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Hollismason posted:So should pick up Siege of Dragonspear? I think I got about maybe 25 to 35 more hours left. On Durlags tower in Chapter 5. Unsure how much longer I have. Yes, SoD is good. However if you have mods already installed, SoD will break them. You can't patch or install DLC for a modded game due to the way text strings are handled.
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Apr 20, 2016 21:24
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Crip Towe posted:I can imagine a lot of those projects die a silent death Many people underestimate just how much work it takes to make a fully featured mod NPC, or only want to write but balk at actually coding and can't find anyone who will do all the coding for them. As for questionable mods, many fortunately are hosted at Chosen of Mystra or new Beamdog sites. Chloe was grandfathered in at Spellhold Studios because it was inherited from a predecessor site - I argued many times that SHS should stop hosting the mod. For a few examples of some mods that applied for hosting that we shot down over the years: * A BG1 Imoen romance (violated rules 4 and 9) * A CG succubus with a unique [read: hilariously overpowered] thief kit (rules 1, 7, and 8) * A drow paladin (rules 5, 8, and 10) * A catgirl sorcerer (2, 2a, and 10)
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Apr 20, 2016 21:25
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There are a lot of mods out there that are questionable to disturbing at times.
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Are there any mod NPCs that people would actually recommend? I'm thinking it might be worth a playthrough to try some out. I played the Kelsey one, but got hacked off with the party interactions that I ended up romancing Anomen out of spite that time, and I quite liked the Angelo one, though it does seem a bit retcon-tastic initially. Also I think I played the Irenicus ToB one because I love having more mages around to cast silly powerful spells  (Or I could just gather up a party full of the worst ones!)
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Apr 20, 2016 22:03
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Woolie Wool posted:Yes, SoD is good. However if you have mods already installed, SoD will break them. You can't patch or install DLC for a modded game due to the way text strings are handled. Even Gibberling 3 stuff? What should I do then?
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Apr 20, 2016 22:17
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You can't use SoD with that playthrough. You would probably have to start over, or else just go straight to BG2 and roll a new character for SoD later. I've even tried patching from 2.0 to 2.1 (after backing up my installation of course!) during SoD and that also broke the strings.
Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Apr 20, 2016 |
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Apr 20, 2016 22:32
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Smiling Knight posted:AC is irrelevant in the long run. By mid BG2, no one should be using shields at all. A couple points of AC can't compare to more attacks/benefits from an off-hand weapon. Why does it end up that way? Is everything mages and other crap after a certain point?
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Apr 20, 2016 22:36
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Acaila posted:Are there any mod NPCs that people would actually recommend? I'm thinking it might be worth a playthrough to try some out. I played the Kelsey one, but got hacked off with the party interactions that I ended up romancing Anomen out of spite that time, and I quite liked the Angelo one, though it does seem a bit retcon-tastic initially. Also I think I played the Irenicus ToB one because I love having more mages around to cast silly powerful spells NPCs I unironically recommend without knowing anything about your particular likes and dislikes: Fade, Tashia, Sarah, Finch (BG1). I personally wrote Darian and Valerie (who's BG1 only for now), so I can't offer a recommendation or condemnation on either beyond that Darian was quite intentionally supposed to be a huge jerk who gradually gets better and I have no idea why he has fangirls. 
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Apr 20, 2016 22:37
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Smiling Knight posted:AC is irrelevant in the long run. By mid BG2, no one should be using shields at all. A couple points of AC can't compare to more attacks/benefits from an off-hand weapon. I would disagree, I got my paladin to -16 AC and he was a fantastic tank all the way up to the end. I've heard Ascension gives bosses absolutely insane THAC0 though, like -27 for Abazigal.
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Apr 20, 2016 22:39
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Kavak posted:Why does it end up that way? Is everything mages and other crap after a certain point? The problem is that the to-hit of tough enemies becomes so low there's no difference between 10 and -10 AC, it's all autohit. For AC to matter you need to stack it to at least -15 for it to have any effect. If you can't or won't get it that low then just ignore the AC score and equip stuff with good bonuses.
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Apr 20, 2016 22:41
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Acaila posted:Are there any mod NPCs that people would actually recommend? I'm thinking it might be worth a playthrough to try some out. I played the Kelsey one, but got hacked off with the party interactions that I ended up romancing Anomen out of spite that time, and I quite liked the Angelo one, though it does seem a bit retcon-tastic initially. Also I think I played the Irenicus ToB one because I love having more mages around to cast silly powerful spells Branwen and Kivan for BG2 are written by BG1NPC team members and if you used that mod, reuniting with them in BG2 feels absolutely seamless. Also Kivan makes people die very fast.
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Apr 20, 2016 22:41
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Cythereal posted:NPCs I unironically recommend without knowing anything about your particular likes and dislikes: Fade, Tashia, Sarah, Finch (BG1). I remember Fade. Yeah, she was pretty decent. Never got finished for TOB though, did she?
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Apr 20, 2016 23:30
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Milky Moor posted:I remember Fade. Yeah, she was pretty decent. Never got finished for TOB though, did she? Nope, afraid not. It's one reason why I am indeed working on Valerie's BG2 part and I'm tentatively planning to just do her ToB and SoA material in one release.
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Apr 20, 2016 23:46
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Suspicious posted:The problem is that the to-hit of tough enemies becomes so low there's no difference between 10 and -10 AC, it's all autohit. For AC to matter you need to stack it to at least -15 for it to have any effect. If you can't or won't get it that low then just ignore the AC score and equip stuff with good bonuses. That's some bullshit. Is there a mod that caps modified THAC0 to 0 or anything like that?
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Apr 20, 2016 23:51
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Eh, it's not so bad. You have high level abilities (warriors get decent damage reduction) and some seriously overpowered gear.
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Apr 20, 2016 23:56
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How much work is involved in designing an NPC? I imagined that the bulk of the work (as with many sorts of modding) would be testing in a game as huge and with as many moving parts as BG2. You've got possibly thousands of interjections and scripts that need to be written, implemented, tested, and debugged. And you also have to make sure there are no proofreading mistakes because even a single typo or grammatical error will be noticed by the player in a game as text-heavy as this one.
Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Apr 21, 2016 |
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Apr 20, 2016 23:59
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Woolie Wool posted:How much work is involved in designing an NPC? I imagined that the bulk of the work (as with many sorts of modding) would be testing in a game as huge and with as many moving parts as BG2. You've got possibly thousands of interjections and scripts that need to be written, implemented, tested, and debugged. And you also have to make sure there are no proofreading mistakes because even a single typo or grammatical error will be noticed by the player in a game as text-heavy as this one. For a bare-bones NPC, surprisingly not a lot - I'd say assembling the absolute bare minimum only takes an hour or two if you already have the relevant tools on hand and know what to do. However, as an example I'll use Darian, the mod NPC I made with full BG2 - SoA and ToB - content and, as the modding community defines things, full features. Darian's .tp2 file - a lot of scripting stuff, his epilogues, biography, and all the different things he says when you click on him, tell him to do something, and ambient dialogue that doesn't bring up the dialogue window, is 553 lines long. Darian also has 10 different dialogue files - banter files for SoA (1,237 lines) and ToB (557 lines) that contain Darian's interactions with other party members; .d files for SoA (160 lines) and ToB (86 lines) that contain Darian's dialogue as an NPC when he's not in the party; j files for SoA (3,110 lines) and ToB (1,076 lines) that contain Darian's romance, interjections, and certain plot-related dialogues like at the Tree of Life and after defeating Amelyssan; p files for SoA (19 lines) and ToB (41 lines) that have his lines if you're kicking him out of the party; and two files for crossmod dialogue (37 and 743 lines respectively). Then 12 different exclusively scripting files which range from 20 or so to 200 or so lines, four image files containing needed different versions of Darian's portrait, a whole mess of files for the music track that plays during Darian's romance, four different .cre files to account for Darian's installation options (he's an archer by default, but during installation you can make him a plain ranger, stalker, or ranger/cleric instead), and finally the installer itself. Plus testing, debugging, proofreading, and so on and so forth. And Darian's portrait is an original piece of artwork another modder graciously did for free. And Darian is much less involved than some mod NPCs - he doesn't involve another NPC showing up at any point outside his romance's wraith scene in ToB, he has no special event or quest, and he has no custom items. Making an NPC mod is a huge amount of work.
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Apr 21, 2016 00:23
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Suspicious posted:Eh, it's not so bad. You have high level abilities (warriors get decent damage reduction) and some seriously overpowered gear. I'll learn to live with it then. Minsc and I are locked in, but what direction should I take Jaheira and Anomen? Could either of them become the kind of ridiculous tank needed to dodge higher level enemies or should all their points start going towards two-weapon fighting?
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Apr 21, 2016 00:31
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Jaheira's the much better tank because she has ironskins and will get hardiness, the 40% physical damage resistance HLA. Anomen has neither, as he's not a druid (no ironskins) and he's a single class cleric (no warrior HLAs). There's no way you can equip or buff Anomen enough for him to take hits decently, so might as well go full DPS with him.
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Apr 21, 2016 00:36
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Anomen's strength is his fast levelling rate: He's at his best when making use of it by using his high level to pop undead and cast high-level spells and/or spells that scale well with level. Holy Smite, Summon Deva, etc. Jaheira's strength is being able to supplement her fighter abilities with druid spells. She'll take a very long time to get access to high-level druid spells, so she's at her best when meleeing while making use of buffs like Ironskins, or when casting spells that don't particularly require a high caster level, such as the nymph summon or swarms o' bees.
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Apr 21, 2016 00:44
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Yeah, since she can use Belm I can direct the high level shields to her and keep a decent pace of damage. I just wish Ironskins were a different level than
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Apr 21, 2016 00:46
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Woolie Wool posted:Yes, SoD is good. However if you have mods already installed, SoD will break them. You can't patch or install DLC for a modded game due to the way text strings are handled. Before 2.1, installing, running modmerge and then installing the mods worked well for me. I do have the separate/copy folder now for trying that but... Dark Souls 3 has consumed my time. The tweak mods should work with that, no? I do not think they alter string references...
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Apr 21, 2016 00:48
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Anomen is dual-class fighter/cleric. I think his fighter HLAs are limited though. I really like him after his quest, he is a better tank than Minsc, at least with the brawling gauntlets that give you 18 DEX.
Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Apr 21, 2016 |
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Apr 21, 2016 00:49
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Luisfe posted:Before 2.1, installing, running modmerge and then installing the mods worked well for me. No SoD has a different dialogue.tlk than the base game, and Steam will purge your overrides folder when you install SoD. Once you set up a modded BG, you're committed to that version.
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Apr 21, 2016 00:56
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I'm not using STEAM I'm using GOG. So does that make a difference. Also I have 2.1.63.2 for the build in GOG. So can I install Dragonspear and it not gently caress with things? I just have the Gibberling 3 basic BG2 tweak pack which also works with BG1. Hollismason fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Apr 21, 2016 |
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Apr 21, 2016 00:59
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Any mod that modifies Dialog.tlk is going to get hosed up when you install Dragonspear. For my part most of the original armor and weapon descriptions got overwritten by dialogue from the prologue.
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Apr 21, 2016 01:02
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Kavak posted:Any mod that modifies Dialog.tlk is going to get hosed up when you install Dragonspear. For my part most of the original armor and weapon descriptions got overwritten by dialogue from the prologue. Ive been seeing that as well.
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Apr 21, 2016 01:08
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Woolie Wool posted:Anomen is dual-class fighter/cleric. I think his fighter HLAs are limited though. I really like him after his quest, he is a better tank than Minsc, at least with the brawling gauntlets that give you 18 DEX. He doesn't get fighter HLAs at all, assuming an unmodded install.
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Apr 21, 2016 01:09
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Woolie Wool posted:No SoD has a different dialogue.tlk than the base game, and Steam will purge your overrides folder when you install SoD. Once you set up a modded BG, you're committed to that version. Hmm. This is what Modmerge says it does : "Backs up your chitin.key to chitin.key.bak, just in case Searches dlc/ or your root directory for sod-dlc.zip Unzips the sod-dlc.zip, copying over top of the existing lang/, movies/, music/ folders. The data folder inside of the zip will be renamed to no overwrite files in the existing data directory. Updates your chitin.key with so any resources from inside of the zip file will point to their appropriate bif files. Renames your sod-dlc.zip to sod-dlc.disabled The end result, assuming everything is successful, is you will have an updated chitin.key that points to the resources from the base game, and the resources from the mod, that weidu, near infinity, DLTCEP, etc will all be able to load." So, doing that and installing a mod should work for that particular version, but would immediately break upon a new version/patch, or am I misinterpreting? E: Or the strings would still break since it does not mention merging anything regarding the dialog file. Oh well.
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Apr 21, 2016 01:11
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I haven't played 2nd edition AD&D in years/decades, but for some reason I just got BG2 and I'm interested in giving it a shot. I know it's a complicated game so I'm looking for a guide that will give me some advice to start, and I'm having trouble finding one that's helpful. I don't want a soup-to-nuts walkthrough and I don't need to be told what THAC0 is, and there doesn't seem to be much in between. I'm interested in stuff like what are some of the better spells to start with, weapon proficiencies to go for early, and other early-game advice that might help make the start a little smoother while I figure out how things work. Does anyone have any advice on where I can look for this sort of thing? Thanks!
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Apr 21, 2016 01:41
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gohuskies posted:I haven't played 2nd edition AD&D in years/decades, but for some reason I just got BG2 and I'm interested in giving it a shot. I know it's a complicated game so I'm looking for a guide that will give me some advice to start, and I'm having trouble finding one that's helpful. I don't want a soup-to-nuts walkthrough and I don't need to be told what THAC0 is, and there doesn't seem to be much in between. I'm interested in stuff like what are some of the better spells to start with, weapon proficiencies to go for early, and other early-game advice that might help make the start a little smoother while I figure out how things work. Does anyone have any advice on where I can look for this sort of thing? Thanks! I use this for spells http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG2/SpellsReference/Main.htm and this for maps http://forgottenwars.com/bg1/ar2600.htm (its for BG1, not BGEE, but its somewhat close) edit: How do the Black Pits work? Loel fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Apr 21, 2016 |
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Apr 21, 2016 01:47
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Sephiroth_IRA fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Apr 21, 2016 |
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Apr 21, 2016 01:50
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Kasparov's game vs Deep Blue would have been better if he had spammed wands of fireball. I'm sorry you were saying something about rules of the board or something I could not hear you over fireball fireball fireball fireball. Final Level 4 of Durlag's Tower.
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Apr 21, 2016 03:28
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I wonder if there's a single player who actually went along with the chess gimmick in that battle. I used to play a lot of chess, and even I couldn't be bothered.
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Apr 21, 2016 03:33
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I avoided the damage squares as best I could and spammed spells at the King. The party was pretty fried but drat did it feel good. I just realized the brain damaged berserker who thinks his pet hamster is a sentient creature is actually the most emotionally stable member of my entire party, though Charname and Yoshimo are keeping it well under wraps. Anyway, Yoshimo's not specced for Pickpocketing, so it's time go feed Jan's addiction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrwjiO1MCVs&t=11s
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Apr 21, 2016 03:38
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LowellDND posted:and this for maps http://forgottenwars.com/bg1/ar2600.htm (its for BG1, not BGEE, but its somewhat close) BG1 isn't BG2! gohuskies posted:I haven't played 2nd edition AD&D in years/decades, but for some reason I just got BG2 and I'm interested in giving it a shot. I know it's a complicated game so I'm looking for a guide that will give me some advice to start, and I'm having trouble finding one that's helpful. I don't want a soup-to-nuts walkthrough and I don't need to be told what THAC0 is, and there doesn't seem to be much in between. I'm interested in stuff like what are some of the better spells to start with, weapon proficiencies to go for early, and other early-game advice that might help make the start a little smoother while I figure out how things work. Does anyone have any advice on where I can look for this sort of thing? Thanks! There's a good distribution of basically all weapon types (except spears) in the game, so just go with whatever. Except for Paladins, they should go 2H sword.
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Apr 21, 2016 03:38
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Cythereal posted:Many people underestimate just how much work it takes to make a fully featured mod NPC, or only want to write but balk at actually coding and can't find anyone who will do all the coding for them. You're violating rule 73a. Don't cite rule numbers without specifying and linking the document they're defined in.
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Apr 21, 2016 04:13
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Keiya posted:You're violating rule 73a. Don't cite rule numbers without specifying and linking the document they're defined in. So... Cythereal's earlier post? Cythereal posted:If it's any consolation, for a long time I was a staff member at SHS (and might still be, even though I haven't been there in over a year), and we developed an unofficial set of criteria for shooting down mod NPC ideas at a glance even before we started really looking at the character:
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Apr 21, 2016 04:29
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I'm having trouble finding the entrance to Durlag's Labyrinth... where exactly is it?
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Apr 21, 2016 05:12
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Sephiroth_IRA posted:I'm having trouble finding the entrance to Durlag's Labyrinth... where exactly is it? Basement, north side. Theres a concealed door. Playing BGSOD, found a cellar full of shadows that do strength damage. As a solo MT, how do deal with them?
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Apr 21, 2016 05:14
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LowellDND posted:Basement, north side. Theres a concealed door. Fireball.
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Apr 21, 2016 05:15
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