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fluent

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  1. I had this issue quite a few times, seemingly at random. Sometimes I'll load my game and play a bit. When I check my world map it will be all blacked out, and you can only see the locations you can travel to and their names. Everything else is black. I'm using the world map mod that comes with BWS, too. Not sure the exact name but it's a huge world map that includes the entirety of the planet, I think. And sometimes the map is fine but only if I exit the game and try it again. Sometimes it's still black. Just thought I'd report this bug. Cheerio.
  2. Damn. Roxanne, you're a genius! Look what I found: "Increase difficulty of level-dependent groupings - almost maximum difficulty" - lol. Damn. Looks like those 2 tweaks right there are what's frustrating me. I'm still claiming innocence, as I didn't think that turning those on would make the groupings IMPOSSIBLE, only very difficult. But seriously, those settings along with having too little XP for the early parts of the game (too little for those settings, anyway) + Hard difficulty meant those encounters were impossible, not just difficult, which is no bueno. At least we figured it out, but setting those settings in the way I did could hurt other first-time EET players experience who wanted a challenging playthrough. Thing is, even after researching all that stuff for literally several days before installing, it was still tricky and almost impossible to know how the game will play the first time through. Thank Garl Glittergold for this forum and peeps like you, though! What should I do for now? Would uninstalling or tweaking those for my current playthrough mess anything up? And I haven't played in a week or so. I ended up finishing the Planar Sphere quest (legit, too! Managed to kill Lavok before he could activate every protection he had) and the D'Arnise Keep (the troll boss encounter was rough), along with a few other smaller things like Hexxat's quest, etc.. Completed the Druid Grove as well, even though I had to postpone the Rakshasas for now. Overall it's been a great run for my first time playing BG mods, with a few snags along the way. What's your expert advice for what I should do now?
  3. Ah, so it's the base encounter itself. Weird. Then that's really the main thing I have an issue with - that particular encounter. It gets weirder from a roleplaying standpoint because the child was kidnapped and we ended up having to just give up on the rescue and maybe come back much later. So yeah, strange one there. Still have to get back into it and play more, but the random wildnerness encounter with 6 mages was flipping impossible, too. And the one encounter with shapeshifters in the wildnerness as well. The 3 Rakshasas at multiple times (on the streets of BG after the Flail of Ages and in the Druid Grove) - all super impossible for my current party. Again, my problem isn't necessarily that Rakshasas are difficult, they should be. It's just strange when the game is designed to trigger these encounters early on, especially the random ones where you can't control when you do them. I don't mind avoiding Druid Grove Rakshasas for now but the random encounters can be more frustrating because you *want* to complete them and can't. And tough mages are still super tough for us, but I repeated myself enough on that, lol. Maybe certain encounters can be tuned down or modded to be easier? Not "easier" per say, but actually doable and not impossible for your current level party. I know it gets into level scaling territory and all that, but it would just be cool to delay some of those random encounters until later so you don't feel like you have to run and are missing out on possibly cool content or items. Just my 2.
  4. For me, it's not necessarily that the Tough Vampires setting is turned ON, it's more about that specific encounter. Do all vampire encounters spawn that amount of Elder + Ancient Vampires? Because if so, that is going to be really hard for my party to deal with. If it's just that one encounter, I think it should be toned down a bit, that's all. Reduce the overall number of vamps in that one by a few to make it tactical, yet not overly hard. What I did when installing all these mods with BWS was turn ON all tactical/tough SCS options. So far, so good, but that does mean that there is room for error in other settings. Since I also turned XP to 50% gain + an SoD XP cap of 250k (it was a bad choice in hindsight) when I was facing these Rakshasas and Vampires in BG2 I wasn't able to cast the higher level spells (level 6 at the time) to even deal with them. So it was sort of like a beginner's trap I fell into. I ended up boosting XP gain to 200% until I'm back to "normal levels" I should be at. All the other aspects of the game have been fine, sans the occasional "super tough/have to cheese" mage encounters (again because I couldn't cast higher level spells.) So I'm not sure how BWS would be improved there. Maybe a pop-up that warns against messing with EET Tweaks XP settings or something? I love all the mods and BWS does a great job of letting beginner's like myself get into the game more, but it was still a bit tricky. And frankly, I'm still not 100% sure how the game is supposed to operate, and if I'm just doing something wrong. A few of the mages I fought were just really brutal (again, only could cast up to level 5 spells at the time, so maybe that changes things.) Took a bit of overly cheesy tactics and a bunch of re-loading to deal with. On a good note, I ended up killing Lavok in a kind of slick way. Invisible'd a few strong characters and then hit him at once with the kitchen sink, lmao. Took 20 minutes of re-loads but it worked. Got to play more now that I'm out of that damned sphere!
  5. Hah, nice! You are already thinking ahead of the game. Wish I could restart and try your mod, it sounds awesome, but I'm already deeper into BG2. And this is actually the furthest I've ever gotten in BG2, so I'd like to at least beat the game once. ON a future EET run, though, I'll use the Sandrah mod for sure. You'll have to let me know of some others I should try, too, since I was a bit unclear on which ones *should* be enabled with BWS (a few were yellow/orange, and at the time I wasn't sure if they would mess up the XP gains and stuff like that. Which is why I hope BWS functionality is improved even more for first-time players...)
  6. Good stuff, thanks Roxanne. What I meant by EET Team is that I always thought modders should team up and work as a group on adding more great content to the game in that style. I understand why modders don't want to do that, but hopefully the EET becomes more popular so more players use it as the standard way to play the game. Then modders wouldn't have to worry about missing their audience. But yeah, I get that. Nobody seems to like BG1 much anymore compared to BG2 (I do, but whatever.) Power in numbers and all that. More modders should combine forces and focus their efforts + combine talents. But that's just been a thought of mine for awhile now, for any RPG mod scene, really. 2. More SCS feedback. I like stronger vampires in theory, same with Rakshasas... I just think that that specific vampire encounter could be toned down with less overall vampires in one battle. 4. All that sounds awesome. More mods that tie you back into BG1/SoD areas in some way (reasons to head back to the Nashkel Carnival, or even the werewolf cabin in High Hedge. Tons of possibilities.) would start to make the EET it's "own thing", almost like a mod expansion in some ways. Not sure if I'm being clear. But yeah, you guys rock. Keep doing what you do, you're all really improving this series over time.
  7. Your Sandrah mod is exactly what I'm talking about. I meant to ask if the EET team had any plans to expand into actual content. Others could do like your Sandrah mod, offering EET content that ties together things in BG1-SoD-BG2, offering official new story bits and "EET exclusive" type of content. Sort of like Beamdog does but this content would be for the EET. That would be cool, IMO. I also wish the whole thing would be easier to get into. I like how BWS makes it easier to install things, but as a first time player I messed up by adding all these extra SCS options, even though I knew they'd be challenging, I didn't realize they'd be impossible with the "wrong" settings (like turning XP gain down lower.) Improvements in the install process would be great, IMO, and just lowering the bar for entry a bit more for other players to get a more balanced experience. And more balancing in general would be cool for SCS (although that's a separate topic, I know.) I didn't realize the Harder Firkraag dungeon for example, would have a super hard, nearly (and maybe) impossible encounter with vampires. I took "Tactical" to mean really challenging but not impossible. It'd be cool for you guys (modders) to combine forces. All the various companion quests could be worked on simultaneously and really polished and taken to new heights. "Official EET content." You guys could all give Beamdog a run for their money. We need more Sandrah type mods. I still have to play that one, but it sounds like exactly the next evolution for EET (even though it's not EET content so to speak, but you know what I mean.)
  8. Hey Roxanne, you can check mine as well as I'm pretty far into EET. Probably 200+ hours now, and completed several quests in BG2. Taking a slight break but hope to return to it soon (just a bit bored by gaming in general right now.) A few balance-related things I noticed: 1. Vampires in Firkraag's dungeon are so very, very tough, especially compared to the rest of the dungeon. I had to turn back twice from them. The Rakshasa outside is no joke, either, but that's okay since A) it's a Rakshasa, and B) it is a good indicator to NOT go into the dungeon until you're stronger. 2. Mages are of course very tough at times, but doable. At least now that I have further advanced knowledge of the game in general. But still some very tough spots where you either have to run or semi-cheese through, like wait for their protections to run out. At least, this is in my experience, and I'm not a super knowledgeable BG player yet. 3. The Druid Grove Rakshasa's - also impossible for my party. Just avoiding it for a good while now. 4. XP related. 50% seems to be a decent spot, but on SCS with all Tactical options turned on + Hard difficulty, 50% is too low. I had to then boost to 200% for a quest or two so I would "catch up" and be where I was supposed to be. Because I was lacking the XP to have the spells necessary to compete against the tougher magical enemies. Maybe 75% or even the full 100% on those settings would be ideal? That's all that come to mind right now. I have super enjoyed the EET all the way to a few dozen hours into BG2. The game is really fun. Question - Is further content ever being considered for EET? Maybe revisiting Thalantyr in BG2 or something, so he can forge new items for you? Just a thought. Oh, and keep in mind I didn't do Ulgoth's Beard yet, so I missed that XP the first time through (I know I can return later, but there isn't a good roleplaying reason just yet to do that.) Everything else is awesome. Only getting a few items left after the thieves pick through your BG/SoD gear was awesome. Other than that I've had just several minor bugs, like dialog triggering when getting a new companion and them talking about quests they weren't involved with. Sometimes getting a "flood" of dialogue from certain characters about old quests, etc.. But that's it. If you have any questions feel free to ask me. I might fire up the game tonight and play a bit more.
  9. It was hell on Earth indeed but I got past it. Turned up XP gain to 150% for a few to catch up and will set it back to 50 probably once it's balanced out. I guess the 250k cap for SoD was a bad idea after all. Guess I gotta learn the hard way, lol.
  10. Right right, thanks for the tips. Yeah, I was going to try a Protection From Magic scroll + a few other possible tricks (3 Improved Invisible characters, Valygar backstabbing + Wand of Heavens from the shadows and a strong attack from my Cavalier to start the battle, then spam Monster Summoning/Breach/Dispel if necessary.) So yeah, hopefully that works. My main question now is - what should I do about future XP? The game is not "hard" in that it's too hard or too tricky, it's "impossible" because I'm too low level. So I was thinking of running 150% XP for a few hours, doing a quest or two with that setting and trying to catch up to where I should be. Roxanne, you start BG2 usually at level 11, correct? So I should try to catch up to that I think. That's my main concern right now (I can get past the Lavok battle I think, had him Badly Injured last time.)
  11. Huh. I guess I missed all that before installing. Oh well. Guess I'll try again some other time. Didn't realize those options would render the game impossible.
  12. So the massive time traveling (would take 5 days to travel to Ulgoth's Beard, etc.) would be alright to do then? No real time limit or anything in BG2? And for future XP, you think setting it to 50% would be good from here on out then? I don't want to get to a point where the game is impossible to progress, and it's my first time through the game with EET so I'm not sure if that would/could happen.
  13. Ah, thank you for that information. Would be awesome to have it be an actual useful item in BG2. Okay, so I just double checked, and my party is mostly level 9, even some 8. Our highest casting level is 5. We're stuck in the Planar Sphere and I'm not sure what to do. I've raised the XP gain back to 50% but now I'm wondering if I need to set it higher to "catch up" to where I should be. I ended up missing out on Ulgoth's Beard thinking I would come back later in BG2, so might have missed some XP there, but I did Durlag's Tower. Will thoroughly examine the rest of Athkatla and do all the quests, etc., there, but will there be enough XP to get me to where I need to be? My main char is a level 9/10 Mage/Thief. A few characters are level 8 and the rest are 9. Any advice here?
  14. Awesome, thanks Fouinto! I save often already so it's all good. I never ragequit games, but the fight with the halfling mage in the Planar Sphere where he was Near Dead and then killed CHARNAME nearly made me do it, lol. We were fighting that battle for almost an hour trying to win and had to keep re-loading. One of the things I notice about the AI improvements in SCS and what not is that they tend to target the main character at times, even if he/she isn't the most dangerous. My little Gnome Mage/Thief was away from combat minding his business and the mage felt the need to ignore the Cavalier with the Flail of Ages +3 to throw a spell at the little gnome and instakill him. Turning this feature on should protect against that at least. Also some slightly weird balance issues in the game when your MAINCHAR is a mage/low HP character. Kind of interesting to see how that impacts the base game since that character can't die without it being a game over. A 32 HP character vs. a 100 HP character is obviously a bit different there.
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