What does everyone think of the mod in general?

I'm going through it for the first time (I'm so proud :rolleyes: :) ) and I'm a solo K/M and I'm finding it quite easy so far the only places I've had trouble in no particular order is Mae'vars guild (it was the first Tactics fight I did) Firekraag, Sahugin city (sp?) which I couldent get through without a lot of wand of moster summoning and Simulacrum fodder and my cat familer, and the three Dragons at small teeth pass.
So far I'm having an easy enough time at insane difficulty but on the other hand what can't you do with a solo K/M except heal and disarm traps? so I picture that these fights would be harder with a party of six, because you have no single overpowered character and it's a lot harder managing multiple characters.
I thought Firekraag was hard until I faced him after the Underdark, even though I might have been able to beat him if I found that spell immunity scroll at the time.

Well over all my final verdict is.

Difficulty 8.5/10 (4-5 with my solo K/M)
Fun 9/10
Replayability 10/10
Overall 9/10

I love tactics, its one of my favorite mods. It adds a lot of spice to BG2:SOA. The lich improvements are especially cool and make them a lot tougher to tangle with early on. For some reason I always had an amazing tough time vs the annoying bastard torgal. Yes he can be drawn out, but even then, he rips apart level 9-12 characters with easy. Another tough fight was the gnome fighter illusionist in the docks. Another great thing about tactics is how hard it makes beholders. They dont kill themselves anymore!

The vamps in Windspear Hills are also a pain in the butt if you're not level 15 or so.

The mod does reintroduce the Greater Wolfwere bug (at least my earlier version did).

I love the mage parts of it, but the other parts I could do without. My Firkraag script is a lot tougher and the other parts cause the enemies to change their classes and such. I remember Improved Bodhi eating my party in Chapter 3 (literally. I have screenshots of her devouring my chars in two rounds).

Where is the F/I Gnome anyway? I'd like to go and kick his overconfident arrogant arse, I hate Gnomes!!!

Also I thought the Twisted Rune was Very hard as well not because of the Twisted Rune leader (Lich, Mage, Beholder, Fighter, Vamp) but those bloody Assassins, I only went in the first couple of times at a fraction of my mage power with a pro-Magic scroll, got my arse kicked by the Assassins, tried it a few times, tried resting then going in, didn't work, so I decided that the mages were the lesser of two evils so I used some spell Immunitys and the Cloak of Cheese an after casting improved alacricity got through without a scratch.

It's great that you have to actually earn all these very powerful items like Carsomyr C-Fury, and Staff of the Magi, before you practically had them handed to you with smile and a "have a nice day I'll just go and kill myself now" ;)

The C-Fury fight was easy in tactics actually. The Gnome illusionist is in the docks in some building, dont remeber which, search him out.

Bhodi was a tough monster, I have yet to beat her with a solo char in chapter 3, I simply run away from her and she leaves eventually. With a high level party it is possible to beat her however.

But what about the "smart" Trolls? how do they justify Trolls that ignore summons, and just how can a Troll be smart enough anyway? maybe if they improved their regeneration ability to match werewolves and their fighting ability that could be justifyed, but intellegent Trolls are unheard of.

Just like good drow are unheard of? :rolleyes:

@ Strifestrike: Maybe you've heard of intellegent Trolls before but the only good Drow's I know of, are Drizzt and Solaufein. (even though he's not technically a part of FR) I am no avid die hard fan who's been following it for god knows how long or someone who's read any of the books, like you might have and I'm sure there are lot's of people here like that.

When I said smart Trolls are unheard of I was refering to myself try repeating what I said out loud to yourself and you might see yourself, and also how common are smart Trolls? and how likely is it that Torgal has an IQ above 30?

He doesnt need an iq above thirty. All he has to do is tell his troops his strongers orders, go for the humans first.

I soloed him and cast a simulacrum so how would a Troll know the difference between a simulacrum or a mislead or projected image if a Gnome or human a lot smarter then him coulden't? And what's up with him "smelling" invisible characters when other trolls just stand there?

Have you tried Kuroisan yet :) ?

Honestly I think it was all a ploy to make things harder.
The whole idea simply annoys me, but it also makes killing them much more rewarding. :)
Then again, sometimes it makes me so angry that I bring out my old Blade, summon images like there's tomorrow and take great pleasure in killing them with my bare hands.

Kurosian wasn't very hard for me only took a couple of reloads on very hard with a 11/12 K/M compared to his 14/14 and he had the acid Katana. (whatever the hell it's name is)

My way of beating him probably wasn't original, I just run around for five minutes Breach/Stoneskin/Improved haste/pro-acidx2/pro-weapons and killed him. It's also a good idea btw to do this around the Temple district so if you need healing quickly it's close by.

What I'm stuck on now is the final battle with Irenicus, I can kill the Dragon and Sword of greed easily, and got Sarevok to near death but the annoying orb of fear keep summoning beholders, and turning my 20+ Mord swords and Planetars. I've tried the Chain contingency + project image trick, so I had 3 Imoens (who I converted to a Sorcerer who is at level 24, and legit) used Telport fields and my K/M's simulacrum who is too weak to be much help.
But then again I've only given it about 3 goes and will try till I get it.

I just cheesed Kuroisan to death LOL.

I was lugging around too many potions of invisibility (from all those random encounters) so I just surrounded him with invisible party members and let my best meelee person with the cloak of mirroring and a long reach weapon like two handed sword, spear or halberd both magical and non-magical (also equip ring of free action to prevent Slow) whack him. If he dispels the invisibility, just drink some more :p .

Oh, do make sure he used up his 2 death fog scrolls.

What are the abilities of that Kurosian's katana? :confused:

Heres the desc.

Sanchuudoku +4: Acidic Katana

This green blade was forged by a Kara-Turan Wu Jen as a gift for his paranoid overlord; its name means "Acidic Poisoning". The sword was enchanted using the fresh blood of a Black Dragon and the hilt guard is decorated with Wolfwere bone fragments. The blade heals its user's wounds at an alarming rate and powerful acid seem to fly from it whenever an attack is made on the user.

STATISTICS:

Equipped Abilities:

Regeneration (1 hit point every two seconds)

Immunity to Acid, anyone attacking or casting spells on the wielder is subject to an Acidic Backlash.

Combat Ability:
Each hit lowers the target's acid resistance by 25% for 18 seconds and inflicts 2d4 acid damage.

THACO: +4 bonus
Damage: 1D10 +4
Damage type: slashing
Weight: 8
Speed Factor: 0
Proficiency Type: Katana
Type: 1-handed
Unusable By: Cleric, Druid, Mage

Kurosians Katana has got to be the cheesiest weapon in the game, for F/M's even more then the Crom or any Vorpal weapon.

Stats:
Immunity to acid.
Acidic backlash meaning if someone hits you with weapons or spells they take acid damage for three rounds untill about 10 damage is done (are we seeing a patern involving acid here?)
1hp regen a second

Edit: I was beaten to it.

Imagine for a moment casting SI:Div then walking into a room of about 20 Golems, and casting pro- magic weapons, a few times, they'll just kill themselves trying to kill you and you don't have to lift a finger.

Thanks the desc, it seems realy a powerful one. Not many monster has immunity against the acid.

The info for the acid Katana say's 1 hp every 2 seconds but for me it was 1/1 anyone else get this? is it a bug?

Is tactics retro-active? Meaning if i dowload it and install it will my current games be changed or is it just new games?

And another thing what mods is it incompatible with?

Kuroisan and the "Red Badge" encounters are the hardest for me, because I never have any Protection from Acid/Poison spells when Kuroisan finally decides to spawn; and I always lose Kelsey and Aerie during the first parts of both the battles, making the rest of the fight really hard.

BTW, I don't know if it's a part of the Tactics or Solaufein mods but that encounter where the party gets abducted by a bunch of guys that tell you their plans in detail and then attack...but that's a hard one for me too. :rolling:

Would that be the Eclipse fight?

The most overpowered weapon in the Sola Mod would be Sola's +5 MoonBlade, IMO. That, dual-wielded with the Acid Katana, would be a real pleasing sight to see.

Kuroisan is easy if you have a full party and have the improved city encounters as you get lots of potions of invisibility and trigger it after coming back from the Sahuagin city. If Kuroisan has a glaring weakness, it is that he doesn't cast True Sight. You will notice my earlier post.

Same with the Red Badge encounter. All team invisible, go to one corner of the map and about 3 of the bad guys (the one with the stunning spear is not one of them fortunately) chase you that can see invisible so you can deal with them first. I like to trigger it in ToB so I can rest in the pocket plane safely before going back to finish them off. Imprisonment helps to narrow it down to 2. Kill them. Cast freedom, then kill the imprisoned one. Time stop and have your mages take care of the 2 remaining baddies.

[ January 12, 2004, 04:46: Message edited by: jeremiah ]

About Kuriosan... His script makes him run away for a bit so make your party hide except a thief or char that can do heavy damage in one round and the ability to go invis anytime.

Arrows of dispelling take down his stoneskin (he has about three) so you will have to go invis for at least 3 times (also remember to wait out the prot from mag weapons - he doesn't cast it if your invis) and then two to four backstabs should do the trick (be quick though as once you start damaging he will run away if he get low in hp)

It might be a good idea to equip a non-magical waepon so once the stoneskins are gone, you can keep on hitting regardless of his protections.

Can someone please answer my questions?

As long as you have not been to the maps that spawn them like the docks for the lich, the Sahuagin city for the Improved Sahuagins and similar, they should be okay. But if you already visited a map I don't think it works very well.

At least the Ilyich mod doesn't seem to work well when I start the dungeon before I install the component. But when I start a new game, it works as advertised.

The Tactics mod is compatible with a lot of mods as it is weidu. Only the Unfinished Business mod seems to conflict with the gnome in Valygar's home component of Tactics that I have seen so far (I think they intend to fix it in UB).