incompatible but stable?, I've been playing v4.2 for months now with my megamod... Options

[coineineagh]

First of all thanks to Sikret for the BEST bg2 mod by far. Thank you for your time and effort, the result is an improved game experience for me and many others.
I love the fact that despite my acquired gear I'm most definitely not overpowered for most of the IA encounters.

<slight spoiler>The brain golems were an xp goldmine! Once I'd finished off the golems in the hallway 40-50 had spawned in the main room of the Illithid boss. Thankfully most were killed by two well placed Dragon's Breaths.
The new golems are tough and sturdy! just how I like my golems. Too bad I saved and reloaded the game at the wrong moment: The 3 amber golems [you know where] didn't spawn anymore. Now I probably can't make [you know what].
Zalladora was great fun - tactical thought required. But here I encountered an incompatibility issue: Not choppiness, but a frozen screen while the game continued, I heard everything, but only got to see what was happening when the game was paused.

This is where my big question arises: You list a ridiculous amount of mods as incompatible in your readme. Basically I would be forced to choose between quantity (megamod) and quality (IA). So far my install has worked fine. There were some issues, but I doubt they were all caused by IA. Also, on the site IA is often praised for it's stability despite altering many native game characters. What I fear the most is an incompatibility that results in a CTD or something that stops me from progressing. Anything that is fixable with a bit of CLUAing is no more than an inconvenience.

I'd like a bit more insight into this if you have time: Are the incompatibilities the result of mods overwriting eachother, and so not taking effect? Is the Zalladora issue above an example of what you mean by incompatible? And most important: Can I expect any CTDs or other insurmountable obstacles? I plan to uninstall an install it at the end, so that all of IA takes precedence, but I'd like to know in advance if there is a point where I definitely can't continue.

Thanks for your time. BTW it doesn't need to be Sikret - if anyone has some answers for me, by all means!

[lroumen]

Perhaps you should have a look at this post. It may be interesting to you for maintaining an installation.

http://forums.pocketplane.net/index.php/topic,17555.0.html

Also, if you install in a particular order, keep the weidu log to check which installation options you have used and maybe you can reinstall everything in that particular order to get your savegames to work. Otherwise, I don't suggest uninstalling mods during gameplay or I would start with a new party.

I also suggest to read all the mod readmes as some indicate a clear incompatibility with another mod. Often I only install 2-3 mods with a careful decision on fixpack or tweakpack settings because basically most enhancement mods provide more than enough additions. It is also vital that your BG installation remains stable. If certain mods don't mix well than you may miss mod content or you get real bugs such as wrong strings being allocated or overwritten if some mods don't append but overwrite certain things (I believe Baldurdash text update does this for instance), crashes to desktop (though quite rare), stutter bugs (AI scripts continuously checking variables that are impossible to meet) and even immortal enemy bugs (like the werewolf in Firkraag's Dungeon).

Good luck with your v4.2 game.

[coineineagh]

Perhaps you should have a look at this post. It may be interesting to you for maintaining an installation.

Thanks, I read it before. Building a megamod is a lot of work, it took me weeks to get my current installation right. I missed the warning in IAv4.2 by accident, but mostly I do my research. This brings me to a question about biffing: .BIF threads were mentioned in that thread, and I'm looking for a way to bif my override folder. My game is a bit slow and it's not because of the Bags of Holding. How do you BIF?

So far I only uninstalled one mod, that was BG1NPCProject after the transition - I couldn't initiate dialogs with NPCs, but it was restored after that was removed.

If certain mods don't mix well than you may miss mod content or you get real bugs such as wrong strings being allocated or overwritten if some mods don't append but overwrite certain things (I believe Baldurdash text update does this for instance), crashes to desktop (though quite rare), stutter bugs (AI scripts continuously checking variables that are impossible to meet) and even immortal enemy bugs (like the werewolf in Firkraag's Dungeon).

Yeah, I've encountered those, but killing them is a challenge in itself. The final encounter with Tolgerias and his mage was weird: If I killed the mage, Tolgerias would become unkillable, if I killed Tolgerias, the mage is there to stay. I wanted Tolgerias' loot, so I lured the mage into a corner, but I've still got to figure out how to kill him. Here are some methods of killing unkillables that I use:
1) Vorpal weapons rarely work.
2) The Two-Handed Sword of General Ghotal ( yeah I hog items, from NTotSC, 40% chance to petrify, no save). You can also use this to 'stall' so you can fight off killables in the area, unpetrify it later to see if it will die properly, and use another method so it will drop loot.
3) Level-Draining weapons are most reliable.
4) Mind Flayer INT drain hasn't worked for me so far.
5) Imprisonment, although this is just another way of delaying.
6) This one is a weird combo of spells: Smart Fireball (dunno where it's from) casts instantly, so use Timestop, Improved Alacrity and then bombard the area with about 10 Smart Fireballs. {When you press ctrl+Y a creature is killed (1129damage) but instantly resurrected, this happens 3 times, then the computer stops trying to kill it.} In this case when the Timestop ends, 10 kills occur at the same time, and the computer can't keep up. The unkillable character dies! Well, I think it's cool...

I know what a stutter bug looks like: I tried to reactivate the Jaheira romance after I'd finished Viconia's, Jaheira could hardly move , so I didn't save that...

I read warnings on many fora that Baldurdash doesn't go well with BGT, so I haven't installed that.

It's a bad sign that I encounter so many unkillables (about 10 so far in BGT), I realize now how messed up my install must be.
But I have to press on...