Fist of kudos for making this excellent mod Sikrit, i can only imagine how much time it took creating this mod.


Please don't take my feedback too personally this post is meant to be constructive.

I began using mods for Baldurs Gate 1 year ago starting with the G3 fix/tweakpack + tactics + several random mods, it was very enjoyable especially the increased difficulty from tactics. However after improved anvil i can honestly say that this mod is far better, at least if your looking for a challenge. It was almost like a complete new playexperinece, i had to think new strategies, about the "economy", like i was playing baldurs gate for the first time again. unlike the aforementioned mods.

which brings me to my first topic:


The difficulty.

i consider myself an above average player but had to lower the difficulty to core. I found certain fights might be better of being a tad more easier. my top 6 hardest fights

1 the drow encounters.

it took 2 reloades until i grasped the concept of this fight but many,many more were needed to actually win this fight, with that many stuns, confusion, chaos, dispelling, it seems sooner or later your saving throws will fail. At which point your more or less depending on luck. I hate depending on luck. that being said on my second replay it "only"took 5-6 reloads for each encounter

2 Your first (Grand)skeleton lord encounter

Here i had to learn to retreat and leave certain fights for later,something i had never done before in a baldurs gate game.
Still after postponing these fights these creatures are usually harder then the boss you actually fighting with the conster or shadelord encounter.
mid game however there fine.

3 The Shadelord

i wanted to do this before going to the underdark but he was simply to hard for me, the skeletonlords were the main reason, just counld't kill them fast enough, rest was fine. with a custom created party it was much easier however. this was also a very fun fight prioritizing targets using unique tactics( i had to use summons, arrows of piercing chargeable items, ect) and yes i did get owned by his abi-dalzim barrage .

4 Dracolich

It took me 2 reloads to realize that he had the essence of both a lich and the dragon and all of the immunities associated with these creatures. This is fine and even fun fighting against. its the Wail of the bansee type attack that is causing me problems. it killed my lvl 14 protaganist 7 times 3 of those times just 1-3 sec after my deathward expired. and yes i also used spritarmor to counter malison and even used magic immune potions( the yellow ones). My second replay was much easier partly do to custom multiplayer created characters. but that wail still was responsible for 5 reloads. If suspect i was very unlucky with my saving throws.This is a lengthy fight in a dungeon that offers no retreat. I spent many frustrated hours here. please note that all other dragons except firekraag caused me 0 reloads.

5 gityanky room in watcher keep (supreme commander)

simply because of to many golems coming to fast, and not being able to cause enough damage fast enough to those golem creators. usually i am able to let my character survive long enough often up to 10 min realtime. but then there are ridiculous amount of golems/githanky and massive lag.this was a game stopper for my first party and thrust me i don't give up easily. (15+ reloads)

6 Twisted Rune

Hard but fine seeing how this a optional battle. Furthermore i gather it is supposed to the the hardest( or second hardest) fight in the game. It is an enjoyable fight but simply very, very hard (11 reloads)

It should be noted that i lost interest in somewhere in Throne of Baal expension, but started right again with a new game


I could also list all the enjoyable battles (torgal, firekraag, ect)but there are to many to list. Overall a few more low or mid lvl battles/encounters would be nice though.


The classes

Basically all non ranger/mage classes could use some more love. as i understand eventually in IA v8 and higher they might get some. at risk of stating the obvious this means:more items for druids, more quests for fighters, better stronghold for thieves,ect,ect. Especially the thief class seems neglected * random item suggestion: tomes or potion witch increase backstab multiplier, this would definitely make the swasbuckler my new favourite class *

Items

In one word Excellent, basically all i wanted from a mod focusing on items
Most items seem balanced and need little or no tweaking, although some more class specific items would be nice, as well as some more low/mid game items followed by a price reduction. Take rings of protection for example lvl 2 or 3 rings could use a price reduction. With all your melee char using lvl 2 or even lv 3 rings would make the underdark battles somewhat easier, especially the due to the increased saving throws, the lvl 4 and 5 could i turn be made more expensive to balance things out. Being able to make 1 weapon and 2 or 3 rings (or other low/mid items or weapons for that matter) before going to the underdark would not be unbalancing imo.
Also a new larger gembag would be nice for all those gems consuming recipies.


Character tweaking

This is more of an suggestion/idea, but seeing how u already changed the stats of valygar and anonem, and the class of imoen, perhaps its an idea to expend this some more.
Much of the fun from this game comes from the massive amount of classes and kits, many of which are more powerful and more fun then those which are being used by the standard Baldurs gate npc's.
That why people make custom multi-player games/characters(btw i had a much more easier time using such characters playing IA).
My suggestion: make most NPC's be able to change there class in an certain(but early) part of the game.

For example in Trademeet there is an gypsy who already has some lines for each NPC's after you ask her to read your future.
After a quest she grants you after powerful reward. Not only can she see the future she can actually change the fate of your NPC's

So the next time Minsc talks to her she offer new dialogue options "changing" the class of Minsc.
changing minsc into any of the melee classes is not much of an stretch
so he can become a:

berserker
barbarian
riskbreaker
fighter/thief

Likewise jaheira can become a:

ranger/cleric
any druid
any ranger

Eventually every popular class and kit can be used with every existing NPC

advantages

-finally being able to uninstall shadowkeeper, you main source for cheating
-massive re-playability
-making sure you more inexperienced player doesn't screw up this game by making these changes manually
-another money sink( she wont change your fate for free)
-excuse to lower there experience (as part of the price) which in turn can lead to more low/mid lvl battles or quests
-custom party like these are much more powerful (and fun!!) giving you an excuse to make even more (optional)battles
-if you change your class you might as well lower the NPC to lvl 1 allowing you to choose you own weapon specialization. This would allow even more re playability and customization

disadvantages

-Npc items might become overpowered or useless depending on class. at the very least your you'll need to change many of these items
-With that many possible chanches and custimizations your bound to run into bugs and error's, which leads to:
-A lot of work/ testing / balancing

Still i believe this would make IA a lot more fun.


More computability with other mods.

i understand this needs to come from both parties/modmakers, but i can not shake the feeling that there still is some bad blood between certain modmakers/communities. I could list all the interesting/fun mods but u get the picture, i wont waste to many words on this subject, it has been disscused many times before. Consides this a friendly reminder.


More in-game hints

Some of the post here on the forums should be required reading for new players
why not introduce these subtly into the game.

for instance the recommended quest order:

As soon you enter the copper coronet you'll find a new character, lest say an experienced adventurer, he'll warn you about an group of powerful bounty hunters are hunting you (suna seni) and that you have at most 5 to 6 "moves" before they will catch up to you, and that you should be save outside athkatla. Later you can ask him if "you are ready" for certain quests after which he'll look at your lvl's and respond simply with yes or no.

Or the fact that thiefs are nerfed and cant steal from shops:

have one shop be able to be stolen from including one nice magical item. however after 48 hours have a shadow thief party (mob style ) group explain that all thiefing busyness is forbidden in athkatla and that u need to pay for that item you stole, or fight them. (or give it an curse costing 10000 gp to uncurse at temple)
Just nice little quest explaining why you cant steal with this mod

i could come up with more but this post is already much longer then i planned

So let me end this post by saying keep up the good work, and good luck in the future.

Gonna plan my 3 run now

Well....my few cents on these issues:
difficulty- drow are already nerfed, so...
skeleton lords - well, they pack a mean punch and have a pathetic THAC0....not true for Grandlords, however
Shade Lord - I'll post a screenshot these days where I won without loosing a single HP.
Draco - congratulations if you managed to kill dragons so easilly....IMO, Firkraag is the weakest of them all followed closely by lvl4 WK red dragon
Githyanki - well, this battle made me delete IA from my BG game....crazy at first, but gets much easier in time
Twiszed - hard...with some PC choices, I'd say it borders on impossible (single class thief, cleric)

For Suna Seni - you can win this the moment you exit dungeon, actually

For the rest of what u wrote, I generally agree...just can't see Minsc as a fighter/thief

Writing the mod's autor name wrong in the first paragraph.... "makes a conversation a bit tricky." (to quote Harold form Fallout 2) ;]

From all you'd said, only drows are too hard, I mean only first ambush is too hard, second is pretty doable if you are prepared (have potions, scrolls, etc. with you; done it on easy first time, then done it on normal, then done it on core in next runthrough, there is some pattern in here, eh? ;>). First is doable too but difficulty level is raised up to the point that there's no fun left in this, imo. But...so what? I killed them like seven times, but only once spiders and drows together - which took me three days and tons of hair, heh SPOILER!
. And like Kerkes said: drows are already nerfed...

I am at the first drow battle now and with current party composition it causes some problem. I have found
SPOILER!
quite effective here. It made damage to the drows and very often disrupting the drow priests spells. Only problem that it put my cleric in the middle of the battle and it is not a good idea. I will try a different tactics, try to use my mages to deal enough damage to the spiders. Is prot from normal weapon + PfMW protects again the effect of spiders? Or only absolute immunity does the job? I think they should give the same protection.

There is a common misbelief about compatibility. Mod compatibility is not what many websites (or their known members), e.g. Gibberlings3 or Pocketplane state. They think it is 'making two mods work together in some way'. We say that compatibility should be at least "making two mods work together in a reliable way for a long term time period". Certain modders who talk about compatibility lack even the most basic technical and computer science skills, they don't know what real compatibility means (most of their knowledge usually comes from reading forums). And when bugs appear in their "compatible" mods, they mislead players that it's a natural phenomenon. (Bug reports bring traffic to their forums too, by the way. I don't say they intentionally leave bugs in the mod, but they don't test their mods well enough and ensure only very fragile compatibility, so they expect bug reports -- and bug reports come.) We have other standards for quality than these modders. This is not "elitism", at least not in a negative way: this is an approach. So the "bad blood" you mention is nothing else than that some -- usually technically incompetent -- modders dislike that we don't sacrifice any from the quality to make a mod compatible with theirs. For example, they imply as if this was a question of communication or intention on Sikret's side -- no it isn't. Many of them just have better rhetorical skills on forums than actual competence for modding. Consequently, many compatibility issues have nothing to do with the lack of cooperation between modders -- this is only what the incompetent modders try to make players believe.

I hope this made the picture clearer about compatibility "issues" in the mind of readers who had some doubts in this topic.

Baronius, I am not really think that it is possible in some/most cases to make two mods compatible. I do not want to tell false statements, so please correct me if I am wrong.

As I know a mod is declared to be incompatible with IA when it introduces new "main" spells/effects/class. Main means that the thing affects the world heavily and make IA unbalanced. For example, if a mod introduce a new alteration spell that remove protections from enemy then it is handled as an incompatible mod with IA because IA enemies cannot use it and it makes the mod unbalanced (too easy). Similar things could happen by a new class, for example a new class called Destroyer, who has the ability to reduce enemy damage resistance will be also unbalanced in IA.

Now, technically the above modifications are not buggy, however the two mod (IA and the other one) will be incompatible because IA will not behave in the way it should be. There are two possibility two remove this incompatibility: adjust IA's script to use the new spells when they are available or remove them from the other mod. It could happen that Sikret has no time or willing to do this scripting or the other mod maker does not want to remove the questionable modifications.

Nobody made mistakes but the two mods are still incompatible. If none agree to do the necessery modifications then there will be no solution for the problem. I cannot say in a such case that the reason of incompatible is IA or it is the other mod because such a statement is unfair.

Writing the mod's author name wrong in the first paragraph.... "makes a conversation a bit tricky." (to quote Harold form Fallout 2) ;]

Yeah about that.... wish i had an excuse, but i haven't, no offence meant.....


As for the whole mod compatibility and bad blood thing, i realize your right but try looking it from a BG noob point of view. I mentioned that i started using mods for BG roughly a year ago, but only now i feel i know enough about these mods so i can start using them without problems. After lurking and reading many, many posts on Gibberlings3, Pocketplane, sorcerers place, even gamefaqs... i found a lot of inconsistencies ignorance and even trash talking about using certain mods

confession time before this "research" i simply tried out many many mods

once i even used tactics, kelsy mod, sofaulein, refinements, world map mod, and IA.... i know, i know blasphemy

I came to the conclusion that of the hundred and hundred of mods for BG there are only a few (5-6) truly bug free, balanced, fun, quality "big" mods.
IA being one of them.

There are still plenty of good small mods, but for actual compatibility... well the list is short...


IA isn't the only mod that has this problem. For a while i assumed the G3fixpack/tweakpack combo was the most stable one, simply because people claim its the new standard/not mentioning anything about incompatibility in the readme's. But really, the number of CTD or weird in game bugs using this mod+ unfinished busyness + only 1 Npc mod... sigh.


About my complaining:

Don't get wrong i like hard battles,you should have seen my face after finally beating the 1st drow encounter: 2 fists in the air screaming SPOILER!
.
But understand this: i hate "relying on luck"


My actual drow battle:

SPOILER!



I think i found out all i need to know to win this fight. But after all this, i on average still need 4-5 reloads to win this fight
mainly due to failing a random saving throw, losing critical party members or as i like to call it: bad luck.


@ kerkes or the rest of what u wrote, I generally agree...just can't see Minsc as a fighter/thief

did you know that the most stereotypical Barbarian: Conan the Barbarian started out as an thief , but your right bad example.

Vuki, there are also conceptual incompatibilities, that is what you're talking about then. I was talking about another, more technical type of compatibility issues (I commented the "bad blood' remark). The "BG2 Fixpack" is an infamous example: its developers want every mod to optimize itself to work with Fixpack. For complex mods such as the Improved Anvil, this is not possible, and it would result in serious problems (because the "BG2 Fixpack" is a very problematic mod, with many incompetent decisions).


One of the problems with "BG2 Fixpack" is that since it's untested and buggy (and changes too many dependencies), it constantly needs to be adjusted to other mods. In fact, as I said, other mods are changed in order to work with the "BG2 Fixpack", and not vice versa. Some mods are already built on top of "BG2 Fixpack", and such mods are always mentioned like some nice examples of compatibility. The big problem is, BG2 Fixpack is not designed to be widely compatible, it is too specialized and tries to dictate a mandatory platform for mods (let alone its other problems). Of course, there is a moral problem too: many "BG2 Fixpack" developers deny these problems and accuse us of various things, instead of admitting their weaknesses and trying to solve the problems.

Hi, G-Force!

Welcome to BWL.



Thank you very much for appreciating what we offer you in Improved Anvil. Quality, stability, and creativity are IA's unique features. It has cost us a lot of time and effort to achieve these standards; however, when we read comments from players such as you who understand and appreciate our hard work, we realise that our efforts haven't been lost and wasted.

When I started to play BG2 and use mods for the first time, I was fed up with the lot of bugged mods which were available to the extent that I decided not to use any of them anymore. Stability and bugfreeness as well as creativity and originality were my main criteria for mod quality and that's what I tried to achieve as a mod-maker when I made and maintained Improved Anvil.

It's needless to add that I owe these achievements mostly to my excellent testing team.

Thanks again for your kind words.