Suggestions for the coming release Options

[SparrowJacek]

ToB will definitely take a lot of time, but you already know my opinion on that

To tell you the truth, it shouldn't take too long. I only have a few fight from ToB and maybe 3-4 from WK that I want to change more drastically than by simply reworking enemy AI. There are also a few fights that I want to rework, but have very low priority and take too much time to change to do it in the upcoming release. Reworked Balthazar, EDE and Amelissan fall into this category.

[lxgxnd9]

Which are those 3-4 encounters in WK out of curiosity ?

[SparrowJacek]

Which are those 3-4 encounters in WK out of curiosity ?

For those who do want to get spoiled before the release:
SPOILER!

- Ancient Dragon fight will be changed in a few ways
- Illithid area will be much harder
- Final seals right before Demogorgon will be... different
- Rock and Garock (2 Minotaurs) will be slightly improved

This post has been edited by SparrowJacek: Nov 6 2025, 07:35 PM

[lxgxnd9]

Nice! definitely agree with those encounters. Is this update suppose to be out within the next few weeks you think?

[SparrowJacek]

Nice! definitely agree with those encounters. Is this update suppose to be out within the next few weeks you think?

It's still too early to make any statements. I do what I can and I really want to publish the patch as soon as possible I should be able to say more near the end of November.

[SparrowJacek]

Yup, it's definitely too early. I said that there are 3-4 encounters in WK left, because I wanted to just make some quick changes to Rock/Garock. When I started working on it however, I got a few nice and unique ideas on how to make the fight tougher. It is the final fight of that level after all, so it should not end in one round. And since those ideas required a set of new spells, abilities and most importantly - new scripts - it took me much longer than anticipated, but I am pretty confident that the fight will be memorable now

[DequNew]

Boost Neb encounter. If you make changes as you made for Assassin class, make Neb fight taking use of it.

[SparrowJacek]

Boost Neb encounter. If you make changes as you made for Assassin class, make Neb fight taking use of it.

I'll note that down, he's a good candidate for that kit.


Here's another Mage kit with a slight boost:

ABJURER: A Mage who specializes in protective magics.

Advantages:
- May cast one additional spell per level.
- Receives a +15% bonus when scribing scrolls from the Abjuration school.
- Receives a +2 bonus when making Saving Throws against spells from the Abjuration school.
- Targets suffer a -2 penalty when making Saving Throws against spells from the Abjuration school.
- Casts all arcane spells as if 1 level higher.
- At levels 12, 18 and 24, 30 and 36 Abjurers get Abjuration Mastery ability.

ABJURATION MASTERY: With this power a skilled Abjurers can cast any spell of their favored school bypassing the need to cleanse their aura. The chosen spell is uninterruptible and does not need to be prepared in advance. This grants Abjurers an unparalleled edge in battle, allowing them to summon protective and dispelling magic at a moment's notice.

The potency of this ability grows with the caster's experience:

At level 12: Cast spells up to 4th level
At level 14: Cast spells up to 5th level
At level 16: Cast spells up to 6th level
At level 18: Cast spells up to 7th level
At level 20: Cast spells up to 8th level
At level 22 and above: Cast any mage abjuration spell

Disadvantages:
- May not learn or cast any spells of the Alteration school.
- Receives a -15% penalty when scribing scrolls from other schools.
- Cannot dual class.

Requires at least 15 Wisdom.

This post has been edited by SparrowJacek: Nov 27 2025, 02:04 AM

[SparrowJacek]

Nice! definitely agree with those encounters. Is this update suppose to be out within the next few weeks you think?

Ok, I think that I should have everything ready by the end of February. I hope that I'll be able to publish the mod faster, but this date should give me large enough time buffer to account for any problems, or last-minute bright ideas, that could consume a significant amount of time.

[lxgxnd9]

Will have to check back in a few months then!

[DequNew]

Suggest to add Delryn family shield missing Acic Resistance:

"
Abilities:
AC Bonus: +5, +8 vs. missiles
Resistance to Acid, Fire and Cold: + 40%
Resistance to missile damage: +50%
Immunity to Charm, Confusion, Domination and Hold Person
Magic Resistance: +10%

"

[pekkae]

Hey!

Any new development / updates / spoliers ?

[HTRT]

It is a pretty big ask, but two things I would love to see one day:

1) Helper monsters summoned during the span of a fight should not yield xp or treasure: for certain players I think it is a dilemma whether to milk monsters like elemental golems or not. The former feels cheap but very rewarding and the latter feels more realistic but leaves, at least for me, a feeling of missing out on something. I would rather see more monsters or encounters in general, as potentially brought by point 2.

2) A fine tuning of encounters based on well-defined paths. The mod already does a pretty good job at that, but I think it could be improved in that regard. There could be 3 main paths considered for SOA:
-Party does very minimal pre-spellhold content, beats Bodhi and leaves almost right away (~level 12)
-Party tries to be as close as possible to the Spellhold xp cap to prevent triggering Improved Spellhold (~level 15)
-Party does everything possible before Spellhold (~level 20 if I remember properly)

The first path for example could lead to a much improved Tor'Gal fight in chapter 6.

From the TOB standpoint, two main paths could be considered:
-Watcher's Keep was done entirely in SOA
-Watcher's Keep was left untouched in SOA and kept for later in TOB

Aside from that, I am currently playing a V7 run and I must say the new content is very very neat, especially the druid stronghold. Congratulations and thank you !!!

[SparrowJacek]

Suggest to add Delryn family shield missing Acic Resistance:

Interesting, nobody found that issue for years

Any new development / updates / spoliers rolleyes.gif ?

Here's a spoiler: Anomen's shield will be more useful in some fights, even if we won't change it in any way.

The progress is very slow, but I hope that both Rock+Garock fight and the final Seals in WK will be much more demanding and fun for players to beat. Currently I'm starting ToB and for that portion of the game I have exactly 3 fights that I want to redesign, but there will be some small changes here and there too. After that I'll have to do a major clean up of the files and documents and finally prepare at least a semi-useful readme, because the number of changes is quite high.

1) Helper monsters summoned during the span of a fight should not yield xp or treasure: for certain players I think it is a dilemma whether to milk monsters like elemental golems or not. The former feels cheap but very rewarding and the latter feels more realistic but leaves, at least for me, a feeling of missing out on something. I would rather see more monsters or encounters in general, as potentially brought by point 2.

That issue is already addressed for (Greater) Elemental Golems in Controversial Changes component, I wonder how it'll be received. I have a similar concept in mind for Spiders and especially Spider Queen, but it won't be present in the upcoming release. In general I don't like 0-exp powerful enemies and would like to avoid that if possible.

2) A fine tuning of encounters based on well-defined paths. The mod already does a pretty good job at that, but I think it could be improved in that regard. There could be 3 main paths considered for SOA:
-Party does very minimal pre-spellhold content, beats Bodhi and leaves almost right away (~level 12)
-Party tries to be as close as possible to the Spellhold xp cap to prevent triggering Improved Spellhold (~level 15)
-Party does everything possible before Spellhold (~level 20 if I remember properly)

The first path for example could lead to a much improved Tor'Gal fight in chapter 6.

From the TOB standpoint, two main paths could be considered:
-Watcher's Keep was done entirely in SOA
-Watcher's Keep was left untouched in SOA and kept for later in TOB

The idea is great, it would open up many interesting possibilies for playthroughs and potential tactical challenges without designing them from scratch. It would definitely take a lot of time, but the work on such changes could be done in small steps, whenever someone has enough time and motivation to do that

[pekkae]

1) Helper monsters summoned during the span of a fight should not yield xp or treasure: for certain players I think it is a dilemma whether to milk monsters like elemental golems or not. The former feels cheap but very rewarding and the latter feels more realistic but leaves, at least for me, a feeling of missing out on something. I would rather see more monsters or encounters in general, as potentially brought by point 2.

That issue is already addressed for (Greater) Elemental Golems in Controversial Changes component, I wonder how it'll be received. I have a similar concept in mind for Spiders and especially Spider Queen, but it won't be present in the upcoming release. In general I don't like 0-exp powerful enemies and would like to avoid that if possible.

My very strong feeling is that "this is the way".

While "milking" strategy gives one comprehensive superpowers; it comes with quite the high cost.

In addition, I think it's quite conflicted, that the "most powetful party" isn't one that can actually finish off the enemies the fastest, but one with amazing endurance.

[HTRT]

1) Helper monsters summoned during the span of a fight should not yield xp or treasure: for certain players I think it is a dilemma whether to milk monsters like elemental golems or not. The former feels cheap but very rewarding and the latter feels more realistic but leaves, at least for me, a feeling of missing out on something. I would rather see more monsters or encounters in general, as potentially brought by point 2.

That issue is already addressed for (Greater) Elemental Golems in Controversial Changes component, I wonder how it'll be received. I have a similar concept in mind for Spiders and especially Spider Queen, but it won't be present in the upcoming release. In general I don't like 0-exp powerful enemies and would like to avoid that if possible.

My very strong feeling is that "this is the way".

While "milking" strategy gives one comprehensive superpowers; it comes with quite the high cost.

In addition, I think it's quite conflicted, that the "most powetful party" isn't one that can actually finish off the enemies the fastest, but one with amazing endurance.

It definitely is the way, I just don't think it was ever intended to be so

[SparrowJacek]

Hey! I have a question to you guys, how would you rate the difficulty of the fights against the children of Bhaal in ToB? Are any of them really difficult?

[lxgxnd9]

At that stage of the game and by extension how strong your party would be comparatively none of them are really difficult at all.

Especially Balthazar, despite being the last of them he is by far the easiest

[HTRT]

Hey! I have a question to you guys, how would you rate the difficulty of the fights against the children of Bhaal in ToB? Are any of them really difficult?

I think in ToB in general:

Too easy:
Ilasera
Saradush
Gromnir
North Forest
Marching mountains
Berenn
Forest of Mir the Temple
Amkethran
Sendai
Draconis
Abazigal
Balthazar (purely vanilla)

Ok:
Yaga-Shura
Oasis
Epic Divine Encounter

I have not yet played the new improved Melissan or any ToB Sibel content

This post has been edited by HTRT: Jan 24 2026, 06:12 AM

[SparrowJacek]

Especially Balthazar, despite being the last of them he is by far the easiest

He is supposed to be the strongest out of The Five, however even in non-modded game he was nothitng special. Some kind of a rebalance of this fight was on my mind ever since I joined the team working on Improved Anvil... I hope to one day sit and rework the fight so that it really shows that Balthazar is the one closest to Ascending, but it won't happen in the upcoming patch.

none of them are really difficult at all.

Too easy:
Ilasera
Saradush
Gromnir
North Forest
Marching mountains
Berenn
Forest of Mir the Temple
Amkethran
Sendai
Draconis
Abazigal
Balthazar (purely vanilla)

I knew that ToB was significantly easier, but tthat list caught me off-guard... Okay, that's actually good, I won't have to restrain myself, when working on those fight in the future.