When difficulty increasing mods are just not enough...

Remove all ads!

Hey there, I love SCS and other quest mods which enhance the game's difficulty, being a die-hard fan of the game and official mod freak out here. Lately, in my current BGT game I tried something different. My enemies are smarter thanks to wonderful mod SCS, but I really wanted to up the dificulty so I edited some major enemy CRE files via ShadowKeeper.

I tried the chess-type battle field in Durlag's Tower. I seriously buffed the enemies via ShadowKeeper. Gave pawns a big level, THAC0, HP and AC boost. And upped their movement speed so they could quickly reach the oter side and become queens. Boosted the levels of all other creatures as well, gave them all +3 weapons created from enchanted weapon spell, so they are powerful but unlootable. Rooks were massively upgraded, a couple level ups, I gave them longbows+3 from enchanted weapon spell and a few dispelling arrows and other more powerful arrows from mods, inferno arrows, hammer arrows etc. for added fun. For flavour, I gave each enemy an immunity to the weapon it uses, so pawns, equipped by +3 hammer were immune to crushing, rooks immune to missile, knights slashing etc. Gave all minor enemies %50 or more MR as well.

Finally, the King was the final touch. Raised his level to 20, and his HP, THAC0 etc. accordingly. Set MR to 100. And gave him the undroppable weapon of planetars, a vorpal sword with dispelling effect. Scary! Add the fact that SCS gives him nice prebuffing and smart spell casting, he became...almost too much. (and lots of fun, more below!)

Keep in mind that my party has survived the battles of various mods, Dark Side of the Sword Coast, Secret of the Bonehill etc. and are high level with good (well, excellent) equipment. Otherwise this battle would be impossible.

At the start of the battle I was suprised by the speed of the pawns who reached us in a blink, followed by deadlier but slower knights. Rooks were really, really nasty. They first dispelled Khalid's protections via dispelling arrow (Khalid is a F/M) and then killed him with hammering and inferno arrows (they do big fire and crushing damage) Jaheira summoned dire leopards to delay the enemies, Kivan and Coran were the heavy hitters, especially Kivan, with his archer kit, and powerful ripper bow, true grandmaster in it, did most of the damage to kill the pawns and knights. Rooks targeted him and I had to run to him and apply some healing frequently (my char. a cleric/wild mage) Imoen tried to dispel the enemy's buffs to no avail, Jaheira, donned with powerful armor and best AC, tried to block the enemies. But the pawns and knights tore through my stoneskins and my char had to quickly cast a Shadow Door before being overwhelmed. Here is a nice screenshot.

http://i52.tinypic.com/rs8ntc.jpg Notice Khalid dead, Jaheira trying to summon more fodder, my character wounded and darting for the Shadow Door, some pawns turned into Queens, casting more spells to cause more trouble for us. Also I like the anime-style portraits I use for NPCs. (Imoen, Jaheira, Khalid, Kivan, Coran) they are cute.

My character safe with the invisibility, ran to Kivan's back while Imoen and Jaheira continued to tank. This proved a nice strategy, Kivan doing massive damage, killing an enemy/round, while my character continously healing him from behind, Jaheira and Immy being barely touched by the mooks meanwhile. We killed them all, but King remained untouched.

He was nigh untouchable! Even Kivan could not hit him with his arrows, either missing or protection from missiles and many other spells protecting the King. Jaheira rushed to tank, gulping a pro from magic potion so she was safe from the vorpal effect. Funny thing, since planetar sword has no animation, King seemed to attack with his hand...which is scary, considering what a single touch of his can do! (in a previous attempt he has chunked Immy with the swing of the back of his hand. Coolio!) Dispelling him did not work, he was improved invisible and thus could not be targeted with spells. So, Immy casted a globe of invulnerability and rushed to King's side, while he was busy trying to 'touch' Jaheira, she giggled and looked around, and with her detect illusions ability, dispelled King's illusions. Here is the screen shot: Notice the lightning bolt coming for Immy, hence the globe of inv. http://i52.tinypic.com/2afbyas.jpg

With his invisibility gone, my char quickly casted a Breach on the King, which left him butt-naked. Notice him trying to cast more illusions to protect his facade (good scriptin via SCS) http://i54.tinypic.com/sfjspw.jpg

And then we all pounded him, disrupting his casting, and Jaheira landed the finishing blow ('for the fallen!') http://i54.tinypic.com/2d7fx1s.jpg Notice the good XP bonus, for he was THAT difficult and required immense team work, and luck. (thankfully we had Coran on our side, for luck is always on the side of the romantic, no?) After the battle my character raised Khalid and Jaheira was not even (too) angry for his short death, the battle was just that difficult.

Anyway, I had loads of fun (pun intended, indeed I had to do some reloads) and experienced a very memorable battle. All thanks to mods, and ShadowKeeper, and my err, 'little ideas'. And just wanted to share with you. I might try to edit mor enemies in the future to seriously up the difficulty and fun of the battles. Heck maybe I could do my own mod some day (yeah keep dreaming) Thank you for reading and any ideas are welcome!

 

Way cool! I love reading epic-battle reports.
D's Tower was always a place for tuff stuff. And upping the enemies some more is nothing short of insane!

 

You're nuts, Silverstar .

 

Well, setting the creatures level has no effect beyond the tiny little fact that they become harder to insta kill with level drain, and some other level based stuff, which are very tiny percentage.
Unless you install the SCS'es after you make the change, as then the level actually makes a difference as the mod itself recalculates the creatures proper values.

 

Yes, kinda, but in a good way, no?

Yes I know that, but as I increase the level of an enemy, I increase its HP, THAC0, and saving throws, and number of attacks accordingly. Also, increasing movement rate makes for wonderful tactical advantage for enemies.

For example, I upgraded werewolves, giving them 25 CON and fighter class (hence they got all the benefits of CON, massive HP and regeneration boost) and beefed up their lvls and THAC0s, also set their movement rate to 5, 8 for greater versions. They were really fast, brutal and exceptionally durable hunters and looked scary on the screen too, charging with great speed, surrounding my characters and trying to rip them apart! The werewolf island was actually quite fun now. Oh, also I added 15-20 more werewolves with the console instantly, at the end of the quests when the whole village went berserk. That was an all-out war for survival.

 

Of course, you always inspire me! I dare say I would not have tried many of the harder mod combinations if it wasn't for your numerous reports on your exploits .