so i've passed the game, twice now, ToB included. yay for me. doing it solo as a thief as well, but i'm finding i want to take a break from that and maybe play a harder game. have a few options, i'm on core difficulty atm, i can either turn that up, or install a mod. anyone care to give me the pros or cons on doing either, and what mods you'd recommend? i've heard about tactics and accension (sp?) and such but i'm a bit unfamiliar with what each specifically does. ideas, comments, questions?

well, the thing about the difficulty slider is that unmodded, this doesn't affect the AI of the monsters (i don't think so, at any rate) but insteads, just ups the amount of damage you take.

so, if you are taking damage and it's negligible, try adjusting the slider to see if that makes it more fun.

alternatively and more likely, is that you aren't being hit at all and the desire is for more dynamic enemy behavioral scripts. you want your enemies to be smarter, in other words. If this is the case, try installing select parts of the Tactics mod.

www.weidu.org has a list of many of the commonly referenced mods.

Personally, i would go down the mod route. Upping the difficulty just increases the damages that monsties do to you, whereas mods add a whole new dimension to the game.

Tactics creates additional encounters, makes existing ones harder, sometimes an awful lot. Most of these improvements come about from better AI - improved bodhi won't go after the tank with the mace of disruption for example.

The whole point is to make the game more challenging, by forcing you to think tactically, and for that reason i would definitely recommend it over a difficulty increase. Still, some people on here manage tactics on insane difficulty, but not something i've tried.

Acsension adds a different ending on to ToB and there is another add-on to that called Redemption that gives you the opportunity to redeem Irenicus. I have both installed, but keep starting new games at the moment, so haven't reached the end yet.

All of Westley's mods use the WeiDU installer which means it's very easy to go through and select which individual components you wish to install (or uninstall, so just have a good look at the readme.

The only thing i would caution you about is using NPC mods, as some of those can be extremely powerful and may upset your game balance, but it's all a matter of taste.

Go there for lots of info about tactics, scroll down a little and every alteration is listed:
http://www.weidu.org/tactics/README-Tactics.txt

Sorry i can't be more help about acsension, but am sure there's someone else on here that knows all [img]smile.gif[/img]