Should I carry over items to IA? Options

[pacman7654]

I'm pretty close to finishing with BG1, and I'm gonna bring my wild mage over to a IAv5 game. I was thinking of using that trick to carry over some items from BG1, like a dagger of venom, a claw of kazgorath, and maybe a cloak of balduran. I know taking these items probably won't make the game noticeably easier, but my question is, are these items added into IA already? I saw in the item readme that you can forge a new cloak for Cernd from the cloak of balduran, so I would assume it is added to the game, but what about the others? I think it makes sense that my character could hide a dagger on his person if Minsc can hide Boo, and maybe Irenicus couldn't pry off the claw of kazgorath.

[lroumen]

In theory you ought to be able to carry over items when you import a character from a savegame if they have the items in the inventory, but I never heard of carrying over the Dagger of Venom nor the Cloak of Balduran. Import preference through savegame ought to be this:

Armor == Protector of the Second -> Mail of the Dead +2 -> Fallorain's Plate -> Missile Attraction +2 -> Chainmail +3 -> Default (Mail of the Dead +2)
Misc Item == Helm of Balduran -> Claw of Kazgaroth -> Horn of Kazgaroth -> Koveras' Ring of Protection +1 -> Default (Helm of Balduran)

They are controlled in two 2da files which you can check with infinity explorer for isntance. They start with importxx.2da, but I'm at work and I cannot check their complete names.

I have only once carried over items into an IA game using an imported BG1 character file. It was IAv2 and I played a Transmuter (since I already played IA before I thought I'd try it out). The items I carried over were Fallorain's Plate, the Claw of Kazgaroth and the golden pantaloons (automatic if you have it in the inventory). I cannot recall that I noticed any bugs, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have occurred.
IA changes (and fixes) a few class progressions and bonuses, so who knows if the imported characters will have the hp/thac0/damage/saves/bonuses/etc. as they ought to have in IA. I thought I was pretty safe with Transmuter from a vanilla BG1 game since IA doesn't seem to touch it, but that still is no guarantee.


I see that you're playing wild mage, so it must be either a tutu or bgt game, probably with tweaks and things so your character is probably an adaption from default anyway. You may have alternate values from saves etc if you create the same character in IA. If you have installed one of the tweaks that changes walking speeds (from BG2 into BG1 I guess or the other way around I don't remember), your character even has an .eff added to the creature file which upon import to BG2 slows your character down and you have to remove it (you can do that with shadowkeeper, near infinity or DLTCEP though). It is just better to make an IA character and CLUA in the items, but I don't recommend that either since you lose support on this forum.

What you also 'might' be able to try is to look into the 'importxx.2da' files. There you see the order of imported items and the default. If you change the default and create a new character, 'maybe' the default for the new characters is also changed. So CHAN03, mail of the dead, changed into MISC72, The Claw of Kazgaroth or MISC73, The Horn of Kazgaroth, or MISC75, the dagger of venom, 'might' change the item you find on Ilyich to one of those, but I am 'not' positive at all. If this works, it would at least allow you to create a fully natural IA character and startup with as few possibilities for bugs.


Note: I'm just a player, not a modder nor the author nor have any affiliation with IA. I would just like to voice my experiences with importing characters. It really can be messy if you play with mods, so you must always be careful.

This post has been edited by lroumen: Feb 18 2009, 08:40 AM