Impressions of IA Options

[Nexiam]

I just finished motb, and thought i give bg2 with IA a try.
Mods: EoU, ToD, G3, DCv3, Dbegone
My party:
-kensa : lswords,sswords -dualw (13)
-barba : thsw,halberd,staff (13)
-berserk : flail, axe - dualw (13)
-c/r : hamm, club - sw&shield (11-10)
-blade : katana, lsw, ssw -dualw (15)
-nalia (13)

Items: Ssw of backstab, katana +3, cleric&martial staff +3, halberd +3, lilarcor, club+3, foa+3, freaver.
(any hints of a normal +3 lsword is appreciated)

I choose good meele dmg party cuz i knew the monsters are highly resistand to physical dmg.
Will use flail of defend & wounding on my berserk and carsomyr on my barba later. (cuz it seems palads are weak in IA cuz of Turn, and 2nd i dont want to play vagrant or any other ranger(except c/r for druid spells)

In chapter 3 so far. Did all unmoded quests. Improved quests i did : pirates docks, unseeing eye, mencar, CC, borinall, planar sphere, sewer rakshasa, mekrath+imp, pai'na, firkraag dungeons, de'arnise.

Bad impressions:

enemy mages(some spoilers mb): SPOILER!

SI:Abj & SI:Div . WTF? didnt see any other mage cast anything else, became fast very booring. RRoR need lvl 14(there are many mages battles till lvl 14), r/magic cant buy, and only on sewer party which i can only fight with high lvl(i tried when my fighters were lvl 11, killed all except wizard, so i gave up). Ok i understand "majority" of mages go SI abj&div, but all mages? lol . My tactic was hack'n slash those which didnt have fireshield, and bait with 1 char the others, usually with my blade buffing himself with stoneskin, msturning, msdeflection, mirrorimage, prot from fire, and pfme scrolls, while my party idle in one corner(sometimes r/c buff with dward, and after SI down i went in. Very booring and very limited tactics vs mages. Bad side is most of the time my bait char (blade) died, never had more than 1 char dead after a fight. Hardest fight was Pirate coordinator, i baited with 2 chars blade & nalia, mass stoneskins, pfme, and my c/r very close to them with deathward. Samia & co. was also hard, cuz little space, and group had one very hard fighter. Conster was easy, no char died (killed after 3rd reload, 1st remove magic on my party who was fighting skelly lords, magic dmg spell trigger at near death). Lavok also difficult, cuz of TS + energy blades(lost 1char here also). Greater Yuan-Ti in Darnise Keep was a bit difficult too, cuz of confusion+emotion(my cleric low lvl, to cast enough chaotic commands)
Other thing about mages, they try to debuff completly my chars all the time, before casting any dmg spells, not very smart. More variety or a bit randomness in order of casting spells would be nice. Also they never move, would be nice if they would move around, and detect hidden chars.

I will w8 and see after lvl 14 how my mages will counter enemy mages.

Haerdalis: is a bit hard to get him, so i had to w8 till a higher lvl, while other npc's can be attained easy at start.

Bards: Need some patch to limit to lvl 6 spells like in original game. Cuz Rogue Rebalans & Un-nerfed tables improve their spell cap to lvl 8. Limit to lvl 5 is a bad idea imo like Sikret wants to make them. Also some patch to nerf Pickpocket for Blades after RogueRebalans or EoU (one of them modifies it)

Good Impressions: Anything not mentioned above . Overall good mod so far. High physical resistance to creatures is nice(especially golems), but some creatures rlly dont need it. I would like mages to have a bit physical resistance too(very little), cuz once breached they are food for fighters. Mages don't cheat like in SCSII(althou you can too since SI is fragmented)

I am close to Brynlaw, but i made my impression how the mod will be, i think. Will w8 and see, if things change and how they change.


Good pickpockets(so far) in Athaktla: SPOILER!

Docks

Any hints with good pickpockets is appreaciated just give me City or District.
Last question what are the lvls for normal and improved Spellhold?

Bugs so far: Jaheira dialogue loop, Korgan leave when rep 20, althou i have happy group script from baldurdash(perhaps i should try some happy group from a weidu mod?), no "door" cursor to enter firkraag dungeon in Windspear hills(killed knights-->tp'ed in front of garrens house-->talked to garren-->bandits appeared etc.). Everything went on normal. Just that i had to CLUA myself in the dungeon since no entrance/exit. After i rescued the child got rewared etc. , everything went on just fine. Some global var might been fuc*ed when i arrived to WS Hills.

Will tell you more after im done with SoA.

This post has been edited by Nexiam: Feb 10 2008, 03:26 PM

[Sikret]

Mods: EoU, ToD, G3, DCv3, Dbegone

What is G3? If you mean G3 fixpack or tweakpack, they are not compatible with IA. See the installation document (attached to the readme) again.

A short repy to what was written inside spoiler tags:

SPOILER!

It's not SI:abj & SI:div; it's SI:abj OR SI:div. Mutliple SIs don't stack in IA. It's the same for players and enemies (as you also vaguely mentioned in your post when you noted that enemies do not cheat).

Will use flail of defend & wounding on my berserk

The flail is not usable by berserkers.

Good pickpockets(so far) in Athaktla:

Any hints with good pickpockets is appreaciated just give me City or District.

No such spoilers, please.

no "door" cursor to enter firkraag dungeon in Windspear hills(killed knights-->tp'ed in front of garrens house-->talked to garren-->bandits appeared etc.). Everything went on normal. Just that i had to CLUA myself in the dungeon since no entrance/exit.

This is probably because you didn't follow the installation instructions accurately and installed things which you shouldn't have. See the installation document and amend your installation as soon as possible. You can PM me your WieDu.log file if you need more assistance.

This post has been edited by Sikret: Feb 12 2008, 12:19 AM

[Nexiam]

ye ye i know. its g3 anniversary mod with 1 quest. My bg2 install is very old, thou i uninstalled all weidu mods before this run with IA, but nvm is nothing big so far. And i know, but my flail will be useable by berserk

[Sikret]

And i know, but my flail will be useable by berserk

If you intend to tamper with the items' usability flags or practice cheats of any sort, then I have to ask you to stop sending any further posts to this forum. Play for yourself in any way you wish, but those who cheat have no place here. Sorry. (You will cheat and consequently you will face bugs and then you will send your bug reports which will only waste my time.)

[Baronius]

@Nexiam:
Unfortunately, even minor hacks in the game may cause unexpected, subtle bugs (and it has happened in the practice several times already). It would be impossible for Sikret to help you while you're playing Improved Anvil with such hacks, because the bugs they will cause can be very misleading. I know it can be hard to restrict ourselves, but consider it as a challenge and something that prevents future bugs that would completely ruin your game. Yes, even if you keep playing with any such hacks (while not posting any feedback here), you will face critical or fatal bugs sooner or later, which will break your gameplay anyway -- and no one will be able to help. This is a general caution to all players who consider using cheats and unsupported modifications.

[Nexiam]

lol relax man just a game

[Baronius]

Bugs really ruin the game experience. It's up to you if you undertake the risk caused by manual hacks. On the other hand, don't believe that some mod makers (especially the authors of complex mods) don't help just because they are lazy: in most cases, they couldn't help even if they wanted to.

The game can considered as a giant web of references and interrelations, so there are a lot of dependencies. Even the smallest unverified change may cause a bug in case of a mod such as Improved Anvil.

[aVENGER]

Also some patch to nerf Pickpocket for Blades after RogueRebalans or EoU (one of them modifies it)

Note that this is an original game bug and not a feature of Rogue Rebalancing. In fact, I used to fix that in RR several versions ago, but I dropped it back in v3.5 because I've donated that fix (along with my elven charm/sleep resistance fix and some other stuff) to the G3 BG2 Fixpack.

[Nexiam]

Amber golem fight in Asylum very hard, and spawn monsters very annoying especially Slords and spiders. Shade Lich also hard, think Liches will be most hard in IA, cuz of pfmw and immunity to breach tt ((. Also i dont find good +3 lsw, before asylum, suxx (
Think Asylum need improve all monsters, cuz some so easy.
Dragons also so easy, Firkraag die in <1 round, they need fast contingency like mages, very sad.

Edit: Had to restart Asylum from begin cuz i forget smth, and after Amber Golem fight was easy :D

This post has been edited by Nexiam: Feb 15 2008, 11:34 AM

[Nexiam]

1st drow ambush, i tried many times, then i tried to split spiders from drow, and after killed spiders, drow was food for my fighters

[Nexiam]

Dracolich down 2 ppl died from wail tt

Very hard battle. Next time i will go to asylum with lvl 20+, so i will have nice chance to remove magic dracolich.

This post has been edited by Nexiam: Feb 19 2008, 12:01 PM

[Nexiam]

SHIT, i am chapter 6, finished all quests + Zallanora except Twisted Rune, and 4 WK lvls, but i have problems with ORC HORDE, so hard, and i have only 1 hardiness on my fighters, and after hardiness goes off, my fighters die fast tt . Dunno what to do. My 3 fighters are lvl 25. I wanna finish WK before Suldenesselar. Any tips for this battle or how long it lasts(rounds)? I tried this battle 2 hours yesterday. HELP TT

[Vardaman]

Lots of Greater Restoration and pray you get Rest with Wish. This might also be a good fight to use a Potion of Barbarian essence or two. Your blade should be high enough level to bring down the Orc Mage's Imp Invis and fire-shield. Focus on them first, when you can, since their prismatic rays can rack up damage fast. Aim your remove magic to a spot where it'll hit two or three mages each casting.

[Nexiam]

i hack&nslash mages fast enough, but archers own me when hardiness goes off tt

[Nexiam]

retarded, RRoR doesnt always work on shangalar

[Raven]

That's probably because of the Spell Shield bug, a seemingly unfixable problem with the Spell Shield spell which means sometimes the shield does not disappear no matter how many RR etc are cast into it. Hopefully if you reload you won't have the same problem.

[Nexiam]

OK LAYENE DOWN.
hardest fight no doubt, especially the golems, but cuz of that bug which happend 3/4 times, it took me 2 days to finish this battle.

[Nexiam]

Need help with orc horde, any strategy is welcome
send pm or write here in spoiler thx

[Sikret]

What's your party level, Nexiam? Perhaps, it's better for your party to postpone the battle to a later time (TOB).

[Nexiam]

3 FIghters - lvl27 - 2 Hardiness
Blade - lvl30
nalia - lvl23 - imp ring (5slots in lvl9 spells)
c/r - lvl19-16

have 4 barbarian potions


I tried 2 strats so far: meele fight, split,
mass aoe, cloudkill, acid fog, incendiary


Emotion+greater command mb next? Cuz i think orcs dont spawn if others alive, so best would be not to kill them. But if launch r/magic for mages then they get dispelled or?

I can keep trying, but rlly wanna finish all WK in soa, cuz im not sure if i can finish ToB cuz will be busy soon. So help is thx.