IWD2 Tweaks

[Redrake]

I started (for quite some time actually) working on some fixes and tweaks for IWD2. Some are made to bring IWD2 in par with true 3E rules. Others are fixings for released mods. And yet again others are convenience changes to make the game more enjoyable.
I'll start by enumerating the things I've done.

- Paladins:
Replaced the common names, Paladin of Ilmater, Mystra or Helm with others.
As in
Paladin of Ilmater is changed to Paladin of the Golden Cup

The Order of the Golden Cup is often charged with the protection of Ilmaters Healers when their missions would take them to the most hostile of places. Serving as faithful guardians, these questing knights swear to many of the same vows as the Healers, though with some differences. They carry enough gold to keep arms and armor, as well as other relevant equipment. They will provide food and supplies if needs be, but beyond this do not keep gold or wealth. The Knights of the Golden Cup use violence only when absolutely necessary to protect their charge, whose zeal for helping often lands them into danger. They will not turn a blind eye to the suffering of others however, but will show restraint, understanding that the Healers cause is vital.

Paladin of Helm changed to Paladin of the Red Falcon

The Order of the Red Falcon is a fellowship of crusaders, warriors, and a few paladins who serve the Red Knight and Lady Bloodhawk. Small in number, the elite knights of this order are dangerous opponents who have triumphed in the face of overwhelming odds on numerous occasions. Based in the Citadel of Strategic Militancy, many of the knights serve as instructors in the Red War College. Other serve stints in various armies throughout the Realms training the officers in military history. On rare occasions they are all summoned back to the Citadel and led into combat by Lady Bloodhawk herself.

Paladin of Mystra changed to Paladin of the Mystic Fire

The church of Mystra sponsors a knightly order of paladins and a small order of rangers. The paladins, the Knights of the Mystic Fire, are granted their spells by Mystra. They often accompany members of the clergy on quests to locate lost hoards of ancient magic and also form the cadre from which the leadership for the small groups of armed forces who guard Mystra's larger temples and workshops is drawn.

- Slightly changed the description of Morninglord of Lathander.

- Dwarves are now racially proficient with axes and hammers.

- Drow are no longer racially proficient with bows, but instead with crossbows.

- Fixed some of Weimer's added IWD1 items so that they can be used in IWD2. Previously some of the armor he placed in there disables spellcasting like it used to do in IWD1.

- All scimitars in the game benefit from keen effect (x3 critical).

- Restored content: Component of would be UB for IWD2. Fixed Druids of Shaengarne Village quest, with an alternate way of solving the problem with Shaengarne village.

- Halflings get Luck of Heroes feat for free at first level.

- Half-elves get +2 Cha. This was made because 3E utterly messed up this race. Is now basically without any benefits. However in 3E Half-elves get a small bonus to Diplomacy and Bluff, bonus which can be covered by +2 Cha.

- Monks were getting axes as class proficiency. This as been removed. They are also no longer proficient with crossbows, unless they are drow.

- Rangers and Druids get Forester as a starting feat (no one would actually take that feat anyway).

- Rangers and bards get a slight increase in skills x6 instead of x4.

- Dwarves received 3 ranks of Toughness at the start.

- Bluff is no longer a skill available to paladins (Lying paladins?).

- Minimum stats are fixed at 8 instead of 3. Obviously this goes to 6 or 4 depending on various races penalties.

- Restored content: Ubchug Babblemug a half-orc crazy cleric in Severed hand.

- Restored content: Goublika leader of fomorian giants in the Western Pass can be talked to, for a different way to solve the problems in that area (essentially he'll attack Andorra).

[prowler]

Good news! Have you plans for making Weidu version?

[Redrake]

As you probably know, my weidu skills are abysmal. For now I am working on adding fixes and tweaks whenever I have the chance and testing them as I go.

[Redrake]

Ran into some problems. Shaengarne River druids quest is even broken than I imagined. For a good-aligned party it works sure enough. However if the party is evil or takes evil choices the game crashes. Apparently BIS replaced the whole druids quest with the evil path. I might in the future attempt to merge the 2 dlg files, but at the moment I'll have to put this aside.

- Added more spells to rangers and paladins. Especially Holy Smite for Paladins. Originally this was a spell only for Lathander and Ilmater domains.

- Watchers of Helm now get Blind fight as feat (as per 3E rules).

- Rangers are now proficient only with Light armor.

- Fixed Moonblade of Selune. Despite it's description, it was not a Longsword and it was not granting +2 to Damage and hit. Basically, only the magic damage was there.

- Fixed elven chainmails. They now count as light armor, with 15% Arcane failure (avoidable providing the player uses 3 ranks of Armore Arcana).

- Stormlord of Talos gets Scion of Storms feat for free.

[Redrake]

I just tested the restored component with Goublika and his fomorian giants attacking captain Yurst. Works wonderful. You can convince them to stop their attacks by either providing information on Andorra or by bribing them (they ask for 5000 gold however). Either way, solving this quest gets you 1900 xp.
And some screenshots:

[Redrake]

Unforeseen effect. After sending Goublika and his giants after Sherincal, she comments on his death and the death of his dream of freedom for giantkin. A voiced comment that didn't make it to the final version of the game.

[Redrake]

Some interesting came up while checking the bugs in monastery. Apparently there are 3 ways to get past the monastery. One the trials, two kill all the monks and three, steal the key. Stealing the key is very difficult and next to impossible in normal game. It has to be done from the leader, Aruma and she's a level 18 monk (while your party is most likely level 12 by that time). Even with potions of thievery, cat's grace and bard song is next to impossible to steal the key. It does open the possibility in HoF, though.

- I fixed pureblood yuan-tis in Chult. Despite being yuan-ti some of those were set as being humans.

- Just to keep things on the interesting side, I embarked on small big project. Extension of IWD2, by adding Lonelywood at visitable locations after the horde is destroyed. I'm thinking on making a story about the horde retreating to mountains but still close enough to Lonelywood, so the party heads up there to do some more horde bashing.
It is so nice that designers thought to include all those locations on the world map. All I have to do is import areas from IWD1, change them and make those locations visitable.

For now, I made Lonelywood visitable and I added the Lonelywood areas. I still need to fix them, by obviously adding characters, enemies, dialogues and so on. Hailee Dunn should be an older woman now, so she's there. As Emmerich is a half-elf, he's going to make an appearance as well. Kieran is going to be there too, as an older man.
I might use the area of barbarian camp as the horde camp and fill it with orcs and goblins. That would ensure a very nasty battle.

[prowler]

Wow!! Awesome things is going here Cool !!

[Redrake]

Yes, I might need some help with Weidu parts though. For now I am just getting my bearings and making sure the bugs are indeed fixed. Next is adding Lonelywood part.

[Redrake]

Restored content: Ubchug Babblemug a half-orc crazy cleric in Severed hand.

Tested and it works as intended. The reward for this banter is experience and a very interesting object...

[prowler]

Hey Redrake! Any progress?

[Redrake]

Well, I finished fixing some stuff, but for the past month or so, no progress. In 3 weeks I'm getting married and as one can imagine, I have plenty of other things on my head right now.

When I have some time I'll dedicate it to writing some proper stories for various items that have just a generic description.

[Redrake]

Tried to work some more on adding Lonelywood to IWD2. Ran into an unforeseen wall. While creating Lonelywood is not hard and it does have a lot of work involved for adding characters and enemies, the biggest problem is the worldmap. The moment I decided to add it to the visitable locations the worldmap stopped working. I have no idea why, as NearInfinity also runs into problems reading a modified worldmap.

Regardless I decided to upload (one of the following days), my collection of fixes and tweaks as it is. No Weidu version, just files for override and a dialog.tlk. It is recommended that the files and especially the dialog.tlk be installed last after any other mods. Mods that should be installed as they fixed some bugs and I did not copy over are any other fixes previously released, like EasyofUse.

And now some summary on the changes contained in those files (in addition to the ones already listed):

- general fixes on alignments. Plenty of characters had wrong alignments or none at all.

- some changes in dialog texts to better implement the new paladin orders.

- slightly altered some rewards in some quests

- some racial changes

- alternate path in Black Raven Monastery for people unable to solve the whole trials and unwilling to kill all the monks (the key can now be stolen easier)

- some changes to containers. There are also less likely to find empty containers in areas where there should be loot.

- gender fixes (yes, I found plenty of females and males with incorrect gender)

- additional items for sale or to be found (taken and modified from IWD1)

[Redrake]

OK, here it is my mod. Non-weidu. For installation, I suggest a patched game Easy of Use fixes, the other things added by that mod can be installed but only before adding my modifications. Especially my dialog.tlk.
As there aren't many mods released for IWD2 there shouldn't be any problems. One thing is certain, Undead Targos is unlikely to work with these modifications.

In the future I'm going to release some updates, as I want to place all the existing items in the database in the game (some were added, but there are still some more).

[coineineagh]

http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=46611
There are quite a few IWD2 mods, actually. I'm excited to hear about your mod, but as long as it's not WeiDU, it won't be compatible with all the others.
Or, perhaps Undead Targos gave that impression. Would other mods possibly be compatible? Have a look at them, if you would.
Hopefully you can learn to adapt it to WeiDU format, or another modder can take that credit.
I'm just an enthusiastic gamer/guidewriter, unfortunately. But I assume there is no objection if another were to convert your work?

EDIT: OK, I had a look at the download. It's a bunch of files that go into Override, and replace dialog.tlk
Now I think I understand why some of it wouldn't be compatible with Undead Targos. The last installed would simply overwrite the previous. If I were to (re)place all your files there before installing any WeiDU mods, would it cause serious gamebreaking CTDs, or are we only talking about content overwrites?
Re-EDIT: I'm guessing it might be a while before you see my message, but I just want to emphasize how excited I was when I found your list of tweaks. I don't expect you to learn WeiDU on my behalf, but if you could summarize which modifications comprise which tweak, it would be a lot more customizable for players. I suggest making separate folders with tweak categories, instead of a zip containing one massive filedump into override. I plan to investigate those files for my own play, but you'd be saving the average player hours of work (or disappointment at the discovery of unwelcome tweaks in their game) if you could do that. If there are files that have had more than 1 aspect about them tweaked, you could include info on it in a readme.

On a sidenote, I included your upload in my mod linklist above, but with the necessary warnings. This isn't the only non-weidu override-paste type mod out there, so with a bit of categorization and organizing, it could be one of the best. I really hope you have time to get around to this.
P.S. If you get around to updating your upload, send me a PM if it's been a really long time since my post, then I'll be made aware that I should adjust my linklist. Thanks!