Here is where I'll add frequently asked questions and answers to them. You can ask your own questions by starting separate topics in the Forum and I will add them here (through editing this message).
Q: Can I cheat and give the new items to my characters?
A: I strongly recommend against doing such a thing. Cheating items into the game not only will spoil the fun of the game for you, but also may trigger some events prematurely in the game. The joy and fun of having those items will be maximum if you do not cheat and try the genuine ways to forge them in the game. Without cheating, The sequence of events will also remain as they should be.
Q: Does Improved Anvil contain upgrades for the specific items of joinable NPCs?
A: Yes, all of the joinable NPCs who have such specific items will be able to upgrade their personal items.
Q: Resistance to physical damage is justified for Golems, Dragons, Demons and other nasty monsters, but how do you justify those humanoid enemies having resistance to physical damage? I don't like to see enemies who have abilities which are not available to my characters.
A: First of all, it is a false assumption that player characters cannot have those resistances. There are several new ways in the game through which you can also gain resistance to physical damage. Apart from new weapons and armors which grant such resistances, a new type of potion is also added to the game which you can find and use. The new potion can also (to a considerable extent) justify how those enemies have acquired resistance to physical damage. You can assume that they have consumed such potions. The resistances are not illegal.
Actually, resistances are primarily designed for the party of players (rather than the enemies) and as you progress in the game you will find resources to gain such resistances. You will need them to survive the harder battles of the mod. But now that you are going to have such resistances, it would not be fair to deprive enemies from them.
Perhaps, you are currently at early stages of the game and you are frustrated to see some enemies with resistances, but as you progress, you will gradually gain such resistances yourself and will find out that it is actually *you* who rely on them to survive (much more than the enemies do).
Battles in which neither side (neither enemies nor party members) have resistances will prove to be too short for a tactician's taste. A tactician requires long battle to be able to think and perform good tactics. As an example, consider the battle with Improved Yagashura. At the point you reach that battle your party has siginificant damage resistances as do the enemies. The battle is currently one of the most exciting battles in the game and requires the player to think very well at every stage. Now, just assume that neither of the two sides (enemies and players) had any resistances; the result of the battle would then depend on sheer chance (who hits whom first and faster)! The battle would turn to be too short and pointless. Either your protagonist would die fast or Yagashura would be killed quickly depending on who hits sooner and better. The battle would be far from a typical IA chess match.
Furthermore, you can just consider that you are playing the game on a high difficulty level (perhaps even higher than insane). Even in the vanilla game, playing the game on Insane level will have similar results and noone has ever asked the game's developers for any justification for that. Our goal is to make the game more difficult and more interesting as well. Improved Anvil has added the most intelligent combat scripts to enemies, but smart scripts are far from enough to make the game challenging and interesting enough (I repeat again that a tactical guru requires long battles to be able to design interesting tactics).
Also, it's very important to note that Improved Anvil has eliminated most of the cheesy methods both for players and for the enemies. One of these important changes is that multiple spell immunities no longer stack with each other. You may play some other tactical mod in which some of these cheesy methods are still available and enemy mages may use them in their scripts. For example, they may use multiple spell immunities. In such cases, you may wrongly believe that a good script has made those mages difficult enough, without noticing that it is actually the cheesy method used in those scripts which has made them difficult. The problem here is that unskilled players don't see the importance of what Improved Anvil has done by eliminating those methods from the game. Even worse than using cheesy scripts, some tactical mods even tweak the game's rules in bad ways, such as allowing 'Breach' to affect liches or allowing spells such as Ruby Ray of Reversal to affect an area rather than an individual. To be honest, if the vanilla game had worked in this way, I would have immediately called it a 'critical bug' and would have fixed it; I'm astonished to see some people deliberately add such things to the game.
Back to the question of resistances, it's interesting that most of players who complain about resistances in IA have not even played the mod long enough to reach those stages of the game at which their party will have resistances as well. Hence, they don't see the justifications behind them.
Q: Most of the improved enemies are immune to traps. Isn't this a non-standard ability not available to players?
A: Player characters don't need immunity to traps, because none of the enemy thieves set trap for you (and you already know all of existent traps' locations; hence, they are just there to give you experience points for disarming them). Making those improved enemies immune to trap was just a step towards making the game more of a fair play. The vanilla game is badly unfair and unbalanced in favour of the players and against the enemies. Improved Anvil tries to tighten this gap as far as possible.
Q: I have read in the mod's readme that Improved Anvil blocks many exploits (such as summoning creatures and killing them for the extra xp). Is this part of the mod's tactical component? Are the exploits blocked to make the game harder?
A: No, blocking the exploits are actually part of the mod's "Fixes and Tweaks". They are attempts to remove the vanilla game's flaws. You can find them listed in the "Fixes and Tweaks" document (rather than the document about tactical challenges). Even Baldurdash Fixpack has some such fixes (though very few).
Q: But those who intend to cheat will cheat anyway. What's the point of blocking exploits?
A: It's true that cheaters can always find alternate ways to cheat, it's even true for the fixes we apply to the vanilla game's bugs. A cheater can always find ways to undo our bugfixes. but this doesn't provide us with a valid argument against blocking exploits or fixing bugs. Let me give you an example:
If you play the game without IA, Boots of Speed can be exploited in a particular way. The boots bonus to speed could stack with the speed bonus of (Improved) Haste, resulting in a character with quadruple speed. I have fixed this bug in IA even though the statement that "cheaters can cheat anyway" is still true and a cheater who wants to have a character with quadruple speed can still use editors to give the (x4) speed to his character. Nonetheless, the fact that a cheater can cheat this way or the other didn't stop me from fixing the bug. (As a side-note, Improved Anvil is the only mod which fixes Boots of Speed in a perfect and seamless way; all other mods and fixpacks which claim to fix the boots, actually add a critical bug to the item; this includes G3's BG2 fixpack and Baldurdash as well).
The same is true for every bugfix and exploit-fix in the game. Cheaters will always have ways to undo your bugfixes or exploit-fixes and to re-create those bugs and exploits in their games (the easiest method can sometimes be deleting files from the override folder), but this fact doesn't provide any valid argument for not fixing bugs or exploits.
If there are still n ways to cheat xp in the game, it can't be a wrong decision to block one of them and to leave the cheaters with n-1 ways to cheat (unless we can find other and independent reasons against blocking the exploit in a particular case).
Q: Do I need to start a new game after installing this mod?
A: Yes.
Q: I am playing the game with Improved Anvil. Cromwell asks for items and components I had never heard of before. What are these items and where can I find them?
A: They are new components added to the game by this mod. Look for them in the inventory of enemies and in various locations and containers in the game, and enjoy finding them!
Q: Why are some of the upgrades so expensive?
A: Because they deserve the high prices. You have limited gold and you should think well and decide which items to make. This is a part of the game's fun and an aspect of your strategy in the game. If all those powerful items could have been made with little price and gold, they would surely unbalance your game. If you want to try more items, perhaps you will need to play the mod again in a different game-through with a different overall strategy and different NPCs in your party who will be able to benefit other sort of items.
Q: Comparing Improved Anvil's list of new items with Weimer's Item Upgrade mod, it seems that IA's items are generally more powerful than IU's. Won't these powerful items unbalance the game?
A: First of all, I believe that comparing Improved Anvil with some other item-mod is a mistake from the beginning. Similarly, it would be a mistake to compare IA with any other tactical mod or any tweakpack. Such comparisons can only be one-dimensional. IA does much more than adding new items or some scripts to the game. It has many features all of which are related to each other. But if you want to make such a one-dimensional comparison, you should keep three important points in mind:
First, forging Improved Anvil's items require hard-to-attain components and they are more expensive than IU's item upgrades. This means that you can forge fewer items (unless you cheat).
Second, some of IA's new items are plot/quest related items. They are not just there to make your game easier. On the contrary, they will lead you into difficult encounters and you will lose those items under certain conditions.
Third, Improved Anvil is not primarily an item mod. It is a game enhancing mod which adds lots of tactical challenges, new adventures and new monsters to the game. The game is way more difficult after installing Improved Anvil (while, on the other hand, IU is a mere item mod which adds items to the game without touching the game's difficulty). However, this doesn't mean that those tactical puzzles and game enhancing features are added for the mere purpose of rebalancing IA's new items; it's rather the other way round. Those tactical challenges and new adventures and encounters are actually the mod's main features. The item upgrade portion of the mod is secondary to them (not vice versa). In other words, you may find the new items helpful during the new adventures and quests and other main features of the mod.
Q: I guess I have found a possible bug. How can I report it?
A:
First, do a search for the problem (or its key words) in the forum and make sure that it's not been already mentioned and replied to in a previous post.
Second, make sure that you have the newest version of Improved anvil.
Third, make sure that you do not have any of the incomaptible mods installed. You can see their list in the mod's readme in a document called "Installation".
Fourth, make sure that you have installed Baldurdash TOB Fixpack V1.12 and not G3 site's BG2 Fixpack. Bug reports from players who use G3 Fixpack will not be accepted as it is incompatible with Improved Anvil.
Fifth, make sure that you have installed Improved Anvil after your other mods.
Sixth, include a copy of your WeiDu.log file in your post. Copy and paste its content. WeiDu.log file is a text file in your main Bg2 folder.
Your bug reports should qualify the abovementioned conditions (though, you can always send me PMs about your doubts). Any bug report without the qualifications mentioned above will not be taken seriously.
Q: When I play Improved Anvil, I experience serious lagging on my computer. It works too slowly. Is it caused by Improved Anvil?
A: By no means! We have tested Improved Anvil even on slow and old computers and have never had such a problem. In some heavy battles (specially in TOB), it's possible to experience some lagging on old and slow computers, but it's normal and not serious. If you experience serious slow down on your computer check the following steps:
1- Make sure that you have followed the mod's installation instructions accurately. In particular, make sure that you have NOT installed BG2 TweakPack.
2- Make sure that you don't have a bottomless bag of holding. (Also, make sure that you have not installed any other mod which adds new containers (bags, etc) to the game.)
3- Make sure that the 3d acceleration option is not turned on in your game's configuration.
4- Make sure that you have made a clean installation of the game before installing your current mods. Leftovers of old mods (even after uninstalling them) may cause such problems.
5- Make sure that a "Real Time Virus Protection" is not running in the background on your machine.
6- Make sure that your machine (if an old one) is not continuously running for more than 12 hours without a restart. A restart will help the machine to refresh its resources.
7- Make sure that the hard disk has at least 15% free space (both the directory in which windows is installed and the directory in which BG2 is installed).
8- Defragment your computer.
Q: As a related question, it was for a while that many people were criticizing Improved Anvil for the slow downs and lags in their games; but it's been now for a while that we don't read such criticisms about IA. Have you changed anything in the mod?
A: No, I have not applied very serious changes, just some small changes here and there to decrease the probability of possible slow downs. The main point about those criticisms in the past was something quite different; those criticisms were mostly propaganda against Improved Anvil. On those days, the other new tactical mod had not been yet released at G3 site and every troll and his mother was criticizing IA for slow downs. Later when that other mod was released in their own favourite site and they saw that it causes much worse slow downs, they just kept their mouths shut and proved the point that they didn't really worry about slow downs or such things; they were just looking for some pretext to attack IA. (As a side note, the reason that IA causes less slow downs than the G3's tactical mod is not that IA has less intelligent scripts; the reason IA causes less serious slow downs is that IA assigns separate scripts to different creatures rather than using one common script for many of them. Consequently, IA has more elegant scripts with shorter length which can create the highest level of intelligent behavior without lengthening the scripting texts unnecessarily).
Q: I have read somewhere (in another forum) that Improved Anvil is a "Total Conversion" and not compatible with any other mod. Is that true?
A: Not at all! If Improved Anvil was supposed to be a total conversion, I wouldn't need to bother to use complex patching methods in the mod to modify all those stores, areas and creatures; I could simply overwrite all those files (which I didn't). Actually, the number of mods which are incompatible with improved Anvil is relatively small (compared to the total number of mods available and compared to the huge volume of new content Improved Anvil adds to your game).
Q: Two questions: (1) Why Improved Anvil is not divided into separate installable and optional components? (2) Is it because it will take much time or effort to divide it into separate components?
A: Answer to question (1): Because everything in Improved Anvil are so deeply interrelated to each other that it's not even logically possible to divide it into separate components. Quests, encounters, items, tactical content, tweaks and fixes and even the item randomizer are all strongly interrelated to each other.If a spell is tweaked, the changes are taken into consideration in enemies' scripts, if an item is there it has a purpose in some other event and so on. The only way to divide the mod to optional components is to remove these connections; but then it won't be Improved Anvil anymore; it will be a new mod with a far less degree of quality than Improved Anvil.
Answer to question (2): No, it's not a matter time at all. There are certain things you can't do even if you spare thousands of hours to do them, because they are logically impossible (and this is one of those cases: It's logically impossible to divide the mod to several optional components while keeping all of the current interrelated connections between the mod's features -- which are required for the mod's current degree of quality).
One more very important point is that unlike what some people believe and advertise, customisability is not really a big advantage for a program; stability and bugfreeness are the true advantages. When I download or buy certain softwares, I do not expect them to be highly customizable, because that will only mean that I will have to make more decisions during installation. What I expect from the software's developer is to make the best decisions for me beforehand so that I can install and use the software with the fewest possible "clicks" and steps and be sure that I have not made any crazy decision while customizing and installing the program. This is what I have done for you. I have customized the mod in the best possible way and have offered you a stable and bugfree mod to install and play.
Q: Some people say that releasing a mod which is not divided into optional components shows that the author of the mod doesn't respect players.
A: Solid evidence for the fact that I respect players is the fully stable and bugfree mod I have released. I don't mistake players for testers and believe that the player's time is valuable and the player has the right to play bugfree mods. You can't probably imagine the amount of time I have spent in testing the mod's content to make sure that despite the mod's huge content, it is stable and bugfree when available for download. Those who don't respect players are modders who release heavily bugged and untested mods and then wait for the poor players' bug reports (as if the player is their unpaid volunteer tester).
Q: Is Improved Anvil a tactical mod or an item mod or a tweakpack? How can it be categorized?
A: None of them alone. Improved Anvil is a "complex" mod or a "big" mod (if you prefer the second expression). It applies many changes and adds much new content to the game all of which are interrelated and require each other. As mentioned earlier, comparing Improved Anvil with some other tactical mod and ignoring IA's other features will be a mistake. Similarly comparing it with any other item-mod or tweakpack will be wrong, because such comparisons will be one-dimensional. Improved Anvil should be experienced as a united whole.
Q: Are there two different Improved Anvil mods available?
A: No, why?
Q: In some discussion forums I read things about Improved Anvil which are plainly false when I compare them with my own experience of the mod. For example, some had said that enemies in IA just stand inside the clouds and fogs without doing anything and merely rely on their regeneration. When I played the mod myself, I noticed that they cast "Zone of Sweet Air" (even enemies who don't have access to clerical spells don't just stand there doing nothing; they immediately move and attack). As another example, I read somewhere that every enemy in IA has 100% resistance to elemental damage. when I played the mod myself I saw that it's not true. Most enemies are only partially resistant to elemental damage (and not equally to every type of elemental damage; each enemy has its own weaknesses and I enjoyed very much discovering those weaknesses in the game). I read somewhere else that all IA does is to make the game harder with adding resistances to creatures. When I played the mod I found many more features in the mod (very good combat scripts, many new quests, the item randomizer, etc). Someone else had claimed that the improved enemies in Improved Anvil use cheesy tactics during the battles, when I played the mod I found it to be the least cheesy mod under the sun; for example, I never a saw an enemy mage casting more than one "spell Immunity" spell on himself (casting multiple SIs is one of the cheesiest possible tactics and Improved Anvil is the only mod in which enemies don't use that cheesy method). I thought that those people (who were writing those false things) were probably playing a different mod with the same name!
A: I assure you that only one Improved Anvil mod is available. Unfortunately, some people (either deliberately or unknowingly) write false things about this mod. I strongly recommend that if you want to have reliable information about this mod, you visit the mod's own forum (instead of some random discussion boards) and ask your questions from people who have adequate information about the mod's content.
Q: I read somewhere that high level spellcasters in IA (especially high level liches) can cast "uninterruptable" spells. When I played the mod, I noticed that it was plain falsehood.
A: That is funny. Some people simply don't know what certain Opcodes do (see here for example). They misread "immunity to turn undead" and mistake it for the ability to cast uninterruptable spells! Then they write things about IA based on their incorrect information.
Q: Can I use G3's BG2 Fixpack instead of Baldurdash?
A: No, you can't. BG2 fixpack is totally incompatible with Improved Anvil.
Known Incompatibility inssues are as follows, but it is very probable that there are more conflicts and problems which are not reported, verified or tested yet:
- The BG2 fixpack's (and Oversight mod's) changes to creatures' alignments will break clerics' scripts in Improved Anvil.
- Bg2 fixpack has arbitrarily changed Tolgerias's death variable. This can break one of the scripting blocks during that particular battle.
- BG2 fixpack has made arbitrary changes to some of the game's files (spells, creatures, etc) which can cause problems under certain conditions.
- BG2 fixpack arbitrarily (and ridiculously) changes some of the game's weapons (such as Daystar sword) into overpowered weapons by increasing their enchantments. Such changes are not expected in IA and can cause problems. This is one more proof for the fact that BG2 fixpack is not really a fixpack despite what its developers claim. Why should a mod which calls itself a "fixpack" do item upgrading job and increase weapon's enchantments while the original enchantments of those weapons in the vanilla game were correct and the items were not bugged at all?
- BG2 fixpack is a heavily bugged mod. Its authors don't test it at all. It's an open question whether the number of bugs it fixes are more or less than the number of new bugs it adds to the game.
The important point to have in mind is that G3's BG2 Fixpack is not really a fixpack. It's actually a tweakpack which applies arbitrary changes to the game which can break other mods' content.
Q: Some people call Improved Anvil "cheesy". I don't understand this at all, because I have found all enemies following the rules. Moreover, the mod has actually blocked many cheesy methods available to players and enemies alike.
A: People who say such things about Improved Anvil fall in four categories:
1- People who have not played the mod and are just repeating things they have heard from other people.
2- People who deliberately spread lies about the mod (these are mostly jealous modders).
3- People who have played the mod, but not long enough to understand what the mod does and to realize the justifications for some changes they see in the game. They play for a few hours and then quit and go to a forum to write something based on their limited and incomplete information about the mod. Most of such people have not even read the mod's readme file and documents before trying it. Some of them have not even followed the mod's installation instructions correctly.
4- Lastly, there are players who have played Improved Anvil for a while, but call IA "cheesy" exactly because IA is the most "anti-cheese" mod under the sun. The cheesy methods they knew to win battles no longer work in IA. Their ego is hurt and the illusion of being a skilled player they had about themselves has been dispelled. They don't know good and effective tactical methods, but instead of trying to learn, they prefer to quit playing the mod and to say something bad about the mod just to cure their wounded ego.
The only honest explanation such a player can offer for not playing IA or not liking it is to say that he is not skilled enough to play this mod and is not willing to spend time on learning; but such honest people are really rare (though, they undoubtedly exist; I have read comments of such honest players who don't play IA, but are honest enough to say that the reason they don't play it is that they are not skilled enough to play the mod and don't have the time or patience to draw a learning curve to improve their skills).
Q: I am a player with little tactical skills. I want to play IA but I don't think that I am skilled enough to manage its difficult battles. Do you suggest that I start with some other tactical mod to improve my skills and return to IA later?
A: No, playing other tactical mods won't really help you to improve your skills to play IA, because IA has applied many fixes and tweaks to the game which are absent in other mods. For example, many spells which were bugged in the vanilla game (and are still bugged when playing other mods) are fixed in IA. Many more fixes and tweaks are applied to the game and in short, when playing IA you are playing the game with a different (= fixed & tweaked) set of rules. If you play another mod, the game's rules will be different and you may even be misled to think that the same tactics which worked in the other mod may work in IA too.
Moreover, Improved Anvil is stable and bugfree despite the huge amount of new content it adds to the game (compare IA's stability with some other tactical mods which are full of bugs according to the numerous bug reports in their sites and discussion boards). Playing a bugged game with some other mod can hardly help you learn any tactics.
The only way to improve your tactical skills for IA, is to play IA itself. Draw a learning curve, start the game on the easiest configuration/setting and start your learning process.
Q: Why is the mod incompatible with so many mods? The list of incompatible mods looks a bit long.
A: A few points:
1- The list of incompatible mods are not really long (compared with the huge amount of content IA adds to the game). IA is compatible with the majority of other mods. However, since it is incompatible with the mods created by some certain people, they have started a propaganda against IA by making false claims such as IA is not compatible with 95% of other mods or even lies such as "IA is deliberately designed not to work with other mods". Some simple and ignorant players just echo such lies.
2- It's also worth mentioning that some of the incompatibilties are the faults of other modders. For example, The incompatbility between Amber NPC and IA can only be fixed by applying some small and harmless changes to the Amber NPC mod; there is nothing I can do to solve the problem. Over two years ago, I sent an e-mail to Amber's author and explained the problem and even told her how to fix it. She replied that she would fix the problem, but for a long time she didn't do anything; we should wait to see when she will fix it (EDIT: After more than 2 years, she finally reported that she has fixed the problem in Amber NPC mod; now the two mods should be compatible). The same is true about Kelsey NPC; the incompatibility between Kelsey and IA could be fixed very easily by applying some simple and harmless changes to Kelsey. You shouldn't blame me when the problem is other people's fault (EDIT: I fixed the compatibility issue between Kelsey and IA in Improved Anvil; while, as I said before, the best and easiest way of fixing the problem was to do it in Kelsey mod not in IA. I wonder why some people still think that I am working against compatibility with other mods when it is evidently the other way round).
3- Many other mods are also incompatbile with big number of mods, but their authors don't mention them in a list similar to what I have done (either because they are not aware of incompatibilities due to lack of testing or because they are not honest enough to do so and prefer to write vague and general statements such as "this mod *should* work with all other mods")
4- The other important point is that Improved Anvil adds much more new content to your game than the total sum of the mods which are incompatible with it (not to mention that some of those mods are even mutually incompatible with each other and you can't have all of them together). So, you won't miss much by installing IA and ignoring those mods (Moreover, IA is stable, fully tested and bugfree, while most (if not all) of the mods in that incompatibility list are bugged even if played alone and without IA)
5- I have repeatedly announced that I'm ready to cooperate with any author whose mod is currently incompatbile with IA to work with each other and reslove the incompatibilities, but I have not received even one single positve answer from any of the authors whose mods are in the list.
6- Many players of IA prefer to play IA alone, not because they can't find mods which are compatible with IA, but because they don't want to break IA's general atmosphere and balance by adding even mods which are compatible. This is fully understandable, because IA is a very well-balanced mod, adding a mod which adds overpowered items or additional xp to the game may break the game's greater balance for very little gain.
Q: Why some enemies have such an insane regeneration rate? They regenerate faster than I hit them.
A: I assure you that what you said is not true. This is a psychological phenomenon with some players that when they fail to find the best tactics to defeat enemies they start imagining things and want to find some other reason or cause for their failure. Some monsters are more resistant to certain weapon types. Try using different weapons with different damage types against them.
Q: Why are the enemies cheating in IA?
A: None of the enemies cheat. Can you give me an example?
Q: When Gracen, the guild's contact, appears, I pause the game and attack him to kill him quickly before he can say his dialogue lines; but I simply can't harm him. Why is he cheating?
A: Well, it's actually *you* who is the cheater here. Pausing the game and killing Gracen before he says his lines was one of the well-known cheats/exploits of the vanilla game. Improved Anvil adds anti-cheat measurements to block such exploits. This mod is not for cheaters. Don't cheat against enemies and you won't even notice that they had those anti-cheat utilities. You cheat and when you see that your cheat doesn't work, you say that it is cheating to block your cheats?!
Q: Why have you implemented so many radical changes to the game's rule-set and spell-system? There are other (newer) tactical mods which remain loyal to the game's rules and spell-system and improve enemies by merely improving their AI and making them behave more smartly.
A: This is plain falsehood. I'm aware of the rumor that the new tactical mod you refer to doesn't change the spell-system and remains loyal to the original game's flavor and rule-set, but that is probably one of the biggest false claims ever made about a mod. The fact is that the changes that mod implements to game's rule-set and spell-system are way more radical than the changes Improved Anvil applies to the game (allowing the Breach spell to affect liches and Rakshasas, allowing Spell Turning to block the Breach spell, allowing Ruby Ray of Reversal and similar spells to be cast on invisible and partially visible targets are all very radical and poor changes that mod applies to the game's rule-set and spell-system).
Q: I've noticed that when my paladin is turned by an enemy evil cleric, some of his enchantments and protections are also dispelled. Is this intentional?
A: Yes, the "Turn Paladin" ability is tweaked to also dispel all dispellable effects on the targeted paladin. It's intentional.
Q: I'm playing BG1. Can I import my character to BG2 and play Improved Anvil?
A: If you are playing a normal BG1 installation, then yes, you can import your character to BG2 and play IA without any problems. But, if your are playing with EasyTutu, then I'm not sure, probably no, you can't do that. I don't use Easytutu myself, so I'm not sure, but I've heard that (unfortunately) the recent versions of Easytutu have some 'fixes' similar to those of the G3's BG2 fixpack. If that's true, then, there is no guarantee for you to have a bugless game if you import your BG1 character to BG2. So, in short, just to be safe than sorry, I don't recommend that you import your BG1 character to BG2 if you are playing with Easytutu.
Q: Some people say that the idea of an Item-Randomizer wasn't your novelty. It's been said that Weimer had introduced this idea for the first time in one of his mods for Icewind Dale game. Is this true?
A: No, it isn't true. Weimer's Ease-of_Use mod for Icewind Dale II had actually a component (Randomized treasure) which was actually an Item-Shuffler (rather than randomizer)
There are huge differences between an Item-Randomizer and an Item-Shuffler. What Weimer's mod does is that it shuffles the game's items at installation stage. Items with the same price (market value) are blindly shuffled and replaced with each other. For example, all +1 long swords will be replaced with some other item-type (ex: +1 Bastard Swords). It's needless to say that shuffling items in such a way is actually a bad idea, because some creatures who wield certain weapons (in harmony with their proficiencies) may end up wielding weapons which they are not proficient in. Even worse, some creatures who had one-handed weapons and shields may end up wielding two handed weapons and shields, which will cause serious bugs in the game. Sometimes even a bow can be replaced with a ring!
Improved Anvil's Item-Randomizer, on the other hand, doesn't shuffle items. It thoughtfully picks certain items and removes them from their original locations in the game. Then, it uses a pool of possible locations for each item and uses scripts to determine a random location (selected form the pool) for each item.
The other important difference between Weimer's item-Shuffler and Improved Anvil's Item-Randomizer is that the Item-Shuffler doesn't re-shuffle items each time you start a new game. If you need the items to be shuffled again, you will have to uninstall the mod and install it afresh; whereas, Improved Anvil's Item-Randomizer doesn't require the player to uninstall the mod and install it again. Each time you start a new game, the items will be re-distributed randomly.
Moreover, an "Item Shuffler" (using Weimer's method) will be incompatible with any item upgrading mod, because Cromwell (or any other blacksmith) will look for the wrong item-type in your inventory. For example, when you want to upgrade a +1 ring of protection, he will take (for example) a +1 long bow from your inventory and will give you a +2 hammer!
The idea of the Item-Randomizer (as distinct from Item-Shuffler) was intorduced by Improved Anvil for the first time.
Recently, someone has stolen this idea from Improved Anvil and has released a mod without sending any permission request to me (and even without mentioning my name in his mod's credentials). The G3 site has also disgracefully hosted the stolen mod. I'm sure that no player who follows a certain level of moral standards will ever consider installing and using such stolen material.
to be continued... (check this message frequently)