So many mods so little time

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I enjoy a few custom edits to a game to make it more fun and different when you have exausted the games natural ability to have different paths through the story it presents you. However my most recent searches for editing my bg2 soa and tob games to make them more fun and interesting has turned up a dead end. Yes thats right people with all the tons of mods out there I have no idea what they all do.

There are so many mods that contradict other mods by doign the same thing and a bit mroe and not being compatable with one other you would like to install that it seems almost impossible for me to be able to decide upon which mods to install and in the correct order so that they do not make one another not work/stop working or crash my game from file complications.

So i ask you all to please help me and do your best to list all the mods for certain typs for bg2 soa through tob and in what orders they should be in.

What ones should be installed if i seek more action and harder difficulty, what ones should i go for to make my game faster and smoother, and any other compenations you can think of.

 

Geez i wouldn't know where to begin but alright here goes:

1. First of all there are two types of mods for BGII (non-weidu and weidu). In general non-weidu mods are older, bigger in download size and are a sometimes a fair bit more troublesome and in terms of installing it is a must to install them before any weidu mod.

Non-weidu mods include for instance:
Baldur's Gate Trilogy
Shadows Over Soubar
The Big Picture
The Darkest Day
Tortured Souls

SoS, TDD and TS add quests/items/monsters/npcs to BGII. BGT basically links BG + BGII together. The Big Picture basically tries to make all these non-weidu mods compatible with each other so if you're really interested in playing these mods together then it's probably the best way to go about it. Also the Big Picture includes some components from some weidu mods. As far as finding more information on them probably www.fwstudios.com is where you want to go.

(2) Now non-weidu can be more complicated to install and if you're going to install weidu mods it is best to only install one non-weidu mod. I personally don't try the non-weidu mods for these two reasons but it is just my preferance.

(3) Weidu mods vary far and wide as far as what they do....they can add quests, items, tweaks to the game etc. They all install the same way which is to extract the contents of a mod to the install directory of BGII and run the setup from there. Also weidu mods are in general compatible with other weidu mods and uninstalling them is fairly simple.

(4) Now there is a lot of weidu mods out there so i'm just going to give you a general idea of them.

Weidu mods include for instance:

01. BGII Graphics Fix (1)
02. Ascension-WeiDU (2)
03. Tactics (3)
04. Banter Packs (4)
05. Chloe
06. Dark Ritual (5)
07. Desecration Of Souls
08. Expanded Thief Stronghold (6)
09. Freedom's Reign/Reign of Virtue(7)
10. Improved Asylum Mod
11. Improved Horns OF Valhalla
12. Improved Oasis II (8)
13. Item Upgrade Mod (9)
14. JPS Portrait Collection (10)
15. Morituri Kit
16. NPC Beautification (11)
17. P&P Celestials
18. Planar Sphere Mod (12)
19. Planar Sphere Return 2
20. Quest Pack
21. Robue Rebalancing Mod (13)
22. Solaufein
23. Super Firkraag Mod
24. Under-Represented Items Mod (14)
25. Tashia
26. The Improved Volcano Pack (15)
27. The SP Collection Kits (16)
28. TOB Refinements Mod
29. Ease-Of-Use Mod (17)
30. Unfinished Business (18)
31. Oversight Mod (19)
32. Ashes Of Embers (20)
33. G3 Tweak Pack (21)
34. BGII Subrace Mod
35. Miscellaneous Tweak Pack (22)
36. Drow Innate Abilities (23)
37. Virtue 15

Things to keep in mind is that some weidu mods offer to install their components individually which is great if you don't like that component or it is incompatible with another component from another mod. Also knowing what a mod does to the actual game helps too (i.e Desecration of souls changes the sewers under the temple disctrict and so does a component of Unfinished Business which they sort of conflicted for one quest of UB). In my case one install included all those weidu mods that have a number in brackets next to them and in that order...not all components mind you and the game didn't encounter any major problems.

(5) Unfortunately explaining what each weidu mod does and whether it's worth playing will take to long. My advice would be to check the mod list here at sorcerers' place and at www.pocketplane.net decide on what mods you would like to install and then maybe ask about them. In general it is recommended to read each read me (in here the authors usually list any incompatabilities and whether they should be installed before or after a particular mod). Another thing to keep in mind is that some mods will affect other mods (i.e universal weapons component of ashes of embers) so it is best to install these after mods that add items for instance should you want everyone in the game to be able to use them.

(6) Last but not least...make sure that BG II is fully patched (i.e official patch) and it has been my experience that the baldurdash fixpack is useful too
(this fixpack would be installed after the official patch and before any mods and you can get it here http://www.baldurdash.org/ToB/Fixes/TOBfixes.html)

[ October 28, 2004, 07:34: Message edited by: Emmanuel Julius ]

 

Check out the Mod Reviews section of the boards if you want information of some of the popular mods. There's lots of good info there, including what the mod entails and whether or not it's worth looking into. Here's a quick link for ya: http://www.sorcerers.net/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=forum&f=23&submit=Go

As per your question:

If you want the game harder, crank up the difficulty. If you still want it harder, there's Tactics and Improved Battles for SoA, then there's Ascension-WeiDU for ToB. Also, the Oversight mod includes an improved battle for Sendai, which Ascension did not include.

Here's also a complete mod-list, generously provided by Icelus, for BG2/ToB: http://modlist.pocketplane.net/index.php?ax=list&cat_id=12

The installation order is as follows: First the official patch, then Baldurdash, then non-WeiDU mods and finally WeiDU mods.

 

That link to Pocket Plane should be to http://www.pocketplane.net rather than .com.

 

If you seek a completely new way to play BG2, I can only suggest Icewind Gate -mod that (tries) to combine IWD2 rules to BG2. Dunno how well it works as no one has reviewed it yet and I don't feel like playing BG2 again just yet.

 

I wouldn't recommend it, it is an unsupported beta. It's available as the creator has stopped working on it, rather than it being a finished, polished product.

And I don't mean beta as in just pre - release, I mean properly beta.

 

Yes Andyr is absolutely right about the link to the pocketplane website (which i have now edited in my post)...sorry if this caused any confusion