Siege of Dragonspear, am I missing something?

I just finished the attack on the coalition camp. In the underground river I saw Hephernan talking to the demon and fought him and he teleported away, and then I freed the dwarf spirit to join cool dragon ghost.

Then when I'm starting the siege of the castle I have only 1 option when talking to the captain. "I learned nothing from underneath the castle." What the heck? I learned Hephernan was colluding with a literal devil, this seems super important and I couldn't mention it to Caelar in the 'negotiations' part at dead man's pass.

Did I miss something or is this just some of the not well done aspect of this expansion?

reddit.com
u/Somedude_6 — 11 days ago

Japanese titles I should pay attention too?

Greetings fellow retro game enthusiasts.

I have finally gotten my Saroo set up all good, and now I'm working on downloading the games from internet archives.

I don't have anywhere near the space to have the full library, and honestly I don't even want the full library, but I know that the Saturn has a LOT of its best games that were only released in Japan.

I'm looking for what everyone's picks for best Saturn exclusives from Japan and/or Europe. I know about all the standard things that most everyone knows about, your translated Princess Crowns, SFIIIs, (have that one on actual disc...) Dragonforce II, Policenauts, Castlevania SOTN, (Which will get the improvement patch...) and your capcom fighters that never got released over here.

What games, like shooters or other games, would people recommend I pay attention to as I download these old Saturn games?

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u/Somedude_6 — 2 months ago

Clarification on 2 tweaks.

Greetings BG experts,

I'm getting somewhat close to the end of BG1 now, and before I import over to BG2 I was hoping to get some specifics on 'stock vs tweaks.'

I put on both "Armor affects thief skills" and "Armor has % miscast" for my current run.

I remember that my casters, like Aerie, could use a sling and a shield and cast without issue, and I also vaguely remember doing stealth with heavy armor back in the day.

Without this tweak installed, how do the multiclass thief and mage skills work? Can a fighter thief cast with a shield and helmet? Or is it literally nothing at all?

And can a fighter thief stealth in heavy armor? My Half-Orc keeps a set of magic leather armor that I'm switching off between that and a suit of platemail depending on the situation, but the main thing is casting with shields, I remember being able to do this, but am I just remembering wrong?

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u/Somedude_6 — 2 months ago

What level should I be?

I'm doing a run that has a lot of extra quests, and I'm curious what level I would be without the extra EXP from these quests. I'm just about to go into Baldur's Gate, I've finished Durlag's Tower, which was pretty challenging and made me boost my find traps and drink all kinds of perception potions, and I'm a Fighter Thief 7/8.

Obviously Shades of the Sword Coast and Black Hearts have added some EXP, but I'm curious how much higher leveled I am compared to a normal run. I've done everything now that I can find to my knowledge.

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u/Somedude_6 — 2 months ago

Can someone explain to me like I'm 5 exactly what I'll need for Saroo?

Hello again Saturn subreddit, this has probably been asked before, so forgive me if this is repetitive.

Last week I made a post asking about different options, and someone linked a shop that had the saroo on super sale, so I picked one up.

By the time I got it the bundle with the SD card was sold out, so I couldn't go that route.

Is there a specific kind of SD card I'll need, and if my PC doesn't have an SD card slot, is there a simple USB setup to transfer the data to the SD card?

My modded PS2 I just had someone do for me, so this is all kind of new to me, though I have modded a genesis mini once and other than 32X games it works fine, so I'm not a complete idiot with regards to this stuff. Just mostly an idiot.

Thanks in advance, and if anyone has a really good tutorial page or video they could recommend for how to use this thing I'd appreciate it.

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u/Somedude_6 — 3 months ago

Saruu or other modding advice?

Hello Reddit world,

I own my original Saturn from 1996 and it mostly still works! Every so often the laser decides it doesn't want to read something, and I'll admit some of my games don't read very well anymore. It can be a little annoying when I pop in Nights and the disc is flawless and it doesn't read but my Dragonforce which is pretty scratched still reads fine.

Anyway, I added a hard drive to my PS2 awhile back, and I'm pretty happy with it. I would like to do something similar for my Saturn. Saving games on the saturn has always been a bit of a pain with the whole internal battery thing, and swapping cartridges for playing burned/import games is also a bit of a pain.

I'm pondering either a Saruu or some other modding option. I don't have a lot of money to put into it, so what would you all recommend to get the most out of your Saturn in 2026?

I have it hooked up to a big CRT TV so my light guns still work, and I'm not going to change that if it matters for modding.

I watched a review by Gamesack about the Saruu something like 2 years ago now, and he said at the time it had a hard time with multiple disc games, which makes me hesitant with that... of course, that was also a few years ago, maybe that issue has been fixed?

Thanks for the advice, I would like to be able to give this system more love than it gets, but it's honestly one of my more finicky retro systems.

reddit.com
u/Somedude_6 — 3 months ago

Heavily Modded BG1 Run, thoughts so far

After finishing up Jade Empire, (which, if you're interested, here are my thoughts on that.) I embarked on this adventure, I've been pretty active in these boards for a little bit, and I'm really excited I have finally started this all over again.

I decided on a half-orc fighter/thief, which is a mostly newer thing for me. I usually main things along the fighter, mage, or druid line, with Ranger/Cleric being the class I last attempted this with, such a very long time ago.

I'm running the game with mostly quest mods, things like Black Hearts, (which is really good so far), shades of the sword coast, SCS, loretakers, and the BG1 NPC project.

I'm level 4/5 currently as you all can see, I've rescued Dynaheir, and I've explored a lot of the southern part of the map. I haven't tackled Ulcaster yet, or gone up to the bandit camp.

I am having a great time though. SCS has made the game more challenging, but it makes me actually rethink things a lot more. I'm use to just plowing through things with fighter/mage/cleric kind of combinations, but I would not be where I am currently without traps.

Traps got me through the Nashkel mines, and every time I've encountered a tough boss fight, like the shade wyvern in the shadow gnoll stronghold, (Shades of the Sword Coast quest) traps have been what changes the fight from something I lose and reload on to win with ease. They're that effective. Heck, when I was finishing up Nashkel, I set 5 snares in Mulhaney's chamber, and once I started the fight literally everything except for 4 basic skeletons was killed by the traps, it was absolutely amazing.

So to make my rambling post here come to a conclusion, I'm absolutely loving this game. Mods with extra quests are great, and there are so friggen many characters that I've decided I'm going to have to play through this game multiple times.

Those that have read previous posts of mine might remember that I've said things like "I just want to do one big mega playthrough." Well, I'm enjoying the crap out of Neera, and I've ditched Imoen since she doesn't really fit into my party configuration. I plan on taking Yeslick when I get there, (I only have Jaheria for Divine magic right now) so I'll be ditching Neera, but I absolutely want to use her in the future, all the way through the trilogy. (Yeslick is also the only BG2 NPC mod I installed... want some more Dwarf power in my life that isn't Korgan)

So I have no choice, I'll take breaks in between playthroughs, but damnit everyone, this game is simply too good for a single playthrough. This time I'm running Jaheria, Khalid, Minsc and Dynaheir, with eventually Yeslick replacing Neera, but my next play through I'll do something else (like maybe Ranger/Cleric) and include Imoen and Neera.

You all have made me love this game again, it isn't like playing it for the first time, since I'm very familiar with IE engine games and I've recently played through both black pits and icewind dale, but honestly it feels pretty close to a whole new experience with all the mods, the EE additions, and the extra tips and tricks I've picked up from reading these threads, (Like abusing web and ranged weapons....) have really added to the experience.

I'm roughly half way through part 1, (based on the map coverage and my memory anyway) and I'm digging my fighter/thief, the mods have been great, even the NPC project which I was a little on the fence about I'd give generally positive notes to as well. Imoen specifically I felt would interject a little too often, and some of the writing quality is different between characters, but I don't dislike it at all like some people have written about when I asked about it awhile ago.

I'm already thinking about what I want to play next and who I'll take with me, and I'm not even through part one yet. This is great.

u/Somedude_6 — 3 months ago
▲ 74 r/bioware+1 crossposts

Jade Empire Appreciation Post

(Posted this in Retrogaming... only to be told that subreddit only applies to things pre-2000. While I personally disagree with that cut off for something being Retro... I won't argue with the mods about it. If a system is 25+ years old though, I would consider it Retro personally. But I digress.)

While I played this on PC, it came out on original X-Box, so I feel this is an appropriate place to post this.

Last month Jade Empire went on sale for 3.75 on GOG. Frankly, that is an absolute steal for this game. So much entertainment for not even 4 dollars.

I played this a few times when it was newer, and my girlfriend at the time loved it much more than KOTOR, (Knights of the old Republic) but I never played through it enough to really get into it.

Well, I have now remedied that, and beat the game a few days ago. Frankly, this game is pretty awesome, with a storyline that is kind of tropey but also has some twists and very dark turns. I feel that it does not get brought up very much in talks about retro RPGS. And while KOTOR is still talked about today, and a remake was announced... (though who knows if that will actually happen) Jade Empire I rarely, if ever, see mentioned.

Which is an absolute shame, because, genuinely, this is an A/A- game, even today.

Much like KOTOR, the game has a "light side/dark side" gameplay element with the choices you make, but frankly even being a light side person is going to have you doing some not exactly "Goodly" stuff. The combat style is much more real time than other RPGs, with an emphasis on learning different martial arts styles and switching between them depending on who you are facing. Once you find combinations of styles that work well together, (Hint: Once you get Storm Dragon, USE IT!) you'll find the game becomes quite a bit easier, but the game does a very good job (on the "Master" or normal difficulty anyway) of being hard without being too hard most of the time... though some of those later boss fights do get really hard. There is a part near the end of the game where you fight 3 clones of yourself at the same time and it's really tough, and the 2nd to the last fight has you fighting 4 stone demon golems, and that fight is frankly way harder than the actual last boss.

Anyway, without going too much more in depth, I want to give this game some love. It is a bioware RPG from the time when most of the things Bioware was releasing were gaming gold, and this absolutely fits in there. It isn't without its faults, I frankly found the "talking with party members to progress their own stories" part of the game to be pretty clunky and not that well developed, and some of the companions you get seem to be pretty worthless frankly, but that is what I would call the low point of the experience. The gameplay, story, and pacing of the game are all top notch, and the choices the game gives you with the "Open Palm/Closed Fist" (Light Side/Dark Side) system give the game diversity and replay value.

Now that I've beaten it I've unlocked "Jade Master" difficulty, so it even sets you up to do a 2nd playthrough after you beat it.

If you have a GoG account, I highly recommend you add this to your wishlist. Picking this game up for under 4 dollars on sale is a fantastic value, and frankly I don't think this game gets enough attention for how good it is.

reddit.com
u/Somedude_6 — 3 months ago

General Appreciation for Jade Empire

Last month Jade Empire went on sale for 3.75 on GOG. Frankly, that is an absolute steal for this game. So much entertainment for not even 4 dollars.

I played this a few times when it was newer, and my girlfriend at the time loved it much more than KOTOR, (Knights of the old Republic) but I never played through it enough to really get into it.

Well, I have now remedied that, and beat the game a few days ago. Frankly, this game is pretty awesome, with a storyline that is kind of tropey but also has some twists and very dark turns. I feel that it does not get brought up very much in talks about retro RPGS. And while KOTOR is still talked about today, and a remake was announced... (though who knows if that will actually happen) Jade Empire I rarely, if ever, see mentioned.

Which is an absolute shame, because, genuinely, this is an A/A- game, even today.

Much like KOTOR, the game has a "light side/dark side" gameplay element with the choices you make, but frankly even being a light side person is going to have you doing some not exactly "Goodly" stuff. The combat style is much more real time than other RPGs, with an emphasis on learning different martial arts styles and switching between them depending on who you are facing. Once you find combinations of styles that work well together, (Hint: Once you get Storm Dragon, USE IT!) you'll find the game becomes quite a bit easier, but the game does a very good job (on the "Master" or normal difficulty anyway) of being hard without being too hard most of the time... though some of those later boss fights do get really hard. There is a part near the end of the game where you fight 3 clones of yourself at the same time and it's really tough, and the 2nd to the last fight has you fighting 4 stone demon golems, and that fight is frankly way harder than the actual last boss.

Anyway, without going too much more in depth, I want to give this game some love. It is a bioware RPG from the time when most of the things Bioware was releasing were gaming gold, and this absolutely fits in there. It isn't without its faults, I frankly found the "talking with party members to progress their own stories" part of the game to be pretty clunky and not that well developed, and some of the companions you get seem to be pretty worthless frankly, but that is what I would call the low point of the experience. The gameplay, story, and pacing of the game are all top notch, and the choices the game gives you with the "Open Palm/Closed Fist" (Light Side/Dark Side) system give the game diversity and replay value.

Now that I've beaten it I've unlocked "Jade Master" difficulty, so it even sets you up to do a 2nd playthrough after you beat it.

If you have a GoG account, I highly recommend you add this to your wishlist. Picking this game up for under 4 dollars on sale is a fantastic value, and frankly I don't think this game gets enough attention for how good it is.

reddit.com
u/Somedude_6 — 3 months ago

Gratuitous "What should I play?" Post!

Hello Reddit world,

I am almost ready to get this started. Have all the mods that I'm thinking about downloaded, bookmarked installation guides, and now I'm at the next big decision, what the heck to play.

While the idea of playing through the trilogy multiple times does sound appealing on some level, the game is too long and I have too much of a backlog to go through to play through this multiple times. I'm thinking 1 mega playthrough here.

What I'm thinking:
Half-Orc Fighter/Thief, This one I guess I'm most leaning towards. It would give the main character the thieving skills so I wouldn't necessarily need to keep Imoen or any of the other thief characters around. Of course, I really do like Imoen and Jan... bah, this is a hard choice.

Human Dual Class, Something like Kensai to Mage or maybe berserker to mage. Over 20 years ago now I did beat the trilogy with Kensai/Mage. It is a very powerful combination obviously. And it has been such a long time that the experience probably would feel pretty new.

Pure caster, either Dragon Disciple or Wild Mage kind of thing. Casters are obviously late game gold, and there honestly aren't a lot of good aligned pure casters in the game, so this is appealing. Also roleplay wise it kind of makes sense for the Bhaal essence to show up as wild magic or dragon lineage, given the base normal kits.

Ranger/Cleric, I've said before that this is possibly my favorite multi-class. In either the tweaks pact or SCS readme I remember there being an option to give rangers more/all druid spells that they could cast, which makes this combination even more appealing. Honestly it's really hard for me not to default to wanting to play this.

Paladin, anykind: I like paladins, they are buff, every kit is good. And Inquisitor especially sounds good since I typically let Keldorn go back to his family and anti-mage power is so insanely useful later in the game.

This is where I then hit the "If the choice wasn't hard enough" part of this: There are multiple balances/buffs in the tweaks and kitpack that make some of the standard kits I wouldn't otherwise think about sound really appealing.

For example: Barbarian Rage gets a big buff. Things like Thundering Rage and Intimidating rage sound really, really cool.

The beastmaster can have a permanent companion that you can choose. Things like boars, bears, snakes. It sounds really cool!

Then there are Monk buffs that make monks seem cooler too!

So this is the always popular "What the heck should I play?" Kind of post. What builds have you all had lots of fun with over the years?

reddit.com
u/Somedude_6 — 4 months ago

What is EEex and when to install it?

I am very close to starting this all back up. Picked up SoD on sale the other day, and I've downloaded the copious amount of mods I plan on using. Question: I'll see things in the Tweaks readme and in the kitpack readme that talk about EEex. What is it exactly, and when in the whole process do you install it?

I've found that the vast majority of what I've downloaded are quest and area/expansion modules... only 1 extra NPC. I gravitated towards things like Crucible, Black Hearts, etc. Really excited to get this started again.

reddit.com
u/Somedude_6 — 4 months ago
▲ 57 r/icewinddale+1 crossposts

Icewind Dale NPC Project Review, (With a mini review of Icewind Dale itself)

Greetings Infinity Engine fans,

As of last night, with roughly 55 hours of gameplay, I beat Icewind Dale. (GoG Version with both expansions)

I played using the original (I think) NPC project found here: https://www.pocketplane.net/icewind-dale-npcs/

So how did this change the Icewind Dale experience? And was it worth it to not have a party of your own making?

The super quick and short answer: Yes. Having NPCs that talk at all the key points of the game, interject with shopkeepers, and actually react to things you say makes the game so, so, SO much better.

Full disclosure, I have never had the patience to beat the entirety of Icewind Dale. I either just beat the base game and ignore the expansion stuff, or just playthrough HoW and call it quits.

Oftentimes my idea with Icewind Dale is to try many different classes for a Baldur's Gate playthrough, and I just burn out before beating the game.

What the Icewind Dale NPC project does though, is actually break up the monotony of the game. While you're delving through the MASSIVE dungeons of the game you'll get banters with you, between the characters, and it is all very DnD appropriate with nothing that really seems too out of place.

Because of this mod I didn't burn out. I was actually enjoying the game, even into the later parts. Honestly more so in the later parts.

So that is the super brief review of the mod: If Icewind Dale is just... too boring without actual characters to interact with, I 100% recommend using this mod.

Now to get into more nitty gritty of the mod and the game itself.

Installation on PC is super, super easy. It has a standard self installer, and if you're playing the EE version like I did, it lets you pick kits and classes for every character before you head into it.

This would be where my first little nitpick is. The readme file doesn't include stats or anything about the characters, so you're just kind of guessing, and some of the options aren't exactly great, are straight up not allowed with 2nd edition rules, and in general are kind of bland and generic.

Breaking down the characters one at a time, You get Holvir, a Human Paladin. When you're installing there is only base Paladin or the kits as options, so his is a super easy just pick what kind of Paladin you want and move on.

The next character is Neela, and she is set up to ideally be a Human Dual Class fighter into either a Druid or a Cleric. She has 18 wisdom, is True Neutral, and has 16 strength and con. Now, when you're making her, there are either fighter kits, and Fighter/Cleric or Fighter/Druid. This does kind of bug me, she is a Human, there shouldn't even be multi-class options. It should be all the fighters or all the Druid options in my opinion. This actually isn't the only Human who has this option in the mod.

There is then an Elf Ranger named Korin. This Chaotic Good character has either all the Ranger kits as an option, or Cleric/Ranger. I chose Cleric/Ranger since I love the class, but technically only Half-Elves can be this mix... 2nd character that can ignore class/race rules.

Then you have the rogue, a Half-Elf named Teri, and you have the thief kits or fighter/thief as your options. No issues here.

The final character is a Bard named Servyn. When you're picking the kits you can pick any bard option, or Fighter/Mage. I understand this is an option since there is no actual Mage here in the characters, but again... Humans shouldn't be able to multi-class.

So this is the cast of characters for the NPC project that you'll be spending 50+ hours with. I do wish the readme had more about the actual characters included, I definitely would have made some changes had I known more about the characters ahead of time.

Now what about the actual characters themselves? The writing, the interactions, and the personalities?

This is where I will start to be a little bit more critical, as the quality is mostly... okay to above average is how I would put it.

First off, I didn't spot a single typo over the entirety of the game. For the sheer volume of dialogue and interaction this adds I have to give credit here. The editing is great, and while there can be some long winded ramblings, (like this review) the formatting, spelling, and grammar are all at the professional level.

Where I would give this a pretty solid criticism is that the characters for the most part are just... kind of boring.

There aren't any over the top, fun, or offbeat characters at all. None of these characters have anything on a Minsc or Jan Jansen. All of these characters tend to be on the serious side, with the Rogue (Teri) and the Bard (Servyn) being the only 2 that seem to have anything resembling a sense of humor or a different personality. (Other than the Paladin.)

The writing is from the standpoint that these are young adventurers just starting out, with only a small amount of real background that gets revealed over time. They each seem to have one sort of "foundational event" in their background, and that's what all the rest of their character is built off of.

Without doing a bunch of spoilers, here is how I'd rate each of the individual characters:

Holvir the Paladin, (Ended at 17, almost 18) I actually thought that Holvir's writing was probably the best in the whole mod. Often Paladins can be really stale and boring, very "high and mighty" kind of energy. Holvir is humble, supportive, and frankly does a lot of what Paladins are supposed to do/be without coming across as annoying. I actually really liked him, probably my favorite of the characters. The fact that he's the only pure "strong fighter" type in the group made him also be a heavy lifter, as I went Avenger Druid for my character. His voice acting I also found to be the best of the bunch.

Neela the Fighter/Cleric type, (Ended as 13/14) is honestly one of the more boring characters in this group. Her entire deal is she is being trained as a Druid, is from Kuldahar, and wants to be the next lead Druid. She takes Arundel's death pretty hard, and after that happens a lot of her talks will be based around that. While the read me says she is romanceable, I never ended up getting there, even though it seemed like it was developing for awhile. Her voice acting is absolutely better than Teri, the other female character in the group, though her personality is honestly pretty boring. She acts much more like a Lawful Good (Or Neutral Good) Nature paladin than a druid type, even though her whole personality is "Defend the tree, I love the tree."

Korin, the Cleric/Ranger, (Ended at 14/12) was one of my favorite characters skill and stat wise, and was possibly my biggest damage dealer dual wielding very powerful morningstars that I was consistently finding. I found +4 flails with extra attacks, and off hand ended up with a +4 flail that had shock damage, so he could seriously dish out damage, and having all the extra cleric and ranger spells just added to his ability.

Personality wise though Korin I found to be kind of annoying. His voice acting isn't great, it isn't terrible but I found both the characters above to be voice acted better, and his character options frankly didn't really work with his background, being a Cleric anyway. His background was that he was a very, very powerful mage, but one day the weave just kind of left him and he had no powers anymore, so he left to the woods to become a ranger.

I feel like having the Ranger/Cleric be an option just doesn't really fit the character. I know divine magic isn't technically the Weave, but having him throw out level 6 and 7 divine spells doesn't really say "I can't use magic" anymore to me personally... but I digress.

In the severed hand Korin gets all kinds of emotional about what has happened to the Elves, and having that kind of character interaction with the environment does really help enrich the experience of Icewind Dale... I just found Korin to be kind of annoying and whiny a lot of the time. I honestly don't really mind whiny characters, I mean, I often romance Aerie in BG2, but something about Korin just wore on me with some of his dialogue.

Teri the Swashbuckler (Ended at level 23, Chaotic Neutral) fills the required "Thief" slot of the party, and is both my most liked and most disliked character. She is a fun loving character that wants to romance seemingly every male in the group, (except Korin) and was who I ended up "Romancing" though it is seriously G to PG rated, which I'm not complaining about. I don't need a harlequin romance novel in my DnD games. Her writing is honestly pretty good, and she is definitely the "most fun" of the characters. However, her voice acting is the absolute worst of the whole mod by far. There is just something about the performance that is like nails on a chalkboard. When I was playing with no sound on when my wife was around I would find myself like Teri quite a bit... but when I was playing on my days off with sound on I would find her so very annoying. I personally think her voice acting is probably the lowest quality thing in this whole mod.

Servyn the Bard (Level 23 as well) is one of the 3 characters that has an illegal possible class combination (Fighter/Mage) that I feel was included just to give people something other than a bard to pick... which is honestly kind of dumb in Icewind Dale as bards are awesome in this game. There are so very many great instruments from the start of the game literally all the way through.

Servyn I would rank as the most "in the middle" of the characters personality wise. He isn't as whiny or annoying as Korin, or as plain as Neela, but he also doesn't really stand out. He is a bard that lacks confidence, and it isn't until you're near the end of the game (And he's tossing out level 5 and 6 spells...) that he actually becomes a confident adventurer. There were multiple times in dialogue where he was talking about not really being a hero where I'm thinking "You just nuked a bunch of Yuan Ti with multiple fireballs... you're a pretty bad ass bard dude."

Servyn will romance Teri, but Teri really wants you. I honestly stayed out of the way, and in the severed hand straight up told Teri to go for Servyn, but that didn't seem to take. Teri just didn't really want to get with the bard.

So that is a breakdown of all the characters. Where I would add some criticism on top of the incompatible class things a some of the characters being a little boring is that everyone is Human, with an Elf and a Half-Elf. I really, really think Teri could have been a Halfling for example. And since the game kind of ignores class/race limitations, Servyn definitely could have been something other than Human. At least Korin's Elf personality makes him stand out from all the humans, even if he can be a little whiny.

So overall, despite being a little critical of it, I would give the NPC project a solid 8/10. I've never finished the entirety of this game, but thanks to the NPC project, I now have!

Now, a mini-review of Icewind Dale....

This game, as all of you know, is the "super dungeon diving, story minimum" game of the series. It honestly does have a lot going for it. Druids and Bards get a very much needed buff, and they're both great in the game. There are so many really big fights where powers and abilities that don't really shine in BG 1+2 do very well in this game. Resting is a genuine challenge in the dungeons, making spell selection much more important than in BG for example... because you most likely won't have an easy time resting. The graphics and changes to different spell animations are all really nice, I'll probably keep those when I start up the BG1+2 adventure. The game does a good job of keeping the difficulty up without being too insane, and the world in general is well made. A lot of the map graphics and monster graphics are really nice. Frankly nicer than most of the stuff in BG1.

Where the game falters, and what the NPC mod does very, very well, is break up the monotony of the dungeons. These dungeons are really long... with many floors. Minimum one time per floor there will be some sort of interaction though. Whether it is just the NPCs talking among themselves or one of them asking you questions, it really does a good job breaking up the long periods of silence in these dungeons.

One of the weaknesses of this game is how you go about doing the expansions. You can access HoW not long after getting to Kuldahar, and the Readme on the NPC mod says it will assume you go there somewhere in the chapter 3-5 range. I went in at chapter 4 having JUST hit level 10, and I had no idea that talking to the halfling in the bar would take me to Trials of the Luremaster. I'd never played it before, and had no idea that would be it... and I'd be stuck there for a few weeks.

The Trials of the Luremaster is, by far, the hardest part of the game. In fact, it kind of ruined the rest of the game because by the time I was done with it I was almost level 16. (I'll admit I had to drop the difficulty to easy twice... once with the Spectral Knights and once with the room full of Harpies that cast spells) This made the rest of HoW really easy. When I killed the white dragon I was bumped up to level 17, which then made the rest of standard Icewind Dale too easy. Until the literal last part of the game I was just smashing my way through.

So that would definitely be something to think about on future playthroughs.

I did have 2 prominent glitches occur during this run. First, the book to fix the rickety bridge near the end of the game glitched out, and I needed to use EEkeeper to give myself Joril's Badge. (Thanks Reddit world for the help there) Second, for whatever reason near the end of the game, it just stopped running AI scripts properly in combat. Sometimes my players would defend themselves when being attacked, sometimes they wouldn't. I'd reset the scripts over, and over, and over again, but basically the entirety of lower dorn's deep and Easthaven at the end I was 90% micromanaging everyone all the time because it just stopped running their combat behavior AI. This did make the last part of the game a whole lot more annoying. But with how overly powerful my characters had become from the expansions it really wasn't a problem.

Overall, I'd rate the whole experience an 8.5 out of 10, and if I ever playthrough the entirety of Icewind Dale again, I will 100% use an NPC project of some kind. There are more than this one around now. But overall, I highly, highly recommend using a good mod like this to make Icewind Dale more enjoyable.

Thanks for reading my fairly long two part review!

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u/Somedude_6 — 4 months ago

Major issue at end of icewind dale...

So I need Joril's Badge in Dorn's Deep. (The Frost Giants) I have to get the engineering book from Soth and then the bridge is suppose to repair itself.

The problem, I spoke with Soth, I specifically remember getting it, but it either vanished from my inventory or glitched or something, and I can't beat the game without repairing the bridge. Every forum or walkthrough thing says that it should just drop on the ground when he leaves after you free the slaves if he didn't give it to you, but it isn't there.

Anyone know what to do? I literally can't unlock the staircase to the last fight without Joril's Badge.

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u/Somedude_6 — 5 months ago

BG1 NPC project, is it actually worth installing?

Alrighty, I'm putting together my list of mods for my future trilogy run, and for the most part I'm settling on quest mods and extra areas/storyline stuff. (Like Black Hearts, Crucible, Ascension, Wheels of Prophecy, etc. )

The only consistent review site I have found is Smoldering Bar's reviews, which I found through this board.

Anyway, they give BG1 NPC Project a not exactly stellar review, and I'm curious as to other people's experiences with it? Or if anyone has a website that has reviews like Smoldering Bar but different?

I'm actually playing through IWD currently with the NPC project installed, (the original older one, 5 characters.) and plan on writing our a full review of it when I get there in a few months. (These games are long!)

How would people that are experienced with the NPC project rate it? What characters shine in it vs. don't? I've read that Imoen is annoying as hell for example, which I don't like, because I like having Imoen around....

Anyway, how would you rate it, and if you've played with this and the IWD character project, how would you compare it?

(So far, I'd rate the IWD NPC project somewhere in the C to B range.... hopefully it picks up as I get further along.)

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u/Somedude_6 — 5 months ago

BG 2 myth's and legends?

Greetings everyone,

slowly progressing towards starting this all up again, and I see advertised on my GOG the BG2 Myth's and Legends DLC.

I am aware that Siege of Dragonspear is a whole extra campaign, and I will be buying it before I start this all up, and I will be doing extensive modding, mostly tweaks and adding a bunch of quests, (Smoldering Bar's reviews have been super helpful.) and SCS and ascension...

Anyway, back on point, I see Myth's and Legends being advertised on GoG often for a few dollars more than SoD... but a quick google and a very old reddit post says it is only portraits?

Is this accurate? Is it only 16 more portraits? That seems odd to me that an actual expansion with a whole little extra campaign is less expensive than a collection of portraits.

What is Myth's and Legends and is it worth spending a little bit of extra money on it?

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u/Somedude_6 — 5 months ago