The refinements mod at

http://www.final-exodus.net/~refinements/

includes a component that adds weapon damage resistances (slashing,crushing,etc) and DEX, movement rate, and casting penalties to all armor types varied by enchantment level.

Will these armor resistances stack with IA's improved NPC resistances making values over 100%?

Does IA increase NPC resistances innately or via their equipment?

cheers,

kilolima

I believe its innate. Unless sikret says differently

Yes, they will stack. Don't install that component of Refinements.

I would like to use this component of refinements because I think it realistically models armor types and makes armor selection more complicated than just the enchantment level. With the refinements mod, better armor comes at the sacrifice of movement rate and dexterity, or thief and spell-casting abilities, and the various types of armor are actually distinct from one another based on their damage resistances. This makes the game more challenging.

Sikret, for my own game, would you recommend that I modify your creature innate resistances to avoid > 100% stacking? I imagine this would only require the editing of humanoid and other armor-wearing capable creatures. Can you point me in the right direction regarding batch script editing of multiple files, or is this what Weidu does?

Cheers,

kilolima

It's not only armor resistance for enemies, there will be further complications in that armors added by IA will not give you the proper Refinements-revised bonuses - and that can't be fixed, either.

Hi The_Bigg,

I was thinking that I would like to extend this component of refinements, preferably with a batch script to modify all armors (original and from mods) aoutomagically, if this indeed possible. Any pointers on where to look for information how to do batch processing of IE files?

cheers,

kilolima

This isn't officially possible, because IA must be installed later than Refinements, preventing any extension to Refinements to actually take place.

If you want to willingly disregard what Sikret says and install Refinements after IA, you have to add the file names of armors and shields offered by IA in the relevant categories in the files refinements/armor/list/*.txt and refinements/shield/list/*.txt and reinstall Refinements.
If you also want fixed descriptions, you have to uninstall refinements, make sure IA is installed, read refinements/language/armor/note_to_translators.txt, run the "Armor Revision" component of refinements/armorwork.tp2, save somewhere the files override/ident.tp2 and override/unide.tp2, uninstall the "Armor Revision" component of refinements/armorwork.tp2, run the "short -> text" component of refinements/armorwork.tp2, make more readable the descriptions of IA items in unide.tp2 and ident.tp2 as you'd prefer, add them to the file refinements/languages/english/armor/human_readable/ident.tp2 and refinements/languages/english/armor/human_readable/unide.tp2, run the "text -> short" component of refinements/armorwork.tp2 and then reinstall the Refinements Armor Revisions.

If that looks like too difficult, I'd advise you against trying that, since you'll already be disregarding Sikret's advice on order installation and thus will be on your own if you have problems.

EDIT: and even then, enemies will still have the IA improved damage resistances, unless you hack something together to either alter the IA improved ones and/or remove the Refinements bonuses. For the latter, you'll have to edit the files refinements/{effects,special}/*.txt and change the values of the second, third, fourth and fifth coloumns to 0 (note: that would be if you're counting from 1 as humans do, not from 0 as computers/programmers do).

kilolima2, are you sure you want more challenge? Is IA not challenging enough for you?
And did you play through entire IA game at least once? I think for first run it's better to follow Sikret's advice:

Well, since it seems pretty goofy that armors in vanilla bg2 are so boring and all the same, I thought that this part of refinements would make things interesting and lend some variety.

I also dont mind altering mods, this is actually more fun than playing the game. I usually extensively modify any mod before I play it, anyway. Sometimes I disagree with a mod authors "vision" of the way I should be playing the game. But dont worry, if I hose my game I wont complain or post bug reports to the forums.

I do wish that IA was more compatible with other mods, though. It seems to be approaching more of a total conversion than a tactical add-on. But it is great fun.

Thanks The_Bigg, for posting those instructions!

cheers,

kilolima

One more thing - it's not only IA that's incompatible in terms of balance with Refinements. I was quite surprised to find out that Ascension's Yaga-Shura has become totally invulnerable to physical damage. So, the best way to go would be to check manually every suspicious creature and only then start doing anything with armors. That's pretty annoying. That's why I don't use Ref's Armors/shields, no matter how much I like the idea (I do like it).

Heh, first complaint I've seen about a mod having too much content.

I agree to an extent, it is nice to pick and choose which features of a mod you want. But even before IA, when has installing a multitude of mods ever been a good idea? There always seem to be storyline or scripting clashes.

If you enjoy handling that sort of thing, it's your perojative. But I learned long ago (well, several weeks ago) that it is better to enjoy mods on a mod by mod basis, rather than try to jam your favourite features into one game and get a heaving mess of balance issues and discontinuity of gameplay.