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IWD Mod Install Order Thread


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In the spirit of cmorgan's install order thread for Tutu, I thought I'd try to put together something similar for Icewind Dale.

 

Your general order should be

  1. Fixes. Many mods create new resources from the existing ones, so getting in the fixes early prevents errors in the original files from propagating to mod files.
  2. Atypical Content Mods. This category is a little hard to describe. There are some mods that don't really interact much with other mods (e.g. Ace's Alternate Soundtrack) or which are designed to only alter original game files (e.g. Improved BAMs) without worrying about modded content. Because of how WeiDU (the modding tool that actually installs the mods) handles and preserves installation order, the earlier you can place mods like this the easier it will make any future mod updates to your installation. This is also a pretty good place for item/store mods, especially if they're stable and unlikely to be updated often.
  3. Quests/Other Content. Once you've got a solid base, it's time to start adding actual content.
  4. NPCs. NPCs should go after quests simply because some NPCs will detect modded quest content and provide interaction with it. You may find a mod NPC commenting on a mod quest, but only if the NPC follows the quest in the installation order.
  5. Tweak mods/tactical mods. Most in this category are written to be universal, i.e. they'll freely change items/creatures/scripts/etc. from other mods, but they can only do so if those resources are present when they're installed. This is why just about every tweak mod suggests it goes last in the install order.

Within each category, another good rule of thumb is to go with older mods first.

 

There are, of course, all sorts of exceptions, or mods that really don't fall cleanly into a category. The readmes are there for a reason, and most modders try to help players avoid issues with install recommendations and compatibility concerns. A lot also depends on how the mod is written--Ascension, for example, used to be recommended very early in BG2 install orders due to the ancient way it had been written. Now that it's been modernized it can be installed in a more natural place in the order. With that in mind, here's a rundown of a good IWD mod order using some of the more common mods. (If there's something missing, I'll do my best to add it to the order.) In the interest of full disclosure, I am the author of IWD Fixpack, IWD Tweak Pack, Unfinished Business and Item Upgrade.

 

First, get your game in order:

  • If you don't have the Heart of Winter expansion, install Icewind Dale and add the official IWD-only patch, which brings your game up to v1.06.
  • If you have Heart of Winter, install Icewind Dale and Heart of Winter (no need for the IWD-only patch). Now you have two choices: one is to install the Heart of Winter patch, bringing your game up to v1.41. But why do that when you could...
  • Install the free expansion Trials of the Luremaster, which includes the bug fixes from the official HoW patch alongside a whole mess of new content, bringing your game up to v1.42.
  • If you have purchased your game from GOG it already includes Heart of Winter with the Trials of the Luremaster expansion (v1.42). You can choose not to install Trials of the Luremaster, which is the equivalent of a patched Heart of Winter install (v1.41). With or without Trials there's no need to apply one of the official patches.

Now let's get modding. In order...

 

Auril's Bane (aka AB): The whole reason I put in the long aside about Ascension above was to lead up to Auril's Bane. Auril's Bane makes some sweeping changes to the game with a slew of new items, spells, content, fixes and more. As of its current version AB more or less overwrites everything it touches, meaning it would wipe out many changes of mods installed before it. I would strongly recommend eschewing Grog's IWD Fixes component in favor of the IWD Fixpack. The core component also has its own version of the Voice of Durdel Anatha, making it incompatible with the same component from Unfinished Business.

 

One Pixel Productions Animation Fixes for IWD:TotLM: Contains some animation fixes for Icewind Dale. The Restore combat stance animations component misbehaves a little in that it not only overwrites some scripts, but the scripts include some minor syntax errors. This is the reason why this is listed before...

 

The IWD Fixpack: Fixes are good, and lots of fixes are better. The only reason it's not first is because the mods before it are currently a little overwrite-y. If you use this you do not need Grog's IWD Fixes from AB or...

 

Redrake's IWD Fixpack: I'd recommend the more extensive and modern IWD Fixpack instead, but if you're going to use this, it should go here in the order.

 

One Pixel Productions High-Quality Music: Replaces the default music with the same, but higher quality, soundtrack ripped from the music CDs. This can probably be installed anywhere in the order, but since it's unlikely to change it should go earlier in the order.

 

Improved BAMs: Improved BAMs seeks to differentiate the appearance of items in IWD, many of which use the same graphics. (A BAM is a type of graphical file used in the IWD engine.) Both IWD Tweaks and One Pixel Productions have similar components--while not really incompatible with one another, generally the last one installed of the three will take effect so you'd be best served by simply picking one and eschewing the other two. (Note that 1pp and Tweaks both have other components, so even if you use Improved BAMs you may want to install those for other components.)

 

Item Upgrade for IWD: A small content mod that allows players to upgrade a handful of items with no known incompatibilities. Putting it here allows for later mods to alter the new items.

 

Unfinished Business for Icewind Dale (aka IWD UB): A mod that seeks to restore quests and other content that was either cut or left partially completed in the game. As noted above Auril's Bane provides its own version of the Voice of Durdel Anatha quest, so UB's version won't install if it detects AB.

 

Icewind Dale NPCs (aka IWD NPCs): A mod that provides five new NPCs, complete with banter. IWD NPCs requires the Heart of Winter expansion, but otherwise should be compatible with other mods on this list.

 

Full Plate & Packing Steel: This mod implements a thorough rework of how armor works in the game. It has its own take on casting and thieving in armor, and is therefore incompatible with the Thieving in Heavy Armor and Allow Arcane Casting in Armor components from IWD Tweaks.

 

One Pixel Productions (aka 1pp): A high-quality and thorough remake of many graphical aspects of IWD. This should be installed late in the order as it has a lot of tweakish content changes to make its graphical goodness possible. As noted above with Improved BAMs, the last version of item icons generally wins.

 

Icewind Dale Tweak Pack (aka Tweaks): A collection of 30+ rule changes, cosmetic tweaks, cheats, and more, each available individually as separate components. Install Tweaks as late as possible so it can affect all modded content before it. Icon Improvements will take precedence over previous, similar components from One Pixel Productions and Improved BAMs. The components to allow thieving in heavy armor and to allow arcane casting in armor are incompatible with Full Plate and Packing Steel.

 

The Widescreen Mod: Allows players to play the game on modern, high-resolution monitors. Despite its name, it can be used on any aspect ratio monitor to increase resolution.

 

There are, of course, several thousand ways you can combine the mods above and no one can predict the outcomes of them all--and that's assuming the mods themselves are bugfree in their current and future incarnations.

 

I'll be happy to answer questions or take any other feedback below. :)

Edited by CamDawg
Updated AB link
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well, here's * my install order *

 

It may not be pretty, but it worked, for the most part, at the time at least...

 

You-can-have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too (stupid cliche) and use both Auril's Bane and Redrake's mod:

{working from memory--so I'm probably wrong...}

 

(1) unzip/unrar/decompress ALL mods into your game folder - in the order I listed. If any of them try to start installing mod components, choose the cancel option.

 

(1.1) (does?) AB drops a custom dialog.tlk so that trashes the vanilla version

 

(1.2) Redrake drops a custom dialog.tlk so that trashes the AB version

 

(2) Now you can start the actual mod/components installations

 

I don't remember too many other problems with this order, and now with the newer versions of some of the mods, such an install might run even smoother.

 

Thanks CamDawg and others for all the contributions you've made to keep this game alive & kickin'.

 

Despite all this, I can't imagine playing IwD again, as the game engine is horribly messed compared to BG2. I had no more love for it after the first few battles in Trials.

 

I do hope in some not-too-distant future to play IwD-in-BG2 -- a dream come true.

Edited by Azazello
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I know this is an old post, but hoping it's still looked at. Thanks for the effort with this; it's much appreciated. I'm just a little confused, though. the README for the IWD Fixpack states:

 

The Animation fixes for Icewind Dale: TotLM [1pp] mod can potentially nullify fixes--specifically, if you install the 'enable combat stance animations' component and choose the 'Replace scripts' option. Using the component with the 'Keep Old Scripts' option should be safe, and should follow the Fixpack in the install order. Using the 'Replace scripts' option is
not
recommended, but if you insist, install it before the Fixpack.

 

So, the README says it should go before the 1pp Animation fixes, but you suggest it should be opposite for similar reasons.

 

One Pixel Productions Animation Fixes for IWD:TotLM: Contains some animation fixes for Icewind Dale. The Restore combat stance animations component misbehaves a little in that it not only overwrites some scripts, but the scripts include some minor syntax errors. This is the reason why this is listed before...

 

The IWD Fixpack: Fixes are good, and lots of fixes are better. The only reason it's not first is because the mods before it are currently a little overwrite-y. If you use this you do not need Grog's IWD Fixes from AB or...

 

Also, this doesn't state which option should be used, so I'm thinking it's better to follow the Fixpack README unless there's something else I'm missing or not understanding.

 

Thanks for any comments.

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I know this is an old post, but hoping it's still looked at. Thanks for the effort with this; it's much appreciated. I'm just a little confused, though. the README for the IWD Fixpack states:

 

The Animation fixes for Icewind Dale: TotLM [1pp] mod can potentially nullify fixes--specifically, if you install the 'enable combat stance animations' component and choose the 'Replace scripts' option. Using the component with the 'Keep Old Scripts' option should be safe, and should follow the Fixpack in the install order. Using the 'Replace scripts' option is
not
recommended, but if you insist, install it before the Fixpack.

 

So, the README says it should go before the 1pp Animation fixes, but you suggest it should be opposite for similar reasons.

 

One Pixel Productions Animation Fixes for IWD:TotLM: Contains some animation fixes for Icewind Dale. The Restore combat stance animations component misbehaves a little in that it not only overwrites some scripts, but the scripts include some minor syntax errors. This is the reason why this is listed before...

 

The IWD Fixpack: Fixes are good, and lots of fixes are better. The only reason it's not first is because the mods before it are currently a little overwrite-y. If you use this you do not need Grog's IWD Fixes from AB or...

 

Also, this doesn't state which option should be used, so I'm thinking it's better to follow the Fixpack README unless there's something else I'm missing or not understanding.

 

Thanks for any comments.

I wrote the Fixpack readme before I saw what 1pp Animation Fixes was actually doing--this thread is correct; run it before Fixpack.

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Hi CamDawg,

 

First, thanks for your huuuuuuuuuuge work on the Icewind Dale mods, great to see that this game has not been forgotten.

 

So, to be perfectly clear, regardless of the "replace or keep scripts" option that is selected, the Fixpack must be installed after the 1pp animation fixes in all cases. Not a problem anymore.

 

But, do you still recommend to not select the "replace scripts" option ?

 

I'm just wondering why, as I thought that the Fixpack was correcting the scripts anyway.

 

Thanks

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So, to be perfectly clear, regardless of the "replace or keep scripts" option that is selected, the Fixpack must be installed after the 1pp animation fixes in all cases. Not a problem anymore.

 

But, do you still recommend to not select the "replace scripts" option ?

 

I'm just wondering why, as I thought that the Fixpack was correcting the scripts anyway.

Further investigation was on my to-do list and just never happened. I remembering opening up a couple, not recognizing them, saying f--- it, and changing the install order.

 

What should be done is giving 1PP some patchy code to make their changes instead, so the install order dependency goes away.

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Hi,

 

Since: " I would strongly recommend eschewing Grog's IWD Fixes component in favor of the IWD Fixpack."

and according to current BWS IWD:

"Redrake's IWD Fixpack needs Grogs fixes: Redrake_s_IWD_Fixpack needs AB (component 3)." (Auril's Bane Grog's IWD Fixes)

 

and this implicit that none of the Redrake's IWD Fixpack components like:

 

@0=Item Fixes
@1=Spell Fixes
@2=Creature Alignment Fixes
@3=Thieves use Light Crossbows
@4=Paperdoll Fixes
@5=Expanded Spell Tables
@6=True Dragon Icasaracht
can't be installed, what is the point of having "Redrake's IWD Fixpack" at all ? Or maybe this condition should be changed so the rest of components can be installed without Auril's Bane Grog's IWD Fixes component, switched to equal IWD Fixpack component ?
Edited by ALIENQuake
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Probably the best way to think about it is like BG2 Fixpack/Baldurdash. You're probably just going to have to pick one and stick with it, even though some of the stuff would probably work just fine together. I did not realize that Redrake was requiring Auril's Bane stuff for his fixes.You could do AB + Redrake, or AB + IWDFP, but trying AB + IWDFP + Redrake is probably going to be more trouble than it's worth.

While I'm here and thinking about this topic, I was asked at GoG to put together a smaller guide for folks who wanted to get a modded-but-still-true-to-IWD mini-guide, so I'll just quote myself:

A common player request seems to be to play IWD as true to the original as possible, with maybe some bugfixes thrown in, but without all that icky content from modders. In that spirit, I've provided a mini-guide.

Install the game--using GoG, that's all you need to do. If you're installing from another source make sure you're patched up (see the first post).

One Pixel Productions Animation Fixes for IWD:TotLM: Fixes some broken hardcoded stuff from TotL.

The IWD Fixpack: Fixes, fixes, fixes.

That really should be it. If you're willing to go a bit further, there are a few more things you might consider that still preserve the original spirit:

One Pixel Productions High-Quality Music: The same original music, just encoded at higher quality.

Unfinished Business for Icewind Dale (aka IWD UB): JE Sawyer was kind enough to let me pester him with lots of questions, so these restorations should be pretty close to the original developer intent. I personally do not recommend Restored Random Drops--it restores a lot of items that were cut with the HoW expansion, and I think they were good cuts since most of them were overpowered. Marketh's Ring also seems to be unpopular with players.

The Widescreen Mod: Play at higher resolution.

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Well, I finish IWD some days agao and find out that "Icewind Dale No-End Patch" create infinite loop with IWD End Boss. If you play through the whole game and can't kill end boss it's like "most frustrating bug ever". I'm removing "Icewind Dale No-End Patch" and "Heart of Winter No-End Patch" components from BWS for now.

Edited by ALIENQuake
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I found this line in BWS\Config\IWD\select.txt

ANN;ab 3 does the same as iwdfixpack

So in fact, "Redrake_s_IWD_Fixpack needs AB (component 3)." condition can be switch to "Redrake_s_IWD_Fixpack needs IWD Fixpack." I will test this.

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And to be honest, it's not the question I'm asked :) But I doubt that it can be answered without deep-understanding-and-analyze of Redrake's IWD Fixpack abd Grogs fixes code etc. Thanks anyway.

I may be absent, but I am not dead. Yet.

 

As for my mod, back when I started working on it, there was only one mod (fixpack included) released for IWD1, Grog's Auril's Bane mod. At first I relayed my suggestions to him, so he improved his mod. The I started working on it, but as my Weidu skills were (and still are) absent, I made the changes in old Baldur dash style.

 

When the fixpack thread was started here, I offered to merge the two mods, perhaps in a Weidu format, but it came to nothing (can't remember the details, maybe some bad blood between Chosen of Mystra and G3s boards). But as far as I am concerned, the offer is still on the table if someone has the time and dedication to draw a line between the 2 fixpacks and merge them.

 

Then a few years ago Prowler offered to translate my mod into Weidu format. He did, but unfortunately he also failed to include all the files necessary for an area where I did changes (level 4 of Dragon's Eye) and when the player enters that area the game crashes. The only fix is to remove the faulty area file.

 

Now enough with the story. For the question asked, my mod assumes that Grog's IWD fixes are included. Which means, not all the AB content, but just the fixes. I was planning on my making my mod compatible with AB content as well, but waited for Grog to release his revised content (he never did).

 

For the list, I'd recommend not to use Item Upgrade with my Fixpack. Item fixes do not work with that. It might screw them both.

It gets along just fine with UB, cosmetic changing tweaks and some components of the G3 Fixpack (dialogues, creature fixes, some of the item fixes).

However a part of my mod basically included tweaks to existing items, adding description to some and changing some stores and containers to add previously unable to be found items (but they were in the database). That's the component which does not work with Item Upgrade and might cause conflict with G3 Fixpack as well.

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Hey!

Thank you for detailed explanation. As you can read in my previous post, It is all setup pretty well:

 

Redrake_s_IWD_Fixpack needs AB (component 3)." (Auril's Bane Grog's IWD Fixes) and since "Auril's Bane Grog's IWD Fixes" does the same as iwdfixpack" i've changed the requirements for you mod to "Redrake_s_IWD_Fixpack needs IWD Fixpack."

 

Now, I've added another condition that Item Upgrade is not compatible with Redrake Item Fixes: https://bitbucket.org/BigWorldSetup/bigworldsetup/commits/0135d09a44c35d82bd3396e339d98c2c760413db

 

Ideally, all those various fixes from AD, Grog's, Redrake Fixpack should be combined to one and make compatible with Item Upgrade but you can't have everything :) But the most important part is a stability and avoid conflicts which I believe, BWS install order provides. Thanks again for you mods and work.

 

P.S. Almateria recently released her "ALMATERIA'S IWD2 FIXPACK 3" ...

Edited by ALIENQuake
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Yes, well, some of the items I made changes to were affected by Item Upgrade mod. Stoutward for example, I changed it a bit to make it more useful, but usable only by dwarves. Item Upgrade allows it to be changed into something else. But most important are the stores. Almost every store in the game was touched by my mod, so any mod that changes a store comes in conflict.

 

As for Almateria, yes, she contacted me about a month ago after she released her restoration mod. I gave her all my files. Mostly some item fixes, but also some UB content which is further detailed on my thread at CoM. http://www.baldursgatemods.com/forums/index.php?topic=6803.0

 


Edited by redrake
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