|
Milky Moor posted:give us the sordid deets
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 03:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 03:12 |
|
bongwizzard posted:It does. outstanding
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 03:36
|
|
|
Rollersnake posted:Sooo, uh, SoD is good then, and all the extremely negative reviews are just manchildren throwing a collective tantrum about whatever they imagine social justice to be? Good to know. I also feel compelled to write a Steam review now, because holy poo poo. e: Metacritic is even worse, wow.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 03:37
|
|
|
Rollersnake posted:Sooo, uh, SoD is good then, and all the extremely negative reviews are just manchildren throwing a collective tantrum about whatever they imagine social justice to be? Good to know. The complaints and review bashing are over something like two or three dialogue lines. Make of that what you will.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 03:56
|
|
|
Really it has all been covered, but here goes. Jaheira goes from a nagging yet rear end-kicking older sister figure to like this lame thing that is literally a druid who is afraid of spiders. Yeslick gets like a five page flashback intro, then is never mentioned again. Xan is like a swordsman/spy and has none of his charming doom and gloom. The friendly ghoul from the basilisk area gets a ton of page time for some reason. The word "rump" gets used often enough to be noticeable. Montaron is actually almost made intresting. No loving Imoen for some reason. It is just bad on every level. Like, if you didn't know the story from the game it would make no sense as a narrative really. It jumps around a ton and nothing is really explained.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 03:58
|
|
|
I Really want to get SoD but like, making an xpac for a game who's enduring life is largely due to moding, that then breaks those mods is wildly lame. I mean, I will buy it soon because I want it to do well so I get more IE games, but I aint installing it. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 04:02
|
|
|
Woolie Wool posted:A member of the Gibberlings3 team has released an automated tool that will unpack the Steam/GoG version of Siege of Dragonspear: https://github.com/K4thos/UnzipSoD Oh fantastic  So after I do this, I can apply my normal Weidu mods?
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 04:19
|
|
|
To be fair, I would hang the responsiblity for the mod breaking on the lovely job 1998 bioware did on programming the IE engine. I mean I understand it was their first project but everything I've heard about it is that their data structure was insane. Zero thought at all was given to extensibility or readability. They would also store dialogue text and programming script in like the same files. I remember a beamdog stream where they talked about how each button on each page of the interface was a separate entity, and this programmer was talking about how his crowning acheivement for 2.0 was to propogate each interface page from a template (so instead of changing each Information button on each character sheet across 6 character slots, you just did it once on the template). Modding this game is a giant loving headache. And this is why mods that have nothing to do with each other often conflict. It's why the BWInstaller is a must, etc. So yeah there are gunna be some big problems in the immediate future vis a vis mods. The insane file structure of the IE engine has taught modders some bad habits, and some old mods are going to need major restructuring in order to start working again. But much like the switch from watching your fingers to touch typing, I think the changes they made with 2.0 (externalising and reorganizing data etc.) I'm pretty optimistic about the mod scene going forward. E: that being said it was p dumb to release the xpac as a zip file that sits on top of the existing file structure. I guess it was just easier than how the old xpacs did it (by actually going in and changing ur isntall files)
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 04:23
|
|
|
Wizard Styles posted:It may not be worth 20 bucks unless you're really into BG or the genre in general, but yeah, it's pretty good. I grabbed one of the keys Kirk posted, but if I'd bought it myself I wouldn't have regretted it. I was so much happier not knowing about any of these reviews holy poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 04:42
|
|
|
Hey I've asked this I think in these threads a few times, but maybe it's changed. Did they ever patch a fix in for healing spells not working on rest in multiplayer at some point? In any of these EEs.Wizard Styles posted:e: Metacritic is even worse, wow. The metacritic is probably so much worse because you don't need to actually have played/bought the game to join the hate mob. LibbyM fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Apr 4, 2016 |
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 04:56
|
|
|
I mean get the mod problem, but its not like the EE versions have been all that great for the mod scene in the first place, have they? If you want the modded versions of BG, go get a fresh install from GOG and go to town. Complaining that Siege of Dragonspear doesn't have great mod support on the weekend it appears doesn't make much sense. Mods are a long tail project. If you want SoD modded, come back in 2017 after the community's gotten it done. 
jng2058 fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Apr 4, 2016 |
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 05:42
|
|
|
LowellDND posted:Oh fantastic I'm not sure, the latest version of Weidu will see Siege of Dragonspear as BG1 but earlier ones will not, and I don't know how Weidu works but I think it's part of the packaging process. So basically mods have to be recompiled by their authors or the installers won't know what to do with SoD. I could be entirely wrong though. I finished Throne of Bhaal and the story of my paladin is complete. He finished the game at level 27, and with gear, tomes, story events, and Lum the Mad's machine I ended up with: 22 STR 19 DEX 18 CON 11 INT 14 WIS 19 CHA 183 HP -16 AC -11 THAC0 Yeah, this was a hell of a trip going from a puny kid who died in a couple of hits with a rusty old sword to someone who turned down the power of Bhaal because he was so unbelievably powerful he didn't need it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 06:03
|
|
|
That is what I plan to do, but come on, people are clearly going to complain about it, same as when the EEs broke all the mods. Atleast with that it was a "new" game, not an xpac for an existing one.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 06:08
|
|
|
Woolie Wool posted:I'm not sure, the latest version of Weidu will see Siege of Dragonspear as BG1 but earlier ones will not, and I don't know how Weidu works but I think it's part of the packaging process. So basically mods have to be recompiled by their authors or the installers won't know what to do with SoD. I could be entirely wrong though. Damm dude, you powered through this thing, can you guess at how many hours it took?
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 06:09
|
|
|
Approximately 110 hours. I basically devoted most of my time except my working hours to this game.  I still beat my time to complete Pillars of Eternity (118 hours). I had a great time, thanks for everyone teaching me the basics of this system and answering my stupid questions! Also according to this math I did, 5024 murders were perpetrated by the Bhaalspawn and his party, including 977 by his own hand. Lord of murder indeed. 
Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Apr 4, 2016 |
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 06:12
|
|
|
Congrats! There's no series like Baldur's Gate that nails the feeling of going from weak and barely surviving to absurd nation-steering power.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 06:15
|
|
|
bongwizzard posted:No loving Imoen for some reason. ? I haven't had more than 10 mins to put into the expansion so far, but Imoen was the first character I talked to.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 07:00
|
|
|
Airfoil posted:? They're talking about the atrocious Baldur's Gate tie in novel from back in the day.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 07:09
|
|
|
jng2058 posted:I mean get the mod problem, but its not like the EE versions have been all that great for the mod scene in the first place, have they? If you want the modded versions of BG, go get a fresh install from GOG and go to town. Complaining that Siege of Dragonspear doesn't have great mod support on the weekend it appears doesn't make much sense. Mods are a long tail project. If you want SoD modded, come back in 2017 after the community's gotten it done. Well, I have the EE versions but Ive never played them  Seeing the expansion connecting the two games gives me a reason to check it out, so I have both the GOGmod and the EE versions installed. Doing a runthrough on GOG while Im waiting for the EE one to get a hotfix.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 07:24
|
|
|
bongwizzard posted:I Really want to get SoD but like, making an xpac for a game who's enduring life is largely due to moding, that then breaks those mods is wildly lame. Have you actually played it or not? Because this post and the one immediately before it are very confusing to see right next to each other. Edit: I'm also confused why you'd financially support something you refuse to install because of issues you have with the writing, since likely any other IE projects will have the same writing issues. Obsidian or Bioware or whoever isn't going to license the updated engine for a new game, it's all going to be Beamdog. Air Skwirl fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Apr 4, 2016 |
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 07:25
|
|
|
bongwizzard posted:I Really want to get SoD but like, making an xpac for a game who's enduring life is largely due to moding, that then breaks those mods is wildly lame. Maybe i'm in the minority, but as a gamer who has been playing this series for almost 18 years, modding has never concerned me. The games were NEVER intended to be modded like Elder Scrolls games or NWN games are. The only mods i've ever used are things like widescreen mods and mods to make some UI elements better like ammo stacks. I have used ZERO mods with the EE versions and don't plan to. It just feels wrong to hate on a game because it breaks content that was never officially sanctioned, and the EE team actually put effort into keeping these games moddable, when the original were never intended to be. Meanwhile, Skyrim routinely broke mods with every patch, and many of use had to wait around for several weeks sometimes while the mods we used were updated. Yet we never complained because we knew what we were getting into. And this post may hit the wrong notes, and maybe I have no right to complain about an issue simply because it doesn't affect me. But i'm also a little butthurt by all the negative reviews this game is getting. These lovely reviews will quite likely mean NO BG3 or whatever other content Beamdog had planned to make. And with Gaider on board, I feel they were going to make more content. Ugh, I'm actually embarrased I wrote this much about dumb video game stuff. Carry on.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 07:32
|
|
|
Holy crap, I think I might have actually gotten the hang of BG2. I'm doing the Unseeing Eye quest, and I was able to take out the group of priests you find down in the center. It took me a couple of tries, but what I did was cast Remove Fear and Invisibility on the whole party, positioned everyone next to an enemy, and after I started attacking, I cast Horror, which scattered a good handful of the mages. After taking out the ones who were unaffected, I managed to pick off the ones who escaped with projectiles. I then had Aerie cast Sanctuary and wander over to get the item you need for the quest, and she ended up dying to the Unseeing Eye (along with Minsc when he went berserk). Bizarrely, I was able to get my Dwarven Defender PC to take him out 1-on-1 with little trouble, but I decided to reload and try it again without losing any characters. Unfortunately, when I tried the 1-on-1 method again with a bunch of buffs (Death Ward, Free Action, Improved Invisibility), I ended up dying. I'm not sure how it works, but my weapons were ineffective against him until I cast Draw Upon Holy Might. It took a couple of tries (there was one where Aerie and Keldorn died, but when I resurrected Keldorn with Harper's Call, his Charisma was too low to reequip his armor), but I managed to take him out without losing anyone. I also managed to take out the Beholder in the northern section of the map with no issue. Of course now, I'm stuck on the fight with the four Gauths that spam magic at you, but I've read that using Fire Elemental summons against them is a good plan. bongwizzard posted:No loving Imoen for some reason.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 08:04
|
|
|
Ive just now started using buffs myself in Durlag's Tower Whole different experience.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 08:11
|
|
|
Max Wilco posted:Of course now, I'm stuck on the fight with the four Gauths that spam magic at you, but I've read that using Fire Elemental summons against them is a good plan. If you don't feel like figuring that one out on your own... http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Shield_of_Balduran
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 08:12
|
|
|
Max Wilco posted:Holy crap, I think I might have actually gotten the hang of BG2. you should just zap the unseeing eye with the quest rod
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 08:19
|
|
|
gender illusionist posted:you should just zap the unseeing eye with the quest rod I beat bg2 like 4-5 times so far and a bunch of others about halfway and my latest newest version of SCS+All added ai and difficulty stuff is the first time I bothered to go get the rod.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 08:30
|
|
|
Washout posted:I beat bg2 like 4-5 times so far and a bunch of others about halfway and my latest newest version of SCS+All added ai and difficulty stuff is the first time I bothered to go get the rod. Yeah, I just installed SCS and Im loving it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 08:42
|
|
|
Airfoil posted:If you don't feel like figuring that one out on your own... http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Shield_of_Balduran That was another method I read about. Problem is that I'd have to reload an earlier save to go and get that (or return to the caves once I get the shield), and I think at that price, I'd lose most of the money you need to move to Chapter 3. gender illusionist posted:you should just zap the unseeing eye with the quest rod  Still, it's impressive I beat him without the rod, right?
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 08:43
|
|
|
Max Wilco posted:That was another method I read about. Problem is that I'd have to reload an earlier save to go and get that (or return to the caves once I get the shield), and I think at that price, I'd lose most of the money you need to move to Chapter 3. That shield is a sound investment and you will be grateful you have it in the future, when doing a certain quest in a very dark place.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 08:46
|
|
|
The real question is if you kill the tranny cleric, does she drop the girdle of masculinity/femininity and how much xp does she give edit: apparently no to the first question, and 2,000 XP to the second with no alignment penalties  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__6nFM5GER8 (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 08:55
|
|
|
Max Wilco posted:That was another method I read about. Problem is that I'd have to reload an earlier save to go and get that (or return to the caves once I get the shield), and I think at that price, I'd lose most of the money you need to move to Chapter 3. I must have done the quest later than you. I recall that shield costing a tiny percentage of the cash I had on hand.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 09:05
|
|
|
Airfoil posted:I must have done the quest later than you. I recall that shield costing a tiny percentage of the cash I had on hand. Chapter 2's sandbox structure means that pretty much any one of the major quests gives you the 20,000 gold. If you go spend it at the Adventurer's Mart and then go do another quest, your wealth ends up basically oscillating. (Or skyrocketing, once you take down one or more of the big optional targets and can swing yourself into the highest echelons of power.) Either way, wealth isn't much of an issue since you should be clearing everything in Chapter 2's major quests anyway.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 09:15
|
|
|
 This game is a lot of fun you guys.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 09:18
|
|
|
Mzbundifund posted:Congrats! There's no series like Baldur's Gate that nails the feeling of going from weak and barely surviving to absurd nation-steering power. I think my favorite part for that is that valley in ToB where you cut through an entire Tethyrian army. They throw waves and waves of their best at you, and you cut them down like chaff.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 09:20
|
|
|
insanityv2 posted:To be fair, I would hang the responsiblity for the mod breaking on the lovely job 1998 bioware did on programming the IE engine. I mean I understand it was their first project but everything I've heard about it is that their data structure was insane. Zero thought at all was given to extensibility or readability. They would also store dialogue text and programming script in like the same files. I remember a beamdog stream where they talked about how each button on each page of the interface was a separate entity, and this programmer was talking about how his crowning acheivement for 2.0 was to propogate each interface page from a template (so instead of changing each Information button on each character sheet across 6 character slots, you just did it once on the template). Pwnstar posted:
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 09:25
|
|
|
Airfoil posted:I must have done the quest later than you. I recall that shield costing a tiny percentage of the cash I had on hand. On to something I've brought up before. I'm still thinking about who to take in my party for the rest of the game. I still want to drop Minsc for Haer'Dalis, but I'm not sure if that would make for a good change (right now I have Minsc, Aerie, Keldorn, Jan, and Jaheira). I'd like to have Haer'Dalis, since the Bard Song buffs and Lore/Identify abilities seem like they help a lot. However, I don't know how well he fares as a close-quarters or ranged fighter (the opinions on NPCs differ vastly from guide to guide). If he's not a good choice, then I'm not sure who else to go with, or if I should just keep Minsc around. Also, something I noticed while playing BG2EE since the 2.0 update; it seems like you're not locked out of romances if you're playing as a dwarf or halfing, since I got a conversation with Jaheira I recall getting when I was playing a human character. I don't know if that was a deliberate change, or if it's a bug, as there was no music playing during the conversation.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 09:38
|
|
|
Max Wilco posted:The BG wiki page said that it was valued at 16000, but maybe that's not what it actually costs at the shop. I'll pick it up regardless. 2. Haer'Dalis is good but falls off at higher levels. The Blade kit's special abilities don't hold up well later on, and Bards end up with bad HP, THAC0 and saving throws and only get level 6 spells. They do also get good high level abilities, though, and at some point start to get levels much faster than Mages, which is relevant for level-scaling spells like Skull Trap. Overall, Haer'Dalis is okay but not really one of the strongest companions. You could definitely do with one less warrior type in your party, although I'd add a fully leveling Mage before anything else. 3. You get some of Jaheira's dialogues whether you're in a romance or not. There's a whole questline that's triggered by having her in the party, romance or not, but the exact timing will change depending on whether or not the game has to wait for you to advance the romance first (and maybe some other stuff). Wizard Styles fucked around with this message at 10:08 on Apr 4, 2016 |
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 10:02
|
|
|
Max Wilco posted:That was another method I read about. Problem is that I'd have to reload an earlier save to go and get that (or return to the caves once I get the shield), and I think at that price, I'd lose most of the money you need to move to Chapter 3. I guess so, I've never tried w straight up fight with it
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 10:23
|
|
|
Arivia posted:I think my favorite part for that is that valley in ToB where you cut through an entire Tethyrian army. They throw waves and waves of their best at you, and you cut them down like chaff. This is indeed the part I remember enjoying the most after you'd spent so long growing stronger and stronger. I actually want to see more of that in games, where after a long while of going into the story an entire army or similar is sent up against you and you beat them handily. It isn't realistic of course, but it sure is fun.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 10:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 03:12 |
|
|
insanityv2 posted:Wow. I popped my head into the Beamdog forums to see if I could get some up to date info on mod compatibility and instead I find a bunch of grousing about a minor, minor npc who happens to be transgendered. Why are dnd nerds consistently the worst.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2016 10:48
|
|
