Since I don't want to play BG2 over and over (I am not able to do due to my time limit), I would like to put into my game as much content as I can with mods. I am searching, checking mods since 2 weeks while I am playing BG1 still. I would be crazy if I would find my game screwed due to incompatibility at middle or end of my game. So I made a mod list from wanted ones in installation order. I would like to ask Sikret and/or any mod expert player to check my list and pls inform me about any possible incompatibility, wrong installation order, or anything what is a somekind of cheat in game balance.

1. TOB Official patch
2. Baldurdash TOB fixpack-1.12 (Non-weidu version)
3. Herbs and Potions
4. Ribald’s Genie
5. Tower of Deception
6. Banter Packs
7. BG2 Tweak Pack
Cosmetic Changes
Viconia Skin Color Change
Avatar Morphing Script
Commoners Use Drab Colors
Icon Improvements
Force All Dialogue to Pause
Content Tweaks
More Interjections
Alter HP Triggers for NPC Wounded Dialogues
Improved Athkatlan City Guard (Andyr)
Breakable Nonmagical Armor, Helms, and Shields
Improved Kick-out Dialogues (Weimer)
Add Bags of Holding
Exotic Items Pack
Add Map Notes
Stores Sell Larger Stacks of Items
Gems and Potions Require Identification
Multiple Strongholds (Sabre, Baldurdash, Weimer)
Bonus Merchants (Baldurdash, Weimer)
Rule Changes
Two-Handed Bastard Swords
Two-Handed Katanas
Weapon Styles for All
Change Experience Point Cap
Expanded Dual-Class Options
Wear Multiple Protection Items
Shopkeepers Have Limited Identification Ability
Multi-Class Grand Mastery (Weimer) ???
True Grand Mastery (Schumacher, Weimer)
Change Magically Created Weapons to Zero Weight
Make +x/+y Weapons Consistent
Description Updates for Make +x/+y Weapons Consistent Component
Un-Nerfed THAC0 Table
Un-Nerfed Sorcerer Spell Progression Table
Alter Mage Spell Progression Table
Alter Bard Spell Progression Table
Alter Cleric Spell Progression Table
Alter Druid Spell and Level Progression Tables
Triple-Class HLA Tables
Convenience Tweaks and/or Cheats
Higher HP on Level Up
Maximum HP Creatures (the bigg)
Easy Spell Learning
Bottomless Bags of Holding
Remove Fatigue from Restoration Spells
Shut Up "You Must Gather Your Party ..." (Weimer)
Change Effect of Reputation on Store Prices
Unlimited Ammo Stacks
Unlimited Jewelry and Gem Stacks
Unlimited Potion Stacks
Unlimited Scroll Stacks
Faster Chapter 1&2 Cut-Scenes & Dreams
NPCs change
Adjust Evil Joinable NPC Reactions
ToB-Style NPCs
Change Jaheira to Neutral Good Alignment
Make Montaron an Assassin (Andyr)
Change Korgan to Neutral Evil Alignment .
Give Kagain A Legal Constitution Score of 19
8. Victor's Improvements Pack
Victor's Wizards Know Better (have more Lore) component
The Djin Merchant (Are these lvl 9 spells and new items somekind of cheat?)
Lydia's Scroll
Special Encounters
Improved Irenicus Dungeon (only if I find Improved Ilyich too hard.)
Grandpa's Shield quest
9. NPC Kitpack
Anomen will gain the Priest of Helm kit on passing his knighthood test.
Imoen & Nalia get an Adventurer kit and/or specialist mage kit.
Minsc's kit title to be changed to Rashemaar Ranger.
Sarevok gets a proper Deathbringer kit, instead of the one ability he has now.
10. Tactics:
Improved Ilyich
The Ritual
Improved Sahuagin City
Improved Bodhi
"Kuroisan", the Acid Kensai
"Red Badge" Poison-Based Encounter
Gebhard Blucher's Improved Mae'Var
Gebhard Blucher's Lich in the Docks
Kensai Ryu's Gnome Fighter/Illusionst in the Docks
Kensai Ryu's Improved Crypt King
Ishan's "Always Toughest Random Spawns in Dungeons"
Gebhard Blucher's Random City Encounters
Kensai Ryu's Random Wilderness Encounters
Improved Undead
Improved Golems
Gebhard Blucher's Improved Mind Flayers
Smarter Beholders
Kensai Ryu's Smarter Vampires
Göran Rimén's Improved Nymphs
Kensai Ryu's Improved Copper Coronet
SimDing0's Improved Oasis
Mike Barnes' Improved Small Teeth Pass
Mike Barnes' Improved North Forest
Mike Barnes' Improved Marching Mountains
Slightly Tougher Demons
Tougher Druid Grove
Tougher Fire Giants
11. Unfinished Business
The Kidnapping of Boo, by Cliffette
Kalah and What He Was Promised, by Andyr
Cat and Mouse: Bodhi Hunts You in Spellhold, by Ghreyfain
Gorje Hilldark and the Extended Illithium Quest
Restored Crooked Crane
Restored Encounters
Artemis Entreri in Bodhi's Lair
Corrected "Xzar's Creations"
Gorf the Squisher Fix, by Gebhard Blucher
Item Restorations
Yoshimo's Original Portrait
Anomen's Original Portrait
NPC Portrait Restorations
Corrected BAMs and Scripts
Corrected Character Names
Restored Minor Dialogs
Restored Bhaalspawn Powers, by David Gaider
Extended Throne of Bhaal Item Descriptions
Throne of Bhaal Minor Restorations
Sarevok's Remorse for Yoshimo and Tamoko, by Sovran and Winterine
12. Quest Pack
Additional Shadow Thieves Content
Alternative Xzar/Harpers Plot
Extended Fallen Paladins Material
Intrigue In The Copper Coronet
Rahul Kanakia's Potion Quest
Saving Sanik In Brynnlaw
Burglary Of The Bookkeeper
The Tragedy Of Besamen
Sending The Solamnic Knights Home
Nazarial The Lich
Reward Negotiation
Infernal Thievery
13. Improved Anvil
14. Auramaster
15. Tortured Souls ???
16. Never Ending Journey ???

Thanks in advance!

Well I did have a recurring crash bug with that component

At the time i had the following installed


- Baldurdash TOB fixpack-1.12 (Non-weidu version)

"Ease of use" :
- True Grand Mastery (Recommended)
- Wear Magical Armor AND Magic Rings (Recommended)
- Un-Nerfed THAC0 Table, Saving Throws, ... (Strongly Recommended)
- XP Cap Remover (Recommended)
- Bonus Merchants (Recommended)
- PC access to all stronghold quests
TOD
and
aura master kit

then the victors BG improvements
and finally IA

and my game crashed each and every time i ran into the first umber hulk at the start of the dungeon - removed the component and - plain sailing from thereon in

there is also a detailed compatibility note in the install readme

http://forums.blackwyrmlair.net/index.php?...ost&id=1437

Mo' mods mo' problems, as biggie would say.

You install that many mods and I can almost guarantee there will be conflicts, usually unforseen. Especially with a mod like IA that alters most parts of the original game already.

But, if you're insistent (i've been there; i can relate). I've got extensive experience with having tactics and IA 3 installed (sucked for the most part btw).

These are the parts of tactics I wouldn't install. Some of them are just plain incompatible, others you can install but mess up the game in other ways.

The Ritual (not incompatible, just introduces a ludicrous item into the game)
"Kuroisan", the Acid Kensai (again, fine, but the acid katana he drops is bugged)
Gebhard Blucher's Lich in the Docks (fine but she drops a duplicate ring of air control that one of IA's more powerful recipes use (the ring of air control has been moved from ribald's store in IA): may be imbalancing)
Gebhard Blucher's Random City Encounters (30 superior healing potions whenever you kill the highest level of the random city encounter spawn, plus it happens over and over again, which is boring (not incompatible though))
Smarter Beholders
Göran Rimén's Improved Nymphs
Kensai Ryu's Improved Copper Coronet
SimDing0's Improved Oasis
Mike Barnes' Improved Small Teeth Pass (not sure about this one, but the dragons it adds are bugged anyway)
Slightly Tougher Demons
Tougher Druid Grove
Tougher Fire Giants (sikret's script and this one actually combine fairly well, it just depends on how you feel about mass lower fire resistance spam being added to his improved versions)

Unlimited bags of holding causes slowdown problems to the game and is not recommended.

Sikret has added an extra bag of holding to the game to address the need for extra storage; but you can always CLUA in additional ones if you need them (and don't mind a bit of minor cheating).

I play with improved small teeth pass and unlimited bags of holding (among other things) and it works for me (but I do have a fast computer with lots of memory). I also use several Tactics components and The Four. I will sell the twinky stuff rather than use it. So, I don't think game balance is too disturbed in that regard.

Plus, BG2 Tweakpack is incompatible with IA. Use the original (Wiemer's) Ease-of-Use.

Also, read the installation document attached to the readme file in the forum.

Thanks all, I will use yours advice. I skip BG2 Tweak Pack then, I will use Ease-of-Use. I read that installation manual, Sikret, at least 4 times, but there is no mention about BG2 Tweak Pack. I passed all components what you wrote in it.
Also I will skip Tactics components suggested by Leonidas.

1- If I remember correctly, there was already a note about one of the BG2Tweakpack's components in IA v4.2's readme (which you still had in your list above), but at the time I was writing the document I was not aware of other conflicts. It will be in the list of incompatible mods in the next version of IA. Don't use any of its components and use Ease-of-Use, instead.

2- Don't install the following thing either (quote from your initial list):

In my install, the banter pack, flirt pack, and tower of deception each prevented the install of Improved Anvil. I did try each of these components alone (ie apart from the other two but with the rest of the components that I install). I have no idea why they didn't work for me, because I know other people use ToD and IA together, for instance. I decided that I didn't care about these components enough to go through a bunch of trouble shooting. I hope you don't have that problem. As someone else said, the more mods you apply, the greater the likelihood that something will go wrong.

On my last run through BG2 I had quite an extensive mod list, with no real problems. After the official & Baldurdash patches, I had:

Ease of Use and a couple of components from the G3 Tweak Pack
Banter Pack & Flirt Pack
Quest Pack, Unfinished Business & Tactics (a selection of my preferred components, all of which were listed as compatible by Sikret)
Tower of Deception
Oversight (alignment corrections)
Slightly Improved Illych
Ascension
Turnabout
1 Pixel Productions (improved graphics)
Blucher's level 1 NPCs (non-Weidu, so I put this first)
Improved Anvil

I had no apparent problems with any of the above.

Of course as IA expands, the list of compatible mods will diminish. eg. the only bits of Tactics I installed were the Mae'var and Druid Grove components; as I understand it Sikret is making his own changes to Faldorn in 4.3, so I will probably not bother with any Tactics components next time.

Tower of Deception shouldn't cause any problem -- all it "changes" directly on the original game is adding a character to the Crooked Crane Inn in the City Gates district. All other content (99%) can be found on its own custom areas. (Though I heard rumours that a villain in ToD is the subject of IA's changes and thus becomes even more dangerous )

Additionally, shadan, as Ryel advised on RPG.hu, I wouldn't experiment with IA, TS and NEJ at the same time. Believe him, you will have many weeks of fight and fun with IA.

I understand that your time is limited, but let's examine it: the content and experience IA adds is many times bigger that any of the other mods (and most likely even their total sum, except TS and NEJ), so the bonus you get for additional mods is too little compared to the risk they cause. I hope you know that I want the best for you, because I've seen many players installing many mods and then getting disappointed due to the constant incompatibilities that made the game unplayable. So it's really wise that you ask for advice in these forums.

whoo boy - yep - that he is

you can get around that by installing TOD after IA , but I hear this is not too recommended

I haven't run into any problems as yet , however

I agree with Baronius. eg. for NEJ Vlad recommends installing Baldurdash-Weidu, whereas Sikret recommends the non-Weidu version for IA. I am not sure what the differences are but it is one example of where problems could potentially arise.

Another consideration is additional XP and game balance - with too many quest related mods installed, or those with additional enemies who yield high XP (eg. Tactics random encounters) the party will accumulate huge amounts of XP and thus make many of the mods too easy. A similar issue obviously also arises with overpowered items added by certain mods.

NEJ and TS are optimized for Baldurdash-WeiDU, while IA is based on Baldurdash.

And, shadan, don't forget the most important: it isn't generally true that you can finish (and thus enjoy) more content if you install more mods at the same time: while banters may happen simultaneously, new quests and similar content is sequential. In other words, you can't finish IA+NEJ together more quickly than playing IA in a game and then NEJ during a different game. The overhead is perhaps just a few minutes: uninstalling mod combination 1, and installing mod combination 2. (And if used together, the compatibility risk is high.)

Even with IA the last guy in ToD is significantly easier than any of the IA enemies - as long as you have a +3 weapon or two you'll be fine (having said that I did ToD straight after beating Torgal with a lv8-11 party, so it might just have been comparatively easy)

I trust you meant to write "Alignment corruptions". Anyway, it shouldn't be installed with IA v4.3 and will be in the list of incompatible mods.

More info:

In IA v4.3 more creatures are coded to behave according to their alignments. Evil clerics control undead and turn paladin, good clerics are coded differently, etc...; if any creature's alignment need to be changed, Improved Anvil handles it itself, there is no place for any other mod which tampers with creatures' alignments as that can easily break IA's scripts.

I have always believed that the Oversight mod's changes to alignments are incorrect even before IA v4.3, but, as you can see, I didn't put it in the list of incompatible mods in the previous versions. In IA v4.3, however, the situation has changed and creatures' alignments play a more important role in their behavior. Now, any mod (including Oversight and BG2 Fixpack) which tampers with alignments is incompatible with IA. In other words, I don't say not to install them just because I don't like them (I have never liked them but I didn't list them as incompatible in previous versions of IA); now I say that they are incompatible because they really are incompatible.

I take it from this you don't agree with the changes to alignment which Oversight makes?

This doesn't make a huge difference to me, so am happy to drop it, but will it reduce the effectiveness of Protection from Evil? Does IA make it's own changes to creature & NPC alignment?

coaster,

When you were posting, I was editing my previous post and adding more info to it. See it again, please.

OK thanks for the added info Sikret.

I really appreciate your replies, Sikret. Now I am installing mods, and I have some questions about BG2 Tweak Pack. You wrote this is not compatible with IA.
I would like these components:
- Force All Dialogue to Pause
- Stores Sell Larger Stacks of Items (I am leisure.)
- Higher HP on Level Up and Easy Spell Learning (I hate to reload or change difficulty always.)
- Maximum HP Creatures (the bigg) (I want NPCs to get max. HP also.)
- Remove Fatigue from Restoration Spells (I hate to rest when I am full with spells and I have max. HP.)

Others are not ipmortant from there, or I can find them in Ease-of-Use. Can I install these components from G3 or BG2 Tweak Pack, or shall I forget them completly?

When I look at the BG2 Tweakpack readme file I can find very little (if any) incompatibility issues documented there, but when you install it in practice, conflicts DO EXISTS. Hence, I don't know (can't know because can't find the details in its documents) what each of its components exactly does and which components (if any) are compatible with IA.

Of course, I can spend a few days examining its codes to find out everything, but I think it's a waste of time and I'm sure you also want me to spend my free time working on IA rather than examining other mods' codes to find what they do.

So, I can only give you a general guidline: Don't use G3's BG2 Tweak Pack at all, use the original (Weimer's) Ease-of-Use.

Thanks Sikret! Of course I don't expect anyone to spend any time to help my game. I am very thankful even when sbody gives any advice from his practice or knowledge. And we are all eagerly waiting for 4.3.

Has anyone had any experience with IA and the Rogue Rebalancing mod? It looks like it adds some new items, an encounter in chapter 6 and tweaks some HLA's and dual wielding proficiencies. I'm just wondering if it changes anything that could cause incompatibilities.

Just checked its readme file and it is surely incompatible with IA. The new trap for bounty hunters and the revised bard songs will break IA's scripts without a shadow of doubt. It will be added to the list of incompatible mods.

In general, do not install any mod which revises bard songs or adds new kind of traps to the game. There may be other conflicts too, but these which I mentioned are enough to create incompatiblity.

Thanks for drawing my attention to this issue, Vardaman! I don't usually check all and every mod's readme files and specially not those which I don't use myself.

You're welcome and thanks for the speedy reply. I was hoping to add an extra encounter and a few more thief items. Oh well, each release of IA adds more content anyway.

IIRC the thief store and Chosen of Cyric encounter can be installed as separate components of Rogue Re-balancing without installing the revisions to thief and bard songs/traps/kits etc..

So maybe you could just install those components? Of course I'd wait for the final word from Sikrte before doing such a thing, I am just suggesting it as a possibility.

After I installed the G3 Tweak Pack I encountered a serious, ever growing, slowdown in saving and loading. I need to wait 5 minutes or more to load a game by now. As I wasn't sure if the mod is incompatible I thought about some other reason for this. Actually I hope it's really the reason for this annoying "feature", so that there is actually a solution other than that beta patch one can download. Well, I (we) will see when IA 4.3 is released.

[edit] I didn't encounter any problems with Rogue Rebalancing though. But one should keep in mind that I installed the encounter and the fixes, but not the revised kits. [/edit]

[edit 2] Fixed some error of mine see below. [/edit]

Why are you using G3 Fixpack? IA doesn't support it, neither do I (it can be a source of bugs).

[EDIT] Unless you meant the G3 Tweak Pack (Though, while I don't know as many details as about the Fixpack, I wouldn't recommend that either. Same development and other problems as with the Fixpack.)

Pardon, I've looked it up just now: it's actually the Tweak Pack. Quite confusing all those packs...

And as stated in the documents found in the IA folder:

"It has also been reported that the "Avatar Morphing Script" component of G3-Tweakpack may cause problems. I'm not 100% sure about this issue, but it's recommended that you do not install it."

Well, that didn't work... or did it? Who knows o.O

My current IA installation uses the BG2 Tweak Pack, and as far as I know, the incompatibilities have nothing to do with performance.

In fact, when I did my install the Tweak Pack was not on the list of incompatible mods (though Weimer's Ease of Use was recommended). I think a bug I encountered in my game was, at least, part of the reason Sikret chose to list it as incompatible, but there is nothing to the level that you describe (i.e. 5 minute load times). I actually do have the avatar morphing script installed, and while I wouldn't say it's caused me problems, it just flat out doesn't work for me. I can hit "S" all day, and I'm never gonna see the dialogue that drives the morphing script.

Which is what I'm wondering about: all of a sudden those performance problems started to happen. As it was just after I installed the TP one might think it's because of it. Actually I've got no idea how to solve it (just hoping it's G3's TP )... besides Bioware's beta patch which might cause other problems *sigh*.

One guess would be one of the additional bags of holding or bottomless bags of holding components. You didn't post your Weidu log of what has been installed, but I know that mods of that sort have caused similar problems to what you are describing in the past.

[Edit] Also, if you have problems with the Tweakpack, I know that the maintainers tend to like receiving bug reports (Click here to submit one) so they can fix them and not have more people run into the same problems.

I have G3 Tweak Pack installed (a few components of it anyway), and I experienced a fairly similar problem...although I'm not too sure that It was related to the pack, and my saving/loading times were only 3 or 4 times longer than normal (so around 20 or so seconds). I use the archive save very often (and the quicksave very rarely) and as such I had a very long list of saves. Opening up the BGII directory and then the save folder and deleting (or just moving) a whole lot of the save files fixed it for me. I figured I was using the save function far more often in IA than in other games and this may have been the reason behind it.

Hmm.
Well, I have like 350 saves (including auto, final and quick saves) in my saves folder. But the interesting part is that at some points in the game I experienced yet another (increased, that is) slowdown (for example when entering WK level 1, or after Yaga-Shura's death). Whether I quicksaved or made a "real" save didn't matter. Thought about trying it with moving all the saves... well, I'll try it for sure. Still, since you experienced something similar... it's maybe related to the G3 Tweak Pack.

Ah - I only had it when I tried to make or load a "real" or archived save - it was fine for quick and autosaves.

I asked what might be causing the slowdown in the BG2Tweakpack forums and this is the response I got from another user.



So as a first step, if you are having slowdown problems I'd stay away from the three components mentioned above.

If only the Bard and Thief changes are the problem, I could add a check in the next version of Rogue Rebalancing which would prevent those components from installing if Improved Anvil is detected. As a foreword, I've listed those components as incompatible with IA on my forum.

However, I respect your work Sikret and I view Improved Anvil as a sort of general re-imaging of Baldur's Gate 2. If you say that Rogue Rebalancing as a whole does not fit into your concept, I will make a compatibility note about it and prevent it from installing at all in case Improved Anvil is already present.

Thanks, aVENGER!

An incompatibility note in the readme will be appreciated (and adequate). Adding checks to detect IA during installation are not necessary and are actually redundant, because IA should be the last mod players install and it can't be detected by other mods during installation (because it's not installed at that time yet).

No problem, I've updated the Rogue Rebalancing compatibility guide according to your advice and I'll also add a note to my readme when I release the next revision of RR.

Cheers!