lawofzero

To me that looks like problems with different languages. Maybe you are running a non-english language for your game or maybe some mods haven't been 100% translated in their setup files? My guess is that some descriptions are simply off in some setup files and you have nothing to worry about. For eg. that is how something like Russian or Japanese would appear if your system is US English and your font doesn't support the character set.

Not a bad idea, probably deserves it's own thread. The thing is, when EET and IWD-in-EET become officially available in BWS, a lot is probably going to change in that regard. Personally I've just been messing around with BG1EE until it happens and I'm getting more and more impatient as time goes by Want to play so badly but also want to wait for EET until I do so.

 

The only real advice I could give is to look everything up. There is a button with an exclamation mark (!) on it when you select a mod in BWS, this will take you to that mod's homepage where hopefully the mod author has provided adequate information. What I usually do personally is start off with the 'recommended' selection and work from there. Generally, it selects the quality stuff and leaves out the questionable stuff and beyond that it is up to your personal taste in custom NPCs and Quests etc. The only section I go through with a fine toothed comb is the 'rules and tweaks' section but again, the 'recommended' selection is mostly spot on with this for me with just a few changes here and there.

Thanks man, those will be a good place to start finding out what I need to know, ultimately I'm probably going to want to create my own mod altogether. I think the devs must have been drunk when they were creating the familiars but there are a few things about them that irk me.. I haven't looked into the workings of WeiDU at all really but I'm starting to think it'll be very much worth my while to do so. Maybe I'll end up contributing here sooner or later.

 

If you don't mind me asking one more stupid question that i forgot to ask: the last thing that bugs me that I'd like to deal with is the portrait selection. I'm not sure what either BioWare or BeamDog were thinking by making portraits of NPCs that are already in the game available to player characters but I would like to replace all of these with my own custom portraits. I know that I can just use custom portraits the normal way so this is not a big deal, more of a convenience thing. My question is, do I also go about editing these in the chitin.key file with WeiDU?

There's a mod that makes her a thief/cleric. The lore fiendly approach is that you make a elf character, and copy the stats .. And if you can't make a Cleric/dual-class you want out of an elf, you won't make her such. Clear ? So no.

Good, now you can make her to be what ever you wish her to be with EEKeeper and cheat as much as you like, 25 in all the stats, but it's the same as making her to be one with 3 in all the stats ... the game doesn't give a darn, how lore fiendly you claim to be.

In 2ed D&D, drows have -1 to Constitution, and +1 to Dexterity, same as regular elves. Just (mostly) evil. And chaotic.

Yeah I'm not going to be giving anyone 25 in any stats. The kind of changes I make are just to improve their class stats. I mean, no one in their right mind would roll a Cleric with 15 Wisdom and 16 Intelligence, that's just stupid. Or a mage with 17 intelligence with a whole bunch of stats to spare in useless things. Even if I was making a character with a limit of say, 75 points, I wouldn't make such stupid decisions. The vanilla NPCs have been created as if a complete beginner who doesn't know the rules and didn't bother to read any descriptions created them. On the one hand, I can understand that BioWare wanted to maybe make them seem 'natural', on the other hand it's just completely dumb. I guess I'll look for a 2E rulebook for more info on Drows. As far as I understand they are basically elves with 50% magic resistance. In other words, better than elves with no other downsides. And that can't be right.

 

Good call on modifying Bif files. i'll look into the WeiDu method but really it's not such a big deal. One hack way to remove those CHR files is to create blank files with the same name in the override folder. It's worked for me so far so I'll just stick to that. Was just curious if there was another way.

 

As for editing Find Familiar, I'm aware of a mod called 'More Style for Mages' that makes a lot of changes to this spell. However, I don't like all of the changes. I guess what I'll do is try to dig through that mod's files for more information on what I want to do. This is the modification I would really like to be able to make out of all.

 

Thanks for the info guys, my questions have been mostly answered.

Description of "Kreso's selection" is this:

 

 

"This selection takes a minimalist approach, enhancing the original game content without adding any new NPCs or large expansions or encounters. The AI is not changed, so the difficulty will be the same as the original game."

 

 

So why then it contains both new NPC's and SCS with difficulty enhanced encounters and Ascension? 

The selections and descriptions definitely need a major overhaul IMO and the only real way to find out exactly what you want and what works for you is to try and try again unfortunately. Start with a preset that looks decent to you and work for there, make sure to regularly use the 'Import Selection to File' option to save your mod selection for next time too. The amount of time it takes to install a mod setup can take a REALLY long time and it's very possible you'll make yourself sick to death of Chapter One of the game while you test out mods but it's worth it once you know exactly what you want. Just one tip while you're testing out what you want and what you don't want, leave out Sword Coast Stratagems until you're sure because it adds about half an hour at least to the time it takes to install all of your mods. If you're plan on using SCS, add it to your mod setup only when you're sure about eveything else.