GameBanshee Forums

I know that the majority of the people here like them and enjoy using and playing around with them, but I dont quite understand why. For me, I like the game as it is. I mean, i can understand if there're Mods for increasing the difficulty of the game. It's the NPC/character editing I think that I'm most interested to learn just why everyone seem to like.

We're all BG fans here, so enlighten me.

The only mods I ever downloaded were for BG1. BGtutu I liked, Dark side of the Sword Coast not so much. It's not that I don't appreciate the effort these people made but it wasn't for me. Most of the new npc's were too powerful. I loved the part where you had to fight about ten thousand Duergar though

Well, for me, I like mods that add something new to the game. Once you've been through it a few times, it's nice to get a mod that throws a few surprises your way. That could mean changing some battles, or adding whole new quests. It can also mean adding new kits, so that you can try playing a character that's a bit different.

For a lot of people, NPC's provide new dialog, which I believe is the draw - that and the extra quests they bring. Personally, I prefer solo games, so don't much care about NPC mods.

As for character editing, I assume you're refering to SK? I wouldn't call that a mod, but anyway ... for me, I generally only use it when creating a solo character, and it usually serves to make my character more able to survive on their own. For example, my current character is a multi-class Berserker/Thief - the berserker kit is there to give me some protection against enemy spells, since I really have no means of doing so otherwise.

Aside from that, I just don't think some of the restrictions make sense, so don't have any problem with using SK to get around them. For example, what's wrong with a Elven Paladin? Or a Dwarven Mage?

Gidday Miser,

The mods I use are Unfinished Business and Oversight, along with the Rogue Improvements, Extra Items and Baldurdash (although that's more of an extra patch than a mod). Also some components of Ease of Use (mostly the patching and stacking arrows, etc).

The main reason I like UB and Over is that they complete components of the game which were left out, such as Minsc's quest, Mazzy's quest, restoring original quests back to their configuration and so on. Also, it makes the final bunch of challenges tougher.

I use Ease of Use because I don't like having to manage an inventory full of arrows, bullets and darts. And because it fixes some of the problems within the game, mostly to do with dialogue and the like.

Mods in general tend to extend the life of the game, and make it even more fun to play for the fifteenth time. SK is not, as Gelnfar said, a mod. Although I do agree with Glenfar when he says that the restrictions on race-class are a little silly (an inherent part of 2nd Ed ADnD, unfortunately. Removed in 3rd Ed).

Cheers,
TGHO

Interesting.

I think I'll try a few of those. Any recommendations?

these :


"(1) Ease-of-Use
Components 0-6, 9-10, 15, 18, 20-21
Skip the faster cutscenes, it's incompatible with Tashia and a few other mods.
Skip Multi-romance and multi-stronghold components, they may cause problems.
Skip No Traps and Locks, the game loses a lot that way.
Skip Bottomless Bag of Holding, use G3Tweaks' Bottomless containers instead.
(2) G3 Tweak Pack
Components 0-2, 4, 10, 12-13, 15-16, 21-23
(3) SimDing0's Tweak Pack
Components 0-4, 7-8, 10
(4) Oversight
Components 0-4
Skip the altered Monk HLA tables - Refinements does it better.
(5) Cleric Remix
Components 0, 3-4
See my remarks about Viconia above. You might want to skip this altogether
(6) Dark Ritual
Components 0-2
(7) Revised Forgotten Wars Item Pack
Most of these items are grossly overpowered. I haven't used any of them yet.
(8) Underrepresented Items
(9) Ascension
All components. Install this before Kelsey if you use him. He has Ascension-specific dialogue
(10) Tashia
(11) Kelsey SOA
(12) Kelsey TOB
(13) Tsujatha
(14) Chloe
(15) Rogue Rebalancing
All components
(16) PnP Celestials
(17) Unfinished Business
All components except the kits. I have grown wary of what new kits can do to the game, so I only install what I need, even though it's a hassle to answer 22 times yes and 2 times no.
(18) SimDing0's Quest Pack
Components 0-2, 4
(19) Rahul Kanakia's Potion Quest
(20) Planar Sphere Return
(21) Improved Oasis 2
Both components
(22) Improved Battles
Components 2-14, 16-18, 24
(23) Tactics
Components 1-3, 6-15, 17-25, 28-29, 31-35
Plus the Generic Archer kit which is one of the skipped numbers.
(24) Pocket Plane Banter Pack
Components 0, 2 (no accelerator, I don't play fast)
(25) TOB Refinements
Components 0-3"



They work well and seem to make the game much better, but I'd reccomend once ingame, to stear clear of alot of the merchants, there items are just often too powerfull and cheap, in an attempt to make up for "ignored" wepeons, such as the Katana or Axe, or Scimitar, which to be honest, there arn't many good ones available to you during the game.

Meow, could you provide the order in which you load those mods?

the order is already there, 1-25, starting at 1, ending at 25.

However, when/if you install Ascension have Kelsey already installed, its the only mistake on the list.

Holy crap!

Well, long list is good! Thanks!

Here's what I think:

Baldurdash Fixpack:
- Absolutely vital. Baldurdash is what Bioware should have done: a massive fixpack that's constantly updated that repairs bugs where-ever they may be found. It's practically canon that BGII players download and install this fixpack. Don't worry, just about every respectable mod out there will be compatible with this essential.
Quality:5/5
Usefulness:5/5

Baldurdash Game Text Update:
- Fixes typos, blah blah. Not neccessary, I guess, since I got through the game 3 times already and didn't really notice or care about the game text much, but if you're a perfectionist, it's always a nice thing to know somebody out there's combing though all the game text and fixing stuff like this. Just to show your respect for the dedicated Baldurdash people who actually take time out of their day/week/month/year to do this, just download it and enjoy . It can't hurt, after all...
Quality:5/5
Usefulness:3/5

Ascension (ToB):
- I won't spoil you as to what this is all about. Suffice it to say, it was written by David Gaider himself (he's an actual Bioware game designer), and the one I'm pointing at is his mod, merely repackaged for WeiDU, an excellent program that makes mods infinately easier to install/uninstall. It changes the game ending so that Balthazar has half a brain and acts like his Lawful Good alignment instead of a mule-headed must-kill-you attitude. I guess this is a bit OT since this is the SoA forum but Ascension is a mod so...
Quality:5/5
Usefulness:4/5 (if you have Tob), 0/5(if not, it does nothing)

Unfinished Business (mild spoilers):
Ever wonder what Kalah was promised? ("NOOOOOOO! This ... *cough weeze!* this wasn't what ... was promised to me!" just after you defeat him in the circus). Ever wonder what other wonderful quests got the axe from Bioware because of time-crunch? Ever peeked into dialogue.tlk and saw dialogue that never appeared in the game, and wondered what that was a part of? Partly inspired by things actually said by Gaider and other Bioware developers, UB is a mod that attempts to restore BGII to it's original form had Bioware not been under a time crunch to release it. In some of the restored quest, it uses actual unimplemented Bioware-written dialogue, or else dialogue quoted from reliable Bioware sources. A true treasure, this mod will give you plenty of surprises and sticks true to its goal, there is absolutely NO added material (as in, everything in UB is, literally, Bioware's Unfinished Business, not the creation of any of the modders).
Quality:4/5 (it's not completely finished! There are tons of stuff the UB gang haven't gotten to yet, so I have to reserve the 5/5!)
Usefulness:4/5 (it's not VITAL like Baldurdash, but it's damn useful and plenty fun!)

Banter Packs:
There's an SoA version and a ToB version I believe. Everybody knows that banters are what makes the BGII NPCs so unique and loveable. It's part of the appeal of playing BGII! What could be more satisfying than more of these banters? Banter pack is an excellent resource that adds even more banters to the game, and is very high quality; the crew never goes overboard and sticks to character very well.
Quality: 5/5
Usefulness: 4/5

Virtue:
They still have bugs and kinks to work out here, but all-in-all for the serious role-player Virtue's a big hit. Remember how "reputation" is a stand-in for both how your party views you and how the world views your party? No more with Virtue! Now, Virtue represents how your party feels about your actions, and reputation is how you are seen in the world. It adds a lot to the game to have this, although it does make the already difficult-to-play paladin class almost impossible in my humble opinion (ONE non-virtuous act, and there are plenty that you could make, and you fall!). Still, possibly because of that, it's the true role-player's dream.
Quality: 4/5 (still a few bugs)
Usefulness: 5/5 (for RPers), 1/5 (for non-RPers)

Gibberlings Three Tweak Pack:
A very useful mod, packaged like all the ones above in WeiDU (one of the greatest advantages of WeiDU is that you can pick and choose which packages you want installed). There are only select parts that I'd personally recommend, including: force all dialogue to pause (so that Kuo-Toan warriors can't kill Imoen in the Underdark while you're talking to the Duregar), zero-weight "created" weapons like Melf's Minute Meteors, Jan's Flasher Master Bruiser Mates, weapons created by Enchanted Weapon, Shillegagh, weapon animation tweaks, spell animation tweaks (change to Icewind Dale casting animations). There are TONS of components to this mod, however, and you'll want to look at them all to see what you do and don't want. Read them CAREFULLY! Then again, one of the biggest advantages of WeiDU is that if you decided you don't want a component but want to keep the rest, WeiDU can do that! So you can uninstall individual components too.
Quality: 5/5
Usefulness: 3/5 (this is seriously not essential and is primarily topical and superficial. There is nothing in the tweak pack you couldn't do without, but it's always nice that Melf's Minute Meteors don't have weight, because as we all know wizards don't have too much strength and MMM's weight might be just enough to encumber your wizard to non-moving status)

There are other great mods out there, but for now, this is what I'd deem the essentials. With these, if you've played a "clean" BGII, you can experience a wonderful new BGII that's fixed and with new, wonderfully designed components that will make you quite happy. Thought BGII was replayable before? Try it out now!

Personally I'd not install Tactics until you've run through the game a couple of times, and are comfortable with tough fights. This is because Tactics ramps the difficulty up a thousand fold, and makes some previously easy fights very hard (and some very hard fights almost impossible).

My 0.02c

Cheers,
TGHO

Thanks for the replies!

I will definitely be digging this up over and over again!