BGII Iprovements ReadMe, Last updated on October 2, 2006 Options

[balduran]

BALDUR'S GATE II
Victor's Improvements Pack version 2.0
Victor Georgiev(balduran@abv.bg)
http://balduran.blackwyrmlair.net


About:
~~~~~~
This mod was created using Nearinfinity, Infinity Engine Editor Pro and of course - everyone's favourite WeiDU.


REQUIREMENTS:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The mod is designed for BGII:ToB. It should run fine without ToB installed, but there is a chance that you won't see icons for some items that Izsul Baba sells. If this is the case, then e-mail me and tell me what exactly is not working right. I will come up with a new version soon after.

COMPATIBILITY:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This mod should be compatible with most WeiDu mods since I have at least 20 of them installed and I experience no problems. There's a list of them in "vic/".

LIST OF AVAILABLE LANGUAGES:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. English (of course)
2. French (by Corran001)
3. Spanish (Clan REO)

INSTALLATION PROCEDURES:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
UNRAR to your BGII SofA directory. For me it looks like "D:\Baldurs Gate 2\". Open the directory and run Setup-Vic.exe. Confirm for each component you'd like to have installed.


______________________________________________________
Table of Contents:
______________________________________________________
1. Victor's Improved Races component
2. Victor's Wizards Know Better (have more Lore) component
3. Faithful Rogue Kit for BGII
4. Lich Slayer Scimitar
5. The Djin Merchant
6. The Burning Man kit
7. Romance Friendly Imprisonment
8. Lydia's Scroll
9. Weapons for all
10. Special Encounters
11. Improved Bard Song
12. Improved Irenicus Dungeon
13. Grandpa's Shield quest
Version Changes
Coming Soon
Fun Stuff
(END) Thanks
______________________________________________________



1.Victor's Improved Races component:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This component is actually an improved ABRACEAD.2DA file, which changes the basic stats of different races as fallows:
-Dwarves can now have 20 CON, but their CHR is limited to 16.
-Elves gain additional DEX point and loose 1 point in CON.
-Gnomes can have 20 INT but WIS cannot be higher than 16.
-Half-elves are now what elves used to be: can have 19 DEX and 17 CON.
-Halflings' STR is limited to 16(You can't expect Frodo to be a Hercules, right?), but DEX can be 20.
-Halforcs are now stronger (20) and tougher (20), but more stupid (-3 INT) and not that handsome (-1 CHR).


2. Victor's Wizards Know Better (have more Lore) component:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wizards (both Mages and Sorcerers) now gain 5 Lore per level instead of regular 3. You can't expect any thief to have the same knowledge about ancient artefacts as a wizard who has devoted his life to studies.

3. Faithful Rogue Kit for BGII:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This component adds a new thief kit to the game. This kit gains some helpful innate abilities, but suffers a penalty in Constitution and has 10 thieving points less per level. For detailed information you should check the kit info screen in the game. The component also adds a special weapon (Lathander's Blessing), which can only be used by a Faithful Rogue. This weapon can be found in the Temple District in Athkatla in the (guess where?) Temple of Lathander. You can buy it in their store.

4. Lich Slayer Scimitar:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The component was previously called "Victor's Item Pack", but, since it started with only one item and the rest were added to Izsul's store, I decided to rename it. Here's the description of the scimitar.

-Lich Slayer Scimitar +4
Wielder immune to Petrification and Imprisonment.
Wielder receives +1 bonus to all saves when battling liches.

Enchanted +4
THAC0: +3 bonus
Damage: 1D8 + 4
Special Damage: +5 vs. all Undead creatures
Damage type: Slashing
Weight: 1
Speed factor: 2
Type: 1-handed
Requires: 8 STR

Can be bought at the Temple of Oghma in the Docks.

There was a request by Rastor on the Blackwyrmlair forum that the item should be available in Chapter 6 only, but since other players might want to buy it early in the game, I decided to leave it as it is. Except for the higher price.

5. The Djin Merchant:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This component installs a new store, which becomes available through a special scroll. It is in possession of the Advertiser at Waukeen's Promenade. He can be found in front of the Adventurer's Mart. He's easily recognisable - a nobleman with yellow clothes and dark skin and saying "Can I speak to you?" Talk to him and he'll give you the Djin Merchant Token, which turns out to be a summoning token for a genie, who is in fact a sales representative of a trading company. Put the token in a quick item slot and use it. Then the genie appears and you can talk to him and he'll take you to the store.
WARNING: The Advertiser seems to be available only on newly started games, which means that if you have installed the component after visiting the promenade, then he won't be there. If that is the case type the following in the console:

CLUAConsole:CreateCreature("erwan")

The command is case sensitive, so be careful how you spell it.

The genie sells mostly 9 level spells, which are hard to find in the beginning of the game, potions and high-quality weaponry (like Long Sword +3). You can even buy the "nowhere to be found" Greenstone Amulet. He also has some unique items, which I made:
- Vayla's Blade
- Cloak of transparency
- Cloak of Weapon Immunity
- Ring of Life Preservation
- History of Edhellenuin (this is a tale I wrote some time ago. If you like it, e-mail me about it)
- Golem Crusher
- Girdle Of Fighting Skill
- Holy Book
- Amulet of Arcane Might
- Flaming Doom Suit (usable by the Burning Man) - Provides AC bonus and causes anyone who attacks to suffer the Flaming Counterstrike

6. The Burning Man kit:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This component installs the Burning Man kit for BGII. This is a fighter kit with a special shapechanging ability to become something similar to fire elemental. The trick is that you cannot specialise in weapons and styles and you cannot wear armour, shield, helmet and gloves. The shapechanging ability upgrades with levelling. At certain levels you receive a new set of Burning paws in your inventory. The Burning Paws are both melee and range weapons - you can switch between both with the right mouse button.

Some people will complain about not being able to equip armours and shields, but in several hours of testing it became obvious that the burning man is too strong and needs severe limitations in order to be a well-balanced kit. If AC is such a pain in the ass, try wearing the robe of Vecna (I think everyone can wear it, not only mages, though I am not sure) or Shield Amulet or Cloak of the Shield.

*** New paws are received at levels 3, 12, 15, 20, 25 and 30. But since the protagonist is captured in the starting dungeon at lv7, it happens so that you loose the starting paws from lv3 just like you are supposed to loose all BGI items. Don't worry about it. You do loose your paws, but you'll notice that you have an innate ability called the Burning Man. When you use it you will create a set of paws. Since I can't figure how to make a one-time-use innate ability (I could have made some weird spell or potion that gives you the paws in the trunk near the mindless golem, but it seems quite stupid), it is possible to create countless paws after resting and give them to other NPCs to equip or sell them for profit. That's why I coded unsellable paws, which only a Burning Man can use (!!! Only cheaters should read this part: Burning Man has the kensai class variable, so Paws are OK for them too.). Even a thief with UAI should not be able to use them, though it is not tested yet.


7. Romance Friendly Imprisonment:
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Galactygon, the author of Lost Crossroads, helpfully provided this component. It prevents the crashing of your romance if your loved ones get themselves imprisoned.


8. Lydia's Scroll:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lydia is a female lich who replaces Alchra Diagott in the Imprisonment Sphere in the Underdark. There's no way to avoid fighting her, but if you try to reason with her, she may give you a little surprise... Lydia should be the toughest monster in SofA, at least that was my intention. She's a lv17 lich, has 400HP, 50% Immunity to almost anything including complete immunity to weapons of enchantment of +2 and less. She regenerates awfully quickly and has AC of -10. In addition, she can summon solid backup (Dark Planatar and some Mordenkeinen Swords) and will make you wish there was Difficulty Level lower than Easy. I suggest that you engage in a fight with her only if your party is sufficiently prepared (levels around 15-16 come to mind) and you have a thief who should lay all his traps before freeing Lydia from the sphere.
***Lydia will not drop her special item when she dies, so be sure to use the right dialog options.

ANNOUNCEMENT: I am currently looking for a female voice actor for Lydia's dialogs. If anyone's interested, please e-mail me!


9. Weapons For All:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is a rule tweak, which enables the use of all weapons regardless of class restrictions. Characters who previously had no access to two-handed swords, for example, can now use them and even place one proficiency point on them. There's a similar component in "Ashes of Embers", but I strongly suggest installing mine over it, because "Ashes of Embers" won't work for custom items from other mods (NOTE: There are reports that newer versions of AofE support mod items, but I haven't checked myself).

WARNING: This component should be installed after other WeiDu mods, which add equipment to the game, including "Victor's Item Pack" and "The Djin Merchant" components of this mod. Otherwise your custom weapons won't become available to all classes. It is also possible that this component will make some NPC restricted items (Valygar's family blade for instance) available to all characters if they have similar base stats (STR, CON, DEX, INT, WIS, CHR). This will also make it possible for thieves to use their backstab multiplier with every melee weapon, even hammers. Just imagine how much damage you can deal with assassin who dual-wields Crom Faeyr and Vayla's Blade! Cool, isn't it?

*** A problem might occur if your custom kits have "0"(zero) in their 2da names. So far I haven't seen such kit, but be warned - It will make the kit unusable, unless you open "clasweap.2da" and "weapprof.2da" and restore the original names. It can be easily done using Notepad or WordPad. Or instead you can tell me about it and I'll include the needed fix in the component.


10. Special Encounters:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This component is not entirely complete, and will be upgraded at least once. The "Special Encounters" are references to famous books and motion pictures (movies), which will usually end up in blood. I got the idea while playing Fallout Tactics. I am not telling what exactly you will encounter, since I don't want to spoil the surprise. However, no harm can be done if I present you with some clues, so that you can actually find them.
List of Special Encounters:
- There should be one near the Watcher's Keep
- More will be coming soon


11. Improved bard Song:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is more or less self-explanatory. I always considered bards too weak and I finally decided to do something about it. What I did was to change the timing of some effects of the different songs so that they would last long enough to make a difference in a fight.

This component should be incompatible with most of the other mods which improve bardsongs. Considering that I do not regard my work on this one very highly, I suggest that you install it only if you don't use any of the other bard tweaks out there.


12. Improved Irenicus Dungeon:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you feel bored with the starting dungeon and you want to tackle some tougher monsters, but you don't feel suicidal enough to face the Improved Ilyich, then this component is for you. You no longer have to fight goblins, who cannot actually hurt you and you will see lesser number of mephits as well. Instead you can try to tackle Umber Hulks and several Evil Scientists. The Air Pocketplane now hosts a couple of Air Elementals in addition to the bunch of mephits that resided there previously, and the furnace on the second level is guarded by fire elementals. I also added some minor additions to the scenery - a few non-magical items in containers to replace some missing goblin equipment, like arrows for example.

COMPATIBILITY NOTE: Improved Irenicus Dungeon would probably work fine with most mods that make changes to Chapter 1. I myself have installed one and it works fine. It could even work with Improved Ilyich provided that you installed my mod first. Installing both however is not recommended because Improved Irenicus Dungeon directly overrides the area files, while Improved Ilyich edits the hex values of the responding files, which would mean that you could end up with some of the Umber Hulk and Evil scientist spawns missing. You'll still get the elementals and the big boss of Improved Irenicus Dungeon, but the equipment, which is supposed to help you defeat them, will be missing (NOTE: I don't know if this is by game defaults or due to a mod I have installed, but elementals cannot be hit by weapons of +1 or no enchantment)

***If you are having trouble defeating the hulks, try paralysing them with one of the wands from the scientists (There's 30% chance they will drop one when they die). Chromatic Orb can stun them as well, but it doesn't always work. If the scientists are giving you a hard time, remember to dispel their protections before rushing into melee combat.

13. Grandpa's Shield quest:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This component add a multi-ending quest to SofA, which can be triggered by talking to little Palin in front of the Copper Coronet or to his mother in a house in the Bridge area. Basic plot: Palin lost his grandfather's magical shield and his father is so pissed that he won't allow him to get back home without it. You can help Palin either by finding the shield or convincing his father to forgive him. The shield itself is in possession of some bad guy called Bladdezord and can be taken from him in three different ways.
Naturally one of the options is to fight him and his fellows, but they should be tackled with extreme caution in the beginning of the game as they are of very high levels (from 14 to 21).

SPOILER: Palin, his father and mother will not appear where they are supposed to if you have already visited the slums and their house in the bridge district before installing the component. This means that to see Palin and talk to him you should have probably just escaped the starting dungeon and not yet talked top Gaelan Bayle. But even if you have already done that you can get the quest if you CLUAConsole the entire family or even only the male part of it (father and son). Here's what you have to type:

CLUAConsole:CreateCreature("palin")
CLUAConsole:CreateCreature("palmom")
CLUAConsole:CreateCreature("paldad")

Version Changes:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Version 1.1
- Added Burning Man kit
- Lich Slaying Scimitar now correctly gives +5 damage vs. Undead
- Vayla's Blade now correctly gives +5 damage vs. Lawful Good characters
Version 1.2
- Added Burning Paws +6 at lv30. Enjoy!
- Fixed bug with Burning Man not suffering INT penalty
- Old Burning Paws should now disappear when you get new
- Tried hard to make Burning Man -(minus)100% resistant to cold but couldn't
- Flaming Doom suit added to Izsul Baba's store.
- Fixed Vayla's Blade - increases backstab multiplier by 1 instead of giving twisted values like x734
Version 1.3
- Included Romance Friendly Imprisonment(by Galactygon)
- Vayla's Blade is now +4(+3 before)
- Vayla's Blade no longer makes wielder Lawful Evil. There were problems when it was equipped by a non-protagonist NPCs and your reputation was too high. There were also spoilers with Virtue Mod(Constantly changing your alignment).
- Vayla's Blade now sets Wisdom to 18. Too bad clerics can't use it. Mwa-ha-ha!(They can if you install "Weapons for All".)
- The Amulet of Arcane Might is now Amulet of Arcane Might & Leadership. Farewell, Ring of Human Influence!
- Cloak of Transparency is now usable by all classes.
- Included "Lydia's Scroll" tactical encounter.
- Included "Weapons For All" rules tweak.
Version 1.4
- Added Special Encounters
- Added language support. If anyone wants this mod in his or her native language, e-mail me at www.balduran@abv.bg
- Fixed a bug with Izsul Baba selling a non-existing item.
- Izsul Baba now sells the proper Ring of Free Action.
Version 1.5
- Burning Man gets his +1 Paws at level 3 - now he has a magical weapon in Tutu and BGT as well.
- Burning Man should have -100 resistances to cold, but the record screen still doesn't show the correct value. It probably works regardless of this minor setback.
- Faithful Rogue gains special abilities at the right levels.
- Added Improved Bard Song. Now I'll finally keep Haer'Dalis in the party.
- Added Sorcerer entry to "Lore.2da" - while playing I noticed that my 5th level character with 11 Wisdom had only 14 Lore instead of 35, which should have been the correct value.
- Gave Lydia vampiric claws so that she would still be a menace after she has no more spells to cast at you. Beware of level draining.
- Added Improved Irenicus Dungeon. I tested it three times so, hopefully, no bugs are present.
- Added Grandpa's Shield quest.
Version 1.6
- Changed the ToB starting equipment of the Faithful Rogue so that he has the Lathander's Blessing short sword in his inventory.
Version 1.7
- Extended the dialogue of the advertiser.
- Renamed Victor's item Pack to Lich Slayer Scimitar.
- Prices of all items in Izsul's Store and of the Lich Slayer Scimitar have been increased. The Ring of Life Preservation can no longer be bought for a measly 4-5 thousand GP.
Version 1.8
- Lydia now comes with backup and a few more spells.
- Marcil and his evil scientists from Improved Irenicus Dungeon will summon vicious monsters if difficulty level is greater than CORE.
Version 1.9 (01.10.06 last official version)
- Added French translation thanks to Corran001
- Changed Bladdezord's script, so he now waits till you get closer before initiating his dialogue. Hopefully, this way you'll see all the characters while they are speaking.
- Minor improvements to the translation files.
- Vayla's blade is back to +3 enchantment.
- Changed Flaming doom suit to robe, so that it can be equipped by mages.
- The Lich Slayer scimitar is now +4 (+5 before).
Version 2.0 (15.06.09 supported version)
- Added Spanish translation by Clan REO
- Added VERSION-flag
- Updated to WeiDU v210

Fun Stuff:
~~~~~~~~~~~
- When I tested the Flaming doom suit for the first time, I gave it to my Burning Man and made Valygar hit him not having in mind that Valygar had equipped the Acid Katana from the Tactics mod. The result was crossfire flame vs. acid until they were both goners.
- For some reason I decided to summon Shrek in Chapter 1 and he said: "What! Prisoners have escaped! Master won't be happy to hear." Eventually I found out that I have mistaken script names for the Evil Scientists.
- At the beginning I wanted Marcil to cast Horrid Wilting so I gave him the proper memorization and scripting and used CLUAConsole to summon him and test him. He said his lines, became enemy and started casting. First he applied his protections, then Shadow Doored himself and Chaosed four party members. Then fallowed the Horrid Wilting and out of six party members only Jan Jansen survived. That was a death sentence for the Horrid wilting too, because the only ways to kill Marcil before casting it was either by applying the "fake talk" strategy or by having two mages in the party while you are still in the dungeon of Chapter One: One, of course Imoen, casting Remove Magic and another - the protagonist, casting breach.

Coming Soon:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, I am open to suggestions. If you have any requests, e-mail them to me.

(END) Thanks:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
- Clan REO
- To Corran001 for the French translation
- My creative imagination
- Westley Weimer for his great utility tool.
- Everyone at TeamBG.Net for the Infinity Engine Explorer.
- Jon Olav Hauglid for his fantastic work on Nearinfinity.
- The BWL team for hosting the site and the downloads
- All BG&IWD modders out there
- All my friends - you've been an inspiration, whether you know it or not

This post has been edited by balduran: Jul 18 2009, 08:58 AM

[Andyr]

Can you post the ingame kit descriptions, please? It would be easier to have them here...

[balduran]

I think I can do that. They'll be posted in a separate topic by thirsday.

[SimDing0]

I thought AoE did affect mod items.

[The Bigg]

If we want to be picky, I released an Romance-friendly Imprisonment via advanced weidu (it's in tb#tweaks, link in sig), which adds the following to Galactycon's idea:

• fixes all mods adding either imprisonment or immunity to imprisonment (next version will also make freedom mod-affecting).
• immunity to imprisonment works (in galc's build, it doesn't).
• the fix is romance-friendly and player1-friendly - Galc's was only avoiding the infinite exp via imprison/freedom exploit.
• a small cheat to simulate going to ribald, buying the scroll and casting it.

[balduran]

I thought AoE did affect mod items.

It does. However, it doesn't work for weapons added by mods. It also doesn't allow you the weapon styles, while I my component makes it possible to put a star in proficiencies which were previously unavailable to some classes. But there are still some exceptions - mages cannot put stars in shields, kensais too.

[The Bigg]

I thought AoE did affect mod items.

It does. However, it doesn't work for weapons added by mods. It also doesn't allow you the weapon styles, while I my component makes it possible to put a star in proficiencies which were previously unavailable to some classes. But there are still some exceptions - mages cannot put stars in shields, kensais too.

AoE affects mod items - I contributed the code myself.
The weapon style thing is provided from G3/Tutu Tweaks.

[balduran]

I made this component almost a year ago. If AoE has come up with a newer version since then, ok. But when I made it I checked the AoE tp2 and in there was described every single weapon within the game.