Grachus Options

[Lemernis]

I hate to admit it, but I wonder if Grachus's Wind Horrors are too much for the particular party I'm using. My guess is I could probably take Grachus and only the three summoned undead humans. But not along with those four Horrors as well.

I'm using an unconventional party composition, and I guess it's now catching up with me:

PC Wild Mage 7
Imoen Thief 8
Minsc Berserker 8 (via Drew's mini-mod)
Xzar Necomancer 7
Tiax Cleric 6/Thief 7
Finch Cleric 7

I just cannot seem to find a way to fend off Grachus' seven powerful undead summons. I'm at the point where I'm considering going back to a pre-Grey Clan save and leaving this adventure for a future, more conventional party.

Before I give up, any thoughts on how I can get defeat Grachus with this bunch?

(Note: I'm playing with Sword Coast Stratagems installed. I have no idea if those amazing AI tweaks overlap with TGC's content or not, but they don't appear to.)

This post has been edited by Lemernis: Sep 6 2006, 06:44 PM

[Baronius]

I tried luring the Wind Horrors away one at a time, killed them all, went into the hall and rested before taking on Grachus. But as you say, he respawns the buggers. When I initiate Grachus' dialogue first, he immediately spawns the additional 3 undead humans. Because then everyone in his mob has seen the party, all seven summoned creatures plus Grachus overwhelm the party.

This is a wonderful mod! Can't wait to see the adventure continued.

Thanks for the compliment, but did you finish it successlly then? You say the enemies overwhelm the party, on the other hand you look forward to the next installment... I guess you defeated Grachus, and won the final battle, but not easily, right?

Baronius, as excellent a job as you have done with pre-SCS scripting, you should look into a scripting overhaul using SCS. Because very soon SCS will become a 'must-have' included in everyone's Tutu modlist.

I don't doubt that there might be things which could be learned and adopted from SCS, but while Stratagems is a BG1Tutu-only mod utilizing BG2's possibilities (and based on what you say, it's one of the best), Grey Clan is a mod for original BG1, and its BG1 version is what gets converted to Tutu. BG1 and BG2 (Tutu) script engines are quite different in several respects. I've tried to do my best when converting it to Tutu (even changing certain scripts), but I couldn't afford the time to completely rewrite and optimize BG1 TGC scripts for Tutu. Grey Clan's non-Tutu (BG1) edition has more than 1500 downloads at the moment, which reflects that there are still players who prefer original BG1 to Tutu, and being one of them, all of my BG mods also work without Tutu.

SCS's AI is far superior to BG2's vanilla AI.

I'm sure it is. I think that the developers of BG2 didn't add such elements intentionally to the original game, because it would have become too hard for many players. They wanted even bigger success than BG1 (i.e. many more players, greater success, bigger profit), so BG2 isn't as realistic as BG1 (this is off-topic now), and isn't as hard as BG1 in core difficulty level. While I don't say they intentionally added stupid AI at certain places, I think they were not eager to make the game more difficult. This is why good mods are important: they give the option of bigger challenge to players, while those who don't need more difficulty can be happy with the original settings.

* enemy spellcasters (both mages and clerics) are vastly improved:
- buff themselves
- can detect stealth and invisibility
- use a much, much wider selection of spells--spells that are actually effective--and use them smartly
- use scrolls and wands

This is very good news. It must be refreshing to see such novelties. In the original game, there are a few determined script templates for spellcasters (such as mages or clerics), and practically all of them uses these.

On the other hand, do you feel the Clan's major spellcasters were not clever enough in battle? For example, one the High Sorceresses attacks your party from the worst direction if you're unprepared...

Baronius: nice job here, good mod ... but it's not finished of course, look forward to play the 2nd episode too

Thanks! I've news about Ep2, by the way. I'll start with the less pleasant news.
Bad: 2007 summer as earliest release.
Good: I promise I'll release it some day, and won't abandon the project.
Better: Unless something unexpected comes up, the summer of 2007 is a quite possible release date.
Best: It will be much longer than Ep1, with a lot of new content! (Not sure this is actual news though...)