Tower of Deception for BG2

Remove all ads!

Tower of Deception - a mod for BG2
Author: Valiant

You are hired by a mage called Tian to go visit the tower and find something valuable for him.

Play the D&D adventure Tower of Deception in Baldur's Gate 2!

Requires ToB with the latest patch.
More information: http://www.blackwyrmlair.net/~valiant

Have fun!

[ March 31, 2007, 20:28: Message edited by: Baronius ]

 

ooh looks cool! I'm installing this now for the M/T solo run I just started (my first game as an arcane magic user).

Sounds great, thanks to all involved!

Quick question: I hope this isn't the type of mod that will have me fighting uber-cheese beasts? And hopefully I wont be finding stuff like Katana +9: Instakill in there? I guess my question is, is this balanced, or are we talking uber-cheesy beasts and uber-overpowered reward loot?

 

Fight is included, but no uber-stuff in this medium-sized mod. You will have to think a bit as well to solve the quest, but no extreme hard riddle.

The Tower is waiting for you -- enjoy the new area graphics and challenges!

 

Hey Baronius,

I just gave your mod a try (up to the second floor of the tower) and I"d like to share some of my impressions.

The readme recommended a party between levels 10-13, so I loaded up an old game with my level 16 Skald and Minsc, Keldorn, Viconia, Jaheira and Yoshimo. The average level was a bit above, but I figured, what the hell.

First thing I noticed is that the dialogue is fairly well-written. It doesn't scream THIS IS A MOD and is not full of typos (the only thing I recall is an insignificant missing period in the option 4, first answer charname is able to give). Also, the text wasn't too long, which is good.

When my party got to the island, the video kicked in. It fits the BG-video style really well, and it was a pleasant surprise to see something like this in a mod. Actually, the few sceneries I saw were as beautiful as anything made by Bioware, and it makes me wonder if they're borrowed from some other IE game. If they're not, kudos to the artist because he rocks.

***** FROM HERE ON THERE ARE MINOR SPOILERS *****

The first battle felt okay and not overpowered. I wondered what an item like that would be doing in the ship's barrel, but it's a small detail after all.

Then entering the tower, I was impressed by the character's soundset. Again, in sound + vision, this mod is very well done and up there with original Bioware content. Problem is, I think the XP award for the creature was way too generous. It wasn't that much of a challenge to my group and I don't see why it should be to a level 10 party. It sure beats hard and fast, but nothing that 2 strong warriors and a bolt of glory can't kill in a few rounds.

Next room. I missed traps. For dungeon rooms with that many containers, it's practically mandatory that something is not what it seems. I noticed there was a scroll of protection from lightning, but didn't give it much attention...

...so in the next room, I was surprised with unusually strong shadows and one master shadow that casted out Chain Lightning with zero casting time. Constantly. If it happened once, we'd have an interesting enemy, but my whole party died in a matter of seconds. Same thing on the 2nd try.

At this point I stopped playing it and browsed here to write this. I didn't like that much the fact that in order to win a battle, I MUST use some metagaming (like, knowing what's ahead and preparing when your group actually don't know what's there).

Maybe it's just me, so someone else there might not give up so easily on the quest. I might try it again later, of course.

Please don't think I'm bashing your mod, though. I'll have to say for the third time, the visual content is simply amazing. Congrats.

 

Chain lightning isn't casted by Shadow master, but is generated by machinery in that room, switch it off.

 

Thanks for pointing that out. But still, it happens too damn fast! This, combined with all the shadows attacking, killed my party in about 10 seconds.

It's a good idea for a challenge, but IMHO, it could use some tweaking/nerfing. It's not that I get frustrated because I had to find out that there was a switch; it's the fact that I didn't even have the time to do it.

 

I tested it and it wasn't so difficult. One character ran to switch off lightning machine, cleric started to Turn Undead and rest attacked Shadow master. It was finished in few rounds.

 

Ohh you guys never stop to amase us BG players!

This mod looks awesome and I am soo dying to try it out! Thank you very much!

 

Just to make sure everyone knows it, Valiant is the author of the mod, so my advice/comments are no more than a tester's/contributor's words.

It's not easy to make such mods or even games which are both challenging and can avoid metagaming. If something is challenging, you might lose the battle and reload (because the game offers reloading), and thus you will unavoidably have precognitions for your next try. Yeah, the best feeling would be if everything were realistic, and your preparations for a battle could be purely causal...

I'm glad to see that you like this BlackWyrm mod (or have positive anticipations), guys!

 

Hopefully my M/T will try this today!

Also, very happy to see BWL back up and running!

 

Heh, I looked at the SSs, and 'who are you? It hardly matters, for your kind won't be tolerated here bla bla' now now where do I remember this line?





Ofcourse! Guthma from IWD2, righto? Heh!

 

yes, a good deal of the dialogue seems to be borrowed from other parts of IE games. The mage that grants you this quest reminded me much of a certain Lord Jierdan of the Windspear Hills, for instance!

 

Isn't it a bit exaggerating to say a "good deal" of dialogues is borrowed? Even the original game re-uses much voice-acted text that is supposed to be specific, so I don't find it strange or surprising... the Baloar's sound rather fits a demon in my opinion, by the way. If it was Irenicus' voice, it would be weird though...

 

Oh I didn't mean it as a bad thing at all! I was just pointing it out as a kinda fun thing, to try and guess where I have heard little bits of dialogue before!

IMO It does not detract from the mod at all! Of course I haven't gotten into the actual tower yet. I really wanted to start last night so I talked to the mage and everything, but I got scared and think I'll do the Trademeet quests to get some exp before trying this!

Anyways, this mod looks very cool and I dont think the text-borrowing is a big deal at all.

 

Yes the text does seem borrowed from other quests but it's no big deal, the mod is well made and will be a welcome addition to my standard BG install.

There's just one little bug I'd like to ask about. The mage didn't appear for me (might be because I didn't start a new game but installed this mod on my existing one), so I had to CLUA him in which worked. However after I completed the quest and returned to Athkatla the mage was gone so I had to CLUA him again. Now the problem is that he was unaware that I completed the quest so he gave me the introduction dialogue again and took me to the sailor. The sailor however "knew" that I have complected the quest and he transported me back to the mage who now gave me my reward.

I know that in the end the whole thing worked but it was still a little bug that somewhat lessened the whole experience.

 

I believe it's not an explicit bug. Do you have Unfinished Business installed? As far as I can remember, there is such a problem with a certain component of UB, and the next release of ToD will solve it.

 

Yes, the problem is with the "restored crooked crane" component of UB.

Personally I think I'm going to just uninstall that compnent of UB. It isn't as if it adds much, unless you really love playing games of chance!

 

Yes I do have UB installed, I guess that explains it. Thanks

 

Oh no I have UB too! So is the conflict a serious one, or can it be bypassed like Aegor explained above? I do so have uninstalling mods from my loong list, it tends to cause lots of headache and it is boring.

 

Well the only thing that seems problematic is one (small, very minor) component to UB, the Restored Crooked Crane, so if you can just uninstall that one small component it would be OK I think.

Even if you don't uninstall it though, you can just CLUA the mage in as Aegor mentioned I believe. I have not finished the tower yet, but I had CLUA'd the mage in once and it worked ok for the beginniing of the quest.