Hi all, love the mod so far but I've only just begun. Here's what I've got

Protag - Necromancer lvl 12
Kensai lvl 11 with Joril's Dagger & Lilacor and 1 * in staves for crushing (+3 martial staff) and piercing (+2 staff spear)
Wizard Slayer>Thief lvl 9/11 +3 long sword & Sword of Balduran (+3 club)
Nalia lvl 12 I'm going to drop her for Imoen later on
Ranger>Cleric lvl 8/11 with FoA
Vagrant lvl 10 with Frostreaver and Mencar's hammer

I'm wondering where to head to next. I think my options are:

Trademeet - Troll mound, Ogre's Tower or Trademeet Tomb
Windspear Hills - I haven't touched anything yet except giving Dryads back
Watcher's Keep - but I have Kitthlix so I'm worried about the Spider Queen encounter I've read about
Unseeing Eye quest - I have no spell shield for Beholders and that's been my only defense in the past
Rakshasa - in the Temple sewers
Planar Sphere
Planar Prison
Temple Sewers party with Gaius
and probably some I've forgotten.

I just did the Slaver ship and found that to be very fun, however if one wanted to they could just wait for Assassins to keep spawning and restock their healing potions.
The only thing I'm bummed about is that I have an issue that was posted in this thread - http://forums.blackwyrmlair.net/index.php?showtopic=3190
I've tried all the lower settings and restarts and defrag but I still get the walk 3 steps and pause choppiness. I believe, but I will eventually go back and test it, that the choppiness only started once I entered the Copper Corronet. Up until that I was fine but now it persists.

I think I'm gonna go down to the bridge in the Unseeing Eye quest and see if I can handle those Beholders and then clear some of first level of Firkraggs' joint. But after that I dunno.

Thanks in advance.

Hi, welcome to the forum! Glad to hear you're enjoying the mod.

Sikret's away at the moment, hopefully I can answer some of your questions:


Could you post or PM me you WeiDU log? Thanks.


Sounds good to me. If you finish the Unseeing Eye quest you should be able to take on the second level of the Windspear hills too, I think. Alternatively you could try the Umar Hills Temple.

Welcome, Hideous the Wu Jen!

As Raven mentioned, I was supposed to be absent for a couple of days, but my agenda changed suddenly and now I have one or two hours of free time to visit the forum.

The choppiness problems some/few players have reported when playing IA have almost always been either the result of installing inappropriate/incompatible other mods with IA or the result of having buttomless bags (though, in principle, there are a few other possible causes for that problem which are listed in the mod's F.A.Q., all of the players who experienced choppiness so far, had it for one of the two causes mentioned above).

That particular section of the mod's F.A.Q was also quoted in the thread you gave the link to.

It's also worth noting that even though both Raven and myself are playing the mod on relatively old computers, we have never had such problems. It's very important to follow the installation instructions very carefully.

Well I have to put up my two cents here:

First: I think this has to to with a combi of scripts and a somewhat slower computer

1) When giving/taking weapons etc. off my NPCs it sometimes takes a while - especially with Keldorn.
2) When buying a gembag the game starts lagging, and dropping that again makes the game normal - again. I only have a few mods installed.

well that's it. 1) really isn't a big problem and 2) made me stop using bags.

Regards

What are the specs of your computer, Shaitan?

If I correctly interpret your words, it happens when (or directly after) buying it -- i.e. as soon as it's moved to your inventory. In this case, the lag might imply that the game checks all slots of a (gem) bag even if it's empty. Unlike in case of other bags, as those players (also) confirmed in the linked topic.

So it's possible that the Gem Bag has a different in-game structure than the other bags (provided your result is repeatable -- performance may also depend on the system status at the moment of your test). By the way, I suppose it doesn't happen with other types of similar containers (bag of holding, scroll case), does it?

I was going to mention that I started with a clean install and only had the recommended Ease of Use components installed, Dungeon be gone, the dual wield fix from Rogue Rebalancing, then IA and The Four. I tried to follow everything to a tee. However, I either overlooked it, or maybe this is new info but I noticed a thread where aVenger mentions his mod is not compatible. Could that be the cause of stuttering and or future problems with only that dual wield component installed?

But anyway, Shaitan mentioned the gem bag thing so I loaded up my save and dropped all 3 of my gem bags. Still had the stutter though, damn. Then I dropped my scroll cases and potion cases and voila, no stuttering. Hip hip hooray! Must have been the Copper Coronet when I bought my first scroll case. Thanks a million.

In game related news I went on ahead and went down to the Unseeing Eye bridge and noticed:

SPOILER!

I haven't gotten a Bag of holding yet. I will test next time with the scrollcase.

Raven: Intel duo core 1,6 GHz 2MB cache, 256 MB Geforce, 1 GB DDR 2. It's a XP on a laptop.

The difference of having a gembag or not is significant, but it could be due to my PC or some scripts - I don't know.

My Weidu.log:

I don't think so, since that component merely alters a single 2DA file and does nothing else besides that. In any case, it would be a good idea to post the contents of your WeiDU.log.

Here it is but I went back and uninstalled the dual wielding component just prior to reading this, if that makes any difference.

// Log of Currently Installed WeiDU Mods
// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod
// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name
// Recently Uninstalled: ~RR/SETUP-RR.TP2~ #0 #0 // Proper dual-wielding implementation for Thieves and Bards
~SETUP-EASE.TP2~ #0 #0 // Infinite Weapon, Potion and Ring/Amulet Stacking
~SETUP-EASE.TP2~ #0 #3 // True Grand Mastery (extra half-attack, etc.) (Baldurdash)
~SETUP-EASE.TP2~ #0 #4 // Shut Up "You Must Gather Your Party Before Venturing Forth"
~SETUP-EASE.TP2~ #0 #5 // Faster Chapter 1&2 Cut-Scenes and Dreams (Karzak, Blucher) (SEE WARNINGS)
~SETUP-EASE.TP2~ #0 #9 // Un-Nerfed THAC0 Table, Saving Throws, Grand-Mastery, and Arcane, Divine Spell Progression (Blucher)
~SETUP-EASE.TP2~ #0 #10 // XP Cap Remover
~SETUP-EASE.TP2~ #0 #15 // Bonus Merchants (Baldurdash)
~SETUP-EASE.TP2~ #0 #20 // Female Edwina
~SETUP-DUNGEONBEGONE.TP2~ #0 #0 // Dungeon Be Gone V1.6
~SETUP-IMPROVEDANVIL.TP2~ #0 #0 // Improved Anvil for SOA & TOB
~SETUP-THEFOUR.TP2~ #0 #0 // The Four

According to your WeiDU.log entry you were using RR v3.82 (or lower) which was compatible with IA 5.0.

BTW, are you still getting slowdowns with bags/scroll cases in your inventory now that you have uninstalled RR?

Having too many bags and scroll cases will more orless work just like having a bottomless bag.

Since you have the infinite stacking component of Ease-of-Use, it can help you a lot. Your scrolls and gems will stack together and you can keep them in your inventory rather than putting them in bags. Having even several hundreds of stacked items in the inventory won't cause any lagging; whereas, putting the same amount of items into a bottomless bag will certainly cause choppiness (if the bag is not bottomless, it won't have capacity for so many items anyway).

So, my general advice is this:

1- Never install bottomless bags
2- Don't use too many bags (even those which are not bottomless)
3- To optimally use your bags, use them for items which don't stack. You can safely keep stackable items even in large numbers in your inventory(out of bags).

Hope that this helped.

Hmm, my computer is very similar to yours, actually it's slightly older. Maybe I do not keep as many gems/scrolls/potions on my party? I think I tend to sell most of them right away.

That could be it, as I tend to keep gems/scrolls for a good long time.

I'll give it a shot.

Could it be a combination of unlimited stacking in conjunction with bags and cases? I use lots of containers in my inventory and have no noticeable slow down. The only time the game slows down for me is when a lot of spells are triggering and then only briefly. Maybe the game is spending a lot of time going thru those 9999 stacked gems if they are in a container....come to think of it can you even put them in a container....I have never used the unlimited stack thing so I am just assuming.

Yes, this is exactly why bottomless bags (or too many normal bags) can cause choppiness. Even 999 items of the same kind stacked in the normal inventory (out of bags) occupy only one inventory slot and the game goes through all of them at once and in one sinlge shot; whereas, if the same amount of items are in a bag, they are not actually stacked and each of them occupies one slot for itself and the game has to check each of them individually.

A few remarks:

1) It's important to emphasize that the characteristics of your computers is important (and greatly influence game performance), but there are many other factors as well. Consequently, you can experience strong stuttering on a very "fast" system while the same thing might run normally on a slower system -- your configuration (both system and IE game), and several other factors influence this (and not just extreme examples such as intensive I/O operations, e.g. a virus scan).

2) It's possible that the game uses different structures for the various containers. Shaitan's report about an empty gem bag causing a lag is very interesting, it implies that the gem bag has a primitive static structure (it's not easy to believe it).


3) This may depend on the structure of the particular bag type. As we've seen here, a scroll case is able to store stacked items in one slot (while, as far as I can remember, a Bag of Holding is a good counterexample: it stores each item -- even an arrow -- in a different slot).

4) It's important to note that a script periodically checking very many different objects (which are allowed by various containers, for example) is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for the discussed performance problems. So saying that "Improved Anvil's certain scripts should be removed because they slow down the game " (we can hear similar statements sometimes) isn't justified, because there is no problem if Improved Anvil is played according to its specifications (including installation and usage instructions). This is certainly confirmed by the tests of Sikret and BWL's Improved Anvil testing experts. Of course, these specifications may change occassionally, that is why it's important to read updated documentation.

Note: If I had more time, I would make tests on my own, but since I haven't, the above statements and suppositions are based on the reports I've read on Improved Anvil's forum. Some of these results haven't been repeated or confirmed.

I normally stock up on all scroll cases, gem bags and potion cases. I only get the stutter with IA. No biggie, I don't need them and to be honest if I'm only carrying one of them I can't really tell if there is a stutter or not. The more I have the worse it gets though. Just last night I beat an IA group and picked up a pink bag of holding which gives me no problems by itself. And just for clarification the stutter occurs while walking, there doesn't have to be a battle of any kind going on.



Yep, so that had nothing to do with it I guess.

I'm guessing you've already done this, but if you click 'Configure' under the TOB auto-start screen (when you put the disc in), then 'Hardware' on the left-hand side you can adjust the graphic, sound and general settings. I noticed yesterday that I myself have the settings at 450 MHz, even though my PC's processor is actually 1500MHz. I also have the 3D acceleration disabled. I don't notice the decrease in quality in the game but it could be contributing to keeping things running smoothly.