Six year gap replay questions.

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Hi, I used to come here a LONG time ago, and I used to play BG and IWD religiously a LONG time ago, oh look it's in the title, six years.

In any case, I'm starting what might be my last playthrough of BG. Before you ask, I'm play BG2 and ToB, I started at BG2 and only beat BG1 one time for the beating it factor. Starting at BG2 sort of killed BG1 for me.

In any case, this is going to be a long post and I'd be really happy if you could read through some of my questions and help me out with a few things.

Here we go,

Mods - I remember jack all of mods aside from the fact that I need to install, official patch, baldurdash, widescreen and then any other mod that doesn't have compatibility issues. What I don't remember is anything about mods.

I know I used to use harder fight mods(esp for firkgraag and the ToB bosses) but I was wondering if there is a mod that improves the difficulty on ALL major fights.

You see, I've never had a problem beating these games, in fact a lot of the time it's been really easy. I don't even struggle with improved mindflayers, firekraag, abazigal etc. So I'm looking for some good improved difficulty mods. I'd like to have to actually care about my spell choices and not randomly fireball into my warrior this time

Also, I've never cared about any romance but viconias, is there any good romance extensions? I think I remember there being one but it was so-so.

Finally when it comes to modding, I want addition. This might be my last playthrough so I'm looking for as much length and variety as possible. Items, characters(except solaufein) and most important, anything that adds gameplay or areas.

Moving on, I'd like some opinions and reccomendations, my standard party looks like this:

Main Char - Usually a warrior or paladin with two handers
Viconia as my cleric
Custom char - Mage

These are my only standard spots, I don't like a lot of the characters in the game(i.e Minsc is boring, I don't like gnomes in general from wow syndrome) but I usually pick up a few that I like like Edwin and Valygar.

I'd like to try some variety this time, I'm not really looking to powergame, just try out different things and make a concrete party.

Of course, some classes I've never really played and I'd like to know what people suggest. Note that I never really multi-class because I like clean cut classes but I want to try that out too.

I'm mainly considering brining along a ranger variation or a thief. I never find druids useful(ever, and I've had a druid main char ) so basically what do people recommend for an interesting rounded playthrough.

Thanks for the help guys, I'm gonna go get started reading up on mods.

 

If you want a hard game overall, try SCSII. Personally I got frustrated with it because it was simply too difficult, but it's highly modular and well done overall. It doesn't give stupid abilities to enemies or put random monsters in places they don't belong, it mainly just makes them smart. Now everytime you forget stoneskin your mage gets backstabbed. Fun isn't it?

Then there's Ascension for the boss battles in ToB, of course.

And I can't live without G3's fixpack and tweakpack, that's an unconditional.

 

Be careful about the mods you install, if they add extra items and XP they ruin the difficulty on the long run.

You can try an ironman (or minimum reload) game without spoilers for a challenge.

Choose sorcerer instead of mage, spontaneous casting is great fun.

 

Hey, the ironman playthrough is actually really good advice(esp since I play ironman on warlords )

Otherwise I basically found some mods I know for sure I'm going to use.

- Quest Pack
- D'arnise romance
- Assasinations
- Banter Pack
- NPC flirt pack
- Keto

I was wondering if anyone knows which is the best difficulty enhancing mod? I'm definently going to be downloading the Bioware employ ToB upgrade(because I remember that being challenging in some places as long as I abstain from overpowered tactics like contingencies vs dragons).

Basically, from what I know, there is SCSII and Tactics modification that are credible. Which one would you recommend for a hardcore playthrough?

Keep in mind that I've beaten these games several times on increased difficulty with restrictions like no ranged weapons or no prebuffing by sending in my warrior and lobbing enemies with aoe spells I also know a lot of the tricks and weaknesses of stronger enemies(like abazigals son or whatever he is falling like a sack of potatoes to chain lightning spam)

Thanks for the help.

 

I would use a bit of both actually. Tactics is somewhat old at this point and no longer maintained (as far as I'm aware). It also is more about modifying certain enemies and encounters more than modifying the entire game, although obviously some parts of it, like smarter mages, do affect the entire game.

I find SCS II to be more systemic and thorough in its approach. Its modifies nearly everything and is pretty consistent about it.

So, what I would do, is read the readmes of both mods to get a better understanding of what they do, and what they offer. Then select a few components from each - remember to make sure that the Tactics components you select are compatible with SCS II. Then install!

 

Mods will definitely add to your replay value. They are the reason I keep playing and got into modding myself.

 

Peronally I really recommend these mods

Ascenscion (must have)
Item Upgrade (useful and fun)
Wheels of Prophecy (adds to the TOB story)
Unfinished Business (adds to the SOA story)

 

My recommadation sounds like this:
Widescreen Mod (Very nice on my laptop)
Ascension
BG2 Fixpack
D0Quest Pack (Good smaller quests)
UB (must have)
Alternatives (Must have for various alternative ways to spellhold)
Item Pack (The best itempack, not OP like Item Upgrade found here)
Wheels of Prophecy (More ToB story? Yes!)
Tales of the Deep Garden + White Queen + Innershades (Very beautiful quest mods)
Fishing For Troubles (Large, very well made, Bioware like mod, which runs through more chapters)
Dungeon Crawl (Fun if you know the comic)
BanterPacks
Imoen Friendship
IEPBanters
Romantic Encounters
Crossmod (if you use NPC)
Rogue Rebalancing (PnP rogues/bards? Yes please)
BG2 Tweaks
Spell Revision & Item Revision (mandatory)
Uniqe containers
SCSII (I take most, but very modular)
aTweaks

Cheers