When I hasardly discovered mods (tactics item upgrade solofein etc saga) I was in awe, utterly. It was a powerful new breath granted to an already endless game and gave me tons of delightful moments. It is only much later that I discovered Improved anvil version 5. I stumbled uon this site surfing on the web at school and instinctively knew it was quite a singular discovery. I hope I could express my feelings properly to Sikret for his remarkable and benevolent spirit. His creation is truly a masterpiece that I could only imagine describing in my native language. Thank you kindly and know that no matter how long you keep up the good work, there will always be somoene left somewhere to enjoy it.
I just finished my second (maybe 2,5th) run successfully. As usual the ultimate battle confered the proper climax to the whole adventure. I say 0,5 run because in order to discover the mod, I played a game with an evil party (berseker, korgan, viconia, edwin, aerie, and keldorn lol) and the following rule : use no forged item whatsoever. Needless to say that I got obliterated many times. I departed to spellhold at level 11 because I had read not to tarry too long. Oh my god ! Spellhold itself was insanely difficult, nevermind those terrible drow encounters ! I had only two healing potions left for those two encounters. I shamefully had to abuse every little parcel of AI left to be abused in the mod in order to be successful. I abandonned the game at the beginning of tob ( I couldn't even dream of killing a grandlord nevermind orcus because my best +4 weapons were a dagger and a shorttsword to which none of my fighters were proficient). So this one doesn't count, plus the fact that when I started it I didn't even suspect the existence of physical resistances (I did learn a lot out of it though, a lot really).
Surprisingly enough, in the two next runs I my reloading was extremly moderate, maybe because I had reloaded more than 300 times in the ''scouting run''. I didn't have to resort to AI abuse in none of the two games as I learned well that it is actually more effective to charge the ennemy than to retreat cowardly. My parties were really strong and interesting to play, especially with item forging AND the knowledge over the game (for example the existence of squeletongrandlords and drow encounters etc). It was satisfying to get through those difficult battles that required 50 reloads and abuse with just 1-2 reloads, often none. My first party was composed of a vagrant, a human kensei, an half elf fighter-thief, a human risk breaker, a human berseker dualled to cleric and a skald (the bard whose song gets better with levels). The whole game seemed to be easy with such a powerful party. The tactic choice was relatively mediocre though. In my case it often consisted in '' KILL THE MAGE KILL HIM I SAID!'' , which is to employ every single party member in the task of physically attacking the ennemy mage and kill him fast at all costs. With that party even epic divine encounter took only 3 reloads. Shamefully, yes shamefully the hardest battle was that in Mekrath's laboratory against the yuanti mage (lol) it took like 12 reloads but I wanted to do it early.
My second party was a single class necromancer, two human kenseis, cernd and two sorcerers. Most battles were even easier than with the other party, but let's say orcus (which was really easy for my warriors party) got insanely hard. Epic divine encounter was much harder too unfortunately
But at least I didn't get humiliated by early mages and a vast majority of battles were overall easier, plus the party itself was most satisfying to play because of spell casting instead of attack-the-mages-at-sight. Maybe I will post later to criticise the mod more seriously and tell a few errors (really rare) that I encountered. For example, I remember with my first party that a demi lich casted imprisonment on my skald that was protected with avoid death. Avoid death works agaisnt imprisonment and it looked like the demi lich didn't know it. She wasted time to cast it, but maybe it was because she had casted other spells before and only had that one remaining to cast, I'm unsure although to me it really looked like a slight error.
Finally, could somoene gently indicates me the location of the red gem ? 48 sided garnet I think. I did all the content in my first run and didn't find it, so I though it was related to the expanded mage stronghold. In my second run I did all the content once again and didn't find it. So basically the fun and excitement of finding it mysef has vanished over time lol. I found all the rest of secrets for example the viper queen, but that elusive gem seems to be too strong for me. Anyway thanks you Sikret once again !
