I'm pretty close to finishing with BG1, and I'm gonna bring my wild mage over to a IAv5 game. I was thinking of using that trick to carry over some items from BG1, like a dagger of venom, a claw of kazgorath, and maybe a cloak of balduran. I know taking these items probably won't make the game noticeably easier, but my question is, are these items added into IA already? I saw in the item readme that you can forge a new cloak for Cernd from the cloak of balduran, so I would assume it is added to the game, but what about the others? I think it makes sense that my character could hide a dagger on his person if Minsc can hide Boo, and maybe Irenicus couldn't pry off the claw of kazgorath.

You know my general opinion about using any kind of "tricks" (or cheats or whatever term we prefer for them). I'm certainly not encouraging doing such things, specially because you won't receive any technical support from me in the future and during the game if you use such tricks. You will be on your own.

Cloak of Baludran (albeit, a revised version of it) is added to the game by IA. The other two items aren't added.

A couple of items aren't really worth the risk of being on your own for the entire game; so, I say 'don't do it'.

In theory you ought to be able to carry over items when you import a character from a savegame if they have the items in the inventory, but I never heard of carrying over the Dagger of Venom nor the Cloak of Balduran. Import preference through savegame ought to be this:

Armor == Protector of the Second -> Mail of the Dead +2 -> Fallorain's Plate -> Missile Attraction +2 -> Chainmail +3 -> Default (Mail of the Dead +2)
Misc Item == Helm of Balduran -> Claw of Kazgaroth -> Horn of Kazgaroth -> Koveras' Ring of Protection +1 -> Default (Helm of Balduran)

They are controlled in two 2da files which you can check with infinity explorer for isntance. They start with importxx.2da, but I'm at work and I cannot check their complete names.

I have only once carried over items into an IA game using an imported BG1 character file. It was IAv2 and I played a Transmuter (since I already played IA before I thought I'd try it out). The items I carried over were Fallorain's Plate, the Claw of Kazgaroth and the golden pantaloons (automatic if you have it in the inventory). I cannot recall that I noticed any bugs, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have occurred.
IA changes (and fixes) a few class progressions and bonuses, so who knows if the imported characters will have the hp/thac0/damage/saves/bonuses/etc. as they ought to have in IA. I thought I was pretty safe with Transmuter from a vanilla BG1 game since IA doesn't seem to touch it, but that still is no guarantee.


I see that you're playing wild mage, so it must be either a tutu or bgt game, probably with tweaks and things so your character is probably an adaption from default anyway. You may have alternate values from saves etc if you create the same character in IA. If you have installed one of the tweaks that changes walking speeds (from BG2 into BG1 I guess or the other way around I don't remember), your character even has an .eff added to the creature file which upon import to BG2 slows your character down and you have to remove it (you can do that with shadowkeeper, near infinity or DLTCEP though). It is just better to make an IA character and CLUA in the items, but I don't recommend that either since you lose support on this forum.

What you also 'might' be able to try is to look into the 'importxx.2da' files. There you see the order of imported items and the default. If you change the default and create a new character, 'maybe' the default for the new characters is also changed. So CHAN03, mail of the dead, changed into MISC72, The Claw of Kazgaroth or MISC73, The Horn of Kazgaroth, or MISC75, the dagger of venom, 'might' change the item you find on Ilyich to one of those, but I am 'not' positive at all. If this works, it would at least allow you to create a fully natural IA character and startup with as few possibilities for bugs.


Note: I'm just a player, not a modder nor the author nor have any affiliation with IA. I would just like to voice my experiences with importing characters. It really can be messy if you play with mods, so you must always be careful.

There are different methods for transfering items. The one you are referring to is the 'legitimate' one which exists intentionally in the BG games where some items in Irenicus' dungeon are replaced with others based on what your character had equipped at the end of BG1.

I think pacman is talking about using some kind of exploit to avoid losing items at the start of SoA. If you import a character into SoA you can apparently press pause right at the beginning of the game before the script has run to clear your inventory. You can then drop items so that they are on the floor of the dungeon and don't disappear. I think that's roughly how it works, I've never tried it.

Wow... I knew you could carry over the pantaloons legally, but I had no idea about those two replacement lists for the helm of balduran and mail of the dead. This is why this game is so amazing. They thought of everything. Thanks for the reply. It turns out tutu isn't even compatible with IAv5 (like you said), so I tried a new wild mage in IA, but I dumped him after he died for the second time because of wild surges. It turns out the dagger of venom doesn't import well since the proficiency is set to "small sword" instead of "dagger." The result is any character can use it as if proficient, which is cheesy. Anyway, Neb's Nasty Cutter is almost the exact same item (it actually poisons twice as fast), with the added requirement of evil alignment. As for the claw of kazgaroth, in most games it would be a hard sell to take it in place of the helm of balduran. The chainmail +3, btw, would be a good choice but in IA you need the mail of the dead for a recipe.