Hello everyone.

I just picked this mod up last week, and was QUITE suprised by how difficult it was.
Without an idea of what quests are designed to be done early, I got a very rude wake-up when I tried to do the Copper Coronet with my fresh-from-Irenicus's-dungeon party! Still, I survived, came here, read hints and such, and got stronger.

My party has about 1.75 Million XP per char, so most people are at level 12-13(10-11 for multi-classes). I have cleared all the unbuffed quests, the Copper Coronet and Slaver ship, the De'Arnise Hold, the Planar Prison, the Planar Sphere, the Unseeing Eye, the Windspear Hills (Haven't killed Firkraag or the other party yet), The 1st level of Watcher's Keep, and am in the process of killing the Shade Lord.

What is confusing me, is that I see other players having level 38 characters by the end of SOA.

My main question is, am I not getting enough XP for these quests, or is there really that much more to kill in the later chapters?

And, if I want to install the Tower Of Deception mod, can I uninstall IA, install ToD, re-install IA, and still use my current game, or is it better to install ToD on top of IA?

Thanks for making such an awesome (and tough!) mod Sikret.

My swashbuckler was near the upper 30's by the end of SoA, but I think some classes have much quicker level progression than others.
I remember Watcher's Keep gave a huge chunk of XP as well as chapters 3-6. Don't worry, you should have plenty of HLA's before heading to ToB.

In principle, if you want to use an old savegame, it is not wise to swap order of installed mods, as it might lead to text strings being screwed up (NPC speaking the lines of item descriptions and other funny things). So, recommendation would be installation on top, although I can't say anything as to whether the two mods are compatible.

There´s no special install order for those two mods in fact, but it will be better to install TOD first and then IA. Ask Sikret for more info, but I have a feeling he´ll agree.

Feel free to install ToD after Improved Anvil. I might have said it somewhere that if you install ToD after IA (and not before IA), IA's difficulty changes won't be applied on ToD. Now I think this isn't correct, at least not in case of scripts. (If I remember correctly, most or all ToD creature scripts are standard game scripts, so IA improves them.) If I've missed something, please correct me Sikret or Val.

Welcome, Aledeth!



Yes, IA adds many new quests and encounters to the game; consequently, you can gain lots of xp before finishing the SOA portion of the game. To keep this phenomenon under control, new level progression tables (for all classes) have been designed and implemented into the next version of the mod.

As Valiant said, ToD and IA don't have any kind of conflict with each other and it is quite probable that you can install them in any order; nonetheless, I recommend to stay loyal to IA's general installation instructions according to which IA should always be the last mod installed. So, if I were in your position, I would uninstall IA, install ToD, and then I would install IA again.



You are most welcome. I'm glad that you are enjoying it.

EDIT: Just noticed your post, Baronius. You are right, the order of installation doesn't affect or change ToD's difficulty.

In that case, though, a new game should be started, because string references in resources stored in savegames (such as stores and areas) may become invalid.

Thanks for the quick responses everyone!

It looks like I will be able to install ToD on top of IA without serious issues then. Good to know, cause I'd rather not have to start over again to play it.

Now on a different topic: When is a good time to go to SpellHold?

And to Sikret: Do you plan to increase the difficulty of the Guarded Compound in the Temple district? That whole building was really easy compared to most of the other improved battles.

I (tentatively) don't think that's right: uninstalling a mod doesn't remove its strings from the dialog file, so when you reinstall, the mod will find and re-reference those strings. Obviously mucking with your install mid-game is always a little risky, but in general it's not going to wreak havoc on your savegames unless you actually physically reinstall the game (and wipe the dialog file in the process).

The best time is when your main PC (if single class) is above level 12 but below 15.



Guarded Compound is already improved in the current version of IA (see the related document in the mod's readme), and it's improved even further in the forthcoming IA v5 (see the pinned progress report topic).

Cheers

You are right, I don't know what I was thinking when I was writing those lines. Semi-managed installations (practically what WeiDU offers) have correct TLK management, so the talk table doesn't suffer destructive changes. Thank you for the correction.

As we know, most objects are only referenced, which means their data (including strRefs) aren't stored in the savegame. On the other hand, store names, area info strings and similar TLK references directly stored in the savegame may become invalid -- if the talk table changes. But fortunately, as you've also said, the referenced strings won't be removed from the TLK during uninstallations. The re-use of existing entries doesn't matter here, because that applies on newly (re)installed files only (and old references in the savegame won't be updated or affected, neither their referees i.e. the TLK entries, so there will be no problem.)