spellhold cap Options

[nicoper]

Hi,

One of the thing I like most in IA is the difficult battles at low levels (chap 2-3), to name some: sewer party, mencar's party, conster, firkraag, shade lord, thax, trademeet crypt, slaver compound, planar sphere....
Of course I also enjoy late game challenges (TR, Orcus, ...), but then you don't have the same feeling of preciousness regarding the use of your single improved haste, pfmw or pfme scroll, you don't have to plan your adventure so you may have the mandatory RRoR scrolls, no greater restoration, a time where 1000 gp make a huge difference since with those you can get life saving potions, and so on...

Problem if you want to have them all in chap 3 (which I did for the first time in my current run-through) is improved spellhold .
Like some others did, I have to say it's not my cup of tea (fighting very tough ennemies, spawning infinitely for no XP). But I completly agree with the principle that you should enter spellhold with level 13-14 party to enjoy the mod (btw, even if I didn't agree, this is how it's meant to be).

Why not just reduce XP of party (and levels) before going into spellhold in case it's too high with current limit?
This way those (like me) who like to complete everything before could do it at the cost of loss of experience, and still keep IA level balance regarding party level in spellhold, those who prefer to keep some fights for later on (and preserve experience) would feel no change.

I don't know if it's doable by any means in the mod but I would like to know other opinions about this.


PS: please excuse me if this topic has to be moved somewhere else

[Ardanis]

From a technical point of view nearly everything is possible, question is, whether or not the result is worth the hassle.

One of possibilities - generate a list of level drain immunity items, make a party to drop them all upno the start of SH, apply required level drain and immunity to restoration, refresh that immunity until party finally escapes. Roughly that's it.

PS and of course one can always go with making a cutscene, during which every party member will be 'studied', while in reality - stripped of extra levels one by one, till reaches the required point, storing the info along the way. Then, at the end of SH - another cutscene, this time restoring those levels, using variables stored before.

PPS the second method actually seems pretty reliable, as I did the similar thing and was satisfied with the result quite enough.

This post has been edited by Ardanis: Mar 28 2009, 08:59 AM