Just in time to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Baldur’s Gate series, King Diamond has just released new versions of Check the Bodies and Shadows over Soubar! Check the Bodies feature new Russian and French translations as well as a number of bug fixes, and SoS has been updated with an Italian translation--so if you enjoy these mods, go download them today!

Relevant Links:

• Check the Bodies website
• Check the Bodies forum
• Download CtB v1.11
• Shadows over Soubar website
• Shadows over Soubar forum
• Download SoS v1.13

The Baldur’s Gate Series is 10 today!

A big “Happy Birthday!” goes out to Baldur’s Gate, which was released 10 years ago today, on the 30th of November 1998. Little could they have known that the modding community spawned by that release would still be alive and kickin’ ten years in the future!

So if you have a beverage of some kind, raise your glass and give a toast--to Baldur’s Gate, and to the IE Modding Community!

Cheers, all!

With this 1st anniversary edition of the IE Modding Digest, we are nearing the festive season, but small things amusing small minds continue to present themselves. Might as well have convivialities every fortnight with these little gems…

Solve: 0.5 v = 1024 x 768
Don’t let trite mathematics stop you from playing Planescape: Torment on higher resolutions. the vanished one allows you to enjoy the Nameless One in 1024 x 768 resolution with several fixes to the Planescape: Torment 1024x768 UI pack, bringing it to version 0.5. But no, the answer to the problem is not 0.5, check your calculations before grabbing the pack here.

Alter-nym
If modifications change their names a lot, then stick with the most recent name of the modification. Sounds simple until you find out that the the ‘PST 1280x800 UI’ modification that became the ‘PST Widescreen UI’ modification has become ’Ghostdog’s Planescape: Torment User Interface‘. Sounds like a mouthful? Then you’ll love how it supports the 1280x800, 1280x768, and now 1280x1024 resolutions of Planescape: Torment. Lots of numbers to make your left cerebral hemisphere happy, and more pictures to make your right cerebral hemisphere happy. See, there’s something right here for every brain. Changes can be found here.

We’re rolling down the female animations...
She’s rolling out the female animations for Baldur’s Gate II with the Human female unarmoured sorceress and the Human female with light robe replacement animations for the One Pixel Productions project. Erephine invites you to give your spellcasters the shine they deserve, without having to cast too many Chromatic Orbs, and definitely not Stone Skin. Grab them here before their mint condition is tarnished by the slobbering of greasy hands.

RoaR, RoaR!
I’m tempted to call it The Rod of a Refuge just so that it can emulate the ferocity of a lion’s growl, but it’s just the Rod of Refuge modification for Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. Konalan describes this as a handy little item that ‘[transports you] to a furnished, one-room house with two containers to store equipment.’ Unfortunately, you are going to have to count to 100 while he hides it in a little corner that you will never find. Happy hunting!

Plenty of trinkets to celebrate one year of gastric secretions and to keep you rapt this coming December, and there’ll be more. Tune in next fortnight...and you’ll see if I just made a fool of myself.

It’s all about the little changes and additions this fortnight. Actually, we could say that for pretty much every fortnight the Modding Digest is published. Why didn’t I think of that?

Stylised snakes and portable holes
vilkacis continues to raise eyebrows with small oddities, fixing an installation error with The Slithering Menace, now version 3.3, and introducing a Portable Hole that you can watch all your items fall into (and easily fetch out again). Check them out here and here.

I, J, K, L?
Italian has suited the spices for the NPCs Jandor and Killing Wolf, in which language they now are ostensibly skilled in uttering their short dialogues in. Have a look at these releases here. Now, what’s next that begins with the letter L?

1280 x 800 = 1024000, and 1280 x 768 = needs more brain power
Fit more into your mind by stretching the dimensional limits of the Planescape: Torment engine! The new version 0.9 of the aptly renamed PS:T Widescreen UI modification now bundles support for both 1280x768 and 1280x800 resolutions, along with other highly desirable changes, which can be seen here. Don’t miss out on this rare piece of innovation here, and grab your free set of steak knives if you call within the next 30 minutes. Now where did I put that box of steak knives?

Sexy leather and sexy chainmail
Now if this isn’t icing on the cake, then go ahead and feed your cake to the dog. Erephine has continued her amazing animation work with new cryptically coded modules HFB2 and HFB3, which obviously stands for Human Female leather armour, and Human female chainmail (sans grotesque miniskirt). What do you mean that doesn’t make sense? Go and satisfy your salacious desires here. I know you want to…

Start with the small and end with the big, and your aftertaste will last many times more, or at least until next fortnight. Catch ya then.

The Rogue Rebalancing mod is a gameplay modification for Baldur’s Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal. This mod strives to bring the Rogue classes (Bards and Thieves) and their respective kits closer to their Pen and Paper 2E AD&D incarnations. The mod is divided into multiple components all of which can be installed separately and are completely independent of each other. In so far, Rogue Rebalancing can restore proper dual-wielding skills to Bards and Thieves, revise some of the Bard and Thief kits and their respective high level abilities, add more items useful for Rogues to the game, slightly revise the merchant treatment of stolen goods, enhance the Shadow Thief opponents which the player faces while siding with Bodhi in chapter 2 and introduce a new challenging encounter with a party of Cyric’s followers in chapter six. Some of the introduced changes will be applied immediately but, for best results, you should start a new game after installing this mod. More detailed descriptions of all mod components can be found in the documentation section of the Rogue Rebalancing website.

New in v4.0

In summary, this major release further revises the Thief and Bard HLA tables and tweaks their respective kits a bit further. Optionally, Rogue Rebalancing can now restore the proper PnP racial adjustments for thieving skills and allow Cromwell and Cespenar to upgrade some of the items which are introduced or altered by this mod. In light of these changes, the compatibility with other mods and the recommended install order for Rogue Rebalancing have changed. Please consult the revised Compatibility Guide for more details.

Relevant links

• Mod homepage
• Download locations
• Documentation
• Discussion forum
• Compatibility guide