Looking for the best and worst mods for BG2

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I finally finished my BG1 game (yay!). I'm starting to shop for my mods for BG2. Could people please provide me with the must haves and the must have not mods? Lists are fine but explanations are better.

 

It depends on what you're looking for.

Must-Haves
G3 Tweakpack
Dungeon-Be-Gone (MUST HAVE...unless you're a first time player)
Banter Pack (If you like banters)
Unfinished Business (Must have)
Quest Pack (Nice but not necessary)
G3 Fixpack (Important - install after patches)
Extended Thief Stronghold (by Blucher, a little hard to find)

Good NPC Mods
Kelsey (solid, but I don't like him)
Tashia (cute And solid)
Imoen Romance (very, very, very good writing)
de'Arnise Romance (if you like Nalia...)
Keto (haven't played her through yet but she seems very high-quality)

 

I guess I should have been more specific with my game to save helpful people some effort. I'm playing as a half-elf cleric/mage so the thief stronghold won't work for me. I'm not interested in NPCs this run through since I'm using the canonical party from BG1 (Shadowkeeper to make them match their BG1 selves) I'm picking up Viconia too. She was in my BG1 party until I rescued Dynaheir.

Other than that it looks like you have some strong suggestions. A couple I was acquainted with but the banter pack is new to me. I'm not using Dungeon-Be-Gone as it sets the tone nicely for the game and I haven't played BG2 in a few years so it doesn't grate on me. Thanks again for the suggestions!

 

BG2 Fixpack/Baldurdash
Kivan
Xan
Auren
Angelo
G3Anniversary-v4
Tower of Deception
Dungeon Crawl
BanterPacks
IEPBanters
Romantic Encounters
Crossmod
iiItemsmod
iiProjektiles
Rogue Rebalancing
BG2 Tweaks
SCSII/Imp Anvil

 

Thanks, Shaitan! More goodies to peruse. I usually like modding my games but having just finished BG1 tonight I'm game to get back in the action. Hopefully I'll be modded before bed so I can spend a good chunk of tomorrow in BG2. Just a clarification, for those who may post, my character is illegal. I modified in Shadowkeeper. The PC is actually a cleric/wild mage. I already grabbed JOG's wild mage mods.

 

Oh, and let us not forget the FlirtPack! Absolutely must-have.

 

Ones I can't do without are:

NoBottoms
FlirtPack
BanterPack
Ease Of Use (certain aspects)

There are others I use like DungeonBeGone, Underepresented Items, Fade, Kelsey, Unfinished Business and a few others, but I reckon they're luxuries as apposed to 'MUST HAVE THEM'!

I've not played in a while though.

 

1PP (v2 + addons). Just for the gorgeous flaming swords.

 

Avoid Saerileth like your life depends on it.

Damn right.

 

Now dangit disciple you said you were gonna play thru with saerileth & take screenshots of all of her gory deaths!!! I hope you are still planning on doing this(Please, Please, Please)

Isn't imoen like your half sister and all? thats a little..............creepy

 

She can be considered so. However, this is an often debated point with strong supporters of either side and tends to derail any thread that is unfortunate to bear it. Basically, your shared father being a god that was in different avatars when impregnating women means you probably share no genetic material (and if you did, it would likely be without flaw) and so it becomes debatable whether you are in fact siblings. If you want to discuss it further, I don't mind doing so over PM, but, as I said, doing so here will simply cause us to divert this thread away from its purpose.

In regards to the original question:
Tweak Pack - Unlimited stacking at the least!
Fix Pack - for obvious reasons
Banter Pack - banter is what makes BGII
Flirt Pack - Makes the orignial romances far more interesting

are probably the ones I would not consider playing without. There are others that, in practice I don't play without, but those are the main ones.

The Imoen Romance is indeed well written, although be warned that it is much harder to get than the originals. Jaheria would be far less effort to romance and goes into ToB, so you should take that into account.

Avoid:
A few NPCs- most are fine, but there are some bad apples out there
Total Conversions - you still want to be playing BGII
The Darkest Day - looks like it could be packed with exciting content? Bugged, poorly implemented and badly written

 

Dungeon Crawl, quest pack and unfinished business are indeed must-haves. I would recommend Assassins and Tower of Deception as well.

If you are playing BG2 for the very first time I wouldn't take any NPC mods, but if this is your umpteenth time, Kelsey, Amber and lvl1NPCs really add to the replay value.

 

My experience of mods is not on a level with some others (I was happy with the vanilla game until this year) but of those I've played with I recommend:

Ascension: adds some harder fights, which are all optional bar the final battle. Main reason I installed it was for extra Sarevok stuff (if you kept his Sword of Chaos, you can give it back to him and he will upgrade it - his dialogues fire a bit more regularly - and he has some more input into the final battle) and the fact you now also have the option to turn Balthazar to your side rather than fight him. I use the improved Illasera, Gromnir and Yaga Shura fights because they are more fun. The harder Demogorgon, to me, is not fun, but some people enjoy the challenge.

Angelo - really great NPC mod. Romanceable by females but useful and interesting even if you aren't interested in the romance (though to be honest, it's a really fun romance once you get over him being old enough to be the PC's father). Comes with two quests and you can talk to him a lot. Didn't experience any bugs.

Edwin romance - very fun romance for a female PC (Int of 14 required). Some people have reported problems getting certain events to trigger but it ran without problem for me.

Romantic Encounters - I've only played the female encounters thus far - great naughty fun if you want to shag your way around the Faerun. Some encounters have adult content and others are less explicit. Quite a few are very amusing. I'm going to try a male PC on my next runthrough.

Iylos - a ToB only NPC. Nicely made and he really kicks ass. I had some dialogue issues with the version I tried (2.0) but these were fixed the moment I reported them (it's at v.2.3 now).

I've also tried the Viconia Friendship (for female PCs, and males who would rather romance someone else) and IEP banters. The Vicky friendship isn't always easy to get off the ground but it's quite interesting if you can make it past the first two banters (she's very picky about who she befriends). A ToB component is in the works so you may want to wait for that.

My next runthrough will also feature Unfinished Business - like Ascension you can install different components. I've only played using Sarevok's Remorse (adds some more dialogue for him, plus more about Yoshimo in SoA, which is interesting), Crooked Crane (more about Aulava and Tiro) and a few minor fixes. Will be trying the Valygar/Suna component next time around. There's good stuff here, for sure.

 

That is a pretty harsh thing to say about a mod DoTW, i have it installed myself and i realy realy like the Saerileth mod. It would be more fair to the mod to say that the Saerileth mod wasn't to your liking...but that everyone should try it themselfs to see wether they like it or not.

The fact that you do not like that mod doesn't mean everyone else should dislike it aswell because you write it so.

 

No, but still avoid it if not for the anoying person (Searileth) then for the lousy soundfiles.

 

Different words Shaitan, but the same meaning. You do not like the mod, others do like it. But i will not continue this because that wasn't the point of this thread.

 

Regardless of how one feels about Saerileth, Shaitan makes a valid point- more effort could have been put into making the sounds fit in well. They are rather jarring on occasion as they are.

 

And the idiotic olde english half the time! WT% was up with that? I lasted about 2 minutes before i slaughtered her.

 

I absolutely loved Romantic Encounters. Talk about spicing BG2 up...

Harsh? I'm the freaking DotW, one of the harshest, self-centered a**hole you'll ever find on this board.

But back to the subject - the horrible waste of internet space called Saerileth. She boasts the most horrible soundset I ever had the misfortune of hearing. Then, she has dialogue for just about everything and their dogs. Then there is the fact it's either Charname or that jacka** Edorem, and don't get me started on the guy's pathetic attempt to steal her from you by STRIPPING YOU OF ALL CHARISMA ENHANCING ITEMS. The very first run I did with this annoying little biatch I painfully carried through ToB (a LOT of caffeine and MJ were involved too), and eventually I couldn't take it anymore so I zapped in a helm of opposite alignment, just so I could become normal (that would be chaotic evil) and be rid of this self-righteous, holier-than-thou zealot. Hell, she makes Keldorn look like a freaking peace-loving hippy.

But you do make a point... everyone should try this mod and see for themselves - and see why this mod is one of the most horrible POS ever.

 

Lmao, that is one way of dealing with it..oh well.