4th party question.

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So I've completed the game without mods on normal mode with two 6 man parties and one 4 man party, respectively.

Wondering what you veterans think I should try next? I know my difficulty at this point needs to go up, and I'm really liking the higher levels/smaller party setups.

My 4 man party on my last run was almost no fun due to just breezing through it, am I ready for HoF?

 

Well, you could give HOF a try with the exported characters from one of your previous parties. I think that most people do HOF with characters that are automatically exported immediately after finishing normal mode.

Maybe try to clear out the docks, etc. to see how you handle HOF.

 

I find HoF boring. You could try soloing (although it makes the game easier at times, due to the challenge rating you'll find yourself not gaining any XP which will make it rather interesting).

Another option that is even better than HoF is using Tal Rasha's Tactics4IWD2 mod, it's challenging without being cheesy. Just make sure you have a Cleric in your party.

 

Carad, personally, I'd never bother going solo. I'd find that infinitely more boring than HOF, because to me D&D is a party-based game, and playing solo is just sooooo anti-D&D to me. It makes it seem more like some first party shooter.

I agree that the Tactics mod could be a good idea. I'd also suggest my own Light of Selune mod which adds more content; over 140+ new items (both normal and HOF modes), improved (aka nastier) traps, tweaks to some classes, upgrades to a fair number of existing items*, and 4 new merchants (2 in Targos, 1 in the Wandering Village, and 1 in Khuldahar... though you'll have to look hard to find this one... he is hiding from the Yuan-ti in one of the buildings that you can get into).

* By "upgrades", I mean that some items in IWD2 are rather underpowered (at least for their location) or overpowered. Some underpowered for their location items I simply moved to an earlier location where their powerlevel was more appropriate. And some items just need some tweaking to make them "better".

The "new" items are mostly entirely original, but a few are conversions of IWD1 items. All new items fall across a very broad spectrum ... new armors, new weapons, new amulets, rings, belts, etc. ... though mostly new armors and weapons. (I tried to put a special emphasis on creating new armors, as well as upgrading existing armors, because the people I talked to here felt that that was an area where IWD2 was lacking...)

 

This sounds fun. Link?

 

Hootpad, my Light of Selune mod is hosted right here on sorcerers.net. It's on the IWD2 Mods page (link below).

http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/IWD2/index_mods.php

LOS is currently at rev 2 (I updated it to rev 2 a few weeks ago), but I'm looking into doing a rev 3 right now... adding more new items, possibly some more new merchants, adding some level 7 arcane spell scrolls to certain merchants a little earlier so that wizards aren't hurt quite so much by a lack of such L7 scrolls at a certain point in the game, and so on.

 

Hootpad - Definitely give Tactics a try, if you're looking for something new. Be prepared for some pretty nasty fights! Also, you might try a "theme" party for some different roleplaying. There are plenty listed on the boards. I'm considering an Ilmaterian party (all Ilmater clerics, monks, paladins, or mixtures thereof) to investigate what's happening in Targos.

Crucis - Glad to see you're back to updating LOS!

 

Glad to see you too, Acrux.

 

Crucis, I had some issues with a IWD1 mod I tried to install a few years ago. Have you had any big issues with your Light of Selune mod? I (obviously) like this game and don't mind playing it in my spare time "ad nauseum" but I hate trying to figure out bug-related issues.

 

dogsoldier, the only real install issues that I've every had with LOS are this...

A. LOS can have install compatibility problems with the Ease of Use mod. Never install LOS before Ease of Use. (Causes a problem in the randomized treasure block of the EoU mod.)

B. There's a new mod called the Widescreen Mod that allows IE games to run on widescreen monitors. Never install the Widescreen mod before LOS. (Causes a problem when trying to edit some CRE files during the LOS installation.)

The problem in both of these cases has to do with the different revisions of WeiDU. One of the things that WeiDU does (which I really hate) is that when you start an install of a WeiDU mod, it will first look at any other mods in the game's folder and will check the revision of the WeiDU instance for each mod. And if it's older than the version currently running, it will overwrite the older ones.

The problem is that if you haven't installed those other mods yet, it's possible that the newer revision of WeiDU may be incompatible with the TP2 installation script code that the mod was written to use. This is why the above two cited examples are serious issues with LOS.

LOS's version of WeiDU is newer than EoU and will cause EoU to crap out. And the WS mod's version of WeiDU is newer than LOS' version and will cause LOS' installation to crap out. I brought this to the attention of the people currently maintaining WeiDU, and they fixed the incompatibility issue between WS and LOS. However, they claim that this overwriting functionality is a "good thing" for reasons that I cannot dispute. However, I believe that it's a bad functionality because mods and their TP2 scripts were written to function at the revision level of the version of WeiDU that the mod is shipped with, and there's no guarantee of backwards compatibility with WeiDU.... For crying out loud, between the time I released rev 1 of LOS and the time that the WS mod was released, over 15 rev's of WieDU were released, and for whatever reason, WieDU lost its ability to properly process IWD2 CRE files. (This was fixed about 2 weeks ago by the WieDU people.) But it shows how this overwriting thing can really screw up a bunch of mods that were written at rather different times with different revs of WeiDU.

Anyways, I know what you're saying about trying to debug mod problems.

I'd like to think that LOS is about as easy to debug as possible, as its TP2 file is clearly written and formatted, unlike some other mods (assuming that one understands TP2 code). But to be fair, as big as LOS' TP2 installation script file is (nearly 2300 lines), it's really not all that complex compared to many of the BG2 mods. LOS TP2 code is almost all very straightforward, and often very repetitive.

As far as runtime issues within LOS itself, there were a few minor bugs that didn't cause any truly major problems... things that never showed up in my single test run, simply because I just don't use the complex multiclassed characters that many powergamers do. And some of my tweaks to the Ranger class didn't work well in multi-classed characters. So I just yanked them in Rev 2. Other than that, LOS seems to run rather well. After all, it's really mostly a lot of new items, and new items aren't that hard to get right. The new merchants and their dialogs took some work to get right (and to create some interesting dialogs), but they work fine.

Rev 2 of LOS ought to be a very functionally stable mod. ((Of course, if anyone comes across any bugs, feel free to report them to me....))

 

Hmmm, well, thanks. I haven't played the game with any mods, so yours would be the first; at this time I'm not seeing any issues with "mod" compatability then.

I am definately intrigued with having more armors available.

 

If you'd like to up the ante AND make the community a favor, I'd suggest the following:

- Try using a caster without putting points into Concentration skill, and use that caster aggressively, ie. not only hiding in the back ranks all the time.
- Use some oddball multiclass combos such as the Monk/Sorcerer, leveling in both classes equally. Monk AC + Mirror Image should make for an interesting mage killer character, but I haven't heard anyone actually test it.
- Put dualwielding and/or sneak attacks into focus and see how they compare with your previous experiences.

And finally: Would you be so kind to post the exact amounts of exp your 4 man party's characters had at the end of the Normal mode? (Preferably at the endpoints of each Chapter too, if you still have the saves available.) That'd make a nice data point for my calculations of the dynamic exp system.

 

Sure man, I'll check all my saves and get back to you shortly, although I probably dont have every chapter, i should have most and deffinitely the ending xp.