Has anyone tried Improved Anvil v6?

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Exactly, so react more often. Constructively, of course.

I do not care with what system BWL is managed and democracy can't work online anyway, since there's always a bottleneck in the sysadmins (usually it is a meritocracy).
While you may be satisfied with the current situation, whatever it is, you can't deny BWL has a bad public image and that doesn't help you in the least.

 

This "bad public image" is a questionable term. BWL is an elite site, in a good meaning. A relatively small number of people like it, while many others dislike it, for various reasons. This is normal. We're glad if more people would like to become BWL members, but we are not going to change on our guidelines and policies to tempt more users.

 

Who said your policies would have to change? And the "elite" status does not automatically come with a bad public image — there are plenty of real world examples of that — so it's a poor argument. There's a big gap between "not liking" and the trolling that is going on on all sides.

 

It does not automatically come with a "bad image", because there is no "bad image". Image depends on who views it: maybe e.g. 1000 players have a "bad" image about BWL because they do not like it or they cannot be members, while the elite e.g. 100 has a good image.

Moreover, just because there are examples that a certain thing CAN BE DONE, it doesn't mean that it can be done ALWAYS. Did you learn mathematics? Just because you can give an example that something is possible, it doesn't mean it can be made possible IN EVERY CASE. It is natural that there are many users who dislike it, because BWL is most the special and unique modding community in the BG2 scene. If you or others disagree with it, fine. The important is, those who like it and visit it think so.

 

The majority counts when public is concerned, and your hypothetical numbers don't help. To clarify, with "public" I meant the whole modding community public, not the small subset you target.

I don't know what you refer to in the second paragraph, but I agree that BWL is in some respects the most special and unique modding community. None else has such a bad public image. Anvil is not the main problem either; you could make freely and publicly available cauliflower growing mods (just an example; could be extremely "elite" and unique too) and you'd still have the same bad press. You cannot command respect without showing some yourself. BWL is not small because of chosing to be a place for good tacticians, but because of the way it interacts with the rest of the community.

 

No need to command respect. Those educated, intelligent users who like BWL give respect to BWL automatically , as they should. Other intelligent users, who do not prefer BWL, simply avoid it. This is also a form of respect. Then there are those, mostly unintelligent or uneducated users (who weren't taught any respect) who try to fight to change BWL and if they feel failure, they spread lies or try to prove how "bad image" BWL has. We do not care about this group of users. They can cook themselves in their own soup. Our public posts (e.g. in this thread) are to clarify some things that may be unclear to new readers and interested visitors.

It is laughable. You cannot even define the "whole modding community", but you can only estimate it, with a big error. It all depends how we approach it. This "whole modding community" has always been the most hipothetic talk ever. Just because some sites (often full with trolls and uneducated or brainwashed users who think too much of themselves), the "mainstream", tries to present themselves as "the modding community". In BWL's eyes, the modding community is much wider than that; with visible, partially visible and "invisible" players. But I do not intend to detail this further. Just a hint: with some common sense, everyone can guess not every user (e.g. the more elite ones) is loud on various FORUMS (e.g. Sikret receives several emails from users who are busy people in real life and do not have time to waste for forum writings, registrations etc).

Lynx Lupo also belongs to the funny people who think they're so clever. If he can tell WHY BWL is "small", then probably he "knows" everything else too, so I don't need to continue communication with him (unless he starts misinforming people so I will have to clear up some points).

So I'm finished this topic for the time being.

Exiled from good, elite things always hurts, doesn't it?

 

Baronius, thank you for enlightening us with your delusions of eliteness. You wouldn't happen to have an uncle in the circus named Kalah would you?

Excerpt from "The Saga of the Weaklings".

"...I think when I get home tonight I am going to re-install IA... oh wait, I'm too weak to do so, poor me, whatever will I do. But wait.. I know! I can pray to the BG gods, Baronius being the head of the pantheon of course!, to show me how to become an elite, master tactician. And mind you, when I say master I mean master as the Infinity Engine is ever so subtle and takes a real GENIUS to figure out the math behind it as the AD&D system is just so ELITE! How will ever figure out THACO???

So any of you fools or weaklings in the Western world who deem yourself worthy of such a challenge as IA, you might as well stop now as you are all nothing compared to the all knowing Baronius and cannot fathom the true meaning of modding and hobbying."

The end..........

 

Baronious, you need to look up the definition of "elite", and replace it with somethng like "limited". Or maybe "deluded". Because believe me, there is nothing elite about BWL or IA.

 

The practice shows differently

 

Hello, long time no writing here.

Last posts, especially the ones written by Baronius, seem to divert from the topic, and they show neither whether the BWL site will be operational soon (for all those who were lured to pay their $30 for membership), or anything about IA 6.0 mod (which I absolutely doubt that Baronius has completed even once BTW).

As for IA 6.0 - although most of the fights are made even more challenging thanx to mainly buffing old Anvil enemies with new fearsome resistances, immunities and abilities (like for example making the Ice golem highly resistant to fire, and adding Purge Magic ranged and on hit ability), and despite there are several new quests (for Sikret's chosen kits and classes) it's the most narrow-minded mod I've ever seen so far. It cuts out a player's creativity and forces the player to guess via what exactly way Sikret planned for each battle to be won. Otherwise, some Sikret-implemented 'scripts' - i.e. cheats - will probably trigger.

If a player dares to take some party members which don't fall into Sikret's favourite classes or kits (or decides to play with 4 or less party members in a team), the player will stumble on some 'modifications' - pure cheats, and I mean cheats - which will 'force' the player to most probably start anew.

For anyone willing to try IA 6.0, I'd recommend the IA 5.0 without experience or gold exploits. It's much more fun, indeed.

For anyone who's bored with IA 5.0 and still wants to have easier early games with IA 6.0, I am ready to give some tips, or even to reveal some of the 'missed' by Sikret and his testing team infinite gold or experience exploits.

 

Hi saros. Yeah, this thread has gotten so far off topic, that the most off-topic thing you can do at this point is discuss the original topic here.


Current working topic: Hungary (or, at least Baronius) vs. the rest of the world.

 

Does this mean you like to play narrow-minded mods, saros?

 

Actually, if anyone wants to wade through the crap in the G3 threads, they will find that saros's posts tried to focus on the mod rather than the BS. And in keeping with that trend, saros has, in fact, complied with Tal's latest directive.

 

Sorry Tal, you are correct of course, we are way off topic. Though I did try to answer the original poster's quesion honestly on page 1 and was bashed for it by you know who.

 

Are you suggesting Baronius and Lord Voldemort have something in common? As we all know Voldemort is a lich (Horcruxes); could that be it? Yes most definitely; that explains why Baronius keeps popping up time and again even though we defeat him in every single battle of reasoning: We haven't destroyed his phylactery!!!!

On a more on-topic note: While diversity has kinda been tossed out of the window, IAv6 is good if you follow one of the 'chosen' paths. However I don't blame Sikret for making certain classes more appealing for a protagonist (except the redundancy of thieves and bards, I fully blame him there); he's just making content for classes he likes the most and after all, this is a hobby like Baronius said. Version 6 was supposed to be the Druid upgrade, except a map artist Sikret was working with didn't finish the new Druid specific quest map in time IIRC. Sikret just takes his time to develop content for other classes. There are a lot of small changes from v5, both good and bad I think. I really like how vampires are actually dangerous now f.i.

I don't know about paying 3 times the price of the game itself just for a mod however...

 

Ok, I am actually the OP in this thread, and first of all let me say that I'm sorry for not replying in a thread that I created, but it took a rather unfortunate turn.

Thanks to everyone who tried to answer my question. I am playing the mod these days and would be interested in discussing its contents with others who are playing or have played it.

My current run is a very standard IA v6 necromancer protaganist with full party.

Necro PC
Custom sorceress
Riskbreaker (flails, short swords, bastard swords)
Custom kensai (2H swords, staff, halberds)
Valygar (Katana, Club, short sword)
Cernd

This group is without doubt a very standard IA setup with 3 single classed fighters (IA is not very fond on multiclasses) 2 arcane and 1 divine caster. The only hint of any originality is having Cernd the auramaster instead of a custom Ranger(7)/Cleric dualclass.

Haven't played much yet. Average exp is 750 000, levels 10-11. So far I did:
Cleared lvl 1+2 of d'arnise keep
Sided with thieves guild and finished the quests up until going for Bodhi.
Suna Seni
Killed the Shadow Jailor
Killed Mae'var (declined guild)
Druid Grove - became great druid and did the 1st quest. (also killed the genies and became hero of Trademeet)
Killed Mekrath and freed Haer'Dalis
Joined Jaheira and did all her quests (great to get a few +1 RoP and CoP)
Cernds missing child quest.
Got Lilarcor
Various quests in Amn: Fallen paladins, bridge murders, Sir Sarles, Harpers/Montaron etc, killed Beastmaster and freed Hendak in CC)

I think that's most of it. My first 'real' fight coming up soon will be the pirate hideout in the docks, but I'm desperately trying to find a scroll of Imp.haste before going there - I've searched everywhere but to no avail, perhaps someone could give me a hint as to where it could be obtained?

First thoughts: A lot of planning is needed, first and foremost weapons proficencies need to be well thought out, as do sorceress spell picks and equipment distrubution have to be. Your first xp/gold/item questing route also have to be pretty well planned. A party trying a challenge before they're 'supposed' to can be severely punished. It feels very linear.
I do however find it very enjoyable and tactically challenging, although sometimes I wish I could device more sound tactics as I do seem to rely on greater malison + emotion spam and hope the Imp.Inv SI:div mage doesn't make his save. (Their levels always seem to be significantly higher than mine as I've never seen a remove magic spell have any effect whatsoever).

That's it for now. I hope I haven't stirred the ashes of the earlier debate in this thread, and I also hope that there actually are people here that's interested in playing and talking about the mod. :-)

 

I'm not trying to be difficult here, but my impression is that IA has a pretty limited fan base, and really isn't something people at SP play, so you're not likely to get much in the way of responses. Wouldn't you be better off discussing this on the IA official forum?

Of course, now that I've said this, watch a bunch of meaningful replies follow.

Edit: Out of curiosity, I just went to BWL's boards, and I see that the last post in the IA forum was over 5 weeks ago. It seems that IA isn't even all that popular on its own forum, so you might not have any luck there either.

 

You're probably right, Splunge. I like the Sorcerers board though, so I had hoped that someone else here played it, and if not, maybe they would still be interested in reading about my experience.