Icewind Gate - Delta version

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Well... killing the red and the shadow dragon went fine. In the temple of Amaunator on the altar is a scroll of disintegrate and it did the trick and no one got hurt. Against Firkraag the third disintegrate destroyed him - he didn't manage to kill any of my party, but it was close: all my summoned help was killed and Jaheira was both buffeted unconscious and getting hit fast. I'm not sure if other spells I chucked against him worked, there was too much happening at the same time to keep track.

Funny thing about that wing buffet is that passing the save does nothing - you get unconscious for a long time anyway. I don't know a way to prevent it from happening, it's brutal and renders dragon battles next to impossible barring a lucky D. In IWD2 the dragon had no such weapon and was possible to kill in a fair fight.

 

That's funny. A "fair fight" against a Dragon?! LMAO!

 

^Well, a fight that takes some skill, at least. It's not the most satisfying way to use one hit instakill -spell* to kill most powerful opponents out there, but as long as the wing buffet incapacitates everything for (probably) 10 rounds within sunfire range from the dragon and nothing protects against it, it's the only way to beat them I know of**. No meatshield tank or summon can take 200+ points of autohitting damage per round for long (and about that is what the dragons do).

*Even doing that requires some luck, since dragons have both Spell Resistance and fort saves through the roof.

** Ok, you can Acid Fog spam Firkraag to death, but that's not very satisfying either.

edit: Crap. I saved in Brynnlaw (no better than 6th level spells available there either) after Sanik was killed and... well... the save is broken. Oh well, it seems the wisest thing to avoid this from happening again is probably to reinstall the whole shebang. I had some IWD2-NPC mod texts flying around and bugging the game texts, may have caused other stuff too.

Ishad Nha, do you know how well do the stronghold quests work? Last time I tried I had trouble with Paladin quests, and due to the solamnic knights going hostile bug mage sphere is out as an option, but I think running a thieves' guild could be fun for a change. Also, have you managed to get the Harper quests to work? Jaheira never left my party nor did anything else trigger them either (yes, I did the Rylock/Xzard & Baron Ployer stuff).

Other buggy seeming stuff: Keldorn met with his wife, got the confession conversation, but nothing after that happened and no dude appeared in the Den of Seven Vales either. It would've been nice to let the man go home for a change.

Anomen's quests seem not to work very well either - after I persuaded him to abide the law the trigger to confront his father about it didn't work (the trigger made party go to him but no conversation happened and the quest didn't begin - Cor just says that he has nothing more to say and no confrontation happens).

 

"Ishad Nha, do you know how well do the stronghold quests work?"
No, I have only done the Paladin quest in IWG2.
"Last time I tried I had trouble with Paladin quests,"
Babysitting quest requires Detect Evil to work properly, IWD2 lacks this. You will need to alter the relevant script, AR0415.bcs, to add some clues as to whether the Hurgis guy is fake or real.
"and due to the solamnic knights going hostile bug mage sphere is out as an option,"
This is one of the bugs in the original game, it can be patched by adding this code to AR0411.bcs:
IF
OR(3)
Allegiance("OBSSOL01",ENEMY)
Allegiance("OBSSOL02",ENEMY)
Allegiance("OBSSOL03",ENEMY)
THEN
RESPONSE #100
ChangeEnemyAlly("OBSSOL01",NEUTRAL)
ChangeEnemyAlly("OBSSOL02",NEUTRAL)
ChangeEnemyAlly("OBSSOL03",NEUTRAL)
END

The three OBSSOL## creatures are the Solamnic Knights. This quick fix enables things to work regardless of what the problem actually is. It works in practice. Problem goes away when the nearby fighting ends. They leave anyway.

"Also, have you managed to get the Harper quests to work? Jaheira never left my party nor did anything else trigger them either (yes, I did the Rylock/Xzard & Baron Ployer stuff)."
Check previous pages in this topic, I might check Bioware topic, off hand I don't recall.

"Other buggy seeming stuff: Keldorn met with his wife, got the confession conversation, but nothing after that happened and no dude appeared in the Den of Seven Vales either. It would've been nice to let the man go home for a change."
"Anomen's quests seem not to work very well either - after I persuaded him to abide the law the trigger to confront his father about it didn't work (the trigger made party go to him but no conversation happened and the quest didn't begin - Cor just says that he has nothing more to say and no confrontation happens)."
I played BG2 on GemRB and had to use the Console in both of the cases. Gibberlings 3 forum hosts the GemRB game. (For those not in the know, GemRB enables you to play the Infinity Explorer games. It could in theory enable the playing of IWG2 while using the proper functions from BG2.)

 

Do you know if talking skills are relevant in Icewind Gate?

 

Talking skills: Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidate.
I lost interest in IWD2 around Shaengarne Ford, I never came close to finishing it hence the effect of the talking skills is not clear to me. The use of the skills will be hard-coded into the game program or written into dialog scripts.

If hard-coded into the program, they will work exactly as in IWD2. Hence look at the original IWD2 walkthroughs for a description of what effect the talking skills have.
If written into scripts, original BG2 scripts were altered for IWG2. A good bet is to look for the use of triggers that feature the various skills:
CheckSkill(O:Object*,I:Value*,I:SkillNum*Skills)
CheckSkillGT(O:Object*,I:Value*,I:SkillNum*Skills)
CheckSkillLT(O:Object*,I:Value*,I:SkillNum*Skills)

 

There appears to be a rather nasty bug concerning Cernd. When the Druid grove is cleared, he begins a conversation in which he asks to stay with the party and then the game crashes.

I have no idea how to get Anomen's father to disown him or make it possible to continue the quest by consulting Bylanna. Very frustrating.

edit: Talking skills are implemented. The guy with the documents in the Docks inn can be persuaded with enough intimidate, I bet this isn't the only place requiring those skills.

edit2: Aerie has a sort of dispel loop on herself. After every few round she gets affected by dispel. Not that big of a deal, but annoying when in invisibility sphere and traveling through a horde of enemies.

 

Running his dialog file through DLTCEP might yield insight into this problem.

Even if he has been in the party, if he leaves and then returns to the party, no matter how brief the absence, you may hit the well-known crash that comes from adding an NPC to the party. He might have left the party line-up to fight Faldorn...

Edit:
I am now looking into GemRB, it is good for BG2 but it is not wholly functional for IWD2, lacks levelling up&.
Edit:
The lack of levelling up sounds bad but it can be faked with DaleKeeper2. Simply level up your party in the original IWD2, using the Console, then save the game.
In Dalekeeper2, open both the IWD2 save and the Gem save, then copy the changed statistics from the former to the latter.

 

Hi guys,

I just started playing IWG2, I haven't run into any big **** yet, but I'll let you know. I'm not a modder either, so I don't know how much I can help, but I'll try.

First frustrating thing for me is the music : I'd like to use BG2 music, but the music folders from iwd2 and bg2 are quite different. Apparently, some musics are sorted by the area they are played in, other don't.

Brute force replacing folders doesn't work (but I had to try it). Areas have changed name from bg2 to iwg2, so you would have to change a lot of file names to get it to work, assuming you can access the new area names. However, replacing standard battle music should not be so tough.

I'll tell you more soon.