Ok, anybody hacked (using shadowkeeper) your NPC's? Is it stable?

UserUnfriendly · Post by **UserUnfriendly** » Wed Aug 22, 2001 1:02 pm

Major cheese alert.

I Have many fun tactical ideas about my npcs. and since its my game, I've never felt shy about hacking into them using anything I can find. Until I got BG2 my most obscene hack was Might and magic 7, where I gave my party all artifact armor.

However, bg2 is so fun I follow self imposed guidelines about hacking. I am about to exceed or reset my limit. Always befoer it was adding killer spells to my pro, a elf sorceress. With all the spells I wanted, and I kept the list lean as possible, she was the nastiest heavy artillery to my infantry and armor support. But in the next tob, after I install the full patch, I want my npcs to be the way I want, not the game original stats.

My question is, if you hack your npcs will importing to tob, or finishing soa remove the illegal mods?

I am not going to hack attributes, but plan to change their class.

Aerie---conjuror/cleric more mage spells
Jaheira---totemic druid /fighter
viccy---same or cleric of talos
korgan-same
imoen-assassin/mage

All are true multiclass, with illegal kit in multiclass.

The most questionable are aerie, jaheira and imoen. I really want to give aerie more wisdom, but plan to use the watchers keep to do that. also, I really need imoen to be mult thief class, not dual. she really needs some decent thief skills, and I am looking foward to using poisoned melf minute meteors against creatures. Jaheira, I think possibly the most underrated char in tob, where her combination of fighter and druid really becomes an asset at the high levels, and best of all due to her spell limits the greater elemental shapechange is really designed for her. The shapechanges will be accessed via her special abilities, not under spellbook. she really is a fighter with some wicked augment spells, not a true spell caster. I really vote her for one of the best fightes in the game, period, since I have figured out ways to make the most of her abilities as a druid to augment her fighting abilities.

Tip:

When she starts getting quest, pick greater elemental summoning, elemental transforms and greater whirlwinds after the first. she has no need for implosion or the other ranged attacks, thats what viccy and aerie are for. Aerie,of course, is always my fav npc, because of her ability to combine cleric spells in mage spells for chaining. I've killed major demons with chained bolts of glory.

ANyway, if anyone has hacked thier npc and moved into to and have had problems, please let me know!

Why not play multiplayer? Have you heard aerie chew out korgan in tob? Priceless! The npc interaction is funny and adds greatly to the experience. I mearly want to change them to conform to my taactical theories.

THE JAKER · Post by **THE JAKER** » Wed Aug 22, 2001 1:55 pm

I tried to shadowkeep a kit into a multiclass, and the game would not load! The loading game screen just froze!

Anyway it was frustrating to me so I haven't messed around with it much...

One time I changed Jan into a half-orc pure class swashbuckler. I wanted a true thief NPC. I didn't play out the whole game though.

Sojourner · Post by **Sojourner** » Wed Aug 22, 2001 2:09 pm

Make sure you have the most recent version of SK, esp. if you have recently installed ToB. Use with caution - BGII may not like some of the changes made to NPC's. Also, it has its limitations - if you want a multi-class, you need to create a multi-class in the game, etc.

UserUnfriendly · Post by **UserUnfriendly** » Wed Aug 22, 2001 11:10 pm

rats! Ok, looks like its not too stable, unless the jake man used an older vers. of sk. I do indeed have the latest version, and it seemed to be ok. Well, I guess the part I worry about the most is moving into Tob from SOA, so I guess I can run thru SOa with plain vanilla chars and make changes in Tob, or just run a new party in tob.

Jake man, I suspect you may not have used the latest copy of sk, since at least one thread said it was stable and worked ok, at least for the protagonist. It may be that this is stable for the protagonist only, as that char is probably held completely in the saved game files. Sigh. Imoen really needs soem good thief skills!

Anybody notice this?

IMO in japanese and Korean means "sister". So imoen is definately your sister and any romance wih her is just gross!

leeho730 · Post by **leeho730** » Thu Aug 23, 2001 1:46 am

I changed Imoen to thief/conjurer and Anomen to fighter/priest of Helm (it's damn true, isn't it?) and Viconia to the priest of Talos (there isn't priest of Shar kit, damn I like her). Everything was fine afterwards as far as I know. It was really easy for Imoen, and a little bit of work for Anomen and Viconia (they have special abilities). Next time I'll try changing Jaheira to fighter/avenger. Make sure that you copy all the abilities and parameters of the classes to npcs you're hacking. Just create custom character with classes you want then browse their abilities and parameters (that's how I did).

In Imoen's case, you need to add special abilities (poison weapon x2 or x3, I'm not sure) and 2 parameters (+1 hit and +1 damage). If you really want, you may re-distribute ability points (remember assassins get 15/level rather than 25). For Aerie, just add specialist kit to her classes, add one spell slot for every spell level (except for the one you cannot use yet) and delete the spells of the opposing school. For Jaheira, add totemic druid kit, add spiritual animal ability and delete all the shapeshift abilities (you'll never use it anyway). I'm sure how many spiritual animal ability you have to add, because it depends on her current level (read kit description; they get special ability every five levels like lv1, 6, 11 and so on). I've made fighter(lv13)/totemic druid (dual-class) myself and it worked fine. For Viccy, add priest of talos kit, add lightning bolt and storm shield abilities (create custom npcs with same level and just copy the ability using shadowkeeper; use CLUAConsole:SetCurrentXP to advance in level you want). Hope this helps

NB. In my opinion Anomen should be fighter/priest of Helm (hell yeah). Maybe I'll change Anomen to fighter/priest of Helm for the game (as .cre files so that you will have to start a new game for this) and send it to the people who wants to try it

[ 08-23-2001: Message edited by: leeho730 ]

Astafas · Post by **Astafas** » Thu Aug 23, 2001 3:56 am

Originally posted by UserUnfriendly:
<STRONG>rats! Ok, looks like its not too stable, unless the jake man used an older vers. of sk. I do indeed have the latest version, and it seemed to be ok. Well, I guess the part I worry about</STRONG>

I'm no hacker but I certainly cannot understand the complaints about ShadowKeeper not being stable. As long as you respect the rules of BG2 everything works fine. You can change stats, profiencies, colours, add spells and items and select a kit for the first class among many other things. It's when you start using two kits that BG2 might crash. You could hardly blame ShadowKeeper for this, could you?