Thoughts on difficulty.

[Bruce Lee]

I love this game, but I hate the difficulty levels. The game has to be played on Core rules I think. Switching to normal for reading scrolls is acceptable(better than reloading if failing to learn).
No the way it should have been is to have more monsters instead of making them do double damage.
And here is what I also think. Hard should have less potions and no cloak of mirroring and shield of balduran. Insane should have hardly any potions, less amount of scrolls. No cheesy items, like wands, rod of resurrection, shield of balduran, cloak of mirroring.
That would make soloing alot harder, the way it should be IMO.
What do you guys think?
By the way is it possible to edit out items from the game?

[Stilgar]

I agree with the more monsters,
I think they shoud do both, and more monsters and extra damage
(theres only one kangaxx if you play on core or easy)

I don't agree with the disapearing of items, but potions might be a good idea.

I don't now how to edit them out (maybe delete the item file) but why not just leave them where you found them!

[Bruce Lee]

Ah the temptation... I don't want them to be there at all.
But I always leave shield of balduran, cloak of mirroring and rod of resurrection behind.

[Archeron]

I've never played below hard, it was a challenge when just learning but is now a walkover (with all cheese included).

So I've downloaded the Sola and Valen mods, this is seriously more difficult on hard. I'm utilising ever i can like scrolls wands etc.

'baddies' are way tougher and smarter, and their are more of them, ie about 70,000+ exp party guarding kangaxx's room.

[Rattman]

more monsters sounds good

and the ban**** that attack you should be diffrent some times as well

and more hamsters

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

What was the word that got cut off in Ratty's last post? I can't think of anything that starts with ban- and is filtered, not like wris****ch.

[Bruce Lee]

Bandits

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

So how come it got cut out by the filter?

[Bruce Lee]

Don't know. Maybe he typed it wrong or wrote something else...or typed the **** himself for some reason.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

O*, I se* *ow.

[kopywrite]

Less experience on harder settings would be good...isn't that how BG1 difficulty works? And maybe less quest experience, say 80% at hard and 60% on insane.

@ Bruce; why do you think wands are cheesy? Or do you mean when you recharge them at a store?

[Bruce Lee]

Well you have to admit that wand of cloudkill is kind of cheesy.
I like to rely on my characters and not on items.
Whenever I have played D&D we never have so many items and certainly not so many potions. It is a bit like diablo to have that many potions.
To have monsters doing double damage is stupid IMO... you could have half the number of hitpoints instead. No the game should be core rules which to means that you cannot alter experience either, atleast not for killing monsters.
With the amount of potions in the game and with the rod of resurrections who needs a cleric? A pity methinks.
But to each his own.
I am going to try and discipline myself cause I just started a game where I wont use any potions and no wands or cheesy items.
Oh and I am playing as a ranger/cleric multi and Jaheira is in the group aswell.

[Glod]

A few different difficulty sliders would be great. Definitely lower exp should be one of them. Monster exp in general should be reduced so that you don't gain so much from random killing and also so that using fewer characters doesn't result is so much more exp per character. This would make small groups harder to win with rather than same/easier. More monsters might be one option though then you'd want to scale back monster exp even further so you don't get level inflation. I'd rather harder monsters than more quantity in general.

The biggest problem of course is lack of good AI for the monsters but thats a pile of work to implement, whereas just cutting exp/items would be very easy.

I'd agree that lots fewer magic items would be good across the board, especially fewer at shops. Removing the bonus vendors would also be a good thing for higher difficulty levels; I finally weaned myself off of Robe of Vecna which was the last bonus vendor item I used ... I feel cleaner now.

I play on insane but really the way its implemented it just makes battles a bit more annoying, not much harder. With all the potions and regen stuff around those hps come back in no time.

[kopywrite]

@ Bruce; if temptation gets too much, you can always delete the cloak of mirroring using creature browser in shadow keeper.

[Bruce Lee]

You mean deleting the priestess that wears it or the item file of the cloak? Will it cause the game to crash? Can I delete potions and suchlike aswell?

[kopywrite]

You can delete the cloak from the priestess' inventory, she's in the list as 'priestess' (funnily enough)... I should think this would be ok as the cloak isn't a quest item or anything. I don't know how to modify treasure that's found in chests or can be bought, but any items that are found on monsters can be deleted or changed. I'd back stuff up though before you delete it, to be on the safe side.

Agree with you about the rod of rezzing though, it completely negates that aspect of having a cleric in your party...maybe if it was changed so only clerics or druids could use it.

[fable]

BG2 has a number of easy ways to abuse game mechanics (though not as much as Morrowind, at least, not currently). The best way to make the game more difficult is simply to avoid the obvious things: agree to never use wands; agree to never use potions; agree to settle for the outcome of any attempted theft, even if you fail. Do these things, set the game on Hard, and you've got yourself quite a challenge.