Tomes Tweak = Economy Fix

[bob_veng]

note #1: the following is especially relevant to IWD-in-EET
note #2: just to clear this up right away - the following doesn't propose removing anything from the games, not even changing existing prices or removing sums of gold

 

These are some EET-specific problems that can be addressed with the tweaks i propose below:

• aesthetic #1 - there will be too much gold...there already is in vanilla installments because you can buy everything you ever wanted (so it's not an EET-specific balance problem) but now, with IWD included it will look silly
• aesthetic #2 - it feels inconsistent that there are many tomes in BG1 but none in the rest of the world (except one in ToTL), and many various stat and attribute altering potions in IWD but none in the rest of the world
• aesthetic #3 / structural - now, while playing in the unified world it will feel unsatisfying to obtain arguably the very best and most valuable items in the world (the tomes) fairly early and mostly with ease, while - later on - not to find any, when generally you'd expect to find progressively better things as you progress through the game...this exists in the the original games but it's understandable that no tomes were included in BG2 since there are so many in BG1; but had there been fewer tomes in BG1, they surely would have included some in BG2; in ToB they got creative and put in the Machine of Lum the Mad instead

...and in the original games, there's the notorious economy dysfunction: gold eventually (i'm inclined to say soon) becomes worthless with nothing to spend it on; beamdog has exacerbated this a bit with their additions. But it's not a bad thing because what i propose requires there to be a lot of available gold in the world - and i propose the following:

 

The "kill 3 birds..." solution (...that eehm someone would ehhm maybe care to implement):

1. move all tomes, except a certain two, from their original locations in order to distribute them to uniformly around the world
2. put all moved tomes in appropriate merchants' wares and make them expensive (no way around having to buy them, and you can't possibly swim in gold having bought all of them unless you grind like mad... economy = fixed ); the remaining two findable tomes should be the charisma one in ToTL (just my opinion) and a single WIS tome in BG1 that is quest-related
3. distribute IWD's stat and attribute altering potions uniformly throughout the game (keeping them random loot of course)
4. move the single guaranteed potion of holy transference (+2 wis, -1 dex; there are two and the other one is random) from the bag of holding in ToTL to a merchant in ToB and make it even more expensive than a tome

[Jarno Mikkola]

Have you noticed a mod called Item Randomi... zer.

 

If you ask my opinion, we'll need to play the EET first before we can judge what's balanced and what's no. This includes the adventure in the middle..

[bob_veng]

Have you noticed that i'm primarily not talking about balance, but about the feeeling...

And sorry but this has nothing to do with item randomizer - the tomes aren't supposed to be random, only the iwd random loot table items would remain random as they already are (almost all these potions are random).

That there will be too much gold we know already by playing the original and EE vanillas.

 

edit:

but since you want to talk balance...

there are 3 wis tomes and 2x wis +2 pots

+3 wis in SoA&ToB

= +10 WIS

 

you don't need to play eet first to see that something's not ideal there

[Jarno Mikkola]

= +10 WIS

you don't need to play eet first to see that something's not ideal there

I think that you fail to see that the convention of your play is perhaps not the same as everybody elses. Just ask this guy. I am pretty sure there's not one cleric that got to use all the Wis benefits before they were scrupulously left as dead carcass to the side of the road.

 

And like said in the home brew manual of no cheese use, all the items can be laid into the bag of holding and forgotten until the time comes where the 5 rings of time stop protections aren't enough and the +10 cheese wheel is the only weapon capable to turn the tide of the whey, in the favor of the player..

[bob_veng]

Okay you're right, +10 WIS, whatever, is great. That was just a side comment on my part and i take it back (and sorely regret it because it's all it took for you to sidetrack the conversation). It has nothing to with the reasons why i started the topic.

 

I'll just restate this to avoid any future confusion:

- i'm serously NOT talking about balance regarding tomes

- i'm seriously not proposing removing any of the stat altering items

And you'll see this true if you *for once* read the OP

[Grammarsalad]

You should be a philosopher bob!

I would be happy to see this as an optional component.

[bob_veng]

Yes, absolutely optional.

[Ulb]

I like the idea a lot and would definitely install a tweak like that.

 

The speed at which you amass those absurd amounts of gold has always bothered me. I usually play with the tweak component that increases the price Gaelen asks for to 100k and even with that you just swim in gold after a few of the major quests.

 

Also, don't anger the Imp; if he gets agitated he'll start asking for your weidu logs, you don't want that..