Random Ilyich ramblings (Tactics spoilers galore)

[SixOfSpades]

I just slogged through Improved Ilyich (Version 20) again, and I've been assembling a few ideas and suggestions to send to Weimer. Just wondered what other folks thought about them. Weimer doesn't seem to hang about the forums anymore, so there's no risk of him "correcting" #2 without any of the others.


1) Lose Imoen's Belt, and her "HP = 1" speech. Anybody that installs mods is going to be familiar with the Main Plot, and already *know* that Imoen is supposed to be alive at the dungeon exit, come hell or high water. Therefore, the only purpose the Belt really serves is to allow all kinds of cheese, from making her immune to Dolorous Decay to turning her into an unkillable Tank. IMHO, It's worth a small chance of discontinuity (Imoen would have to get chunked in the dungeon, since Jaheira is only inches away from knowing Harper's Call) to get that cheese out of the picture.

2) Not ALL the doors on Level 1 are stuck open. The North, West, and South doors of the Otyugh Room (the ones opened by the Sewage Golem) can be manipulated as before, PROVIDED that the player has not Reloaded since sending the Sewage Golem on his rounds. In my opinion, this should stay. Not only does it strongly discourage things like Reloading over and over until Karamazov fails her Save vs. Charm, but since it increases the odds of one's entire party being in the Otyugh Room, it allows "good" door-slamming ("Jaheira, you stand here and hold the door shut while Minsc and I pound the Golem") but not "bad" door-slamming (Lure out the Glabrezu, lock him in the Glass Jar room. Lure out Zhivago, lock him in Rielev's room, etc).

3) I dropped Zhivago down to Level 13 and made his Plate droppable. When it comes to his spells, though, I frankly think his AI needs reworking. Spells like Flamestrike and Poison are good, but what's with all the Magic Stones? When I gave him some Sanctuary to cast, he didn't do so, even when he was surrounded and alone. He's a spellcaster, so have him fight like one, including having him favor a Sling instead of a Flail.

4) I'm idly contemplating a Return to Ilyich mod, which creates a sewer-dwelling Halfling named Murray, who hangs out with Roger the Fence. He knows the sewer systems of Athkatla like the back of his hand, *including* the ones below Waukeen's Promenade. For a price, he can squeeze the party into a tunnel that runs from the Slums Sewers to a spot near the exit from Jon's Dungeon, and from there to the Otyugh Room. Now, Ilyich and company are hardly likely to hang around with their employer in Spellhold (who's gonna sign their paychecks?), so the party must return within 3 days if you want to collect any acorns. Therefore, the Duergar aren't going to have to contend with any high-level parties wielding Carsomyr, but the Glabrezu's and Golem's immunities aren't going to protect them anymore, either. To compensate (especially to replace any of the gang that the party killed the first time through), I'm adding 3 new Duergar that happened to be out of the dungeon earlier: The real brains of the whole outfit is Kasparov, a master strategist in the shape of a Level 13 Conjurer, followed by a Level 15 Skald named Tchaikovsky and a Level 10/12 Fighter/Thief named Denisovich. Ideally, this fight should take place in the Wand-trap Room, with an Invisible Tchaikovsky running around turning the traps on and off for added fun, but that's probably just a pipe dream. What are your thoughts on this?

5) Since they're treasure-loving Dwarves running around in a dungeon packed to the gills with magical loot lying about, I've given all the Duergar some random stuff to drop. Proletariats got RNDTRE02 and 03, Party Members got 03 and 04, and all named Duergar got 2 RNDTRE05s. Loot was some gold and minor jewelry for the most part, but enough Scrolls and Potions to give some interesting variety.

6) Imoen chose a pretty good selection of spells, considering the situation, but Jaheira's and Minsc's are frankly moronic. Hold Animal? Detect Evil? CALL LIGHTNING!?! Sheesh. I reorganized their spellbooks as follows:
IMOEN: Armor x1, Magic Missile x3. Mirror Image x1, Web x2. Haste x1, Monster Summoning x1, FireBall x1. Stoneskin x1, Improved Invisibility x1.
MINSC: Cure Light Wounds.
JAHEIRA: CLW x3, Doom x1, Shillelagh x1. Barkskin x2, Charm Person/Mammal x1. Cure Medium Wounds x3. Call Woodland Beings x2. (The Shillelagh and Barkskins are because she can see that neither Minsc nor herself has access to any armor or weapons.)
I was also annoyed with the awkward way the game chose incarnations of the NPCs to accompany you. Start with a PC of around 161k EXP, and your Minsc might vary from 89k all the way up to 400k. Since I always use the Tome of Retroactive Convenience, I simply overwrote MINSC7 and MINSC9 with the file MINSC8, assuring that I will always get a Minsc with 161k EXP. I did the same with Jaheira, too, for the same reason. Oh, yes, I also moved Minsc's proficiencies in Mace into Axe, to better match his BG1 starting proficiencies. You can't choose Racial Enemy:Gnoll in BG2, though. Do you think he should go for Ogre or Hobgoblin?

7) I tweaked Imoen's Thieving skills a bit, too. Basically, I disregarded her past of pickpocketing the Monks of Candlekeep and moved all of her points in Pick Pockets (not that there were many) into Stealth, along with 5 of her points from Open Locks. She now has Traps 95%, Locks 95%, Pockets 25%, Move Silently 40%, Hide in Shadows 30%, Detect Illusion 0%, and Set Traps 5%. I made the same adjustments with the 2 Spellhold Imoens as well.

8) It has been suggested that the Duergar Proletariats be made *smarter* than a box of hair, i.e. able to acquire new targets while the first one is still alive. Although it would make them much more dangerous, I must agree with this--I can see a Jailkeep Golem being stupid enough to run in circles without realizing it's never going to hit anything before it dies, but Dwarves aren't supposed to be that brain-dead. I would have the Proles switch to attack the closest target every 1 or 2 rounds, and also drop their strange ability to know where their target is, even from the other side of the map. Now, since the Proles can't be run in circles anymore, this makes them real bruisers--to compensate, I suggest more balanced stats. I'm going to roll a Dwarven Fighter now: The numbers that came up were 11/11/14/16/12/11. Well, that certainly sucked, didn't it? I'll roll twice more. I got 13/8/16/14/15/11, and 14/8/13/15/16/13. I suggest that ILYPARTY, ILYTH, and ILYTHF01, respectively, use these rounder stats--thus lessening the damage that the party is now sure to suffer. Not to be one-sided, though, the Proles now carry Small Shields. Maybe I'll give them some Throwing Axes or something, too.

9) Once again, I saw the "Regular Dungeon Spawn" appear just outside the dungeon, resulting in a Prole and Party Member attacking me just as soon as the Cowled Wizards had left. Now, the time I spent "in transit" through the exit was more than 8 hours (Auto-Save was Day 1 Hour 21, ambush occurred at Day 2 hour 7), so it seems that this can be fixed by placing the command to turn off the regular 8-hour Duergar Spawn just before the command to jump to the next Hour 7.

10) I have a screenshot of me hitting a group of Duergar with a Holy Smite. The Battle Text reads:
Duergar Party Member- Magic Resistance
Duergar Proletariat- Save vs. Spell
Duergar Proletariat- Save vs. Spell
Duergar Proletariat- Save vs. Spell
None of them took any damage from the spell. Now, Shadowkeeper does not indicate any MR at all for the Proles or Party Members, and Holy Smite only allows a Save for HALF damage. I can understand scripting some innate MR for residents of the Underdark, but I'd at least like to know how much--and what the heck happened with those Proles?


FYI, the PC for this run-through was a NG Dwarven Fighter/Cleric, with starting stats of 12/17/19/8/18/11. It took me forever to get a natural roll that good, but as this was my first no-reloads run through Ilyich, I wasn't going to take any chances.

[Link]

I don't have much remarks on your findings, Six, but here are some spouts from my side;

1) What would be the reason for Imoen's belt and speech to disappear? Cheese is a choice, after all.

4) Overall a good idea, albeit that I remember Jon's castle exploding after we left. Does that mean the lower levels survived the blast?
And on the names; it might be even more fun to name the Fighter/Thief Piotr instead of Denisovich. That way you'll have his entire name [img]smile.gif[/img]

6) Overall a good idea as well, but how could Jaheira have known what was going to happen? For all we know, she expected fights outside (she was captured and kidnapped after all) instead of inside. Not to mention that she wouldn't have thought of getting out in the first place. The whol idea of her spell book containing all sorts of spells that aren't quite useful in the dungeon only backs up the 'more realism-idea' about the game.

7) Again; why? What would be the justification for that? Basically you're tweaking with her background this way..

8)Hear hear!

[ 08-23-2004, 04:20 AM: Message edited by: Link ]

[SixOfSpades]

Originally posted by Link: 1) What would be the reason for Imoen's belt and speech to disappear? Cheese is a choice, after all.

Apart from the fact that it makes the gameplay more logical, because she's stronger (not counting cheese, of course) without it. In my conquest of the dungeon, Imoen died twice. (Thankfully, she was the only one.) If she had been wearing the Belt, I would have had no Wizard spells for the entire 2nd half of my stay--and I'd have had to give up 1/5th of the loot we lugged out of the dungeon.

4) Overall a good idea, albeit that I remember Jon's castle exploding after we left. Does that mean the lower levels survived the blast? And on the names; it might be even more fun to name the Fighter/Thief Piotr instead of Denisovich. That way you'll have his entire name

Hmmmm.....I'd always interpreted the explosion as collapsing the passage through which you leave the dungeon, not the dungeon itself. In Waukeen's, we see that the crater has a blast radius of about 25 feet. We can hardly expect it to have done more damage in solid rock than in a hollow structure, so the most amount of damage it could have done inside is to take out that rickety rope bridge.
As for Denisovich, the only real Thiefy-type character that sprung to mind was the cetral figue in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by (watch me butcher the name) Aleksandr Solzenietzhin. Ivan is a prisoner in a gulag, and one of the climaxes of his day is that he tries to smuggle a broken hacksaw blade back to the dormitories to use as a tool. Who is this Piotr you mention? (Idle thought: That wasn't Tchaikovsky's first name was it? We might not be able to use Tchaikovsky anyway, I think he predated the Revolution.)

6) Overall a good idea as well, but how could Jaheira have known what was going to happen? For all we know, she expected fights outside (she was captured and kidnapped after all) instead of inside. Not to mention that she wouldn't have thought of getting out in the first place.

Really? I got the idea that the party had already been incarcerated for around a week or so. I mean, Jon has to make some incisions in Imoen, place a mental dagger in her head, dissect Khalid in front of her, go kill some Shadow Thieves, come back, torture you, go kill some more Shadow Thieves, and he's only one guy with two hands. I'd give him an estimated four days for all of that, six if he's a union man.
And you think Jaheira wouldn't have thought of getting out? What, are you nuts? She's just going to sit there and die slowly while her legs turn gangrenous from immobility? This is Jaheira we're talking about, not Aerie.

7) Again; why? What would be the justification for that? Basically you're tweaking with her background this way.

I agree, but since all Thieving skills are redistruibuted upon transferring to BG2 anyway, only a fool would have kept anything in Pick Pockets. And hey, even with 0 points invested in the skill, she still has a score of 25%--conceivably enough to snag a few quills from sleepy acolytes, and she was caught frequently. Besides, if we're going to remain strictly true to BG1 here, she'd have gotten only 20 Thieving points per level, instead of BG2's 25.

[JrKASperov]

All good points, and I for one agree with the general points made by Six that Tactics is a cheating mod. Unnecessarily and frustratingly so.

[Hank Parsons]

Originally posted by SixOfSpades: Weimer doesn't seem to hang about the forums anymore,

Not sure which forums you meant (IW or Pocket Plane's Weimer Republic forum)... but Wes is on holiday for a month. He's not on the forum, but he will be back.

In Response to Thread... I will try to respond to SixOfSpades' lucid points; even though I disagree on certain details, I think Six plays fair in his constructive criticism. I'm disenchanted with some other critics of Tactics. If you wanted the game to be easy, and the enemies to be weak, and the PC's to dominate everything -- then don't install Tactics. At least offer well-founded suggestions for improvement as Six does. Some of you guys are so married to the CRPG rule-set that you've lost your creative minds.

SixOfSpades, the only point I didn't understand was about the droppable armor. What's wrong with undroppable armor? That seems like a good way to enhance enemies while not giving the players unbalanced armor upgrades at this time in the game. I agreed with any minor changes to characters to enhance the personality and customize, such as fixing the spell-selection within the rules, and juggling weapon proficiencies before you begin gameplay. Smarter dwarves in the dungeon? Bring 'em on.

Remember this: From the Tactics Read Me file... "Improved Ilych is a PARODY." (Translation: a joke... It's so over-the-top extreme that it is supposed to be funny.) If you can beat it, then you've beat something that was really meant as an entertaining joke, but technically is still beatable with hardcore game tactics. Let's try not to take this componant too over-seriously.

[ 08-25-2004, 02:39 AM: Message edited by: Hank Parsons ]

[JayS]

I've heard that II has changed Fallen Deva scripts for the worse. Maybe that's another thing that could be changed?

[SixOfSpades]

Originally posted by Hank Parsons: Some of you guys are so married to the CRPG rule-set that you've lost your creative minds.

Hmmm....in essence that's true, but I would temper that statement with the caveat that it's better to insist on ironclad D&D rules than to totally disregard them. A Dagger that does more damage than a Two-Handed Sword needs a hell of a lot of explaining in order to avoid being completely ridiculous.

Remember this: From the Tactics Read Me file... "Improved Ilych is a PARODY." (Translation: a joke... It's so over-the-top extreme that it is supposed to be funny.)

Supposed to be funny, yes. Now, Ilyich's dialogue is quite funny. But Fallen Devas? Not funny. Undroppable Full Plate+2? Not funny. A Greater Otyugh with ESP and a long-range targeting system that keeps you from changing armor from half the map away? Not funny. Simply going overboard does not automatically qualify as being entertaining--I don't remember laughing with glee in the Improved Small Teeth Pass.

Originally posted by JayS: I've heard that II has changed Fallen Deva scripts for the worse. Maybe that's another thing that could be changed?

As far as I know, the only change was that Fallen Devas who are Hostile to the party no longer cast their Healing spells on them. Happily, this is a moot point for me, since my Zhivago can't summon them anyway.

[JayS]

What I was thinking of is the Fallen Deva frying Ilyich with a firestorm. The thing I've heard of was that the script also changes the Fallen Deva's AI so that the Fallen Deva you summon will fry you with Firestorm.

[SpongeBobTheDestoyer]

Okay, first off I'm a powergamer, I have little experience role-playing. That is probably why my opinion of the Tactics mod goes something like - "if it ain't broke don't fix it".

Six, you always have well thought out ideas and are obviously blessed with high scores in INT and WIS. Some of your last suggestions to the mod are ones that have been implemented and I'm playing and enjoying every day. I tend to agree with most of the ones now too. Here's my opinion-

1. Immys belt is a bit disruptive to the rules but as long as she can cast a Summon Monster spell it serves the same purpose - eat up the Dolorious Decay, Hold Person, Confusion or whatever spells. So take it away or keep it, I don't think it matters. The 1 hp thing annoys me but I'm quick on the pause trigger and her potions.

2. Didn't know any stayed open any more, I agree with you.

3. If the armor drops then what would I use my first Limited Wish spell for? Gems - phooey.

4. see below

5. I have no idea what those stand for but I like treasure!

6. I always hated Jaheira's spell selection. And yes, she's been in a cell for some time she has time to memorize new ones.

7. Sure, that means I don't have to waste all day waiting for her to hide.

8. Like you said they would be MUCH toughter, especially on Insane. It's kinda funny how they can go from nonexistant to really tough by adding brains.

9. I just rest before leaving the dungeon and they spawn there and I run out. Now I wouldn't have to do that.

10. I've had several MR's come up for those bastards. Karamozov too, does she have MR?

Back to number 4, that was my main intention for posting. I would love for you to make a mod like that, or any other that you've thought about. With your ideas I think you should spend more time developing your own mods instead of disecting Weimers. And if you really want to fix a broken mod that has potential look at the Improved Battles mod. I would love to re-install that one but it has some major issues.

In short, yeah the dungeon could be improved but IMHO it's fine as is.

[Link]

Originally posted by SixOfSpades: Apart from the fact that it makes the gameplay more logical, because she's stronger (not counting cheese, of course) without it. In my conquest of the dungeon, Imoen died twice. (Thankfully, she was the only one.) If she had been wearing the Belt, I would have had no Wizard spells for the entire 2nd half of my stay--and I'd have had to give up 1/5th of the loot we lugged out of the dungeon.

Loot can't be a real reason to change something so fundamental to the original game. In the same line of your argument [the player knowing what happens to Imoen already] you could argue that the player should also know what happens to Imoen once she hits that crucial 1 HP. Same thing, other perspective.
On the other hand, I can imagine that going through the dungeon without a decent spellcaster (can't remember when I last saw Jaheira entangle someone to death, but we'll get to that later) is quite hard, especially with the Improved Ilyich goons walking around.

Hmmmm.....I'd always interpreted the explosion as collapsing the passage through which you leave the dungeon, not the dungeon itself. In Waukeen's, we see that the crater has a blast radius of about 25 feet. We can hardly expect it to have done more damage in solid rock than in a hollow structure, so the most amount of damage it could have done inside is to take out that rickety rope bridge. As for Denisovich, the only real Thiefy-type character that sprung to mind was the cetral figue in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by (watch me butcher the name) Aleksandr Solzenietzhin. Ivan is a prisoner in a gulag, and one of the climaxes of his day is that he tries to smuggle a broken hacksaw blade back to the dormitories to use as a tool. Who is this Piotr you mention? (Idle thought: That wasn't Tchaikovsky's first name was it? We might not be able to use Tchaikovsky anyway, I think he predated the Revolution.)

The explosion was of some power to say at the least. As we know it made the tunnel collapse, and although I have to admit that the game does not tell you the exact truth of what happens with the dungeon below, my imagination always told me that the whole of the dungeon either turned into a pile of rubble or was so utterly damaged that you could't travel through or to it anymore.
Again, on the other hand, if you make your story plausible enough (which is a necessity if I might say so) then I don't foresee any grave problems with the mod. It would be a nice tweak to be honest, especially with the names and all. Piotr was indeed Tchaikovsky's first name, his FULL name being Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. I trust you to see both reasons for me to suggest the name "Piotr". Solzhenitsyn (forgive for raping his name as well; he's a great writer of his time) and his Gulag Archipel are of course known to me, as is Denisovich. If you want to stay focussed on the Revolution (after all, Lenin was a 'Ilyich' as well), then that name [Denisovich] would be better suited indeed, and I would advise you to change Tchaikovsky's name into Lev (or you could go for Stachanov, but he had nothing to do with the Revolution in '17). I trust you know both names

Really? I got the idea that the party had already been incarcerated for around a week or so. I mean, Jon has to make some incisions in Imoen, place a mental dagger in her head, dissect Khalid in front of her, go kill some Shadow Thieves, come back, torture you, go kill some more Shadow Thieves, and he's only one guy with two hands. I'd give him an estimated four days for all of that, six if he's a union man. And you think Jaheira wouldn't have thought of getting out? What, are you nuts? She's just going to sit there and die slowly while her legs turn gangrenous from immobility? This is Jaheira we're talking about, not Aerie.

Touché, you’ve got a very valid point. The party must have been in their cells for some time before they managed to escape. This gives a window of opportunity to rearrange Jaheira’s spells (a much needed move! – I don’t think I have to mention the entangling bit again ). After all we don’t know what happened to Jaheira other than that she didn’t know what happened to Khalid (who wasn’t dissected in front of her, but in front of Imoen [img]graemlins/nono.gif[/img] ).

I agree, but since all Thieving skills are redistruibuted upon transferring to BG2 anyway, only a fool would have kept anything in Pick Pockets. And hey, even with 0 points invested in the skill, she still has a score of 25%--conceivably enough to snag a few quills from sleepy acolytes, and she was caught frequently. Besides, if we're going to remain strictly true to BG1 here, she'd have gotten only 20 Thieving points per level, instead of BG2's 25.

Alright, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. I have rambled on enough anyway

[ 08-25-2004, 07:17 AM: Message edited by: Link ]