New Anvilite with ?'s, long read, sorry Options

[Hideous the W...]

Hi all, love the mod so far but I've only just begun. Here's what I've got

Protag - Necromancer lvl 12
Kensai lvl 11 with Joril's Dagger & Lilacor and 1 * in staves for crushing (+3 martial staff) and piercing (+2 staff spear)
Wizard Slayer>Thief lvl 9/11 +3 long sword & Sword of Balduran (+3 club)
Nalia lvl 12 I'm going to drop her for Imoen later on
Ranger>Cleric lvl 8/11 with FoA
Vagrant lvl 10 with Frostreaver and Mencar's hammer

I'm wondering where to head to next. I think my options are:

Trademeet - Troll mound, Ogre's Tower or Trademeet Tomb
Windspear Hills - I haven't touched anything yet except giving Dryads back
Watcher's Keep - but I have Kitthlix so I'm worried about the Spider Queen encounter I've read about
Unseeing Eye quest - I have no spell shield for Beholders and that's been my only defense in the past
Rakshasa - in the Temple sewers
Planar Sphere
Planar Prison
Temple Sewers party with Gaius
and probably some I've forgotten.

I just did the Slaver ship and found that to be very fun, however if one wanted to they could just wait for Assassins to keep spawning and restock their healing potions.
The only thing I'm bummed about is that I have an issue that was posted in this thread - http://forums.blackwyrmlair.net/index.php?showtopic=3190
I've tried all the lower settings and restarts and defrag but I still get the walk 3 steps and pause choppiness. I believe, but I will eventually go back and test it, that the choppiness only started once I entered the Copper Corronet. Up until that I was fine but now it persists.

I think I'm gonna go down to the bridge in the Unseeing Eye quest and see if I can handle those Beholders and then clear some of first level of Firkraggs' joint. But after that I dunno.

Thanks in advance.

[Baronius]

A few remarks:

1) It's important to emphasize that the characteristics of your computers is important (and greatly influence game performance), but there are many other factors as well. Consequently, you can experience strong stuttering on a very "fast" system while the same thing might run normally on a slower system -- your configuration (both system and IE game), and several other factors influence this (and not just extreme examples such as intensive I/O operations, e.g. a virus scan).

2) It's possible that the game uses different structures for the various containers. Shaitan's report about an empty gem bag causing a lag is very interesting, it implies that the gem bag has a primitive static structure (it's not easy to believe it).

Yes, this is exactly why bottomless bags (or too many normal bags) can cause choppiness. Even 999 items of the same kind stacked in the normal inventory (out of bags) occupy only one inventory slot and the game goes through all of them at once and in one sinlge shot; whereas, if the same amount of items are in a bag, they are not actually stacked and each of them occupies one slot for itself and the game has to check each of them individually.

3) This may depend on the structure of the particular bag type. As we've seen here, a scroll case is able to store stacked items in one slot (while, as far as I can remember, a Bag of Holding is a good counterexample: it stores each item -- even an arrow -- in a different slot).

4) It's important to note that a script periodically checking very many different objects (which are allowed by various containers, for example) is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for the discussed performance problems. So saying that "Improved Anvil's certain scripts should be removed because they slow down the game " (we can hear similar statements sometimes) isn't justified, because there is no problem if Improved Anvil is played according to its specifications (including installation and usage instructions). This is certainly confirmed by the tests of Sikret and BWL's Improved Anvil testing experts. Of course, these specifications may change occassionally, that is why it's important to read updated documentation.

Note: If I had more time, I would make tests on my own, but since I haven't, the above statements and suppositions are based on the reports I've read on Improved Anvil's forum. Some of these results haven't been repeated or confirmed.