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BG1 Completed Mods => BG1Tutu General => Topic started by: Gay Lord on November 04, 2013, 07:56:23 PM

Title: Disagreement with easytutu changes - increased damage
Post by: Gay Lord on November 04, 2013, 07:56:23 PM
I've been a tutu (and later easytutu) user for ages.  I've never played BGT since tutu was easy to install and BGT just seemed too large and too buggy.  However, I've had a problem with gameplay over the years that recently irritated me enough to finally sit down and find what was causing the problem.

For years I've had a problem with low level monsters causing more damage than they should.  I started playing again yesterday and saw diseased gibberlings (which are supposed to cause subdual damage of 1-2) hit for 6 lethal damage.  Xvarts (1-6) were causing 12 damage every other hit with their short swords, and regular gibberlings (1-8) were one-shotting characters.  I had problems with this in the past, and so have others (http://forums.pocketplane.net/index.php?topic=25756.0;wap2).  Don't even get me started on how insanely lethal the kobold commandos are!!!

My first thought was that this was from a mod.  Fortunately, I have a virgin install of tutu so I loaded that up and tested it out.  High damage.  I played the regular BG1.  Low damage.  For thoroughness, I installed BG1 and BG2 from my GOG versions, and tutu'd them.  BG1 = low damage again.  Easytutu = high damage again.  My group attacked the band of 6 xvarts SE of the ranger you meet enroute to the FAI.  Their damage was 12 12 11 12 9 8 11.  I adjusted the difficulty levels and to my surprise found that Insane difficulty didn't change the damage at all.  The xvarts caused similar damage on Insane as they did on Core over several reloads.  I lowered it to easy and while damage was reduced, it wasn't reduced to 50%.

I loaded NearInfinity and looked at all the CRE files.  Looked at their equipped items.  Looked all over the place to no avail.  None of them had high damage weapons.  They didn't have high strength.  I couldn't see anything to explain their increased output or, more importantly, how to fix it.

I downloaded BGT for the first time and using more fresh installs, tried that out.  Diseased gibberlings were only causing 1-2 subdual, as they should.  I've noticed that the base BG1 game only has 1 diseased gibberling near xzar/monty and only 1-2 by the Lion's Way sign on the next map.  However with easytutu, they are hextupled. 

I never had a problem with x6 monsters, and in fact much preferred it.  It seemed both more logical and more fun for these guys to wander in packs.  However, the damage increase is unacceptable to me.  From all my testing, the only source of this easytutu.  The higher damage is not present in the base BG1 game, nor from my mods, nor in the BGT installation.  It can only be coming from easytutu, and I see NOTHING in the documentation indicating this (hence all my countless hours trying to track this down, not to mention the years playing with this feature).

Now, I thank the great modders who have made easytutu possible and the great fun they've added to countless people's lives.  I don't want this post to sound like a rant (I often sound that way). However, I wish there had been some mention about this increased damage feature, or even some way to disable it.  When I play, I play with permadeath, so every time my PC died from this increased damage, that was a game over.  I've had a LOT of new games from dying so much.  I got burnt out from essentially playing on Insane difficulty and not knowing it, which is why I stopped playing.

It would be nice to keep easytutu just as it is, especially since I've already spent tons of time getting my setup just the way I like it.  But this extra damage is a deal breaker for me, and I've finally figured out what's causing it.  I'm going to now try BGT and hope I don't have to spend too much time trying to figure out how to get that setup with mods correctly.

The forum seems mostly dead, so I don't know how long it will be until anybody even reads this. Mac hasn't logged on since July.  I don't know if the increased damage is a bug or a feature, but I thought I'd mention my findings here in case anyone in the future becomes similarly confused and goes googling for answers.
Title: Re: Disagreement with easytutu changes - increased damage
Post by: Mike1072 on November 05, 2013, 12:57:37 AM
Extra damage shouldn't just happen; there must be something to explain it.  I don't have the time to confirm your findings right now, though.
Title: Re: Disagreement with easytutu changes - increased damage
Post by: Gay Lord on November 08, 2013, 06:15:56 PM
Extra damage shouldn't just happen; there must be something to explain it. 
Don't know what to tell ya Mike.  It's a fresh install with only easytutu. Some setting or rule in the mod is causing it.  Maybe everybody's backstabbing, or maybe all rolls are crits, I dunno.

When I stood next to the monsters, I tried different things to test.  I turned AI off and just stood there to see how much damage they did under different conditions.  They all held melee weapons then all held ranged.  They wore armor and were nude.  I switched their position in the party lineup.  I had them face different directions.  I tried different difficulty settings.  They simply do more than they should, at least by every D&D rule I know.

Which is a shame, as I really like them being hextupled.  I'm playing now with BGT and the solo xvarts and DGs are total yawners.
Title: Re: Disagreement with easytutu changes - increased damage
Post by: Salk on November 20, 2013, 08:54:40 AM
Which is a shame, as I really like them being hextupled.  I'm playing now with BGT and the solo xvarts and DGs are total yawners.

Fighting hordes of low-level creatures like diseased gibberlings or xvarts can hardly be considered the pinnacle of strategic challenges in the Baldur's Gate series.
Title: Re: Disagreement with easytutu changes - increased damage
Post by: The Imp on November 21, 2013, 11:35:00 AM
Fighting hordes of low-level creatures like diseased gibberlings or xvarts can hardly be considered the pinnacle of strategic challenges in the Baldur's Gate series.
Well, that might be if the creatures wouldn't hit with damage modifiers that quad triple their original damage outcome and be there in packs of 6... but as it stands, that's not quite what's it looks like in low levels.

If we compare the BGT-weidu and EasyTutu to the BG1EE, we can see definite improvements to both in EE, in comparison to the way they were in the original game. There's no packs of monsters that gain members every time you save/load a game in a spawn point, like there's in BGT(yes, these is a bunch of mods to try to fix this), and the damage outcome seems very attuned to the original. What the EE just needs today is more players and hours of play and the fact that the major mods need to be made compatible with it. Most of the mini mods are already out of the box, as they only need the latest version of weidu.exe to be ably-able.