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Topic Summary

Posted by: whathuh
« on: October 24, 2005, 10:17:05 PM »

I'm a masochist :)

I'm about to solo a full game with tons of mods installed.  I'm actually doing Quest Pack, DEFJAM (25% quest/creature and 50% skill/spell) and tactics on insane difficulty with a fighter/thief.  Man this is going to be hard.  In fact, I don't know if I will be able to beat the last battle, much less ascension.  Ah well, I can still try.

Anyway, from playing tactics and winning, I can safely say that NOTHING is harder than the final battle in tactics.  Bodhi is pretty hard too, but nowhere near the difficulty of the 1st part in the last battle.  If you enjoy a challenge like me, tactics is the way to go.  If you enjoy the roleplay and legal playing of the game, go for the quest pack's improved bosses.
Posted by: SixOfSpades
« on: September 28, 2005, 07:35:33 PM »

In terms of answering the question, Quest Pack is nowhere near as painful as most components of the Tactics mod. But it must be said that the various components of Tactics were written by many different authors, and even two components by the same designer are of wildly varying difficulty levels.

Weimer's take on things like Improved Irenicus: "What if Irenicus was more powerful than most gods, could cast an infinite amount of spells and prevent you from casting any spells of your own?"
Quest Pack's take on things like Improved Irenicus: "What if Jon wasn't such an idiot?"



As far as EXP is concerned, my own view of the subject is that when you kill any creature, the party is awared 1/2 of 1 percent of the EXP that that creature would have required to reach its current level (with modifiers for factors that affect difficulty in killing it, like being immune to weapons of X enchantment, whether it has a large amount of special abilities, etc). Kill a Level 12 Fighter, get 5,000 EXP.
Posted by: Borsook
« on: September 28, 2005, 07:44:29 AM »

While I can't answer the question directly, if you want to raise difficulty you can use Simding0's exp fixer which will lower XP you get and mine MixMod which can significatlly boost HP/AC/Thac0/Saves of all the enemies. Personally I dislike Tactics for breaking game rules (i.e. cheating).

Well, the thing is SimDing0's exp fixer reduces XP down to  between 10%-75% of original XP - that might be OK for something like Big Picture with its 100s of  XP-rich mods, but the only large XP-adding mod I've installed in the past is The Darkest Day,  with the rest of the mods just changing the storyline  or making combat more difficult - so I'd only want a 10-15% reduction in XP, no more.

I realise that MixMod and similiar Heart-of-Fury mods are quite popular, but I've never taken to them, as I prefer more complicated tactics and enemies with many more different powers than before to make the game more interesting, rather than just improving THACO etc. That said, I seem to have read that, in your mix-mod, you don't allow the PC's summoned creatures to have the same benefits as actual NPCs/Monsters, which is good. In Icewind Dale 1 and 2, practically the only way to win was to keep using summoning spells, which made the game rather repetitive.

As regards Tactics using cheating, in a sense each BG gamer is a cheater as he know exactly what the NPC's tactics are going to be when he plays through a  battle the  2nd time around, so it's necessary to add in extra abilities/scripts etc.  for NPCs for balance.
Well, personally I always play with 50% reduction, this makes the game far more challenging and I just hate getting to the uber-levels, when you level up to 25, there's no thrill, now getting to 15 at the end of soa! the emotions when pressing level-up button!
Versions of mixmod prerior to 5 gave bonuses to summons, 5 exluded them, though in few cases (mastly IWD1) coding in cres is very strange so a summon or two can slip through... BTW yes it's similisr to HOF but without the bigger reward. You might be suprised how challenging some ordinary monsters may be if they're given the chance to hit you/resist spells or live through your hit. Also I feel it's nice to have a challenging fight with a bunch of goblins not all the uber-monters. ;)
Posted by: strontium dog
« on: September 28, 2005, 05:50:45 AM »

While I can't answer the question directly, if you want to raise difficulty you can use Simding0's exp fixer which will lower XP you get and mine MixMod which can significatlly boost HP/AC/Thac0/Saves of all the enemies. Personally I dislike Tactics for breaking game rules (i.e. cheating).

Well, the thing is SimDing0's exp fixer reduces XP down to  between 10%-75% of original XP - that might be OK for something like Big Picture with its 100s of  XP-rich mods, but the only large XP-adding mod I've installed in the past is The Darkest Day,  with the rest of the mods just changing the storyline  or making combat more difficult - so I'd only want a 10-15% reduction in XP, no more.

I realise that MixMod and similiar Heart-of-Fury mods are quite popular, but I've never taken to them, as I prefer more complicated tactics and enemies with many more different powers than before to make the game more interesting, rather than just improving THACO etc. That said, I seem to have read that, in your mix-mod, you don't allow the PC's summoned creatures to have the same benefits as actual NPCs/Monsters, which is good. In Icewind Dale 1 and 2, practically the only way to win was to keep using summoning spells, which made the game rather repetitive.

As regards Tactics using cheating, in a sense each BG gamer is a cheater as he know exactly what the NPC's tactics are going to be when he plays through a  battle the  2nd time around, so it's necessary to add in extra abilities/scripts etc.  for NPCs for balance.
Posted by: Borsook
« on: September 28, 2005, 03:01:39 AM »

While I can't answer the question directly, if you want to raise difficulty you can use Simding0's exp fixer which will lower XP you get and mine MixMod which can significatlly boost HP/AC/Thac0/Saves of all the enemies. Personally I dislike Tactics for breaking game rules (i.e. cheating).
Posted by: strontium dog
« on: September 28, 2005, 02:30:32 AM »

Hi  There,
I'm waiting at least another year to play the whole BG experience, as there is another quest pack mod that will be completed by then(the BG1 quest pack, that is). In the meantime, I'd be interested to find out if  the BG2 Quest-pack improved versions of Bodhi and Irenicus are easier or harder than Weimer's Tactics-style versions of these two NPCs. (I've already played once against Weimer's version and was deeply impressed as the game had been a hopeless walkthrough before.)