Looking for mods to spice up the game.

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I know there are tons of mods around for BG2, but I'm a lazy bastard and so I don't have time nor the intrest to start testing any of them to find out if they are really good. I've played SoA and ToB through several times unmodded but there's only so many times one can go through these games before they come overused. So now I've finally decided it's time to try out some mods. Here's a few points I'd like you to take into consideration when you recommend me anything.

1) I don't need any more NPC's, the old ones are sufficent enough, the same goes for items. New romances and extra dialogue would also be quite useless.
2) More difficulty and something new to battles would be fun, but I don't want it to become so difficult that it actually stops being fun anymore and can't be dealt with a six person party.
3) Nothing absurd. I don't want to play a vampire or a werewolf or meet a dragon in every damn dungeon or fight twenty demiliches during the game. Everything has to be in reasonable proportions.
4) The mods recommended would have be something that affect the entire game and not just individual sections. I won't download anything that affects only a limited part of the game.

Oh and if there's a review for the mod you recommend here on SP then please mention it, and if there is not then a short description of what it adds to the game would be nice.

Thanks for all recommendation in advance.

 

The only mod I can think of that makes the game more difficult is Tactics, hosted by Weimer. There's a review of it here on Sorcerer's Place, in the Mod Review forum. How much you'll like Tactics probably depends on what kind of player you are. Myself, I've been playing for a long time, but I never got very good at skills and tactics, so I find it to be somewhat excessive. (There's a component called "Always Toughest Random Spawns in Dungeons", and that's exactly what it means. You'll always meet Spirit Trolls in Nalia's castle, there will always be liches in the Temple Ruins, and so forth.) But it's a popular mod and it does exactly what it promises.

Other than that, most mods introduce new NPCs, so I guess they're out. I wouldn't recommend most of them anyway, as the new NPCs are often gimmicky and sometimes quite blatantly a Mary Sue.

(Now, I know there's a little Mary Sue in every fictional character, but there's a limit to how far it can reasonably go. The connotation for me is of a character who is unreasonable with respect to her setting and is the reason I refuse to read certain books.)

 

There are a lot more mods that make the game more difficult

What I think you could do is go read the readmes and introductions of the mods. Either soccerers' place, pocket plane group or forgotten wars etc. And decide yourself what you like.

e.g. the readme/introduction will say:
in this mod you will be fighting twenty demiliches in one room....
or
in this mod boo will become a real giant hamster and eat minsc ...
etc etc.
It only takes a few minutes to read the whole lists.

Then decide yourself. It's really quite hard for people to recommend anything as people don't really know what you want. Something can be "useless" or "absurd" the first time, but after a while it might not be absurd anymore. Nobody knows how you'll adapt etc.

[ June 06, 2005, 06:12: Message edited by: 14 ]

 

Try Check The Bodies. It adds many quests throughout the game, found here: http://ctb.forgottenwars.net/
There's also an optional patch to let you skip the Candlekeep chores, which is very useful.

Unfinished Business adds quite a bit too. http://www.pocketplane.net/mambo/index.php?option=content&task=blogcategory&id=101&Itemid=80

 

Tweak packs (weimer's ease of use, G3 tweaks, Simding0's tweak) all make replaying more fun. There's also Ashes of Embers which rules, but it does alter the game a little more severely, but its still just a tweak pack.

Unfinished business is good, as is Ding0's quest pack.

For difficulty, I don't recommend tactics. Unless you like to cheese your way through, it becomes impossible quickly. Instead, I'll continue the Ding0 advertisement and advise you to get DEF JAM, which lowers the amount of XP you get, making things harder without silliness.

 

a lot of tactics is ok ... but definitely un-install the improved illyich mod as this is so overpowered for the start of the game and you have to use real cheese to beat it

ascension/redemption look good but you have to wait a long time before you actually play these

 

I forgot Ascension. That actually is my personal favorite. The best part about it is that it blends well with the rest of the game (it does only affect the very end, I guess) and seems plausible. It's damn hard though.