18 const) is more qualified for Kyone, since she hasn't so much option to defend herself. That's why I raised his by 3 points, so Kova doesn't feel so extremely helpless. But thats just my opinion^^

 

And since am playing with full SCSII a lot of stuff from your mod suddenly get completely unfair and unbalanced (that's also the reason to raise his con)

My major concern were the nasty and pretty OP wizards, which really started to get annoying..your level 17 variant was more or less okay, but once my parties' level hit ~18/19 suddenly level 30 wizards jumped in instead. And those guys powered and beefed up by SCSII weren't absolutely no fun!

 

The 2 worst spells in their re-done spellbook were TimeStop(3x) & Gate (2x) which they deliberately casted. Given the SCSII Fiend-overhaul, I was pretty much helpless at first. I think my most abused spell was Sphere of CHaos, which helped a lot, before I had to strip them off their protections and kill them.

Also, I must have at least "dispatched" 80-90 of those fellas at all, which in itself is quite a number and completely unrealistic too.

(cause of the lack of spell-slots and the massive things I had to use, I had to rest and re-do the area, so the chance to encounter another pack was very high)

And mages are a rare species and can't reproduce itself like rabbits...

 

Still the Gate-mages were rare, before I went to Spellhold/Underdark - and I was kinda *hooray*, cause it cooled off a bit, as those cowled ***** really started to become a massive pain in the butt.

I think the first full group of your level 30 (!! still can't really believe it) guys helped Kharen a bit, which made the fight so damn hard. And compared to any other quest/boss/NPC so far, which was the hardest fight I had (maybe the beefed up Irenicus fight was on the same level). Kharen itself - on a sencond thought - wasn't _that_ hard, I think the only annoying stuff was her perm. Imp. ALacrity and sunfire spam in phase 2. Yet it was still less annoying then to fight off 3 Fiends, 3 lvl 30 mages and non-stop time-stop.

 

Once back in Ath. I made haste to get Bodhi killed asap, so I could get to part 7.

Hence the witness quest was then again fun ^^ but while I was in Ath. I had to kill 3 or 4 groups of those nasty mages, also the groups went up to 4 guys, which made them even more annoying.

But once I finally could face Seida, the mighty cheat-hammer did hit again....after several trial and error (16~ times) I started to wonder, why the heck can't thy be crowd-controlled?!

So I took a peek in nearinfinity and needless to say I was just WTF. First off, you can't just give a common 'human' attributes of like a giant (21 STR + 20 dex =seriously?).

There are other ways to boost them, with out relying on such stupid mechanics.

Furthermore, why do they get the complete undead immunities = immune to: Fear, daze, morale-break, chaos, hold, stun, poison, confusion, sleep, slow and similar.

 

So anything I did to slow them down, was useless (and that's where I really was pissed). With RR their AI is also a bit more useful, so the started to hunt in packs and if unlucky they killed off my party within seconds, as all I could to was to endlessly gulp heal potions. (and they use more invis potions, that make them even more dangerous)

 

SInce I was already in the editor, I just removed that stupid immunity ring and changed their attributes to be in line with a human being and not some half-god. And suddenly the fight was much more balanced at all and do-able.

 

To sum it up, my only real complains are those level 30 mages and the god-like assassins, you encounter in the Seida event.

I think the only mod, that is at 'fault' and changes most of your encounter should be SCSII...RR only slightly beef up the shadow rogues.

 

Barely remember vanilla though ^^ but mages weren't necessary hard, so I guess it's much more fun at all without difficult changing modules.

 

THat aside, highly looking forward to the wedding now but I the worst is yet to come: Imp. Irenicus in Hell........

Edited by valky, 22 July 2013 - 11:36 AM.

[Zyraen]

Mages vs Shadow Thieves

 

BTL "pursuit" encounters run on two separate timers.

 

Thieves run on "Real Time", meaning every X hours you play, there is a chance you will encounter a party of Thieves in pursuit.

Mages run on "Game Time", meaning every X hours, there is a chance you will encounter a party of Cowlies in pursuit.

 

I'm also quite sure that I only ever sent Lv 18 Mage AI max, with my game. Your mods might have upgraded them to Lv 30 AI, so yeah.

The Mages with Kharen were supposed to be Lv 16-18, if I recall right.

 

IMHO, especially with K&K's gear, Thieves are the much easier party to deal with.

 

Even without all the mods you mentioned, the Mages are quite a pain to kill. I usually "pick" my place to meet them and kill them there.

eg. I am in Docks (where I don't want to be) and run into party of Mages. I reload (usually an Autosave) and instead of going to Docks, I go to Slums (my favourite place to trigger encounters). I walk up to the first door of Copper of Coronet and trigger the spawn of Mages. then I walk into CC, go out the other door, and I have a fair distance to them now and able to have a straight up "fair" fight, instead of them spawning around me.

That said, probably doesn't work with AI, SCSII, etc.

 

So, if you're meeting a ton of Mages, it probably means you are Resting, a LOT.

This also typically means you run around with a party that almost always has all its Spells etc Ready (as opposed to Expended).

In that case, I guess the Mages come when you're "ready" for them.

 

=================

 

Final Fight Assassins

 

Complete undead immunities = immune to: Fear, daze, morale-break, chaos, hold, stun, poison, confusion, sleep, slow and similar.

<== I'm quite sure none of my assassins have this Possibly added by some other mod.

Alternatively, some of them were built on a template of Arkanis Gath wielding the instant kill sword. That might explain how that crept in.

However, ALL the Assassins used in the Final Fight are *identical* to the Assassins used in the Shadow Thief Party, except for a script that lets fits them specially for the scenario and lets them respond to scripted events in the Finale, AFAIK (again, subject to mods, etc).

If you did not have a problem with the Shadow Thief hunting parties, you should not have a problem with the Shadow Thieves in the finale (Edwin is another matter, but he is nothing compared to SCSII AI)

 

With normal AI, they are not that hard to deal with. The Assassins and even Wizards (except Edwin) in the finale are not intended to be meaningfully killed. If killed they simply spawn more in shortly.

If you can get the Assassins to spawn all at the same side of the screen, let Kova tank them while the rest of the party deals with Seida & Co. Kova is a good tank for them normally since they don't get their Backstab Multiplier on him, and since he is a Mage, they tend to go apeshit on him.

That said, I understand SCSII and other mods make enemies ignore Stoneskinned etc characters, so I'm not sure how to deal with that.

 

Hope this helps.

[valky]

Since posting screens within a spoiler is not allowed or my rank is too low or whatever, it messed up my whole posting. so I'll add the assassin part later on...again...(and I friggin' wrote that much just to explain the situation of Z#CW18.cre! hehehe..don't expect or maybe expect less for christs sake for the explanation to "Z#Assas3.cre")

 

Just a few sidenotes before going into detail and as noted, I guess I made the game myself needlessly hard by using SCS in combination with the cowled wizards, but maybe it helps to fine-tune it or at least I was just bored and wrote some things. Usually you won't or rarely encounter that many in one place.

 

[oh, and since SCS overhauled Carsomyr, it ain't reliable in stripping off protections anymore...the Save vs spell (0) triggers as good as 0 times..changed it after some test to -4 penalty, to have at least 1 (!) successful dispel every 5-6 hits. Though I doubt that it is even successful against the CW#18 critter..as both are considered lvl 30 - your NPC and the Carsomyr ability..more to that later..and I don't use the abusive weapon from weimar as well: katana of *heyho-you-have-acid-resistance-c'mon-lets-strip-you-off-that-shit-for-once* or Seychoowhatever +cheat - which happen to deal even damage against Mordekains swords! =LOL]

 

The major problem at first with the cowled wiz. timed encounter were mostly the lack of decent stripping methods, since they appear with tons of pre-casted protection. And I tried to gather my party as soon as I finished (or skipped *whistle*) the boring starter-dungeon after playing at least SoA more than 5times. Henceforth the Wizards started to appear, while my party was ~10/11 at best. And since my only real&effective stripping spell was 'Breach' I lacked the spell-slots to beat more than 1 of those encounter -> needed to rest and raised the chance to get just another encounter right away -> vicious circle it is

I think it went better around ~14/15 with the introduction of Sphere of Chaos (=almighty spell) for both my cleric and wizards (spell-rev replaces confusion for clerics). Since they usually appear scattered Greater Command was less useful but proved to be quite amazing against the assassins (Keldorn -true sight -> cleric G.Command spam = easy win).

That's the level, where things started to be a bit fuzzy but still manageable, cause of the introduction of "Z#CW16.cre", who loved to spam horrid wilting/sphere of chaos and fingers of death. Still not really a biggy, cause I finally had enough spell-slots and Kova catched up in his multi-class to being able to cast some decent stripping spells as well. (you should have seen my spell-books, it was filled with only stripping/CC things and nothing else *lol*)

 

About Kharen: I really won't complain, since I thought it is or should be that hard, as it was mentioned in several posts

I should add at this point, that the massive amount of XP might be the sole cause of this; while I only cleared Watchers Keep up to level 2, I got insane amounts of XP thanks due beating the endless spam of assassins & cowled enforcer/wizards & the restored reputation-trap-trigger (Gebhard Blucher's Random City Encounters). Each encounter is worth 20-30k XP and this sums up pretty nicely! My imported PC (lvl 9 fighter from BGEE) reached lvl 18 in cleric once I started act III .... ! The others - depending on the class - were about 15-17. So from this point onward I got always the highest scripted trigger from your scripts - but thankfully they didn't occur for quite some time.

 

Damn, I went off-board. Anyway, 'bout Kharen: the problem is: CreateCreature("Z#CW18",[925.2620],2)

This nasty 'lil creature is getting tuned to the following: [or I'll call her Ms. Nasty from now on...since I can't image her having a husband with that amount of temper in form of spells ^^]

Spoiler

http://i800.photobuc...80.jpg~original

Left the paths intact and the smaller window represent your unmodded Z#CW18.cre and the full view is the SCS overhauled 'version' - but biffed' due to performance gain. (that's why it is always a bit tricky to do mod changes, but am fine with my install anyway).

Once I figured, that Kharen ain't the real threat in this very encounter, I filled the bridge with Nishruus & Hakeashar - oh, boy are those guys badass! But only work properly, since they could attack right away and not necessary an option to summon in an ongoing fight or those spawns. Cause all 3 wizards were done for good within 2 rounds, I could handle Kharen to my liking. For the sake of my laziness I did the last try/fight fully un-buffed with only the summons; think it was the 4th try.

 

Assuming, that your cowlies gave me more trouble than anything else, she was more or less easy - even with her obvious permanent Imp. alacrity - sunfire spam. If I'd have protected m'self from fire..than I'd have to fight to not fall asleep at all The resurrection or whatever it was, was a bit shocking in the 2nd try..but it was quite refreshing, as it didn't take much to beat her first - and she doesn't seem to be affected by SCS at all.

In my very first 2 tries I focused her, and this was the major mistake..since he bridge started to getting filled with 2 (!) Bhalor, 1 Pit Fiend and something else..guess it was 1 o 2 of those stupid overhauled nasty morde-swords. (not sure if I hate the new overhauled fiends more or the mordekains)

 

[I think for a party or a player, who doesn't like an obnoxious challenge or plays once in a while or just love your mod..this fight is really quite something - even unmodded - to be honest]

 

*snip* cause Underdark and stuff went smooth! Back in Athkatla we are...finally; I was filled with happiness to be able to craft all the new shit! (Teleomortis +4 for Kyo = that is beyond badass-ness! Keldorn was happy too, cause he got some new shiney upgraded armor :>

 

Yet, I wasn't aware of the Mistress' of Doom that awaited me, once I zipped in to my stash to gather materials and things - I happen to place in all games the crap in front of the copper coronet ^^ and I like that place anyway.

Ms. Nasty already awaited my cheerful arrival with a couple of common fellows, just to beat the living sh*t outta me! I try to recreate it with an older savegame and a couple of pics at how those encounter usually proceed: [unbuffed in this case..since I'd take a quicksave...go on or prepare myself, since I know it will trigger anyway and going into some building is a no-go, since summons seems to crash the game, as they try to follow you as well]

 

Ooooh, YES, this is illustrious taken and should give you an insight, WHY the heck I was so damn pissed ^^ (no offense meant)

Uhm, and since I just wanted to show-off my party too..the first one is a full screen *whistle* (re-colored some character/armor, so they look different and m0ar sexy)

 

That's the init-encounter after like 2~ seconds, since the scripts from SCS take some time to fire off for 4 mages; note the protection and that it is only for _1_ mage, and he barely is level 17!

Spoiler

http://i800.photobuc...b8.jpg~original

 

Now, Ms. Nasty-uber-Annoying thought it'd be pointless to let their lower brethren take off the load of her and started to re-act properly:

 

Her inits: (I f* hate prot/divination] all previously cast of course, since the player does so as well :>

Spoiler

http://i800.photobuc...e4.jpg~original

 

And that's how it does look like, once she starts dominating the battlefield...don't mind the 2 time-stops, cast within the minimum of time-delay and don't really mind the 3 friggin' GATES (!!)

 

Spoiler

http://i800.photobuc...02.jpg~original

 

If I further let it running without doing anything: (guess, what!? RIGHT - another fiend joins the battle...johohohohoho and a bottle o' rum ^^ and don't mind the couple o' moves shown in the previous pic...they know tons of friggin' crap to be a major pain in the butt; aura of flaming death is one of it)

Spoiler

http://i800.photobuc...2c.jpg~original

 

That is just about ONE wizard, that according your comment ain't gonna appear or should not?! At this point I have to say sorry, cause I never paid much attention and thought all 3-4 of them are level 30, but it is only 1! (taken from "PursuitC.baf" and Ms. Nasty is the only one able to cast timestop+gate!)

IF	AreaType(City)
	Delay(10)
	Range([PC],20)
	Global("KKCowl", "GLOBAL", 1)
	XPGT(Player1, 2999999)
	!ActuallyInCombat()
	InParty("Kova")
//	XPLT(Player1, 3000000)		
	!RealGlobalTimerNotExpired("Pursuit","GLOBAL")
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		SetGlobal("KKCowl", "GLOBAL", 0)	
		DisplayString(Myself,@16)
		RealSetGlobalTimer("Pursuit","GLOBAL",600)
		Wait(1)
		CreateCreatureObjectOffset("MAGE18A",Myself,[100.100])
		CreateCreatureObjectOffset("COWENF3",Myself,[-100.100])
		Wait(1)
		CreateCreatureObjectOffset("Z#CW16",Myself,[-100.-100])
		CreateCreatureObjectOffset("Z#CW18",Myself,[100.-100])		
END

 

Still, Divination stuff and so on is no big deal, since SCS let me counter it, but the endless time-stoping crap prevents it and once 4 demons are on the dance-floor I can't do a thing, since they just hunt down Tyris and/or Kova and thanks to their stupid disease - once hit - my STR goes bottomline and I can't move ^^

 

And to be absolutely honest and while trying for once to measure the difficult level of certain mods against vanilla SoA (or maybe ToB as well), I take into account my endless SoA games and how obviously balanced this mod is in that case...it is seriously fine and does NOT need any tuning.

Doing it the hard way with SCS/tactics/spell-rev and some or any (FUCKING ^^) encounter after underdark in athkatla gave me quite a headache.

 

Heck, Demogorgon = LOL..irenicus in spellhold (and partially in hell) = LOL..your friggin' mage level 30 = NO fun ^^

You can't possibly imagine how often I was fistshaking at that crap of yours ^^ and I'm not sure anymore If i just did it for the sake of your mod or cause I just love your mod ^^

 

 

erm, will add the assassin shit later on...don't mind my nostalgic chit-chat

Edited by valky, 05 August 2013 - 09:31 AM.

[Zyraen]

I'll have to check my Mage. I'm not sure if the original Z#CW18 is level 30, but that said, Z#CW18 is really no more than a cut-and-paste of the original COWL18 if I remember right.
 
That said, this has something to do with how SCSII programs Mages.
SCSII randomly generates scripts and fills in the spell slots and AI for Mages, based on their levels.
 
If SCSII was installed in this fashion, then Z#CW18 would not be registered as a Lv 18 Mage, but as a Lv 30 Mage.
Thereafter, it would proceed to fill out Z#CW18's Spell Slots and BCS file with the appropriate AI script to cast all those ton of Time Stops etc that it is eligible to memorise at Lv 30.

Down to it, the difficulty of the Lv 30 Mage is entirely due to SCSII. I suggest if you're pointing at the AI, you might want to give compliments where it is due

Edited by Zyraen, 06 August 2013 - 01:08 AM.

[valky]

I'll check again as well in other tools, once I have a bit more spare time. That kinda puzzled me too and I can't imagine SCS changes the level of an override critter.

[Zyraen]

Well I've checked it out, and I suddenly remembered something.

Z#CW18 is based on the highest level Cowlie you can encounter in BG2. That is actually a named Cowlie none other than Zallanora.

You can Wiki who she is.

 

In any case, in the vanilla game, she and Khollynus Paac show up to attack the party when they've offended one too many Cowlies. 

So she's the basis for Z#CW18 and her CRE / DV / Script is actually Mage18Z. 

 

Here's the interesting thing - due to certain reasons ( see Wiki ) it seems the original game packaged her as a Level 30 Wizard.

That said, her script was only a Level 18 Wizards.

 

SCSII of course fixes that, by giving her Spells and Scripts corresponding to her level, which is 30 (and not the 18 that is apparent by her CRE, DV, Script). So there you go, Ms Nasty explained

 

==================

 

I also decided to check out the nature of Z#Assass3. I managed to find the Ring95.ITM (anti-stun, slow, slay, etc) based on the most irritating "legal" "killable" thief that I could find, which is the Rune Assassin encountered in the Bridge District. Yep, there you go

 

Congrats BTW, you got me to open my NI which I have not touched in probably close to 2 years.

Edited by Zyraen, 06 August 2013 - 10:39 PM.

[valky]

Hmm, if the script-change from a level18 wiz was used but the original critter is 30, that'd explain a lot of things. And I went thru all backup ressources of Z#18 but didn't check the explicit scripts in all cases. Since BG2 and/or SCS let mages only cast spells, that they also have memorized, the Gate/Time-Stop stuff 'd typically never have happened, but since SCS upgrades the mages properly ... and so on.

 

Though I still get the RING95.ITM for any ressource-file as well, but since my game is slightly/heavily modded, I have no means to check, how your version suddenly have this specific item in all files, but if I get your message right, they shouldn't have that item at all. And even reading out your source files in NI&DLTCEP gives always ring95...

 

But in both cases, my frustration in "some" fights is now explainable as both creature gave me a very damn hard time. I speeded things up in the last chapter, but still had to fight off 5 or 6 of those mage-based encounter, but with pre-emptive quicksave/quickload/sphere of chaos spam they were more or less doable, if the confusion or whatever did affected the mage right away.

Once she had their prot/divination & imp invisibility & other protections up and running it was highly unlikely to beat that encounter. (even with the SCS component to target invis. enemies with stripping spells, cause she moved quite a lot so they never hit at their given 5' radius)

 

The rogue was easy to fix, since I just replaced the ring, but it took me quite some tries to figure out what went wrong.

It still reminded me at the Fallen Bladesinger ambush from IWD2 in HoF, very similar nastiness!

 

On the upside, your mod+SCSII gave me a true difficult-level increase. I think I used a decent repertoire of swearing @game/monitor *whistle*

 

Since I help for another NPC, I'll have a clean BG2 version up & running and I can prolly further check the marriage stuff. Since tactics, which SCSII/hell is based upon messed up tons of cutscenes trigger in that encounter anyway. SO maybe it is at fault as well...but as long as I can enjoy it I don't mind viewing it in another version, as the other triggers/romance progression worked as intended.